BOE Budget Meeting

001our teachers to gather together around a table to discuss through department areas where where are the challenges that they're noting both in student performance. Where are we where are we identifying strategies to to target those specific areas? How are we going to continue to develop assessments that are going to be challenging and meaningful? What what progress monitoring tools are we going to incorporate? Uh so we have an opportunity to see the growth and the progression of student performance during the course of the year because the challenge is we can't wait till summertime to make the decisions uh when the students are in front of us each and every day. Um, so, you know, very proud of the efforts of our staff to to to kind of like roll up the sleeves and dig into some

002of those tough conversations regarding practice and uh content and skills and how we're working collaboratively through. >> So, to give a couple of examples of the curriculum resource in resources in the proposed budget, you look at like elementary school budgets under library um books like that has increased. If you look under the assistant superintendent budget um under uh supplies that's increased and that's due to decodables that we're buying and um to replenish our classroom libraries that we try and keep up with um either um um ones that we need to uh replace because they've been used so much or new ones that have come out that kids are interested in and we need to make sure that we have those included. Um, another um, example of a resource is middle school math and I always

003it's hard to say the fish tank math is hard to say. And so that's um, a resource that we actually were using the freer version of it. It's an open source if you wanted to use the free version, but what we found is that obviously you pay for the subscription, there are more things that we're able to access. And so it's things like videos for teachers that provide tools for them. It's assessments for teachers that they can use with students in their classroom. um it's more practice and all of the stuff on fish tank is related to IM and the way that we teach um illustrative math. And so it ended up being more additional practice that we can use with students in addition to our to the IM. And so something else that um

004falls under curriculum resources is inquired. And I talked about this last year um in the in our budget um conversation where um it actually was something that a teacher went to a social studies meeting and came back so excited about this resource that had everything in it. It was in it was inquirybased. Um it was related to standards. The um state of Connecticut was saying that it is one of the programs that it recommends for social studies. And so one of the things that we did is in working with the principles and with the teachers, we talked about how could we roll this um this out and it is a curriculum for social studies. So one of the things we talked about doing was to start with fifth grade where it's departmentalized, teachers can focus

005on um on social studies and then eventually having a plan on rolling that back um all the way down to kindergarten. And so part of what you'll see in the budget is money to pay for the online subscription for inquiry ed. So both MAC fish tank and inquire ed um while they're listed here under curriculum resources in the assistant superintendent budget they fall under software licenses because it is a platform that we have to buy. So if you're looking to find where that is it falls under those. I'll talk a little bit more about what falls under that software license um uh in a few minutes. >> But as we roll through um the next >> Got it. >> Is there a question? Oh yeah. You're saying what sales cost? >> Um I can tell

006you. >> No, it's just I don't read those. >> Yeah, it's not >> $1,000 $50,000. >> No. Uh so the fish tank is like $2,000. Um the um the inquir is like a couple thousand. It's not like it's not like tens of thousands of dollars. >> Believe I can pull it off. I believe the entire all of the things that Dr. Chief has referenced combined with the summer writing is 50,000 in total. >> And so as we move through our um our different buckets the next one we wanted to talk about is days reflection. >> Pause on the reflection for a second. >> The presentation is not streaming on the live stream. So we have to stop it. Yes. Right. >> All right. So, we'll move on to collection. So, in um in addition to

007the two things that I just mentioned, also under software licenses um is the data warehouse. So, we've talked a little bit about that here with the board um over the the past year and thank you again. Um last year um we included the data warehouse manager in here, someone to pretty much live and breathe this data warehouse every single day. And so um the committee that we had last year chose Educ Renaissance to be our data our our data warehouse. Um again, what you'll notice in this line is that there's an increase and I'll explain why in a second. Um, so with this warehouse, we've been working really hard to be able to build this so that it's something that, um, teachers can use, administrators can use to have the most up-to-date data that's possible.

008And so currently in there right now um we'll have the state assessment data, there's report card data, there's um attendance data, the IABS plug, if you're coming to PNC next week, we'll be talking about um IE data. Um we have running record data in there and we have the elementary math end of the unit um assessment data in there. We're currently working on putting in there intervention data. We're also working on putting in there a flag. So, if a student does not do as well as we would like them to do on an assessment, it'll flag them so that um the administrators here and the teachers who have that student will get a message to say that this is something that we should be checking on. We're also working closely with middle school to talk

009about what sorts of assessments do they want in Educ Climber and what should that look like because you can tailor this um platform to make the data look however you want it to be displayed. And so we're spending a lot of time making sure that the way it's displayed is something that is usable for teachers and is usable for um administrators. And then the next step would be to work at at the high school level like what data um would they like included in there and how how does that look? All of this information is an integral part of those data team meetings which we'll talk about in a few minutes. It's really difficult to have structured and cohesive data team meetings if you don't have the utmost up-to-date data. And so while in the

010past we've been doing these data team meetings, um I think that having edge climber and having this right at our fingertips to be able to pull it up has really been something that's pushed forward. >> Um and it also is we talked about like naming the names. we've been do be able to do we've been able to do that not only at a district level where we're able to look at who those students are that maybe need some additional support but then we're also able to take that back at the building level to do that and at the classroom level to be able to do that. So there's tiers of data we can look at. Um the other uh another thing that's listed under the software licenses are everything related to assessments. And so something

011that's new this year um is a K3 reading assessment called EasyCBF. So, according to legislation for the science of reading, we had to choose um an assessment from a list that the state provided um to be able to have an assessment for K3 students. And so, we chose to have easy CVM. One of the reasons why we chose that because special ed was using it um um for their students. So, we thought that it would be um again that cohesiveness and consistency to be able to use that not only with special ed students but also with gened students. And so it's a web-based assessment um and it's on curriculum based measures which is where the CBM comes in and it's on all of those early literacy skills that um that fall under the science of

012reading. And so according to the state we have to do this three times a year. They give us a window that we have to make sure that we give that assessment in the window. And what we found out is that the state has mandated that they pull the data directly from this platform. So, um, they can get this, they've been pulling this data, um, so far twice. We have one more administration of it in the spring. And so, one of the things that we found doing this twice so far, we did it in the fall, we did it in the winter, is that this became a better predictor on how students were doing than the NWA fluency that we had been using for a few years. And so, um, this now easy CBM will take

013place of the NWA fluency assessment for next year. um because we got more information. The information that we received from ECCVM was usable. It does have a progress monitoring tool. So, it'll tell you what students need to work on and it'll actually even give you some um tasks that you could do with students based on what they uh need uh to improve on. And we found that it's a better predictor of the characteristics that could possibly um flag a student for dyslexia. So, that's why we decided to go with easy CBM instead of NWA fluency. Another assessment that um we actually were really fortunate to kind of jump in on the launching um part of this is called Project Read. And I put in parentheses UFly because it really is all about UFly. And so

014last year um our some of our coaches uh learned about this platform where what you what happens is as teachers give um the UFI assessment weekly, you can take a picture of it and it automatically will upload to this platform and it'll tell you what um words or sounds students need to work on. So teachers don't have to spend time grading things. You can take the picture and and it'll grade it for you. In addition to that, it also will group students for you based on how students are doing on each one of the sounds or on the different um uh phone names or the different words. So again, teachers don't have to spend a lot of time figuring out with, you know, all the students in their class how they're going to group them.

015This will help do it for them. And so um one of the things that we have found is that it really is a timesaver. If you look up there on the screen, that black um rectangle is actually students names that I blacked out, but that is data from a class. So it'll show you the words that students made errors in so that teachers can make sure that they're reinforcing and that they're reteing those. So this has been really helpful for our phonics program. So again, this was something that um we were able to use um as a pilot, but now um since we like it, we're kind of hooked and and we're going to pay for it. The other assessments that we have is NWA map growth. And so there's the difference between the map

016fluency and the map growth. So there are two NWBA assessments. That map is the one that we've been using for elementary and middle school and um some high school students that talk about the different standards for um reading and math and it gives you um student achievement. It gives growth. The fluency was the assessment that was more about the early reading skills and again we found that easy CBM does a really does a better job of um telling us information about early literacy than than the fluency. So, one thing that will go away is that fluency part, but we will keep the NWA growth. ESAT is something that we have been doing. And so, um, that's also listed in the budget as well as world language assessments. And I think I mentioned this last year

017that we've been using the Apple assessment not only for the seal of literacy. is one of the assessments that you uh can choose to use for determining the seal of bi literacy. But it's also something that our middle and high school uh world language teachers have said has been really useful in helping them uh monitor progress for reading, writing, speaking, and listening. And so they wanted to continue to use that. And so that's licensed for middle and um high school. Speakable is something that's relatively new. And again, we jumped on the uh you know, we jumped on this when we saw that this again was something that could help with world language. And it really is about the speaking and writing skills of students and the high school teachers um said that this has been

018really helpful for them. So, it's something that they want to continue to use. >> Good evening. I'll talk a little bit about some of the data team work that's been happening across the district and we'll jump into some pictures because I'm elementary and s. So um four areas that I'd like to talk to in terms of data teams and the first one and really for me the most important one is and it's this it's this challenge that we have as administrators as teachers is how do we keep our data teams on the front burner. This can't be something can't just look at data when it's time for a call. We can't just look at data when state testing comes up. We need to have data at the front burner week in and week out for

019our teachers and most importantly for our students. And so we all come into the year, first thing we're put on our calendars is when are those data teams happening? So every teacher in the building knows I'm going to be held accountable to my colleagues. I'm going to be held accountable to my students to to know my students, to know their data, all the different things that Dr. Chief has said in terms of the data that's available to us. I'm going to be coming to a meeting. We're going to be talking about our kids. So can't emphasize enough how important it's been for us to have those data teams on the front burner and have dedicated time to those meetings. The second thing is about precision. It's it's not enough to say that a child's struggling

020in reading. Um if you come to one of our data team meetings at any of the grade levels and talk about a child struggling, there's going to be follow-up questions specifically where they struggle and they're struggling with reading. Is it comprehension? Is it decoding? If it's decoding, is it thousands, diagramraphs, where is it and where's the data that we're talking about? And a lot of the data is charts and graphs. We have it at a moment's notice. We have an interventionist at the meeting who's leading the meeting. We bring up a student and she's typing on the computer and she's putting that student, that classroom, that grade levels data right up there that we can look at it. But we also have teachers that bring student work that it's we talk about a student struggling.

021Let's see some of their writing. Let's see some of the reading assessments and how they answer questions for comprehension. And it's just a really powerful exercise and and the data educate data has been a game changer for us in terms of the speed that we're able to um to take a look at a student and have it progressively. The other thing that's been that's been very key for us is that there needs to be a purpose to these meetings that sure we can come to a meeting and say someone's struggling in reading or struggling in math. We can identify where they're struggling. But a real difference for us has been when a teacher leaves that meeting, they're leaving with a plan of action. They're leaving what am I committing to doing over the next period

022of weeks before we come back to the day meeting. What strategies am I going to try? What assessments am I going to collect? What data am I going to collect to come back to let us know if those strategies have been successful or not successful? And one of the things that we want to do is replicate those strategies that have been successful. So if a teacher leaves and says, "This child's having decoding issues with short vowels, these are things that I'm going to try." They come back to the next meeting and say, "This child really took off. These are the things I tried and and the child took off." The other teachers are taking notes because if they're struggling in one class, chances are you have a child with some of the same issues. And

023we're beginning to find what are the strategies that we're really leveraging to get students to grow. And it's been it's been really powerful. And then the last thing is perspective. And um I think Heather Cone and NDS have really been the leaders in this is how do we put the experts around the table and you know once upon a time at our school it was mostly the grade level teachers that were at the table but then we learned again from strategies that have been successful is we can multiply those efforts when it's pe more than the grade level teacher who gets special education teacher because their knowledge is incredible even if they're solving problems that are not related to students identified with special needs they often are leaders for strategies we put the counselor around

024the table who has really in-depth knowledge of students and their social emotional perspective. We put um the ML teacher, multilingual learner teacher around the table. We even have some of the specialists come to data teams. And one of my favorite stories this year is our PE teacher was at a data team meeting and they were talking about fact fluency and math and starts thinking. He said, "I do a game in Chen where we have these big foam dice and the kids roll the dieice and they three and a four adds up to seven. They roll with a station seven." He starts listening to teachers talking about multiplication and see. He said instead of them doing three plus four, would it be good for them to do three times four? Then our math coach lights up,

