001hour so um we'll try and keep an eye on the clock so this one doesn't run too late we have a chance to do our early literacy one as well so I won't take up any more of our time with that we have Mr Eric Jackson and Miss alici gearing here to talk to us about DLI yeah good evening uh we're happy to be here today to kind of provide an update on our two dual language immersion we we say the lot in these new language immersion programs they're both pilot programs and as you know one's being um uh held at aall elementary and the other one at Hobs Elementary um with me today as Dr said is Alicia Garing she is our ESL program facilitator uh and she's been instrumental in helping stand up
002the both programs and supporting the teachers and the staff um although these programs really have only been going for 10 weeks we do have some preliminary data and information that we've collected uh it's part of our program review that we'll conduct throughout the year all year long and so we just uh wanted to provide you the ini data and information that we have tonight Lee is going to present to you and then at the end we're happy to visit with you some more and answer some questions so with that I'm going to hand it over to this car so I just want to start by sharing with you a little bit of background information about our program in 2023 um if a language imersion programs and we were able to hire a local D expert
003Carrie as a part-time consultant and she was able to share her expertise which helped us implement the program um two principles at Hobs and applera agreed to Pilot the program at their school for the 2324 school year and they were the ones who hired our Spanish kindergarten language teachers um for both schools and they also hosted some information nights for parents where they had presentations and question and answer sessions um the teams from both of our schools went to trust Elementary School in levelin Colorado so that they could see a DLI program in action um and then before the end of the school year both teams met again and we went through a rigorous um process to look at different curriculum material for the span Spanish language arts portion of the program and we were
004able to make that selection and then in August before school started um our Spanish language arts teachers were both trained on that program so a little bit of information um right now we have 29 students in each School in the program so appba has 29 students and hops has 29 students and those students are split between two classrooms um we have an English-speaking teacher and a Spanish speaking teacher so in the morning the english- speaking teacher would have 14 students the Spanish speaking teacher would have 15 students and then in the afternoon they swap so if a student had English in the morning they would have Spanish in the afternoon vice versa um the while they're with the English speaking teacher they're going to be learning English language arts um they are working on foundational
005English skills such as phic awareness and phonics using foundations and hegr and then they are working on literacy with reading and writing using wit and wisdom um the English teacher is also responsible for social studies and then math reinforcement which I'll come back to in a second um our Spanish language arts teacher teaches Spanish language arts again hegerty Spanish for pic awareness and then mavas for the literacy component um they also do the math instruction in Spanish and then they do science instruction in Spanish and you can see I took a picture of the different materials that we're using um the science and the math are what um students across the district are using they're just in Spanish um let's see both of the teams at both schools have been meeting monthly for a half
006day of professional development in PLC time and our Focus for that has been Spanish language acquisition and math assessments and standards okay so here's where we're looking at data and I hope you guys can see this if not we can enlarge it a little bit but um I'm going to stand up so I can explain a couple of things so the first thing I want to talk about is fast bridge and there's something that you'll notice you'll see DLI classes combined and then traditional class and that's what we're comparing so when I'm talking about DLI classes combined that's the two DLI classes one of 14 students one students at each school for 29 students total the traditional class is the third kindergarten class it's English only so there's no Spanish language being instructed in that
007traditional class fastbridge is our Universal screener for reading and for math that all students take this is our Baseline data the students took fast bridge in September and what you'll notice um for both schools that lowrisk category for our DLI students is very high so we have a lot of our students in the DLI program both at affera and hubs that had very low risk for reading and math which right now that just means that they had some good foundational skills coming into school until we do fast Bridge again in in the winter and then in the spring we'll have a little bit more data to compare um for our standards the first thing that I want to point out is that these standards were recorded on for first quarter however we don't expect our
008students to be proficient or Advanced until the end of fourth quarter so you're going be looking at their scores and thinking wow only 7% or only 0% that's because we've only been in school for N9 weeks we wouldn't have the expectation that students um be proficient or advanced yet but I want to talk a little bit about the data and why why we're seeing what we're seeing so the first thing you'll notice is math I'm writing and representing numbers 0 to 20 and you'll be able to see that our DLI students have plus that are proficient and advanced in the traditional class and if you think about learning a brand new skill that you have no background in in another language for example maybe you're learning calculus in Chinese you're learning both calculus the content
009and you're learning chines the language and so you're going to acquire both a little bit more slowly than if you are doing it in a language that you currently already knew so while our students they're still gaining that that content the math skill and they're also gaining the language Spanish so by the end of the year we would expect to see those students catch up to their peers and be proficient or advanced for the next one counting and matching you'll notice that it's pretty equivalent across the board um recognizing and naming all upper and lowercase letters um this is a raw score not a percentage so out of 52 are 52 upper and lowercase letters um our DLI students and our traditional students are pretty much on par the next one is demonstrating knowledge of
010letter sound correspondence by producing the primary sound for each consonant and vowel and this is where we see the biggest discrepancy so if you think about learning to languages you're learning English and you're learning Spanish and when the teacher the English teacher um shows the student the letter a and asks what sound it makes the student isn't able they're they're thinking a and a and maybe they say a for Spanish and they don't they're not differentiating between English and Spanish yet but they will so we we would expect them to see to be able to differentiate you know this is an English sound this is the Spanish sound hopefully closer to fourth quarter um everything is pretty much equivalent and on par and what we would expect to see um and this isn't just for
011our district DLI programs Across the Nation to use something similar so this isn't anything unusual um some of the challenges of our dual language mergin pilot program um fiscal sustainability um facility coordination hiring qualified teachers for the target language um requirements for ptsb they have some pretty stringent requirements that we have to meet um one of the the concerns that our teachers have is not having time to meet as a team um from affer ball and Hobs coming together they only get to meet once a month um they would like more PLC time we're a little bit concerned about student enrollment over time right now both programs have 29 students but maybe when we get to fifth grade due to attrition students moving um it maybe less than that and that's a concern um and
012then also thinking long-term post- Elementary School we students will have a great deal of language you go to Junior High you know Spanish one is not going to cut it so kind of thinking about that ahead of time we lost any students so far which is unusual is that right yeah usually we'll have some sort of tradition we're a little bit surprised by that but they've all stayed and they're all we're going to go over kind of the current progress so we did send out a parent survey at the end of first quarter um we have 58 families in the program the two programs combined we had 35 parents respond so over half which we think is really great um and all of the responses were extremely positive um and I just have four four
013of the many questions that we asked up here but they were all you know along the same lines of responses um so the first one how excited are you for your child to have the opportunity to learn a second language 34 out of 35 parents gave a five they're very excited and only one parent gave up four nothing less than that so that was pretty great um same qu same sort of question 100% of the parents think yes this is a good opportunity for our students in ly County School District number one 100% of parents have said they've already seen their students acquiring language which is really excited and really exciting and kind of unexpected for only being in school for nine weeks um I did go observe both Hobs and Apper twice this year
014and I will tell you all those kids are speaking in Spanish it is incredible to just sit there and like listen to them um counting to 40 in Spanish telling their um their tablemate to put their back back away in Spanish I mean it was it's really cool so I'm not surprised you know when parents say yes we're we're shy to hear that and then um I think this one was pretty awesome how How likely are you to enroll your child next year 34 of the 35 parents are highly likely only one parent gave was the four um so all the parents seem like they're pretty excited about having their kids be in this program and then you can see the um parent comments at the bottom very positive um very exciting about the program
015so our next steps um we're going to continue with that ptsb required professional development and that's one of those strent requirements we talked about um we're going to be creating priority standards for proficiency scales for quarter two three and four for Spanish language arts and also for first grade um we have some fiscal and some facility planning we will need to hire two Spanish language arts first grade teachers and purchase curricular materials for teachers won't be in digal expense teach anything yeah you know when you think about it the number of kids in the schools don't change so if it's a thre section school you're GNA you know if you continue Eli we would have a Spanish English in that traditional class with English right um The Only Exception would be is if it's a
016two- section grade level then if in order to continue uh D we'd have to have a Spanish English and then an additional English teacher so they're could be some additional dabing costs but um they're they're pretty basted out and do the students get to or the parents get to decide if they want their child to do that and then what what if they're not in the AR or the or the Hobs District that's a great question um because the DLI programs are pilot programs and not necessarily District programs at this point it's only those schools kids however um we have had conversations about depending on enrollment so let's say we do it next year and let's say we only have 15 kids that are interested in DLI program at half the bond then we would
017have the opportunity to open it up to a lottery for families throughout the district and we've had families from other schools say can I get my kid in um but so we would have that opportunity if we were low on numbers that challenge gets to be greater and greater as the kids get older and they're further behind jumping in right at the beginning is one thing but starting fresh if you're in third GR grade these kids are going to know a lot of language by the time they get so that that's going to be tricky um some of our English language learner kids might be the kids that would uh be able to thrive by joining late and I think um some other school districts um that we've talked to do some of that to
