October 6, 2022 Board of Education Retreat - Part 1

001foreign please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance [Applause] exactly thank you so much um I wanted to there's one two three four five of us here for my accounting right yes um we have Laura costume online and Michael Joseph will be joining shortly unfortunately Miss Kowalski can't make it tonight so um but we moved us up early so because we have a real robust agenda and some some things that we have to do a lot of deep diving on so I will get right to it so with that um the curriculum plan review cycle Dr caravillo and Mr jamico we listened to this video this was the shorter one the 34 Minute one I warned you I was less enthused about I have to be honest okay so do you have anything you want to

002say or we're just diving in the high school team is online and Laura I'm just going to keep looking up at you when you have a question I have to hold it down nope okay anyone Joe go Joe well I'll start because I have the most remedial of questions so I'm basically I've been listening or we have been listening for some time now to the public making comments about curriculum about items that are approved that are unapproved things that might be uh in it some things that might not be in it so basically I want to kind of bring it down to the most rudimentary levels now when people say curriculum is not approved do we have a history of every approved curriculum and every Board of Education that might have approved that curriculum were

003basically say there's some way of doing push-ups in gym and that was approved 25 years ago and that has not changed do we have a board of ed meeting that says that the curriculum for push-ups was approved in 1964 at this meeting the such things exist I wasn't alive in 1964 so I can't tell you exactly what happened in 1964. but what I what you're referring to are standards and the standards are set down from the state that's what's approved by the Board of Education that we're going to adopt the state and National standards in a particular content area then it's up to the local School Board to be advised by the deputy superintendent this is superintendent curriculum the curriculum coordinators on how we're going to actually take those standards and make them meaningful in

004terms of learning outcomes and developing learning plans so curriculum is a very broad um it's a it's a philosophical term people throw around curriculum all the time and and I've often heard people say well the board should approve all curricular materials well let's talk about what that would mean so curricular materials could mean every single teacher's daily lesson plans now we have over 900 teachers and they write lesson plans every single day I don't think it's within the purview of the board or I don't think it I don't think the board even wants to engage in having to work 24 7 to look at every single teacher's daily lesson plans and say yes these are board approved so the board approves on a higher level like on a 10 000 foot view you look at

005the standards identified either at the state or national level we look at the Frameworks to which we are supposed to teach those standards and then our job is to fill in the learning outcomes based on developmentally appropriate lesson plans and provide teachers with the curricular resources to get to the standards is that helpful in a way a little for me a little too much education ease if you know what I mean sort of kind of bring it down to a level where basically Maybe locked out but like I remember I remember back uh not too long ago we had that black and Latino studies as a curriculum item which we had to approve and uh that was kind of specific we went over the what was involved there and it sort of covered a lot

006of stuff of course not the daily uh plans the the the plans teachers had to put for oh I do uh uh I had to work on but it was basically just in general what was uh I I think back to uh I believe there was some time ago didn't we approve a yoga curriculum was that something we talked about as a new course or is that that's different that was a new course can you explain how the new course and US approving a new course versus US approving a curriculum item would be how that would be different just sort of but let me let me say this again this is because I I listen to our community when they when they ask questions and unfortunately the way we're structured here what we can't answer

007them we're here to listen to what they say and I feel that our our community is not really being answered these questions that they're asking about unapproved curriculum how curriculum differs so if we could just spend a little time just explaining the basics on that that would help me because I'm kind of getting hang of it a little bit with everybody here the three years I spend here but uh but it helps me to explain to maybe the community with more confidence when they ask these sort of questions so what would be the difference in those two curriculum standards framework materials so when I went home have you started that Maverick technical um what would be the best type of ethereal that we could use to implement and then I thought about it we thought

008that that particular test was curious oh okay sorry that the particular text that we chose really helped us to implement our math curriculum so in a way it's a little tricky because the curriculum and the materials happen to be very similar we use the materials to implement the curriculum so then when I think about programs or materials we have many things that are cross-curricular like social emotional learning and that's a big part of what our vision of The Graduate is and that we want to make sure that all those components are given to kids and we have to have those all the time across all content areas and across you know recess in every place else so therefore then we have programs to help us Implement that to make sure that we are meeting the

009needs of all our diverse Learners so that's more of a program or materials to have all those cross-cutting things that we want to make sure that we're giving students the opportunity to have and to graduate with the vision of The Graduate capacities accomplished so that's about the simplest way I can explain the difference between what you approve as the Board of Education the curriculum the Frameworks and the scope and sequence and then how do we Implement things that are cross-curricular like SEL so like second step uh ruler would be programs to make sure that we're helping students with their social emotional learning because there's not a curriculum for that there are things that we know are important let me address that's a good example the ruler example because I did hear that uh uh that

010that the personal people get up there and they talk about this ruler program now uh a daddy bragging moment uh my daughter happens to be a a uh at NYU as a uh a pre-med and The Psychology major and she was with the team and she would work as a research assistant up at Yale when they were developing ruler so I've certainly had some experience or when it was mentioned I knew nothing about it we were talking about it at the dinner table one day and she said well I know everything about that I was involved in the design of that remember Christy right sure yeah so yep so I quickly learned what it was because I didn't know what it was and it and she made it kind of simple and we offered the

011opportunity to some folks who had asked about it to maybe talk to her about it but she made it really easy for me to understand that it's trying to create emotions into a language that could be Universal and discussed amongst people where those emotions could be described in many different ways and to have a universal language so you can communicate that's the way she I I'm not really good at things like this but maybe she didn't explain it to me correctly but I kind of think it did yes that is correct so now when when the the citizens that the our constituents ask about why that was not approved can we walk me through how that falls under something that we were that we did approve and how that's under that umbrella and and how

012we could explain to uh our constituents about why it was why our policy covered that by approving uh what we approved and how that derived into uh into that specific thing they're talking about I think if you look at the vision of The Graduate and the capacities that's what you approved we have to have a way to make sure that students are exposed to those capacities which include the things that we teach the universal language that we hope comes across with second step and with ruler so that's really where you approve them so it doesn't make it really connected so I don't know maybe we should try to figure out because I think these people who speak at our meetings deserve answers even if they're maybe not on Target on on some of their questions

013maybe they are but I every person who speaks in any of our meetings I stop what I'm doing put down what I'm doing and I look at them and I listen to exactly what they have to say they only have an hour it doesn't take a lot of time and a lot of those a lot of attention to really focus on that and a lot of those people they deserve these answers so we might want to think about as time goes on maybe somehow helping them connect how that falls under certain categories that and going back to making sure we have the approvals at the highest level as you described connected to what courses or whatever else they're just saying we haven't approved because I would like to make sure that everything certainly that gets

014taught in the schools is approved so I'm not saying this is something we have to do right away but this is something maybe we if it doesn't exist and it might already but if it doesn't exist well I'd certainly like that to have that looked into because I think it's crucially important for us to have tremendous amount of transparency in everything we do there can't be too much transparency so I know it's hard to create the transparency that's necessary sometimes but you know what hard is something we just have to go at hard and go we teach our kids to work hard so we have to work hard to do the same same sort of thing I keep hearing these same things like social emotional learning and I remember Michael wasn't it you that mentioned

015it pre uh election to the Board of Education that things like that need better explanation by by the by the Educators by the Board of Education by us so basically I think well maybe it falls on us maybe I don't know how it falls on because we're just trying to figure out how I'm trying to figure out the best way to address these things we have to explain how that makes sense rather than people looking at it and seeing as something they're confused about last time we discussed the curricular uh plan um Improvement plan and management plan I think was last September the 20th um we had a deep discussion about this as well because I'm gonna use us as an example and you use the term Board of Education there's two boards of Education

016they're the elected members of the Board of Education and then there are the administrative members of the board of education but the term board of education is a broad term that sort of encompasses all of us and it is consistently used for one when it is meant for the other and vice versa the term curriculum is is similar in that and I think uh Mr Jimmy go ahead and a really good explanation for that last September and I'm not going to try to make you think back to that but um you know because the term no no but the term but it's true I've spent a lot of time trying to explain this to individuals as well is that right so the overarching curriculum are the specific needs and the standards that each course and

017student that the students need to reach in that course and master by the end of that year in order to move forward right so if it's uh ABC's and one two threes you have to do additional first grade math Edition and simple addition simple subtract subtraction so that's the the overarching curriculum and then below that you have curriculum mapping which is not our responsibility that's those who study uh to become Educators and how they take those standards and put that into terms where how do you get from point A at the start of the year to point B at the end of the year so these students can know that one plus one is two and two minus one is one and then further from there there is are the lesson plans so you take

018the curriculum mapping where students need to be at a certain point to be able to move forward and then there are those lesson plans right so that's what our teachers are doing on a daily basis to ensure that those students are learning what they need to learn on that day to be able to make it to the next point to move forward and that is where the data that you know not just it's the textbooks are overarching but there are other materials that come into the daily lesson plan there are assessments that come in and as part of the curriculum mapping and the daily assessment plan and um there are also the other the points where we are learning our students needs along the way and our teachers have to adjust those daily lessons daily

