January 31, 2022 Work Session Public Meeting

001great thanks katie good evening and welcome everyone uh katie can we begin with the roll call [Music] yes mr antonio here mr badger here mr bliefeld miss kiavaci mr frank here mrs hayman here miss carrie and i guess here dr morris here mrs ginsberg here seven president two absent and alex kendall here one student board wrap this evening thanks so much katie all right please join me now during the pledge of allegiance goodbye good evening again and welcome everyone to this january 31st meeting of the west higgins school board all right looking at our agenda we first parted with our prior meetings in section three we listed at our upcoming meetings we have another meeting next monday february 7th on february 14th we have our racial equity oversight committee meeting on february 15th we have

002a budget workshop on february 16th we have a policy committee meeting on february 23rd i'll have my mciu board of directors meeting on february 23rd we also have a north moscow joint operation meeting and on february 28th we have another school board meeting now we'll go to section 4 which is our presentations for this evening and our first one is the board of school directors recognition thank you i'll take this and start us off and january is uh each year the month where districts across the state have an opportunity to thank the volunteers who spend so many hours unpaid to help their communities and help the students in their community so normally we have some volunteers come up here and help us with this in the form of students as you may recall i'm not

003doing that at this time so we have actually a representative of of another group affiliated with the district who does all sorts of good things for students and can speak on behalf of many students so uh it's uh it's a pleasure to introduce and have her please say a few words our the president of our foundation uh allison matizek thank you so much i appreciate uh having the opportunity to come and say thank you for all the work that you do as a as the school board boy it's been quite the past couple of years to say the least and you've done a terrific job and we really appreciate it so on behalf of the wizarding educational opportunities foundation we extend our great thanks i would be remiss if i didn't also thank many of

004you who have also supported philanthropically we off and appreciate all that you do in order to help with the grants that we give for the activities of our community and the six schools within the district i'm joined tonight by our two student representatives from we off so um i will turn it over to lauren kuhman and alexander blatic thank you okay so first off we wanted to give a quick recap of our staff tribute event we off raised four thousand seven hundred and twenty five dollars and we were able to send over 180 staff tributes to district staff the attribute included a personal note from the donor and a small gift we would like to thank the wizarding community for its support of this event and remind everyone that there will be another opportunity to

005send a staff tribute in late april early may to celebrate teacher appreciation week we are also excited to let you all know about our double good popcorn fundraiser the listing community may have already received emails or seen information on the we off facebook page for details but this week only we office launching this fundraiser where families are encouraged to create a pop-up shop and purchase popcorn there are more than 10 flavors to choose from and in true pop-up fashion the fundraiser is only available for four days so please don't miss out popcorn sales will support grants for wisan teachers okay and finally we also wanted to remind everyone that we also be hosting its annual trivia night on may 7th 2022 at the center square firehouse more information about ticket prices uh covert precautions and

006more just general information will be coming out in the spring closer to the event oh thank you so much and uh in both lauren and alexander we have uh terrific ambassadors of the district and your partnership with we off is amazing and i would just like to second what i know what we said anytime which is um we value the partnership that we offer has with the district and and we appreciate you being here tonight and thank you for all that you do yes i would second that thank you so much for everything that we all done and thank you so much for the gift this is wonderful thank you and um i'm very interested to know more about the popcorn pop-up shop uh some more information is on your website awesome okay my family's

007a big fan of popcorn so i will be checking that out thank you so much does anyone else have any comments uh just one quick comment um i'm very excited about uh having a date for the rehab trivia night uh we're always been uh big uh supporters and attendees of that event and glad to see you returning and thanks thanks to we up and everything that you guys do for the district um helping out providing grants to uh teacher driven and school driven projects and initiatives is really great in helping um sort of expand on the opportunities uh that are available to our kids so thanks everyone thanks again anyone else have any comments i'll just say thank you as well because i feel like that's not said enough so thank you so much for

008what you do really it's it's thanks to this community for supporting our students and we've done a great job i think in the past year of gathering more dollars that we can give out um for our teacher grant so we're looking forward to doing that in 2022 so thank you all thank you well if there's no other comments then we'll turn it back over to jim again thank you and we'll take a second to set up our technology for the uh presentation thanks okay so tonight we have the fifth annual report of the district's efforts to close the achievement gap um it's we have shared this report each january now and the initial launch of this was a term the achievement gap 10-year attack plan and we may change nomenclature but it's still indicative of

009a laser focus on doing whatever we can whatever it's necessary to ensure that all students achieve okay so we're going to tag team this presentation tonight uh i'll take the first part which is setting the stage and then i have uh a team of people who've worked on this and also have uh much more in-depth things to to share so first of all what's the same as i mentioned we do this every january this is a actually in a report number five now this is not what uh you might recall as a annual district-wide standardized testing report um it's actually not going to even happen this year because of the pandemic the results of standardized testing are extremely unreliable best we'll eventually get back to that point and that is always in detail included in

010a separate report because we don't want to get hung up on achievement being linked to standardized tests that's one small indicator uh what this is also not is a a review of individual student growth okay that happens every single day as a matter of fact that's happening now in the pandemic as well and it's just that um those are things that skilled professionals in the classroom do on a daily basis as part of their normal responsibilities this does instead focus on our local achievement gap and the definition of it is there and we have from the start been up front that that and very frank that our students from certain demographic groups are currently achieving at lower levels in other students and that's factual we have plenty of indications of that and what we need

011to do is continue to work to close that gap so there are some ongoing influences again this year do the pandemic things are different we again we can't necessarily measure with reliability our students achievement the the indicators and we'll go over them in a second just to remind everybody what they are they don't really fit so this year again we're going big picture and we're actually kind of changing a little bit and we'll talk about this later we're moving from a look at into all these individual indicators we're not discarding them but rather than look at them in in separate silos we're instead trying to take a look at the bedrock causes of the achievement cap there's root causes at work here that we need to fix before we can fix any one of these

012individual indicators so first some demographics uh actually almost unchanged from last year this time you see the breakdown of our uh student body this is as of december 1st of 2021 by race and ethnicity on the left and by what we call lunch status on the right again the same as last year lunch status is our attempt to to quantify how many of our students come from a low-income household um it's a it's a decent proxy of that uh goal it's it's not perfect but it's the best we have so as you can see on that one about 20 of our students come from low-income households and all of these demographics work into our thought processes we celebrate this diversity this is one of the things that makes wissa hicken as great as it is

013and it's one of our treasures this slide takes a look at our staff composition in terms of race ethnicity this is for the most part unchanged from last year as well except for the uh percentage of black teachers went up about one percentage point from about five and a half percent last year to about six and a half this year so that's a little bit of progress uh we still have work to do and then on the far right column you can see how they measure up against the same percentages from the previous slide of our student population and then this is the last i'll discuss before i pass it along but this is just a timeline we we started this back in august of 2016. we launched this we took each year we sort

