Regular Board Meeting - 05.27.2025 pt2

001board to determine the direction we're moving forward with our vacant seat. At this time, I would like to make a motion to accept Mariah Munos as our position number two, board director. Do I have a second? I'll second that motion. Uh we will motion made and I have a second. Bear with me. This is my first time. Um, at this time we will do a roll call. Aaro I. Myself I. Ken I. Aaron I. Motion passes 40 Z. Welcome to the school board. Um, because we already started this meeting and we can't make an adjustment to the agenda, we won't be able to swear you in until the next board meeting. But we're super happy to have you. So, thank you for joining us. Yes. Thank you. [Applause] Where's Dalia? We need to get the

002photo. I know. We'll get one next. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get one next week when we swear you in. Um Okay. At this time, we're going to throw it over to our student reps. Okay. Um first of all, baseball final four for stage. I'm actually super proud of them. Um Xavier Lascon actually was one of the pitchers for the that last game and he did really well. Wasn't Xavier? No. Who was it? It was Aiden. Aiden. Yes. Sorry. Yeah. They they clutched up. It was really good. Um and soccer went into the first round of state. They got put out, but they had a really good season overall. Jose Cabrera, he was going crazy. Like the whole season, he did really well. Um we're coming up to track. We have two girls, Abby and Bella, going

003to state. They also made first team, too, so that was pretty cool. Uh boys, we got put on everything. Like the Ellensburg kids are like 15 times our size. They're so fast. So fast. It was really fun, though. Our season's closing. Uh we got field day coming up as well. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Soccer. They're gonna have their No, they they finished. Yeah. Um golf as well. How did golf do? Um I think Samson got 10th. Yes, 10th. There you go. So, yeah, we we've done pretty good. Athletics are kind of closing. Spring is also the time when, you know, the kids are scratching by, so we're just trying to make it. Three more weeks. Three weeks. They said that like five weeks ago. Yeah, that's all for us. Great. Thank you. Um, we will

004move on to board member discussions starting with our legislative report by Director Gerber. Nothing for legislative report today. Okay. Um, I don't have anything else for board member discussions unless anyone has anything to add to that. I think I think we just want to uh confirm about graduation attendance. We want to make sure we include it appropriately in the program. So, I think it's going to be Aaro, Lindsay, and Aaron for sure. And Ken, you were not available. Not available. Not avail. Mariah, do you think you'd be available for um graduation on the 6th? Okay, we'll make an adjustment to the program even though it might be prior to the official swearing in. Okay. Thank you. Um Okay. At this time, I will accept a motion to approve required approvals. I'll make a motion to

005approve required approvals. Do I have a second? I second though. I have a motion and a second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion passes 40. Uh at this time, we'll move on to our superintendentformational items and throw it over to Dr. Perez. Yeah, thank you. I was as I was listening to uh the soon to be director Munoz talk about uh some of the biggest things facing the district and the challenges that we're having to deal with. I think all of you may have shared that standardsbased grading would be one that we've been talking about for a couple of years now. And so we committed to the board to share with you uh some next steps and provide a follow-up by the end of the school year. And and today's that opportunity to share

006with you some work that um we've done over the last several weeks. It's been uh primarily myself uh Dr. Meek and John Weisman out gathering information about next steps and certainly with a lot of help from the administrators at Oll High School and McFarland Middle School. This is some of the work we've been doing. We had focus groups in in midappril. We took that what we learned in those focus groups at Oll High School and then met with the Oll High School administrative team to talk to them about what we heard and whether or not it lined up with what they believed about how things were going. We presented to the board uh in April, end of April, and shared with you that we'd be coming back uh before the end of the year. And

007that's what today's about. We got a group of focused teachers to compare Skyward to Empower. I know that you are all very savvy about the challenges we faced with this is an SBG presentation, but many of the concerns shared by parents and by students has really been in power versus skyward. So, we had a test run and and a chance to evaluate those and I'll share some data with you about that. Dr. Meek and John Weisman then met with some McFarland focus group teachers on May 14th, a similar activity that we ran in April at the high school. Then we went back to Ollo High School on the 20th to provide an update similar to the one that you're going to hear today with maybe just a little less detail for you. And then we're

008here today uh providing the board update. You'll remember this work was really focused on uh we're really talking about level four here standardsbased standards reference reporting and that's an optional component of this idea about high reliability schools and making sure that every kid has effective teaching in their classroom. they feel connected to the school and that the experiences they're having in nth grade algebra in one class are very similar to the ones that they have in another class. So chasing a really good target and it's a matter of how we um provide feedback to our our parents and to our kids about how they're doing. Now this slide if you'll remember we gave the high school and the middle school some options to consider and we asked them uh for some some of their qualitative

009data like how do you really feel about this? What's your story? what do you think about this? Then we actually gathered some votes and took some numbers and we did a quantitative uh report here and so about 40% of teachers said just keep going and this is combined between McFarland and the high school. Stay within power. We've put a lot of time and energy into this. Stay the course. And we had a smaller percentage about 15% say hey we need we need to take a breather on this. We're hearing a lot of concerns about empower in particular. let's let's charge ahead the way we've we've indicated, but let's let's pull back on empower. And then we had a a larger group, just over 40% say, "Hey, we need to have some options, some choice, and

010some flexibility here. Maybe not every course lines up to be used for standardsbased grading. Maybe it's not used 100% across the school in every class. Let's take a more thoughtful approach to it." And when you combine those two at the end, it's it's just over 60% who say maybe we should move away from empower. And I'm going to share with you where we're headed. Uh I did share with the uh high school staff. And uh if you put this data just in high school teachers, the green bar would be uh 25, the purple one would be 25, and the red one would be 50. And when you look at it as a percentage, there are certainly ju at least twice maybe over that twice the teachers at Oll High School as compared to McFarland and

011certainly a more complicated master schedule that exists at the secondary level. So some additional um I think influence has to be and and weight given to the high school perspective on this particular issue if we decide that we're going to do it as a 712 model. The next slide shares with you some of the uh comparisons we ran. Pros and cons of Empower versus Skyward. And if you look on the far right, there's a the boxes there. If it's an N, that means it's neutral. Doesn't really matter which platform that you use. An E would give the nod to Empower. A Empower is maybe a better a better model. And so we evaluated these with teachers who are skilled in Empower and have been using it for a couple of years. And then we we

012cloned their classes. Dr. Meek was able to do the technical parts of that and share show them their classes in Skyward live in the moment and let them know uh kind of what it would mean. A couple of these that um maybe have been important to the board, you've probably heard from parents about, well, I'm not sure where my kids at. There's this line and I'm not sure what the grade actually is. I think we've heard that a little bit from our student reps as well. Um and so there's been some challenges in communicating with families really clearly. The next page indicates the places where the group that we were meeting with thought Skyward um got the nod and when it was a little bit easier uh to navigate. So that first one is really

013important. If we make this switch to Skyward for traditional and standardsbased grading, parents only log into one system. They're not chasing two systems now. It's it's one login. Also in Skyward, a standardsbased grading course will also appear with a traditional grade. So, you might be a a 3.0 in a class and it'll appear as an A on your as your parents look in and and and you navigate how am I doing in class? Um, grade entry for teachers. So, from the teacher side, very similar to how you already use Skyward and so that won't be a heavy um new learning for for staff. Creates better trend lines. And then the one at the bottom around athletic eligibility. It's been a a difficult challenge to make sure who's on track, who's not on track, who's eligible,

014who's not. And switching to Skyward will clean that up. So on the next slide, I'm going to let you see some of the next steps that we are going to pursue at both Oll High School and McFarland Middle School. We heard a lot at the board level. I I know that some of you have shared concerns with your own children who are students in our school district. You've heard it from some teachers. We heard it on our uh in our focus groups changing the late work from a four-week minimum to a two-eek minimum. And so you can see Miles down there nod nodding his head. And uh um I'm not sure what the reaction is down there. Let me stop there for a second. What do you think about that move, students? I need it

015or else I won't do my work. Seriously, I will not do it. I will wait until three weeks and six days and No, because the first week my mom is and she's, "Oh, I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it." And then the next week I actually have time to go up. That's also what my first thing was to standard base entirely was because at college we don't get a proficiency scale. College you don't get a empower. There's no line that's did it or not. this week. I give it now because high school is not taken seriously. I I think two of the reasons behind this move, one from the teacher perspective and then uh one from what we heard from parents and students. From the teacher perspective, it used to be it

016was even greater than four weeks. And so students would wait and wait and wait and then hand in a pile of work and expect immediate feedback and an updated grade while a teacher is continuing to plan. The course continues to move forward. There's work that's on time that's coming in and there's a frustration of having this pile of of late work. So we shrunk that down to four weeks and now maybe this is going to be the sweet spot where two weeks makes sense for teachers and for students. There is some discretion. We did hear from a few staff members who said, "I'll accept work at any point because for me it's about the learning and I want them to demonstrate that they know how to do it." Teacher would still have that discretion to

