001Miss H, would you open us with prayer, please? Heavenly Father, this evening we invoke your presence. We lift high your name. Heavenly Father, this evening we ask that you be in our midst. Heavenly Father, we ask that we conduct the business of Kershaw County School District, Lord, and help us not to get weary, Lord, in doing what is good. Heavenly Father, this evening for those who may not be feeling well, for those Lord who may have death or those who are going through sad hours of bereiement, help them to realize Lord that you will never leave us and you will never forsake us. Heavenly prayer, but for the uttermost parts of our hearts, we say thank you for this day that you have given us and it's our hope and desire that we that we
002have been glad in what you've given us. All these blessings we ask in thy holy and precious name and we count it done in your name. Amen. Amen. Call the Kersio County School Board of Trustees meeting to order. Is there a motion to adopt a proposed agenda? Motion by Jean and second by Miss Rebecca. All those in favor that be known by saying I. I. Those opposed and that should not unanimous. Is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda approving? Second motion by coach Blackman, second by Miss Harley. All those in favor has been known by saying I. I. Those opposed. That's unanimous. Want to thank everyone for coming out this evening. At this time, we do not have anyone signed up for public forum. Under the chairman's report, you have before you our
003trustee schedule meeting for 2026. It is for us to approve tonight. I will, Mr. Chair. Yes, sir. I make a motion to approve the meeting schedule for 2026. Popular motion by Dr. King. Second. Second by Miss Rebecca. All those in favor, let it be known by saying I. I. Those opposed. And it's done. Good. Yes. Tonight we have two reports. Um the first will be on visible learning which is um Mr. Matthews and Miss Goodwin will brief you on and that'll be followed by the U financial report by Mr. Brad Willard. Good evening, Dr. Goodwin board. Uh before we get started with our visible learning uh discussion, uh want to talk a little bit about some changes we're making to some of the things we're doing for next year. Uh I know there's concern about
004whether or not we've taken something off of uh teachers plates. So, a couple of things that we're moving away from uh to free up some teachers time. Uh the primary one will be MAP. We will no longer map test. Uh we will be using I ready as our formative assessment. As you know uh by state regulation we have to give a formative assessment every year three times a year. One at the beginning of the year, the middle of the year and the end of the year. And that formative assessment tool helps us determine how what kind of progress our students are making throughout the course of the year. Um, we had a committee of principles and assistant principles, teachers to look at the formative assessment tools that were out there. Uh, and as you know,
005we've used MAP and NWA for 15 years. We were among the first districts to use MAP back in the day. and Lavoy Carter was the local expert on MAP testing and was recognized in our state uh for all of his work with NWA. However, we are moving to I Ready for a couple of reasons. Number one, we're already using I Ready with our our intervention students. So, we were testing with MAP and then we were retesting with I Ready. Uh it is also as you remember our adopted text for our K through5 math program. We we use I ready for that. So it seemed sort of uh superolous to continue to do two things that basically uh perform the same function. So we've decided to go strictly with Ready uh for that. And as most
006of you know uh that is a reimburseable thing from the state. We We pay for that and the state reimburses us on a per pupil aotment. We figure that'll take save us a minimum of 10 days of instruction every year. We are also uh as Dr. Goodwin has said many times, we're moving away from some of the uh computer-based instructional strategies that we've used in the past. Among those, Dreambox, which was funded by the state, and they have decided not to fund that. So we'll no longer be using that but we're also not going to use exact path or study island which are part of the adminum uh suite that we've had for uh again many years uh going back to when Dr. Robbins came. So we we have and two reasons for that. Number
007one is the state provides us with instructional tools through our uh English adoption in in the uh elementary schools that's an HMH uh product, middle schools, that's a McGra Hill product, high schools, that's an HMH product. uh with math that's I Ready as we said for K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K through five, then a Savis product called Envision Math uh for the for the 6 through 12 program. So, we're going to focus on using those tools that are provided again trying to not restrict the access but allow teachers the opportunity to focus on what's been provided. Uh, you know, how many I've said this to Dr. Goodwin and he disagrees with me. Uh, but how many screwdrivers do
008you need in the toolbox? Well, as somebody who works on small engines, he needs lots of screwdrivers in his toolbox. I don't need that many. I can get by with a Phillips head and and a flathead. Uh so we're we're doing a a good job of streamlining uh what we're uh what's available to our teachers so we use those things well. It doesn't do any good to have a plethora of tools if we don't know how to use them. And when we looked at our usage data on adminum and on progress learning uh we we didn't see that we were getting the bang for the buck. So we have uh moved away from those. So again giving teachers back time for them to focus on what's important which is teaching uh and sort of brings
009us into uh the visible learning uh conversation. So because you you started with something other than what we were going into. I have questions before we get into that if that's possible. Okay. Um and I apologize if it's not appropriate, Mr. Chairman, I'll I'll stand down and wait, but I since this is Okay. Um we're going to move away from MAP, move to I Ready, which was being used by our intervention students and their teachers. Correct. There's training that's involved in order to be able to use that assessment tool. The teachers going to have to be going to training to learn that assessment tool. So, in essence, well, we've we've already been using the assessment tool. So the teachers are already already know how to use the not all the teachers if I remember correctly.
010It's it's not all but the majority. But it's not just it's in the elementary schools. It's not just the special education teachers. It's the interventionist as well. We're not taking something off the plate. What we're doing is we're swapping it out for something else is because you said we're moving we're moving away from that but we're moving towards something else. So the teachers it's not really uh we're going to take something away but here's something else. this that that's what I hear you saying is while we were using MAP across the board, we're moving to I Ready, which was what we were using for our intervention students through our special education teachers. They went through numerous trainings if I remember correctly to get acclimated with that and how it works and how to use it.
