D65 Board of Education Regular Board Meeting - August 31, 2020

001might not be able to reach at so feel free to just interrupt me if you need me to re-explain something and it's not um not very clear right so right now i'm gonna layer the 2016. so right now we can see um the blue line is 2015 data the red line is our 2016. right and so you can see on the left side of the isil benchmark that the line is lower the red line is lower which means that there are less less students in 2016 that are that scored below the benchmark to the right of the benchmark we have uh the red line is higher so we know that there are more percentage of students who scored past the benchmark and so who were considered k ready in 2016 right and so what we're

002doing right now is um we wanted to see the difference from year to year because we saw that like direct change in 2019 so what where we're going with our analysis is we wanted to look at every indeed individual subtest and say okay which subtest had the had a like a a harsh change in 2019 and 2020 right difference between uh the previous years because that's going to be the that's going to be the subtest that we want to look more closely at and it is or subtests if plural that um er is driving the drop in scores right so for phonemic awareness and keep going so it's 2017. again 2017 is pretty close to the 2016 line and the 2015 line it's not a big difference between three of them 2018 similar they're all

003along the same paths um there's not a large deviation between any of them um 2019 right so here's the first year where we're seeing our drop in scores so if this subtest was going to be the subtest that's driving our drop in scores we're going to see a difference between our purple or light purple trend line and the rest of the lines we don't see that in phonemic awareness so we can safely say that phonemic awareness is not causing the drop in k readiness overall for students right because for a student to be considered not kindergarten ready they have to be uh not they have to break let me rephrase that first student to be considered kindergarten ready they have to be kinder carter rating in four or five areas right so if we're not

004seeing a drop in this area this is not the one so consistent you can see how consistent it is right there's nothing really very there's no real variation here and so this is not what might be dry a driver for um the changes that we were seeing so the distribution is just so consistent we're going to show you next what it kind of looks like when um the distribution is not so consistent this is really just to acquaint you with how to interpret what the graph looks like um so here is a second graph that we made for each of these uh for each of the subtests against your phonemic awareness um so each uh each rectangle is for e is there each rectangle consists of one year right so 2015 to 20 each of

005the bins in each rectangle corresponds with a specific percentile range so the topmost range is this light blue and it corresponds to students who scored at or above the 70th percentile in area the next bar is between the 70th and 60th percentile and so on and so on until you get the to the bottom bar which is the blue uh which is the dark blue is the bottom 20th we also have a yellow line on each ear this yellow line uh corresponds to the 50th percentile benchmark right so when we look at this we can say um for example look at this 2015 line that 2015 line anything above that yellow line uh are the students who scored uh above the benchmark right so the more students who are above a benchmark the better the

006more kindergarten ready students that we have this year in this specific stuff test right so in the in these graphs slot information three errors that are most important to pay attention to um and there are more of these in the memo is the uh yellow benchmark the the yellow benchmark line right so the lower that line is the more students who are who were kindergarten ready in this area that year right so that's probably the most important so uh the second the other two areas that are good to look at is the topmost bar which is at or above the 7u those are the students who are advanced competency and then this bottom this bottom bin which is below the 20th right so for example we can say what's important to look at here is

007like in 2019 while um the benchmark for this year there for there are still the similar amount of students who are making like k readiness in this area we still have uh we have a little bit more percentage-wise of students who are uh in the bottom 20th percentile or below right so that's in general how you want to look at these graphs again most of the information on this graph is consistent um and so now we're going to look at three of the other five early learning skills um all together specifically because they're a lot like phonemic awareness right so overwhelmingly in our analysis and our exploratory data search um we found that most of the skills were fairly consistent over the years right so in the top left we have one-to-one matching all the

008lines like across the years fairly consistent um to the top right we have story listening and it's the same story right the lines are fairly close to each other they follow the same trend line at the very least um there is a little caveat which we'll come back to with story listening which is that um in 2020 in 2020 um school year 2020 um we discontinued the test so students did not take that test um and that's going to come up later on and then also with letter sounds right so with letter sounds we see a little we see some deviation from year to year but nothing uh too drastic right and we uh felt that it wasn't driving the change which brings us to our last early learning skill which is alphabet recognition right

009so here we have that the graph from 2015 to and what we want uh what we want to see here what we what i want you to notice here is the 2019 line which is just like bright purplish and then the 2020 which kind of blends in but it's this green yellowish line and we can see that there's just a a distinct difference between where those lines are compared to the previous year right we see this distinct drop you know five ten percent of students right uh especially past the benchmark right um so just from this visual we can see that um the if out of all the early learning skills out of all the subtests this is the one that is probably our culprit right so i'm going to pull up that second graph

010which is the rectangles right so again looking at this one we want to look at these yellow benchmarks benchmark lines first and again we see a difference between 2019 and 20 versus the rest of the year rest of the years especially when you compare to 2015 right there's the the yellow lines for 2019 and 2020 are much are higher than the 2015 line which means that the less students like making kindergarten additionally um in 2019 we can see that bottom 20th percentile is the highest that it that it ever was for the last six years so though yeah these six years right um so not only are less students like making k readiness but there are also more students in that lowest 20th percentile um and so these were like our areas for concern right

011um these were and then additionally um we were able to recognize like that where's like out of the scores right alphabet recognition was the one driving the scores the rest of the scores are consistent this is a subtest that matters right so the next question that we have in analysis is okay so we recognize that out of the five early learning schools we know the one that is the culprit right but we want to know is is this drop in scores more prevalent among certain demographic groups certain students more so than others right um long story short is the answer is no um i'm going to show you a bunch of graphs because we you know we broke um we're going to show you i'm going to show you the same like histograms with the

012bars and the lines the trend lines by different demographic groups by race and ethnicity by free reduced runs lunch status by english learner status and so on but in general across each demographic group uh everyone us uh like everyone uh had every group had a drop in 2019 and 2020 right so while different groups might have different starting areas i'm not saying that um students who are on free reduced lunch and not on free reduced lunch like scored the same before and after the drop right but they both felt a they both had a consistent drop in their scores regardless of demographic group right so first i'm going to show you by race race ethnicity right so again just reiterate you know the the height of the all of these graphs have the same scales

013so some of the some of the trend lines are going to be higher than the others this is our when i when i that's what i'm referencing when i say different starting points um but what's important is like when we look at 2019 and 2020 which on each of these graphs is this like light purple and this like hard to see green yellowish thing uh but they're always the lowest lines and there's always a a distinct drop um when in comparison to the previous years you see for black students for white students hispanic students and then uh we group the rest of the students because they're just low in sizes again it's the same story for pre-reduced lunch status and i'm i'm gonna kind of speed up the pace here because i'm going to reiterate

014the same thing over and over again but um we see this drop 2019 2020 free reduced lunch full price launch um for english learner status right for students who are receiving services versus students who are not receiving services and never receive services like we still see this distinct drop we also did it by uh pre-k program right so we said we wanted to divide students by students who attended jeh students who did not and then on the next page i actually have a graph for students that we don't have any uh pre-k program pre-pre-k data for um but we also see this consistent drop so regardless of uh what what school or that our kindergarten students came from we see a consistent drop in 2019 and 2024 and this is dropping scores right um additionally