017extend that deadline, but it is going to shrink to a twoe minimum. I was going to add one more thing to that too, like so like for an art class and stuff like those where it's not menial work, but it's not as pertain like an essay, then I would understand like four weeks or something because also like people who are involved like I'm missing class right now. So like stuff that like if I had still continuing then I would go to practice after this and so then two weeks gives me a little bit of leniency where like if I pack up my schedule with other things I think enriching things um then it makes sense to give me a little bit of room to have late assignments that's also what in college I'm not going

018to do 60 million college sports well I might try but it's not as easy what about like struggling students who can't meet the two minimum like before the deadline. Do they have to cooperate with the teacher and just Yeah. I I I'm hoping what this will encourage is more frequent conversations, opportunities to send a notice home to use parent square to make a phone call to reach out and say, "Hey, this is due. We need to check in and and so on the student and on the teacher if that's happening more frequently, more consistently every couple of weeks instead of every four or six weeks that we would, you know, be able to accommodate everyone's needs. But the challenges that teachers were facing with the extended uh window for late work and it sounded like

019some of the habits that were unintentionally being created and and developed in kids about handing things in at the last minute. It made sense from what we heard from our staff to adjust that. The next one is about empower and skyward. And so we have decided that we're going to switch to the use of skyward for SBG and traditional grading. We would retire the use of empower. Um this decision again from the parent perspective is single login uh late assignments now for for a traditional or standardsbased grading will all appear in the same place. Conversion of that standardsbased grading number to a traditional grade for ease of communication and access and interpretation. There was just so many factors that where it made sense to adjust to Skyward. Now having said all that, it seems really

020simple to speak out about that level. I'm going to show you some of the next steps that the high school is going to undertake and and then we'll be interested in hearing McFarland's plan in the coming weeks as we transition to um from Carlos Gonzalez going out as principal and Will von Brock coming on. There's still some planning to be done there. So I I don't mean to say there's not going to be some work behind the scenes with the infrastructure and also some learning for teachers, but we're going to invest in that, pay people to come in and and and build that muscle up. But it seems like um this is going to be well received by most teachers. Is MMS currently only center based right now? Correct. So with this now changing, are

021they going to go back to traditional a little bit or No, they would still stay Well, they would stay standards based. That's a that's a really great question and I don't think we included it on this presentation because it is a little in the weeds, but when you remember this slide right here, the goal here in the green was that every class at Athell High School eventually be standardsbased grading. Uh what Dr. Meek developed with the high school administrators was a a rubric to say which ones really make sense and which ones don't. So now we're chasing a target that isn't 100% and every class is a standardsbased grading class. It's the ones that make the most sense are going to be standardsbased grading and the ones where it just doesn't fit and we're trying

022to, you know, a square peg round hole. We're going to pull back on some of those. So they're going to make some of those decisions at the school level. Um and and I think McFarland may engage in some of those similar conversations. Are they going to move forward with standardsbased teaching? Yeah. So, if you look at this slide right here, that's exactly what the bottom part here is about. It's those three areas are standardsbased teaching. My guaranteed and viable curriculum are the what are the priority standards in my content area that I'm going to use. Even if I'm not a standardsbased grading teacher, uh so here's an example. Um PE is probably going to be exempt from standardsbased grading. Might be a traditional model. It still means we should know that freshman PE with H

023oily or with Parish or with uh another or Stzman or another teacher is going to be the same experience for kids and that each of them are going to teach at a high level so that students can learn those those skills and that they're going to feel safe and connected. That's that's consistent and foundational to everything we're doing. the standardsbased reporting part of it would be different and so some some courses don't lend themselves as well to that model with the um like with our after school program Saturday school and stuff like that are they also on Saturday based teaching like how does the curriculum work for those supports and then for is it intervention you guys have at MS as well yeah how does the grading if is there grades I'm not sure like

024yeah so typically in an intervention setting it's about supporting you so that the grade you're taking in your regular course can be elevated right you can get work in, you can be so it is graded in that sense. Sometimes it might be late work or just helping you catch up on a standard, those kinds of things. At Although High School, I'm not sure what you were referencing with the after school stuff. We have like Saturday school for freshmen and there's also intervention. Yeah, it's a very similar to what McFarland's doing with some of their intervention programs. Come in and get caught up on it's not new work or additional work. It's to help you get caught up and and remediate those skills and areas you might be struggling in. Oh, so dependent on which class

025you're struggling in would be correct. Correct. Y and then um one of the last things that we're pretty excited about and I think Carlos will help lead some of this work with um his work around as the athletic director and director of student engagement. Uh the development of a behavior report card. So think of this as um I'm trying to think of your own industries that you each work in. So, if you have um someone at the glass shop who's really skilled at the technical parts of it, they know how to calibrate the windshields, they know how to diagnose, they know how to connect with insurance, right? They have all those skills, but they're always late to work, they call in a lot. Uh they're not reliable, those future ready skills. uh we're we're thinking

026about a model that includes some of those and might impact a student's ability to participate in extracurricular activities or athletics if they're not being a good citizen. I talked was at a fellow high school this morning listening to these guys and some other students talk about being connected to the school and that what it means to be a Husky and some of the Miles. Do you remember some of the things you said about what it means to be a Husky? What some of those were? I got a whole list on I remember we we revised it that same time too but most of it was like the almost graduate of a profile type of things. So like we made the anagram for husky involved uh honest, understanding, self-aware and self-determined, kind, involved and educated. And

027then each of those came with like a little bit of a drop down section of like detail what it would look like in a classroom. And we also talked about what would that look like for um in a math class or if you take leadership or if you did CTE on one. So like that this curriculum would just be taught not for only leadership kids or AVID or something, but it would be SEAL type of thing that it goes across the board. Yeah. So imagine you're an athlete or you're in a school play or you're in band or choir. Uh you're participating in something representing the school, maybe FFA, and you tick off all the boxes with your grades. You're passing and you're eligible, but you haven't been honest. You're not kind. You have these

028behavior issues. Those kinds of things. an AB Skyward may allow us an ability to track those behaviors and identif and at the high school they're calling them red, yellow and green behaviors and if you have a lot of red behaviors we're not sure we want you representing us that you understand how we behave here. So uh moving to that model um Skyward allows us to kind of address that and and approach it a little bit differently I think more holistically. Is this like a a branch of 21st century? Exactly. It may it may in fact end up being called that 21st century skills, future ready skills, graduate profile dispositions, something along those lines, but there'll be a group that comes together to design and develop that. And the red, yellow, green behavior would include things

029like skipping or being late to class consistently and things like that. Absences, uh, failing a certain class, referrals, yeah, within a month passing, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, within a month. And, um, suspension. Yeah. So, what they just did there is they described what the high school administrators have been developing over the last year to talk about these things. So, it's really cool to see the kids connect that and what what Skyward will allow us to do is to have a technical support and structure to allow us to track that thing. Yeah. So, I think it's a it's a a cool opportunity to come together. Now, some of the work that's coming this summer, um, at OS in particular, there's going to be some professional development for a group of of lead teachers there. Um, some

030other processes for them to come together and continue to talk about the scope and sequence and what we put in front of our kids every day. So, lots of work to be done there. There's here's the behavior report card that we just talked about and what that's going to turn into and how we're more consistent with athletic eligibility. uh the college and the high school courses for some of our students at the end you may be involved in those already but those are going to move away from the standardsbased grading model are going to be a more traditional model to to connect we were asking teachers to keep two grade books and that created some tension for folks and then that standardsbased grading course decision matrix that's what um uh the rubric that Dr. Meek

031was developing and working with the high school on to decide which courses are going to go where. So, still some work to be done. Uh, but as far as down the road as we've come with SBG, I think this is going to accelerate it even just a little bit more and be more um accessible for people and a more effective way of communicating with our families about how their students are doing. On the time we when we rolled out a center base or empower, did we do a parent reach something parent night or send out how did we get the parents involved to see that this is what the grade was going to look like? Yeah, we had we did have a couple of parent information nights and I think what we discovered I mean

032and attendance wasn't great at those. I know they did one at a pack meeting. Um what we discovered is it's difficult to change educators mind about grading practices. People who are trained in it live with it every day. It's even more difficult and requires more frequency in in um helping parents understand it. When we were at the training in Denver, I was with Cat Aerson, John Weisman, and Mandy Perez. One of the most uh unsatisfying responses I got from the trainer was, "Well, we just have to wait till enough students have had a standardsbased grading experience in their own schooling career that America will make the shift to standardsbased grading." So, we just got to write it out for 20 years, Pete, and then it'll be fine. And that um I wasn't ready in the