011So they've already been trained in that and know how to use special education teachers we education and our interventionist. So who's going to do the testing for the kids or do the assessments with with I Ready? I'll start with that question. So in elementary schools, the classroom teachers have also had some training with I Ready because all of them have intervention students and special ed students in their classrooms. And when we brought together elementary teachers, that was one thing that they really um the data that we received from I Ready was a lot different than the data we were receiving from MAP. And one of the big differences was for example, I Ready gives you like this is a strategy that you can go back and teach. So, it's like a teacher toolbox. And I
012I'll stop you there because I'm familiar with with that because I was here when the implementation of I Ready was was put into place and I appreciate that. I'm going back to are we really taking something off the plate? Well, for elementary schools, we used to before the last time that we were given assessments, we map tested every student and then our special ed and our intervention students then again took the I Ready assessment after that. So you're talking about and then they were having to take it only during their intervention blocks. So when we're talking about reducing the number of days that we're going to have to spend for testing then yes because when that student is out taking already that assessment then they're missing classroom instructional time. So and that was a big
013thing I think in every principal meeting all the data meetings that we had with they were like you know we we really need to streamline the assessments that were given because it's taking too much time. So it that's how we're taking it off the plates. They're getting their instructional time back. Yes. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. And I also have a question moving away from Exact Path and Study Island. Um I'm going to go out on a limb here and I'm going to say that if I remember correctly, the data um from my term here as I was leaving out Exact Path and Study Island had already somewhat been abandoned by our teachers and was not being utilized. Are we really taking something off the plate and out of their way? what we
014were requiring and we had required now whether individual principles were were following through with that again looking at our usage data we saw that it wasn't being used so at least not to the extent that it had been asked to be used okay so so it's not on the list but it wasn't necessarily being utilized as it was supposed to be throughout not as it was not with fidelity no sir okay that's all I have for that thank you thank you Mr. Mr. Chairman. Okay. Um, moving on. Uh, right here we'll you'll see something that it should be familiar to most everybody, especially to to uh Dr. King and Mr. Cameron. Uh, this is our Kershaw County instructional model. It's been around a while. Um, in fact, back to when I was a principal at
015Cam High School. So we're talking a minimum of seven years ago uh where we began to discuss uh what we think is important in the classrooms in Kershaw County and we thought at that point and we still consider uh the supportive learning environment which has an engaged classroom uh respectful culture and social emotional health of our students monitored growth uh successful criter success criteria data driven and metacognition which just thinking about the work uh college and career readiness, life and career characteristics, world class skills and knowledge and then of course everything should be focused on being student centered a rigorous curriculum, competency based learning and personalized learning. So in the spring um our department gathered and and the focus of our conversation was how do we improve our tier one instruction? What is it that
016improves our tier one instruction? And for those who who not to speak Ma uh not math but education ease, tier one instruction is instruction that everybody receives in the classroom. A lot of times we don't talk about tier one. We talk about our subgroups. We talk about our students in poverty. We talk about our students uh our ML students, our special ed students. But all of them are under the umbrella of tier one instruction. They should all get really good core instruction to on on grade level, whether or not they're on grade level, they have to have be exposed to on grade level instruction. And as we looked at the way for us to improve our tier one instruction, we looked at several different uh models, but we landed on visible learning. Uh visible learning
017is go ahead and advance the slide. Uh visible learning is a framework uh created by Dr. John Hattie and what it does is it uh assigns effect sizes. It it really is a metaanalysis of all of the education research to look at what works and what doesn't work. what what is an effective strategy and what isn't an effective strategy and and they assign effect sizes to it. And I was talking just a little while ago with Miss Goodwin and and Miss Dove, our new elementary director. And it's funny how the wheel seems to come full circle. I can remember and I still have some presentations that I did my first days as the principal at Cameron High School. Miss Runlet can probably remember those. uh where we say the best thing we can do for
018teachers uh for students is to put a high quality teacher in the classroom. Well, oddly enough, John Hadtie's work says the biggest effect size which is an effect size uh is uh what what determines what's an effective strategy or not is collective teacher efficacy. So that is teachers who believe they can make a difference in the classroom. That's creating a positive culture in the classroom. Well, that's our supportive learning environment. That's what we're talking about. So there are four key components to to Hadtie's work. Uh one is teacher clarity and that is being focused on your learning intention and what the student needs to be successful in the classroom. So, if I'm giving a lesson, uh, and I actually pulled a standard up, uh, when if I'm y'all are in my math class now, and
019this is an algebra one class. And what we expect of our teachers is to put a standard on the board. That's what they should put on the board. Why do we put a standard on the board? So, you know what you're learning that day. So, here's a standard from the algebra one classroom. Transform linear, quadratic, exponential, and linear absolute value functions to equivalent forms to identify slope, y intercept, linear vertex roots for quadratics and linear absolute value and y intercepts for exponential functions. Do you know what I expect you to do? Well, unfortunately, there are probably only a handful of teachers, high school algebra teachers, you know, some middle school algebra teachers who can understand that verbiage. So, is the learning intention clear to the student? I don't think so. I think we need to
020do a better job in the state of identifying what we expect students to learn that day when they come in the classroom. What do we expect students to learn? The second piece of that is how am I going to know whether or not I've learned it as a student? I should be how many times have I gone in a classroom and said, "What are you doing today?" Well, depending on the class, sometimes it's I'm doing English, I'm doing math, sometimes it's I'm doing nothing. You know, if you're talking to middle school students, it might be nothing. But the student should be able to tell us and that's part of student engagement. Okay. What am I doing to to be a successful learner? So when when we talked about visible learning and we're looking at it