014of um we took a look at what we had in front of us in terms of data we we tried some things we develop some plans and then we we adapted each year and again a pandemic throws a wrench into things i liked one of the highlights from the over the past five years is we've moved from measuring absolute achievements to an attempt to also measure growth of students which i think is really really good again we're going to have a hard time with that tonight because of the the pandemics data issue tonight's annual report number five and then ongoing we have all this work and to develop and improve our understanding of the why so that's really important that's going to be a flavor for tonight really it's not so much that we have

015a gap we we're are the first ones to admit we do we're trying to figure out why that is and again it's it's morphing from individual causes to a broader structural systemic and then we're going to continue to work to close the gap so at this point i'm passing it over to dr jen schmidt who will talk a little bit about those uh achievement uh indicators that we normally use why we picked them and why we can't necessarily use them this year but we're not forgetting about them great thank you dr cristfield um as dr chris field mentioned a series of indicators were identified as a way to measure our progress towards our work to close the achievement gap the measures that are tracked in a typical year or normal school year include 10 progress

016indicators that span across the elementary the middle school and the high school levels and as you can see those indicators consist of various national and state achievement measures such as pssa and psat as well as local grade-based achievement measures such as math fact fluency and honor roll yet we know that last year wasn't a normal school year and we know that these achievement indicators and some of our growth indicators as well will not be reliable measures of progress towards closing the gap because of factors related to the pandemic however we are continuing to look at at different pieces of data to monitor and so for example one progress measure related to the 12th grade ap indicator that the district is currently monitoring and exploring further um as part of our ongoing work towards equity is

017disproportionality and ap enrollment and this is an example of one of the topics that was discussed the most recent equity oversight committee meeting in january the education landscape has shifted due to cover 19 and that has definitely changed everything and though although our focus returned to academics and addressing curriculum gaps last year we were still navigating the pandemic and our students were learning in a variety of settings including in-person virtual um and a combination of hybrid environments and we also had students who were home schooled but we had work to be done and we had learning challenges that we needed to overcome we know all of these factors influence achievement um and they influence the gap however as the landscape has shifted we have to shift in order to best meet the needs of all

018of our learners and so this means that we are not only focusing on the efforts of addressing students academic process progress but also and more importantly we're focusing on social emotional needs and creating a climate of belonging and now i'll turn the presentation over to dr dewan thank you dr schmidt and dr chris field so when we look at the big picture what we're really talking about is the system and we have to keep some things in mind that is that the achievement gap that we're seeing today has developed over decades it didn't happen overnight and we cannot change it overnight it's something that will take many many years many many efforts in many different ways to address and close the gap systems uh school systems often ask for prescriptive strategies that are going to

019help to close the achievement gap and what we need to know is that the research is clear that the focus needs to shift to the pedagogical approaches to focus on increasing the educational environment to ensure that it is culturally relevant and so as we think about moving forward and we think about what we've done we need to keep that in mind keeping in mind that it is the big picture it's the system there are many different layers and therefore many different avenues that we need to address when we're addressing the problem it's going to require a systemic solution because it is a systemic problem and so in 2021 we sort of looked at that as triaging and there were many efforts put in place to attempt to support to attempt to close the gap to

020work diligently toward addressing covet-related needs of course keeping in mind the gap all along the way and so some efforts are listed here um and so we of course have a question do we have evidence that these strategies have helped to close the gap and the answer is no there's really no magic solution or strategy again it goes back to changing the system and so the efforts that we have in place have to consider all of that so as we move forward we're focusing on strategic action steps to identify and dismantle root causes of inequities in our system we're thinking about belonging this is from a text belonging through culture of dignity by floyd cobb and john cronapple and it shows the um this idea of um what we may what we are frequently in

021education considering is the hierarchy of needs and so you can see here what they've done is shown where belonging fits in terms of the hierarchy of needs belonging when we think about belonging we're talking about the extent to which people feel personally appreciated validated accepted and treated fairly within an environment research shows that we know the more students feel a sense of belonging the more motivated they are the more engaged they are the more resilient they are and the more successful they are if they feel that sense of belonging in school and so this has shaped this research has shaped what many districts are understanding now about the gap that we need to think about yes academic achievement absolutely but we see where that falls in terms of the steps to success here that at

022the foundation before achievement we have to focus on and think about the sense of belonging so right now we don't have quantitative data to speak to this however we have plenty of qualitative data we have the words of our students we have the experiences our students have shared with us um in terms of illustrating a lack of belonging and bringing to our awareness and we do have a belonging survey a climate survey that we're going to administer to students and staff and more information is worth coming to families about that but once we do that we'll gain some quantitative data and that'll help us track and monitor over the years and it will help us help to shape what we know we need to do or rather help us to know better what we need

023to do in terms of that sense of belonging for our students and so this illustration shows that there may come you know obviously if we're not addressing the um sense of belonging there becomes a gap a perilous gap right the belonging gap when people are uncertain about their belonging they search for cues to help them to know how to fit in where to fit in if they're liked if they're valued and if they're accepted and those cues especially having to think about that having to use that cognitive energy affects their ability to focus on academics and there's research to show that students who are members of underrepresented groups who are often stereotyped and experience um stereotyped experiences they are especially likely to be anxious about not belonging and of course that affects their ability to

024focus there's research to show that changes to practices can help reduce the belonging anxiety and help to mitigate race-based and gender based achievement gaps this research also shows us what some uh things that can affect academic achievement all of these things can potentially come from that lack of belonging and and all of these things most certainly affect academic achievement and this is why we must focus on ensuring that sense of belonging in addition to all of the tremendous academic supports and interventions that are in place and that will continue to be in place for our students that educational belonging structures what are we looking at we're looking at people do people help me feel like i belong we're looking at policies and procedures looking at rules and expectations in our schools and in our district

025we're looking at practices and curriculum and materials and instruction to make sure that all of these ways that we can ensure our students feel that sense of belonging that we're addressing interpersonal institutional and instructional belonging in our schools and at this time i'm going to turn it over to ms letour and she'll talk about our commitment to educational equity and she'll walk through some of the steps the district has taken thank you dr doan we have three major committees dedicated to educational equity the board racial equity oversight committee the district equity planning committee and the school equity committees this structure that is in place really helps us to investigate our policies procedures practices to ensure equity and cultural responsiveness there are district critical areas of appraisal that we highlight here these areas of appraisal provide