033moment to hear that. So, there's lots of training that we would need to do with our uh famil family's miles. I think what this gives us an opportunity is it's a more realistic target and maybe uh something that people would be more willing to engage and and be interested in listening to because there's some technical things about converting it to a letter grade and um connecting it to behavior. Oftentimes when you ask teachers what's the first thing the parents ask you when they come to conferences and they say is Miles behaving himself right? How how is he are they being good kids? Pleasure to have in class. Yeah. Yeah. When he shows up on time he's great. That's that was Yeah, I just want to ask because um one of the things we're talking about

034today with the building what is a husky is also parent involvement and kind of getting the kids prepared to because parents are not in the school. So we need to equip the kids to tell their parents this is what I'm doing at school. This is why I'm doing it. This is what the culture around you know this is where you send me for eight hours. So that's what we're doing. Um I know that in years past we've had specialists who have been helping people with power and things like that. What does their role look like next year? Yeah, so that uh question came up with a small uh focus group. Um I think it was just Thursday, Wednesday or Thursday. So there's certainly going to be some conversation about whether or not that uh transitions

035to uh standardsbased grading support, you know, moves away from empower coaching to some other model. So we're in a position to continue to support it. It's just who it is and how we design it. We want to make sure that teachers have the supports they need. All right. Well, I I certainly appreciate the board hanging in there with us through this process. Again, I know you've you've taken a lot of comment and and questions about it. It was an eye openener for me to get in front of staff and to hear really this balanced perspective. There's lots of really good work that our teachers are putting in around standardsbased grading and standardsbased teaching. I think we need to honor the work that they've all put in, but also be mindful of the feedback we're receiving.

036And I think this this feels like a good compromise for the district. Thanks. Now, our star guests, we'll uh we're excited to hear from uh our principal of McFarland Middle School for the last time as the principal of McFarland Middle School, Carlos Gonzalez. We'll turn it over to you. Yeah, as you can see, I have a there's no way to do this job by yourself. And it's I'm very blessed to be surrounded by very capable group of people who not only love McFarland and our kids, but are very driven to do what's best for kids and for our staff and our community. Um but the reality the truth is we are a school of improvement and when we were um identified as a school of improvement we this is something that we took very seriously

037and headon with our entire staff to set some goals and uh really we landed down we landed on belonging and impact just to keep it simple our data through the use of our uh CE survey and some feedback from kids is what can we do to create a greater sense of belonging for our kids but not only that what can we do to positively impact our instruction All right. So, this was two years ago. And so, what you're going to see in this presentation, you you have most of our presentation, but what I've done is work over the weekend to embed the most recent data that we have from Smarter Balance because we're still in the middle of it. We still don't have all of it, but we're going to share what we do have

038so far. Okay. So, um again, before I continue, I I I think it's important to introduce uh the team that I get to work with. And so starting on the end, um, we have Jenny Hokinson, our assistant principal, who's been with us for the last two years or three years. Three years. That's right. And Clint Scriven, who has been also a huge blessing to us this year. He's our fun culture guy. He didn't bring popcorn for you guys today, but he brought some candy. And uh, but Clint's the guy who just helps to build on the idea of belonging and help people feel good about being at McFarland, as we all try to do. Uh we have the amazing Nikki Wilkins who's been a huge support for us in multilingual support at our school and

039the evolution that we've been going through this year. Here we have Don Bullis who's retiring and I've been I've been able to work with Don for what what 14 15 years and uh over two different schools and he's been a blessing too and uh it'll be I'm happy for Don and his retirement but he's been helping to lead as our dean of athletics and activities at MMS. And then of course who you you saw me recognize at our last meeting uh Devin Lewis who's been a a godsend. I'll I'll characterize her that way with her expertise and experience around standardsbased grading and what she's done to support stat and be that person to just that go-to person to really help us out with all the work that that entails. And I cannot forget to mention

040Denise Collie who's sitting back there who is our instructional coach who's also been part of our instructional leadership team. So, um, and helping to be part of those discussions and lead some of the PD around what we're trying to do at MMS to just continue to improve around belonging and impact. So, what you see in this first slide here is this idea of motion versus impact. This is something that Pete has shared with us and Jessica and the the teaching and learning team that for years we've been living in talking about the work, but when are we going to actually doing it and set up some intentional specific plans to create that impact? Um the reason why I have that up there is because for years uh we've been living in this idea of motion

041instead of uh action. And so this year what we did for the first time is instead of making resources available and that's when you see passive versus active. Passive is more of just making resources available like here's a strategy if you want to use it versus active where hey when we teach reading this is how we're going to teach reading at MMS moving forward. And so that would be one example. Over the years so far, we've conducted 621 walks. That does not include formal observations. These walks have been very focused around how we teach at McFarland. So when we come in, when we come in and we see reading, we're giving feedback about how the reading is being taught, if it's to a high degree or not. And uh but also with um that it's

042empathetic and supportive and what can we do to to support you through this. This is something that I use. This is something from the Association of Washington School Principles. Um that's an amazing organization. Huge support there. Um but when it comes to this leadership continuum, you'll see over the top their first year in their years two through five and years five plus. One of the most important things you could do in in a new principal ship in a different building is really focus on the culture and help to establish the the importance of relationships with the people you're going to work with. because my job as a principal is to first and foremost hire the best teachers I can or and to also improve the ones that I have right and it starts with culture

043and relationships but after that what you also see is in years two through five because this has been a frustration of mine and I have shared these in board meetings you know change in education does take time but with time and setting up the right systems eventually with the right culture with the right systems it will eventually lead to positive student outcomes and learning So that's the idea and that's that's why it's important to share this leadership continuum to give you a visual what that what that means and looks like. So at MMS we have um this idea of belonging and impact there on the left and what we did at the beginning of the year to really hone in on here's the expectation that when we teach reading, when we have our kids read,

044you're a reading teacher. You're not just an ELA teacher. You're not just a math teacher, a history or science teacher. If you have your kids read anything, guess what? You're a reading teacher. and this is how we're going to do it. These are different ways to do that. So, equipping our teachers with high effect size strategies in the pre, during, and post as an example to help focus how we teach at McFarland. And this is the first year that we've done that. But also, what you see is this effort around how we teach reading or the specific strategies for multilingual support, for example, or how we help manage our kids with Teach Like a Champion also lends itself into the instructional alignment that we've been building on in the OSD. Um, probably the most profound

045professional learning experience I've had has been in the Oll School District with our principal PLC. It has been the most uh I've experienced most growth as an educational leader because of that principal PLC and the people I get to work with and to see the cool work that's happening in the elementary schools. But when you have four different systems that feed into one elementary school, let's have a conversation about how we can align how what and how we teach so that when we have four systems feed into one school, what can we do to keep that going? And so that's why I'm also really looking forward to uh the instructional alignment work that's coming up. Um, so special thanks to Pete and how he's reorganized the leadership structure and uh with the support with Josh

046Meek, John Weisman, Amy Paris, the rest of the teaching and learning team, but also with the executive directors of uh instructional alignment with Justin Johnson and Christina Benjamin who have made some really uh great gains also in their systems like but also in our principal PLC. What can we do to just continue to align how we teach what we do and how we teach it? So this is the data that we have so far. What you'll see here on the right side of it, um you'll see 2425 on the right. This is the most current data that we have. The lighter green is the ELA. The darker green is math. The two previous years since I've been in McFarland, um you'll see that we we are showing a positive increase or a positive trend line,

047but it's not enough to me. I to me I want to do more. I want to have more gains. But nonetheless, it's still on a positive trend line. To be clear, though, as of today, I checked this morning and again as at like 10:00, 11:00 a.m. Um, in ELA, only 209 kids out of 350ish have been scored. And then in math, same 320, but we're pretty close to having all the data on the math so far. So, that's what it looks like in seventh grade. When we get into eighth grade, it kind of levels out, but still positive nonetheless. uh between ELA and math in eighth grade. And uh when we look at the grade levels combined, we're on a positive trend. So as each year our kids come through seventh and eighth grade at

048McFarland, we're showing improvements, but we're not going to take credit for that. This is also something that our kids are coming to us with from the middle the elementary schools. So this if we're having any success, of course, it's going to be because of how our kids are coming more prepared from the elementary schools and the work we're doing together as a PLC. So kudos to them of course too. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to hand this over to Nikki who has been a huge help to us in with her exper expertise and experience in multilingual support. And so she's going to speak uh to some information on these next two slides and share this data with you. So early on Carlos reached out and the McFarland team has made a