021and then we look at our uh instructional model, all we're doing is changing the verbiage on what we're doing. We're really not doing anything different than what we've always done. So go ahead and advance the slide. Okay. So why are we using visible learning? Because it gives us a focus on high effective highly effective strategies. Uh so we cannot do what doesn't work. If it's not working, we should be able to walk away from it. Uh it builds a shared language across our school district. So when we have meetings, whether that's with our math teachers as we uh will spend time rolling out our continuing to roll out our math standards this year, we're talking the same language. Uh it empowers students to become self-directed learners. And there's a big difference between a good student
022and a good learner. A good student, most people would say, is compliant, respectful, quiet, but that doesn't help us when they don't know what to do when the learning for them stops. We want to empower our learners uh to be more effective and self-directed. And again, what we see is personalized learning and competency based learning. So again, part of being a student centered environment. Okay, advance the slide, please. So the next piece, our district implementation plan, visible learning aligns with our goals to improve tier one instruction and boost student achievement through evidence-based practices. So our team created a phase roll out um that really began this summer. So I'm sure many of you saw our pictures on Facebook. We um put together an invisible learning implementation team and did a follow-up training that we had
023received with South Carolina ASC. So that team was comprised of several core team members, district office staff, administrators, instructional coaches who attended the first training session and some lead teachers. And that first phase really just focused on we came back together here in this room and laid out like what how would we see this with our district rolling out at the beginning of next school year and really defining learning dispositions as how students view themselves as learners. A good versus a good learner. Matthews kind of talked about a little bit earlier and then also defining teacher clarity which is really where we wanted to put a lot of our work clear learning intention success criteria and feedback because that gives us more than years growth sizes. Phase two will begin in the fall um with
024instructional coaches, lead teachers and administrators. We were really fortunate we had a um conversation with our HR department and we were to write up use some funds that we have for teacher recruitment and retention. One thing collective teacher efficacy that's the highest impact uh that you get out of all the work everybody is coming together working on one thing but also that's how we teach morale one thing I always say from school um you can do you can feed them like everybody likes candy but everyone is working together and I know that the work I'm getting impact from that work. That's when we get that collective teacher eacency when you are able to be a part of some of those teams. You see you see good work happening. You see the you see that strong
025achievement when everybody's working together. So that's how the roll out will start in the fall um with professional learning sessions led by foreign education consultants who will come. We were able to purchase eight days that we're in the process of getting some dates. So it'll be in September. One day will be dedicated to elementary teachers in the calm and then one day dedicated to secondary teachers. Um and at that time teachers will receive practical strategies they can implement not something new but how we can take our curriculum and elevate what we're currently doing. Those conversations will then continue the winter if we advance the slide the fall winter roll out to teachers through professional development and coaching cycles. So making sure that our instructional coaches are speaking the same language, our administrators are all speaking
026the same language. So when we're going in looking at lesson plans or having those professional learning communities, we're able to have that those same conversations and aligning the same foundational concepts what we're doings having a strong not just a school multi-ter support system but a strong district multi-ter support system and that comes with building effective professional learning communities. So the expectation will be for teachers to just start looking at when we start with roll out where are some places like maybe focus this year on good student good learner um you know I might not be ready to dig too deep with everything success criteria and then looking at a lot of buildings we have international teachers I know soul and I talked a lot about that teachers who need a little bit more support it
027will help give us as a district and our coaches some guiding conversations what we can do with this roll out piece. Um, training sessions I said earlier will be funded through that teacher and retention funds and that collective teacher efficacy that's one of John had it highest rated influences on student learning and that will assist us in boosting that teacher morale and also building those strong professional learning communities in our build. Um the district's long-term plan is to sustain this effort and not to expand the learning into the 2026 2027 school year. Really when you look at it, we could do this probably for the next three to five years. Like it's a not just a one time and done uh program and it's really not a program, it's a mindset shift. So spending that
028time to shift that mindset. Then the next slide. So some of the key practices for our teachers um we want to focus again on that good student, good learner um and establishing uh and communicating what learning intentions are and what success criteria are. And we we talked about that a little time ago. Uh design aligned learning task and formative checks for u understanding. Uh, I can think of times when I I taught my class and I thought I did a really wonderful job of teaching and then when they walked out of that classroom, clearly they weren't buying what I was selling that day and they they may have been dumber when when they left my classroom, but if I hadn't done a formative assessment and checked their knowledge before they left, I wouldn't have known
029that and I wouldn't have known how to do that. And so we do have learning task available to our teachers many that they have created uh and formative checks for understanding so they can get that information and make those incourse corrections so they don't have to to uh waste their time. Uh providing timely and actionable feedback to students. You know that's that's what we're talking about. Uh and to support our teachers, our instructional coaches uh will and and administrators will model these clarity routines. Uh there'll be district-wide resources and examples for them to use. Uh we'll have some collaborative templates like our PLC template. That's that's a district template that we use. uh and we expect our our our teachers to do that when they have their PLC's and utilize the high quality instructional materials
030from the state department uh that that we have have adopted whether that's our new uh English adoption which was last year or our new math adoption which is this year advance the slide okay that's good and then key practices for administrators uh leaving learning through the professional learning communities of course modeling the success criteria in adult learning set settings and using PLC's to elevate again those informed conversations about teaching and learning uh ways that we will support our administrators from our end using their data. when we're setting those schoolwide goals, looking at a strong multi-tered support system, looking at subgroups, using that again, using that common language and looking for ways we collect evidence, what's giving us the highest impact and um when we're having master connect conversations during our PLC's, how do we use