019lesson plans uh because you know student number one um got it on the first go student number two is struggling a little bit needs to have a little bit more reinforcement in that lesson and then student number three I didn't get it at all and so the teacher then has to look at student one two and three and figure out how to deliver that lesson so that they're all getting what they need and so that's that is not a point where we are at and so I don't know if I did I don't know if I did it justice okay I agree 100 and so if I can take any credit for teaching that to you I will but but this is this is years of sitting beside you at meetings uh but another way

020to look at it and again I don't mean to over uh simplify curriculum because it's incredibly complex but you can look at it in two ways the what and the how so what do we have to teach that's the standards the expectations set forth at the State national level but then well how are we going to teach those sometimes people jump to the conclusion that it's always through a textbook and it's not always the case that it's through a textbook there's multiple ways of ascertaining knowledge through units of study um again it's the how that becomes the art of instruction and that's where teachers really are required to put the effort into and that's not the level of the board of education but it's okay to ask us about the how I think it's important

021that we can explain the how because the how has to correlate to our results and if we can't make the correlation between the What the how and the achievement well then systematically there's something that's broken well thanks man I only have a little bit more to touch on I really I'm really interested to hear every everyone's explanations great and it's actually it is helping me out that was very helpful but I guess some of the things that are the things that I try to answer with stuff that's kind of spreading and it can like in a in a misinformation of people talking about stuff out there and saying this exists but they they don't know where to ask the question so they come to a board of ed meeting and say hey we want to

022know the answer to this and we just sit there like say a word I mean we hear words like or CRT and woke and things like that are being mentioned are in our curriculum now the curriculum is approved by us at a high level you all just described to me at a very high level and how would like a thing sneak in because I keep hearing people saying like things like words like I had just mentioned are kind of sneaking in to what how does that get managed that it doesn't sneak in to our to our big broad umbrella approval at the curriculum level and then we get down to the multiple levels you so eloquently described to me uh and informatively thank you how would it sneak in or how would defense the defense

023mechanism set up where it can't or it won't just so I can explain to these people that are spreading some stories around to each other that things like this might or might not exist how help me explain to them how we're well is policing that the right word or how we're managing that or how we're controlling such things I mean I think I think oversight I think oversight's a good word but you did say you were going to start off with the easy questions tonight Joe and I don't know if that's necessarily the easiest I would encourage all parents to go to our website um I've been in this position for three years and we've said what we're going to be extremely transparent about what we're teaching our children and we've created public facing documents

024so that parents can delve deeper into what we teach you're giving an example of people making the correlation between CRT and second steps program so I'm going to go right to that so if you go to our website the scope and sequence for our K5 program is there for all parents to review and now we have you know the six eight program scope and sequence uh posted as well I challenge you to find within the scope and sequence where you draw a direct correlation or even an indirect correlation between the lessons provided in the second steps program and what people refer to as CRT I don't think you'll find it I can't say it any clearer than that no I believe it has been no accusations I'm just trying to help answer questions that that

025are asked of me and I see in public public comment now there are uh uh diversity equity and inclusion the words themselves make so much sense don't they you know and people are saying that no well I guess the the I think the debate at time is his equality and Equity I think some people are arguing that one but uh but you know it's it's it's it's things like that that I I just I think we have to just make ourselves as clear as you just are how to explain that how to discuss that how to draw people in and how to maybe make it easier for us to connect the dots in that category and say and help these people and a lot of them are truly honestly nervous and scared and it's a

026sincere feeling and they're concerned about it and I would like to help alleviate that stress and and work with them on that so that's it okay I'm done thank you no I'm just going to add it's there's the board member and then I'm lucky enough to of course be a parent at every level um and I I saw Ralph there for a second the only open house I've had so far is the high school and I could tell you as a parent I walked away knowing exactly everything my child was being taught in those eight blocks and I am not capable of learning uh calculus at this point and um but I now know every unit I know every chemistry unit I know everything us history I know everything about the English and computer science

027I mean we I went through everything and they had handouts on the exact every unit how they were preparing in the case of the AP classes the sequence of preparing for that um I was floored by the information that was provided to me as a parent on exactly what they'd be learning this year and I was looking for an opportunity to get that in I didn't see it as an anywhere on the agenda but you just provided me that so thank you so much yes all right I was going to say another piece of it is when you're asking how we police the materials that's the exact what we're looking at right now this document is exactly how we're doing that and it's something that had been asked for for quite some time to ensure

028that in from you know the students across the district were learning things in a similar fashion yes and as a horizontal and vertical like alignment so that when they move from first grade to second grade those students all know the same thing no matter what elementary school they're going to and then when they move from their Elementary Schools they're all joining you know not all joining together but cohorts are joining together in middle schools and they walk in with the same knowledge and when they leave those middle schools to go to our high school they have the same core base of knowledge and that is exactly what this document is supposed to provide um additionally they did the work or the curriculum institute and committee did the work to put together the vetting rubric which

029we were introduced to a few weeks ago I know one of my and I'm just going to say thank you in advance because I sent my questions to you guys late and I got a huge document we all got about five with some of those answers and the first question I asked was about uh vetting uh materials that are outside of textbooks because there are materials that are used in classrooms that are not just textbooks um and I'm happy to reactance to ask the questions so that it can be shared here but I think that exactly what you're asking about is something that parents have been asking for here for so long it's why at these meetings I consistently say how grateful and appreciative I am for the work that's being done they're providing support

030for our teachers with lesson plans so that they're consistent they're providing support to teachers so they don't have to hunt down uh extra materials to to deliver a lesson and they're being vetted they are giving support to our Educators who our Educators can walk into those classrooms and do what they know to do best deliver the material in the way that they feel is appropriate to their students to help those students achieve and grow which we'll be talking about later I guess in the achievement report and so I don't have a degree uh I'm not a teacher I don't have a degree in that I'm not an administrator I don't have a degree in that but I believe in the people that are sitting in this room because I've I've seen the work that they've

031done through my children as of you and so I think that for the first time we've had seeing this management plan seeing all of the materials and the Scopes and sequences for K-8 up on the website being able to see all that material in schoology for the high schoolers and seeing what those courses the overview for those courses are has provided a level transparency we've never had here before and so to me I I think we've made incredibly great strides and so when parents come and they're frustrated I I do understand I understand it's a long frustration and I'm always happy to help and sit down and ask answer questions also from a parent perspective and so I appreciate you bringing this up because I think it highlights the incredible amount of work that's been

032done in the past few years in this District to bring forward which is why we're now number three I know you want to get to number one but we're getting there we're getting there yeah Michael Joseph um yeah I I don't disagree with anything I think uh as a board um let's be mindful of our role right the um and I do think I hear what you're saying Mark tonight and I don't don't disagree I do think though um we have to consider what you know our role is when it comes to the approval of curriculum um particularly when we're looking at uh policy um the our policy um very much speaks to textbooks um that's a very Antiquated definition of policy of curriculum we all know that so I don't think it is um

033um about I think it makes a lot of sense uh for the policy committee because this is a continuing conversation for the policy committee to go back and look and see you know what is all rolled because the uh transparency is is a hundred percent of the way to go here and and what the solution is we have transparency at K-8 we're getting there at high school um I'm at the kindergarten level and I can see from my son I know very much exactly what he's going to learn all year in kindergarten as a board member if I'm trying to figure out the high school curriculum I can't find it anywhere the um it's very difficult for me um if I wasn't you know I didn't go to open and you know the you know

034back to school night um because I'm not a parent so I think that's and we know that that's where uh you know we know of the course of the Year we're working on getting more of that transparency at the high school level on the um out there very clearly in one click we talked about that last Retreat um at the um online and I think that's going to help but I do think that the you know over the last 20 years the definition of curriculum has changed such that Boards of the programming just textbooks probably isn't adequate anymore and I think that's where a lot of this fuzziness comes in so I do think it makes sense as uh for the positive committee to reconsider this I'm not sure given our I'd have to go

035back and look given our current policies if it's that cut and dry that the board approves that the board approves textbooks doesn't approve programs I'm not sure that it's quite that cut and dry and I think that's something we need to we need to consider and that's where we're hearing a lot of this um concern in the community or rile up the um which I think we need to acknowledge well there is a policy 6140 B which goes Way Beyond the textbooks right but that wasn't that wasn't the explanation we heard uh earlier the um the explanation tonight was we approved textbooks so what I said was that it was it can be a little sticky a little iffy because when we first had the textbook committee for our to choose a new math text

036we didn't know that we were going to choose a text that was perfectly aligned to our math curriculum to what the standards were to what the Frameworks were and to what the student outcomes were so we didn't know that it would be the way to deliver the curriculum that was a surprise so that's why sometimes it's a little iffy it's not just the textbook that it just happened that it worked out that way and that's what made me starting to think about well how do we explain curriculum Frameworks having materials to be able to implement those Frameworks and how do we assess and what do we do so it's not I wish it was cut and dry but it's a process that we go through so I'm sorry if you if I was not clear