025the teachers light up to think about these students are not only going to be reinforced in class, they're not only going to be reinforced with their homework when blah, they go to the specialist classes, they're going to be reinforced as well. And you know, it's just it's that whole community coming together to talk about students, to hold each other accountable, to be partners in this work, and it's been a real inspiration for us to continue that work with the team. So um John spoke rather comprehensively about our data team process. So there's u I guess a few things that I would just add is um you know the categories that he mentioned about pacing precision purpose and perspectives. These are all things that we are getting up and running as well and we are continue

026to grow. Um our data needs are happening with uh regularity at the team level. Um our interventionist also run those meetings and it's a little bit different just because of u the nature of the middle school but um the team is at the meeting they are run by the interventionist at present and we look at student work and data and all of those elements is part of our part of our conversation and so the teachers do leave with an action plan of interventions that they're going to tie in their classroom and then we have a followup meeting to report out on the success of those interventions. So we do feel that this is um this process has gained some momentum for us and we feel that it is independent for our students >> and just

027to add on to share we've been very fortunate to have the opportunity to observe his team in action that's happening at the elementary level and as Steve at the middle school are there opportunities for us to refine our practices and one of the things that we're we we are engaged in right now at the middle school level is uh reviewing that through the lens of how do we maximize the expertise around the table. Just earlier this afternoon we had a a day team meeting in which uh one of our teams was engaged in the process of reviewing 15 different students and literacy and math needs and social emotional needs. and be fishbold with the rest of our staff to have an opportunity for them to see the practice. And you know, as an administrator, you

028participate in the process, but you have instructional coaches, you have interventionists, you have uh student support services, the teacher is uh the one who uh holds a lot of the information because they have a lot of the practical data that they see day out in the classroom. But what I found was most powerful is not the meeting itself, but what happens in between the meeting. The the ability to have the expertise around the table to partner and say, "As a as a coach, I'm hearing that, you know, students are struggling in this area. I have some strategies that might be helpful for you to try tomorrow." and to put that into action to to get some traction for the students and then to come back at at the end of that that cycle to then

029hear how did it how did it how did it work and have you know having that community in practice. So I appreciated the opportunity going down personally to the elementary level to see that in action and to see how we might be able to replicate some of the the practices that are meaningful success elsewhere bring them back and refine it to to our school environment. So this was an example of how to off the presses of about three hours ago uh in action at so then um taking all this data you know to to work on our inclusive practices again involving our special ed staff a lot of what has already been shared um again that educ has been a big big support to us as well and when we did um to support to

030support the district's tier one plus um goal for the year, we started to have our special ed teachers become more assigned to purposeful planning times. Um, and what was nice about that is it really did start out as we've kind of heard where our special ed teacher teachers providing some best practices for our general education staff and then as the conversation started to evolve when the special ed teachers are giving different like universal accommodations and instructional strategies for all students then it started to morph into the special ed teacher saying well the certain goals and objectives that you know a child in your class is working on they would benefit from this as well. And then we started to see where things would happen in a large group class and then in a small group

031class. And one of the things we also have done a little differently this year is as administrators um especially at the elementary level there's always collaboration when we're talking about um teacher evaluation but this year we have sat together everybody again around the table. So, it is a modeling of regular ed and special ed um administrators working together because we are continuing to ask our special ed and general ed teachers to work together. Not that they always haven't, but again, just being that modeling for for our staff and again the um to continue to, you know, to put forth inclusive practices um our special ed teachers again working very very closely with the coaches. Um, one of the things I think that's eye-opening for me when I, you know, kind of look at everything that

032we're talking about, when we have our UFly instruction and our IM, uh, math curriculum, we're really only in false gear, second year for for our district. Um, and last school year, our special ed teachers worked with the coaches on UFly, which again is onx program, and a lot of our special ed teachers, that's really in their wheelhouse. They're very comfortable with that. they've had um additional training whether it's a different types of structured literacy was kind of bringing that all together. Um a lot of our special ed teachers were so excited when this came to the district and this year we're really focusing on the math. It's a it's a kind of a little different of an animal how they are um you know going to participate and what that looks like. So, our coaches

033have been instrumental um as continuing um working with our special ed teachers, helping with the alignment of standards, uh you know, vocabulary, different instruction, and how that can all work together to support students with IEP goals and objectives. And then, of course, um being supported within the general classroom as well. Um so, you know, we want to make sure our teachers get continued training specifically on the math program. I kind of equated to our um coaches getting used to it. Um and they're rolling it out to general ed staff and our special ed staff just now starts to get more and more involved with it and parallel at that time, not necessarily just individual sessions. So, in addition to everything that Don said, we also um we kind of talked earlier about special education participating

034um in those data teams as um John and Jen talked about. Um they're also participating on PLC's, grade level meetings, um purposeful planning um which is a huge bonus for both the the grade level team because it's special education teacher and the goal is always the LE the least restrictive environment. So we're always looking how can we move students on that continuum and by special education being boots on the ground in those meetings that's helping us to do that. U Paul mentioned the second bullet there um already with the essentials classes being uh the curriculum writing to be done by multi-disiplinary teams. Um that's also been huge on being able to move students into and out of the essentials classes on a continuum. Um and aligned to that is refining the datadriven decision-making for small

035group instruction. So of course you know traditionally in special education you're taking data on goals and objectives and that's like the big forward facing uh piece for special education. Uh but behind the scenes when you're looking at that small uh the data driven uh decision- making you're also thinking about how can we move students you know into and out of programs. So like we have our CLP programs which we've had at the high school and we've expanded to have at elementary and middle school now um for our students with emotional behavioral needs. So we're always looking at the d the data to see like who can move out of that program, who's ready to go back to a more um mainstream special education setting, who's ready to move out of special ed in general. And

036then we're looking at out of district students and who can we move from out of district into those specialized programs using the datadriven decision- making. Uh and then uh continued work on small group instruction in resource setting to provide opportunities for grade level uh content. And then um something that we're really working especially at the high school to incorporate but also um at the middle school as well is the state assessment style um questions and vocabulary within the specially designed instruction. So when we're looking at our academic support or resource classes as well as our essentials classes um really looking to give the students a dose of not only the curriculum aligned with what their gened peers are doing but also like the style of questioning like SAT style questioning. um aspect style questioning so

037that they're uh they're seeing more u practice opportunities in their everyday instruction. So as we um come to our last clip as Dr. She had a set of intervention. I want to give you an analogy. In the book, Good to Great, Jim Collins wrote that great organizations and great schools don't just have the right people on the bus, they put them in the right seats. And to reference my colleagues, we want to thank you as a board for supporting a budget that puts instructional coaches in the room with teachers that allows special education teachers to pull their expertise and consult with regular education teachers when they're looking at data to put interventionists in the right seat on the bus so they can support that along with our psychologists, along with our counselors and all those

038people working together to have that coherence piece. So this also means for us not just getting the right adults in the right seats but also with intervention we're trying to make sure every student is also in the right seat getting exactly what they need exactly when they need this. That's what intervention is really about. Thank you. Perfect. So referencing all the past slides data teams and the wrap time and the coaching the teachers collaborate with their teams. They use that data to form small groups. They then deliver targeted instruction. They monitor that progress over time and then they let that new fresh data drive them the next round of decisions that they make as they move through. The process takes time, but it moves students through towards the grade level standards that we all aspire

039to go to. I'd like to show you what that looks like in a classroom. So, we have here are two visual examples. Um, so here is a small group on the left and what you're seeing is targeted instruction intervention at work. The students, the lesson materials, the way it's being taught, and the assessment are all purposefully chosen based on the data and in collaboration with others. People often ask, what are the rest of the students in the classroom doing while those students are meeting with the teacher in a small group? That's the picture on the right. those students are engaged in reinforcement activities that strengthens learned skills and strategies. And so one example of that reinforcement is um happy numbers. And so this is a researchbased online uh math support program that's individualized for for

040each and every student. And um it's used during win time for that reinforcement. It's something that we've been using with elementary schools um for the past few years. Um and um it's listed under software licenses. Here's another one that's listed under software licenses um in the assistant superintendent's budget. And so as we talked to teachers about the use of it, um did they find that it was helpful? Did it support students? Is this something that they want to continue overwhelmingly? They all said yes. So that's included in the budget. >> Yes. >> Can this be used level? >> Um yeah, it actually does go up to eight. We only bought the licenses for K5. So, um, again, just to kind of continue, um, what it looks like for a special education teacher beyond everything we've

041already talked about, um, what their real charge is is that specially designed instruction. So, this piece as it comes to an intervention after students have gone through the SOP process, the tier process, and the student now has an IEP, there is specially designed instruction by those special ed teachers where it is adapting content, the methodology, or the delivery of instruction. It could be all three, one of those, any combination, but it is a very targeted skill that the special ed teachers are working on. And again, it all comes down to because of the impact of disability of what it looks like. So, you might have some specially designed instruction could be simple as reinforcing of skills in a smaller group setting all the way down to a completely different methodology that they're teaching. And again,

042a lot of work that we talked about alignment, but also when it comes down to now our students with special needs is making sure it's exactly what they need and what their IEP goals and objectives are talking about. So, you might see something like in writing, which a lot of times that is a push-in service. There's a lot of opportunities during our reading and writers um workshop model for our special ed teachers to go in and support that instruction. But you'll see onetoone teacher conferences, a lot of work on building independence for students to access um graphic organizers, templates, things like that. As the students advance in grades, you'll see um students using more of their assisted technology to express their thoughts and their organization. And again, it's it's breaking down writing pieces. And this

043is beyond what um happens in the general setting. Um reading again is a big push. It has to be a focus that's kind of a foundation for all students. Nothing against our math folks. I was a math folks myself, but um you have to be able to read. So, a lot of that is marked in small group instruction with structured literacy. Um just about all of our teachers have additional training beyond, you know, what they come out of college. Um we have a a veteran staff, but we also have some new um staff that we've brought on over the past couple years and giving them their uh sea legs get in the district and then expanding their time and training with structural literacy as well. But again, they're also working on enhanced vocabulary, especially in

044content. Like when it comes to our middle school level, they are trying to support students so that they can't access, say, a science and social studies curriculum. Um, working plots on comprehension and really drilling down and what does it mean to um comprehend a text that's fiction versus a non-fiction text. And again, math, the same thing. That could be um pushing support or pull out support. And we're really working a lot to see how we can make sure students do have access to that regular ed curriculum, math, but some of that specialized instruction is repeated practice. It's different manipulatives. It's a different way that they need to see it. But again, working on those same skills. And then one to figure out what um specialist instruction looks like. It really again starts from the SRBI

045EPT referral process using a variety of uh standardized evaluations, district assessments, um you see their class and performance data progress monitoring and then of course looking at I development objectives and there's a lot of collaboration um during this process whether it's in the initial phases or as students are going through there's everything we've kind of talked about here today. These next few slides really just break down in special education the uh the kind of structure if you kind of envision like a pyramid. So we start at like the bottom of the pyramid with the you know where where the most students are and the um the most general education aligned um group of students. So that would be the gened access and that would be in the gened setting providing the accommodations and the modifications.