031our PLC's to elevate data informed conversations about what we're doing with teaching and learning? The most important part of this slide though is that piece that you can't see at the bottom on the screen, but reflecting on the process monthly during districtled meetings to make sure that we are being reflective. And even though with implementation plans, when you're starting something new, when we reflect, we're able to go back and say, you know, pivot and say, well, you know what, maybe we need to spend a little bit more time here on success criteria. We might need to spend some more time on developing learning intentions. Um, so making sure that we give our teachers time to reflect, making give our administrators time to reflect um and our district team. Next slide, please. So, go ahead. You
032go ahead. Okay. Our visible learning journey will strengthen our district's collective capacity to know our impact, make learning visible and ensure every child is empowered to achieve their fullest potential. Visible learning, one thing I want everyone to leave here and to listen to. It's not a program. It is a mindset. about how we think about teaching learning and our impact on student achievement. And in the last slide, the favorite part, one of the things that I think got our team interested in this, I know we've done book studies before. Um our at the beginning our lead teachers, instructional coaches, uh principles, assistant principles will get a book, but it's not normal book, but I call it a picture book for adults, almost like a graphic novel for adults. So, um we our goal would be
033to purchase one of these books for person in our in our buildings, all staff members. That's going to cost us a little bit more. Um, but that is one of the goals. And then you see our picture of our questions agree with Hadtie's work. Um, his book was back in 2008. Yeah. you know, when we're old enough to know that, you know, even going back that far, you know, nothing's ever new in education. It's just named something different and the vernacular might change a little bit. Um, you know, and I could go into, you know, my opinions on that. I guess I guess what I'm considering is um I've had the opportunity over the weekend and um and even today I saw I I circulated through town saw about five or six teachers who either
034worked for me or and or I knew and I asked them if they knew anything about Hadtie's work in visible learning. Most of them did not. Um I said uh and the first question was is that something we're going to have to do? And it's almost like Ka the Snake in the Jungle Book. their their eyes started spiraling and I and it was just a sense. So, I I guess I guess what I'm getting at, I'm I'm looking at or kind of started brainstorming in my own head um the adopted programs, mandates, initiatives, whatever you want to call it, all we have, you know, leader in me, Cubby's work, which is somewhat analogous to visible learning, schools to watch, Ron Clark, AVID that I think one of our schools is using, which seems to be
035very similar to the Hattie model, uh thinking maps, 4.0 auto rubric, SLOs's, letters, math adoptions this year with standards. Last second year, as you said, of ELA adoptions of standards, project-based learning, enrich, I know some we replaced Enrich with another program that still hasn't been fully trained on by all of our folks who it applies to. And I guess that's not to mention the plethora of responsibilities that teachers already have. This is this is my plea as a board member, and this is I kind of hinted at this to Dr. a good one. What I'm scared I'm going to hear as a board member is this is something else we got to do. I'm already doing that. Why Why are we kind of making me do something I already am doing? Um another planning period
036or workday lost uh more mandated training. Do do we even have a voice? Will I ever have any autonomy to teach my kids and have my personality, my inflections? And I'm not not saying all that to say that I disagree with this program or and I'm I'm pleading with you don't call it an initiative because I think that will overwhelm people. Um but I guess the gist of what I'm saying is kind of like Mr. Cameron said um is it going to be perceived as adding something to the plate and not taking anything off? And and I also the analogy you used at the beginning was was very poant for me when you said you know we don't we don't need five sizes of screwdrivers five different models. We don't need eight adjustable wrenches sockets
037with metric and standard. Um teachers just need that basic toolbox for them to be allowed to have the latitude to do their job in the most effective way according to their training and the and the resources we provide. So, I I guess what I'm I'm pleading with is please don't let it be something else that's going to encumber and burden the teachers down even more to where they feel like all they do is just train because I feel like sometimes all our teachers feel like they're doing is training and adopting another something. Um, so that and I I'm making that plea on behalf of the teachers because I saw it. I've worked, you know, over 31 years in education. And I worked with 10 superintendents, you know, some for, some with, and uh each of
038them, you know, had their own mission, their own goals. And and this is not reflective on Dr. Goodwood at all because I've not seen that um with him. Some of the previous superintendents I worked with, it was all about what's next, what's front, what's on the what's on the front burner, what can we do next? And it absolutely overwhelms people. We're working hard to retain. We've done a lot of things to retain our folks. We sure don't want to run them off by adding something else to the plate that they're going to have to take away classroom time or their own planning time or their own PD days when they could be uh meat and potatoes doing their own thing as well. So that's that's just my plea if that makes sense. Sure. Yes. I
039also have a few questions. Um how is this different than leader in me? leader in me and go you go you address that since you were leader in me school. Okay. It's really not a big difference with with this and leader in me. Um and I was actually talking with Miss Johnson and Miss Barbara because they both are leader in me schools in Kershaw County. Um it's a perfect mesh with leader and me and all of our schools aren't leader and me. So we have some schools who do leader and me, some schools who do um Ron Clark Academy and then Of course, we have some avid schools, but this is about leader and me is a focus on the seven habits of highly effective people. It's goal setting. So, this is where we able
040to focus in on that collective teacher efficacy piece. You can do that with leader and me, but leader in me is also very expensive. And I love leader and me, but to do implementation of that districtwide, um I think when I started years ago, I may have been $50,000 to do it at Jackson years ago. But now it's probably over $100,000 to implement at a school. Um so that's one of the the bigger components I think a large. So the schools that are part of leader in me I know three are there only we have four schools that are involved in leader in me. Okay. Pine tree Jackson Camden Middle and Camden High. And in the Ron Clark programs is uh Camden Elementary and Dobies. Yeah. And the only AVID school is Stove. So this
041this would be a everybody else has sort of moved away from AVID. Uh uh I know that Camden Middle did it for a while. They moved away. No other middle schools are and they paid for it out of title two for a while and so there's no more money for that. Well, we don't actually know what our title two dispersement is at this point. So for Camden High School, has Leer and me been rolled out to the teachers yet? No. So we're rolling out both of these at the same time? Well, this this is really two days. This is a day in the spring and a day in the fall. And then everything else they're already doing. So this this dubtales with that. It's it's not an additional thing. You know, when we talk about