015i would like to say that um like i said at the start of this memo this was in our yearly data report that's released in the winter these graphs were like created and presented then and there's a slight difference in this graph than what was presented in 2019 if anyone uh went back to go see um and that's because i did a little bit of extra work and i was able to um recapture a lot of this data right so we were missing a lot of this data in those previous graphs so if they look different that's why i was able to capture more students there right so in summary uh when we look different when we look deeper into alphabet recognition scores this drop is consistent so we're not so we're not saying that

016certain uh student groups or certain demographic groups of students are feeling this drop more so than others now um now the question is um okay so we understand that there was a drop in scores in 2019 in 2020 right as we saw as we showed here in that first graph it shows you right but the drop in scores and alphabet recognition um are fairly consistent for 2019 and and doesn't uh explain the further drop in school year 20. right um so we we saw that those scores were they were they were lower than the rest but 2020 wasn't so much more lower than 2019 that we would expect to have 10 percent more students who are like 10 more students who aren't considered kindergartner ready so we wanted to further uh we so we want

017to further uh explore why this might be right and so we started to look at changes in test administration right so first we wanted to look at step testing um so in 2019 the district implemented like a step pilot at three schools and then in 2020 a fourth school was added and so that reduced the total number of isil test results that we that we had each year what uh what we did in our analysis so i i uh took the scores from each of the schools and i found that the average score and i compared it to the rest of the schools um just to double check that these schools weren't uh didn't have or didn't happen to have like students who were performing at a much higher level than the rest of the

018schools so that because we lost this 200 300 students it meant that um it happened to me that we we lost a lot of high scores um and what i found was that that wasn't the case right so that these three enforce three or four schools depending on the year um had the same had that on average around the same number of students uh who were who would be considered kindergarten ready as the rest of the schools right so that the removal so i found that the removal of these three or four schools wasn't didn't cause their driving scores because they were fairly they all scored around the average um so what i looked at next was the removal of story listening in school year 20 uh school year sy-20 right um and so what

019i did was so i so as we saw was that in school year 20 compared to 2019 we found a 10 drop in kindergarten readiness right and so what i did was i in this first table table 2 i simulated this drop of story listening so i said if the if each student had only been tested on four assessments um and still had to be considered kindergarten ready on four assessments to be uh to like pat still have to pass the benchmark on four assessments be considered kindergarten ready what would be the drop in overall kindergarten readiness right because that was our policy for sy20 right we remove one test but you still have to be k ready in four areas right so in table two you can see that and every year that i

020did the simulation we had an average drop of um of 10 um actually of around 10 in total right um regardless of the year if you remove a test you're going to see a drop in scores um with story listing so in table three what i looked at next was okay so let's look at only one year like let's only look at 2019. uh what if um maybe story listening was more impactful than the other tests that was the question i wanted to ask right that i wanted to answer um and so i did different simulations where i individually remove every other um every other early learning skill to see what the difference would be in kindergarten readiness each of them caused a drop and then the average drop was 13 and so what what

021we can see happening here is that um it's really a game of odds so if we gave students five tests beforehand to prove their kindergarten readiness um and they had to prove it in four areas if we remove a test we just remove a chance that students are going to be able to prove um their literacy skills um and so by removing the test you're just you're just giving students less chances to do so and this is what's going to happen regardless if you reduce the number of tests you're going to have students who you're going to have less students who are considered kindergarten ready so in conclusion of uh this section right uh a conclusion overall actually is that there are two main factors that influence the decline in kindergarten iranian scores so the

022decline of scores and alphabet recognition that we saw and also these test administration changes the removal of story listening as a test um regardless of what tests in uh school year 20 uh caused that extra 10 um drop in scores that we saw in school year 20. um yep so we so at this point in our analysis so we had our you know our answers um why this uh on what was occurring right like what what was causing the drop in scores um at the very least from uh like what we could look at from our side of from our side the equations which is you know test changes and and overall just like our data um now we want to look at okay what are the implications of scores and what are things we

023can do to counteract things so in this in this area we did a little bit more research into um literacy early literacy skills for students um what skills are important for students um what at what point um at what point do they like need to what at what point are they necessary you know at one point when you don't have this skill it becomes a detriment to your learning because at the end of the day or as a reminder we are talking about kindergarten students who are just entering um just entering education right um these this is the fall of kindergarten so they all have chances to grow they're uh so that is so that's what we looked into more right so what we found was that yes um we looked into uh the yes

024we need to monitor this drop in alphabet recognition and then our early literacy skills for our younger students overall but like just right the alphabet recognition that skill is not the only determinant of early literacy skills right um and the ability to read which is what you know this test is mainly focused on right is based on a lot of different skills right it's based on phonics which is you know the sounds that words make and syllables make um and even letters make right it's in addition with alphabet recognition and a host of other skills right um additionally um we found that the implication of the change in school year 20 it just made it made longitudinal comparison more difficult right so as we change our test administration criteria right so when we remove skill

025uh certain schools from our testing environment when we change the criteria of tests you kind of have to reset um your comparison like your comparison groups from year to year you know it becomes hard to compare the results of 2020 with 2019 because the students aren't on the same playing field right some students have more tests than others so they have more chances to prove their kindergarten readiness right um and additionally we talked about our district strategies so what are the things that we can do or we have done right at this point uh to try to counteract some of these things right so first there was uh increased there was and is an increased instructional focus and pre-k promo programming on you know the phonemic skills and phonological awareness so that's about uh letter

026sounds um how do letter sounds and like syllable sounds like what are the sounds that people make uh when we're talking and reading um and letter naming and like the basic of phonics um and we we found in research that often like you know the sounds of letters in some ways can be um as important or even more important than um recognizing the letters additionally um pre-k teachers are conducting like formative assessment of early literacy data literacy data so that's like throughout the school year um addition and at the primary grade level we have introduced a new phonic phonics curriculum and additionally um starting in this year um we have started to move away from isil to a new suite of assessments for the early grades um including matt fluency and kids which will probably

027give us like a better understanding of like the breadth of uh student skills um because as i said beforehand like the ability to read and the like your your literacy skills is not determined by one specific subtest area right now i just have an appendix of charts these are we're not going to go through them these are all in the memo if you would like to see the charts um and probably the uh like probably a little bit larger than they are in the memo they are in this powerpoint just and for anyone watching that is all i have i'm gonna stop screen sharing thank you so much ajani that was incredibly uh you know thorough and i really appreciate how you walk everyone through the data to make sure everyone has a shared understanding

028of what we're looking at i also want to thank and acknowledge that we are really fortunate in the district to have sharon's expertise sharon has been an incredible resource in helping us really unpack and examine this data and really look at what the implications are and i know that um she has been a real powerhouse in helping us along with stacy and with romy in thinking about how do we take what we're learning what we're seeing in this data and really operationalize it for teaching and learning so that we are supporting our students where they're at and growing them where they need to be and so that has been a really wonderful partnership throughout this analysis and so i just also want to acknowledge that i am excited to open the floor for any questions