018try and round out numbers what what is going to be the call then every year for the new it's it's about 30,000 for each for for for all for both schools combined yeah I know you saw me making a face so as we are at these two schools at least over the the coming years transitioning one teaching spot at the next grade level up to um someone who has to be fluent in Spanish to teach that Spanish only section what happens to if if we have three sections of third grade right now at at second first grade none of those teachers are fluent in Spanish and one of those positions will have to go to a fluent Spanish speaking teacher next year what I mean there there's got to be some concerns for staff for
019sure yeah that it certainly is and as we address on the kind of the challenges page if we we would have to either a asked the teacher to move um which we did this year actually and and teachers were fine with it internally um there there could be the potential of having to move somebody externally um so that is certainly a challenge and as we talk to the principles um as we were beginning to stand this program up in May um they had conversations with their staff about it it wasn't just them making a decision and staff you have to live with it it was are the staff bought in and and they they were they were excited about it so they understood that that potentially could happen as we roll grade levels up yeah
020yeah but it is a concern so the staff we having from Target teachers were they from within our district or were they outside yeah so the two were within the district one was actually a student teacher who just graduated and and the one at Hobs uh and she's fantastic uh we were very fortunate to get her uh the nextal question do we have anybody else internally this interested we believe we do but until we decide if we're going to continue the pilot programs um we have an approach apprach anybody with that question yet we want to make sure that it's successful that the parents are bought in that we have the future planning in place um before we go out and start asking if people would be interested but we do have staff internally that
021would be qualifying do we anticipate having any kind of a training program to grow our own well um we in the esl's realm we currently have a program where we're growing ESL teachers but ESL and DLI of course are are quite different um so we don't have a current program that would train folks to become fluent Spanish because they have to through ptsb they have uh pass a test in order to get that certification and they and they have to do they take a test and then for three years they're on an exceptional authorization and at the end of the third year they become El certified else is that the biggest obstacle then finding teachers as the years keep going yeah I would say yes you know we've um I don't know if you guys
022remember about six years ago I think um the board and and a few of us went to Utah to kind of when we first started talking about DLI uh to visit their program because they have a pretty robust districtwide program or actually it's even bigger than um and and Jackson and Tron or Campbell and and the other with d programs that is the biggest challenge there are options for um kind of collaboratives uh with um where we can connect and Alicia maybe you speak to this better than I can but where we connect with um like universities in Spain uh if if we're if we're getting to the point where like we can't find anybody where those teachers can actually come over and teach um on visa for I think it's three years so what
023would be the time frame for making a decision as to whether we want to continue with this I think you know this is this Baseline data is very very positive right off the bat the information especially from the parents it was so good to get their feedback um I think that probably around um after the next quarter so the end of January end of February we'll gather our data from our Baseline assessments again our our fast bridge and our grades how they're do it on the standards so I would say that we would want to make a decision February March at the very latest that's about the time normal Staffing happens so that would probably be a very sensible time because how the school will have to you know respond Beyond just that program that's
024the time of year where you're kind of building your staff think that would make sense how the parent teacher conferences Go I mean you have to have both teachers together there right must be interesting they did very well I think the the two teachers the English teacher and the Spanish teacher they were very closely together they planned everything that they were going to tell the parents and then they sat side by side and did parent teacher conferences and they did go very well thank you thank you guys and our next as I stall here for them to get their prog their presentation up we have our English language arts Elementary coordinator Miss Shannon Brooks and our interim director of instruction Miss Manda Hall GNA talk a little bit about some updates in early literacy and
025you're ready to go evening well good evening Dr Newton chairman bin members of the board as Dr Newton said my name is Shannon Brooks I'm the elementary Ela coordinator I am excited to provide some updates on the work we're doing in the district around early literacy for our kindergarten through third grade students the work we're doing in early literacy Is Anchored in our district strategic plan focusing on early literacy impacts student Readiness and a healthy environment while supporting and educating parents encourages Community engagement the main area of impact in early literacy is ensuring every student has access and opportunity to meet or exceed their reading growth and Expectations by third grade Dr Newton has identified three big targets for the district that connect directly to the strategic plan these targets are providing high quality instruction
026focusing on literacy and developing and implementing a multi-tiered systems of support which helps us respond when students struggle so the early literacy work that is a huge component of all three of these targets we'll start with high quality instruction in literacy the work done with the guaranteed and viable curriculum last year has been implemented this fall the new GBC identifies essential standards that include skills that have the longevity and leverage that students need to be successful it has a quarterly outline with pacing vocabulary objectives and proficiency scills that assess and monitor uh progress the GBC is a living and working document so we we're going to continue to update that based on teacher and principle feedback as well as best practices we've also formed an assessment committee that's going to meet to develop and analyze
027effective standards based assessments to monitor proficiency so something I am incredibly excited and passionate about is that the new G GDC allows us to refocus our work on skill acquisition and standards rather than just a program um you know a curriculum truly means the skills students need to learn and apply not the material that they learn it from so focus on these skills ensures that students are receiving instruction and being assessed on less where you go on the next step part is that done continually throughout the year or do we wait till the summertime to do that it's going on continually I've already done some of those updates even in first quarter for second quarter so yeah it's continual based on feedback and what we're seeing students need so if it requires extra time for
028the teacher they teachers on that committee yes are they Po in some way what the extra time that they're doing yes we well we have substitutes that we provide and we did pull oops um we did pull from the committee that we used last year when they did the original development of the GBC so several of those teachers wanted to be involved could do the reviews and provide feedback so at semester we'll pull them all together again we are giving out feedback to the entire District actually right now it went out last week and then make those adjustments and we have some adjustments we need to make but um we're getting really good feedback and a good Focus sorry CHR no fine Amanda I I think it's great that you're talking and communicating feedback to
029every all the stakeholders are you also including the parents so that they can be a help at home that is something that I have considered and I was thinking through how to best roll that out um so that is something that that we've discussed and and are looking at and we're working we'll talk a little bit later too but we're working on getting a parent portal with some of the trainings that we're providing how do we provide some of those resources for other stakeholders and so um so yes it is definitely a conversation we don't have anything completely concrete yet for that piece thank you for having any other questions before we go sorry another resource for in high quality instruction is the recently developed instructional framework that consists of research-based phases of instruction that
030when utilized help the purposely shift the cognitive load over time from teacher as a model to independent practice and then application from the learner so I know you have received the framework from Dr Newton this resource was also introduced to principles at the September academic council meeting and they were able to dive in to the res source and determine how to best utilize the information with staff to ensure high quality tier one and instructional practices are provided in our classrooms across the district um did you ladies work on that so that work actually started last year with Dr Newton along with a team of teachers I think did it end up being about 50 we had about 30 teachers and another 20 um coordinators and administrators so so there's about 50 of us that work
031well as you know Steve I through it and it was great we are following up right now with it um with the help of Laura nap she did a lot of work in this in this document um creating training videos and providing exemplars of what it looks like in action and so that's kind of her next step is she's creating little mini videos that go along with the different components of that we don't want it to just be a shell document we want it really out and so on that's in the works as well anybody else so when thinking about literacy in mtss we must screen students to analyze where they're struggling so the state approved Universal screening screening tool that we utilize is fastbridge which is administered three times per year in grades k6
032the screener allows us to identify students that are struggling with reading difficulties including but not limited to dyslexia students in kindergarten through third grade that are identified as being below the 15th percentile on the screener are then given additional diagnostic testing and some of those tests that we use are up here um they pinpoint specific needs through these diagnostic tests and then they're used to plan strategic interventions aimed at eliminating these skill gaps that the students have after those K3 students are identified they're placed on an individual reading plan or an IRP the IRP outlines the students reading difficulties and the intervention plan that will be put in place for that student parents are notified that their child is on an IRP so they can partner with the teacher in the school the building staff
033utilizes mtss to provide specific interventions based on student need and then student progress is monitored closely through fastbridge um continued diagnostic testing and assessment data to analyze the effectiveness of the intervention adjustments are made as necessary throughout the year and students that make adequate growth can be dismissed from the IRP so now we'll look at some data so this data represents the percentage of students in each grade level K3 that were placed on an IRP last fall and then this fall so it shows that there were 21.7% of kindergarteners that qualified for an IRP last fall and that number has been reduced to 20.3% in first grade there were 31.5% and with a reduction to 26.8% second grade there was 28% with a reduction to 25.8% and then there was an increase of 3.3% um
034of students on an IRP in third grade from last fall to this fall so while the fall data is really just the beginning of a story for us overall what this tells us is that there was a 5% reduction in students on an IRP from last year to this year which equals 147 students great give me an idea what happened in thir you know we really need to dive into that individually each IRP is very specific well part of I think what we have to consider is those were second graders last year at 28 and so really that cohort actually reduced a little but if we're just looking so depending on how you look at it they actually that coht of students went from 28% on an IRP last year to 19. for this year