037with that I just want to say from a positive comment because Karen Kowalski is not here tonight but she emailed me this morning and one of the things we're trying to do um because the team has done such a great job getting there is a ton of information out there so last year like for our SEL second step we pushed that out once it was all on the website but some people might have missed it you know we're in the middle of covid we're going back over so you'll notice every Friday I'm including curriculum and when we're at the board meeting I take copious notes I listen to the complaints and if there's something that we can do better and I've heard that SEL peace is something that people just weren't understanding and so we

038pushed it out again last week Karen said she had heard some really great feedback because people just didn't know it was there we also updated the six eight in the same spot and we'll push that out again tomorrow as well so I we are listening and trying to be responsive I think a lot of people are just so busy they either like this meeting probably I don't know I can't see the numbers but generally when we talk curriculum hardly anybody dials in um or or they leave when we start talking about curriculum so it's trying to get the information out yeah yeah um what's up 20 people well that and which is great but but we're continuing to push that information out from the high school I was also going to say you make a

039good point though and this is something we've talked about with reports and over something I spoke about even before I was on the board and countless presentations I stood on the other side of the thing talking to the board we use so many terms here that are edgespeak we use so many things and little isms SEL Dei yada yada yada that we understand and so to a larger community they may miss they they may interpret that to mean something slightly different because it is from their Viewpoint and their perspective but until you sit down with somebody and say well what's your understanding of this versus my understanding of this you realize you're maybe on different pages and finding that uh point in between where the what we're actually doing and so I I wanted to

040point that out because something we've talked about also for a long time here um and I know that sometimes we forget that but um everybody else has a question but I was going to go to one question because I thought it also went to what sorry Cody did have on I wanted to weigh in on this but um Joe just to your initial premise I think it might be a little bit backwards to say parents are telling us there's an issue administrators tell us why there's not an issue I think part of what we should be doing is looking and saying it's probably not the case the parents are making things up like that when we hear there's an issue there probably is an issue at least on an isolated basis it doesn't mean it's

041systematic and the question should be not tell me how I can tell them their eyes are lying to them but what can we do to continue to eliminate the cracks or the issues where they emerge even if they're not systematic um I think to that point there's and this is a broader discussion and something that would relate to policy committee but I think about transparency which is I think we can do more on but also the concept of red lines you know where do we what what kind of guard rails can we put around so parents know that hey there's certain things that are not allowed or not tolerated um like everyone is concerned about the like you said the woke things over politicizing things I um uh we know that that happens in the

042schools uh and so you should you can argue about what degree but what are we what can we do as a board to put policies in place to make sure that there's accountability to prevent that even again it's not necessarily saying it's fully systematic but I think that's something we have we can't just say well you know there's a bunch of complicated educational terms and they don't understand the layers and how curriculum works I think we have to take it seriously and think about um a systematic way we can address that I just there's a few comments that were made that I found a little bit troubling I guess the oversight of how versus what and maybe it's semantic I think just the fact that we have uh there's a large emphasis in our existing

043policies on voting on specific materials if they're primary materials there's kind of I guess a loophole or for supplemental and reference materials which gives teachers probably wiggle room to sneak things into the classroom that maybe parents aren't a fan of but there's a I think there's a fair amount of emphasis for the board to evaluate the how and not just the what um and I think that's a responsibility that I'd imagine taxpayers voters whatever want us to have I think and the reason it's important for us to have that is when you operate in a system where I'm actually a big fan of the idea of saying hey Bottoms Up give more power and um control to the people in the field but that only works in a system where you have a high degree

044of accountability and by the nature of teachers unions that doesn't exist um and so we have to have guard rails and some kind of you know uh top level system to um prevent people from you know taking their autonomy the wrong way because we don't have a way to you can't say everybody do what you want and we'll just keep the good the good ones um and so I uh um I think it's an important I I personally think that that's a role that we should embrace and we should probably from a policy standpoint be looking at supplemental and uh reference material and working with you guys on this I don't think it's necessarily a fair question for you to say hey tell you know defend yourself effectively and it's not necessarily I don't think

045it's the administrators I think a lot of it has to do with the fact striking that balance between autonomy of teachers but recognizing that some teachers are going to do things that they're not supposed to I know like when I toured the school was last year this is a common thing that would come up with principles of you know they have to slap hands sometimes and say hey don't do that um but I think it all goes back to the parents and what they're looking for and um and for this is something that we need to bring back to the policy committee I don't want to spend much more time on this because I know it's not the core Focus but everybody else is weighing in so I wanted to uh give my two cents

046yeah I hey it's a retreat so that's why you know and we now we're just starting our normal time so it's okay it's okay um so with that um it was a good discussion um but yes do you have anything related to the questions in front of us okay I was gonna ask one simple one sorry and truly simple can you just give me high level what's the big change in the writing lesson plans for six through eight foreign so as the curriculum management plan outlines we're staying the course in Middle School uh last year the focus was on six eight reading lessons and social studies lessons this year we're turning our Focus to writing instruction so at the end of this year we'll have accomplished reading writing and social studies so we're in our

047full first year implementation just so everybody's clear on reading and social studies garnering frequent feedback from teachers teachers are getting on-site visits from our curriculum writers they have Avenues to provide feedback we'll make refinements during the next summer curriculum institute in those two content areas we're just embarking on our uh work with regards to Middle School writing now Kim can speak to where we are in terms of bringing our committees together so do you have a microphone over there yeah so that's Mark as Mark said we're currently the writing process is started the first deliverable from our curriculum writers for the first couple of units in each grade level are coming tomorrow so we have a writing focus group of sixth through eighth grade teachers so there should be one teacher from each School in

048each grade level that will do a deep dive of the materials will give feedback to the curriculum writers in a 30-day cycle they'll also come in person to meet with the curriculum writers to give feedback in person and then all of the other teachers will have access to the materials as well and have an opportunity to give feedback um and then we will um as you know have a curriculum advisory committee where we will have um different six or eight teachers we'll have some representatives from Alp from special education from our El Department from the board from PTAC and as another opportunity to review curricular materials and to give feedback in that group so that's what we've got going on with writing thus far and I just want to remind everyone that we went through

049an evolution last year when we rebranded curriculum advisory committee and the sole purpose of rebranding was to create a higher level of transparency and involvement so we did that for the Big Ideas Math implementation we did that for six eight reading and social studies and we'll continue down that path for writing as well knit it for ninth grade as well ninth and 10th grade math and there will be two other sessions throughout the year too so after each set of deliverables we'll do the same process and minutes from those meetings are posted to the web excellent oh sorry yes Miss Downey I just want to talk about the process a little bit more just because this is a great chart but just kind of talk through um the step like review for Renewal obviously the

050selection creation is a little more understandable and the implementation to refine it but let's talk about the review for Renewal because we have some courses that we're doing that with if you could just kind of talk about that process a little bit I think it would be helpful for everyone sure why don't we put it in in perspective so Tara do you want to talk a little bit about what review and renewal looks like in science yep okay uh so when we review for Renewal that means we're ending five years in the Shaded color of green into blue so we we've had this curriculum we know we need to evaluate it it's been in process for a while and we just like to make sure that we're staying current within curriculum models so we're going

051to evaluate how it's doing that's the blue and then we review for Renewal that means we've officially moved it into red on our list that means it's a focus area a priority Target and it's what we're going to focus on that year in classrooms that means that we're looking at the materials as they are being used in that classroom we are vetting some other possible materials to use instead we're bringing together those curriculum advisory committees and then we're moving towards yellow of formal selection or creating our own materials in-house but I'm just I'm obviously not an educator there's the difference between the evaluation and the review like you kind of right it's it's it's going through the C sequence over and over again you know how are you move I mean and about from an

052evaluation period to a review for Renewal like what what's the hinge what what happens differently yeah and those blue boxes were really focused on student scores we're focused on how that's being implemented in the classroom and how our students are performing that's where we're evaluating what's going on that's where we're measuring feedback from teachers saying okay you've been doing this if you were to change it what would you change how are your students performing what do your parents say and then as we move into the red that's when it's action mode that's when we're pulling together committees and we're ready to move on to the hard work of the selection or creation so just to be sure so the the red the that review for Renewal means you're taking all the data right because it's

053data driven from what you have and then saying okay these are the parts of it that we need to improve whether it's gaps in learning on a particular strand of something or you know taking too long to learn something that's what that process is so that you have a focus before you go into so you know what you're getting the selection and creation of new correct like what kind of what what do we want to make better or what do we want to keep that's exactly correct so you'll notice on the K8 boxes at the front are big areas for review right now are going to be in K5 reading which I'm sure Kim will have a chance to talk to at some point this evening okay let me ask you about that just um

054APS how much I mean we don't have I mean you know I thought that was really dictated by the College Board I'm not sure how much Liberty we have to really kind of we put it into our cycle um but don't they mandate a lot of what goes into the classroom the AP has a syllabus that has to be followed teachers have an opportunity to personalize it to the kids that are in front of them but there is a outcomes that they expect they give them a variety of materials so they'll come out let's say with a new textbook that is very different from the 2010 textbook that they've been using let's I'm just going to use this as an example calculus B AP Calculus B so they've come out with a new textbook which