026us with an intentional focus to help us with our equity efforts and our action steps with our district action steps that are noted here you can see several areas that we're exploring one area such as the code of conduct microstudy is one that we conducted during the fall semester and we explored both qualitative and quantitative data the evaluated collected data will provide recommendations for us to consider as we review our district's code of conduct our intentional efforts with professional learning focuses on building our staff's capacity and confidence and being culturally responsive practitioners with a social emotional lens as well and again that enhances that feeling and that sense of belonging additionally our leadership team has participated in professional learning sessions dedicated to restorative practices combined with a culture responsive approach which will extend to a

027secondary cohort of teachers at this time i'm going to turn the presentation over to dr chris field thank you these are uh term closing thoughts and first thought i have is i'm sure it's evident to everybody that i did not personally put this slide that together there are way too many uh awesome graphics and flow to it um and for that i'd like to thank the a-team that i have working with me um this was a collaborative effort this year and it's going to be that way moving forward um in a nutshell we are learning uh we are we are learning things about how to get better we are for example moving from that initial focus on individual indicators to instead a much more robust and probably impactful look at the system in this case

028uh the theme of tonight belongingness this work really matters to us it has for five years and we're getting in the fact we're getting better at it and we're not leaving it and we're going to continue to work on it i hope is indication that we're very serious about it we want this gap closed and our our goals are to do those things up in the screen go beyond diversity and get to inclusion get to dignity get to that belonging that feeling of belongingness all of that if we can do all that it gets us to opportunities and then if we if we close the achievement gap which may well be better framed the opportunity gap then we get to where we want to be and it's not going to happen overnight as dr juan

029pointed out it was caused by many many years of issues we're learning about them we're learning how to fix them and we remain committed to doing it thank you so much dr chris field um dr schmidt this is couture and dr juan for the presentation um i guess i'll start it off i have a couple questions myself and then i'll go around see if my fellow board members have questions um dr john the belonging survey you referenced can you give us an idea of what types of questions we post to our students and families yes thank you i'm actually because we have ms latour here i know that she would be i'm happy to answer that question she'll be we'll be composing a message to families to help them to understand when we're doing this

030survey for students why we're doing the survey and that will include a sampling of a few questions for you so ms latour do you want to share thank you dr dewan um so in terms of the survey that we're using we had the opportunity to review several survey tools and we focused on the psychological school sense membership scale basically to assess of course a degree to which staff and students um perceive a sense of belonging so some of the questions that um staff and students will look at or experience will be you know i feel accepted in the classroom or spaces that i'm in um i feel that the teachers acknowledge who i am and accept me as i am those types of questions will be those that students will explore currently for the communication

031to parents and guardians i have several samples five in all that really provide a good sense of what types of questions will be asked of students so it's really trying to gauge their level of how they're perceived by their staff their teachers how they're perceived by their peers how they are perceiving themselves in terms of involvement in some of the club activities that persist and exist in our school community so we just want to make sure that we're looking at how they're pretty much seeing themselves in that whole scope of the school community and so those questions will really tailor and be tailored to those types of questions great thank you so much and then my next question was i saw that we had um listed there was one of the things we did an

032academic response coordinator a coach and it looked like we had a number of different like community partnerships perhaps that we've been working with do we have anything in place like with student to student like like a picture like an elementary school at stoney creek we have like a fifth grade buddy for kindergartners like do we have anything comparable in middle school or high school like we have an older upperclassman that kind of guides you and perhaps checks in with you and tries to get you to engage in the clubs that they belong to anything like that thank you ms latour would you mind sharing i know that there was just today the start of um the mentorship program so this is perfectly timed yes thank you so much so we have a secondary mentorship program

033that we started with the collab collaborating with of course the guy wright leadership team and in this partnership um for this year at this time we're looking at really building the capacity of the students who are involved in it so we're focusing our efforts on the mentees making sure that we provide them with that leadership capacity and then also provide them with the skills that they need to serve as those peer mentors so that secondary mentorship program that's currently structuring itself now and building its foundation as of today will be that network that will allow for peer mentoring to take place at both the middle school and high school levels and will be identifying the students that need mentorship or is this something that's voluntary like i would like to sign up and have somebody

034be my mentor um how would that work exactly yeah so um we'll make sure it's going to continue to be something that allows for a student to self you know nominate a teacher a parent or guardian so there will be many avenues for nomination to the mentorship program um so that we can ensure that we are wrapping all students and they feel that sense of belonging and they have that student to kind of guide them through that level of success that they need at that high school or middle school level great thanks and then my next question had to do with metrics like with the other measures that we're using for different grade levels like the different tests we were using to rely on like how are we going to measure success with this new

035approach yes thank you for your question so in terms of measuring um and tracking that sense of belonging the sense of the belonging survey tool is one that we are starting with this year and that'll be our baseline but we intend to continue to administer that throughout the years to come so we'll be monitoring the sense of belonging in our district over the next several years and we hope to see growth in terms of that that data that we're collecting using that tool okay great thank you um and as far as the teacher numbers jumping through a different topic the disparity between the percentage of students of a particular group or the number of teachers it looks like in certain areas like asian teachers we're really lacking um it's like i think like a 15

036or 14 spread same with hispanic it looks like we're getting a little bit more of a narrow gap with african american but what are we doing as far as like our asian teachers or hispanic to attract more teachers in those groups absolutely um actually miss latour and i are actually working together to sort of target some of those areas um certainly um you know broadening our areas and where we're recruiting um is certainly important and then uh our um our affiliations with different colleges and and working with different colleges so um those are some of the things that we're working on but yes it's definitely um it's definitely something we've noticed as well okay i guess we go to all of the like diversity fairs we attend these correct yep um multiple yep through the

037year okay great um and then my last question had to do with like takeaways from covet like we've all seen what's for just like the covet slide is there anything we're seeing that's happened during covid and something we've done that we feel could be a takeaway that we could then apply towards the achievement gap overall like we've been hiring additional reading specialists we've hired the kindergarteners the help of socialization is there anything that we've noticed that we could maybe use down the road i'll give you one anecdotal because i think there's there's a number but one that sticks out of my mind is last year when we had so many students at home we we came to realize there was a communication gap between households who spoke primarily spanish or only spanish and the school

038district so in that instance we actually hired somebody who's fluent in spanish and an educator to just be that liaison for these families and it was marvelous last year all of a sudden we were getting information they were getting information and all of a sudden the students would log on again and they became re-re-engaged so small thing but what we learned from that is well we we don't have students at home now everybody's back uh in in school um the communication with homes in in that other language in this case spanish is mission critical for the success of the students so we will continue to have somebody if it's not the same person on an hourly basis it will be the schools will have the ability to communicate in spanish or any whichever other language

039and especially when a student starts falling off in terms of his or her either school performance or something else um right away in the in the language that's that's understood at the house so that we can get that communication channel open that's great yeah and hopefully we can look at other things that we've utilized during the covet moving forward as well thank you so much okay so i'll open it now to my fellow board members anyone else have questions i have a question um have other districts use belonging surveys and then have used that data to help them show improvement in their achievement gap yes there are several districts that have employed um the belonging climate tool um some of them have used the university of pennsylvania to administer it and to collect that data