035which is is good data so then just expanding what chairman ban asked then if and I I appreciate you pointing that out going diagonal but then if you look at last year's kindergarteners you've got about 5% on an IRP this year so same question any ideas what what's happening there so for kindergarten we actually don't even place them on on an IRP until winter data for a lot of our students this is September they're still figuring out where their pel is and so um so I me really that is that is a piece of it but we do monitor it closely so we don't actually Place those students on an IRP until after we do winter testing in kindergarten um and then at that point so the teachers are still monitoring right now just to
036see but that really is what they come into us with um we do notice for the schools that have pre- kindergarten programs those numbers do look different so this is the entire District average um so we do see a difference in the number of students need an IRP that have been able to access that Rec if I may one of the very encouraging things I think we're seeing from the division of instruction is these numbers are the beginning of a story not the end of a story and to your point we need to go find out we need to go examine our first grade who are these kids and what what exactly is going on so I think uh what's encouraging is maybe in the past we said well the answer is 26.8 now we've
037kind of flipped that on its head saying that tells us where we need to go look deeper and on the other end we're seeing some great reductions in some areas what's going on there and so I think um I might characterize it as the beginning of a story a question really quickly and I'm so sorry you're going super fast on the last I was trying to take notes all the DI the diagnostic programs that you're using I didn't see anything for dyslexia what are you doing to try to identify that so everything that we have definitely does Target dyslexia as well so the way that kind of the state talks about it and we're using it in the district as well is that it's struggling readers included but not limited to dyslexia so um like
038Wilson is a very like solid program that we're using that we have people trained in every building to use that would be absolutely associated with dyslexia specifically do we have people in every in every building to screen and identify by children that possibly could be um we don't actually screen for dyslexia but what we do is with fastbridge it would it would identify those students that are high- risk and then from there we kind of approach you know a student with dyslexia versus a struggling reader um making sure that we slect the right information that we pull those those resources in we also have an Ela tosa that sometimes we'll go out and do some coaching and do some additional testing Carrie Redman is our El TOA and so she'll go out and some additional
039work on that as well if there's kind of a question of like we can't seem to Target where the student is needing but we have it really pretty dialed in at this point it doesn't mean there aren't other options or things that we'll you know that we'll find that are meaningful as well and make sure that we have those good resources in the hands of of our teachers than thank you I just wanted to ask that because last year at this time there was the presentation and you talked about the Mississippi dislexia screening and I don't see that up there so the state ruled that one out um right now is not a recommended and so you're sticking with fastbridge which is one of the approved um and so it does just give us a
040baseline that then we take that information and we have to dig deeper so thank you yeah and what what they've with this very holistic approach we're sure to identify kids who might be struggling because of Dyslexia but it also provides help for those who are struggling who don't have dyslexia and as important as it is to bring attention onto the dyslexia topic um we have a lot of kids who are struggling readers who aren't dyslexic so we need to make sure that we serve them all thank you okay one you say something that the kids that are in the programs where we have a pregate program there are being more successful is that dat we're putting together to present the blood Cent because I know we would love to be able to have that for
041opportunity for everybody yes I've been working with wde pretty closely with their Early Childhood um with Amy Reyes and a few others over in their early childhood Department um so I Shar the data with them I've shared we've restructured programming um we revamped last year we did all the um standards and made sure everything was align that it was a good combination of standard Focus but play based learning as well and development appropriate so yes we had some open yes we are completely full even all of our tuition programs are full thanks So speaking of qualified people in our school helping our students that are supporting literacy and mtss we do have the reading interventionist position it's been incredibly beneficial for our schools and our students and we were able to increase support with five
042new reading interventionists this year uh starting last year the department was able to assign interventionist based on student data and placed in schools with the highest needs so we do have some schools that have a halftime intervention is some with one full-time and some with 1.5 the ELA department is providing professional development for our interventionists to keep them up to date with best practices in early literacy with trainings such as the lon reading system and then we also have PLC meetings planned throughout the year designed to problem solve complex reading difficulties in students and share intervention strategies now these five new they were hired with regular District funds and not with funds yes how many does that bring student oh man I haven't looked at the list yeah yeah yes we have at least a
043half time in each yes Shannon do we have any that are that are paid for with Title One funds no okay now some schools have chosen to increase with another academic interventionist or something to that effect and so we will let those um folks be involved in our training and opportunities and things like that but that's just a principal decision outside of that District domination and because it can I always want to make sure we're not misunderstanding on this we cannot reduce a schools resources because they get title funding so we first go through and allocate our people the way the most balanced way we believe they need to be allocated then if schools want to supplement on top of that if they have title funds they may but the calculation for do you get
044a reading interventionist has nothing to do with their sort by title FS just want to make that clear because that would be illegal to to do it any other way one more question to that and it's it's just gone out of my head um sorry it's okay speaking stop of going back to the K3 individual reading plan that was piloted last year it was updated based on stakeholder feedback and is now live in all elementary schools in our district I know this snapshot is kind of small and it's hard to read it line by line but what you can see very clearly is the amount of data that we are capturing on each student uh that has been identified as having reading difficulties so this data informs our instructional intervention practices to support that student
045and is updated throughout the year to show progress we are continuously working with staff on how to implement and complete the IRP and align it to tier two and tier three supports for our students we did create an IRP guidance document that walks the teachers through the process step by step and the IRP is now accessible on Infinite Campus and there is a parent letter provided to Aid in communication and there's also an IRP help card to support staff with accessibility this looks like paper but it's not paper right it is all digital but they can print it all you remember yeah go you said the principal deide on their that need and based on probably of their schools and last last time we met there were some schools that were on Improvement plans and
046I just wondered if the district had anything to do with recommending like reading interventionists or or other types of help um to our schools when we read through when we read and approve their Improvement plans is that connected well it is in some ways and and luckily Mr Jackson stuck around in case I need to phone a brand um the um there are some schools that have been identified as being eligible for school Improvement Grant funds and we get a big pile of money for and they tell us how many schools that are targeted for those funds and then each School develops A needs assessment saying here's what the particular needs are in my uh building and they ship those off to Mr Jackson and he's kind of our Watchdog to make sure the kinds
047of things they're suggesting that they ought to spend their money on make a lot of sense given their data given their their other school Improvement plan that's in place of course and how to use those funds to augment um what their needs are I would say that we have some schools that are struggling who aren't eligible for those School Improvement Grant funds we don't get to decide that it's um it's a been a bit of a mysterious calculation how schools end up on that list you might look at that list and think well I would have thought this school might have and so there's always a little bit of a a disconnect between which schools get access to those funds and which don't but absolutely those funds uh um schools will be making those decisions
048say I want another interventionist is that a federal decision or a state decision it's um the money comes out of a subsection of Title One um but and then the money that passes through the state for our allocation of it so the state makes decision on who it is yeah it's a state help me out there is it a state calculation on which schools are identified it's if a school is not meeting expectations for three consecutive years in specific sub indicator on the performance report so like you may have um Equity that it is not you haven't met expectations for three years in a row now some schools who may have lower performance scores may not get the 103A funds because they might have done well last year neity but then they drop back down
049and it might be two years and then they haven't hit the third year so it is complex like Dr Newton said um and it is a state decision on the funding and each school gets um they have a fixed amount for every school they didn't used to do that but they still started last year uh so they'll get that money and then to your point um we do have a tier level system of support that the district uses so if you've been three consecutive years not meeting expectations not only do you get support by the from the wbe we have those schools of six schools that you guys approved last board meeting they um they provide additional support throughout the year which is training review of s looking at data helping them analyze their data
050a lot of different things we continue to do the same thing internally and so the principal valuators and myself and I'm a principal evaluator too we take a look and say okay with the additional resources you have or if you don't get the 1038 funds who is your plan addressing the specific needs of the sub populations and if they're not then we can look at additional resources such as reading interventionist or or something like that we're fortunate in one way that most of the schools do have access to federal funds and so they are able to hire academic interventionist or Behavior Support Personnel uh through that fund a yeah I was gonna say kids when they're on um irps at the end of a school year are they recommended to continue through the summer yeah
051so those students typically would probably qualify for our summer programming which is they have the choice whether or not they would like to attend but with it being an infinite campus now it actually can be flagged and so it follows the student and so they don't have to start everything back over the next year so that was something we fought hard for last year because before it was just a paper copy that maybe came over in the CBE file maybe it didn't and so a lot of times you know it takes until November Until you realize that the student is struggling and start all over convention so so we're hoping that will bridge that a little bit and then if they're still on an IRP at the end of third grade the recommendation from the
052district is that they would be transferred into Bid And so that they are not lost in the system at that point either so to support interventions we have provided staff with extensive training around letters and the science of reading which will increase as we begin our professional development opportunities through the state requirements and on this slide you will see a list of the reading intervention programs that are heavily utilized in our district so this year we have received the final recommendations from the state regarding expectations on early literacy professional development we've worked hard to meet and even exceed those expectations Dr Newton has sent you this informational page in one of his earlier Communications and we distributed it to principles as well it outlines our professional development plan for this year so we have two