029that you may have i know this is quite complex but really appreciate any questions that you guys have i'd like to also just acknowledge we're really excited to be digging into the kids data is a real wealth of information and we have um our kind of baseline year from last year and we'll be utilizing that um to help us better examine kind of a bevy of students skills beyond uh you know just literacy it includes early numeracy it includes also social emotional and so it's a really robust opportunity for us to examine how our students our incoming students are doing now questions yes thank you i mean i'll start so thank you um for this information and this presentation um you know this kind of we've seen the data for years but so having this

030additional layer of analysis has been really really helpful um i want to talk a little bit about these that mean you alluded to kids so we don't have the because we did administer kids last fall correct but we just don't have that data to look at yet we did administer kids last fall we were very fortunate that it was one of the um kind of undisrupted testing events so we do have reliable data to look at our school leaders have their preliminary results from the state they haven't been made public but school leaders are digging into that data and they just release the overall data for the state so as the data is publicly available we'll be bringing it forward more and more right now we're still utilizing it um kind of in the behind

031the scenes uh way okay because i think it would definitely be interesting to know how that um data and what we learned from that either um supports what we're seeing from isil or maybe is telling a little bit of a different story and i know it's going to tell a more complete story which i think will be very helpful i'm also curious i know that a few schools were piloting step and piling them out in kindergarten do we have any of that i i know i saw the the charts that i think that's helpful to see what does the isil look like when you take those students out but what what about the data that we do have on those students is that telling a similar story what is the step assessment telling us about

032kindergarten readiness or do we know yet the so sunni i would it's i appreciate the question we've absolutely been using this update at our step schools to identify where kids are entering and what their areas of growth are and have been focusing our teaching in for into those particular skill areas but i'm not com wasn't prepared for that question to do a comparison to this isil data tonight but that's certainly something that we could look into i don't want to speculate without really taking a deeper look at those numbers okay and that's fine and yeah i i apologize that i didn't get a chance to to share that question in advance to give you that opportunity if that would have even been possible anyway um and i guess my my final question about assessments at

033least is the presentation mentioned that um you know moving away from isil to a broader suite including kids and map fluency so step was not mentioned but i know that that is something that we are looking at so and map fluency is something that is not currently being administered in kindergarten this will be a new way i'll go ahead stacy go ahead so that fluency we both are so excited to talk about it that i can't wait to answer the question so i'll start and then stacy can take over um for anything that i've missed so map fluency is going to be a new tool in the toolbox for us it is a a really quick universal screener that can help us better understand students who may need a further diagnostic assessment and step will

034be one of the suite of tools that we use to get that kind of deeper view about what is really happening with a student where we may have an academic concern and we need better richer for informing teaching and learning and so that will be available for the schools that have the step training and we're part of the step pilot but it will be primarily utilized as a in a diagnostic way to get it some of that deeper information do you see would you like to add to that sure i just want to point out some of the differences in the situation map fluency is a computer-based assessment and so it's going to allow us to gather this information for our kids that are at home in school in a very efficient way so that

035educators then can take that information and for kids where they feel like they need to pull up and have more of that one-to-one assessment to go deeper in where the strengths and potential learning gaps are they can do that and so it is part of one of several things that we're doing to try to gather um some more upfront information through our universal screeners with a particular lens for the environment that we're in right now but that's something that we it's not envisioned that it would just be for this environment that would be something that would be used we think yeah we think that this has a lot of value going forward because it is a relatively quick assessment that gives us information about what type of letters do kids know sounds a lot of

036the early literacy screeners and then if students pass those screeners they then move into some deeper reading assessment all in a very efficient online assessment so it gives us some really strong upfront screening information for our kids regardless of environment and we can do it in this world right which obviously is is incredibly important and i you know certainly understand the need and desire to to be able to monitor and gather data on how our students are doing i would just caution us and i know this is something that our educators have brought forth time and time again particularly we're talking about our youngest students um that we'd be mindful of the number and frequency of assessments that we are administering because obviously especially in our kindergarten classrooms what we want to be doing is

037is creating relationships and a love of learning and not you know over assessing um and i guess the final point that i want to make and then i will stop talking and let my colleagues uh ask their questions um and this johnny you mentioned this that you know i think we do have to be mindful that this is you know a snapshot very early on in kindergarten and kids do develop so differently um you know and so i think we we need to make sure that we're looking at this not to say that we shouldn't be um you know mindful and acting and doing what we can to make sure that the kids are developing the skills that they need to but i think it would also be helpful at some point if we can

038see and i don't know if i heard that this might be difficult to do because of the differences in the way the test is being administered but because we know the kids develop very differently um you know is there a point where kids are may you know like i know third grade is sort of the other really important transition point in understanding where kids literacy skills are so the kids who are not make meeting those benchmarks and fall on isil how are they doing by third grade are they catching up are they still staying behind i think that's really important data to know too so i don't know if it's that's some point of an analysis that we can get um eventually or um or if we have any sort of preliminary understanding of that

039i think on the board planning calendar we have some time we're gonna bring early childhood back to the table suny and i think that is a great point that we can uh address and level that to make sure that we give our give at the time so the college team can dig in uh and have some that's that's a good piece of data to really look at and analyze and we have in the past looked at isil and dra and kind of tried to map across it's very hard when the assessments are measuring different things and they're not necessarily compatible they're not necessarily made to do those things but we have done some of that work but it's a very excellent point and a very fair point and we know early learners really their development

040trajectories are not linear and so we have to keep kind of our eye on the prize for that long-term um benchmark grades so well thank you very much i don't know if i can add but um when i first arrived here these were some of the um some of the data that i was trying to dig into and i did i was given an analysis that showed the correlation between students who were not ready and ready based on isil and how they were doing by the time they got to third grade so that data does exist it's a it's older analysis but it did show a correlation between students who were not ready on isil and students who were not ready still in third grade and it was particularly noted for black students black and

041latinx students that they were not making progress at the same rate so to say that another way a white student comes into kindergarten showing that they are not ready on the isil they recover at a faster rate at a better rate by the time they get to third grade then our black and latinx students are recovering so this is something that we need to take seriously whether it's isil whether we're looking at mpg our students are not arriving ready that this looks at literacy we need to look at the whole child as well math is also extremely important and social emotional learning the whole package isil will hopefully help us with that um but it is something that i have taken very seriously since i've been here and we have worked with my team to

042really look at our practices and and bring in new practices to improve these outcomes and i look forward to dr horton's offer that we can come back and share some of our data because even though the year was cut short last year last year was the first year that we really started implementing some of our changes and the improvement in our teaching strategies gold data which is the assessment we use at kindergarten was very encouraging from fall to winter and looking at the winter scores over several years so we fed we felt encouraged that the changes that we were putting into place were going to have some impact we never got to do our end of the year assessment so we don't know but we seem to be on track and there was nice growth