042uh teacher clarity and we're talking about learning intentions, that's put that's their standard. We're we're talking about how are how are they going to put their standard on their board that their students can understand uh in in vernacular rather than in the the guise of how the standard is written in the state department book in our math standards. So if think back to when you were a teacher, how would you perceive this? If you came back on your first day and you found out you were doing two initiatives, even though one is what you're already doing, is that how you're going to take that as a teacher? And that's why we were really intentional about making sure that we brought everyone like different people together from all different aspects in the district. Making sure we
043have teachers so it doesn't feel overwhelming when we come back and not to think of visible learning as a program. It's our Kershaw County instructional model. It's just some language. So when we talk about creating a success criteria, how that looks at a leader in me school or a non-leer in these school is still going to be the same. When I talk about I my standard when we're looking at the math standards and having teachers work on a success criteria and for students to be able to identify um what I should be able to accomplish as a student. That's that we don't even have to call it visible learning if you don't want to. I mean that's just that's just good teaching. Okay. And then I have one more. Hold on. Um, so you used
044your example from the algebra one standard and you said several a lot of our algebra one teachers probably couldn't put that in layman's term for an English teacher. Is that No. No. I They are the probably the only ones who could. Okay. Um, I want to roll that to social studies. What would this look like for our middle school social studies teachers who have their standards are much more vague than math, ELA, science? Um, I don't know the last time they had new textbooks. So, how does this support specifically social studies, but I'm really thinking about middle school. That's the nice thing about this. It supports everything because it's not you can take your standard. And when we start talking about breaking down a standard, a social study standard, first you've got to be able
045to say like I can identify know the geographic parts, right? So if I that's going to be that first, we've got to be able to do that before I can do go in depth. I've got to be do this first part. So when we look at talking about tier one instruction and we talk about providing that scaffolding support, I'm thinking about like a writing rubric like being able do this part first and then I can do this part. You can do that with any standard. And I know when we did some work uh with Heath Pond in Colia, he was teachers. There was a teacher there. She was like, I've got, you know, I couldn't do this all the time. And no, it's not that for you to do it all the time. It's for
046you to think about what are those where are those focus areas where I can start with something really, really small and see if it works and then you it could lend itself. So you can do that with social studies, you can do that with any standard, you can do it with science standard, it doesn't matter which one. And then when that student feels like, oh, I was able to accomplish this task. So with our subgroups, for example, right, you got those in-depth social study standards. When you have a student who maybe is a struggle reader, which we just did with summer reading camp, then that student gets success at this one part of the standard that's still on that tier one part. And then okay, I've gotten that part. Let me go up to this
047next piece. So that way the learning is scaffold that I might have a gifted talent student and I can do all 10 things in this particular um under this standard. I'm ready to move on to the next one. So that's what we're trying to do is get that mindset shift getting people to think about teaching and learning and how we reach everyone. Does that make So this but so social studies teachers will have this hands-on support with breaking down the standards into learning targets and success criteria. This program will specifically help them with their content. Well, we'll have lead teachers. So, it's not Now, remember we said this is going to be like a three to five years. So, when I say in professional learning communities and making sure we get PD out, you will
048whatever your content area is that you're working on, that's what if you're the social studies teacher in middle school, then that's what you will specifically working on with creating your success criteria and your learning intentions. And there will be someone who coaches them or works alongside them or checks. Yes. That supports that work. Okay. That was all I have. Thank you. I had a question. I understand y'all had a team that went over all of this and has been educated in this. Okay. The team has. My question is, have the administrators of all of our schools aware of this? And are they in agreement with any kind of change? And it's I have to agree with Dr. King and probably the rest of it. Change is something that teachers don't like a lot of. and
049I'm looking at stuff that I don't understand a lot of it, but I was a teacher and I'm a history major and I have a master's in that. But anyway, the uh focus shifts from teaching to learning. Tell me uh give me an example. What are you talking about here? Just because you stand up in a classroom and I'm sorry. Just because you stand up, not you in particular, but just because a teacher stands up in the classroom and delivers information, that doesn't necessarily meant students learned it. That's what that means. So, we need to be sure that students are learning the material. In addition, I mean, it can't happen without the teacher delivering some information, but it it can't be a one-way exchange. There has to be a two-way exchange there. Well, isn't that
050what we've always tried to encourage as far as absolutely put we have always and that's that's what our in Isn't that what home homework is all about? I mean, I'm being a little simple here, I guess, but Well, it's it's more than just homework. It's more than just homework. Well, it everything's all more than homework. But we're asking for a change here. And we hadn't and I'm not fussing. I'm just saying our administrators are not aware. I can tell you now all of them are not aware of this because when you give me something, I'm going to look at it and find out who's aware of all of this stuff and what's going on. But it it seems like like I say again, we're going to be asking teachers to make another change to focus
051on something else to do a different uh type of teaching technique. I'll go back to pet. That's many years ago. And there's always a chain somewhere. There's always a chain somewhere, you know. I just don't understand. You got to hold this is a fire to get it done. And if you don't, you can't just uh come up with some kind of uh specialized implementation. This I'm just giving you an opinion now. Just let um visible learning type thing again. But I just um it would be better for me if everybody that was going to it was going to affect I ain't talking about the students as much as the teachers and the administrators were aware of everything you're explaining tonight. That's the way I felt about then I got a better feeling about how they