053years to complete 28 hours of early literacy professional development we intentionally plan trainings that dive into the philosophy of the science of reading but also focus on the application of what was learned these professional development opportunities are designed to enhance early literacy instruction in our district and give all staff members the tools they need to identify when students are struggling with reading so we're extremely fortunate that we've had over 300 people trained in letters in our district and we continue to provide this opportunity but the early literacy training here will be provided for all staff members to ensure a common understanding around early literacy and an opportunity to learn with their peers so we are starting with 7 hours of the training for our staff members in roles 2 and three and we'll also be
054able to complete the total 3.5 hours in role one this year so our first course is going to launch this Friday November 10th on our District staff development day and then we're going to continue uh planning our professional de development uh for the remaining hours that are required which will be implemented next year so this this training done by inhouse people we actually looked to we really wanted to have an asynchronous course that teachers could learn and then work together in plc's and actually apply to their teaching so we looked at GCU Grand cany University who was able ble to sit down with us and really plan out very specifically what we wanted for our course and so that's who we're going through the other reason for that is we are unboarding new staff continuously
055so this training goes to Paras it goes to a lot of different people I think on Friday we're training 600 people um and so we needed to have access to it for people that Miss for people that aren't able to be there in person so that we have that tracking and then we'll actually own the resources for these trainings that we can continue to use years to come University or and the staff pay credit they can't because there's not a conferring teacher but they are able to get PTSD okay so we did try that we're like there's no way without an actual Professor to attach to it the entire time that's pretty difficult how would that training work with new teachers coming into the district say after this year when we' missed what those required
056hours so we for the last couple of years have been onboarding new teachers in ela in the summer and providing training around integr foundations just some of those basic and so our plan is to embed that um we've had some preliminary discussions with um Mr Frey and some others regarding how are we going to get all these hours in in the limited amount of time that we have and ensuring that's not a burden on on staff so um we're still working out some of those details but we have been providing some of those opportunities in the summer so this would be embedded in that and then we also have some new teacher training um that we're talking with Teresa Ross about how do we make sure this is a big piece of that how many
057hours do are new teachers to the district have to put in so then what level then or yeah when they start in the district they'll get their first three years to do the initial 28 hours and then it's a recurring cycle every three years after that with continued I'm talking more about that first summer how many are weing training days yeah they two days of on boarding with the various divisions the HR component the um instructional piece technology has a big uh junk of the day the Dual Bas training so they they have those two full days and then any other trainings that we bring them in for we compensate them for so that's part of their initial contract is those extra work days so do this anything that the University of Wyoming I mean
058since it's a requirement from the state is this something that maybe they would start building into their teacher education program you know yeah we've been in ongoing conversations with the university um they are working really hard to stay as up to dat on the current thinking around reading instruction as we are um that's a bigger ship to turn at the University level it would seem um and so aside from the state requirements we recognize that even exemplary students come to us with some some work that we need to backfill so um it's a little tricky telling them what what they ought to be teaching in their courses but but we have really good relationships with the professors over there Alan bus um is is one who I've I've known him forever um and so um
059they're very receptive to it I but the reality is a lot of the professors teach in those classes at UD you haven't been in a classroom for many many years and some of this has just evolved quickly sorry but if you just I mean the 28 hours by Spring of 25 that's incredibly ambitious because it's not as if they're sitting around doing nothing on every other day and so trying to meet this state expectation just on contact hours let alone the quality of the course it's incredibly ambitious and so um that's why we have an early plan for this year and this summer but trying to embed this into our school year into the future is just going to become a necessity um I and I I'm going off script here a little bit um
060in the old days we used to reserve a number of our staff development days we have usually have four built into the calendar um preco the district held on to those days and we did these kinds of trainings during an after Co we kind of had a bit of Mercy on the on the buildings to say do what you know your building needs to do well we're probably back with these uh to the time where we're going to have to take back those days again and say um we'll figure out how to fill your building needs um in a different fashion but we have just got a Commander these dates because I don't know how we're going to get to our 28 hours contact hours if we don't so the good news is if we
061take advantage of that a number of those would be contract days teachers are working anyway and it would just be how they spend their day not whether we bring them in for another day that would be best case scenario thank you all right so going back to the Strategic plan we are striving to involve community and support parents in literacy so last spring we were able to provide a training for parents to struggling readers and then looking forward we're trying in the process of developing more accessible way to train parents and how to support students with reading difficulties and this process will include a parent portal on the ELA website with resources and support and the ELA website did launch so that is out there I knew that our percentage of kids that need to
062do that that are actually coming are the parents of the kids did um last spring we had a pretty small turnout so that's why we're looking at things like the parent portal how do we get resources on the website how do we get um access that's more convenient for parents I'm a busy mom so I understand sometimes getting to a class at night is hard so almost an asynchronous version for parents as well is kind of the dream I think we ended up with maybe 30 figured out good things maybe having them on their something online or something yeah absolutely yeah speaking of the website we have a website the new yearly website um it's easily accessible from The District home page right now it includes uh the GBC documents there's a video explaining the
063components of the GBC for the parent for parents and the public um there's information on our core reading program parent tip sheets and contact information right now and then we look forward to adding more resources and support as we as we get them so our next step so we're making great strides and early literacy and we have a lot of work to do but we do have some exciting next steps so a few of these steps are that we will implement the initial threeyear cycle of the early literacy professional development that is required by the state we will also be designing that Parent Portal and looking ahead we will be planning the next threeyear cycle of continued early literacy professional development that's going to dive deeper into responding to student needs and then finally there
064will be that continual GBC and assessment update to meet the needs of our students and their skills I think there's much intentional and meaningful work happening around Elementary El in early literacy it's really leading Us in the right direction for our students any further questions I just want to say thank you this is vital right we all know it so thank you for your work I think we all agree this is huge and and this is a priority for us thank you on timing with all of our questions Mr chair that is the end of our presentation all right thank you and you're welcome to stay the meeting for sure and I okay it's uh 6 and I call this meeting ofy County School dist number one Board of trast order and please stand and
065either listen a redo on that this is Elementary fifth grade class from great you the Little voices and I think those kindergarten set that high bar the rest of them are coming up to that bar now that was great and we'll now go to the classroom recognition for the pledge of Alle oh oh um good evening um my name is is Mary qu and I'm the community relations director here at the school district and um I would like to invite um up to the front of the room uh Diana wadel um she's the teacher um at affer bom and um and then also um is Mariah Robinson um our assistant branch manager at Western Vista Federal Credit Union here excellent we have a little award for Diana thank you if be PA with me a
066little bit we have a little bit of business we need to do here I was supposed to do before we did that so no you can stay up there you'll be back up there soon all right so um are there any adjustments to the agenda Mr chair there are no adjustments to the agenda this evening Mr chairman I move to adopt the agenda Mr chairman I second okay we have motion a second to adopt the agenda without any changes any discussion all those in favor say I I was oppos no motion best we have everybody here again which is nice to everybody here at one time okay now we're going to be calling up our student of the week and our first person is from Central High School good evening chairman Bolan interim superintendent Newton
067and trustees I am Mike Maloney the associate principal at Central High School and it is my privilege to introduce Matthew Wallace a senior at Central Matthew was selected as student of the week because he is a kind respectful empathetic and extremely hardworking student he is a leader self-motivated and keeps up in all his classes he participates in rooc in his rank of Commander sergeant major he participates in Raiders color guard and drill at Central High School he has been awarded the Special Forces Association medal for Roc during his time at Central for exemplary behavior he takes an active role in mentoring young students at the high school level and he works at Godfather's Pizza I present to you Matthew Wallace hi uh sorry I'm a little nervous um my main involvement at Central sorry my
068main involvement at Central is the RFC program I am my uh man I'm nervous academic strengths include Auto Body PE especially weight training and writing outside of school I uh spend my time working on cars training for the military and working at Godfather's Pizza I take great pride in the ROTC program and my future plans include uh joining the US Army I would like to thank my parents for their support Christian and laye Wallace I chose sergeant major Harter and Lieutenant Colonel Johnson as teachers who have impacted my life Sarge major has helped me develop leadership skills and have been a role model for me Lieutenant Colonel has helped me with my emotional emotional regulation and interacting with others I present you s major harder and Lieutenant Johnson if we could um have his parent
069stand up and be recog nice please and thank you for your future plans to serve okay our next one is going to be from um South High School thank you again we're really excited to present um Caleb Brewer he's a 12th gr here at South High School and some of the great and wonderful talented things that he has accomplished so far is a 4.0 and a 4.3 weight to GPA so that's pretty amazing as far as his academics growth goes additionally he's our president for National Honor Society he's a two-time state winner for swimming and part of deca and FBLA and he participates in building a really great strong uh Friday Food Bag program and so he spends his weekends sitting at Safeway organizing food to be delivered to our school so there's so many