049lot of commitments around supporting language development while they're teaching their content. And so that's something that's really crucial is that you have to understand your grade level standards in order to be a language teacher because this isn't in isolation. This is to drive instruction and to complement what should be going on in classes, but make sure all of our students are accessing it no matter what their proficiency level is in academic English. So we're really excited to report that we have 11 students who have met proficiency according to the state criteria. And what that means is that on the WEDA access score they scored a 4.7 overall. We had seven students who did that by themselves. However, the state also recognized that the WEDA access is informed by different assessments. So one of the assessments

050that they do analyze is the ESPA. And so when the state was looking at what students were meeting that 4.7 criteria but still weren't necessarily or I'm sorry the students that were not meeting the 4.7 criteria but they still were achieving a proficiency level three or four on ESPA there was a difference and so the state responded by including students who score a 4.3 to a 4.6 six and also meet proficiency on the ESPA ELA are also considered exited and then we monitor them for two years. And so now with the current data we're at 11 students who have met exit criteria and we have six that are still on our watch list like Carlos was saying the ESPA data is still trickling in so we still have a potential for six more students to

051join the exit criteria. Um this is a huge celebration because when the students move into sixth grade, they take a middle school level assessment for their language proficiency. So it is difficult for students to maintain their proficiency and increase their proficiency because the rigor required of them is that of the grade level. So these students are looking like grade level peers in accessing their classes. Um, we have 288 students at McFarland that are MLS. So, it's about 40% of our students. If we could go to the next slide, which is really exciting because what that means is we can see a shift that our students are moving into this level three called developing and level four expanding. We did have a student reach bridging this year. Um, we're always going to have some students that

052are in different proficiency levels. So, for example, a level one entering means that they are new to English entering the language. And we did have newcomers join us this year that are brand new to English. So, we're going to have some students in that proficiency level. However, we don't want students to stay in that proficiency level. Um, and so we can see that we're shifting students out of the early proficiency range into the later proficiency range. So, a developing student is a student that's acquiring more autonomy and navigating the language by themselves, but they still need clear supports from their teachers. And that's one of the things that McFarland committed to this year is to have some consistency through strategies like QSA and simultaneous roundt. Um, and then we have some students that went into

053the expanding range, and those are the students where I'm talking about that 4.3 and higher where ESBALA is going to show how are they doing with grade level standards because that's ultimately what we want to see them is succeeding in grade level standards. And then finally, bridging is that they're comparable to a native English-speaking peer. And six would be considered reaching. And in our school district, we often see students reach that proficiency level in listening, but they're still working towards it in some of their other domains like reading and writing. Um, one of the big celebrations was that Denise Carlos and I collaborated and we targeted 105 students with an intervention to improve their expressive skills around writing. And I'm really excited that 156 students made growth in writing. And so what that tells me

054is not only did we see our para educators make commitments around that ed around the intervention, but the classroom teachers are really making those commitments as well because this test is driven by content. So they'll have a science prompt, they'll have a math prompt, a social studies prompt, and an ELA prompt. So if our content teachers weren't doing the work, we wouldn't see growth like that. Thank you. But it's also fair to share something that I pay attention to is how are our kids doing overtime. So through their OSD experience, whether they start in fourth or fifth grade through seventh and eighth grade with us, how are we doing? Are we starting to level that line off? Um, is it starting to get better or this is data that I also share with our team.

055And so what you see on this slide here is for ELA, our class of 2030, current 7th grade, and class of 2029, current eighth grade. This is the data over time through the grade levels as they come to McFarland. And so this has been a trend for some time now that we're still working to turn around. Even though the data right now is showing a positive trend or improvement, which shows that some of what we're doing is working, but we still have plenty of room to grow. This is a focus of mine of how we can continue to turn things around in McFarland because we are a school of improvement. What can we do to change this trend from that that continues to drop or to level off so that in time it continues to

056increase or rise. And so this is something that I keep in front of me that drives me all the time. And um this is something I'm sure that when I pass this on to Will who has a copy of this now is going to use some of this data. And I'm sure this is going to be a part of his discussions with his his new department chair group. This is the math data right now uh for our current seventh and eighth graders through the years over the last four years. So when you look at this, this is um eighth grade, eighth grade, seventh grade, sixth grade, fifth grade for the class of 2029. And uh this is why we were identified as a class as a school of improvement. and we have um we're doing

057everything we can to turn that around, but I can also say that we are showing some signs of growth. We're getting better and so we're implementing the systems to do that. So if I prior to the announcement to um transition into a director role for the school district, this is uh these were the recommended next steps that I had communicated with with Pete and meeting with some of the teaching and learning team of what I was going to suggest as we were getting ready to prepare our professional development over summer and especially getting ready for August. And what I'd communicate is just we're setting up some systems especially in and refining in what we teach and how we teach it. Of course that we can attribute to our experience with standardsbased grading. But the next

058step for us is what can we do to improve our instructional rigor. What can we do to put work in front of our kids that meets a DK level three or four and being intentional with the use of questions that we can pull from content explorer for example that we've been doing in our alignment work in our principal PC with the elementarymentaries that is something that we can continue to build on um this idea of gradual release direct instruction and what I do and then what we do together with our kids and then releasing them to do it on their own but at a high level with rigor and uh reviewing the phases of learning where surface to deep and transferring that learning. Something that's been a focus for us is teach like a champion

059strategies where we continue what we've been doing through strong voice cold calling kids uh no opting out and radar and be seen looking as strategies but also introducing exemplar planning stretching it right is right and the art of the sentence and this is something that we would equip our teachers with through professional development in summer and especially in August. Uh, real quick for the next steps in multilingual learner support, I'm going to hand this over to Nikki. This is something that we've built together, but um, she would be much more eloquent than I. Um, I'm really excited because McFarland and OHS decided to partner up on supporting our students that are new to our country and new to English. And so, one of the things prior to this year is that our newcomers had an

060experience, but we didn't have a lot of guaranteed outcomes. And because we didn't have a lot of guaranteed outcomes, we weren't able to help students successfully navigate when they move into grade level content because again, that's what's most important is we want our students to be able to navigate the grade level and reach the standards for their developmental age. And so when we think about that, it would have to look different at secondary than it does in elementary. And so McFarland and I with OS and their ML teachers have been collaborating on improving our courses that we have students go and learn some of the foundational skills because there are different types of multilingual students and there's different types of newcomers. So we have newcomers that come with a strong educational background and a lot

061of literacy in their first language such as Spanish. But then we do have some newcomers that are new to school. And so even though they're in middle school and high school, this is their first opportunity to consistently go to school. And so we need to make sure that we're giving them the opportunities that they need at the developmental appropriateness that they need. And so what we're committing to is helping our students learn how to read do through a foundations for literacy class, a foundations for expression where we're helping them speak and write clearly in the patterns of English. And then also that we're providing them some opportunities to link their background knowledge and the funds of knowledge that they're bringing with them and the experiences that they're bringing with them in a class like language

062for STEM. And then also sheltered history and sheltered math. And then we're having our one ML teacher Rose Barahas is going to have a new teammate U Mario Vargas. And so they can really start partnering and look at data with me and then also collaborate with OS where we can be comparing data and instructional strategies for what's working and what's not as we continue to improve not just an experience but have some guaranteed outcomes for our students. Thank you. And then ultimately the recommended step around feedback and assessment is not just making aggressive monitoring available but saying hey this is what we need to do next and so we're going to provide some training. This is what it looks like now that we've had a year under our belt with standardsbased grading and we have

063those we've been living in the language of proficiency scales of what's at a three or 3.5 or four. What can we do to use that language and to get more immediate feedback to kids or about their learning using aggressive monitoring as an approach and make that an expectation moving from it being a resource and passive to active and this is the expectation right and so uh reviewing high impact reading strategies which I did discuss earlier something that we have always done historically at least in my experience at MMS we we put so much weight into claim one reading comprehension What can we do to do more for our kids around claim two for writing across the contents and share it with our teams? So what this means here is in ELA through the three different

064modes of writing, our ELA team will share and head up narrative writing. Our history team will share and head up argumentative and science. It's only appropriate that they live in the exposition uh orformational expository, excuse me. And so what can we do to just create this shared responsibility as a staff instead of it just living in ELA, right? And so um that's what we're going to do. Our teams have embraced it. Denise Collie has been heading this up with a team of teacher leaders in each of the grade levels and content areas. And uh what's interesting is there's a desire for this from our teachers. It's not just us saying, "Hey, this is what we're going to do." This is an expressed desire that they've communicated to us to share this together as a system.