043and nice movement into exceeding expectations uh which is more closely correlated with kindergarten readiness so i look forward to sharing that with you thank you for the share and i wanted to really kind of ask that question is again for me you know i want to get the whole package right when we look at data around kids and and having this holistic view and i think you know teaching strategies gold right i think it is a comprehensive it's an observational assessment but really takes it to fine motor gross motor social emotional math numeracy literacy it's pretty comprehensive and and i've seen you know in previous achievement reports that we've seen for the district you know i've seen this disconnect right the disconnect between iselle and teaching strategies gold so our kids progress really well on

044teaching strategies gold right and again it's a more comprehensive test right it's observational but it also again tests the cognitive piece as well as the so for me it's a complete test i appreciate tests like that but when we hit um you know kindergarten um it that that's where the disconnect is right and i think that and for me um we're that's where we pull you know the social emotional supports the the fine motor gross motor skills we spend less time on that and of course more on reading the math because that is what's mandated federally and of course you know i've been a big critic of over testing and standardized testing and how it hysterically has been uh just that um not the appropriate way to measure growth in children particularly marginalized children marginalized

045for marginalized communities so again i'd love to see that i'm looking forward to it so so i'm glad you mentioned that so thank you for that also you know one of the things that i saw in regards to strategies was you know like for instance you're going to be using the the hegerty phonics um approach or uh to to to work with kids and and build their alphabet letter recognition and phonemic awareness and all that good stuff uh but what i want to know is so you know how are we going to how what strategies are out there for our emergent bilingual multilingual kiddos right and what's the work that's being done so when so as you think about the presentation around early childhood i'd love to hear some of the strategies some of our

046teachers are utilizing with um our our emergent bilingual kiddos we will definitely be ready for that for sure you know sergio when we come back around this is really good feedback for us as we uh prep all right uh i had a couple of questions as well one i really appreciate the analysis and the time that you took the johnny to walk us through it make sure that we fully understood it and our community fully understands it um i am curious about so we did the step pilot as sonny had inquired about and i'm presuming step also indicates kindergarten readiness or lack of kindergarten readiness in its administration is that correct it wouldn't necessarily have the same benchmarks or the same measures and it wouldn't necessarily measure all the same constructs so it's not as

047tightly aligned as we could have hoped you know isil is limited as an assessment quite frankly it's it's um it's a very narrow set of things that it's looking at and so it necessarily have the level of richness or the depth that some of our other options have and so it's it's difficult to make that comparison further for the schools that did have step we only had a very few number of schools utilizing that assessment so the the number of students that we can draw on is very small in terms of trying to really make overarching conclusions about where students are coming from i am very hopeful that as we you know utilize the kids assessment and some of these other assessments that we know are are going to do a better job of measuring

048our students breadth and depth of experience that we will have better more robust data in the future to be able to share they see i don't know if you want to expand on related stuff i think you know unless there's a more specific question on that i think you've addressed it violently so it sounds like stepp was not included in those kindergarten readiness or not ready numbers because it is a altogether different assessment tool than isil and it wouldn't have been there to correlate them in that way you are spot on it's a different assessment it covers different skills and strengths and it's also administered at a different time slightly different time and so then you have like different numbers of weeks of instruction that students might have had um and so uh for that

049reason it's not integrated in the kindergarten readiness numbers okay thank you so yeah i i would agree with sonny that it would be nice at some point for us to see that step data so we have a more holistic picture of um [Music] what perhaps uh students are needing or not as they're entering into kindergarten i think you know our community broadly speaking was really alarmed by the um dip in 2019 and i think there's lots of ways that we process that alarm some of us internalize it some of us project it but i think there was a sense of panic in terms of [Music] early childhood preparedness so having more data having this deconstruction is helpful and i think getting an idea of what step is telling us would be really helpful as well

050so um that i think um the other question i had which may need to be addressed at the early childhood presentation in the future sometime is when i was looking at the alphabet recognition graph i can't remember which specific graphs at the moment but it looks like jh alphabet recognition data was similar to that of students who had no preschool at all um that just those students are students we don't know about i'm sorry those students are students we don't know what their previous schooling was we don't have information on what programs they may have attended they may have had you know preschool we just don't know where or what they may have had also i would like to say that um it's not the best uh comparison on like because of the in sizes

051for the the students that we don't have any data on is solo not to say anything it's just it is what it is for example like in 2020 it tracks 30 students um in 2016 it's 16 students um i included it because it's these students matter right um but um it's hard to say like you know it's hard to find a trend in it you know okay thank you those were the initial questions that i had um did anybody else have any questions comments um i just had a quick comment uh with regards to our dual language learners and how we assess them i remember when i worked at um at jeh i had to do a similar test for a student who got zero letter record you know recognition uh in spanish because i

052had to administer in spanish um and he was in a bilingual classroom so i guess that's why he had had it taken in spanish and then after we finished he you know he says to me well i know all my alphabet in english and sure enough you know i i asked him to tell me the letters in in english and he knew he knew them you know so i think i just in our conversation that we have around early childhood i'd be curious how we assess um our dual language learners and and we're ensuring that they you know that we're capturing the things that they do know not so much of things that they don't know thank you that's an excellent point i think we always want to come and look at the strengths based

053approach and make sure that um and i will say our educators they know that a student is more than a scorer this is a jumping off point for their understanding of what a student can um can bring immediately into the classroom and what a student's strengths are and so i think as you go through the experience you could have a student who's just really like uncomfortable being at school early on and so as they get more comfortable then they start to really show up and bring who they are and so we always have to be cognizant of the fact that these represent the full story of our students this is information though that is really valuable for us to look at in aggregate and in patterns but when our educators are using this data to

054support individual students they're bringing in a whole host of other facets of what they're collecting and what they're reflecting on to be able to really meet every child where they're at i think that we have room to grow in how we assess our bilinguals and i think that's something we'll continue to develop as a district um so i appreciate that comment and that push thank you so much and i might just add um to your experience rebecca so at jeh um we don't exactly have we don't have a two-way immersion program it has to do with the grants and how um how the classes are structured so the students are either in by monolingual spanish or monolingual english classrooms all teachers who teach the english classrooms have esl endorsement we that's mandatory so that if

055there are students in there who are emerging bilinguals in other languages they have a teacher who's trained trained in english as a second language but as far as the assessment is concerned if they are in a spanish speaking classroom they will be assessed in spanish but you do what you experience is is true there's so much variation in the students within those classrooms some of them actually speak more english at home but their fam they they uh you know didn't pass their language proficiency test placed them in the spanish class and their family really wanted them to continue to study in spanish so they're in a spanish classroom even though they might be a little more proficient in english so they do get assessed in spanish but our teachers are very mindful and we have

056a lot of conversations around this that if they have a sense that the child is speaking in english more they're going to take a look and they're going to really try to understand where that student is so that just as you're suggesting we understand what their strengths are we recognize that and then we're going to use those strengths to try to lead this the development of the second language as well um it just might get reported officially in the language that the club that classroom is tested in but we do really uh pay close attention to how the chil each child is developing individually and we we do a lot of ongoing i don't want to say assessment but progress monitoring um of student growth and i i think that those practices are really helping