070great things about this kid but what I'd really like to do is let him introduce himself and talk some more about all the great things that he um has done it South hello as she introduced me I'm Caleb I am a senior at South so So currently I'm pretty involved in our school so I'm in boy swimming I'm the captain currently I'm also the president of Our National Honor Society program I am a treasurer for future Business Leaders of America and then I also join Deca this year so my schedule's pretty full I Wake Up Normally at 5 o'clock to go do a morning workout then go through school have another swimming and then either Deca fbaa NHS something uh so my day is pretty full my future plans after high school I'm planning on
071going to college to study for robotic engineering um I'm not sure what college I'm going to but I've already applied to schools so hopefully that goes well um some things that I'm pretty proud of I'm really proud of swimming and being a state champion in that I'm also very proud to hold a 4.0 GPA and I'm also pretty proud of FAA being able to go to Nationals every year and the community impact that we have through that Community food drive and then I would like to thank my parents and my teachers at South High School and at Johnson High School or Junior High School okay um and then I would also like to say that there's a lot of teachers at South that definitely deserve this but I picked my my calculus teacher for my
072favorite teacher Mr Markham uh he's very passionate about the subject and he's just passionate about teaching you can tell he really wants the students to understand and learn the subject rather than just score high on a test he really wants the students to succeed so I won't speak long but uh you know we go into teaching for students like Caleb I mean when I show up every day uh he's a blessing walks into my classroom because I'll go through I'll do what I need to do but I can bet that in a few minutes he's going to raise his hand he's got a question for me and he's digging deep to understand he doesn't care about the grade he's never once asked me about his grade all he cares about is the learning and when
073you have students like that they make you a better teacher too so this is a very deserving young man for this award and it's privilege for me to have him in my classroom thank you and before we get done can we have Melody and William stand up these are Caleb's parents and I'd like to say um the one thing that I think is wonderful is you ra B great kid but they're also um a household that brings in foreign exchange students and um they go to South as well so just thank you so much for your contribution all right we will we will bring Mariah Robinson back up here um if you wanted to say a few words and then we can hand out the certificate good evening um my name is Mariah Robinson I
074am an assistant branch manager with Western Vista and um you know it's a honor for us once again this year to be able to come and do this and recognize um the amazing students of ly County um so with this in recognition of the efforts put forth we do uh proudly present a certificate of achievement and uh Visa gift cards um and then also we'd like to present a certificate of achievement and Ziggy's gift card to the recipient nominee for favorite teacher as well and we are back to doing our shaking hand so as soon as you get your certificate going in the line there and come back through and shake hands with all the board members and also again we're continuing our theme of Math teachers for about two years now and we're now
075adding a theme of the military the ROTC so it's two meetings in a row we've had those two things so that's great to hear I keep forgetting about the handshake yeah we're glad to have it back yes congratulations thank you congratulations thank you congratulations all your hard work teacher man okay so we not only recognize students but we're going to recognize a staff member today so if we could have somebody from a coring Junior High School come up please um you were asleep back then no I wasn't asleep I my brain stopped sorry I apologize um so it is my honor I'm tant TR I'm the principal at McCormack junior high school and it's my honor to recognize Dana Burger I'm GNA asked to come join me up here she'd rather get a root canal
076I think but we're gonna make um so Dana October 18th we're gonna have to look at that date by the way October 18th uh during third lunch um we had an emergency in our cafeteria where a student actually began choking on food and Dana was very um with it um helped the student um and was able to dislodge through her amazing hind like maneuver um the food and so for me what was most scary about the situation was actually rewatching um the incident because it took Dana quite a while much longer than I was comfortable with to actually dislodge that so thank you for being with it in the cafeteria I guess so we appreciate that thank [Music] you that's interesting that that came up as an award day because back when I taught him
077mccormic Jim schumach our principal at that time had all of our staff go through the I'm maneuver training I don't recall I was on lunch stre lot times was there so I don't recall anybody ever having to use it at MCC to that point but few years probably 10 years later I was at a store and my my wife tried to take a one of her pills without any water and it got stuck in I had to use HCK maneuver to save her life at that point so it is a good thing to know if you have if you don't know how to do that okay so now we're going to um go to the East High School um golf champions our golf team had an unbelievable season culminating with the state championship and I'll
078let Coach Oswalt and Coach hardigan tell everybody about it introduce the members of that team coach Oswald uh head coach at East High uh like Mr merage said our team had a phenomenal year our our golf season is Fast and Furious it's about only six weeks six weeks long uh in that six weeks we won all five of The Stroke play tournaments we played in including the 4A East Conference Championship and then the 2023 State Golf Championship which is East High's first championship since 1986 uh all four of these gentlemen that are here are our fifth members home sick he apologized but all four of these gentlemen here were all conference and three of the four were all state members including Daniel Meyer who was our individual state champion for the year uh this is
079is kale lisman senior Nash Coleman Jr tton zitek senior uh and Daniel Meyer again our state champion he's just a junior so hoping for a repeat but uh phenomenal golf season coach and I are super proud of all of them and thank you all thanks coach also would the U parents of these um athletes please stand to be recognized the golfers want to say anything about the season okay congratulations conratulations congratulations good luck next year thanks for all your hard work okay that's the end of our recognitions now we have a resolution Mr chairman I move to approve a resolution of recognition for National School psychology week November 6th through the 10th 2023 whereas children and youth learn best when they are healthy supported and when they receive an education that enables them to grow
080and Thrive academically socially and emotionally and whereas School psychologists help Foster healthy child development nurture our students individual strengths across both personal and academic en Endeavors and are experts in children's learning and psychological development and whereas it is important that laramy County School District 1 takes the time to recognize the vital role the school psychologist play in the personal and academic development of our students now therefore be it resolved that the laramy county school district one Board of Trustees hereby recognizes the week of November 6 through the 10th 2023 as National School psychology week A second we have a motion in a second to recognize November 6 of the 10th as National School psychology week any for the discussion appr um all those in favor say I I those oppos no lotion passes and that's
081one of the areas that we kind of struggled this year in trying to fill all the positions that we had and we tried to program where we were doing it um online and we quickly figured out that was not the best way to do this but I think we still are having to do that a little bit as we try as we're trying to tell all the positions we have again very very important okay another recognition resolution Mr chairman I moved to approve a resolution of recognition for National educational support Professionals Day November 5th 15 2023 whereas educational support Professionals Day was created by the National Education Association to provide recognition to the often underrecognized support staff in schools Nationwide and whereas laramy County School District 1 relies upon support staff to help our students
082receive the highquality education that they need in order to thrive and whereas educational support professionals assist students and teachers alike in providing a safe fun and academically enriching learning environment now therefore be it resolved that the larmy county school district one Board of Trustees recognizes November 15 2023 is National educational support Professionals Day a second and we have a motion a second to uh recognize number 15th as National educational sport Professionals Day all those in favor say I I those oppose no motion patterns and those people are very viable in our school sometimes they're underrecognized but I'm sure that most teachers that work with any of them in the building don't realize how important they are okay next thing on our agenda is the item from visitors and we have nothing at this point there's
083nobody signed up to do to talk on the agenda item um I will say that you need if you if there's anybody here that wants to talk I'm going give the opportunity right now make sure you state your first and last name keep your comments two three minutes so that others have time to voice their comments keep your comments General nature not direct to specific individual or individuals and suable for language and content for K12 grade students and make sure you try to provide some additional perspective and try not to be redundant what already said is there anybody here who would like to come up and talk anybody online please oh come on Mr chairman and members of the board I'm not sure if this is an agenda item or not but I know you're
084taking public comment on U whether the library policy should be um vastly amended and I have made comments on that and I've commented here before but I just wanted to make sure that the board was aware that uh one of the very frequently banned books is parent ma'am your name as I said before my name is Maran Yoder okay and I wanted the board to be aware that right now uh the sh Little Theater program is producing uh the play Fahrenheit 45 in the past I've handed out excerpts from fite 451 a frequently Banned Book to all the board members I don't know if you had a chance to read that I know in the past several of you have mentioned you haven't read some of the books you've thought talked about and being concerned
085about but it would be an easy way to to get an idea of what what is offered in the way of band books is showing at the sh Mary Godfrey playhouse on East persan Avenue uh November 10th through 12th uh and um Thursday through Saturday Saturday Sunday afternoon mat you can get in there for $29 and I highly recommend that production so thank you very much for listening to my remarks I encourage you to read ban books before you start Banning more thank you thanks for the information we have a good relationship with the um little theater they actually own the parking lot which is the faculty parking lot for East High School so we have a arrangement with them to use that parking lot um during the school day so um anybody else anybody
086online please raise your hand Mr chairman there are no hands raised online okay so now we're going to come to the board communication reports upcoming meetings so our next meeting will be November 15th through the 17th several offs are going up to Casper to attend the woming SCH board's association annual conference delegate assembly in Casper and I'll be attending the delegate assembly as our voting member and I just learned today how to do that voting so I'm pretty sure I'll be able to do that cast our eight votes so um November 20th 2023 it will be our 6 PM regular board meeting okay next is individual Communications and reports anybody have go ahead thank you chairman B so last week trusty Clawson and I attended the student of the quarter celebration at at McCormick Jor
087high and they did a couple of areas they did academic and they did citizenship which I thought was very nice that they included that but then they also one of the things I really liked was that principal trout put QR codes on their tables in the lunchroom so that they could choose a seventh and an eighth grade teacher to celebrate and then they had kids once those teachers were chosen that came up and actually spoke and talked about why they had selected that teacher and I just thought it was really nice that they took the time to do that and to invite the board to join them so thank you very much I have one more thing so South High School student council is doing a cozy drive and the drop off locations are South