065And so we're on the right track. But also through that work, what you'll see is an emphasis on rubric alignment that when we write, what are the expectations? What does a one look like? What does a two look like? What does a three? What does a four? And being very clear and descriptive so that we know what to expect um in the alignment process to then eventually lead to greater scoring consistency across the contents and grade levels. So that's where we're headed. But again, these were my recommended steps. This is uh this is something I'm sharing with Will and it's going to be up to him now to carry the torch for MMS with this team and it'll be up to him and he's already doing a great job of having some one-on- ones with

066staff and and teachers and getting some really good feedback and he is taking the time to meet with our department chair group today for example to start having that conversation of what's next, what's appropriate for us, what is the data telling us and uh what do we need to do next to get ready for summer and August so we're ready to go when school begins. All right. So, through our work of sense of belonging and culture, um it led Carlos and I's work in Mustang Leaders for Change. Uh bringing in a group of seventh graders and a group of eighth graders. Uh and as as we move forward in the future, um mixing it up a little bit more, getting some u a wider group of uh student representation, but that sense of belonging brought

067up some key phrases, safety. Uh Dr. Perez had a slide in there with multiple steps tiered and that bottom uh block was a safety or feeling of safe, being safe. So that was a lot of our drive um in some of our questions and our our work with our students. And so some of the input that we received from uh both grade levels uh were around our hallways and their sense of safe in our hallways which then um we got their input and with that uh we did were working on um bringing in I guess tape for the floors separating the right from the left like yeah a little bit of co action but I think with a little more class and uh little Yes. Staying in your lanes, you know, preparing for a driver's

068head. That exactly, you know, Zoro, you talk about real life, you know, it's driving in the right lane or, you know, so helping the students recognize that they need to be on one side of the hall so the flow of traffic and people aren't bumping into each other and colliding and things of that nature. So, uh, bathrooms, just increasing our supervision in bathrooms. Uh we're discussing um some of the privacy slats um that can fill the gap in between the doorways just to give the students a little more sense of uh you know uh safe and uh privacy and our work with our cell phones. The students gave us some good feedback. still have a little bit of gains uh that we can make, but um that's really made a a shift in in the

069students feeling safe, especially in years past having those cell phones in the bathrooms. And then uh they touched base on clothing, the baggy loose clothing, all the dark clothing that the students are wearing. So, um, Jenny of I Jenny and I have talked about implementation of a certain some more clothing guidelines and moving forward. And so that's some of our work with the Mustangs leader for change in those A areas uh to improve the belonging and safe letting you know helping the kids uh feel safer at school. Okay. So, Janney and Clint, Chad Smith and I had an opportunity to go to Justin's Renaissance conference um this past summer and one of the things that we brought back just a great conference. Gives all kinds of ideas for schools to help improve everything they're doing.

070um three of them. We came back looking at uh an idea called the Renaissance card that a lot of the schools use to recognize, reward, and reinforce what their students are doing, the students that are doing what what we'd like them to do. And one of the first things along that line is what values do we have as a school? And so we said academics, belonging, and character. So we changed the name of the Renaissance card that they were using to ABC card uh so that we could remember what our values were there and then within those uh if we have the goals within those ABCs how might we achieve them and this is Renaissance kind of formula for uh having success respect respect the values that you have recognize those that are moving in

071the direction that you want them to go, reward them, reinforce them, um build relationships, and get the results you want. So then we thought, okay, so what are inside of those goals? What are the things that we want that we can measure and and see if they actually are moving towards those goals? So we had four different things. This is coming after the Olympics and everything. So we have the bronze level and all of them are aligned with academics, attendance and behavior and we certainly want them to move to the platinum level. And to be honest it took u quite a while uh through the first quarter and some of the second quarter because even after we talk about it in an assembly a quarter later they're they're going what's an ABC card? They're they're

072getting it now. um as an example. Well, let me show you um how we recognize reward and reinforce. So, if you earn a bronze card, then your reward is what we have there. And then moving up the silver with greater rewards, gold and then the elite level of platinum and the rewards that they get. As an example, platinum, last quarter we had six students in the school reach the platinum level. This latest quarter we had 39. So the students are paying attention. They're they're starting to finally get, oh, and they're paying attention to the posters on the wall now and saying, "What do I need to do? How come I wasn't at platinum level? How come I only got gold?" So they're they're digging into it a little bit. And then um we have rec

073the reinforcement part is an important part of going through the classrooms during their advisory and and it might be like a treat and all of them that have an ABC card. So the first few times we were doing this we had told them you need to keep your ABC card on them. Well, we'd come in and we'd reward those that had their ABC cards so we could see other kids could see why are they getting a treat. Um, and so now those kids, they carry that card with them and the other kids recognize it and we're getting more students involved that way. We still have this part to move forward and that's the staff. um little things even the important part of it is recognizing when somebody's doing something that you're wanting to re and

074rewarding them and reinforcing. And a little simple thing that we did we started last year is secret staff dress up days and you'd get a few student or staff members that would would dress up with whatever we were doing. For example, last last month we had inflatables for the day. had a race outside. Great fun. Well, we would go around during the day and and the staff members that dressed up, they would get a treat. The attendance of the staff members that are doing um yeah, that participated is going up a lot. Just recognizing little things like that. But we're just in the beginning of the ABC cards and there's a lot more that they can do hopefully moving forward um for both students and staff. Okay, my turn. So, um one thing I just

075want to thank Don for doing so much work with that ABC cards. And if you guys ever get a chance to go to Josyn's Renaissance um training, I would suggest it. It's mostly put on by students and it's amazing. So um I'll be super quick with Stat. You guys have seen something like this before when I presented in the past. Stat has um they have incentives or they have interventions depending on um what if they have a red card or a green card. Red card means is they've been targeted. This year is all targeted interventions. So people teachers request students to come if they know they're not meeting standard. Um if we can go ahead and flip this is how many I hope you guys don't mind me standing up. Sitting down is really hard.

076Okay. So, if we're looking at this and we look at the grade level and the content and everything here, these are the minutes and hours and and time that kids have spent in interventions um that we have had teachers targeted and run interventions and how many times they've been able to reach students. Sometimes times those are repeat students, but sometimes those are also just somebody that needs to be checked in. Um, one of the things that we did during stat was Nikki had already talked about it is they had pulled like the WEDA students during that intervention time and targeted them and that's when they were able to help get them the intervention they need. moving forward, our next steps. Um, talking with Will uh a little bit in the last week or so, one

077of the things that we want to really hone in in on our intervention piece is really kind of um focus on what we're missing in our math and ELA classes, especially with our SBG or with our SBA standards. Um, you know, you saw those lines. they're kind of they're trending up a little bit, but they're not trending up quite as much as we want or they're a little flatlined or going down with our cohort. And we want to make sure that we are addressing those um more specifically, more targeted um and more intentionally and we're going to so we're going to pressure up the heat a little bit on our in interventions and what those look like. Um and being very more specific. We did that a little bit this year with saying this is

078what we expect to see in interventions and doing walkthroughs in interventions, but next year it's going to be even upping it up more so that we can definitely hit most of those students. And also students are now realizing, hey, I can request to go to intervention. So now we're having more and more student requesting teachers target them because they're like, "Hey, I didn't get that and I need to know that. So can you target me next week?" And they will do that. And so a lot of teachers are reporting that that's what a lot of students are starting to take that hey, I'm not doing great. I need to I need to make sure I have access to my teacher. So please target me into that 30 minute book. Okay, last thing we're going to

079touch on is our standardsbased grading experience in our first full year of implementation. I'm going to hand this over to Devon Lewis on the end. Um, so what you're seeing here is kind of our learning experiences and I'm going to start with the negatives and work our way into the positives. Um, we've had it was a rough start to the year, but I think as we move into the consistency piece and really looking at what our students are doing and what they're starting to say, we're improving. So, some of the big things that we've learned and we want to improve on is our consistency. And I think you've heard that as a theme today in general talking about being consistent and really getting the kids to understand a process and a uh whether it's ABC

080cards or stat as they do something more and more frequently they're going to understand it better. Um but the big consistency piece is also for teachers. Uh, so when you're grading something in math class, if I'm grading it versus Nikki's grading it, there should be some similarity in consistency and how it's getting graded and what's being graded. And so that's one of our next steps is how do we make sure that a class that I'm teaching and a class that Don or Nikki are teaching, which obviously they don't, but you get the point. Um, that it's it's the same across the board. Um there are some training opportunities that we feel are out there for our staff. Um and this was things I was set Carlos tasked me with actually interviewing a bunch of our

081staff and I did and these were some of their ideas. Um scoring group work when it comes to SBG is quite difficult because you don't know who did the work. As most of you have done a group project in life, someone usually ends up doing a lot more work than others, especially in school. And so, how do you assess the learning with group work? And that's something that we would as staff wanted more information on. Um, as well as how to effectively report learning for our IEP, our ML, and our 504 students. Um, we had an experience earlier this year, uh, where we had a whole bunch of students that were put in a sheltered math class and suddenly they already had threes in scales that were like, "No, they don't. There's no way." And