046So just accommodations being the how like the extra time provide you know alternate uh style of presentation etc. And then modifications is where you're actually changing the curriculum to make it more accessible to the student um you know changing the the reading level changing the task that you're asking the student to do. Uh then we move up to the adult supported classes. So at the different levels we have teacher supported classes which are like the old uh co-taught or team taught. Um we're using teacher supported. Um we this year at the high school we sent six different uh pairs of special ed and general ed teachers to um a workshop on team teaching and we're starting to kind of try to build capacity, rebuild capacity and start to kind of continue partnerships yeartoear so that

047the team teaching can grow and get stronger. And then we have the para supported sections um we've implemented um at high school and middle school um and uh one system and then a different system in elementary school um for paras for collecting data on par usage in the classrooms um because a lot of times the special ed teacher is not in present in the classroom when the parents are providing those structured supports. So, we've kind of streamlined our process for not only getting the data on like uh individual students to be used for scoring IEP goals and objectives and and the actual data on the students objectives, but also data on how um how much the PARs are being utilized and um whether students are ready to move up out of Paris supportive classes. As

048I kind of said earlier, that's always our goal is to move towards a a less supportive um structure and move closer to general education about Paris. >> Yeah. So, to kind of take a little to the left and then we'll come back. Um you know, I know there's concern about some of the uh shortages that we have for our PAR educators. This was a letter that went out to districts from um the Bureau of Special Education um on September 5th that really just kind of highlights that there is shortages. they understand that, you know, services could be interrupted. As you could see it here, there's also a link to the foot letter for for those of you who want to um you know, look at that. But I think, you know, kind of as an

049extension to that last bullet that Michelle was talking about what u myself, Michelle, and Dr. Sherto started um last year, met with a circ. We wanted to kind of get ahead of how our par educators are being used. Um so we've developed, revised and implemented a clear data collection system for um our building level staff to take a look at when they are feeling the point of a student needs some additional paras to the point where it could be adult supported in a general classroom or to most restrictive as a onetoone myself. um all of our administrators would have um a piece of that process and we're also just kind of continuing and having teachers really be mindful and methodical of when a a pair of educator is needed what does that really look like

050and our general ed teachers are also becoming part of that process because again students always start as a as a general ed student potentially can go down to the curriculum u but you know overall we want to make sure we're promoting independence however we we definitely have a need for pared educators Um, so when we are looking to staff our buildings, there's a lot of collaboration amongst myself, Michelle, and Jessica, and our building administrators. Um, Becky Fairbain, I don't think she gets enough credit for our human resources director. She does everything she can to get the word out, recruitment. Um, she's been great as far as even working with Carrie on the professional development for retention. So, not only to recruit, but to retain our paras. um you know the PD we had with them

051on Friday um a couple weeks ago you know I was hearing lots of positives you know so it's it's also trying to arm them with the tools and our parent educators as well don't get enough credit they know talk about what's on the ground onetoone with student or in a classroom and they're helping a variety of things and they're taking information from a lot of folks whether it's the general ed teacher special ed teacher an occupational therapist who's like hey I only see your child once a week reinforce this skill or the speech pathologist the the physical therapists, our BCBA. So, they're getting a lot of information and helping um reinforce that from week to week. So, you know, we are very fortunate a lot of times to have subs that will be able to

052cover um sometimes our buildings will have certain subs that they utilize more so for PAR educators. So, there's some consistency um and there's some openings, but then also, you know, we do have to prioritize sometimes. First, it's the safety of the students depending on their needs. It's also that, you know, her supervision, basic access to, uh, the building to ensure accessibility. And then our special ed teachers will also, you know, kind of pitch in. You know, they may have to adjust their schedule. Sometimes if it's a push in or pull in model, they'll they'll flex with that as well. Um, if we needed to do a sharing with a onetoone if it's in the same class, again, it's making sure safety and supervision is there. You know, what does that look like? And lots of

053communication with our building level staff. And we've had to, you know, communicate with parents as well. we've had changes and different things that have happened because we know that you know students rely on these you know individuals and so like I said excellent people make a huge difference in the lives of our students u but that's kind of where we are as far as um where we have these open positions and if we can fill them all we would do it and we are just constantly constantly working >> a quick question do we carve out time specifically for the paras to work with coaches as well >> I don't know if they necessarily work with coach but they have time during those wrap times to work with their case managers. They'll also work with their

054grade level teachers so that they know when they're in a classroom, you know, what might be expected of them. Um, you know, how much support to give, what does that lesson look like, and what's their role in that lesson. >> When I first came to this region, I was so impressed and taken by the fact that our paras actually have um contractual hours outside of the student school day. any district that I worked in or worked with previously, the paras work the school day hours same as the kids. Our paras actually have a half hour contractual time that's linked into our wrap time. So that time is so valuable for the paras and for special education teams. We also use it for training data meetings with paras. Um that's completely invaluable time to have them

055um have that wrap time. It's not as long as the teacher back time, but that half hour is is really well used. >> At both of our middle schools, um they really work very very closely because you could have, you know, we try our best to keep Paris in a grade level, but it's not uncommon they could be in an eighth grade science and a sixth grade math just the way the bell schedule works. Um so the case manager will meet with them during wrap time. um our middle school CLP program at Roshambo. We're working and we have meetings just about every other weekend. We invite the parent educators that are part of that program so that they could hear they have some input. What are strategies look like? How can we help them? So

056we definitely again want to make sure they're part of that process so that because again they're the ones sometimes they're going to be delivering that reinforcement support. All new learning comes from certified staff but that reinforcement is coming from them. So you know we definitely want to make sure they have the tools as well. So going back to my little pyramid I was talking about before just continuing up the kind of continuum is our essentials and small group classes. We've talked a lot about that throughout the presentation about the curriculum work and the alignment to the general education curriculum to allow for the back and forth movement. Um we talked about materials of vocabulary included um within that model is also the that multiensory u instructional approach. So that's where John was talking earlier about

057how we're trying to build capacity inhouse for um our Wilson or Gillingham language live transmath all those kind of extended trainings um as Don said beyond kind of what they get in their teacher preparation program. Uh so we're trying to build capacity each year. You know, we're sending more and more students to I more and more teachers to thosemies to kind of get those certifications, get those trainings. Uh and that's allowing us to try and cut down on some of the consultant um pieces that we have coming in to be able to to meet those needs in house. Um and then we have our collaborative learning programs, our rooms, and our learning center programs. and those are are students who have the highest needs and those are usually the lowest ratio uh staff to student

058ratio classrooms um allowing for more customization more goal based approach um those are often students who are several grade levels below um their peers. So it's more of a goals and objectives based rather than being so tightly aligned to the curriculum as we try to do in our essentials classes. Um and those are that's where you're seeing a lot more of the service hours are with those students uh coming to OTP BCBA and all of the uh and counseling and all of those pieces more tightly connected to those and then of course beyond that is our our district students um which Dr. Shadow will touch on more in her presentation. >> So one of our hopes is that through this presentation you will see how the budget allows us to be a cohesive district. Um

059you'll see that through preschool who um when they graduate from high school um our students get an education and instruction through instructional practices that matter. You'll see that the budget helps support and build to exactly what portion of learner says allows our students to communicate. It allows them to be ethical contributors. It allows them to be productive citizens in our society and that's built through all of the budget things which occurred tonight. Um, one of the pieces that I'll close with that also impacts multiple schools. Um, we have a current6 math position, uh, that came at the end of the school year last year, um, it was a total of 62 students that we had to disperse, uh, based on the three sections of that person who retired. Uh, we were able to fortunately do

060that, um, because of largely the declining enrollment that has happened over a process of the past five to six years. Um, as a result, we were able to move those students into the same classes they had. we were able to support them. Uh but we did hold a position in case we did have see the need to um fill that position um throughout the course of this year. We do not believe that we are going to need to. We did kind of u we have seen some of our registration numbers. We we feel that we're going to be in an okay spot to be able to reallocate that to a social worker position. U we have currently a 6 social worker at Rock High School. Um that same social worker is split over the two

061middle schools. Um what we are asking is to reallocate that 6 math position into a full-time social worker at Arre High School and then have one social worker that goes between the middle schools. Dr. Shredder will talk a little bit more next week in two weeks uh about the role specifically social work will play from more of a district lens. I'll speak to the high school. Um we have seen an increase of need for social work uh here at the high school. Uh over the process of the past two years our numbers have doubled. um in what students and the case load that our social worker has seen. Um we also coming out of COVID um we had two teachers who retired that were fortunate enough to bring back um on a tutor type structure

062where we call them student support leaison but what they've been doing is working with students from an intervention mindset on attendance on executive functioning on things that um high school students really struggle with doing. Um, and so what we found out of COVID, uh, one, nobody wanted to go to school anymore. And two, um, I'm not sure if you're aware, but if you've looked at any of your high schoolers backpacks, organization is not, um, really a specialty of teenagers in most cases. Um, we also after co have moved much more to an electronic world. And so while if you think about that backpack full of papers and full of stuff, um, imagine their Google Drive the same way. Imagine their emails the same way. Email is a way that no matter where our students are

063going, whether it be trade, whether it be the military, whether it be a four-year university, they do need to know how to use email. They need to know how to organize email. They need to know how to reply in an email. Um they need to be able to navigate managing their classes in those pieces. So when we look at what a social worker will do, those support leaison have done a great job working with ninth and tth grade students on some of those things I just talked about. the social worker who has already had an increased case load here would be able to take over some of those responsibilities as well so that those two tutors would not be here. That's where the it's an FDA net neutral. We are not adding an actual um

064FTE but it does allow us to reallocate our resources so the intervention um is able to be provided to our students through that social worker. um a challenge that you have at the high school. We don't have coaches and and that's intentional because the high school curriculum is just very diverse. You you go from algebra one to AP calculus, you're teaching AP physics and you're teaching culinary, you're teaching a wide array of things. So the benefit we have is that all of the instruction that has occurred before the students got to us through coaches, through the models that you've heard through those data teams, through the elementary PE teacher teaching multiplication in in a in a PE class. All of that by the time they get to us, they now need to know how to

065store all of that. They need those executive functioning skills that a social worker for those students who are struggling that a social worker can help them focus on. They need that. They need those skills. So that a lot of our students who are missing school or not attending school, it often doesn't start with them just not wanting to be here. It starts with them feeling like they're drowning. It starts with them feeling like they can't keep up. And unfortunately that transition from 8th to 9th grade is when we see that you see that jump in education that it becomes really hard for the student to keep up. So they start missing school because that's the natural thing. You start to run away from the problem. social worker helps them get back on that path, get

066them back into class with an organized notebook, with an organized um life so that they can focus a little bit better and actually be able to maintain and not feel like they're drowning. >> And the only thing I would say to that is we'll talk more about the social worker as it applies districtwide because having two social workers uh prek12 versus three as Dr. Sho uh presents in two weeks. We'll talk about kind of wraparound family services uh the increasing needs uh of our society in general that impacts us here. Um as you heard tonight or what I hope you heard tonight is uh when you look at the budget bill and you look at individual and don't know that they capture the work that's happening. The true cost of our schools is not in

067what we would say control of the lines, the the $3,000 in software increase or those small individual lines. Most of it falls into those staffing lines which represent about 70% overall budget. So what we talk about like what's in this budget, people are in this budget. Teachers are in this budget. Uh parent educators are in this budget. What we tried to do tonight was give you a comprehensive idea of how those resources are being applied and how they impact students. Um so that you had um and we had a record publicly of uh what the the fewest lines that represent the largest dollars actually get spent on. And so with that question >> thank you very much everyone for your presentation. Appreciate it. Anyone have questions? >> Okay. Thank you. We have some questions. So

068two questions. One and just we just talked about it just the last slide it talks about the social worker and it just mentions a significant surge in tier two and tier three and then Dr. That's what I heard you talking about. Seems like it could be anybody that or is it >> talking about that? Um, sorry. Go >> ahead. Are you finding that tier two and tier three students are more likely to have those? >> Yes, >> those same students. >> Um, so is it? >> And then my other question is, um, so I was thinking, um, I guess specifically well about uh Mr. Ro talking about like the people coming together for the data meetings and so you have to be prepared with um to know your students and that be able to talk

069about the data have the data. So two questions is the if you're getting tier one or tier one plus like is that they use the word label but is that like a label that when you see a student's name like when you talk about that the student you go like oh like he's he or she is already getting some sort of tier tier one plus intervention or or not like how does that I don't necessarily of course it's different from all schools but I don't necessarily think that we're labeling the student or labeling the so you have a student struggling math really trying to drill down what specifically what specific struggles are you having and then what strategies are we going to put into place to meet those needs. And in terms of as we

070think of tier one, tier two and tier three at the elementary level, tier one is that general classroom instruction that everybody's getting. So every single student is tier one. And then tier two is instruction above and beyond that general classroom instruction. And what it looks like at the elementary level is we have the tutors that we've talked about. And tutors might see students two times a week for 30 minutes. And tier three is the most intensive support. So we not only get tier one in the classroom, you also get tier three supports from our directly from our interventions theoretically and most skilled person in terms of diagnosing those needs. >> Sure. So tier one is just kind of a description of sort of the process. It's not really the core instruction that every child in