088High Johnson Junior High in all of the elementary schools in the South Triad and this year they're collecting items socks hats scarves and gloves and it's for all ages in all sizes so I would encourage anyone that wants to help keep people warm to find a Dropbox and do that um justy you justy hle thank you chairman um I just want to take a moment to recognize this um past week we lost a Community member who was very important um to our district um gave much of his time um money and energy um to our district so my brown passed away this past week and I just like to recognize that he was a very important part of our district um and to say that he will be missed thank you anybody else so um
089one of the things that chairman Bolan talked about coming up is the delegate assembly and so I did want to take and I believe this is where we decided we would have this conversation um take hold off a little bit on that we'll come to that in just a minute any other comments or any board members before we get to that I just had one comment I wanted to make um I tried to every year when we're having the parent teacher conferences for the secondary which this year happened uh Thursday last week anyway recent Thursday I try to go around to all the secondary schools I started at at uh Johnson Junior High School then went to South then went to mcari and then went to Central um when I finally arrived at the East
090side of town they were already closed their conferences were over so I got to see four of the schools and it's a great time for me to go in and and if the teachers don't have any parents there with them although Rel was very good turnout for that one I get a chance to visit with them and and that's part of the reason it takes me so long is because everybody wants to talk me so um it's great to hear from the staff and I also am there because I feel a little bit responsible with that because um a long time ago probably 30 years ago now mcir is actually the one that started that we it started as a plan to help parents of seventh graders become more involved in the in their uh
091students um academic career Johnson mccormic and then it was so successful that year we had e8th grade the next year and eth and nth grade the next year and then I think three or four years later it was districtwide so it's a great opportunity for um parents to be able to meet with their teachers and put a Bas to the name okay now we'll go to the wsba and each of we should have a copy of the wsba delegate assembly items there Y and I'm going to try to take notes as best I can on how you would like for me to vote okay uh so as you all know we get a number of votes that uh chairman Bolan will be able to cast we get eight votes um as due to the size
092of the district um there were four resolutions submitted from districts around the state to wsba and these resolutions are just requests for wsba to um advocate for them during the year uh these are not things that are passing necessarily these are these are positions uh that people are are asking at wsba to take and so at the last wsba board meeting then we reviewed the four resolutions and you'll see at the bottom of each one um that there is either an affirm or a no recommendation the board um voted to affirm three of the of the resolutions that means that they go onto a consent consent agenda in order to be pulled off to the consent agenda discussed at the delegate assembly at least five districts have to vote to or have to request for
093it to be pulled um otherwise those three resolutions will be voted on as a whole the fourth one the board you'll notice didn't take a recommendation on there was lots of discussion at the board meeting around this particular one um and a number of us didn't feel like we had enough um information uh to make a recommendation on it um I did come back and actually gather some information from our district um on that particular one as well and so um I can quickly uh run through each of them or if you have specific questions I do want to particularly address the bosis one and the um threshold for Safety and Security expenditures um because those are the two that I specifically had the questions on but well let's start with 20 25.1 which is
094increased decrease board size yep um so right now in statute if a board if a school board wants to decrease or increase the number of board members there's a very complicated detailed process that they have to go through um that is makes it almost impossible to do so apparently unlike ours where we divide it up um so that we have representations from the Triads the process was after the vote so ultimately all it took was a vote of the board uh to head that way and then the process started um for the up and down piece um they you have to go through the full process before there's any Vote or any kind of ability to do that there are some issues around that in that for instance Lusk which is in the smallest county
095in the state has nine board members um from a historical perspective and so um they're asking if uh potentially they could make it match what is in the in the statutes uh for making it bing it into territories if you will um and so the board didn't see an issue with that okay so how does our board I mean this one's being marked as a firm means it would be a yes vote on that one anybody who has any concern about changing that okay so we we'll go with that one all right so now we're going to go to 20 25.2 which is allowing District Personnel District 20 25.2 allowing District direct payment to bosies and for you don't know what Bose is the board of Cooperative Education Services and districts enter into those kind
096jointly with several other districts provide services they can provide on their own so go ahead U so some of you will remember that in the last legislative session there was a bill that went through that allows for bosies to be designated as leas on um in order to receive Grant funds um this is sort of the next um ask along those lines uh and this this uh resolution came from Converse County School District toit through their bosies specifically um and the ask is that the payments um go directly to the bosies for the services they provide there were a number of districts that had concerns about that and the accountability and the tracking um because ultimately the school district still has accountability for that and they may or may not know whether the dollars went
097I did talk to um our procurement and financial people and they both agreed that that didn't seem like the finest idea in the world um and so my recommendation would be that we do not vote for that anybody have any concerns about voting no on that one I'm sure Jed is taking his head back to yes that we want to vote no all right we'll go on to the next one then which is 20 25.3 which is increasing the threshold for Safety and Security expenditures um so this one did get a an affirm vote but it also had a fair amount of conversation around it and I did uh ask for an opinions uh internally on this one as well uh it basically says that they want to increase the thresholds where they don't have
098to put it out for bid for specific Safety and Security projects um in other words for materials and supplies they they want to increase the threshold to 75,000 and for Capital construction projects 150,000 the initial piece with this is that almost none of our C and security projects are going to fall under those thresholds so it doesn't necessarily apply real well to laramy one two there is some I think unintended consequences of potentially doing that I.E you tag them as being Safety and Security projects and so it may actually make them more visible than trying to um keep them from being you know the conversation was um if you're trying to get locks changed and you have to put it out for bid you're advertising that you have four locks in a specific building in
099our case if we put a locks out for bid it could be in any of a hundred different buildings but um you know this one I I don't know that there is the benefit that they think there is to it I think what they were saying was that it was going to help draw less attention oh no they wer going to be giving any any details about it I guess on what kind of so um so it kind of works both ways so right now it's a recommendation to be affirmed how does the board feel about staying with that or going with a noble feel strongly I don't have an opinion either way fine with affirming that helps in I didn't know that was strong J how how do you feel about our who our
100ger person their recommendation is no there's recommendation is a no I would like to go with a no then if that's what our staff is is doing so when everyone agree that I can vot no on that one then okay I got to remember to pull that off if nobody else does okay now we're at 20 25.4 removing obstacles to rehiring rehired teachers to fill vacancies so there is and some of you are going to know more about this than I do um but there is some kind of weird piece in the statute that says that if you um don't have at least a 30-day break in service from retirement to rehire that then you're penalized um within the retirement system and you lose part of um the retirement piece and so um it's making
101it really hard in a the current environment where we're having a hard time finding teachers in specific areas anyway um to get those teachers back on board um according to how their contracts are working and so they want to advocate for removing that penalty I think this is a a statute ask with all state employees not just teachers but because we're on the retirement system so anybody that's covered under retirement system so anybody have any feelings one way or the other I have a question okay I don't have a strong opinion on this I just I was just wondering does that have to do though maybe with processing the paperwork um do you happen to know that did not come up in the discussion um and I think it would have to be negotiated within
102the changing of the statute that's true I think probably was discour people doing that right away give you chance somebody else but um think times have changed with as far as how easy it is to get staffed so I don't know do we have we done that very often somebody I don't think our district does that they do it pretty frequently in the small districts according to the board members so it was originally to affirm it is and I guess I have no problem with affirming that it helps the smaller districts so we'll stay with that one so we won't pull that one off okay was there anything else so the last part of that document just um I identifies the advocacy agenda which is built based on the resolutions from past years and um
103conversations along way it hasn't really changed much from last year um I do believe there is a vote on that as well um um but that is just what the what is being put forward forward as the advocacy agenda and the resolutions would then be worked into that as they're voted on so do we vote on that I've not been there and you have is that vote on like all one package then yes so would you have a chance to edit things or do you know have you seen that in the past I don't have the agenda right in front of me um and I have to admit that I don't remember if it's fully voted on but a and is any board member concerned about anything in that part so umy Ashby um the
104advocacy agenda then when you don't know when it's it's part of the consent agenda but it's it's all voted on in one Fell Swoop or will they go through item the advocacy agenda itself I believe is I'm sorry I don't remember if voted on or is just mooved forward um based on votes from previous years I really appreciate the chance to read through this because I'm not sure that in the last few years I've seen this um so I'm glad to to read the document um I I I guess I was not personally in in total alignment with some of these so that's why I'm curious what we do with this piece if if they need to share what we think about it or if it's um if as as a representative for our district
105if um chairman Bolan is you know if you're taking action on these item by item or just saying this I would guess we're probably not going to be but what if you have a concern on here what we could do is do a resolution for a future year to modify one of these or to remove one of these so that would probably be the best way to do it would be to look at over this year and think about a resolution for next year okay that's good although it Mr chair Al if you have an opportunity to vote on it should we be giving you Direction on that right now okay I'll take some notes just in case so did you have some concerns the first thing that jumped out on me as I read