040but in with within our area you have um local school districts that have done so um for example abbytune school district and several others that worked in a collaborative um then you have done the belonging climate tool this year actually in the fall semester any other questions have we implemented the universal i think there was talk of implementing universal gifted tested and testing in first grade have we implemented that this year yes that is um that is on the schedule to start this sprinting yes sorry one more this is a little out there but have we thought about introducing some spanish language into elementary schools to give kids a better sense of you know the a different culture that is that their classmates share and for just all around building like language skills that are

041important when you're that young wait you want to take this one no okay um the answer is uh we would love to be able to do that uh and and i don't know to what extent we've thought about it um we don't feel like we can do that in an authentic way enough to to make a difference and we're just up against that constant struggle of of time competing competing really awesome needs such as that with all these other awesome needs i have two questions and a suggestion so two questions uh the one is i'm assuming with the survey we will also collect demographic data so that we can track um any trends that might take place within specific demographics um is that true yes that's correct okay thank you um and then the second

042question is um the mentorship program i believe will be fantastic i'm very excited to hear about that will there be a plan to roll that out also to elementary so there will be conversations about um an elementary mentorship program absolutely whether it's going to be affiliated or connected with the guy wright program is another question but definitely we're looking at that ongoing mentorship um being something that is available k through 12. okay thank you um last point is just a suggestion um regarding uh the question of uh learning a second language in the elementary schools understanding some of the challenges that exist um one recommendation that came out previously was possibly as part of an after-school program that a second language might be introduced so i know at the elementary level and after school there's

043programs such as chess and aerobics and things like that to keep the kids involved we might want to think about the possibility of of a second language that could be after school so it would address the issue of the resources within school and the time uh needed within the school day i think that has as potential because then it would get us that goal that we all we all want and then also buy us more time so yes we can look into that great thank you stephanie some questions yeah just a couple so um for the belonging survey will we see results of that survey sometime in the coming weeks months or we look how are we going to get that output yes thank you for your question um we are looking to administer in

044february and so we would hope to be able to have time to analyze and be pull it together in a way that's presentable um in march april time frame beautiful and i think quack catch was that going to be for all grade levels so k through 12 is that the goal that is correct k through 12 all of our students and all of our staff will we also um take a pulse from parents and guardians yes we had lots of good discussion about this and we do intend to administer a survey for parents and caregivers and we did want to focus our attention first on students and staff but parents and caregivers survey will be the next step in that process awesome great um and my kind of dovetail thought to that and maybe a

045suggestion is you know and i appreciate the presentation and i agree we're looking to help identify opportunities for everyone um but how do we kind of see the accomplishments that we have within the year like waiting a whole year to see what has happened or what has changed feels a little bit uh too far apart for something that's so tremendous and so kind of important for our community so can we have maybe a more regular check-in even if it's like small but meaningful successes that you're having like you know more diversity kind of outreaches or i don't know whatever but just so that we can keep a pulse on all the efforts that are being done here that's all but thank you for the presentation thank you any other questions no well sorry just to

046jump off his ass question really quickly you talked about using uh like social emotional indicators i believe how are we tracking those indicators are they quantifiable or how does that did you who mentioned that i'm sorry like the social and emotional tracking of the student versus oh is that what you were sorry okay specifically using the belonging tool to reference those to track that data okay thank you so do you have some questions uh just just a comment um to to jim and yay and the entire team um i appreciated the presentation tonight and it's it's nice to see or interesting to see as well how um our thinking around this uh this challenge of the achievement gap has evolved over the last five years or so um it sort of started at looking at

047standardized test test scores and differential um average achievement levels between you know one group of students versus another um and trying to attack that directly was always hard um but this idea and the approach and some of the ideas and thoughts tonight that are talking about not just focused on you know test scores but really thinking more holistically about the student experience and the environment that our students learn and operate in and trying to focus on some of the underlying root causes that could unlock or facilitate greater performance from from all of our students especially the ones that aren't doing so um good relative to some of their peers so um thanks for all the time and energy you guys have put in and i'm excited to see the evolution in our thinking and excited

048in uh being involved and hearing more about the changes that are going to be making over time i think an important thing is that we don't focus just on doing a bunch of things but that we also measure our impact over time like is it having the intended effect um on belonging or on some other indicator that we hope to have and just consistently following it through time and then based on that making course corrections adjustments is necessary to fine-tune and improve along the way this is something like as you was mentioned the presentation is is going to be a long-standing effort but i think with consistency and focus we can make a significant impact in improving the achievement gap for the district and for all of our students over time so thanks again for

049the efforts thanks joe anyone else davi go ahead sorry i forgot one question for the screening that you mentioned before for the gifted program are we screening just a cohort and like of grades specific grades or are we kind of doing a full blow kind of screening the screener will be administered to all first graders in the district and every year it'll be administered to all first graders in the district so if you're second grade or older you've missed your window if you're not if you're a second grade or older you've missed this screener that we're newly implementing starting this school year however there are other ways for students to gain access to being screened and being evaluated for gifted education and those methods have always been in place and we have been working with

050our school psychologists with our counselors with our teachers i know our department of student supports has been working to ensure that the message is getting out in terms of looking through the lens of cultural responsiveness as it relates to identifying gifted characteristics so there are other elements to our efforts that we hope will capture some students who maybe have not been won't be in first grade to be a part of this newly implemented approach in terms of the annual first grade screener okay that would be great thank you any other questions or comments no well again thank you so much for the presentation all right so we will now move on to our first public comment which is on agenda items only uh we allow five speakers max be heard on the same topic and

051please limit your comments to three minutes and um it's the board's practice not to engage in dialogue with speakers when appropriate we will post followed responses on our district website uh when you come to the podium please state your name where you live and the topic you'll be speaking on and please make sure to keep your mask on when giving comments all right our first one is colleen comprolo i'm sorry if i said that wrong colleen simprola um so i have some questions regarding the achievement gap um in the presentation that i would like answered on the website and regarding the presentation are we continuing to look at any other causes besides belonging um how was the conclusion reached that the focus regarding the performance gap should be on belonging do we have information on

052minority students being less involved in sports clubs school activities etc i think that's information we probably have at fingertips um and are we looking at minority groups that have higher academic achievement and scholastic performance and looking at what the differences are there and some of the causes for that thank you so much colleen hi katie well now let's see if everybody online there are no hands raised on zoom okay then we'll move to our next in-person speaker which is carmina taylor so i am um deanne if you could take some notes because i really want to give some context on september 12 2016 that is when the superintendent um presented his attack plan it is now five years later 60 almost six years later and this is about the third iteration of the attack plan