082it turned out the teacher from the previous year was like, "Oh, well, they're trying so hard. I'm going to give them a three." But that doesn't accurately report the learning. And so we need some training on how to accurately report the learning without hurting the student's grade because in the end that's what parents do look at is say, "Okay, what did my student get?" Well, why is my student getting a C? Well, because they're not there yet in their learning. And so that's one of the things that we wanted to really focus on is how can we get that um learning reported accurately while also giving the parents information like, "Yeah, they're doing they're trying really, really, really hard. This is not for lack of effort. This is just they're struggling in the content. Um,

083and then how to work with our some of our cyclical classes, as I'm sure you guys have experienced, um, but also our teachers are experiencing. There are some of those scales that we teach all year long, um, like math and ELA. They might want to teach, uh, fractions, decimals, and percents all year, but the scale is only for one semester. And so how do we accurately report and grade or assess that information over a whole year? So that was something else that we were uh was a struggle specifically in ELA math and our AVID classes as well. Um we again wanted to look at some opportunities for alignment better alignment and that came from uh especially our teach our classes where our seventh and eighth graders are taking high school credit classes. And so our

084algebra class, for example, if they're taking algebra in seventh grade, they're going to get a high school credit for it. And I'm pretty sure our high school teachers are expecting those seventh grade, those kids to actually have a course that's equivalent to what they would get in high school. And so we want to make sure that there's some alignment um across schools to make sure a lot of that is being taught. So if we drop a scale or they drop a scale, it's like, wait, wait, wait. this class isn't the same now as this class. They're not the they're not equivalent. So, we want to back one. Yep. And then again, just more time for our PLC's to have that alignment within themselves what they're grading and what they're doing next. But to the positives,

085and this is my favorite part. Um I am seeing a huge mindset shift in our students and our staff. It's really going from that idea of, "Oh, well, I did it, miss. Here, you wrote your name on the top. No, I'm not giving you full credit because you wrote your name on the top." Like, that's not how it works. And so, a lot of our students are now starting to see that it's not task completion, it's that learning mastery and what are they learning. Um, and we are seeing a lot of that shift in the language the kids are using. They're starting to talk about their learning. They're talking about scales. Um, when I see uh on my GoG Guardian, I'll frequently see kids having power up and then I get an email, miss, miss,

086I am still I still only have a 2.5 in algorithms. How can I what can I do to bring that up to a three? I really want that that 3.0 scale or 3.0 on my scale. And so they're they're starting to use that language and they're seeing we have graphs that I show the kids in empower and they can see their learning over time and they really start to get excited about that that improvement of score over time and so they do really see that in empower on their uh that improvement. Um our staff are starting to think more this way too. Uh I had a conversation with one of our teachers who the conversation did not go as I thought it was going to. I thought they were going to tell me how much

087they hated it. Uh, and it turned out that they really didn't. They were talking about mastery in skills in a PE class and not just, oh, my kids know how to play softball. They actually were saying, oh, that kids are learning and they know how that they need to um show how they can throw and how they can um I'm I don't even like taking PE, but uh I wouldn't know what I'm doing. Uh, so, but they were talking about that ability to talk about the skills rather than talk about the grade. it wasn't so much that the grade was the important part. It's did did I learn what I needed to learn? Um, and then teachers are actually looking back at what this mastery looks like and being really intentional um about how they're

088teaching and there's a lot less of the what are those? Well, it's just like the fun things like, oh, we're going to do a cross word puzzle today or we're going to do a coloring page. That kind of busy work. There's the word. It was like busy work is really kind of out the window because a lot of teachers are going, well, can this activity that we're doing today show evidence of student learning? And if it can't, why are we doing it? It doesn't mean anything. So, we are there. I see that shift. Now, are we there 100%. Absolutely not. But with consistency in our systems and the way that we're doing uh the the support that our building is getting, I think we're going to get there pretty fast. And I do think that

089being allin this year has made a huge difference. Um, this had a whole lot more on it before I had to change it uh last Wednesday when we found out that empower is not going to be there. Um, so this was a couple things that came up in my conversations with staff. one uh to help our ML learners as well as our students who are not yet reading and or proficient in reading, we wanted to create some infographics and some visuals around our proficiency scales to really help students see um what these scales mean. So maybe we have the word I use the word list is a good good verb. We want them to be able to list these things. And so maybe we have an a graphic, a common graphic across the district that

090when the scale requires a list, they see that visual next to it and they can go, "Oh, I remember what I'm supposed to hear. I'm supposed to bullet point certain things." And so we can start taking all those verbs that we're using across the district and create a system for uh visuals that would really work and help our kids see what they're supposed to do, not just read it. Um and then communicating to parents how how all of this works. That was a big one. Um and then our advisory and stat time, being able to help students check in with their grades and um goal setting, targeted interventions, those kinds of things. Thanks. So, I know that sounded like a lot today, but that's just really in the grand scheme of things or the greater

091scope of things. It's it's a small portion of what we do, but still carry significant weight. And so, um, thank you for being patient with us and taking the time to listen to us, but you're welcome to ask any questions or offer any comments and and I'll do the best I can to answer questions. Sorry, Mr. Clint, I didn't get your last name. Scriven. Uh what is you said you're the culture guy. Like what does your dayto-day look like with the kids? Well, I coined that. Yeah. Yeah. So um just uh personalitywise bringing um you know the treats I carry around treats with me. Um just get interaction with the students. Uh get them talking more, interacting with uh an adult more. And so when he's talking about culture guy, um I do a lot

092for the staff. Um I do popcorn Friday uh every other Friday for the staff. Um my wife and I um put together um during the winter time it was um bring your own mug Monday. And so we'd bring in a curig and some cocoa and the staff would just bring in their mugs and all the good stuff would be there. You know, all the toppings, scavenger hunts, you know, Easter egg hunts. We'd I'd hide Easter eggs with prizes in them. Um just things that you know get the teachers in a good mood just help bring that enjoyment back into what they're doing. Um and just remember why why we get into education for the students. Sort of like a parallel where you're to certain classrooms or you're just kind of floating through the day. Oh

093no. Uh so I'm in charge of seventh grade. Uh and so I still have all my uh class walls. He's an assistant principal. I'm an assistant principal. Oh, okay. So, he's a culture guy. That's what I'm thinking. Like, ding. He's you, Miles. He's a student and he's the culture for the class. We went to Sunnyside recently and there's a guy named Mr. Martinez there who's literally culture guy. Yeah, he is. But he's also an assistant principal and athletic director. So, um yeah, we we're very similar in that ways. Yeah. Uh he's out in front of the the team on game days and stuff like that. So, um yeah, that's kind of my role bring bringing some joy, but also all the other um aspects of an assistant principal. I have a question for the uh

094for remind me your name. Sorry, I think it was Jennifer. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. So, I um you mentioned how you help with for the multilingual students. What exactly do you guys do to help them um uh be able to talk um well master the English language? So I have the opportunity this year to partner with all the schools in our district and um specifically at McFarland this summer. Our school district is using a program called Elevation where it houses all of our data for our students, but then it also has strategies that teachers can commit to and then they can use their data to inform them of like how to help students participate more based on where they're at in their language development. So, for example, there's a strategy called QSA, and that is really

095just like a protocol or a checklist on how to turn and talk with your partner using academic English. And so based on where you're at in your proficiency level, if you're in the higher numbers like four and five, you're going to be a lot more comfortable after your teacher teaches you or you view something or you read something to remember all of those key academic words and then churn and share with your partner whatever the question was that the teacher asked you to talk about. If you're still learning and you're like, I kind of understood what the assignment is and I understood the content, but it's just this picture in my mind and I still need support in the specific words to use. Then the teacher would provide something like a word bank. So those

096key words that your teacher's walking around hoping that you're using to show that you're learning that content are available for you. Because when you're earlier in your proficiency, you might understand it, but you're like, I don't remember how to say that word or I don't remember exactly what that word was. So, McFarland did some training this summer with elevation around strategies and then teachers are implementing that through their content. So, um when I partner with someone like Devon and I partnered in her CTE class because she had some students newer to English join her. Um and so we strategize like what do you want your students to be able to do? Is it something that they need to share expressively by speaking or is it something that they could show you by modeling it? And

097so it really just depends on where the student is and that's where I get to partner with either the principles or the actual teachers and we say what are the students telling us that they need extra practice in in order to be successful in that content area. I will also add we used our data to see which strategies make the most sense for us and our kids. Also, I know you guys have also heard the idea of effect size. So, what are the highest effect size strategies that we're needing to address specific domains, whether it's reading, writing, speaking, or listening. And so, we were very intentional to and strategic about what we're going to put in front of our teachers and not just giving it to them as a resource, but modeling it for them