071the classroom is getting. And when we think about tier one plus, I guess kind of a framework, tier one plus is students in that tier one instruction, they're not necessarily getting tier two. They're not working directly with tutors, but there are kids that we have some concerns about and what additional supports can be put into place to help them be successful in the regular classroom. >> And so kids that you have concerns about would come out, you're having the data meeting and you you're talking about 15 kids, but one kid you have concerns, someone has concerns about. So then you will discuss how you're going to address that. >> Exactly. >> And then at some point, I'm assuming there'll be other assessments and maybe someday you'll just be like, you know, this this student is

072now sort of I guess, you know, caught up to his Peterson and that's that's that sort of official moving in and out of some sort of >> I mean it's different in terms of math and reading. So reading we think of as more linear that if you're struggling through reading it's not in math you might be struggling with the time unit or the measurement unit but then we get to the next unit on geometry and you're soaring. So your needs are different where reading we really want to catch you back up to reading at grade level. So that's a little bit less smooth than maybe the math. >> And then final part is so you're at the data meeting and you're talking about different students. Um it's tier one is everybody. I understand like you

073could have special ed there and um counselors or you know everyone. Um if a student is already getting tier 2 and tier three like how does that does that kind of come up in those meetings or is that sort of kind of dealt with separately? >> No no it's it's all together. The interventionist is the one that leads the tier two and tier three instruction. the interventionist needs are to get a team meeting. So any student that's receiving tier 2 supports or tier three supports that's part of the instruction that our classroom teachers need to be dialed into that. It can't be something separate that you're leaving my classroom for 30 minutes to get support and I don't know what you're working on. I I have to know what you're working on so I can

074reinforce. >> Okay. So so the interventionist is there. You're talking about students A through Z. The interventionists should usually be like, "Oh, you know, students A and B, you know, we have to have this extra focus or extra strategies." >> You know, in most cases, the interventionist is leading a charge on data. So, while teachers are talking, they're pulling up data. They're they're talking about strategies and they're also leazison between the tutors and the teachers because um different from the PAR educators where they have the the wrap time to be in the building. Our tutors only work during this school day. So they're not available to come to those meetings. So the interventions plays a key role in translating that information to the tutors in terms of actionable steps and what t needs to be

075part. It's an impressive process really. um our interventions has doing great work. >> Thank you. >> Tom, >> thank you all for coming out spend some time with us and giving us this presentation. Um I was interested to see the section on data collection uh tonight and uh I wanted to deepen my understanding of it. I think uh it's pretty straightforward when we're talking about like say state assessments how that would be an input for edgy climber and how you might use that data. Could you talk a little bit more about the other types of data you collect beyond formal and and state assessments and how you use that new tool? >> So I I can give you an example. Um so running records would be one that we um have set up in Edge

076Climber. And so um the way it's set up is teachers can go in and actually enter the level that students are in. And so it's it's a click of a button um to enter that. And then um once you're done, it'll display it in a graph and it'll show you um um in either bar graph like how many students are at each of the levels or you can actually pull it up in a da they call it a data wall where it just will show each child's name and then the level right next to it. So if you just wanted kind of like a like a spreadsheet version, you could do that. Um so that's something that's in there. Another thing that um our data manager has worked with um the our math coaches on

077is how do they want the end of the unit math assessments displayed like that data because right now um what we have is anytime a student takes like an IM um assessment they have a cover sheet and that cover sheet will say which of these questions pertain to which standard and so then um what we do is we talk about like are they progressing towards that standard do they meet that standard so there's there's a cover sheet So we've taken that cover sheet and we we've um put that into Edge Climber so you could see if the student is progressing towards that standard. So it's standard specific or if they met that standard. And so again you can click on different um different like displays of that. So you could see it in like a

078spreadsheet sort of thing or you can take a look at it in a bar graph and it'll show you what percent of your class um either is either progressing or meeting or you know maybe needs a little bit more support and isn't there yet. So, um, we've been working on that. Another cool thing that, um, hopefully I can show you next week in, um, in PNC is the effectiveness. And so, there's a tool in Edge Climber that if it's an assessment that's taken multiple times, it will show you from one administration to another administration, each child, and where they were to begin with, and where they ended up in that second administration. So you can take a look for example like NWBA where they were um last spring and you can look at it for

079the when we took it in the winter and see if there's been an increase for each student or a decrease. And so um you can compare that data where before it was very cumbersome to have to go look in the data platform to either see that or through like Google Sheets to see where all all of that lived. And so, um, right now, like I said before, we're looking, um, at working with like our middle school coaches to say, so what information do we have like end of the unit assessments or, um, running records? How do you want that to look in there? And what could what can we do? Do we want it at the standards level? Do we want it at either a progressing level and meeting level? So, that's the conversation we're

080having right now. What's the best way to display that information so it is useful for teachers, for administrators, >> and you could also that uh academic performance data out coupled with attendance data. So number of students who have you know 14 absences in a school year or scoring between this band it's very quick to tease out that information. So we layer in kind of like the social emotional piece as well with attendance data discipline data um kind of mirror and kind of marry that to the academic performance. >> Yeah, it's really great. you can like put on like you could say um students that were below um proficient in in ESPback, students that missed 20 days of school, students that were below like the last math assessment and it will narrow down um to those

081students that fit like all of those descriptors. At the high school level, you can also help to predict um level the the correct level for a student in math or in English and making sure that they're progressing and being challenged to be at the most appropriate level uh based on that math and those English scores. And then again adding in what Michael is talking about with attendance and you know is the is the issue attendance? Is the is it really not a math issue? Is there other other issues there? and teasing out that data does is a good tool to be able to do that a lot quicker than like Harry was saying trying to jump between Google Sheets to Power to this to that. It's all right there and so you tease that out

082a lot lot easier. So follow question um other than say data we're integrating from other systems like attendance data um if I'm looking at say elementary level what would I expect in terms of like the quantity of data points that we collect in a given year >> have a lot so kind of like high stakes data know we're looking at like our end assessments kind of like that larger scale is three times a year. Um that fluency assessment we have been conducting three times a year. Um but then if you're drilling down further um the running records like Krie was mentioning that's happening minimally three times a year that we're you know have windows but then teachers are also encouraged to do progress monitoring running records throughout the classroom. So that really deeply um with

083our UFly assessments there's progress monitoring that's happening throughout. So, you know, could be every week, every couple of weeks that that progress monitoring is happening after x amount of lessons that are being done. Um, if you're in kindergarten, you're doing letter identification assessments, you're doing concepts of print assessments. Um, you are doing um that's just an ELA. Then you have math, you have ended unit assessments, you have pull downs that you're doing. Um, you have, you know, assessments that you're also doing within small group instruction. So if there are a child who's received like tier one plus instruction or tier two, tier three, there's also weekly progress monitoring that's happening and those are kind of like those little mini assessments that are happening to make sure that the students are making progress. So lots some

084of that automated or is automated I should say. So like for example like NWA automatically pulls into Edric ECCBM um GI our data warehouse manager has set it up so it will automatically do it like that takes work on the back end to to do that. um the UFly like she she could set it up so it goes to that project read platform that I talked about and automatically can pull in the information. So right now what's in educ um is the for at the elementary level is the end of the unit assessment um information um there's the running records listed in there and then um the out the kindergarten um assessment where it is like letter letter ID and things like that that um that would be entered and so some of the things

085we talked about was um there are windows for that for example like the letter letter ID like we do it at the beginning of the school year like how many letters does a the gardener know that we do it mid year that we do it at the end of the year and so the coaches work together to say what's a reason based on you fly because that's teaching them the letters what is reasonable by October and so um and you know teachers can enter but as as we move through the school year if if kids know 18 letters in October but then in um November know 19 and and teachers want to go add that they could still go add that so we we haven't put in every single assessment um it really is a

086conversation with the coaches about like what do we want to capture in there that teachers would have to enter um in order to give information that is usable for those data and so oh go ahead go ahead yeah >> and then there are things that don't make it into educ because there's not enough room for it and we call that street data or granular data so a students writing their book where the teacher sidles up to them every day or at least once a week to say show me what you're working We're working on transition. Show them what that looks like. Let me let's try it out right now. I want you to try this. Great. I'll come back to you in, you know, 10 minutes or tomorrow. We're going to check on that. They're

087reading notebooks, whether stop and jot, whether it's inferential text, whether it's fiction text, and they're making note of what they're doing. The teacher comes over conference with you for two, five minutes. What are you working on? What's my teaching point? Let me give you a compliment and I'm going to have a clipboard with your name on it. I'll take a few notes and I'll come back to you later on. those granular straight data that you can't get that in edge climber. It would take forever. So those data also are brought with teachers to these meetings to say here's what it really looks like from that satellite to the middle level on edge climber all the way down to that grand writing notebook from today. The only piece I want to weigh in two two things.

088I don't know where your question was like driven from, but you know, we have a lot of conversation around assessment data and around how we know our students. Um, and a lot of the data that that Perry talks about is data that we were collecting in some way, the the spreadsheets people were presented. Now we have a more efficient way to do it. Um, but kind of on a more global there's this conversation about whether or not we over assess students. And so when we hear assessments, some of the assessments that especially at the elementary and kind, you know, it's a a 14- second assessment of, you know, you're six and do you know five letters or do you know this sound? We call them assessments. Dr. Pet and I are having this conversation with

089the State Department right now because they're trying to calibrate how many assessments we get. Well, when you're five and you're learning phonics and you learn three letters a week or two letters a week and like there's this it's more of an iterative data process and I feel like the word assessment becomes very polarizing and so I just again I don't I know that we have an audience of of tens of thousands and I don't want them to that's our community and and I think that when you hear the word assessment people bring some some u of their own understanding of what that word means and so trying to calibrate. Our teachers are when you walk in my classroom in the morning and I say good morning to you, there's an assessment on how you're doing

090as an individual and whether or not you got off the bus happy. So, there is this iterative process. That's that street data piece that Mr. Warwick was talking about of teachers just walking down the hallway and talking to students. We're assessing how are they? Do they feel like they're part of our school? Uh we don't always capture some of that, but um we uh what uh Dr. Jones was talking about before about kind of our social workers and how we know who our students are. We are trying to make sure that when our interventionists sit at a meeting with our teachers and we're talking about that tier one student that kind of Steve was talking about before that we know who they are as a child with all these data points. And so like we

091have lots of assessments that we try to capture but it's really about how we understand who our students are as learners. Um, and uh, you know, I think there's a lot of conversation about overassessing students and sometimes there's tension between how do you know who your student is and what's an appropriate level. And so I just want to >> I want to leave it lingering out. Again, I don't know where you're going, but I just want to make sure that >> Okay. I just want to make sure >> that's been the conversation with interventions principles um you know and all the administrators with with Tiani our data warehouse manager to say like >> what data should be in there like an exit ticket that you do every day for I am like we're going to

092put that in there like what data really needs to go in there to number one get to know make sure that we know this student number two like to be able to use that in the data team meeting not every single assessment with a big A or small A that we collect needs to be in that system, but like what are the ones that need to be in there to give a a complete picture of the student knowing that teachers still have to bring student work to the meetings because that's something that you know that could change like daily. So, um >> Carrie does a great job of working with us and with our coaches and interventionists to make sure, you know, we're not just collecting data to collect data, right? We whatever we're collecting,

093there's a point and a purpose to it. it is to to really drill it into our best work for our students. So, if we, you know, we had a conversation just the other day, you know, about a about an assessment that wasn't really working anymore and we had were able to have a conversation about it and like, okay, we're going to do this instead. So, it's it's a fluid process that we utilize um to make sure that we're making the best decisions. So, and the teachers have a have a role in that as well. So, I appreciate that you're all here. Um, and this hard work that happens in the region. We've actually had an opportunity to be in some of the schools recently with the school tour. So, we see a lot of the

094work that's happening. Um, whether it's the coaching or in the in the hallways, the cramped hallways, especially at GES, I saw, you know, kids working um whether it was with a parah or a teacher. I kind of want to jump on your analogy where you said that um if we during since it's budget season we're paying for the bus and we're putting the right people on the bus, you guys are the drivers or the wheels on the bus. I don't know, one or the other. Um, but I guess we're counting on all of you to make sure that everyone's getting on the bus and that that bus is reaching every student and that we can maximize student support and bridge that gap when they're struggling and help drive student success. So again, everybody on the