106through this um was item number three public schools are the choice um and while I do not disagree at all that the public schools are obviously a great option for our students um I do believe that we have some educational Alternatives through charter schools which are run through our Public Schools but um that are not necessarily bad options for a number of families and we have Charter Schools operating in our district right now uh that are really do doing a great job and um are are are meeting the needs of a number of families here in our district um so this item number three um appears to me to discourage charge schools to it's not meant to no it's meant to encourage accountability for the charter skills okay I think it does kind of discourage
107the new type of charter school where it's approved by the state agency okay because it doesn't it just mentions it says we want it to be um approved by the local educational agency so it would probably have a tendency to make you think that it was a little bit against the other way of doing things so so that may be something that we want to look at for next year of maybe including the other one in there if we think that's appropriate so Aon Bolan yes um I think that's the point though is to encourage local control you know if we have a district and we're having to have the money go through our funding system um to not have any control over where that money goes or why I think that's the whole point
108for the School Board Association is to say if we're going to be financially in charge of it we should have you know it should be transparent we should know exactly what's happening there thank you so again some I would think that would be one that probably would be something if you wanted to change it come back for next year so any other concerns anybody else and just in defense of wsba they do send this out every year now we have not taken time on the Das here to discuss them and to bring them forward other than the proposals that have come from us in the past um the one about these the trying to get a consequence for stop arm violations was one that came from us so that was the kind of thing that
109we were discussing in the past not all of them so it's a good chance to get discussion and actually see what's here so that in the future we may come up with some our yes yeah yes Mr chairman I want to say thank you to you and uh truste Ashby for the transparency on this and and presenting us with these these proposed resolutions and advocacy agenda um on these different topics this is I've been on the board for five years and this is the first time that we've had such um thorough transparency on this process so thank you both need a one more time or are we good I think we're probably good okay so anybody else have any other individual board Communications over replaced okay so now we get come down through reports from
110Mr down thank you chairman Bolan at this time I'd like to call up Mr brayley to provide an enrollment update thank you Dr Newton uh good evening chairman ban board trustees uh want to give you a quick uh recap of our enrollment report um each year our state department extracts numbers from every District across the state on October 1st and so what I'll share with you tonight in the brief slide presentation is that uh is that data uh our first one is an overall uh Trend that we see across the district uh when we captur the data on October 1st uh as you can see the total enrollment in the black line uh somewhat mirrors the uh blue line which is our district uh I tell you a little bit of the difference is um
111is our charter schools in that they have a uh an increase in our total enrollment but uh of course not for our district enrollment where we capture those funds uh as you can see the trend uh over the last three years has dipped since uh Co we saw a bit of a rebound in 2021 to 2022 um has decreased several hundred last uh three years I'd also like to share that this data tonight does not share with you the pre kindergarten numbers as well as the um Charter and homeschool numbers uh next graph that I'll share with you is a breakdown of where we do see significant um declines especially in our elementary schools uh as you can see the uh top bar is our Elementary School uh decline over the last three years whereas
112our secondary schools have seen somewhat of a static um numbers although they are declining similarly I will add at this time that our our state is is showing a decline in enrollment as well not to the percentage that we are but they do see a a slight decline in enrollment across the street State uh the next slide goes into our Triad enrollment where we see uh our most of our population of students um hous in the East tribe uh followed uh by Central and then in South respectively it broken down to the secondary in the orange the junior high and the royal blue for our our elementaries the last uh I will share is the enrollment across our grade levels K through2 as you can see we have about um some some interesting Trends if
113you break that apart what it really breaks down to is we have six of those grade levels uh that we do see um an increase from last year uh whereas seven of those grade levels we do see a DE increase in last year's numbers which is uh which is interesting I'd like to hypothesize a lot of things and and try to speculate but uh I won't get get into that tonight unless your question would would lead me to so so with that ends the enrollment report uh just one last comment is that uh with student enrollment is tied directly to funding for our district as you can tell um a significant uh point to make to WRA the enrollment Report with that I'll take any questions in the have ask anybody else on the board
114I yeah I um thank you Mr fr do do you have some indication of where the students are going when they leave our district do we do we get feedback or have information from families on that change in their status chairman ban Mr Smith we we can't speculate our homeschool number the last three years have remained pretty um static very consistent from from three years ago when we saw Co numbers increase um our homeschool numbers significantly uh that's that difference from about three years ago is about a 100 students so we have seen that we also um Can speculate that uh an increase in the virtual education programs across the state has increased and so uh we can we can only speculate that um students are are choosing the virtual option supposedly along with the
115homeschool option but uh to to a degree that we know exactly where those students are going if we're declining in population uh for school a children across the county I can't U I can't say for certain thank youbody else it seems like we're having a growing Community it's growing larger so um and I know that we there's been a lot of talk over the last four or five years with the project that's going to go on at the base that we were going to see increase in enrollment is that still being talked about as a possibility chairman Bolan through local media Outlets is is the best I can gather I did talk to Colonel barington about a year and a half ago about the increases in various Pockets throughout not only our County but uh
116our neighboring state States in Colorado and Nebraska we do see um both military and civil engineers um coming into our our community but we don't know quite the impact quite yet okay you showed the Triad numbers but you didn't talk about what the changes in the Triad so is there one particular Triad that seemed more of a change a downward Trend than the other two uh chairman Bolan we have seen a pretty static um you know enrollment in all three Triads uh with the exception like I said earlier of East it seems to continue to grow in that side of town um whereas our Central and South RADS remain pretty consistent anybody else thanks for the report one other short um announcement um our fall Sports and activities are coming quickly to a close uh
117we've been able to recognize a number of our young people here at this board meeting of course all of our kids have a whole lot to be proud of whether they were recognized here or not um my understanding is we have one team yet competing in Fall Sports and we would like to wish uh good luck to our East High Thunderbird team who will be playing in the state championship game this Saturday at 4:00 at War Memorial Stadium so uh good luck to the t- birds and uh hope they bring home that state championship trophy for us Mr chair with that that's the end of my reports okay that brings us to the consent agenda all items listed with a designation of CA or considered to be routine items by the governing body will be
118enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion on these items any item removed from the consent agenda will be considered as normal sequence on the agenda has any board member um request to remove a motion from the consent agenda seeing that Mr chairman I move to approve all motions listed as consent agenda I second a motion second to approve the consent agenda all those in favor say I I those oppose no motion pass all right now we're under new business Mr chairman I move to Grant permission to purchase Eureka math squared mathematics students book student books teacher resources manipulative kits and online access from great minds publishing for grades K through 8 mathematics course for a price not to exceed $4,200 th000 for the spring 2024 and in initial year of 24 25
119and six subsequent school years so over seven and a half years I second and we have notion second to approve the new uh A8 Mathematic Curriculum and we've had a lot of have a pilot that's currently going on and our pilot is not finished yet it'll continue to go on but we needed to order these textbooks this early because as we all know there's supply chain problems and we want to make sure we have those available for us to start the school year next year so any further discussion on that I believe we have somebody here if you have questions they can answer for us I I would just like to say thank you to Amy and Tor for all the hard work that they put in on this for all all the different town
120halls they put on all of my emails with questions that they answered thank you I'd love to ask a few questions anybody's here to answer they are both here to answer so okay and they're still smiling so but you haven't asked your question okay first of all thank you both for all of your work on this I had the opportunity to attend the last Town Hall I did not rsdp and I showed up and they were still ready for me um anyway I mean really quite a a fascinating and huge process but I was hoping maybe um for this board but also for our community if you could just explain a little bit about a process just high level overview of where you started and how you got to where we are um and I
121I guess just just because we're spending I mean we're voting on a lot of money um and I think it's important that our public understands you know all of the work because I know a lot went into it right thank you um chairman Bolan and trusty Smith for the question um back in the fall of 2022 so this has been about a year and a half now in process we put four uh textbooks up for public review including a review of our teacher committees and from those four we um narrowed it down to one um which was Eureka Mass squared and then at that point senior leadership asked us to explore a little bit further with an expanded committee um so we took um Eureka Mass squar along with a fifth publishing company we expanded
122our committee to include additional teachers parents um other professionals principles um to examine those um materials and again the recommendation was Eureka Math squar um in order to um see how the process was going to go give it a thorough vetting we were asked to Pilot so we asked for volunteers last spring and we had approximately 160 teachers volunteer to Pilot these materials with about 4,000 students in our district we've spent the fall um having professional development with those teachers going out and observing observing those classrooms um including model te teaching in those classrooms uh and getting feedback from those teachers and again um at our second to last meeting that we had with our teachers overwhelmingly their recommendation was eure mqu did that answer your question it did thank you may I ask one
123more sure okay so this is a a fairly lengthy contract I mean we're looking at seven and a half years what is the reasoning for entering into a contract that long so our typical um seven years is our typical contract when we um purchase curricular materials um the half year is the extra one due to finishing out the pilot so normally um for example when I came to the board last year and did my three math textbook adoptions those um textbook adoptions were for textbooks and online curricular materials for seven years so that's our typical practice in our district thank you okay it's not really a question but we're doing this because our current contract is up and we're not able to get those similar materials is that correct chairman Bolan trustee hle yes that's