053um the problem here is that when you talk about an experience gap or belonging number one the best source of information are the people that have experienced with the hicken and experience being a parent and i clearly remember black parents and black community leaders for years four decades explaining their experiences and the belonging issue so as i sat here and i watched the report again i think is problematic after five years that you don't have quantitative data because when i sat on zoom last year and i heard the fourth annual report we talked about the covet slides and the disengaged students there were hard gpas that were failing those are quantitative numbers and data you can extract i personally prefer i professionally consult and i have eight school districts right now that are doing the

054pc at pssm survey you do not correlate academic achievement with the belonging survey because they're all anecdotal and because it's a voluntarily process volunteer process most students we have found in the three months that i have hands-on with pen the cohort working with it are not responding truthfully so i think that the community deserves more substantive outcomes based on this i am a minority i was a student i was a parent i was a parent leader i had a black son he had black friends black male friends i help special ed families you need to talk to them you correlate the data regardless of whether or not there was individual numbers and stuff done before you can still take that data with what you're doing this is not good enough i have so much more

055to say but i know there's other people that can help this district with your problem it's just not a simple answer of belonging it's more complicated so to clarify when you have systemic issues in education that's institutional systemic racism it has occurred in this district for over 50 years there's been two times to ten year decades where there was no hiring of any minority teachers that's not putting the blame on anybody it's fact talk to the people that know what the history and the context evolved i also wanted to say that his a game is because he's added women of color on his team thank you for your comments coming up katie is there anyone else online there are no more hands raised on zoom okay well then we'll move on so we'll go now

056to the board president report and this week i have no informational items and no action items we'll move next to our superintendent report jim thank you just one informational item that is that uh last week we had the first of what will be many community conversations on the topic of school start times uh the next step in this process is to have a similar conversation with our staff uh which is actually going to happen day after tomorrow they were invited to the first one but this will be staff specific it'll be uh after school and then right immediately after that we will take the necessary steps to form the steering committee which we discussed uh last week will be a group of uh students and staff and community members to help kind of sort through

057the mountains of information on this topic help assess the uh the the hurdles that are specific to wissa hicken yes there are many examples of this districts that have either done it or thought about it but each district is different so we're going to need a lot of uh help with that and eventually and this is a key reminder here too is that nothing is happening if anything happens at all nothing will happen until the 2024 school year so a long process many conversations and but the good news is we started that conversation on wednesday and many of you were joining but they're with us thank you many other opportunities and we look forward to those jim i received a question from a parent how can parents get involved on like performing like a current

058task force committee committee yes how can parents get involved uh the answer is we'll uh most likely tomorrow night we'll send out a notice to all all families with information about how to do that it's going to be like a button on the website tell us who you are what your affiliation is we'll look to have a spread of student staff community members and they can express their interest that way great thanks jim does anyone else have any questions all right um it looks like you have no action items right okay so we'll move on then to the assistant superintendent report dr dewan thank you uh no action items one informational item which is the black history month preview our schools are planning a variety of activities to recognize and honor black history month uh

059principals will share their updates with me throughout february and at our february work session board meeting on february 28th i'll present updates of our students engaging in learning opportunities to recognize and honor black history month so i'm excited to be sharing that with uh with the board with the community uh in february 28th that concludes my report for this evening great thanks so much i look forward to hearing that report on the 28th um all right then we'll move on to the board solicitor report jeff i have no informational items nor do i have any action items so that concludes my report thanks jeff all right then we'll move on to the board secretary report wait uh thank you at the next uh meeting um we will request approval of three sets of minutes the

060communication regular public board meeting and the communication committee again and there is no informational great thanks spade and you want to go ahead and give the treasurer report right away uh thank you very much there is no informational item and at the next meeting we will request approval for their treasurer work for uh december 31st thank you thank you all right then moving on to the director of human resources report danielle great good evening uh tonight there are no informational items for your review are six action items under 12b the first two action items include retirements resignations appointments changes of status leaves of absences extracurricular changes and volunteer additions action item three is seeking approval for an increase to the custodian sub rate item four is for the approval of a new extracurricular job descriptions

061item five is a request for conference attendance and the final item is the approval of the amendment to the employment agreement of wade pullman business administrator and that concludes my report great thank you danielle does anybody have any questions all right well great thank you then we'll go ahead to our committee reports communications committee hi yeah thank you we did have a meeting that um we'd actually outlined in this v3 uh we did have a workshop where we looked through our website and as well as other websites to determine how we would like to move forward kristen rowlands is on lead for that um and she's doing a lot of work along with the team to kind of get us into a great place uh we're looking to um update not only the website but

062perhaps even changing partners and becoming more you know technologically savvy with our resources um a couple of things that came up out of that meeting was we will uh kind of have kristin make updates to the website in the interim if we find things and one thing we did talk about that pertains to all of us here is that we will be updating our bios as well as our pictures for the school board so um you must i'm sure you've gotten an email from kristin we we have like a little template that we can follow so that we can update our bios if you want a new picture she can help coordinate that as well um so this is a two year program or process um so it's it's a pretty big undertaking so i

063will be providing updates on a pretty regular basis through this forum as kristin uh kind of gets through the different stages as with all the other things that we do here we will be taking in feedback from all the various stakeholders that kristin will be pulling that through along with the team so great um great update oh katie already has to be queued up on our new numbers before i go to that do you have any questions about the website sorry i jumped right into the website any questions okay so these are our new numbers um this on campus in person uh reported cases um this was a week ending through january 28th and you can see we had a really nice drop from 75 the week before to 25 this week so i'm happy

064this is just one data point of this trend but i hope it continues the next slide is our off campus so anybody who's reported positive that was not on campus again through january 28th and we see a similar trend in this when we went from 16 to eight and then when we're looking at our quarantining isolation for our orange is where we're looking at so our total number and quarantine isolation um this is a snapshot of january 28th uh we're at 45. now i don't know if you guys remember but a couple of weeks ago we were like almost at 100 or maybe right at 100 so again this is definitely a positive trend here as well so happy that we are seeing this and then the next slide is for um our staff member

065who are quarantining similar story uh this is also on a downward trend we have right now 10 staff members quarantining foreign isolation the next slide is this newer this newer slide that katie created for us so that we could keep a track on our transmission status and you can see it's dated from 12 2 through 120 and you know here we're still showing our transmission levels at high um as a reminder and katie keep me honest or jim we need to be two weeks in a row in moderate or better before we can go to mask optional that is correct two two weeks in a different level for the the masking status changes that will be masking uh highly recommended instead of masking mandatory yes so as you can see here even though our numbers