055is more aligned to what's happening today in the mathematical world and in the um in the world of work and research and things like that so that's how they'll do and manage the AP courses we'll still bring them to you and we'll still bring the updates if there are updates and any new materials that we need to adopt foreign so I wonder if this is a uh this is a draft um or just the first time that might be something to think about because I don't know reading that yeah the I'm a live as a Layman or even anyone the uh what the difference is between one and four just looking at the names the um like we're talking about student if number four talks about student um outcomes um was more about that would

056be something about what's that the phases yeah the uh but any event um like the question I had well I had two the I'm going back to the writing uh which makes sense and I was a little confused the um so the writing just social studies or is it social studies in ela what what's because I thought it was Ela but then you mentioned social studies so so last year was reading specific and social studies specific this year we're going after we're going we're focusing on the writing curriculum correct we're attempting to do interdisciplinary work where it's appropriate okay and so then no pressure um so I'm wondering so what I was actually wondering the um the real thought the um because I think this is great the um you know oftentimes what are the

057questions accidents certainly mine I don't I try not to accentuate the negative than they shouldn't because this is this is a terrific plan and really really isn't I really like this the way this is laid out the um and of course the video was it was a great community resource now that we have reorganized right the um and we have um our different curriculum Specialists I'm I I'm wondering um if keeping to The Five-Year cycle is is always necessary they um in particular sorry Karen they um thinking about science they um if that does that do are we sure that that needs to wait um until 24 25 the um for that looking at the science performance scores which are up from last year but still below continuing targets you know is there a way

058now in Oregon and now that we're reorganized that there are some aspects of this that can happen simultaneously because we have more people driving the ship in different departments so I know I know Tara's dying to jump in and answer this question but I just I just want to take pause and remind everybody when we make everything a priority then nothing is a priority and we want to be very thoughtful of how much we put on teachers plates at one time um and we're going to talk a little bit about that when we phase out of the middle school work and start talking about the elementary work and What needs to come but also the I think it's important to look at our curriculum management plan as something that's pretty fluid and we need to

059be responsive to several things one state mandates uh like for example the read the right act we're going to talk a little bit about that tonight I think um student outcomes if if we're not seeing the results that we thought we would see and I'll use big ideas for for an example although we are seeing the results we thought we would see with big ideas and in a few years I think we're going to be incredibly pleased with having adopted that program um we wouldn't wait five years to make a change um within a curricular area so all though it may not be up for five years for intensive review every year when the when the state results come back we're looking at direct correlations between the assessment results and the curriculum that we're putting

060in front of students to make sure that it's responsive to their needs so with that Tara would you like to go into a little bit about science said a little bit because he knows I get to I get excited and talk too much the other important part to talk about here is that our curriculum management plan priority targets are very closely related to funding so I think Kathleen you had asked before or um Ms Danny you had asked about when we have something as read as marked for Renewal that means we're ready to program big buckets of funding into the following school year as you know we're going to be setting our budgets which within between August and October for the subsequent school year so when we Mark something for review we do have to

061look at big buckets of money traveling between all of our program-based budgets for those priority targets you can imagine that science is a heavy heavy spending area given the Hands-On materials are required we have some supplemental funding to handle that in the interim and just because it's not a priority Target in a specific year does not mean I'm not working hard to ensure that the curriculum is being implemented with Fidelity that we're helping teachers and we do have plans to increase scores moving forward word science is in a wonderful position because we have these national standards adopted by the state that are not changing and that we have in place with foundational lessons that are being taught right now and we're confident in our curriculum so I can say having been in all the K5

062classrooms that we're okay in science right now and teachers are going to love the breathing room two years of math to really make it work two years of reading and then I'm going to do two years of science so we we like how that feels for a teacher and we are prioritizing social and emotional um social and emotional experience for our staff as well and this is really a nod to that while maintaining student scores and their experience in science Miss Hirsch well I feel like some of the questions I had have sort of been answered so I was I mean I'll jump back to one of them after this but um just before we lose focus I was actually going to discuss one of the we looked at the high school I was looking

063at the high school um curricular renewal plan I know you know we've gone into depth in a lot of regards to the elementary and middle school but high school as Michael Joseph pointed out is it's a different beast and that's also because if you ever looked at our course catalog it's like a it's like a college course catalog which is why it's impossible to sort of get the same kind of gist as you would with the elementary and middle school because they're they're all on different paths at that point I'm sure you know that is but that's for the listening public but my question for you guys when it came to the high school is um sorry I had it written down is um well I have two actually one is when we were talking

064about math since we are Big Ideas I'm really pleased to see that we've seen Improvement in the year that we've used it to sort of help narrow that achievement Gap and bring back some of the coveted slides so that's good I'm looking forward to seeing more data going forward um but are we taking a look at any higher level math courses um as possible new courses because we have a huge well not huge but we definitely have a cohort of students that started a few years ago in the middle school I see Mr Healy nodding and Kathleen should be nodding um who are starting to take much higher level and more advanced math courses and so by the time they get to their junior year they've already done BC Cal and then where do they

065go and so so so for juniors and seniors who are that two three levels advance have we started to look at any of those because I'm sure that means it's going to be a textbook review and all sorts of other fun stuff Andrew is online so I think he can answer that question there he is thank you so much Andrew I know that you have done a lot of work on this and that you have been looking at those Advanced courses that we need to start to think about for our students moving forward yes thank you Ann uh Miss Hirsch that's a wonderful question and we're very excited by the advancement of the middle school students and the opportunity that that provides not only our students but our teachers and our wonderful high school as

066well and so uh we we are very fortunate to already have a number of courses that the kids can take namely Advanced calculus not too many schools around us have such a robust Advanced calculus program as we do we typically I think this year have about 28 or 29 students that are sitting in advanced calculus this year and many of our other students will go on to take EP courses in in both statistics and computer science and as you probably saw from the report our computer science scores are amazing and you know our enrollments never been higher so we're very excited about that but certainly um given what you just shared in the data that we're looking at we are in the process of putting together a new new course I'd mention it to the

067board around this time last year um we're in the early stages of putting together a linear algebra course which tends to be the next level of math that most of our students would take at University or college and we have some teachers that are excited about offering that for to our students so I just actually had a meeting with Dana and Ralph today to start that conversation and our next step is to to bring some of those ideas to our faculty committee the LPC group and then ultimately the board in the early winter or early I'm sorry late winter early spring so it's definitely something on our minds and we're excited by it and you know I hope to have something to you guys uh very soon that's awesome um the more we can give

068to our students who are reaching beyond the limits of what we have currently offered is amazing and so on another note for our high school I had a quick question because I also noticed I'm sorry to do this to you guys but um I in the curricular plan I didn't notice we have a large section of Visual Arts um and Technical courses and I didn't see any of the technology courses video production broadcast journalism any of our family and consumer science courses listed anywhere in the review cycle so I don't know if they I'm wondering when those might get reviewed some of these courses are things that are you know for you know a lot of these two we talk all the time about our students who don't always excel in math and and English

069and some of them are more technical some of the more you know focused on all of these other areas and so I was wondering when we might be digging into well I can tell you that the family and consumer Sciences um teachers did work on updating their curriculum this past summer and they now have a new team so that's the work that they did this summer and they have um they've done a good job with that I know for um what does Mr Mayo do he has the he does broadcasting video production and video production so he's working on that as well and those are areas that we are still looking at and how can we put them into our cycle so we are looking at that because we really haven't had those updated in

070quite a while so they need to be updated thank you so I'm sure I'll I'm sure we'll see another line next year and which means you're going to have to either make smaller print uh or get your magnet find much bigger paper um and then I was just going to jump quickly back because I think it's important for when we were talking about the curriculum plan and I'd asked a quick question you know most people probably didn't see the you guys did such incredible work getting answers to the questions I sent but um we had a new vetting rubric and I just was sort of trying to I had asked where that and I think this sort of goes back to some of the earlier questions is where that uh the vetting of supplementary supplementary

071materials lands in the curriculum cycle um and I had asked you know any new supplementary materials I assume were embedded as they come in um but how do we review the older ones that are part of our curriculum that may not address the needs anymore um so you're talking about items that were already in our classrooms outside of textbooks right so we're talking the vetting you know rubric is there for things that are needed you know when new documents and materials and things come when you talk about history you talk about ancient history things there don't necessarily change but recent history does and so I'm just going to use that as an example because that's you know you know students read the newspaper daily for some of the courses I know we have a teacher

072here who had them reading and deciphering stuff from you know newspapers and materials on The Daily and I mean it was amazing for them to do that the students had to self-selected those materials of course that's not did not come from our schools but I know when we're talking about current events sometimes we need to vet materials to share with those students yeah it really comes down to we have a vetting rubric so that everybody understands really what is the context in which you're reviewing so and it kind of even comes back to school law and looking at you know if you're going to look at the material you have to make sure it's developmentally appropriate that it meets the standards you shouldn't just be bringing random things in just because you like it and