095bus and everybody reach every student. And I think that that's what we I would want to see versus Thank you. I think Heather was first. Yeah. Okay. He Heather and Sally. >> Um so I really um I really like this presentation. Thank you all for being here. I do think um having special education experts here as well. very I felt was very valuable and a very important through line uh that was uh I've often wondered and asked you know in principles of talking about you know implementation of programs and you know how does that trickle through or or when we hire supports that how does that um so this that part of the presentation is really valuable for me to to understand. So, thank you. >> Um I I wanted to pick up on something

096um that was mentioned a couple times um about the data that we're gathering and um you know particularly when you talking about um social worker on Dr. Um, we talked about overlaying maybe some of this more academic data that we're getting with kind of the social emotional picture and I wonder are we g is it just attendance that we're looking at? Is there other data that you know we're kind of um collecting or using to kind of get that kind of more full picture of a student? So I mean yeah from a summitive level a few times a year we actually have a social emotional survey that we all do which is based on the castle field of um social emotional um it's not competencies it's a framework and so every teacher kind of takes

097a survey on how their students are doing with their self-management self awareness ability to manage their emotions get along with friends those you know navigate troubling things all they're done in the fall and then if students pop out we have those conversations with the counselor and then right now actually Dr. Schroeder we're going through round two where we follow up with the students who were flagged in the fall. Now that's some of it that's that's really that's just a few times a year. I think Mr. Smith said it exceedingly well when he said every single day our teachers are checking in with our students. Some of our classrooms have mood figures. Students come in are you in the red? Feeling angry? Is your sister stepped on your toe? Are you in the blue? Is your

098parent to package favorite lunch. Are you in the green? Because you know today's gym, you're really happy. You know, so there are ways that that iterates within all of our schools every single day where we are checking in with the social emotional well-being of our students and we that's one of the reasons we have our school counselors at those data team meetings and a lot of us have school counselors that drop into our grade level meetings as well. How are things going? What are the challenging behaviors? Let's talk about that. are students being you know supported. Um an example in my own school we have quite a few students transit who come in from Waterburg or neighboring districts and some of them are not used to the the environment that we have here in region

09915 and it can be a little bit of a shell shock for them and so they they act out because they have maladaptive ways of adjusting to these perceived stressors right and all behavior is communication. So when that's happened in our school, the teacher comes in and they're immediately talking with myself, the counselor, the school psychologist. Child doesn't have an IEP, but they're just wondering what can I do? Where do you think this stems from? Where do we go from here? So there are constant through lines of communication whenever student represents any kind of, you know, again, just challenges with managing their behaviors. Does that answer your question? >> Thank you. our social workers, I'll just add also um when they case manage students, they're collecting qualitative data at all points. They're they're building that

100entire um student picture as they're meeting with that student as part of um it could be home visits, it could be um watching the students in the class and observing their behaviors. So observing behaviors in the cafeteria, things like that, similar to a psychologist, but more from a social work standpoint. Um attendance is one lever, but there are many different levers there. Um the high school is also working on a student intervention team structure that um is part of the ask. It's part of what we're working on right now. So it's not quite at the level of putting it on a slide yet that will also help us provide a little bit more um structure to that qualitative data collection. One of the other things that I get from the uh the hard data on

101the like the attendance data, it's not just telling us like, you know, did they show show up in school or not show up in school, but like at the high school level, I'm looking at, okay, how many times were they down in the counseling office? How many times are they down in the nurse's office? They're missing class because they're in the nurse's office. They're missing class because they're in the counseling office. Like those are factors that we consider when we're looking at the whole social emotional picture of the child, too. They may be in school every day, but are they in class every day? You know, those pieces. So, the attendance does break it down for us um more specifically. So, it's not just like, you know, present or not present like uh when we

102were kids. >> And even to that point, um at the high school, we have a digital hall pass um that now that all classes use and it allows us to um track when students leave the class, where are they going, how long are they out of class, um what are they doing when they're in class. And that brings in um even our security cameras and that being able to say, "Hey, where's the student going?" And if we're seeing every class during um the same time period, this student's leaving and they're taking laps, that's something that can go to the school counselor counselor can talk. What is it about 9:02 that you need to be welcome? So when we say attendance, to Michelle's point, um attendance is more than just what you might see from an

103absent present standpoint. the kid might be marked as present, but we're noticing that at 902 they're taking 13 minutes every single day and they're walking the hall. Um, now we're catching it, we're seeing it, but what is going on there? So, it's more than just um you need to go to class, why are you not going to class? So, the counselor then might need to elevate it to a social worker. They put in a social work um referral and then the social worker can dive more deeper into um that the quality of data that we're talking about. >> We're also tracking tracking a connectedness data point for students. Uh looking at how many of our students are engaged in activities above and beyond um school which is coming at you know 8:05 to 2:45. How

104many students are engaging in our music program? How how many students are engaging in our uh performing arts? How many students are engaging in various club activities? How many are participating um in our intercolastic sports and our intramurals? tracking that data to know how many kids are we reaching above beyond the their you know period day during the course of the week. Um and and are there areas that we're missing? Are are we seeing that we are not connecting to an audience of students and can we find opportunities to engage them through an activity? So, we're using as um the data as a as an opportunity to look at what ways can we further engage students into the culture of the middle school experience and it drives some of the work and decisions that we're

105making. That was part of the impetus why we brought a drama program back to the middle school um a couple of years ago because we felt that there was a niche of student that we were missing and we did not have a program offering to reach those students and that was the impetus for bringing that program back. So we're capturing a lot of data right now um to see how many of our middle school students are engaging in an activity either one, two, three during the course of the year above and beyond school. But being a school-based activity, >> another piece too, just thinking of our social workers, my experience kind of at that uh prek, mostly K8 level, and again, it's definitely not just, you know, for students with special needs, but the work

106they do with our families and our parents, like those they are such an important sounding board where yes, you know, our principles and our classroom teachers, we're approachable, we're engaging, but when you need to talk to someone that maybe you don't want to face every day, this is someone that is a trusted individual that they can call up, you know, just about any time and say, "Listen, I'm struggling with this with my child. I need services in the community. Where do I go? What do I where do I look?" You know, whether it is, you know, more complex systems of the Department of Disability or the Department of Health rehab services or just I'm new to the area and I'm really struggling to find a um pediatrician that takes my insurance. Like, that is such

107a huge piece that then eventually does get back to the students. But the work they do with families is it really is amazing. And that that because again you're when you're now talking to a parent, it's a lot more sensitive topics, especially when it gets into insurance and money and resources they have. Where can we go? That's someone that you know they can they don't necessarily see it drop off every day, but they know it's there versus, you know, the faces they see every day. is such a huge piece and that's kind of a qualitative data piece that our social workers are definitely recording you know of just their interactions with families their following up and you know what that presentation would look like in a couple weeks would kind of you know speak to

108the volume of what how important it is because the parents also need a support and the two you know social workers together they really are >> yeah so um I have two questions I'm actually the order because my second one kind of flows more from that. Um the uh the question is really about like who's looking at the data and first off thank you all the presentation I feel like it was really helpful to see that fine brain this is how it works you know this is how often the meetings are what how one leads to the next the next so thank you thank that that was very helpful um I was a little interested to hear kind of like uh K you mentioned something about um you know we're working on getting stuff in

109there for the middle school the high school some of the data and you know and then kind of like fleshing out how that will work I just um wondered if you give me a sense of like who's looking at the data in middle and high school. How does that, you know, not not necessarily like to get on the coaching model side? It is much of play there, but like who who's looking at it and what does data look like at those levels? Let's start with what are the main forums where we look at student work together at school planning. And so basically um you know for example at the purposeful planning meeting um there will be discussion around what are the assessments that we have coming up for the next unit and then what are

110we delivering that assessment. Let's then bring our results to the next plan after that and then take a look at student work and kind of lay that out across the table and actually really get into a granular view of work. So, so it's not so much the data meeting, it's kind of like that they have the elementary school, but it comes up with planning. >> It does. It does, but we also have meetings too. So, for example, um kind of more of what Chris described and what Michael described happens at our team level by at the grade level by team. >> And so, um at that meeting will be the PLA teacher, math teacher, social studies, science. Um if special education is able to join, they join guidance counselor as well as administration and then

111one of the interventionist ELA or math um depending because there share them across buildings. So, We'll go through that process for ELA for staff where we'll have them certify the student bring some data or go over the any sort of progress monitoring that they've been doing and then do the same process but another date for the map. >> Okay. >> Some data sorry that are in um uh edge of climber for middle school or the FIA which we'll talk about >> okay on Monday. So like that so that data um that you've been kind of highlighting like when those files would happen at the middle school back in ELA um that data is in there. So I can show you some of that on on Monday. >> In addition to that so the teachers are

112the ones who are really looking closely at the data because they're serving students who are right in front of them. instructional coaches and interventionists and administrators are routinely looking at the data from a from a an oversight standpoint and how do we need to lean in and push in at areas identify challenges that we're experiencing. How does that now drive me learning or conversations with individual departments. So that is happening very regularly. So it doesn't mean you just look at data when there's a meeting that's coming up. Teachers are craving that data when they get the students right in front of them to start the school year. How did the students do in terms of last year? Where am I picking up what pieces am I learning these students for the first time? I want

113to go to a dashboard that has information in front of me so I can help make decisions and then I'm also learning the student as they go. So as assessments are incorporated in their classroom, they're keeping track of their individual data regarding the students who >> the high school level. Um similar to purposial planning you have professional learning communities PLC's um every department is scheduled at the same time so that teachers can meet um at department or they can meet specific content areas um where you see the majority of the data structure is during that professional learning community time that is built in. So every five days five day rotation uh they meet three times so um within a fiveday rotation. So there is a lot of time for them to meet together to do

114lesson planning and things like that. But they also can review data. So I'll use an example of SAT data from last year's SAT. U it is tricky to use SAT data because it's a cohort data. Um but using SAT data this school year um our math teachers, our math department chair and our math instructional teacher leader met. They reviewed data to see which students were not um at or were not proficient on the SAT. um they had went as far as to look at actual student names, who were those students, um what math classes were they in last year, where were those units being tracked. So that's what where that's happening and they were able this year to take that data from College Board. Um what we are looking to do and started a little

115bit in English this year is um al tracking as far as back as the ninth grade PSAT. Now again, it is hard. They do not correlate. They're not direct correlations, but a lot of that of it for us is making sure the students are in the right course. So PSAT data for ninth grade and um for ninth grade can help us make sure that we have students in the right level similar to the data I was talking about earlier um with u with the other questions. Um so that PLC structure is really where they can dive into that data. Uh they can also look at attendance data for students, discipline data. Um, and then as I said before, our student intervention structure or team structure that is being developed currently will also give away a

116little bit more of a a similar model to the data team you're hearing there that'll be very focused on this student is struggling. what can we do to help the student with the counselor specific teachers administrator and potentially social work? And then my my second question is is um a little bit more negative, but I kind of want to acknowledge that I mean for me since I've been on the board that you know the big u budget question was the was the coaches was the math coaches and and and that was the you know and um and I understand that we're all we're all human beings and it takes a while to rule something out and implement it and get buy in. And so I really appreciate the kind of fine grain like this is

117kind of how we rolled it out and worked it. But I also know that there as I'm sitting here going wow that's a pot of work. you know, can I change this and tweak this and do that and that that there's an iterative process as more sort of implement that too. Um, I wonder if you could speak at all to any any of the challenges in terms of kind of getting buy in or or or even sort of staff assessing how it's going. Um, because I can imagine that's that's a big ask for teachers and for for for schools, you know, entire schools to kind of it's been transformation >> from from the early days of the coaches to to right now night and day. And I think My colleagues have spoken to this well

118that this idea early on was that if I needed coaching as a teacher something wrong >> and then and the model now was not that the model now is that the best you know in your sports analogies it could be anything but the best in the business have have coaching and I feel like coaching is so integrated with the world and I think our teachers would have a hard time thinking about what life be without the coaches like how how wonderful it is to have colleagues colleagues that we can talk about our next unit. We're colleagues that we can talk about the data. We're focusing specifically on that because as a as an elementary teacher reading, right, most science and you come together, we get to spend a half an hour, an hour, a full

119day with someone who specifically focuses on that, but is an expert sounding board. It's just been incredible. And they're they're part of everything we do. They're part of the data teams. They're part of great planning. that go into classrooms and work individually with teachers. They model lessons. I mean, they're just um such a part of what we're doing. It's been incredible. I think just such a difference from growing up to to what we're doing today. >> The coaches also encourage our our teachers, our professionals to be their best selves. So um you know on a lot of our teams we have veteran team members, brand new team members and our coaches also help to facilitate conversation amongst everyone at the table. Everybody has a voice and a value and I think that the coach does

120a great job when they're working maybe with a team to really pull out some of the um strengths of the team members in front of them and really differentiate for those um you know educators who might need some more support in this area or that area. So, it's really um you know a strength in numbers and really being um a leader and a facilitator of those conversations to make sure that everybody has a seat at the table and has a voice um and and feels empowered to make those decisions that are are best for the students in front of them. >> We're so excited. Oh, the idea that so we have coaches in each of the buildings. So it allows the effects across the buildings because the coaches are not a team within our building.