057us to target our instruction and hopefully lead to improved outcomes for all the students can i make just one more comment too um you know when we're talking about early childhood and zero to five obviously we are very fortunate that we do have um the early childhood center at jeh here where we can really um you know make changes and and impact how our students are showing up at in kindergarten but we also have a very full early childhood community in evanston outside of jeh that i know works together and i know sharon that you're a part of that early childhood council um i know we're all part of the the lifting up early childhood series that is really trying to bring general community awareness around the importance of early childhood and the importance in

058investing in early childhood um and i know there was a lot of community excitement last year pre-pandemic around potentially bringing the early development instrument uh into district in into our community um generally so i just hope that as we're having these discussions too that we are you know i know that we'll be keeping our community partners in mind and you know this is not just a district 65 issue to solve this is really a community but we need our community partners to also be involved in in problem solving um what we can do for our youngest learners thanks honey so i gathered um a couple of highlights from our discussion um that perhaps we can loop back to for the early childhood discussion but we'd like to get more information about the uh implementation of

059step in kids and what the outcomes have been associated with that um we'd like to take a deeper dive into how we are assessing our emergent bilingual um young young people for kindergarten readiness and how we're making room to assess for strengths and not just needs [Music] ultimately if we can get another um early literacy report demonstrating the trends between kindergarten readiness and third grade reading proficiency that would be useful achievement data for us as a board and ultimately we're looking forward to hearing more from you sharon about the progress that y'all made at jh yeah so thank you all for for the k readiness discussion we still have um [Music] two big lists so next on our agenda this evening is our board calendar yeah so thank you uh there were quite the items

060that was discussed just in this last session regarding early childhood as one of the items sharon i would love to say credit but the board has really expressed their interest in learning more and hearing more about early childhood so we added that and there are some other items that will be added that's not here tonight uh in discussion with board leadership so i'm going to turn it over to dr green and she is going to uh go over the board planning calendar absolutely good evening everyone um i want to just bring your attention to the board planning calendar it is in the wee edges of such a robust packet um so i think what's careful to know or what's important to know is topics that were referenced back in the uh spring of last year

061was it like was it last year or just the spring of this year is this just in june june and stretching so it felt like last year but it was just a few months ago so few topics that were uh on our radar many have been embedded in our minds in relation to our miracles framework and really trying to capture much of the work in a more cohesive manner you'll see that we're trying to take the feedback that was given to us from from the spring session with remote learning and plan to give a remote learning update monthly just to kind of check in on some things uh specifically related to guidance that we've received from isb related to both social emotional uh wellness of students staff wanting to definitely look at remote engagement through

062a couple of different mechanisms and definitely just in terms of student um engagement in general uh with class in this new normal or school and this new normal um i do know that we got a little bit of feedback about a couple of topics that probably needed to be um moved around a little bit so initially we had for this discussion the strategic planning process that actually is going to need to be moved down as we seek to somewhat come up with a process similar to our superintendent task force that really allowed us to somewhat engage multiple stakeholders and voices to really dig deep into some of the tenants in or indicators within our miracles framework so you can look for that possibly um anywhere in the second quarter to maybe the uh early third

063quarter where we'll kind of come back and revisit a process around engaging more with that you'll also note that we took advice around just the culture and climate um dr horton mentioned we have two new staff members who are functioning to really help support in conjunction with donna cross as well as work that romy and some of the student services team student support team is doing as well around culture and climate restorative practices and just seo i can't say enough about what we're really trying to accomplish in terms of not only ensuring that that work lives within our schools and with our adults and students but also uh we're pretty excited about our work with panorama and getting some student voice on many of these um metrics and topics so we're looking forward to that

064rounding out the first quarter um and just looking at the second quarter i think the only other highlight that i would bring up is is the items that are pretty much usual for us so trying to look at summer learning um the state school report cards and other important data and information like that those will be present as well we might look to move a few topics over from our not december meeting i believe it's our january meeting into a working meeting just to ensure that we have time to discuss some pretty big topics that are coming down the pipeline for the district so as it relates to starting work in our student assignment planning as well as work related to our math acceleration and we know that there were covet adjustments made in in

065a couple of these areas and so we want to be able to revisit those and engage in a discussion on that i see a typo on february so i'll kind of mention that we will still have an update on our equity professional learning i want to say and acknowledge devon alexander our new director of equity diversity and faith has been probably spending more of his time um in the face part of his work right now just because the need is there and really trying to coordinate all of the resources that are afforded to our community uh we are truly blessed and fortunate uh to have so many people uh looking to support and finding ways to really just come together at a time like this and so he's been digging into that i think it's

066also safe to mention um again when we think about the metrics in region 10 that we are awaiting to give us somewhat of a better sense of what in-person instruction could return to i think that it's safe to note that we we are working towards a plan to ensure that our students in the fifth ward um if in fact we return or just even in this remote setting are able to get the kinds of supports and resources that are necessary or needed when you don't really have a community school to kind of bond together in um it's hard to be dispersed across the community and still try to um support one another in a time like this and so i think that you know we're certainly working in partnership with a few of our uh

067larger community partners to ensure that we can band together and and make sure that we are providing students and family support um i don't like the term marginalized as much it means something different to me now but uh i do want to acknowledge and recognize that where there is need we want to all come together and make sure that we're applying our resources in a way to best support that and coming down into our fourth quarter um again just wanting to make sure that we're keeping tabs on many of the processes that make up our our normal uh board calendar and board topics but we also want to be mindful uh to just what this unique opportunity presents us with and so we want to make sure that we are preparing for the next school

068year with different uh material updates and things of that nature and um again just a continuous focus on trying to make sure that we are formatively checking in on our remote remote learning uh guidance and experience for both teachers and students and so uh that's a very high level summary of what the board planning calendar has wanted i do want to note that there are a couple of typos and additions or adjustments that we would like to make just based on some feedback tonight in relation to early childhood i think there's also um some questions about maybe a follow-up for our special air report um and so those are things that we will be uh in fact adila and i work on tuesdays after meetings to uh just make sure that we have a uh

069somewhat of a combined understanding of our next move so fortunately the calendar is a dynamic document and we'll be making those adjustments based on tonight's feedback so with that if there are any questions comments or concerns the door is open i want to thank you for putting the dates on there for some additional finance calendar things as well and i just want to confirm that those additional dates are um per the board's request to have more proactive discussion and planning around um what's um you know around our financial challenges and what reductions could look like and how we're going to get community engagement and all of that correct yes that is absolutely correct so yes thank you for for including those in there and so those are just for so that the public is following

070our discussion um there are two additional finance meetings in quarter two is that correct it should be quarter two yes special finance meetings yes we targeted quarter too we won't get it done before january right that will allow us to have a high level discussion about how we're going to respond to our fiscal needs so that those responses can be implemented starting in january with ample time to prepare all right and for anyone who's curious about the background on that conversation that was at our previous finance meeting at the beginning of this month um in just i know these are questions that i asked but just so that these questions can be asked with in front of the public as well um the january meeting was heavy on discussion topics and so as you had