073the vetting rubric is very simplistic in that way and so if a teacher has a question and I know we've had some where um this year where they could probably give you an example if they get to one section and they're just not quite sure then they go to the next level so that they're reaching out to the supervisor and they work through that process and that's what it's for and so far I mean it seems to be working really well and I think as much as anything it's helping people hit pause and just think more about the supplementary material if it is something new and does it really does it meet the standard of what they should be doing in the classroom [Music] and I guess the last question I have on that one

074I asked already as well if our teachers have given any feedback on the vetting rubric how they feel it supports their needs because I assume that you know there may be some feedback that might uh you know we always want to bring our teachers into the conversation because they're the ones that are taking this and running with it on a daily so I just want to make sure we're including them if there's any updates that are needed there you know I think part of being a great educator is you're always wanting to take feedback and you continue to grow and get better that's why the curriculum management plan in front of you has you know grown over the last couple of years um and I think that when we meet with DEA they gave us

075some good feedback actually at our last meeting and probably one example was there's a section on the rubric where it talks about point of view and it shouldn't just be one point of view so we got into a conversation we could probably write that section of the rubric a little bit better because we do want our students to be able to look at different points of view so we're taking feedback we'll continue to work on it all year long there are some teachers that probably don't like it at all there's some that really like it because they feel like it's a comfort to have it um but we're going to take feedback and continue to tweak all year I see Chuck not in his head with Gea and I know there's an old saying that

076you know you can't make everybody happy all the time so if everybody's slightly a little bit unhappy then you've done it right interesting that's interesting I like that slightly slightly happy slightly heavy just a little bit and to think that to think that why aren't you liking Communications wasn't that your job by the end of the meeting I will have the exact quote for you I was paraphrasing but my point is is you can't make everybody happy all of the time what makes one person uncomfortable is something somebody else is clamoring to learn about and so you know you have to kind of find a happy medium is that better happy medium I don't know if there's more questions but I was just going to say since I am sadly the oldest person on the

077board no wait sorry longest tenure on the board certainly not the oldest okay um I think hopefully only Cody is under me um but um this was like nothing I've ever seen when we started this process I remember sitting in this room and I don't know there was this whole I don't even know what it was that was put in front of us when I first joined the board but let me just tell you you walked away and there was only confusion and it was a random point in time that connected to nothing and so you just sort of said okay um but this is you're providing like a holistic overview and a plan and it's kind of how a private organization runs and so I really appreciate this thank you very much else on

078this topic okay I I'm hoping that everyone's going to be able to chance to speak here tonight but I suspect when we go to achievement data that's what they're here for so um so let's go to the achievement data report of course so we keep this moving yeah this was 34 minutes to actually watched the video when he did it I was yesterday yeah [Applause] and I know and I know where he messed up and he didn't catch it so I had to catch it for you that's multiple yes so we aim to please we hope you enjoy the video if you have questions the entire team and they came up there is there ready to go okay um do you want me to go first everyone someone else okay um I have to go

079to mass so the there was a trend right that it seems that unfortunately our achievement goes down as the grades go up and and the primary answer that's going to be provided was that the math rigor increases and therefore for some reason we're not our children aren't meeting it at the same percentage expectation but my question is language arts also gets more difficult right so is there something wrong with us or is there something wrong with the comps out there or is there something wrong with how the state is measuring the rigor because that was just there weren't any comps for that whereas there were comps I noticed for um for special needs that were comps for high needs students but for the overall metric versus the state there was not so I'm trying to

080understand if what's happening so um glad to kick things off here for the achievement report um I think in order to keep it as simple as possible in the spirit of how Mr Kelly kicked off this whole meeting um if you if you start back in in elementary school in kindergarten and first grade kids learn Concepts in second grade they apply those Concepts so that makes sense to everybody right so in third grade they learn new Concepts and then in fourth and fifth grade they apply those Concepts right so there's still new things being learned every year but certain grades are heavier so K one and three are heavy in new conceptual learning two four and five are heavy in application of skills that you learned in previous years once you get to Middle School

081it becomes new Concepts continuously year after year after year so I guess the most simple way to say it is um the conceptual learning is intensified once you get to the middle school level so that could be one way to think about why do we see this sort of like General downward trend from third grade standardized scores to eighth grade standardized scores so um that's sort of the most simple way to talk about it we can talk about what we're doing to address it if that's what you'd like to do next or if you have a follow-up question I'd be happy to answer no I think that's uh I do want to hear what we're doing next but then it also does go to the state should figure that out right and therefore shouldn't they

082be sort of rescaling or is there something wrong with us or should you know should we be I mean I know so yes how do we address it because I want to meet their standards but is there something inherently flawed about it versus like the language arts standards yeah so I wouldn't speak to whether it's inherently flawed at the state level but what I would say is what we're doing right so um just a little uh trip down memory lane which which I shared last year you know for the better part of a decade we were kind of all over the place it was the Wild West depending on the school grade level you were in you you got standards that the teachers were adhering to but they taught them in different ways so the

083Big Ideas helps us with that uniformity so that's year one right we implement this new new program and uh everybody across the district is aligned vertically and horizontally um to use Mrs Hirsch's analogy before um once we're aligned now we're in year two so the focus this year is how do we get the discrete data that we need that tie right to skills so that we can support classrooms small groups individuals so as we had spoken earlier in the year about IXL we're leveraging a tool that we already had uh to get more actionable data so that we can support the needs essentially of individuals um what did we have in the past we had SBA data which is by Target a b c d e f g and it's many standards in that Target

084so it's kind of difficult to like sort of flesh out exactly what a particular school or grade level needed through the SBA data we just see overall Benchmark then we have link it which gives us a little bit more discrete data so we can see the actual standards we can see the question types so that gives us you know by standard what the kids need to work on and it does break it down into skills and so we started to use Link it that way but IXL gives us the skills even more discreetly so for example in third grade standard 3082 might have 15 discrete skills that students need to be able to match um your one implementation your two gather data that is actionable that is real time that we can use you know

085get the date of the night before use it the next day and then next year it's okay now that we have this data down and we understand what's coming in what our Trends are how do we look at our instructional model to be a little bit different um you know in elementary school we have the same kids all day as teachers and um you know there's flexibility to have you know like small grouping based on the hour block of time and so we have the station model that we use where kids rotate around um in middle school there are time constraints we have 42 minute blocks of time it's um difficult um to transition from the traditional whole school um lesson delivery to you know having three distinct groups because that would be 14 minute

086groups I mean by the time you transition through them you would have lost a lot of time so we have to figure out how we can use this data that we get from IXL to be more just discrete with our small group instruction at Middle School level and you know it's uh try to be cognizant to the uh to Tara's Point earlier on the social emotional health of teachers because um you know you throw a new program then you throw some new data mechanisms and so we get used to these types of things and then year three we start to look at the instructional model and say how could we approach this maybe a little bit differently because if we keep doing the same thing getting the same results we all know the you know

087the sort of punch line to that thank you thank you so much sorry to throw you the tough question at the beginning but I know if anyone could handle it I want another one yeah go ahead Michael I hear you the um so I'm looking at page four right which is the overall page with the um with the math SBA results right on chart four here they um and to uh Kathleen's Point um obviously in Middle School the if you're looking at pre-covered numbers and post-covered numbers you're seeing uh you're seeing a large gap I mean in seventh grade it's ten points right our students last year scored 10 points below what they were before our seventh graders did uh pre-pre-pandemic um I look at that from a from a macro level just looking at

088that and I say well that's an example of of learning loss the um I don't know if that's the case so the question is um are we seeing that in things like IXL where were we seeing standards in fourth fifth sixth grade that students haven't Mastered on showing up in middle school is that the kind of thing that that we're seeing it talking about as far as where um the need for small group instruction and these kind of tailored tasks is the IXL analysis that what it's showing thank you for teeing this up for me um so um IXL when when it pinpoints where the student is it gives you a a score so a 560 would be a fifth grade level 60 Through The Years IXL is our math program that we use basically

089for you know Drilling and Skills Practice um but we're leveraging an aspect of it that's a has a diagnostic feature so we can figure out where a student's floor or ceiling is so it allows us both downside and upside um sort of uh viewability um so so anyway um uh 560 would be a fifth grade sixty percent of the way through the year so hypothetically speaking you could have a student that um in seventh grade that got a 560. so that would tell us they're achieving right now at a fifth grade sixty percent of the way through the year and it would give us the skills plan that's specific to that kid what they need can we identify Trends from that yes there's actually a button in the program that says what are the trouble

090spots you click it and then it gives it to you across the grade level I have the district view where I could see it across the entire District now um is it giving us anything super new that we don't already know not really um you know it always falls back to the same old things which is why we need that uniformity the vocabulary uniformity the instructional technique uniformity um so um yes we are able to identify Trends across buildings across classrooms across the district and then we figure out okay is this a specific skill or a specific standard that we might need to beef up a little bit in our professional development and then we'll work towards what would be the best way to teach fraction equivalence or you know what would be you know