052feel and what's going on and they can have some input on what's going on. Not that y'all doing a bad job of presentation or whatever, but uh I don't know how many schools actually use this now. Well, there are districts across the state. There are districts across the state that are using this right now. Uh none in Kershaw County. Now, we did send people to the ASC conference in March. Uh many several of our schools went. I I don't know that I can give you exact number but most schools uh geographically were represented in our uh meeting in June but our July the 16th we have administrative staff development on the 16th and the 17th of this year of of this month and uh the primary function of the July 16th is to talk about
053this and improving our tier one instruction. Uh we're not telling anybody how to teach. We're te telling them that that they should be clear about what they're teaching and what it takes for a student to be successful. That's what we're asking. We're not asking we're not telling anybody how to teach anything, but we are saying you need to be sure that everybody knows what you're doing and what it's going to take to be successful. That's what we're asking. Yeah. Well, I'm I again like I hope teachers don't look at it as, oh, here we are again with another. Well, I hope not because we've been doing the vast majority of if you go to that part of our our district website, you can there's a and I'm I'll finish up with my little remarks that
054we have excellent teachers. I feel like the best and I would agree. And uh I I want them to continue to feel that way. I hope that and uh in November you're gonna see that. Huh. I hope in October and November when we can talk about test scores, you're gonna see that. Yeah, I hope we have it too. Yeah. But anyway, I appreciate you listen to my comments about it. Yes, sir. Saying that the biggest part is teacher clarity. And it's been very clear to me what you what what this say. It's a mindset and a lot of time it's going to make us make teachers better teachers. not teach telling them that you have to do it a certain way, but it's a mindset change. And teacher clarity is the main part of this
055program. And you want to make sure that when you stand there and you're teaching that it's clear what you're trying to get across to the students. And that's our main goal as as being good to be clear in what we are doing. Know what we're doing and make sure it's getting across to our students. And the mindset change is good. One last thing. Yes. If I may. Um I think Miss Runlet said something very significant and that and I'll just reiterate as as this is rolled out vernacular changes um as we approach this model um please think about that teacher and how they're going to perceive it and how they're going to feel about it. And as you all know um I always said and you know I felt like I was an okay teacher
056and a fair administrator but the best learning occurs with a student when they don't even realize they're learning what you're teaching. So maybe if we just kind of ease this in to to a degree, not not to be subversive, but to make it so smooth that the teachers realize, hey, I'm already doing this. We're just making the language uniform or or something of that nature, if that makes sense. Thank you, sir. Um, you talked about the I Ready portion of that. How does I Ready and Mastery Connect fit into this, too? They're really more part of the PLC process than anything else. Uh, you know, it's providing teachers that information so when they go in their PLC's, they know specifically what their students have mastered and what they haven't and they can have that I'm
057pick a Camden High School term. They can have those collegial conversations in their PLC's so they can say, you know, Mr. Cameron's kids mastered that standard, Miss Runlets didn't. What did Mr. Cameron do that Miss Rlet did not do. You know, we want to encourage that that teamwork aspect and that's what a good PLC should do. Uh, and I I don't mean to monopolize a lot of time, but I you mentioned if it's not working, we should walk away from it. So, off on a slight tangent here, we're looking at rolling out something different. We hope that we're not burdening our teachers with something else on their plates. If it's not working, have we looked at other areas that might not be working? Let's take computers for instance. How much computer time, FaceTime are our
058kids getting? Are we paying attention to the the studies that are out there that are coming out now that are talking about chat GPT and AI and the the effects that it's having on the adult brain? And if it's having those effects on the adult brain, what kind of effects are they having on the student brain, the young brain, the the the brain that we're trying to mold into a successful citizen? And you know, for our our younger students, they need to be engaged and we need to find the things that aren't working and and get rid of them. Back to your screwdriver analogy there. I have a tool bag that's just nothing but screwdrivers that rides around in my truck with me and the others wrenches and sockets and stuff. So, I I have
059lots of tools in my tool bag, but I absolutely agree. We don't need to have that many in the classroom. Um, but are we also looking at some of these other things? The the pendulum has swung so far with technology in education, not just in our district, but in education. I I think we need to look at at how much screen time our kids are getting too, especially our our 4K through um middle school kids. I know our high school kids are are there's some things there that are dedicated to that they need to do and have to do and how are we policing or at least showing our kids to use the tools to not rely on the tools to do the work. Um but there's a particular MIT study that just came out
060um last week and it's called chat GPT may be eroding critical thinking skills um according to a new MIT study this was in Time magazine last week and in a nutshell there there are psychological consequences isolation issues and information retention deficiencies uh for those adults in this study that relied on that AI that chat GPT or the LL the large language model programs, you know, are is there enough of this going on that's creating another issue that that our teachers are competing with, that our kids are competing with, and they you it's it's addictive. Oh, without question. The state has gone and mandated that it's against law to have cell phones in the classroom, and we give them a computer, which is just as much of a distraction, especially for our techsavvy kids that know
061how to get around things. um we're going to do this, but are we going to look at some other things too that that might be contributing to some of the challenges that we have? I just think it we owe it to our kids and we owe it to our community to look at some of that as well in terms of the technology. Is it necessary they take it home? Is it necessary it's out in the classroom every day? Do we go back to putting them in carts and pulling them out when we need them? to and again I I think that my focus on that um as a new grandparent I'm thinking about things a little differently as well. Um that brain development that we're working on and we have a we've got a great
0624K program here. It's a substantial 4K program. We get those kids early. How much FaceTime computer facetime are they getting on top of everything else we're asking to be done? Is that a problem that we need to look at too and walk away from that if that's something that's not working for us or at least back off? That has Sorry, I got off on a tangent. Well, that that has been a focus of Dr. Goodwin's is to walk away from some of that screen time and we got rid of Dreambox and uh Study Island and and Exact Path. We we still have to keep courseware uh because that's a high school issue uh with with credit recovery. But other than that uh and in our summer reading camp, we used some handtomind stuff which was