098and saying, "Here's the expectation moving forward, and we're going to give you feedback on that. Could we go over this? I don't remember it on the side, but there's this one graph here is explaining I think the SBA scores or something. I'm not sure, but on one of the criteria it says MMS white and then it goes from 60 to like 50 something. Oh yeah, that's a hidden slide. Um that's a hidden slide that I have, but I can easily talk about it. That has all of the data uh even broke down into subgroups. Uh when you look at uh smarter balanced assessment data, it can be broken down into subgroups by by race or ethnicity across Washington state. Uh when you look at Hispanics or Latinos, for example, across the state there, it's 26.1%

099I believe across the entire state, but our demographics in our community, it's 90.1%. And so, um, when we think about our demographic and who we want to serve, who we do serve, it's like what what can we do to improve our practice to support our our demographic here in in Oll. So specific to our demographic because we're such a high ELELLL community. Uh I know Nikki mentioned it earlier at McFarland we have roughly 700 students and more than 40% of our kids take the WEDA assessment which means that um a language other than English is spoken in the home. So when they have to take the assessment um what that means is we have to be much more intentional in differentiating instruction for our kids um and being much more intentional in the strategies and

100using high effect size strategies with them. And so that's why we're moving more from what we've done historically in the past around being passive and making resources available to teachers to hey moving forward when we teach reading or when we manage our kids or when we teach math and using VEPS as an example we're going to be much more specific and intentional in the strategies that we use and these are the reasons why and so it really is also tied to high effect size strategies. Carlos on that. You sat there and said Hispanic, Latino. Okay. I Where's the breakdown even further? Where is either being Spanish speaking, MCCO, mom? Where's that breakdown? That breakdown um you could find the students languages in the home in elevation. And that's something that Nikki and Denise have helped

101us with with data for our kids because you're technically asking a kid there to learn three languages at one time. And that is what I we can all sit here and and say, you know, we're all Latino and that might have worked when I was in school. It's not that way now. Now you have MCCO, you have mom, you have several different ones. And so when you're sitting there and you ask them to go home, it's the one of the hardest things I have for Ludaka is when you have a a mum student who comes to to class and and they come to work, you're asking them to go back home and they don't speak neither English or Spanish back at their home. They're speaking something else. And so you're asking that kid now where

102you're you guys are effectively trying to teach them two languages or at the high school or at the junior high, sorry, at Luda, now you're trying to teach them three. that kid has a lot harder um hill to climb. So, I'm just that I I I I want to get away from saying Latino or Hispanic because now it's just doesn't mean that there's there's so many much more that we have in this community that it'd be nice just to break it down so that we knew, okay, you know, 40% of of the Latinos, well, you know what, 20% of them are Mum. I could tell you like 8 to 10 years ago we used to it used to be English, Spanish and some mixed deco but now I mean Nikki uh could also elaborate more

103on this on on the several different number of dialects that our community has. And the reason why I I know is because I deal with it at work every day. And so it's it's it's very hard for me when I I'm looking at them wanting to speak Spanish to him and they look at me like Yeah, I I think it's actually really interesting that you bring that up because the students that I had this uh first semester in my class, one of them actually came from gosh, I can't remember what country, but spoke mom only. And in fact, we learned as I was trying to teach her how to use a ruler because that's one of the skills in my class realizing she didn't actually think in base 10, which is what our numerical system

104is. She speaks she thought in the Mayan number system which is dots and dashes. It's actually a base 20 system. So we but it goes back to kind of that SVG thing that we're doing. I had to go okay my goal was to get her to me measure to an eighth of an inch and she could get the system down. She didn't have to understand what an eighth of an inch was, but she could figure out, okay, here's a line, and with the systems that we created for her, she was able to put a ruler next to it, understand where that what each line rep like represented, even though that didn't compute 1/8 for her didn't mean anything, but she understood what it meant, and she could write down the actual measurement. And so, we

105were looking back at the skills that were necessary. Could she verbalize it? No. But she could measure to an eighth of an inch. And so that's kind of it goes back to the what we're doing with SVG and the intentionality behind what skills do we need them to have. And so I think that it was a it was a really good and one thing I wanted to clarify is when our students join us at McFarland or at the high school, what we're really working on is comprehensible input because WEDA's standards or our language standards are actually our content standards. So we have language for social and instructional purposes, language for English language arts, language for science, language for social studies, and language for mathematics. And so at middle school and high school, we're not trying

106to teach them multiple languages. We're trying to make sure that they have access to their content standards. And so when we talk about them joining Devon's class, we know that they come with funds of knowledge and we know that they're coming as middle schoolers. And so they have all of these experiences up, you know, till they're 12 years old. And so if we can tie in their previous experiences, even if she hadn't been familiar with the base 10 system, she is familiar with measuring and she is familiar with representation. And we know all the developmental milestones that they reach by the time they're in middle school. It's just simple child development. It doesn't matter what language. We knew that we would be able to show her this is representative of measurement here and this is

107US customary because we also have the metric well I think it was the metric system sorry that was fifth grade um but what we're really trying to do is make sure that they can access their content standards and so the way we do that is through comprehensible input especially at McFarland and at the high school because we are focused and our language the dominant language at the middle school and high school is English and we're going to be assessing them in English. If they do have a Spanish background that they're coming to us with, then things like the ESPA in math, we can put uh a com, it's not an accommodation, it's a designated support. You can have a designated support for the Spanish to be layered on, but they also will have it available

108in English because that's the way we assess in the United States currently. And so that's a little bit of a a mind shift where when we're not in a dual language program and we're newcomers in like McFarland or an English dominant school like Hayawa, then we're working on comprehensible input so that they can gain academic English. I have one more thing on the hidden slide again. So sorry. Okay. It's just a little concerning the MMS I see the MMS Hispanic Latino. This is the ESPA scores, correct? Or Like what are these? It just says ELA at the top for me here. Let me pull up see what you're looking at. And then the Yeah, these are ESPA scores in ELA and in math. And then so with the MMS whites, it goes from 66 to

109Yeah. our our white students at McFarland that make up 10% of our student population are performing at or better than the state. Huh. What's happening there? like we can see with the you know that you know the language barrier but then if they do know English what what now I I would go to just other factors that affect learning um socioeconomic factors language is definitely one that you already addressed um also the different dialects that we have four different dialects at a minimum here in the school district now when it comes to or languages I should say English mix and mom am I missing any right now we also But the dominant language is Spanish. So they will access school. I would love to get to figure out you you say Spanish is I'm pretty

110sure there is quite bit more mum speaking people and pretty close to overtaking the Spanish version of it. So I it depends on who you're looking at. So when when we went to the WAB conference last year, we did a lot of learning around there are different types of ML students. And so at McFarland, because everyone ends up at McFarland, we see this really play out because we're have the whole community there. Um, but it really depends on that student's journey. And so a lot of the formal education would have been received in Spanish for a lot of the countries that are joining us right now, but it they do have home languages other than Spanish also. So, so it really just depends on the family's experiences in their home countries before they come come

111to us. And I just Erin, what was it? There was the uh she was from Belleview, right? What did she say? 126 languages that was spoken in Belleview. And I'm just trying to figure out their numbers. We're just Yeah, I'm just trying to figure it out. I think I just would like to add one point maybe for Miles and and to bring a different perspective to the conversation. It's a little bit broader than than I think just the language spoken in the home and and some of the racial or ethnic factors that the state asked us to monitor. Um in a community like ours where the median income is so low um across the country and across the world language is so influenced by poverty. The experiences that you have, the words spoken in your

112home, the opportunity to access language and that has to happen in school. And so a place like Bellev can have a 100 languages and we might only have three. But if the income level is different in Belleview and the experiences that those kids have even though they speak a number of different languages that the gap to English is still greater in a place like Oll. And one of the reasons it's important to track data like that to see the outcomes that we're getting is because at scale you can say hey our brown boys are lagging behind everyone not only in Oll but in Pasco and in Belleview and in Seattle. What do we think about that? So it's important that we track that data and it it's much broader than just saying what's the language

113at home or how many there are. There are so many other factors layered in there. I think yeah that's kind of what my question was pointing to because the on white it goes down almost 10 points over two years 2022 to 24. Yeah. So think about that in a place like Oll where you might only have 10% of our students that would be categorized as white in a class of 300. How many kids would that be? 30. 30 right? So 30 kids and if Yeah. If if Yeah, exactly. Okay, there you go. scale. But Miles, this is why we're so intentional about multilingual support. This is why we're intentional about the use of elevation because the one of the cool things that Elevation does is it not only captures all of the data and how