091a better way to teach kids the standard algorithm for division um so it gives us a lot of information I would say we're in our sort of soft restaurant opening of it um so we're trying to still figure out exactly all the functionality and we have some cool professional development coming up on on Election Day and we're going to dive a little bit more discreetly into the data and see what kind of Trends and things we can find um in um you know in our classrooms and across the district Austin I'm sorry thank you so um can you hear me all right so I just want to say you know looking at the SBA scores um there is a jarring disparity between some schools like new Leb and ham Ave and schools like Riverside it's

092it's you just can't ignore it and I I really want to know um if we're doing something that is not working for these students you know what what is it that is not um that is not helping them the same way um you know there's got to be um there's got to be some way to address it and I just I don't know where the trouble spots are so I guess that's you know what I need to find out and then the other issue is you know yes rigor does um increase as the grade levels progress but for those students that are maybe struggling in Middle School to then have to swim in such a big sea at the high school and and you know it seems like it's sort of an uphill climb too

093late if there is um an issue with um keeping them at grade level keeping them achieving where they were so I I just sort of wanna understand how we catch how we catch them you know before they falter in the late in the later grades so it's sort of a very different two-part question one you know how are we um going to fix what is not currently maybe working um at new Levin Hamas and you know again as they progress all children through the grades not just on one side of town there is such a a drop off in um in achievement before high school I just want to be sure we're catching um students who hit a trouble spot and I I mean I have two high school kids and and the rigor certainly

094intensifies um as the grades progress and and they soon learn after kindergarten and after first and second grade school is is more serious business it's not just where you go to socialize so you know um I just wanted to ask the question okay so we'll start with Elementary uh and we all know that we've operationalized into our budget math interventionists at the elementary level um to use um there's two schools that you referenced specifically um they both have two math interventionists um now um before they either had one or maybe not even a full 1.0 um and part of that may have been paid out of their own budget um so now they have to so response to intervention um which basically what that means to the layperson is getting kids the help that they

095need when they're struggling is happening earlier um um one big shift we made this year was We implemented a kindergarten screener for every single student that walks into the Greenwich Public Schools our math intervention has screened them to see what requisite skills they're bringing to the table so right off the bat we're getting um sort of um a bird's eye view in each building of what the kids are bringing so we're identifying what's happening and then from there we start to tailor our tier one instructions which means the classroom instruction um to support the needs of that particular class so um I guess it starts with having the right people and the right and the right um supports um in the building so um you know our work's not done done there I will Champion

096for more intervention even up I'm looking at Mr Healy right now even up to the Middle School level we need we need another one at Central um and um you know I will you know do my best to show you know how we're performing and how we could use people differently Lee to support you know our math achievement um you know what I would say structurally at the middle school um is um if you sort of compare to the high school when kids get into high school um at the ninth grade level they have many different ranges of sort of on slash around grade level like four or five different courses they could take there's an algebra class algebra geometry class all sort of combined we don't have that leveling um or that ability to

097be more discreet with where kids are at the middle school level so there could be a need at some point to discuss which involves money and Staffing how do we create levels where we can get kids the support that they need when it's not just a pull-out Intervention which we don't really have a ton of those mechanisms at the middle school level at Western we have the Staffing to do it um at Eastern we don't really have the Staffing at all to do it and at Central we have one person that can support that um but um you know that's I guess how I would answer that question um and and I think it's important to be proactive in our support of this and not reactive um you know based on the scores I think

098you know if we can get ahead of the of things we could be we could see gains in achievement this is following up to that I mean kind of educationally what's the time frame right like we implemented Big Ideas in year one since we're on the math topic and we're talking about what we've seen for the test scores and we've had the covet issues kind of what's the time frame you would use to say the program is working and that we're going to close this Gap and we've it put all these tools in place because I gotta say I was going to have the same question as Laura about we clearly have some schools that are more challenged so what can we do and maybe that's a budget question Dr Jones when we're doing our

099operating budget about what we need to deploy in the schools that need more help so if you could just talk to the time frame like so I'm just going to grab that one real quick we used to have a wonderful gentleman that worked in the Greenwich public schools named John Curtin and he would always say three years makes a trend so we really need to hold on to and stay steadfast I have the utmost confidence that our curriculum advisory committee selected the right instructional tools I just kind of was like when do we evaluate it was kind of the question okay then I'll stop no no three so three years so basically at the end of next year you could really look at the data better I I think you want to follow the cohort

100data that's incredibly important we can start to evaluate the successfulness of our program after three years but I wouldn't after three years say that if the if the data isn't suggesting incredible gains that we would depart from Big Ideas but we would certainly reassess and evaluate where there could be potential vulnerabilities that we didn't expect Joe it's in the same line of questioning you're seeing a three-year we should see progress in three years on this but you made a reference to more is better kind of like if we have more help more Personnel more people more teachers to teach the kids more there's sort of a money versus need want versus need so I mean these things have to be addressed I'm glad you pointed out the fact that we're looking at a three-year process

101to see this improve so we have to put some some hard evaluations on these things if we're going to equate success we're going to somehow have to attach money to the success to some degree because it's going to cost us more money to have more of that success so we have to make sure it's a tight tight evaluation so to build on your point what I would say to that if I could um Karen's heard me make these analogies when I was the principal at Glenville school um I love woodworking I'm going to print this Carpenter and there's this wonderful image that shows for those who don't know what it is a carriage bolt with a slotted top so it's a flathead embedded in a piece of wood and someone trying to take it out

102with a wrench and it says effort with the wrong tool will equal no success I'm confident we have the right tool and I'm confident that the 900 plus teachers we have are giving their maximum amount of effort but you do have to ask do we have enough teachers making that that that concerted effort that will influence a successful outcome I don't know you can re-evaluate Staffing every single year um but I'm confident in the tools that we have sorry Karen and then Cody well I guess it's sort of on the same line and that you know I as Laura Christina were asking because when I was looking I was you know in addition to our Title One schools which I know we've we do put a lot in there um and you know I'm also

103seeing the COS Cobbs numbers have have changed slightly drastically which I had you know in it in a different way which I know I had asked about and I think the question there is we're also looking and then I looked forward to the middle schools and there's a large disparity in our scores and growth model a growth at the middle school between three different middle schools and the question then becomes is since we are talking and budget is coming um today won't be operational but that's coming soon is you know do we have the right supports in place if we don't have the right supports what are the supports that we need to add in to ensure that every single one of our students meets their growth Target right because it's every student has their

104own it's not about getting a five on an AP for every student every student has their own path to go and we have to get that student to their point so I know this is sort of a question for everybody it may not be answered tonight it may be something we think when we come down to operational budget but that's the question we want to ask Joe's always talks about being number one we've made it to number three that's great I know he wants still he wants to push forward so the question is is how do we take these results because we have to look at the disaggregated data I can't even speak this evening and sort of see because every school has different challenges different needs but we still have to look to see

105what we need to put in place at every single one of these schools and so it may not be an answer for tonight because there are 15 schools uh you know and um but I think that that's the bigger question we sort of have to look at is that we we know that we had the coveted slide that's a whole separate piece and we've been looking to try to reduce our achievement gap for a long time that's a national problem that we won't solve here today or in the next 20 years necessarily but I'd love to that would be great but if we move it closer it's better so is there something that you guys have started to think about and discuss that you feel we're missing is the right support to put in place

106to make sure that all of our students that we're moving them all in the right direction and and our Educators because they need to be able to have the support as well because without them you know they're just buildings with children in them so I think I'll simply answer it this way there's the traditional there's the known ways that we've intervened to try to close the achievement Gap to show improvements to be responsive to all of our learning communities and in some cases we've been slightly successful or somewhat successful have we sustained success not in all schools if you want to see lasting change then we have to as a group think about some drastic changes so right now we live inside this box but change occurs outside the box so I'm going to float

107something out there that I just want you to consider we've never discussed having year-round schooling in some of our schools we might want to start exploring different Avenues and approaches to how we give access to schooling year round for some of our more fragile learning communities you might want to extend the school day explore different magnet themes like a six to six again these are all things that um you know can work in the right conditions with the right support but they're not things that in Greenwich we've talked about in the past so these are radical shifts in thinking does it require money 100 percent does it require buy-in 100 um you can't always make sweeping changes just by changing a program sometimes you have to make systematic changes philosophical changes to the way we

108approach our work so I'm asking you to think very differently about when we talk about how do we address these problems let's not rehash some of the things we've tried in the past that haven't been shown to to show sustainable um Improvement in those schools year in and year out wow I was just gonna say that is so not where I thought you were going to go with that but I do remember superintendent I might not have thought I was going there I remember I do remember your discussion on the lower elementary school and the middle Elementary School dividing those up between that was a discussion we had a decade ago I feel like but so I should not be surprised but thank you you've given us leaves me a lot to think that Cody