124right um our contract is up this may with a go math and and I should say and for seventh grade Eureka Math as well good and I'll just add to that I was talking to miss Castle earlier today about this and do you want to share with everyone what you think about this particular um math curriculum compared to what we're coming off of chairman Bolan trustee Clon thank you for the question um this new program Eureka math squared uh has excellent marks from Ed reports it scores in the green in every category um we feel like it is really what's best for uh all of our students K through 8 in Lar count School District number one um we're excited about um the possibilities that um this program affords and um we're excited to have
125the people involved with the with the pilot and the overwhelming majority of them are um raring go and and ready to uh adopt this um it uh is a is a great way a great approach uh really focuses on conceptual understanding as well as building procedural fluency and um we feel like it's a a really good resource and we'll move our district in the right direction else you kind of give a summary of kind of maybe some of the highlights of the comments that we've heard either from staff or from parents or where we've heard from German Bolan thank you for the question um one of the the things that the teachers have been most joyful about um is the fluency part of this program I I encourage you to be able to go out
126and see our kindergarten third first graders uh doing fluency every day for 5 to 10 minutes and it's just amazing to see them all these different activities that they're doing and they're being able to count by twos and threes and fours and they have um different games that they're that they're playing and just it gives us great hope that that fluency piece which we know is so important to mathematics that the kids are just uh jumping in and just so excited about about that that's been just a real initial um aha that teachers have had and it just really appreciated this program um the level of rigor and the discourse we hear uh kids from the age of five to 14 talking about math in new ways and um not just about the answers but
127about how they got to those answers and so that's been really exciting um I've had the chance to uh model in a lot of different classrooms and just to hear the conversation that the students are engaged in with each other has been a real um eye opener and it's it's been exciting to see and to be a part of so I encourage you to um if you have a chance to get out to one of those classs and see it you'll just you'll be amazed at the discourse um and the level of rigor with this program thank you thank you and I I the this program is very similar we already had in the junior eyes so there isn't a lot of change there as that correct yes chair Bolan um we currently have Eureka
128Math in grades seven and eight and this is the updated Edition I also understand that we're closely aligns with how we're testing on our state tests is that correct yes chairman Bolan um the technology piece uh has a nice um way to um let students practice with problems that are going to be very similar to um the kinds of uh computer assisted program uh problems that they're going to see on white top I also like the fact that we're adopting a through eight because in the past secondary was you know was different from elementary didn't necessarily see that that flowing through there of course you can't really do that past 8th grade because then you're getting into the named classes rather than just math so i' like to see the better we're gonna have a
129strand all the way through from getting any further comments all those in favor of spending 4 2 million I remember back when this was couple hundred thousand by textbooks $4.2 million for our textbooks um favor say I hi those suppose no passes thank you okay that was really our only item of business today so um the next regular board meeting will be held on Mondays November 20th 2023 at 6m the business district is done I would like to say that at our last meeting I didn't notice all of you reading out there in the audience I'm very focused on running the meeting and you most of you were sitting in towards the back it didn't I didn't see it until I saw the picture in the newspaper later on from the side where I saw
130all you out there reading so um thank you for being very um quiet with your demonstration that you think reading is very very important as all of us do also we had a presentation earlier at our five o'clock meeting about uh the new reading programs that we're going through in the district so all right so now we have our second item from visitors and we do actually have a few people this time so our first person is Marcy hrid chairman board superintendent I'm Marcy Kindred and I've been here before you've read my emails and know I'm here against the pro proposed changes to our library policy I do not come here today with hope that anything I could say might convince you not to take this dangerous step of infringing on our children's First Amendment
131rights as Americans but today I have with me a beautiful stack of hundreds of handwritten postcards from our community many of these folks have already submitted comments to the portal written lengthy emails and braved their fear of public speaking to do what I am doing tonight this stack in this stack there are handwritten notes from parents grandparents Students larmy County School District number one teachers Librarians past board members and retired Ed Educators these postcards come from abroad Coalition of folks with wildly different beliefs backgrounds and political affiliations I have never been more proud to be part of such a diverse group that while we may disagree on some issues we know that as wyomingites we don't merely value the blessings of Freedom the freedom to pray or not to pursue happiness and to speak and
132read freely we understand that we have a duty to protect these values we work so hard to instill in our children our love for these hard-fought Wyoming values is a verb that love must be demonstrated it must be acted out and acted upon and we have done that in every way we could think of many of these incredible freedom-loving wyomingites are here doing it tonight as our with our joyful silent protest of reading our beloved books and the most remarkable thing about this broad Coalition they have taken all of this action when it has been made crystal clear that this comment period does not mean anything to you we know this from off EDS declaring your vote regardless of public comment we know this from text exchanges acquired from public records assuring your peeps not
133to worry about the public input process because you have the final say all all of these efforts and yet here we are for an effort we know we will lose all board members elected during this last election cycle on a platform of fear and the national hysteria that are highly qualified and trained professional educators are suddenly in the business of pedling pornography to our children they won those elections with less than onethird of the vote the elected members that campaigned on prioriti prioritizing a small group's undemocratic beliefs of what should or shouldn't be taught in our schools they did not win the majority of the vote that majority belonged to candidates that value freedom and a robust education system but we split the vote there were too many candidates we weren't as well organized and
134that's on us but I've say I'd say we've done some organizing so while we are not here with much hope for how this one ends I am here tonight with an abundance of Hope for the future because I've seen what this community will do with their backs against the wall for an effort they know they will lose what are we capable of when we know we can win laramy County we have 4 days left for public comment keep them coming this is not all for not do it for the Educators that have been discredited and demoralized by the circus do it for the children promised in our Wyoming Constitution a highquality fair and Equitable education for every student we have learned a painful lesson that we can never take our Wyoming values for granted not
135for one second let us take these lessons and get to work restoring the Wyoming way of keeping the government close to the people and the American principes that free people read freely thank you our next person is Cary Hardy I've known Mr hardy since back when I was in high school you're still looking good good evening my name is Charles charart I'm a cheyen native I've been involved in education All My Life as a student a teacher an administrator and even as a librarian um I have uh I have four University degrees one a masters in educational Administration from University of Wyoming and another theology from Catholic University of America um I was superintendent of the Catholic schools in the state of Wyoming High School principal St Mary school and presently I for the over
13610 years have been helping out in laring County School District as a substitute teacher thought today teach tomorrow we'll teach the next day um a year ago I uh with regard to the library let's respect parents rights my suggestion would be give every student a library card and any parent who doesn't want their child to have access to the library just takes that card away and that's also whole problem there but the question of sexually explicit language does present something of a problem how do you define it iend superintendent sters uh last year his press conference newspaper said it was a little America I thought was a littlest America I had ever attended I felt it was 1693 and I was in Salem Massachusetts and there was a Witch Hunt going on after 20 people
137were executed I didn't hear the word witch but I heard the word teach teacher administrator and Librarians which seem to be synonyms for witches and having fallen in all those categories I was worried that I might be executed along the way defining what is sexually explicit I would like to read just one sentence that I think is in all of our libraries here in Cheyenne School libraries and you're going to have to deal with this and so I quote she lusted after lovers whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emissions were like those of horses and that to me I don't know what you think I think that's pretty sexually explicit and that's from the Bible Ezekiel chapter 23 verse 20 and if you want to you can go through the Bible and
138find many other such references okay what you as a Schoolboard do I think you might if I don't know if you think that's sexual explicit I think it is you might go from school to school with scissors and cut that passage out of the Bible because I think you want to keep the Bible in schools or maybe just with black marker pens in any case I wish you well thank you and thank you for all the subing you've been doing over the last 10 years we certainly are in need of good substitutes next person is Mark Moody online raise your hand if you're online appears to be online Mr chairman okay your uh yes uh good evening uh Mr chairman members of the board my name is uh Mark Moody can you hear me yes
139go ahead okay all right I'll just uh say this again I support this policy 100% so do over 60% of people in larmy County keep hearing about elections again most people don't pay attention to Schoolboard elections but are Great superintendent of Public Instruction for state of Wyoming Megan degenfelder won 70% of the vote here she supports the policy that the board wants to implement and most people in the county do support it if it's 70% as an absolute super majority please don't listen to the minute 25% of the popul potion in ly County that best better be said in Boulder Colorado or for Collins Colorado thank you for your time thank you and Kathy see online probably Mr chairman she is online go ahead when you're ready yours after you're unmuted are you able to
140speak Kathy we can't hear you if you're talking Mr chairman I'm not sure what's going on I can't see any um anything coming across on the microphone okay I guess we'll go on then is there anybody else that would like to talk to us about any topic anybody online please raise your hand if you'd like to talk to us Mr your chairman there no other hands raised try Kathy I'll try to mute again Kathy can you unmute your microphone doesn't look like she's unmuted now okay she doesn't look like she didn't okay sound was like she doesn't want to talk to us okay so um a motion Mr chairman I move to go into executive session at this time prior to adjournment for the purpose of dis of possible student long-term suspensions and expulsions Personnel
141legal advice and litigation I second he motion a a second to go into executive session all those in favor say I I those oppose no motion passes we are in recess