063entirely handson stuff. I couldn't agree more. Uh we only did four computers in summer reading camp and we only focused on Amira and I ready which were district and the students and the teachers were happy. But there were a couple of things that we did. We made sure that we did training with all of the summer reading camp teachers on the handto- mind material and how it's correlated with letters and a lot of the visible learning things that we were just kind of I was kind of piloting some of that those pieces like how do we do active learning with our teachers and with our students in summer reading camp and we did we saw really good growth in summer reading camp. So um I'll share that with you. Well and and I appreciate that
064too. appreciate the invitation to attend the celebrations. I went to Watery and to Wella to both of those celebrations and it was amazing to watch what the kids were doing and and with their skits at uh Watery and and the things that they were doing uh over at Wella as well. So, I appreciate the work that they're doing with those kids. It's like a retake on old school teaching is what I like to call it when we did those good old school things that that worked a long time ago. Um and less computers, less technology. I think there's a time and place for all of that. Thank you. Okay, Dr. Go, uh, if we could recenter back on just a couple of comments that were made. The first one being the very first comment was
065the most effective way to teach children is to have a quality teacher inside the classroom. I used to tell my my teachers just shut the door and teach. And you know they had all this noise about being worried about this going on that going on but really the ones who knew how to just shut the door and teach were the ones who were the most effective. Mr. Cameron agree with you more than 100% although I guess mathematically we can't have more than 100%. But we have taken steps to take screen time and technology from students. When I first came, there were mandated amounts of time that students were supposed to be in elementary that they were supposed to be on the computer, which just absolutely made me cringe until we pulled that. And in some
066cases, we had to claw it away from teachers because quite honestly, we had a core of teachers who had come in during the pandemic who that was the only way they had been taught to teach. And so we we we've been clawing that back away. One of the great things that that we did was summer reading camp. I I don't know if you understood, but a classroom only got four computers. Sounds like sounds just like old days. Now there are times when you have to have a classroom set. For instance, when we do SC ready testing, we have to have a classroom set. The other thing, glad to hear you say it because I wonder how much push back we'd get when we did it. Middle schoolers are not going to be taking computer home
067computers home daily anymore. We're art as you said and we're going to use them when needed and there will be times when they do need to go home. Well, somebody says, "Well, what makeup day e-learning day?" If you recall, we don't do our e-learning days where we expect folks to be on a computer all day long on a day when we have an e-learning day. We give a window of time for them to do that. So, we still accomplish what's supposed to be done. Uh, especially glad to hear that. The other thing is and and D and and Matia knows how I feel about stuff on teachers at the first school year. I hate it and I absolutely despise it. You'll know if you look back this is a very very soft roll out. In
068fact, not even until the fall do the instructional coaches and the lead teachers and the administrators get the Corin training. We didn't schedule it for July. We didn't schedule it for the last week before school. It's a not only that, but if you then flip the page to the next slide, you'll notice that even the roll out that begins to happen to teachers is really their regularly scheduled coaching cycles and professional development. Again, a very soft roll out so it does not monopolize time and I think that that's important. You'll is on reflection on student learning and the piece that we don't do well and this is not a teacher not do well. This is an administrator not do well which is walkthroughs of classrooms where teachers get meaningful feedback on what's going on in
069their classroom. Sometimes that can be very positive. Sometimes it can hurt feelings, but also sometimes it can open the door to talk about how could you be doing this better. I got in a real argument with a colleague back in May and and we really it was really a heated argument and we were going back and forth and I won't tell you what it's about because kind of gets to be funny how non uh consequential it was. But he was on one side or so we thought. But the longer we argued, the more we realized we looked at each other and said, "Hang on, so you think?" And he said, "Yeah, that's what I think." And I went, "Well, that's what I think, too." And we had almost 40 minutes back and forth, but our
070problem was we did not have a common language. We might been speaking French and one speaking German because we were looking at a problem from two different perspectives and we were I'm a simple guy. I really am. And I boil things down very simply. Visible learning is creating one language that we use to discuss how we instruct and how we deliver instruction in the school. that it's about learning a shared language that we all are able to say so that when we talk about going in and making a standard that is studentfriendly to understand we all understand what that means it's not a bunch of garbage that you read out that oh by the way I can hang with him on on his math example because I doing with slope y intercepts and and and
071finding finding that and And then you could go further also finding the the the coord based on the original equation that you started with. But kids don't know that. That's not language kids use. You don't use that language. I don't use that language. What we use language of it's important to be able to solve this equation because the outcome impacts something else. It was not until I took physics. Those of you who took physics will know exactly what I'm saying. It was not until I took physics that I understood algebra 2. All of a sudden, I was like, hang on, this makes sense. In fact, the only difference between algebra 2 and physics is that algebra 2 goive side where physics only operates in the positive side and all of the learn to actually make
072sense. So, what we want to do is we want our teachers to be able to help students make sense of what they're supposed to learn. And coach, that goes back to, you know, I was instructed a lot in in school. I wasn't taught a lot. Now, my teachers though made a lifetime change in me. The teacher did, not the instructor. I can't tell you a single instructor that I think really impacted me, but my teachers did. We don't want to take that away. We don't want to change that. All we want to do is make sure that they understand that the learner, meaning the student, is able to get the information and put it into use in a way that not only helps them on the test, but in life. And that's the problem where
073we have come to in education is it's too much the test. Now I will say I have to agree I can't wait to be able to show you some things on the test in October, November, which I don't quite understand why we're restricted so long and letting you know but that's a whole another thing because we let almost a half a year ago before we tell you about how things went last year because that's the rules. But we can perform on the test. But the more important thing is we perform in life. And that's what we're trying to do is create a common language so that we can help learners understand what what they need to learn, not what they need to memorize. Okay. Thank you. Still look that I will not do. Uh Mr.