109um I think what you just said is really great and uh going towards the systematic changes and I think everyone should speak up about stuff the one I would want to add to your list of innovation Innovative things we should consider is introducing a charter school in the district which is a conversation we can have another time um I was just going to make a comment about this um I find it very difficult to really get a sense of what's actually happening in the schools based on the um the the information in here and I'll use an example of there's a lot of discussion around the lower performing schools and higher performing schools and oh what are we going to do about ham average Julian Curtis or um uh but I think it's important to

110note that the information in here doesn't actually tell us if those schools are underperforming as institutions because we don't know what the Baseline is with those kids being in a uh in a generic school or not in a school um what I'm saying is that you have the school as an institution and then you have the demographics of the school or other factors that are kind of beyond our control and both of those have an impact on uh scores like if you had a school where no one spoke English you would expect the English Sports to be a lot lower so it wouldn't tell you much about the quality of the school of the English scores or lower or just to point out an obvious one and so one one point about that is I

111don't think we should overlook the schools that have high scores in terms of potentially like we just don't know or at least I don't from looking at this where the Improvement is actually needed most from an Institutional standpoint we know that there's more room for the scores to go up at certain schools but it also could be the case that those schools are actually serving their students better than some of the schools that have higher scores and we sort of saw a weird covet gave us a weird way to test this because we were able to see what the declines were when the kids were out of school and I don't have those numbers in front of me incorrect me if I'm wrong but I think some of the schools that have some of the

112lower scores here had the biggest is this right had the biggest drop off in in scores when they were out of school and some of the other ones like I don't want to Hazard okay we should double check that but it's interesting because the broader point I wanted to make here is just I think we have a data and benchmarking issue in that unless you have some control or something to compare it to you really don't you can't get as good of a read I would like I'd be remiss to say oh hammav is not as good of a school as uh Riverside because the students who have been there for five years aren't hitting their Benchmark because there's a lot of other factors um and so I think we really need to think about

113ways that we can either if it's picking you know other schools with at least somewhat similar demographics that we can get data on and track and compare but there's got to be something to give us a sense of um comparison to really get insights from this I I like flipping through the deck and the the presentation you guys did um but I I just I don't really have I don't know what conclusions necessarily lead a draw from a lot of this uh and I think we can do better and in terms of um coming up with creative ways to evaluate you know how we're doing so you mentioned the five-year data and that really is new for us and we're doing exactly I think what you're what you're asking about is really digging in and

114considering that maybe a building has a different demographic and they made great work maybe going on in that building and I would reference you to page 27 because when we pulled all this data we really want to eliminate excuses um for in migration out migration a really high population of students who are learning to speak English of course they're not going to perform as well but if you look at new lab on this on this page at 72 for ELA something is going right in that building for ELA and we want to get in and really figure out what that team is doing because if they can keep their kids and they have them in their school they're making progress and huge progress so we're doing a lot of that and we literally with the

115state now are drilling down to individual students and so we'll we'll work hard at trying to bring better information to the board how we can do that for you but all that work is definitely taking place and I think when Mark referenced like uh year-round school we're having all those kind of conversations what are some things that we could do that are really different that might actually emulate like what we're seeing at new lab on the five year for ELA across all of our schools and I agree with you actually I like the five-year thing is interesting because you're kind of saying you're you're um what would be really cool is if you compare cohorts of kids that are five years versus say two years you should see a difference if we're like coming up

116with the right controls one thing I was gonna throw out there is um and maybe at some point because this is some of this would be kind of interesting fun statistical stuff to do which is not necessarily in the job descriptions I imagine most the folks in this room um uh nothing they're not capable of doing it just it's a lot uh is is to look into hiring a consultant of some sort that could come in and do like a very deep dive analysis because we probably have troves of data and I you know I'm not a fan of spending money but on um uh uh yeah I wasn't I I was a math major so uh but um I think there's something that's something we should consider because it I feel like if it's

117one of those things where if you pick the right control variable you can actually glean a lot of insight and and something like the this what you just pointed out Tony with the new lab success like those are those are the things that we want to find and also you want to educate the community about because you have a self-reinforcing cycle where people say oh well this school is not good because the scores are low or whatever so I'm not going to send my kids there it's actually like a great school but you just don't know because you don't know what the control is I was just going to say so when we get these scores we look at them in overall and every school gets an individual school report from the state and then

118they compare it and they can go in and they and I want to I use the word manipulate it comes out like they're changing things there's not but they can manipulate the data by looking at these two students by grade by need by whether they're students with 504s and IEPs if their students said English is not their first language they can go in and take look a look at different cohorts throughout this they look at these scores in so many different ways and I know just from being a parent at the PTA uh almost every time I've you know every every year the principal would come out um one of them sitting here and they go through that data Report with the parents and discuss the different ways to look at the information and to

119talk about the needs of that particular school so I assume and it was one of the questions I asked that you guys are doing that in comparison to seeing so you may you don't want to sit down I just because I know that was one of the things you're interested in I know I am too and seeing what needs there are at different schools based on different pieces so it's just a point if you haven't if you don't have a student in the school and you haven't been at a PTA meeting per se you may not have been aware yet because we just yeah but that should make it to this report I shouldn't have to go out and Hunt that down yeah no I'm just saying that there's you know so we're going to

120talk a little bit about that when we talk about and I think it's labeled as site Improvement plans there really are School Improvement plans and we'll talk about the through line that that leads right up through our strategic plan for the district Miss costan so just a question because at some point along the line our summer school or however we brand it now um our extended school year model changed it used to be that um children who struggled or their teachers felt they would benefit from additional instruction were offered placement in our in our extended school year and currently it's really um for children who have a special education need and um I just want to know I look I know it takes money to stack those kinds of programs so I'm I'm just wondering

121you know when did it change why did it change can we change it back because I know that you know not every family can afford a tutor and a lot of tutors are completely fully booked across all grade levels you know if you call the ones on the Greenwich Public School list so you know I just I think you know Mark D'Amico brought up a really um a really important point but we should be offering extended school year to all children who [Music] um have an educational need and who would benefit from the added instruction and you know I I just think that it is a really important um tool in our toolbox and I and I don't know that we're using it and particularly during covid you know the the extended school year hours

122were I mean it I got to Glenville and then like I could I had time to go to stop and shop for you know a hot minute before I had to go back and pick up my child so I you know the time spent there um was certainly you know curtailed during the pandemic so I just I I really think um we should start looking at that as an option because not only is there a summer slide but there there are some kids who who need to be caught on that slide that may not have a diagnosable need um as far as an IEP but may really benefit from the extra instruction so our summer school program targets those students who are performing at the lowest level those are the students that we invite to

123our summer school program which was from 9 to 11 or 11 30 this year the tutoring was for those students that the parents wanted the students to come in just to have that reading instruction to improve their reading then there's the esy program which is for students who have been identified as needing to stay in school for an extended school year that's determined at their IEP at their PPT meetings and then is included in their IEPs they are not required to come but many parents do send their children so we changed it so that we could meet the needs of the students and actually it was Dr Jones's idea to do the tutoring and it was extremely popular that parents were able to have their children tutored it was a three to one ratio and

124it was quite successful next year will change the hours for that but we do focus on those lowest performing students five weeks is not a very long time but you know the extended school year meaning year-round school is something that we have talked about for about a year now that um we really want to see if we can put something into place and not next year but perhaps the following year I was thinking about this earlier as people were talking about Staffing and money and it's not always about Staffing and money it's about doing the right thing and when I first came one of the things that I noticed very quickly in summer school we weren't making any we didn't have great gains in summer school we still had slide coming back and we were

125spending it would probably be close to a million dollars more than we spent last summer and so we've worked really hard trying to get the right programming to the right students and some of our parents didn't want to send kids all day long in the summer they wanted their children to be children and you know we could offer you know PE and music and all those things but a lot of what they were doing during the day wasn't actually focused on the literacy and the numeracy aspect so we've made quite a few adjustments and we'd feel like we're getting better results and we're doing at a much more cost effective way which that has helped us fund things like you know whether that's math interventionists or reading interventionists because as you know we don't get

126to come out and just ask for a lot of extra money so we have to get I was just in this conversation today um because we noticed one thing for like esy running a tutoring model which was very very popular parents actually liked waiting on their children to finish tutoring which means they weren't on a bus so we didn't really expect the bus transportation savings but it's there so Dr hollygen taller and I were discussing today about well that's great because she needs more money as ARP goes away on her curriculum and continual training for the action plan so we are really looking very careful at those areas like summer school and esy Michael Joseph cool the um so I'm here I'm hearing a couple of different Trends here the um over the course of

127the conversation I think the first one is as we know we're consultants for this consultant um confirming the brutal facts right and I think we're all finding that um um there was concerns here justifiable concerns in some of the achievement data it sounds like the concerns are in two two large buckets one is looking at certain grade levels the uh pre-covered postcode looking at the same grade levels and looking at and seeing the um the the difference there um there's a slide on there's a bullet on page 42 which I must I'm assuming is a typo because it says that um on page 42 it says that the scores are back at pre-covered levels at elementary and we've just spent 45 minutes saying that's not the case no it says math and reading and in