071alluded to dr green i was wondering if we could move two of those discussion items to the february working board meeting to make sure the meeting doesn't go on for too long and we can give everything it's due attention yes yes i think um both stacy and i had items on that date in january and have agreed to move them over into the february meetings i know uh stacy did you want to comment on the time constraints about um the february one are we all good i think we're fine um the adjustments we were thinking about we're moving to i believe it's the february 8th working board meeting because tweet the general board meeting is a joint board meeting later in the month and so the shifts we would just want to make sure we're

072being moved to the february february 8th working board meeting yes that was my that was my thought and um you alluded to adding an early childhood um discussion and i believe i saw it earlier but can you point out specif specifically what meeting you added the early childhood discussion to so it isn't presently on the camera on the camera calendar now um i know that there is a head start community needs assessment in april so i just want to be sensitive to sharon's schedule as well as um talking with the dealer about how we might want to give that ample time in preparation for our calendar so i'm sorry go ahead dr horton we'll also be adding uh an update for emerging bilinguals as well uh i'm thinking maybe we look at the working sessions

073uh to at least through presentation but we'll we'll work with with uh with the board to set up those dates and also the directors is leading that wonderful thank you um did my other colleagues have questions and comments about the calendar that you wanted to share okay i i just yeah a couple of others that i shared that i'd like to just share in our public session um a discussion about reflections and plans and updates about black lives matter week of action as well as lgbtq plus equity week um and any other celebrations that we had um in mind to take on as a district including hispanic heritage month or indigenous peoples asian and pacific islander month etcetera thank you for speaking to those sure so um educators have been doing work through our summer

074curriculum project mechanisms around three percent three functions one is a latinx heritage hispanic heritage month one is lgbtq equity week and black lives matter a week those we i'm still working on finalizing the dates we will start with the hispanic heritage in october uh black lives matter will be in february and then the lgbtq equity week will be in the spring um but again we're finalizing those dates um long term all of us we brought actually the working groups together in the spring and they did some joint work with our fine arts educators over the summer as well long term we want to find ways that we are one um more thoroughly integrating these experiences day in day out into our content areas fine arts literacy social studies and this is hooked somewhat to our

075social studies review and one of the things that is different this year and i think an improvement is that because of some of the rotations and the work over the summer fine arts will address these topics and themes across weeks other than just this particular week and so we'll be weaving those those ideas and learnings through different content areas as the year goes on but we will lift up the experiences and identities within a particular week thank you thank you um and then we had talked a lot about um checking in in regards to social and emotional learning and social emotional wellness back in june and i was i i had inquired if that is part of the remote learning update or if we will have if y'all were planning to have a separate conversation

076about social and emotional wellness and any progress that we've made on measuring that um on a regular basis kylie could you chime in a little bit about our uh work with panorama and how we're looking to leverage that for both devon and donna and then maybe um romy if you have any updates in relation to some of the uh just wellness in general where both staff and students i know that um over the summer both of us both departments kind of worked and added some contributions in those areas but related to the calendar i do think that we have like two times when we'll have some specific uh updates around restorative practices and seo updates um and i do suspect that there is going to be a piece of um that amount that type of

077engagement or um in relation to the remote learning update i think we'd be remiss not to tap into that so be quiet sure i can take a stab um and i i want to just commend donna cross she's been really taking in a lot on sel and i think um she convened a group of educators to think through um the framework and the kinds of competencies that would be really uh valuable for us to you know have a line of inquiry related to and um you know really brought a lot of educator perspective and voice into that process so i don't want to speak too much to that but we do have the opportunity with our partnership with panorama to do some um great measurement in terms of hearing directly from students how they're feeling

078and really getting a close closer lens on um where students are at you know we had a lot of data in all of our surveys related to remote learning last spring and also how families were feeling over the summer and sel is a big component of something that we have to be mindful of and the great thing about panoramas sel assessment is they've done a lot of research it's deeply aligned to a lot of the frameworks they have a really robust instrument that's gone through a lot of validation and it's a it's a pretty strong measuring tool that we feel confident would give us results that are actionable and meaningful i think we'll we'll look at the calendar and we'll try to find a time for us to really bring you a more comprehensive um

079view of that i don't want to do it a disservice and the the work of our educators a disservice by under representing um all the work that's been done to date on that thank you i just had one more that i had asked about um dr green you alluded to was there any thought about when we could get an update on um special special education uh so again we'll be working with uh romy to get those items added to the calendar so we'll make sure they're part of a board presentation wonderful thank you did anybody else have any other comments additions questions about the proposed board calendar or requested editions all right well thank you all we um i think you know we've said this a lot but i want to reiterate we absolutely understand

080we are in unprecedented times and there are a number of really pressing priorities that need to be tended to and so um we absolutely understand that the board calendar is a living document and want to adjust as need as needed during this year so let's continue to be in communication about what is feasible um you know we don't need to have every curiosity addressed if there's not the capacity to do so so thank you all for for considering our priorities but stay in touch um next we have the miracles the amazing miracles document to to discuss our last discussion item all right let's perk up a little bit we're rounding towards the end of this everyone let's let's perk up almost there so uh you know and i also heard that this is tell me

081if i'm wrong i heard this is cubs country so i want to use an analogy um if you if you have the miracles document opened up uh they hired a guy um you know theo epstein they hired him a few years back uh to to take the curse away you know to be like a leader of that uh and not to say that we're what we have a person we don't have a curse of but we do have an achievement gap that has been historic we do have just issues around providing um access and and the best opportunity opportunities for all students so this miracles framework i want to just really give that the idea behind uh the concept when you think about what happened with the cubs there was a plan that he had

082to devise and while you may see in this document a ton of what some will call initiatives these are really just actions that have to happen in order to align with our overall arch and purpose we have the seven priorities that was built by by the team in the school district last year that's embedded throughout uh in addition we've added a component to that uh and then and then on the other side of this it's the uh what we've shared it is definitely over it could be overwhelming if you're not in the trenches doing the work uh and we just i just wanted us to have an opportunity this time to really show how we're working all the different pieces as we're um spending dollars uh across the district as we're making decisions for position

083creation or different curriculum selections and also adopting heavy into a restorative there had to be some alignment and so when the cubs put their whole plan together he went in with the goal of winning the world series i see you smiling this he went in with the plan of winning the whole the world series and within a certain window and he had to identify what are the key components of the process that he was going to use that they were going to use to get there so i'm going on a miracle's document when you go over to the miracles framework there are there are key components and that's what i really want to highlight tonight i'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of going into those those multiple pieces because it can get

084heavy but first we must if we as a district if we say we are focused on equity we're equity centered and this is truly the vision of the district in the in the action we must be intentional about how we say it we can't mince our words there's amazing policies as written that says this is what we stand for equity inclusion all of those pieces have to be really spelled out so the m is an acronym and under the m there are multiple there are areas and i won't go into these there are components that connect to say that this is how we're going to really march towards outward-facing equity work when you go to the next one improve the instructional core uh we all know that the most important part to this work is