121They're a team amongst themselves with area central office and the conversations that they have and the amount of work that they do together ensures that there's equity across the buildings that we're on the same units that we're using the same instructional strategies using the same assessments. It's um it's a really powerful model that that we have and that's that's been built over years. It was just a few years ago we had one math book running around to four different buildings and to think we each have our own paths that really can impact the math instruction day where it was >> and that's exactly what I wanted to segue into because we want to thank the board for the patience. The math coaches are only a few years into this iteration of one for builders. Our

122math curriculum that you funded is IM is still new within just a few years. You fly at lower elementary is still new. We're only in the first within less than five years of these people, these programs. All these four resources that make an effective district are still newish to us and they're getting a huge amount of traction, but it does take time. So, we just want to thank you for that patience. Um, because good things are worth waiting for, you know. >> So, and I just wanted to say like the coaches, I think, really help grow the school, the district because they really do kind of this crosspollination because they're in with all the different grade level groups. So, they see what's working and they can see what's working in one grade level, bring it

123to another grade level, and then Carrie has the meetings where all the coaches come together and then they're sharing. So we're you're really kind of that through line and the interventionists too that help both grade levels, schools, and then the district, which is wonderful. >> And thank you. >> And the coaches are able to work in a in a school team also. So they're a part of our leadership team at our schools, our coaches, our interventionist, etc. And um just like where of us kind of talk with each other, you know, we kind of know what we're going to say to one another. the longer that our coaches are together in a team with our interventionists and ourselves, um we're able to really, you know, have a joint vision to move our work forward as

124well. So they they really get to know one another and support one another in their work and um it's really neat to have another coach in the building because you know they can work collaborative collaboratively with one another also. So the ELA coach can work with the um math coach, can work with the interventionist. It's like a nice triangulation of of teacher and educator support. Um, go ahead, John. Go ahead. >> Just real quick, Carrie, you can tell you're really excited about this state of work. >> So excited. >> So many other administrators. How about the teachers? >> Um, I I would say that they're really so excited that when we started to build something, um, and with the coaches, for example, I'll use records. we said like to go back and have to enter

125that data like nobody's gonna want to go enter the data. So when the coaches go enter the data next thing you know teachers were like oh no I want to go enter that data because I want it now and so that we were like wow that like teachers wanted to go in there and enter it so they could pull up all the different graphics and have that information right in their hands. So I think that I mean you guys probably answer this better than I can that the feedback that I have gotten is that teachers are really excited about that. I think part of our work is especially at like middle school is like which assessments do we want to put in there that would be those high leverage probably high school too that are

126like those high leverage that are going to give us um the information that we want because like we said before you're not going to put every little assessment that you do in there. So which are those ones that we're going to do? It will also bridge to the middle school next year which I think will be really exciting and like next year our current fifth graders are moving to sixth grade and the middle schools will be able to access all that data that's edge climber to really understand the incoming students as well. >> I think you understand how many spreadsheets that we had that you could do. It's so exciting. >> I think that's I think that's the too from the teacher perspective. There was a point in time where they had to ask permission

127for the data like how did my children do on X assessment and can someone else get that for me? I think what's different now is our teachers have the ability to access the data on their own to go in there and to do all of the reporting mechanisms that we've been talking about. They can do it at the classroom teacher level. So they're no longer waiting. They're no longer waiting to ask permission to get the data regarding certain things. They can lo in. they can see their students, they have the ability to tease out the different reports. Um, it is a learning curve right now because it's new for us. But the idea is no longer going to get information in 16 different places. The only other piece I would say so again I'll say

128that this is the fourth data warehouse I think that I've been part of building to say that on whatever today is March 4th we would have hand like data in the hand of teachers likeable data ne never before has it happened this fast I mean you're looking at like a two-year roll out process not a five month rollout process then the other huge difference all that data that we A lot of it, most of it wasn't predictive, it was reflected. And the shift now is we can start to look for patterns and trends before and and we can re react and intervene with students. uh I don't remember who asked the question here but you know the idea that we can build in social emotional data we can start to see trends in grades and

129patterns in student behavior and intervene before we're at crisis level uh is transformational and before it was you know we're trying to we have a student in crisis and we're going backwards and trying to figure out how they got here and now and we're not there yet the the dashboard piece of these are the students in front of you and you might not have known noticed that this student got the last three assessments and struggled on it because you have 120 students that you teach every day and now you're going to be able to get those trends and patterns and be able to support students. You know, we have at the high school level on track to graduation. We know that if you fail two classes and you fail English your sophomore year, you're already

130at risk of not graduating. and being able to get this data in a proactive way where we can help students before. I I think that that's some of the the change that's happening. And again, the fact that it's March and we're having this conversation, it's never happened in my career with the other dashboards and all of the work that all of these people and all of the people that are behind all of these people. Uh put in a story. >> Um I'm gonna take the next question. Um, I want to flesh out a little bit of what, um, Sally asked. Um, I appreciate that you are standing behind the work that is currently happening in your schools. Um, I appreciate that you're not saying that we need a new $500,000 program to fix, you know,

131to improve this area. Although honestly, if you said that you needed a $500,000 program, we'd have board members here, I'm sure, who would be supportive and fighting for that. That's what you said you wanted. Um, and you know, everything that you're saying sounds terrific. Um, and it sounds like all the right things. I'm a lawyer. I can't say you fly is better than whatever. Um, but it seems like you guys really believe in what's being uh the structures that are in place at school and I appreciate hearing that from you, but how do you know it's working? >> There's that's a great question. I think there's I mean all of us are in the classrooms regularly. I think If I were to think about, you know, one of the initiatives that spoke about in that

132with building classrooms, for example, and there's been an investment in professional development time to learn those strategies. I do see a progression among our teachers in terms of their adoption of those strategies. So, um, you probably heard about spaces and teachers utilizing those across classrooms. Um, we've gotten a lot of whiteboards for teachers to be able to do that. So, they can have stations around the rooms where their kids are then doing like math problems around the rooms. And, you know, kind of standing up and working is something that really does increase automatically naturally for kids, 13 year olds, 12 year olds, even for adults. I would say I think the next steps on that though, aside from, you know, just getting kicked up on their feet, would be um This is kind of where

133our next work is. Number one is deep breath in the classroom and then also what's called backing up the bus. So deep breath in the classroom meaning that the teacher um kind of removes themselves as always leaving to answers but rather facilitates conversation through study of examples that are on those spaces and the kids are kind of directly class that way. um backing up class is kind of where you start your lesson to somehow assess what you see on those visual white spaces. Make sure that you are um that everybody's with you before you jump into something real and that has a lot to do with the pace of instruction. So I do think that you know as we see sort of like these steps into that ground into that territory where teachers are becoming

134more comfortable taking those risks in their classrooms I do feel that that is qualitative evidence that things are working. But I think what I've heard also is that it does this about we do appreciate the time for the patience because a lot of what we ask our teachers to do is learning and so for that to become ingrained where it is um as how they just think about instruction and I think there are a lot of pieces that work to support that uh those initiatives of best for best practices and data So even our conversations around data um not a trajectory not all of our departments are in the same place with being f and I um we've tried a few different things for example um has decided that we want to make sure that

135the fab questions that we give are align action what we not do platform we're instead print it out break it apart and give it in a more actionable way so that we can then take those results and teach it but they find that process boosting and then they come back with the student work. So I think those things are progress and so it's more about our practices that are growing and evolving as well as the way we assess them in our own professional growth. I guess a question that I would also ask is what is what is the it that you are referencing? >> What is what is what is the it? So is it that how do we know that we're successful with students and providing them a high quality education? Is it uh

136students feeling connected and engaged in school? because it is a really it's a big two-letter word that in the sense of like let's how could it be all encompassing because there's a lot of practices a lot of initiatives that heard tonight that are really um targeting very specific things uh to try to to to to move the needle in a direction that we're we're capturing for students and providing that quality of experience in the classroom that they deserve this community deserves. Uh so um I look at our portrait of the learner and I think that's going to be a driving force for the work that we're going to be doing forward. How is that portraiture of a learner connect to every child in this district prek to 12 as they go? How does that impact

137their learning experience in the classroom looking forward? How are we providing experiences that get kids excited about learning um excited about coming to school? I shared before school should be like Disneyland. It's not, but it should be like that for for for students. And so, how do we how do we provide that experience for for students? And then how do we collectively measure the student growth and progress over time? I think tonight that's that's something where that I hope that you're hearing the efforts at least at this side of the table that we're taking to um to do our due diligence to intervene as necessary to support students who require that additional support. How do we communicate out with our teams and our staff and also engaging families in that conversation about where students may

138not be meeting with success and what's some of those additional things that we can do. So I think that is a big that's a big hit in terms of the work that that we have in front of us and I think um the work that we've talked about this evening is really targeting that Um, how do we measure that success? I think there's going to be incremental stopping points where we have to kind of stop, pause, assess, reassess, and identify the next course of action that we have to continue to achieve the goals. >> I think um I apologize uh that snow days and some uh difficulties got away from us in inviting board of education to see the senior year experience presentations today. Um I own that. we'll make sure that you're invited next

139year. Um, and it was it was just a mishap. So, I apologize for that. Um, but when you ask, um, that's immediately what I thought of. Um, I thought of a room full of 244 seniors today. U worked there. So, 244 minus 8 um seniors who were uh of all backgrounds. These are students who um in one case is going to the coloring institute of America next year. Uh these are students in in another case who are um going into train. These are students in other cases who are going to in one case an Ivy League school, one case a military academy and they're all standing side by side next to each other talking about what they did, talking about their project, talking about what they've learned. These are students that I guarantee you sat

140at, you know, Middleberry Elementary School and teachers worked with and they had no thought of like what that it would be. But that student was able to come through all of the years of education in region 15 and stand in there well-dressed, welcome and talk about a project or a job shadowing and use all of the portrait of a learner to show this is what they've done, this is what they've learned. So they might not have made it on one test. that at some point they might have struggled and if that was the one thing we captured then they might not have looked like it was successful but I can tell you listening to those presentations today you have students who we will have to push across the stage we do that every year that's

141normal at a high school level but they did get it today and they were successful today um you you look at the success in the presentations that they have what they're able to talk about um they did get it and it's through the pieces that come from an education 15. Um, so I I just want to add that into that. >> I do think the board may want to ask themselves how would you operationalize what it is? What is your definition of success? Is it portion of learners? Is it your mission statement? Is it quantifiable data or qualifiable data? So we can better answer that question. We'd love to answer it. But right now, we're giving you a lot of different examples. Another one is from elementary. And the example I'm going to give you

142is echoed throughout all seven of our schools. So last year in August, we at Long Meadow received our next generation accountability scores which are highly summitive and quantifiable and it wasn't where we had hoped we would have been after a year of hard work and all of our systems in place. We have new math coaches with a lot of different things. So we met as a leadership team and we identified particularly that group of students that are tagged by the state as the high need super group and those are students that fall within many categories. They're in special education. They get free and reduced lunch. They're an ML learner. And so we came up with an academic plan that involved all processes we've told you about tonight. And we worked explicitly with the coaches, with

143the interventionist, with the counselor, and we always had those students in the front of our heads. So our response was measured and appropriate and highly effective because we closed that gap this year with our next generation accountability results. And we're all doing that work in our schools. We're all analyzing from a very summitative data, you know, at the top with satellite all the way down to that street level data on what does success look like and how do we get our students there. So if you want to redefine the question and say I want it this way or this way, elementary middle can give you a more fleshed out answer, but I think that no matter what, we're going to give you a really good response for how we feel it is working K through