114they perform in the different domains of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and what levels there are. They are each with a composite score. It can tailor instruction to every specific student with specific strategies and different levels of scaffolded instruction. And so that's something that this the first year that we've we've jumped into just this year. Last year what we did is we just to kind of just make this available to teachers as a passive resource. Hey, we're just going to become familiar with WEDA. What is it? What does it test for? Let's look at let's look at the body as a whole. Well, this year we wanted to increase our intentionality and all right, here's our data. We know who our kids are. you know who who which kids you have in your advisory. Now, these

115are the strategies we're going to approach these kids with and here's why. And so, again, tying that to high effect size strategies according to what the data tells us and what would be best for our kids. And so, moving more from passive to active, here's the expectation when we teach this, this is how we're going to do it. And then kind of to echo off of what Dr. press and what Carlos is saying when we look at our students and that dem all the demographics and stuff too many of our students are from Oll and started at in kindergarten with us. So when we're looking at that data it's about navigating the language required for college readiness, career readiness and your grade level standards. I didn't come from an agriculture background. So, my first fair

116here in Oll and being in the poultry barn, it was an entirely new language for me when it comes to animal science and fair and getting your kids to go show their birds and things like that. So, those were words I'm a native English speaker, but I grew up in California not showing chickens. So, I had to learn all of that verbiage and I had to learn all of those things just like if I went into a college level course on pediatric medicine that would require an indifferent vocabulary. And so, when we're looking at the WEDA data, it's to complement the grade level and the content standards. So, we're looking at ESPA, we're looking at the science test, we're looking at their interim blocks, and we're looking at what are they doing on their scales

117in their classes, too. and it's the English required of them no matter what their language background is. The the WEDA doesn't take the language background into consideration. It's really about are we preparing our students to participate effectively so that they can reach grade level standards and they're college and career ready. One more for Mr. Bogus now. um with the PBIS and the ABCs and stuff. What do you recommend on the high school side to when we receive these eighth graders to kind of keep the momentum because it might be a little bit harder to do the store and that kind of situation for us? But I still want to keep them on that pace of you should reach for you should be an achiever, look for look forward to school and um some kind of

118recognition and reward with that too. Yeah, I think everybody that does what they're supposed to be doing and are doing their best likes to have that recognition somehow and then somehow to reinforce it. So it it's always on the forefront of their minds. When we went to Renaissance and I went to Renaissance, I don't know maybe 10 years ago as well and I heard about these REN cards again and again and there most of them are high schools that are using the Ren card. It it's not the middle school. It's it's the high schools where most of this action is happening. So this could be easily done in the high school. I mean it's it's the same model. It's it's how what's important to you as a school. How do you recognize when the students

119are are doing those things? How do you what are you going to reward them? What what do students value that would say, "Oh, maybe I could try a little harder. Maybe I can show up to school. That that's going to move me up to this card." and and the rewards that are offered there. So, that kind of thing. Um but but you got to think about what what do students want and what middle schoolers want are different from high school students. We do have um Mr. Gonzalez going to the high school to to be the culture guy, right? I mean, you're the athletic director, but aren't you also coin that that sounds good. Miles, you're also getting a really good group of a our ASB leaders. Ethan, yes, I just you're getting a lot of

120them. But yes, Ethan's one of them. Uh, but you those kids know and they're the ones that run our ABC program. So, you could actually get them like pull them in and have them help run it and start it. Maybe even if it's just with freshmen. One of the other things, Miles, that I I heard you talk about this morning, the three of you, and we've heard it a little bit here today, there's such a strong uh research base and connection between a student who's connected to an adult at school and their graduation rate. And you can see it anecdotally at Ollo High School with the Avid family, with kids who are connected to band or to drama or to athletics. Those kids graduate. So, the answer is getting more kids connected to more well-trained

121adults at the high school. And you have to think about systems and structures that foster that sense of connection. But that's what you should be thinking about. How do we, and you were talking about it this morning, how do we get staff to buy in and how do we get kids to buy in? So, when you figure it out, let us know. In this Renaissance car um conference, most of the speakers are kids, okay? They're telling us how they're running the school and what they're doing to get the kids involved to improve culture. Um, and get and just getting the kids excited about being there and and belonging. You know, they all the kids want to belong and it's it's pretty easy for some of them to just fade in the background. Well, how do

122you pull them in? What gets them excited at that Renaissance conference? Sorry, just really quick. Are do students also attend or is it only for adults? There's more students than adults. It's huge. Yeah. Lots of student um schools come with 10 15 uh students. Uh a lot of interwoven with the ASB leadership. Um they're doing activities. They're doing um different um assemblies and making videos and it's just I mean you can go check it out. Um they have a lot of free stuff on on their site is Renaissance Johnson's Renaissance. Uh we get they have Harbor videos that you know you spoke about SEAL uh character strong. So Harbor and Renaissance have videos that coincide with SEAL and u making those connections and building relationships with the students conversations that can be had in the

123classroom in your advisory class. Uh so it's yeah it's interwoven a lot with the ASB leadership um and and is driven by the students student voice. We get it free. Yeah, we get it free because we use Renaissance for our yearbook, but caps and gowns for graduation, any of that, if it's through just then, then it's free. And all the resources that they have, whether it's character education, um, you know, just different ideas to improve your culture for staff, for students. There's all kinds of things on there that are that if you log in, um, you can access it just as well as anybody else. when I was a principal at Oello High School um back in 20 up to 2015 16 um I started the gradalk because of an idea from Justin's Renaissance and

124seeing kids on fire for student staff celebration and school spirit. It was amazing to see and I've been to a lot, you know, in my experiences over 18 years as an admin, but it's hands down probably the best experience I've had when it comes to the importance of culture and school spirit and student and staff celebrations. I mean, those kids are on fire for school spirit and celebrating people and so tons of ideas. It's something that we've embraced over the years and you can hear from them just the benefits of the ideas that that program offers. Johnson's is a great organization, too. Thank you guys. Thank you so much for your presentation and for all of the hard work that you've put in. Uh specifically, you Carlos, thank you for years of hard work at

125the middle school and for all of the presentations you've given us through the years and u the impact that you've had on the middle school is timeless. So, thank you so much for all of your hard work and thank you to your team for being the best of the best. Thank you guys. Thank you very much. Um, Director Perez, do we have any public comment today? None. Okay. Moving on to upcoming events. June 6th, we have OS and DOHS graduation at the high school at 8:00 PM. Um, June 9th, we have our next board meeting at 1. June 10th is Ludic Dual Language Night at OS at 6 PM. Do you want a headcount right now for like who's going to be at these different things or do you feel like you already know, Marisa?

126Okay. Okay. Um, Ludaka dual language night. Zaro will be there. Anybody else? I would just like mention also on June 10th I will be doing a rockets too. Oh, rockets. Yes. On June 10th at Ludaka. Yes. Okay. So potentially Aaron. Um and then June 13th is the middle school promotion at 9:00 am. I know I'm signed up to do that, but I won't be here. So, who else is signed up for promotion? Aaron Aaro, are you available? You're out of town. We might have a new board member who's available. Fingers crossed. Um, so what that looks like is we go to promotion and to graduation and hand out the diplomas. Um, so yeah, maybe check your schedule and let Misa know if you're available June 13th at 9:00 am to hand out um, diplomas at

127the promotion for the middle school. And then um June 13th is also the last day of school and June 23rd we have another board meeting. Does anyone have anything to add to that besides me? Um Pete, I was going to ask you, we need to schedule our board retreat now that we have a full board. Um maybe Marisa can get us some dates that could potentially work or I don't know where you're if you we'll bring you some. Is it okay to bring them on June 9th? A series of options? Yep. Okay, perfect. Um, now we'll move on to the board self assessment of the meeting. I would just like to compliment the degree of participation from our current student directors and the questionings and comments that they have. You bring a lot to the

128meeting. Um, appreciate Is there Don't interrupt me. Um, just kidding. No, I I appreciate our new board member that she showed up and interviewed and is willing to serve. Um, sometimes this can be a a wonderful experience and sometimes it can be a little bit more difficult and um it's, you know, it's time away from your family and time away from your hobbies and and your interests and um so I just I deeply appreciate your willingness to make this commitment and to serve our community. Um, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for showing up and doing that. It was a really great interview and excited to have you on board. Y of course Carlos and his team here today with the presentation MMS. Yep. Great job. Aaro said a well planned agenda and

129uh thank you for the update on standardsbased grading. I'm excited for the direction that that's taking and what that means for um understanding between our parents and our kids and and the staff and and hopefully moving forward with a lot of clarity. So, thank you for that. And I know that Dr. Meek plays a huge role in that too. So, thank you for all of your time that you put into that. Dr. Meek, anything else? Okay. This meeting is