066are getting better we're still at a high transmission rate and we must remember that that's still keeping our mass on at this point any questions i think the rest of the slides are just are our terminology which i think by now we all might know the book better now is that the incidence rate is that in the school district or is it countywide that's that would be the district's three municipalities is that the um i mean it's great to see the dramatic drop-off in terms of uh cases which is fantastic and hopefully that's a trend that continues um those low case counts my reflection was that i think at the beginning of january we were looking at the total number of students quarantine was like close to 300 actually i think 2 78 280 something

067um in early january so the fact that it's all the way down where it is now is uh dramatic improvement which is which is great joe thanks for remembering that i think i've blocked that out of my memory because i think i did get scared at one point but you're probably recollecting that better than i am all i know is a couple of weeks ago we were still like pretty high and i was like when is this gonna change so i mean it's one trend right so we can't get too excited but i i feel like i can exhale a little bit with my mask on i've had a lot of parents ask when the notification letters might come back to their um for their classrooms and i think many people just want the same

068sort of notification that one would get if someone in the class had strep or lice just like a general health notification and some people are still using that to say hey you know what we might not visit grandma this weekend because there might have been exposure at school so is that on the table it is the uh the pause was just because of the overwhelming nature of the nurse's responsibilities um but i'll ask when when there might be a sense of it could get back to that it's more labor intensive than it might appear on the surface but i'll certainly ask any other questions or comments no all right then we'll go ahead and thank you so much debbie and we'll go ahead and move on to our curriculum and technology committee report ronnie okay

069i have no informational items dr duan has a lot of passion items that you'd like to go through thank you there are two action items which will seek approval next monday item 14 b 1 is ratification about these students and tuition costs for two students that are outlined in document 14-1 and item 14 b2 will be seeking approval of a payment for the mciu's age of beginner program for the current school year this payment is for students who become school age but their parents decided to keep keep them in the early intervention program for another school year so those are two action items that will seek approval at next monday's meeting and that concludes our report for this evening thank you ronnie and dr juan is that you have a question can you describe this

070age of beginner program a little bit more i'm not sure i completely understand it absolutely so in special with special education services students who are eligible for early intervention services that's before they become school age so before kindergarten age when students become school age students have the option just as any family does when their student becomes five years old they have the option to come into kindergarten some families as we know may keep their students out of kindergarten for an additional year for students who are in the early intervention program at the montgomery county intermediate unit students whose families decide to keep them out for an additional year they remain in the early intervention program for an additional year and there's an additional cost for that thank you for your question thank you so much

071i did not quite capture all that i appreciate it anyone else have any questions or comments no all right well thank you so much again ronnie and dr swan i will move on next to our facilities in transportation committee report joe um good evening no informational items this evening and uh for voting next week we have one action item for consideration it's um uh looks like an abatement contract for uh the stoney creek uh construction project wait do you want to add any color commentary on that item yeah sure thank you uh the bids are attached to productivity151 and it's um a mastic that is underneath the floor in the cafeteria and certain panels on the exterior of the building thank you uh any questions or comments regarding the action item okay that's uh that's

072it for facilities and transportation great thanks so much joe and wade all right we'll move on now to our finance committee report david thanks amy uh we have one informational item for the finance committee and that is that budget workshop dates have been established for february 15th uh march 14th and april 19th and then if we need a fourth one it would be may the 9th the first meeting is uh the agenda is to look at the top side budget for the coming year uh we'll consider enrollment projections reviewing the staffing impacts that we're experiencing a new pro program our item request summary uh overall look at revenue different contributors to that i believe a five-year capital projects plan and then some specific categories in the budget including capital projects transfer debt service and plant

073operations and maintenance and then several agendas for the other two meetings that are scheduled those meetings are at 6 30 uh wait have we established are these in-person meetings or zoom we actually haven't established that because i had a lot of it um but i would think it's in person and we'll talk about it and decide okay great is there any more you want to say about the agenda um and then we have four action items to consider next week uh which are the following uh first we would seek approval of financial reports per document 16-1 asking for approval of the appointments of natalie cormier as a deputy tax collector for amber borough jennifer stonsky as the deputy tax collector for whittham township and melissa wanted as the deputy tax collector for lower gwinnett township

074i think that was me those are all wrong yeah yeah jen and ambler natalie and laura gwyneth and melissa and whitney would you explain sure so um this is the appointment of the deputies and i think it probably is right but we'll check it um oh they deputy each other and and again i just want to throw an accent out there um we are very excited in the business office because the tax collectors are working so well and they're being each other's deputies which means that they're helping each other and they'll help each other if they run into problems and we're very excited about it i understand proposed deputy tax collectors hopefully the the the other uh bureau and township will follow suit there if they haven't the third item we're considering would be the

075approval of the list of payments issued for the month ending december 31st for document 16-2 and then finally approval of parameters uh resolutions which i will let wade explain in as much detail as you'd like for uh potential bond uh issues sure thank you very much so the parameters resolution uh is a vehicle whereby the board approves the resolution and then the financial advisor sets a date and then we have a auction sale where certain um entities financial institutions would be invited they go through an auction and then a financial advisor pfm reviews the lowest uh overall bids um the auction is declared over and then um primarily amy and myself would then sign off on those documents assuming that we believe it's in the best interest of the district so the parameters resolution essentially

076says uh these are the rules of the the game and whatever day that we play by them uh if it is a positive auction uh then we would accept those bids if for whatever reason we're not happy with the bids then we would not uh take the uh auction sale and we wouldn't approve it um amy whether you knew it or not or mrs ginsberg there's lots and lots of documents that we have to sign between now and then and after the sale as well so that would essentially the first one is for new money and that primarily pays off the remaining pieces of stony creek and then depending on how much of the contingency we use we may have uh available funds to uh carry over into uh either the future projects of the

077sandy issue maybe the middle school pool renovation uh becoming classrooms or the turf project at the high school so the good news is we very very likely are going to have uh excess funds to use on those projects either way the auction sale should be underneath 10 million dollars to be bank qualified which would give us lowest lower interest rates um and then also likely have a five-year call for the future so that if interest rates drop in the future we would be able to essentially re uh refund those and in a future uh time frame if it's advantageous to the district so that's what the parameters does and you can read through it and uh bond council has been through it as well and if you have any questions you can certainly send them

078to me and i'll get them answered prior to the friday meeting the other two parameters resolutions as discussed at the finance meeting we have two outstanding bond issues from 2016 and 17 related to the um uh natatorium at the high school the central plan at the high school and various uh improvements to the site there's a refunding opportunity in the current market whereby we could uh potentially save about 900 000 um you never know they could have another fed meeting and that savings could be down to 500 000 but um right now that's what's uh out there and you know it also could be positive and maybe it's even more than that so again the parameters resolutions set the parameters for the sale we enact that sale and then if those are positive results then