085the teacher and if we're saying that we if we're saying that we want to change outcomes and close the achievement gap we must equip and support and sometimes get out of the way of our of our teachers delivering high quality instruction third level it must be built in how do we really build how do we really focus create curriculum that is rigorous you hear people through that term around all the time truly defining the action that we must take in order to provide rigor for our students right attract and retain a high quality staff that's the a we got we have to have the staff i know we talk about recruiting our uh most diverse candidates and most passionate teachers but also let's retain the great teachers that we have right what are efforts around

086that uh commitment to accountability again this work cannot be done when the cubs was on their journey that was some really big time players for those who are diehard cub fans would realize there was some people that were traded from the clubs and we thought we thought theo was crazy for a lack of better words but he wasn't he had a plan and so that when we talk about commitment to accountability how do we design and hold ourselves starting with the superintendent and throughout the entire district how do we hold ourselves accountable accountable just cannot be in words it must be in action and we are venturing into some new work uh that it's gonna take some time i've been speaking to the team about the storming normandy performing and it lives within this commitment

087to accountability the l learning environments that support student success on my tour as i'm talking to different teachers and administrators and even a few parents and and speaking about restorative practice has been a great addition to what were to our district but what our restorative coaches was doing was spending roughly 60 percent of time dealing with helping teachers uh to to uh set the right classroom environment and our teachers were doing doing their best and their memberships are doing their best but central office we have to come with it a little bit to help them provide them with those resources and then the e you cannot move the work there will go set and the cubs front offices said in order for us to get this world champion this this world series we have to

088we have to set these targets and so we are the same work we cannot have ours our schools working on one set of goals while central offices either a have not set them strategically and openly or have a different set of goals so this is the establishing expected target driven by results and then finally putting our dollars where we say we value while being fiscally responsible uh with the with the funds of our taxpayers and these are all actions that have to take place and again i've we've gotten some really amazing feedback from uh from the board around things that we definitely need to change shift uh readdress and i'm we are um we're excited about where we are i think we're about 60 of where we need to be we're building this out as

089we talk about strategic planning this is while this is not the strategic plan we felt like in order for us to really dive into building a viable strategic plan that we can actually move and yield outcomes we had to have this district improvement plan uh that's that's really driven around continuous improvement and this is what we have here so um we are open to taking questions uh there were that that was presented to us in multiple ways again this is not a final document this is just us really being vulnerable and saying here's what we're thinking give it back to us and let us go back to work to uh design and create the structure so we are open for questions i think uh a prevailing question that i had and then i saw some

090other colleagues had were about specific targets for student achievement there are a few places where student achievement as a measure was mentioned which i appreciate just curious to get more specific and by the way this is probably one of the most specific things that we've seen comprehensive and specific in terms of collective thinking about how we're going to address what we've identified as a priority um which is accelerating the learning of students who have been excluded thus far from and underserved and so i do appreciate um and i think broadly speaking we we appreciate the work that you all have done to pull this together um and so questions please i hope that our questions are not perceived as criticism oh no oh no no no no we don't take it that way we love

091that like in order for us to create a document that represents the community we definitely have to get the feedback from the board who represents that that entity so we are please don't don't hold back on us i'm not sensitive the team knows that uh they're not either and we're gonna roll so i would just like kylie if you can chime in a little bit we've spoken uh green more kylie green has spoken more about this when our goals setting our goals those smart smarty goals as we got from the retreat back in july um we know that what we have put here isn't it it's not necessarily it's not our final we have to go back and make sure that all our goals are measurable that they're attainable that they're realistic and they kindly

092will be able to take this and put it um in a place so that we can go back within these eight week cycles and i won't go down the rabbit hole to get those details of reviewing progress in those areas so connie can you chime in a little bit about how we're going to work to get our goals and each of these metrics uh moving or set up i should say sure um so i think it's important to recognize that this is you know as dr horton said a work in progress i think ultimately everyone on this team wants our work to impact student outcomes and so what we need to do is just work uh to come up with a framework for how we're gonna really measure these things and how we're going to

093measure them in ways that are meaningful for each one of the um projects that we're undertaking you know having incremental goals so that we can track the progress over time i think is really critical to making sure that we are making the progress that we need to see making sure that we're measuring the right things so if we think that a project is going to have a specific outcome the measures have to align to to that outcome and so we'll be working to further refine these and really hone in on some of those measures and so i think that'll be that'll be a lot of work that's forthcoming as we further develop and and please understand these are not just statements that we put together so we can have this great presentation for the community

094it's really how we're going to operate um and again continuous improvement requires our organization to be united and on the same path um another comment that i found to be really important that was consistent that this document itself is overwhelming so we've been talking about um ideally what we're probably gonna what we're probably gonna propose is actually just the tenants uh the indicators and then the goals that align with them and keep the for the public facing document and keep all of the action that we must do out of the public i i think that gets that can really overwhelm after i was reviewing it like 15 times um the team has articulated that so many times uh melissa and her group uh they've really went into the lab and took this if you so

095what you saw if you saw it before you wouldn't it looks crazy melissa took this and really uh made it make even more sense just from the order and the structure so we are going to create a a true publication document that can at least show our direction uh and it and and the team will tell you everything that we tried to speak about i'm working to align it back to this vision and this focus of this miracles framework there should it shouldn't be anything that we're doing um that doesn't align within this within that within our continuous improvement structure from emerging bilingual to our finances i've had a conversation with rafael earlier today uh about a couple of things and so every every communication that i've received regarding recommendations suggestions or ideas we put

096it in a q a and we're going to be working to continue to build this so that it's a user-friendly document for us but it also brings a level of accountability that i'm not i don't know what 65 had i wasn't here but i can tell you most school districts don't have this level of accountability that our team is making themselves vulnerable um and committing to these goals it's not an easy um it's not an easy process to get there but the team is is ready and and and are willing to we're putting ourselves out here on the line for for our students and to close this achievement guide hey yesterday um yeah so i was was one of the people who had felt a little overwhelmed by the initial draft um i think the

097public facing document is fantastic um and it's definitely more digestible um and it's still maybe is going to be more lengthy that some people want but i think it does give it i think it gives a really great level of detail for people who want and i think maybe having even a shorter one that just as attendants is a great idea so people can sort of pick and choose how they want to to dive into it so thank you very much um for for for creating that i think from a board perspective you know what i had shared um is you know i think to what anya said one thing is you know sort of what are the things that as a board we should be looking at and monitoring to see how we are

098moving forward on on you know on some of these goals um i think you know also you know thinking uh obviously fiscally um trying to be fiscally conservative uh you know i'd have to look through it again but there's there didn't appear to be some you know i think one of the things that i had noticed is you know we're going through um there was a suggestion to do an equity walk again which is something that we had done in the past and so i just want to make sure that we have a clear understanding of what the goal is for um you know doing another equity walk or equity audit or whatever we're calling it in the upcoming years versus what we did in the past and how the two how we can you

099know i think there was still valuable information in the previous report we got so so how can we utilize that and how can we make sure that you know before we are going for external consultants on curriculum review that we're really utilizing the internal resources uh that we have um and oh and committee structures too i think i had mentioned that um that's something that has repeatedly come to the board's attention about we have a lot of committees i know in the last round of negotiations we had a side letter around really reviewing the committees so really being thoughtful to the extent that new committees are being created under this framework you know what are they replacing or how are we using the existing committees to make sure that we are not just adding without