128the middle school it's Middle School reading they're not there either um there's still the gap um but in any event so that's that's one um second um um I think the other big area of concern which is the perennial concern here in Greenwich is the East West achievement Gap um and we can say that's a factor of socioeconomics but then if you look at this other breakdown we see that it's not quite socio-economic and it's not quite useless no we've got um because I think the five-year analysis students have been here for five years now is actually disposes that there were schools that you know that are doing on the Eastern side of town that are doing very well and there are other schools like cos Cobb that um are very concerning when you look

129at the their their scores it's only if it's Costco only has a 15 free and reduced lunch population so that's um that's a that's a real concern and I know we have new leadership there um all that said I think there's three trends that the other that were in the conversations that as a board we need to be talking about right and we've been talking about we need to where can we go from here it sounds like one of the real issues we have is a tier two problem we know that we have curriculum um that's ongoing and that's going well and that's tier one that's Universal right the tier two what are we doing for specific students and we talked a lot about that the um and Mike talked about that was the use

130in it's particularly for math in IXL and identifying specific needs and we talk about math intervention interventionists and we talk about small group instruction and things like that they um it concerns me the that um the conversation is about how can we do more to it now is how can we do more tutoring where might we need more math interventionists um where might we need some other time times in the day when we had that conversation last spring when we're looking at how to spend the art money and we chose not to do that instead we went forward with the high school um a student center they um and I said at the time which was when we come in October I hope we're not going to say that we need more money for tutoring

131and interventions and things like that so that ship has sailed um but we have to then the our money is spent the um but moving forward they um we really need to think about this whole idea of tier two because if we need math intervention is we need to talk about it if there was not enough time in the day for tutoring to Mark's redesign comment um I think that that I think we need to see a program about how we can do that after school and before school and things like that I work in a system where kids are in school till 5 30 every day um 11 and a half months a year the um and they need every moment of that they um I don't think we should be afraid of that

132the but I think it does mean that we have to consider our priorities and we can't do everything and some of these things are more important this is our fundamental you said a lot of things in there so I'm just going to um and New York is a very different funding model New York City especially so we could get all that money that New York does that'd be great but we got a lot of our money right right not to the same yeah New York City certainly got a lot more Michael Joseph I followed that as well um so the I was going to actually do you have more or because I was going to turn to something else um language arts um since we spent a lot of time on math and I don't

133want to give any and then I want to go to science and then and then of course the high school because that seems like that's the right order okay so language arts um do you want to talk about that because I actually feel like his interpretation was kind of different than mine so I'm going to hands it over on um what your view is I guess of the score is on the SBI language arts well Kim go ahead okay so um as the the slide that you can see where we're talking about um near our historic levels we have you can see that after our 2020 year where we didn't take the espa for covid um we have trends that are trending upwards which is great um and in two of our Co and two

134of our grade levels in third grade and fourth grade we're back um at where we were at our our highest high on this graph before covet um so it's nice to kind of see those Trends trending upwards um hopefully we will continue to do that as per our new um reading units that we have um in six through eight and you know as we'll as we'll talk about reading at the um and our curriculum management plan we hope to continue that Trend up thank you no I would simply say going back to our curriculum management plan uh we recognized last year when we started our unofficial audit of our elementary Reading curriculum that there were deficiencies there and vulnerabilities and so I think partially what you're seeing is a stagnation in performance due to the

135fact that there's key areas that we're not teaching to and so I'm incredibly uh thrilled to be turning our attention to the elementary English language arts curriculum review cycle this this year and then I'd like to point out that on page 24 it seems that language arts kind of has an opposite trend of math in the sense that as as they stay with us longer the numbers are actually going up so that's an interesting Trend as well um okay people had more questions on oh did you no classes came back on no um okay go ahead and just so kind of where do we feel you know this is back to you know what do we think we can do like even if we're happy with them what are we doing to make them even

136better like I know we've got math interventionists for the math what are we doing in reading and language arts you know what are the tools we're looking at what are some ideas um for helping progress things along and and should we be thinking about maybe adding to the mix so let's start with what we have in place this is our fourth year of rolling out foundations this is the first year in third grade but this is the fourth year our kindergarten teachers are teaching the program we systematically rolled out first in kindergarten then in first then in second in this past year in third grade it's an incredibly core um component of early literacy we have companion to that we're training our teachers in geodes which are decodable techs that align nicely with the scope

137and sequence of Foundations in fourth grade and fifth grade last year we onboarded vocabulary workshop uh we were supposed to onboard grammar Workshop in fourth and fifth grade this year but I put a halt on that when we started to hear about possible mandates coming from the state certainly didn't want to spend a whole heck of a lot of money on a resource that we might not be able to use uh um and I think that's a larger conversation uh to provide the board with an update on where we currently stand with the state mandate so fundations is something that we're incredibly proud of um we absolutely need to continue to use fundations in our primary grades we're seeing positive results that will transfer into espa Data as the students cycle into the testing years

138where our vulnerability is I've said this before I'll say it again and again I knew this last year and we indicated in the curriculum management plan it's our units of study the vulnerabilities in the units to study in 60 seconds or less are in that they take into they take for granted the amount of background information our students come to school with and the amount of vocabulary they may have been Rich vocabulary they may have been exposed to and that leads to Trends and deficiencies very early on and very hard to track and catch up with yeah actually I'm gonna have Kim GUI a very specific example of that so um when we have kids that don't come we have a vast array of kids in Greenwich we have kids that have vast experiences are

139exposed to oral language go on trips go to the museum with their families speak multiple languages in their homes um and then we have other students that that don't necessarily have that that level of experience they've never been to a zoo they've never been to the movie theaters they've never been bowling we were just having a conversation the other day of a great lesson that he walked in on um in an ell classroom where the ell teacher was in second grade was explaining to a group of students what bowling was this is a bowling pin this is a bowling alley and so those kind of things that we take for granted when we are instructing students um in in the area of literacy really plays a big part when you're trying to read a book

140about or an assessment book about the zoo and the children have never been to a zoo before they don't know what a giraffe is they don't know what an elephant is they don't know what a polar bear is it's really hard to help continue that kind of instruction when they are lacking experiences they're lacking vocabulary so one of the biggest things that we see is that that's a huge discrepancy at a young age and that correlates to early literacy knowledge base and you need that knowledge base to understand and to access our our lessons so our units of study don't explicitly build background knowledge and that is one of the vulnerabilities that Marcus talking about and the units assume and Kim you can talk a little bit more about this and you could talk better

141about it than I can about the assumption that grammar is embedded within the units and quite frankly it's it's just not there and we need to be we need to teach our children explicit grammar skills and that's one of the vulnerabilities in our current units as well yeah I think the philosophy of of the units that were when we talked about the science of reading last time and how we know that explicit instruction is very important for students um in all areas but some of our students come with a lot of World Language and they have the grammatical and the syntactical just in everyday language and they don't need as much explicit instruction as some as another student might and those students are able to in spite of access that um but our units right

142now do not explicitly teach vocabulary they do not explicitly teach grammar or syntax or any of those important elements um they're weaved into discovering them through more reading um and for some kids that come with those background knowledge and and come with that it it's more natural other students need more explicit instruction in that area I was on a call the other day with 20 assists and superintendents of curriculum from across the state I'm not going to name which districts but they were all high performing districts and it seems very uh common to have the following recipe and literacy instruction they have foundations they have hegarty and they have units of study and they all agree that the units of study have those vulnerabilities the difference is in the higher performing districts as Kim is

143alluding to kids are coming to school with a higher fund of knowledge of background knowledge and experiential knowledge that they can immediately make up for those vulnerabilities and they don't necessarily need the explicit teaching in we can't afford that you know when we talk about and you have the slides in front of you are a high needs population we have to be very strategic in how we're approaching our instructional methodologies to meet those needs so when you have one of those just the tools what are the tools you need to address those I guess that's the question for us so on the curriculum management plan that's our that's our analysis and evaluation period this year is to come together as a curriculum advisory committee look at programmatic shifts that we would recommend to the board

144the wrinkle is this so there's been an update um there's been a great deal of pushback from all of the districts in the state of Connecticut on the right to read act and this notion that we have to choose one of the programs that the state has mandated um superintendents have come out saying they're not going to do it their District's not going to do it um groups of superintendental areas and Dr Jones can talk more about this than I can um but there's a there is a great deal of dissatisfaction in the state telling us what they think is best for our learners the state released a list on Thursday evening and already the state is making changes Dr Jones did you want to just talk about some of the changes the state has

145already relented yeah really within 24 hours they're already sitting down at the table with the cave and caps because pretty much the entire state was like this is not going to work um if you look at a district like us the message that was kind of coming forward by the programs that they picked like we'd be tossing foundations out going and investing another million dollars to roll out curriculum when replacing things that we don't feel like we need to replace um and so there were only 12 districts in the state of Connecticut that were using one of those programs was it 12 or 15. 12 out of 122. so so they've really pretty much said now they're going to come back they're going to allow waivers we'll probably have a lot of paperwork to do

146because it was legislated