079we would approve those and bring the savings back to the district uh for each individual sale so one could happen and the other couldn't or they could both happen or neither could happen it's all individual thanks very much that's all from the finance committee thank you so much david and wade does anyone have any questions or comments no all right well i would just encourage anyone that's interested in learning more about our budget to attend those budget workshops that david and wade host over the sit over several meetings they're really informative and you really get to understand more about the school's budget so i encourage anyone that's interested in the public to attend those um next we'll have our policy committee report and since um marshall's not here jim said that report certainly i'm happy

080to before i get to that i would just like to say with regard to the parameters resolution uh we did ask the question so thank you mr coleman for that policy committee the policies on the agenda are uh uh to be voted upon next meeting they're all the second reading of the same exact set of policies that uh were passed as first reading at our previous meeting since that first reading none have been changed so once these are moved off the docket next meeting we'll have another policy committee meeting we'll have another set of these and we'll continue marching down the path of getting our manual updated great thanks so much jim any questions or comments no all right well then we'll go ahead and move on to our racial equity oversight committee report paul

081we have one informational item this evening which is a recap of our january 24th meeting and i'm going to attach it to joe antonio to deliver that recap thanks paul um yeah i'll do the recap this evening if paul wasn't able to attend the most recent one at the the racial equity oversight committee meeting uh the primary focus of that session was uh taking a look at uh representation of black and brown students in particular in our ap classes um well first off before i talk about the specifics of the presentation taking a step back like why are we looking at ap and why do we care about ap um first off ap classes or having taken at least one ap class we know uh makes you as a student a stronger applicant for colleges

082the more you can class you have more rigorous courses you've taken the the more selective the colleges that you can apply to um also research has shown that having taken at least one ap course in high school is correlated with higher rates of persisting in college that means continuing on until you actually graduate and it's also correlated with higher gpas while you're in college as well um those positive effects are also greater for black and brown students for low income students and for first generation college students so there are positives for benefits of taking ap courses and we have essentially unlimited seats of ap classes in our district anyone who wants to take ap courses we will make space for them and have class for them so then when we take a look at the

083actual composition of who takes advantage of all the great ap courses that we have in with the hicken what we see and probably not surprising is that we have live disparities in the types of students that enroll in ap classes um you have a severe under-representation of black and brown students in ap courses and anecdotally we talked about that even when there are black nebraskans and ap courses they tend to be in uh less of the hard science or math ap courses and more things like ap site um or ap gov and what we wanted to discuss and explore was what are some of the factors that may be resulting in those outcomes in our district and so we talked about um the academic tracking that happens as early as middle school for students about

084which level of math you get like in seventh grade and then that has like ripple effects into high school and can close you out from opportunities taking higher and more advanced uh math courses or math ap courses and how that you know how that again can create barriers for certain types of students and we also took a look at teachers and guidance counselors the role that they play in taking aps who are the students that they actually encourage or recommend for aps and who do they tend not to right um we talked about from the student side student awareness are the benefits of ap they're not necessarily well known um also the way our gpas are calculated if you got a b and an ap class that can be actually better than getting an a

085in an academic class and the way it works out with gpas so the idea that you might take an ap course and not get as good of a grade it actually could boost your gpa uh but people don't necessarily know that right um they also talked about and we had some feedback from some of the student reps current students as well as recent alums who are part of the racial equity oversight committee from their personal experiences some of the things they talked about was sometimes you might not have uh the self-confidence that you can actually like you know handle a class like that um there be various reasons for that um sometimes you might feel like an ap class is just not a space for for you if you are a student of color it's

086just not accepting uh you don't feel like you'll be uh supported you know it's maybe related to the belonging issue that we talked about earlier also um we talked a little bit about how if you're a student of color your own peer group can be sometimes be a barrier for you wanting to pursue ap or more rigorous coursework so we talked about all these all these factors and how to really a rich discussion about that administration then talked about current efforts and some other additional efforts that they're uh putting in place or contemplating to try to attack some of those uh possible dynamics that could be presenting barriers to uh more black and brown students being represented in ap courses so um it was really interesting and fascinating um discussion but i think with this

087topic as well as others like gifted and all the other things that we've looked at from a racial equity standpoint what's important is not just to make commitment to doing something about it but then to over time track our progress did we do what we said we were going to do and then did it have the impact that we thought or hoped it would and if it did great if it didn't what can we do to correspond and change and we need to really follow this through over time um and then over time we can see and hopefully experience an actual uh impact to some of the disparities um but yeah again the focus of the last meeting was about ap uh representation and uh yeah good discussion as always great thanks so much joe

088do we have any questions or comments stuffy go ahead joe thanks for that um curious if there was any discussion and i'm sorry i missed the meeting but um was there any discussion about what we can do like firsthand or kind of immediately to help solve for this for the ap examples that you talked about well i mean the administration had on their slide a series of a number of actions that they're taking and have taken to uh try to address and you know attack some of the dynamics but i guess i'll ask many way maybe to uh highlight or expand on some of those things thank you um yes as mr antonio said we did present not just um we did present information from the research to see what does the research say is

089the best way to eliminate the barriers to increasing um black and hispanic students in english courses and we shared some of the steps that the district has taken and then a few next steps what was really valuable was to hear feedback from the committee and from the students some of those next steps that we have in mind though did include looking at how are we systematically capturing students working closely with the middle school and the high school and thinking about um reflecting on what's currently in place looking at not just teacher input but also mr antonio said counselors and principals input looking for students who might not meet the target for the quantitative data that you might look for for being eligible for thinking about ap coursework but looking at the whole child and tapping

090students on the shoulder to see if they might be interested to encourage them so it's um some of those texts we talked about but what was so valuable was the conversation among the committee and listening to students who were on that committee to help us to gain greater insight and understanding what we need to do to move forward and knowing that yes we're on the right track and yes we have more work to do that just reminded me one of the things i thought was really interesting was that sometimes they have um students who have taken ap courses talk to younger students to just provide more information about what the course is like and uh the benefits of taking the course and in the past i think it tended to be all white nation students

091who are telling students about ap so further sort of reinforce the dynamic for a lot of our other students of color that this is not like a class for them or they don't necessarily see themselves uh being in that environment and so there's a more conscious effort to try to make sure that when we're looking at like these student ambassadors for ap courses to the younger students that we look for uh other students of color than just like our white and asian students um and the importance of that representation and people being able to visualize other students who look like them being in those spaces as well thank you anyone ask me comments or questions no all right well thank you again again all right then we'll move on to our report of board representatives

092uh marshall is not gonna speak to our extracurricular report um does anyone else have anything to like share with any extracurriculars no okay um then i will give my mciu report i'm just going to combine my board of directors and legislative committee report because a lot of the legislative materials also presented during our actual board meeting um just more condensed um and this past week we had our legislative we had the legislative two weeks ago this past we had our board meeting uh the board meeting was rather short it actually was the same evening as our school start time meeting but they also had a budget workshop that the nciu was putting on so they had a very very short meeting um dr speaker to go over some of the goals that she had said