14412. >> Yeah. So, you know, to that point, you look at SAT data. Um, we all that our SAT scores are not where we want them to be. Um, we came out of COVID and our scores actually rebounded faster than most of our peers. They've been stagnant for the past few years. Um, and we own them. However, in that same amount of time, our AP scores, uh, we've increased the amount of students, uh, we've increased the amount of tests students are taking, and, um, we have a really high proficient rates, so three or higher. Um, exceptionally high compared to our peers. So, one of the things we did this year in those professional learning communities and in those conversations is really dive into College Board makes both assessments. So, what are we doing right in

145the AP classes that we maybe need to focus a little bit more on um in our more general math and English classes? Um, we also talked about that, Michelle talked about with our um, special education uh, class, our academic support classes where our special education teachers met with math and English teachers and looked at what how are we using question what stems or question steps are we using from the SAT similar to how we have been doing AP instruction. Um, it's a little bit more nuanced because it's across multiple levels of uh, classes. It's across multiple grades. But if we're doing it right here, how do we make sure we're doing it right here? And I'm I'm excited to see what happens um as we move forward that it does take patience. It does take

146time. Um but I am excited to um to see our staff really own that. Yeah, we we don't want our squares to be right there. Um how do we make sure all the same variables and all the same challenges we have, they have across the river at New Town High School. Um we we own our students here and we want that to improve. Um and so that's the the steps we are we're taking kind of similar to what Chris was saying we own where we are and we own that we want to be better and so um that's again continuation >> that's so I would just just add it is great to see everyone excited about data uh and just all the data pointing process to mention there at measure. Uh I think it though

147is is at least for me and at least in the sort of relative short term is is test scores like it just it just is test scores. Um uh I don't discount all the the other things that go on portion of the learner and all that but um if everything is aligned in terms of curriculum and instruction and um teaching like like to me that's how we know it is working because there's been such a huge effort. So that's what the it is to me. Um, I hope that you use data to um, I'm glad teachers are really excited. I'm sure in any organization there's still probably some people that are clinging to old ways or that just don't, you know, maybe aren't entering the data that you want them to enter like that that's

148not automated um, or that are resistant to receiving coaching. And I hope that um, you're able to reach them and use the data. you know, I guess the more data you have, you can go to them and say, you know, look at look at your specific data like can we help you like can you know and um so I hope I hope that's what's that to me is what what what it is at least at least for the time being. Um and then I just have my one other question was just jumping back to the social worker. Um is it so it's tier two and tier three um on that last slide is that uh does that mean it's mandated work because when I hear tier two >> it's not the same tier two and

149tier three that we're talking about. So it calls of like tier two and tier three is a little bit different than what we've been mentioning tier two and tier three academically. So yeah, not a tier. >> So it's not synonymous to like our tier two and tier three intervention. >> I was not synonymous social emotional. Can't believe there's more than I said. >> Um just >> they bring tears. Um thank that makes so much more sense. And then um in the past I think historically um like when we've added the elementary vice principal when we wanted to talk about adding more teachers to beef up the the way we could support the teaming model at RMS. I think of many other examples like we've looked at other districts to to say like look how we

150fare you know in terms of you know let's just say social worker to student ratio. Is that something maybe you could when you're a group chat call superintendent find out like >> it's 4 a.m. >> So when we do doc so so the the kind of needle that we're threaded is that the social work the the kind of quantitative data that you're looking for about comparisons and case loads and structures will come when Dr. Shetto correct because it's it's technically the social workers fall into her domain but the kind of nuance is that while Dr. Jo was here tonight the the reallocation of the position um in order to make it kind of staffing neutral and not add any cost. Uh so I wanted to not or omit the conversation but it is a little

151bit almost in reverse and that but yes so we'll have u some some data to kind of help understand that but if you had questions really about um the ability of the high school to manage the u I mean effectively it's an it's a reduction of a math teacher at the high school. Um and tonight you have Dr. Jones here. So, I just wanted to make sure that that was clear have that ability and then the next step and then it's kind of I guess reversed and be that it's will help justify where where that person's coming from and why and and why that's an ask um and a reallocation. Um I do think there's been a lot of conversation um in the community which is a a good one that if you look over

152the resources that we've added in the last six years staffing wise the vast majority of them that uh are related to social hospital supports for students uh for families whether they be ML teachers special education teachers social workers um I don't remember off the top of my head I know that Dr. has this in the presentation, but it wasn't that long ago that we had zero social workers in the district. And so, you know, the demands and shifts of our community even before CO uh were putting a lot more pressures on the district and and then since co that's um again co's a point in time. It's not an excuse, but I do think it exposed a lot of cracks in society and um I do think it's an inflection point that we can't go

153back to before. Like I think that fundamentally we're we're a different world. It's not even, you know, region 15. It's globally that we we think differently about things like social emotional supports and those executive function skills that allow people to be successful. So we'll have some of that data and how we've evolved over the last six or seven years um and why math instruction is important. We have enough um staff here to help support the math instruction. It's the the wraparound services that uh we're feeling additional pressures on. >> Can I just piggy back back on something, Steve, that you said about like it in the test scores. Um you know, there's a lot of student growth that you may never see in that test score. So, you know, I'm a firm believer in um

154looking at individualized students and group over time for those students. So we may have students who in third grade they started at a level one on the back assessment and they are, you know, working super hard and they're receiving that instruction and they make it to a level two, they're still not going to show up on that like beautiful proficiency number that we're all hoping for. But that doesn't mean that our students haven't grown and haven't, you know, received that amazing instruction and done the very best for them. So, I just want to kind of caution when we say like it is the test score. There's those test scores within that test score that may not ever show up in the newspaper or on that big number, but there are these beautiful case studies and

155stories that we can tell you that are inside of that number that we're so proud of. It just may not show up on that ultimate score. So, you know, I I think that that's a great continued conversation for us to have about really those celebrations within it that they just may not see, but their scores have really risen. There just might not be enough that anyone else Thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate you being here tonight. Yeah. So the the short answer for uh the athletics budget is there's only one increase in the athletics budget that is uh in fees and services uh professional services that is the 50,000 to offset that we talked about. Um, and so what you will get, um, I don't have for you tonight, but like comparison,

156mostly we pulled or almost finished pulling all of the data that we used, um, last January and February on those fe structures. Uh, the athletics budget is flat with the exception of of that line. And so, uh, we'll give you that and then you can be better prepared to to have a conversation going on. Um, it's funny like Mr. Martino and I have talked a little bit about things like uh pay to play and gate fees are almost like revenue structures. They're not necessarily an athletics. They don't fund the athletic budget. Um, they happen to um they're they're adjacent or connected to the athletic budget, but the paytoplay shows up in our revenue line. Um, and the uh gate piece we put in there just because we don't have any place to put so we

157fig give you a little more information before we dig into that athletic conversation. >> When will we get that? >> I hope that we will get it Friday when we send out your your u with bi-weekly alerts. We'll send it uh that data that we're >> so then like conceivably we'll talk about it >> when we with Dr. Sherto. >> Okay. um on that night. >> All right. So that's the 18th. >> Yeah. >> March 18th. So Rod's not here tonight, >> correct? >> Should we get rid of all fees or just some for the 50,000? >> So the 50,000 would get rid of um almost all of the fees that families have to pay to watch sports. Uh the one piece that the reason we say almost is that our um Friday night football

158games tend to attract really big crowds um which require like I would say a disproportionate amount of staff to manage security, safety um and so it becomes if we didn't if we absorbed all of that cost I think that number would grow quite quickly. um where I do and when we talk to families um it's you know the freshman field hockey game that you want to bring your your three nephews to to watch your your daughter play field hockey and it cost you $27 or $42 or whatever to get in like those are the fees that are disproportionate >> we only charge varsity levels um I did >> the four varsity exactly I did tell Josh I'd say if you have questions, I'm happy to answer them. Um, in lie of getting that information like

159as you're just kind of going through >> or if there's things that you want of us be more informed on that question. So, she had her hand. >> No, no, it's okay. I just want to make sure, right? Like that's not going to disproportionately affect football, right? Like if we're saying we're only doing it Friday night for football games, right? Aren't we ostracizing a group of people? Um versus saying like then the conversation becomes well I didn't have to do it for volleyball, right? But now I'm doing it for football. Like that doesn't seem fair. So I just want to make sure that we're treating like if we make a decision that we're treating our families equally so that we're not creating a conversation that necessarily doesn't need to happen. Right? If it's more like,

160okay, we're charging people from out of town or we're giving whatever the situation is. Just because they're attended more, doesn't mean that we should treat them differently. >> No, I think we we've had a lot Thank you for that because we've had a lot of conversation. Um, and the difference and what Dr. shows way too, but the difference of kind of that Friday night game is that it's more of an event than necessarily just I say just a sporting event, but it's different if we're playing on a Tuesday um or even on a Saturday somewhere. Like I feel like that Friday night attracts people that want something and it's no uh disrespect for our football team, but it's also an excuse to be out on a fall night and we attract a lot of students

161who want to be held with friends that it's not it's not just, you know, um again I'm slippery territory because I don't want to be disparaging to any any team, but there's something social about being out on the field on a Friday night, you know. Um, and and that's the piece that if we charge nothing, we have additional security staff there. We have additional pieces that aren't at other events because they're they're not they don't attract the same kinds of crowds. Um, and so when we talk about how do we at least foray into this um we're not hiring three different um security officers for the um field, >> you know, or even the right has a limited amount of people that can come based on the stands that we have. So like this the

162size of the event is really large and takes a lot more resources and that's where we're not jacking up the prices because we're trying to make a profit off that we're we're break even. We just use the proceeds from that event to offset the cost to run that event. Um and that's kind of why I don't know if I missed anything you want to add there. >> I just want to clarify something. The 50,000 includes football for Pump Rock High School staff that run the game. It is that's all sports. To Josh's point, we hire four police officers for all five home games. Four police officers are not at any other contest for anything. Um because of the size. So when you have an event with that many people and I love it. I love

163being here. I'm here at every home game. It's awesome to have it. You have four police officers that are getting paid overtime that comes out. That's what's not included in there. The the gate fees that pay for your ticket takers and all of those pieces. that is that that's still included in 50,000 including football. So because to your point, we wanted to include football the same as every other sport. However, and that's where we said the almost because it's not really confirmed yet. Like we're not saying this is exactly what it has to be. This is the conversation. We'll provide you the data. The difference is no other sport requires four police officers. Uh boys basketball, we do have one police officer for a lot of the games, but still not even all. And that's

164really um the South Berry Police rightfully so. you know, if you have a c a crowd a certain size, they want to make sure that officers are here. Um, you also have EMT service or yeah, EMT services, an ambulance um at the gates. Um, those are things that not every sport has. Um, and so the 50,000 includes football for gatekeepers, for the clock, for all of those pieces. Um, it doesn't include an act for police officers. And again, to Josh's point, we um have our own security there as well. uh because the the South Bay police are here to monitor the event. They're not here direct traffic. If you've ever been here for a Friday night football game, um there's a lot of traffic and um fortunately um with Mr. Martino's help, our parking lot

165is a lot brighter now. Um but it that turning point right there can be really unsafe. We hire our own um security guards to come and work as well. So, it's just the nature of football is just a different kind of event. But to your point, the the staffing that we have for across all sports, football is included in that 50,000. That is the number, that's the amount we pay on primary high school staff to come and run the clock to uh take tickets. You still, even if you're not charging for tickets, you had to have someone at the gate to monitor who's coming in and out. Um I'll give that an example. Um if if we did not have someone at the door for a volleyball game earlier this year, um a dog would

166have come in. Um this dog is not a service dog. this was just a pet. Um, and so you do have to have some supervision of the game. Um, in basketball, we now have a shot clock that is required by the CIC. Someone has to run it. You have a clock, an adult has to run it. Um, you you have a book, an adult has to do it. So, all of those pieces still have to you have a clock and um you have people that have to manage those things. So, to your point, I completely agree. We we had that conversation myself and um Mike Murphy when um he runs a lot of these things for us and um is an amazing human being. I just put that out there. But um he um he