074Chairman, members of the board, Dr. Goodwin, good evening. Uh we have for you this evening the May 2025 monthly report. Uh and this will be our last full report for the uh 2425 year. um as we will be spending the next uh eight weeks or so closing out the year preparing for the audit and anything that we do uh after the year gets booked to June um with a lot of acrruals expenses as as well as revenue being booked. So we will give you some uh updates as needed as we go through that process but uh the last full report for the end of the year will be when the audit is complete later in the fall. So for the month of May on the financial dashboard, uh the only thing that I want to
075highlight here is the lower right section for the sales tax. You'll notice that there was no current month revenue booked for sales tax. That's because the uh uh the the collections for that month did not get uh receded until June 4th. That was the actual date of the check from the uh state. So, uh, we should have, uh, two deposits that will be made in the month of June to round out our sales tax for the year. Otherwise, everything there looks good. Looking at the general fund summary for May, uh, just a few comments about our revenue on this page. Um we are happy year to date with where we are on the local revenue with regard to advalorum um and our fee in l of taxes as it relates to our expectations um as
076well as other items uh on that local section at the top. State revenue um we um we we really can't um you know complain about where we are based on expectations. um we we had a little bit of a help at the first adjustment period of the year for the 45th day. However, at the 135th day, we did see a little bit of a decrease in the aid to district's general fund and EIA line items and we've we've spoken about that with regard to the funding formula and the proportionate share. So, it is just a product, but it was not uh too significant for us to be concerned about for the end of the year. We just need to uh make sure that we keep that as a hot topic going forward. Um with regard
077to um our expenses that we will talk about in just a minute, just keep in mind as we um kind of fine-tune this summary getting to the end of the year and end of the audit. It's important to keep in mind that our total expenses for the month of June will climb because we have the whole month of July for acred payrolls as well as other expenses that will be going back to the the previous year. But all in all, $1.4 million revenues above expenses based on what we are showing at the end of May. General fund expense summary. Um we we have the same story here. Uh overall we look very good at this point going into the last month of the year and we know where our overages have been through the year
078for our services uh for professional technical services as well as our property services and that just basically gives us um the knowledge that we need to look at our utilities and things like that as we have done as we presented the budget for you uh to you. Um transfers you will see greatly exceed expectations. Um those things really don't necessarily translate good or bad. Um in this case it is a good thing because we had additional transfers this year that were booked due to the bond maturity uh that was invested and we were able to pull um at least a half of that at least half of that maturity back into the general fund. And we'll we'll definitely be talking to the auditors about that. They may want us to show it a different way
079but if they do that's okay. but it's in the transfer line. Special fund summary for May. Um, looking at the special fund revenue compared to expenses. As we've talked through the year, our expenses typically greatly outweigh our revenues because we spend first and claim later. Now that we've gotten into May and we've gotten a lot of our state revenue in uh for the year and we've made we're up to date on our claims for federal, uh you'll see how those are very close at the end of May. Um and we'll make our final claims on the federal programs by the middle of August before we close out student activity fund summary. Uh just a couple of things to highlight. Um, as you compare receipts and dispersements, uh, you'll see the spread there. Um, I've looked
080back the past few years in the month of May and that's very typical because of end of year expenses for, uh, schools, people activities, um, activities in general, and there's just not as much revenue coming in during that time. But, uh, there's nothing to be concerned about there. Um, just in case anyone noticed and it was a question, there are a couple of schools that you will notice had uh negative receipts for the month of May. So, I wanted to make sure that I just let you know that that is as a result of cancelled trips that had already been paid for, monies had been collected. And the big one that you see for Camden Middle was the Junior Beta convention um in March that had to be cancelled because of weather issues. So those
081those funds were certainly reimbursed to families and were not held. U present to you just for information the cumulative rental account activity for the year. Um and as far as the actual events if you have any questions about that, Mr. Smith, I'm sure would be able to answer those. Um food service summary. So with school lending uh towards the end of May, this represents the last uh report for the participation activity. So we've added two columns to the right. You have the month of May uh 64% and 58%. Um spoke with Dr. Lawyer and looked back at history. That's very typical for the month of May uh with regard to uh participation. and you see the average for the full year at 66 and 69%. Um, here's the thing. We we can live with those,
082but we know that there are areas where we need to improve participation. There are a few locations we need to address. That does keep us at a level uh going into the next year of C that um gives us uh positive feelings about being able to reup that once we reach the end of our current uh approval period. Um, now I will say the average numbers you see here, Dr. Lawyer bases those on the days of service, not the average of the months. So, it's based on I think it works out to be like 177 days of of serving due to um inclement weather days that that didn't have to be made up. So that represents a kind of a conservative percentage in her eyes and we're not sure the state may look at look
083at it as a straight average and if they do that's going to be a little better and the last two pages are just going to be the expenditure details uh for the month of May that transfer over to the summary. And I won't go into any real details there uh but if you were to have any questions about those please let me know or I can answer those now. But with that, that wraps up the uh May 2025 report. Um, professional and technical services. We know that's been a lot of contractual stuff. Has have we seen a shift hopefully in employment possibly for the upcoming year where we're not going to have to do as much contract stuff as we've done in the past? No, sir. We uh we will still have probably about the
084same amount especially in the special ed areas um especially in also the special services areas like school psychologist uh speech language pathologist uh that's the way of the world now quite honestly a lot of u people in those areas are choosing not to um not to join districts but to join contract agencies which is actually drawing more and more away from the traditional school job. U that's typically where you're going to look first and and that is the case. Um and that would be expected. Uh we we do we do see a little bit of trickle down of of that to uh the middle school level as well. Uh a couple of areas of concern that we need to address. She's on top of it. Thank you. reconvene to open session properly motion by Mr.
085Cameron second by second Mr. Rebecca. All in favor be notif by saying I. I. I. And that is unanimous. In executive session, we discuss resation retirement of certified and classified personnel, employment of certified and classified personnel, assignment changes, and transfer of certified and classified personnel. Is there a motion to accept administration recommendation concerning employment matters? Proper motion by Dr. King. Second by coach Blackman. All in favor let know by racial right hand that's announced. Is there a motion to turn to close motion by Mr. Cameron second by this Rebecca? Yes. All in favor let me know by saying I I Okay. Heavenly Lord, dispatch your angels, Lord, and lead us safely back home and find all this. And we give you all the honor and glory that is due you and it's in the Amen.
086Amen.