093prior the year dr speaker is our executive director for those of you that don't know her um so she went over some of the goals that she had gone over with us earlier in the year and then went over with us some metrics that she's using to measure those goals and whether or not we're meeting them so for example one of the things i brought up before was the partial hospitalization program that was launched and they're going to be looking at things like enrollment and attends data next year to see how that program is working uh we also had um our audit results uh mainly presented those to us as well just as we did here a few weeks ago um as far as legislative items there was a couple one of the big things

094that was discussed at our actual legislative meeting was fair funding and charters and iran has talked about charters for years so we've heard a lot about that um but i encourage anyone that wants to read more about it in your own time uh to go to pa charterchange.org and there you can learn more about charters and how they're funded and get some more information and if you didn't get a chance to take that down and give it to you after the meeting we also talked about nothing on the school funding lawsuit and this is a trial that um a lawsuit that's challenging pennsylvania's school funding system and the trial in that case began back in november and it's still ongoing it was filed actually in november of and is finally gone to trial and is

095still ongoing um it alleges that pennsylvania's school funding system violates the education clause and equal protection provisions the state's constitution by failing to provide an adequate education to school children in low-wealth school districts and creating wide and unjustifiable disparities between school districts and there's been a lot of compelling testimony presented by various school leaders detailing the inequities that schools do face students how to put in equitable funding um and i don't have the case citation here but if you're interested in knowing more about that lawsuit i can certainly give you the citation to that case you can follow it apparently i think some of it is being streamed live online i had heard um so i could find out more about that as well we also talked about something that's directly impacting us here or

096maybe it's not as much more the school bus driver shortage um and the federal motor carrier safety administration actually waived part of the cdl skills test and that's the part that requires applicants to identify under the hood engine components um so drivers receiving a cdl under this temporary waiver will only be allowed to drive school buses though um and that waiver will end on march 31st um and they think it's likely to be extended though um let's see and that's about it we talked about a couple other things but those are really the highlights so thank you any questions comments no sorry well thank you um next meeting for ncu is um later this month february 23rd actually later next month february 23rd um next we'll have our north vancouver technical career center uh center

097representative entertainment okay most of the last meeting was personnel matters and david was gonna what were you gonna add david what did we talk about uh there there was mostly this routine business there was a uh the biggest item on the of the night was the approval of a contract to scan a bunch of their archive documents so they can winnow down that uh massive mountain they have i guess but that's it from mark mark all right great thank you any questions okay uh then we'll move on to our psba liaison there was no meaning that um i was able to attend in january there's one coming up um in two weeks great thanks so much stephanie um then that brings us to our second public comment period and again um we'll have a maximum

098of five speakers on any particular topic comments are limited to three minutes and as mentioned before it's not our policy to engage any dialogue with speakers but if appropriate we will post a response on the district's website um coming to the podium please state your name address and municipality a residence as well as the topic from which you are speaking and in person would you have one registered speaker and that is carmina taylor good evening um there was a board meeting where i asked about the restorative practices policy and i received a response and i just wanted to say that in 2018 the district had a powerpoint that said that they were going to put in the district uh the restorative practices as part of the code of the conduct code of conduct policy so

099i looked at the middle school i looked in the high school and it does not exist so i just wanted to point that out because it's very very um misleading that you're trying to address that it's not in the book but you brought it up in 2018. and the only reason why i know it's relevant for me is because i was working with a family and there was a young black man boy um he was in seventh grade at the time and from august to november he had 17 detentions a black boy this wasn't one this was more than one and i asked the assistant principal at what point do you try to have the restorative practices policy you committed to in 2018 the man had no answers so i can't find it i don't

100know if it was the october meeting or the december meeting but i just want to be clear and i plan to email you the powerpoint that shows that so it isn't in the code of conduct at all and it should be but the district committed to it in 2018. so i want to point that out and again for you dr dewan i think that what's important is to talk to the parents that have had kids that have had these multiple detentions and lunch detentions to see if the code of conduct procedure and policy is working the other thing is joe i didn't prepare to say this but i just want to know that in response to your talking about ap when i became a parent in 2006 the achievement gap disparity started at third grade

101at wissa hicken so you can't talk about ap if you're not dealing with where the disparity is in elementary level i could go on but then i want a question answered what parent education initiatives have been conducted in the last five years as it relates to opportunities for students with the math tracking uh with the math test and ap and honors and in title one um and when we talk about research dr dewan what does the district research say we you look at a larger studies we've got to study right here i think you're not tapping into the resources of the people that can help you we have a problem here but we have a wealth of people that can help you you keep talking about the students but you don't talk about parents these

102are kids that are all under 18. their parents take care of them that's it katie is anyone registered online there are no hands raised on zoom okay great well then we'll move on to um board comments do any of my fellow board members have any comments this evening if i could add one more item to the north montco uh report i forgot they are uh going to be holding in-person uh preview tours a little bit later uh in the semester which they haven't been able to do for at least one year so for prospective students to check out the school and the programs meet some of the instructors they'll be having those uh i'm sure it's been announced to the students at what's happening well that's great thank you for sharing that any other board

103comments yeah amy i'd like to make comments um and just for the record the the board's racial equity oversight committee is composed not just of a few board members um but it's it's kind of a hybrid it's different from all of our other board committees it has um current students it has recent alums it also has several parents um staff and some administrators and there's also also a few community members the vast majority of the members on this from students to parents to staff are all uh people of color um and we have very i think candid and um active dialogue and discussion so we have the opportunity to hear directly from again students recent alums parents of color in our district so we can benefit from their lived experience and you know their direct

104feedback as we take a look at each of these issues and what i want to mention is that um each meeting that we've had so far we focused on one specific topic related to educational equity in our district but is by no means inclusive of what we're trying to do there are many pieces and many parts to the challenges of educational equity in whisken and in an individual meeting we just tend to focus on one specific one but again it doesn't mean that's the only thing we're focused on some of the things that uh carmine at the podium brought up are all good are all good and valid points but i want to uh just assure everyone that um we are trying as much as possible to bring in voices um of our community members

105of color into the discussion and we are looking at all aspects of racial equity challenges in our system as we go about this work thank you john anyone else alex do you have any comments steven i don't have any comments at this time amy it's paul i just want to uh acknowledge and say thank you for the lovely and thoughtful gifts that board members received today as a part of the school board member appreciation month so very thoughtful very much appreciated yes again second thank you for that thank you so much um any other comments no all right well then i will go ahead and adjourn the seeking meeting oh do i have to take a vote oh yeah oh emotion yes anyone want another commotion or if it looks easier to get out all

106right [Music] thank you