167and I had that conversation about being very intentional about making sure football was included and that the piece that Josh is talking about is 100% accurate is all the other pieces that we don't do for any other sport. Um and I as part of that I can run those numbers that we can look at it and I can give that information to Josh as part of that. I think it's just about messaging, right? Because when so I when you say things like we need a police officer, I hear me also needs a police officer when they have open house, right? They need it when they have uh concerts, right? Right. There's other schools that have similar type events, right? So just want to make sure the messaging is clear because if we say it's for

168police officers, then why is like MEES or MMS, right? They officers at their concerts, right? like is how is that kind of transitioning and translating from the message perspective? Um because as a parent rather than putting my parent hat on, you say things like that other schools have it and they're not charging. So just >> Yeah. No, it's a fair point. Um and again when I'm saying for police officers, I'm not meaning for like F. I'm meaning Fur for police officers. And there's no other event um other than graduation. There is no other event that we have multiple police officers at. Um, but it's a very valid point and I can get the numbers of how much money we spend on it and >> I think it's just part of and then like how we

169message that like we make that decision. >> Yes. >> Right. It it seems right a little discriminatory, right? Like just right like as kind of those pieces and we use some of those pieces. I get it. There's four police officers, right? Maybe that becomes the component, right? It's because there's more than one police officer. But I think we just have to make that message clear to the community and to the parents in that. >> Listen, just to be clear, yeah, >> we put it in there as a placeholder so that you could have a conversation about it. Um, and you know, we took some liberty. We talked a lot about fees last year. We did u a few years ago we talked about parking fees, right? And we over time we started with one number

170and we reduced it I think over three or four years. We reduced parking each year a little bit. So our fee approach was a little bit the same in that this doesn't include all fees in there but it was a starting point for a conversation. Um and as a board you can say this isn't the year we want to continue to to have the conversation and put the fees back in easy. we can reduce that that one line in the which is why we're it's deep in the conversation tonight is in the athletics budget. Um and the same thing with pay to play in the revenue line of your budget. You'll see a dollar amount for paytoplay that that's a slider that you can decide you know we haven't in a lot of years we

171want to move it up or that's not it's it's not a it's not a driver from 180,000 in collections to 220,000 in collections. You know it doesn't change the budget number. It might change how people feel. might send a message like there's there's reasons to do it that aren't financial or you know I'm not suggest whatever you guys want to do with it that is something that you know really the entire budget at this point is proposed our job is to to listen and answer your questions and and give you what you need to make every decision question is it only Friday night games or all that resources >> because you you anticipating >> but most but to Sharon's point and and to Josh's point we can provide you the numbers and that same information

172given that like if you want to cover that cover I mean that's all this is a starting point because the conversation last year that I sat in at finance and everything and talked about fees um and listening to the high school PTO and talking about you know going to games and things like that um when you start comparing we compared other schools across the state. Um trying to get down to are they out of town or in town is almost impossible to manage. Um it it's it's really difficult. Also, if grandom lives out of town and comes, is she out of town or in like those pieces got really difficult. Um there are some districts that try to do games that again after like a seven. Um but I think to your point that's discriminatory

173against certain sports. Um, and so we felt like the best thing to do was to give the board the information. This is how much it costs. Um, and then go from there. Um, so, uh, that's I can absolutely provide the numbers on how much we spend on police and ambulance for football and, um, and give that to Joe. >> Just I think you had put together a you had had done some semiformal comparison with other districts. Great to see >> that was from last year's. So I'm trying to update what you had last I think it was January. Um >> I had to go listen to that again maybe at double speed because the only thing I remember that I think we agreed on was that middle school otherwise I think we talked for like

174two hours. I don't know what we came to conclusion to and I don't I don't want to have another tour conversation. So >> So it's to revisit it after two we got to revisit. I remember the one thing I support. That's it. I mean this exactly raising my hand. So for me the whole standing was middle school. So if we can have that >> middle school play. >> Um so if we can have that analysis if we're looking at something to include in this budget. >> So we'll update that. I don't know like how we'll work to see how much data. We did a lot of work to get some of that middle school data. >> Yeah. Sure. Uh but we can at least give you like this is how much it costs and basically

175you know if you were to reduce them eliminate them kind of what the the cost impact is >> um and then you can decide you know however you want to manage it. Do you want to up somewhere else to make the cause neutral or is it not a big number like whatever you want to do we'll give you that that data. >> Where do we charge data play now? >> $150 per >> for every sport >> for everything across the board. But I think the middle school discrepancy is right. So like my son does jazz band so it's only once um a week and sometimes it's not every once a week. That's the same cost as someone at the high school getting five or six days of extra instruction staying after school doing all of

176these things. Like I think the middle school they pay but they get a lot less >> for the dollar. >> So it's like so to join the jazz band at the high school it's another $150. That's >> so advent at the high school a little different. >> Okay. >> Different middle school. >> Well, because at the high school it's connected to a class. So there's no fee. It's tied to a class. In the middle school those music events are seen as extracurriculars. Um and my understanding this uh we inherited this structure um based on the I don't remember what years 2013 2014 those zer were put in um actually ironically to create equity and that if you wanted to do something extra in the district you needed to buy into it. And so um they

177tried to tie it to not just athletics. It's unique among school districts to have these or nonathletic things. So what we tried to do in region 15 again based on my understanding of people who were here at the time is that paytoplay is pretty common. Lots of high schools have it. Athletics are expensive. Coaches are expensive. Again our our athletic budget is about a million dollars. We collect about 180,000. The idea of pay to play is not to necessarily pay for athletics but to to symbolize that this is an extracurricular. U philosophically I think when we talk about how students are connected to schools we can kind of dig into that but uh in region 15 the decision was it shouldn't just be sports and athletes that pay it should be all extracurriculars. At the

178high school things like jazz band are tied to classes so you can't charge. It's against the law I believe. I have to double check on that statute, but if it's tied to a class, you cannot charge >> if the kid does two or three or four activities. >> Yeah, we have a family cap of 600. So, you have to until you hit 600. >> Any other questions on athletics >> for now? To be continued on the 18th. >> Yes. >> Okay. Um, all right. So, then we're on to comments from citizens. Uh, the board of education will recognize citizens of Middlebury and South Berry and citizens are asked to state their name, their town of residents, and to limit their comments to three minutes. >> Stopwatch ready for you. Hi everyone, my name is David

179and I have two students currently um atro high school and one that has been advocating to get their PhD. Um so I'd just like to stay here and group as this comes into discussion. Um all I have three children they've all participated with sport. So I spent a lot of time sporting events here at school and I think the biggest complaint for the gate fees is just having to pay at the gate. So I've missed my child's misses. I've missed goals. like this because I'm waiting in a line, right? Even if I have even if I pre- buy a ticket, right? I have to get there, get it on my phone, I have to show it to somebody at the gate and sometimes there's a line. Sometimes other people show up. We don't have cash

180and just creates this like not a very warm and welcoming environment when you're just trying to come and watch sports. I would say even for parents who are coming from other teams um you know like embarrassing oh my wallet cash feel bad they're there they have a couple people with them in they've got to go get money somewhere so I don't think parents are opposed to paying like I would rather see us increase pay to play high school for $150 compared to say like a club sport um outside of school which is thousands of dollars per season. Um, so again, I think parents would be willing to pay $200, but for football, you can keep it 150 because those parents have to pay the game, right? If that if that's the situation, right? I think

181there's a way to make it equitable. And right now, it's not really equitable because some sports have to some parents have to pay their kids sports and like track, baseball, they don't have to pay to watch the kids. That's really not that sports of who's paying to watch and who's not to watch. So again, I think parents are happy to pay the money or find another way to pay the money. I think parents just don't want to have to pay to get it. >> Thank you. >> All right. Announcement of future meeting date. Um tomorrow, Thursday, March 5th, we have a special board of education meeting along with the board of finance from both Southbury and Mbury. Um the tour is going to start is a tour starting at Gainfield Elementary School at six o'clock.

182Um and then we're going to be um moving to Pump Rock Elementary School um for the tour um to continue and then we will have like a formal like call to order and pledge of allegiance after tours are done and a sit down meeting in the PES library to answer any questions that board of finance members um may have. um for Josh and Joe >> and a small and a small bond >> right in and tech John and and and Barry from um the bond. It's gonna be a very exciting >> gonna be like celebrate. I mean, this is >> not one to miss, folks. >> Did you do that data warehouse? >> Not yet. >> But, um, if you if you want to, if you've been on the tours, I know many board members

183have been on the tours. I you know you might want to aim to be at PES around 6:45 7 o'clock and you can catch the meeting part um where we'll have a more formal uh presentation to the board of finance of the upcoming a possible bond and any questions that they might >> impact question rate impact the piece that everybody's been asking that Joe and I are uncomfortable answering is the mill rate question because we don't set the mill rate um and so we've been working with the towns and the bond attorney to model out kind of how that will be projected and we want the towns to be a part of that conversation so that we agree we could build a model based on any variables that anybody wants to build. So, we just

184want to make sure we're all on the same page that if we say this is the potential mill rate impact, we can say based on these factors today, this is what the mill rate would be four years from now and make sure and then Barry, I don't want to steal your thunder on the next meeting. Um then we will bring Barry who is our bond or advocate and advisor uh to the full board meeting for you to talk about maybe the more granular mechanics about how it impacts the >> and attorney. >> Yes. >> You guys getting ahead of the announcement. >> Yeah. So on March tomorrow again the tour starts at Gainfield and then moves to PBS. Um and then around 6:45 7 o'clock we will have sit down in the PES library and

185have a formal sitdown meeting um with the board of finance and Jeff from Tecton will be there and Barry the bond person will be there >> bond advisor got >> we will be videotaping that sitdown part of the meeting um and that will get put on our website but we're not streaming it it's just going to be videotaped. So, if anyone can't make it, you'll be able to watch it. Um, >> and you think 45 minutes is is enough for two tours in that transition time? >> It might. >> Definitely not. >> I'm just aim for 6:45, 7 o'clock to go to PES. >> Um, that's, you know, I'm also going to miss the the game tour, so I'm gonna try to get to PS by 6:45. >> Who's leading the tours? >> Uh, Mr.

186Martino and I and say I mean for those who not that I want to disparrage anybody but if you've been on a tour with us it's going to be very similar except there will be no children or teachers in the building so it will be a lot more empty and a lot less excitement >> it it definitely was helpful to see the kids >> um filling the spaces and seeing how that's used but not every working person can get to a during the day thing so this is an option also for anyone who um not able to get away during the day. All right. So that's tomorrow, March 5th, starting at six o'clock. Okay. Um then we have Monday, March 9th. PNC is meeting at the high school media center at 6 o'clock. Um followed

187by our regular board of education meeting at 7:30 where we will have our bond presentation. Wednesday, March 18th, we will have another budget workshops where we will be discussing, I believe, special ed and gate fees. Yeah. Event. Um Monday, March 23rd, finance meets at 6:30 at the high school, followed by a regular board of ed meeting um at 7:30. Wednesday, March 25th, we have another budget workshop. that's with the boards of finance from both towns to talk about our budget, not necessarily the bond, which will be tomorrow. Um, Wednesday, March 25th, we also have our public hearing on the um, region 15 proposed budget. Um, that's at I think at 7:30. So, that's going to be following the budget workshop, the boards of finance for Mbury and Southbury. Mon Monday, April 6th, PNC meets at

188six o'clock. Um and then Monday, April 6th, we have our regular board of ed meeting. Um at 7:30, we're in hopefully we will be adopting the budget. May I have a motion to adjurnn? >> Motion to adjurnn. Heather, I have a question. Are we allowed to ask questions on this or do you want like a statement like I'm unable to make so the 18? So like can we submit? >> Absolutely. always and and any like please submit your questions to Josh. We still do that Q&A that goes up on the website. >> Yeah. So, absolutely. Um I know everyone has work commitments and it's hard. Mar is very busy. >> That's a shame. >> That's my issue. It's like I thought the fees were going to happen tonight, right? Versus them happening at a time

189like where I've worked, right? like so a lot of comments right on >> well and and then we're like I said at the um I believe after the public hearing we have a discussion like there's there's different touch points that we have discussions on stuff so we're we'll talk be able to talk about more than just on the 18 that make sense >> it does >> I know like multiple revisiting things right so that's what I'm trying to like right because I know like okay you guys talk about it for two hours >> and then we talk about two more hours, right, Steve? But like motion to adjourn. All right. So, thank you. Have there been a motion to second by Sally Romano. All those in favor? >> Thank you, everyone.