100maybe taking away where appropriate um and then i think the final comment that i want to make is you know i think i do hope people will take a look um at this public facing document that you've created because i think there's just some really really exciting things that is a board i know we have been talking about and asking for um and you know front and center the very first thing the the student advisory council i think is something that we've talked about oh we need to to have more student voice um and i think for you to put that in there as the number one thing is really spectacular and i'm really excited to see that and there are just some other things in there um around uh you know looking at how

101we can make sure that we are providing bilingual services at each school and really thinking through the school assignment plan to make sure that we are um really serving our student population uh in the most efficient and best way that we can i think that's really exciting it's something that we wanted to see for a while and so to see that level of detail and know that you're you're thinking about it and have a plan for addressing these things is just it's really exciting to see so thank you for that thank you miss i we can't hear you biz while you're waiting i just want suny did you want me to address any part of your question like about the equity walk or two oh sure if you can't yeah i mean you can address

102that now or yeah that's fine that'd be great i would just just i'll highlight a couple things because um i've read the equity walk that was done in the past by cory wallace and it does have some good recommendations but the one um that i put in our miracles framework is different because it's specifically focused on special ed and emergent bilinguals and none of those components were brought up in the recommendations in the previous equity walk and the equity walk with deborah ignite that we'd be conducting this year would also be paired with leadership coaching and professional learning that would be built into our grant we are required by the state to spend a certain amount or a percentage of our grant dollars to support professional learning around priorities and because disproportionality is something that's

103been we've been cited in the state it's written into our plan that we need to address it so that's one of the key ways i chose to coordinate that support for our department thank you for that clarification that's that's helpful thank you thanks mommy biz i could hear you once you can hear me now yeah um dr horton i appreciate any time we can use cubs metaphors and make parallels to our work so thank you for for doing that for us um i want to touch a little bit on what suny said i think um a historical issue for our district has been a lack of alignment and so i'm very excited and hopeful with this document for doing a better job of aligning our work and making more clear connections between different parts of

104the work i think a an issue that has been a challenge for us previously will come up again in that if we do not articulate well how all of these things are connected to our educators and staff it feels like 42 different tasks um it feels like we've added you know all of these different components and that was where we got pushback historically about having too many teams and too many things is that i don't think we did a very good job of articulating how it all fit together and how it was all part of the same umbrella and so i think there's great potential with this this document to help people see those synergies and see where all those connections are but i want us to be really explicit with our educators about how

105this didn't just add 42 new things to their list um but that it is how we you know how it is strengthening and giving them um more tools in their toolkit to be able to do some of the things that they have already committed to historically um and thinking about you know how we can most effectively use teams and committees so that our educators and you know we have we have some pretty critical folks in every building and we want to make sure that we're not pulling them in way too many directions that they can't be as successful as they need to be so i think i've got great hope and optimism about this document because online life a lifetime cubs fan i am an optimist um but they're you know the how it gets

106communicated out and how people are um able to see this as a larger strategy not all separate strategies that are siloed will be really important i just want to jump off what biz said and i think what others have said about trying to communicate the undergirding beliefs or premises that the all the letters um align with um i i felt like there was a lot of focus on culture and climate and that social emotional learning space which i think is critical so i was really happy to see the resources devoted to that the personnel devoted to that the training um really needed to build that social relationship between educators and students um because i think without that no matter how many initiatives and programs you have you're really not going to be able to operationalize

107any of the stuff so i i'm really happy to see all of that um but i think we need to be more explicit that that's what we're doing right that what we're trying to build here is um that really healthy relationship between teachers and students in all aspects of their interaction not just academics and not just classroom management but but the whole kind of relationship um so i think articulating some of the that vision up front would be really um critical for the public-facing document and and for educators as well right that the the goal is very clear um but i also would wouldn't um totally discount the the actions either and maybe like later on when we've gotten to those actions or achieve those actions it would be great for the public to know

108like here's how we got to this goal in year one or here's how we got to the these goals in year two so that we can celebrate what we actually did um so i think it'll be really important to show the public the steps that we took to got to to get to specific goals and to have an opportunity to celebrate those um and to that end one of the goals that i'm really interested in is the social studies curriculum and and i know that it's been in review for a while and i know that there's been a community push to to make it um less eurocentric um less based in white supremacy so i would love to hear some thoughts i know i saw in the progress report it hasn't started yet in earnest

109but i'd love to hear about some directions and what you're thinking and um i would really love to see more integration into the rest of the course subject areas as well thanks thanks sulai that was really uh what you sent was really uh helpful earlier today uh so i'm gonna be using that when i talk with the team that was a really good way to summarize but um stacy has found um hey we've kind of kind of i don't want to say this but i guess we'll find like a unicorn for the work so the main part was finding someone that can help us lead the social studies piece um i believe that we found that that individual and so there that that action can begin to take place and i'm grateful i'm glad that

110you're able to use the status of progress not start it or whatever that's how that's exactly what what we would like to uh engage that's how we want to engage in conversations with the board and the community as we're moving uh through the work yeah jolly so there's a couple things that um i just want to commend the team on putting together the the framework and i think if we're going with the cubs metaphor i think you know sometimes it's about finding the right people and getting out of the way and that that holds true for your building leaders it holds true for your cabinet it also holds true for your teachers and your paraprofessionals and everybody in the building and giving people space to be great on behalf of community and kids is really

111important but in this framework um you don't explicitly say it but what i read was the naming of the role of administrators at the central office and the building level in staging for support staging for the success and support of educators while the what sula was saying about the relationship between teachers and kids is so critical the role of everybody else that isn't in that relationship is to support them whether it's being developed in content facilitation so we can have more engagement and conversations you know i loved reading about that within the plan because that also tells teachers that something they can expect down the road are leaders who are better at facilitating conversations and delivering feedback and being in their rooms in a way that's more productive to them in giving feedback to children

112and enhancing the culture and climate of the classroom and when those things can be tied in from an overarching plan like this on that's on paper that we're talking about at a board meeting all the way down to a classroom that's when you can start to get people give people a little bit of faith that the system is actually working for the right people and working in the right direction all in one direction and so i look forward to seeing the fruits of that labor and thank you for just putting it out there even as a first crack i'm sure it's going to be revised and changed like all good plans are but i think the tenants are probably going to stay the same and the core structure is probably going to stay the same

113like all good goals are we're going to shoot for the the moon and if we miss we'll fall amongst the stars and and that'll be okay too thank you just wanted to also again keep the pray keep on the praise right again i appreciate again getting a document that's public basing that that i think is accessible uh and but also you know really appreciate the the emphasis at the beginning around the vm right around working towards equity or moving towards equity and the family and community engagement piece and that's me that speaks to my heart that's what i love uh as an educator you know for me you know we know that the the parent is the first teacher right and we as a district and as educators um really emphasize the the power that

114parents have right and now in this time more than ever right you know we we were kind of helping out and we have no other choice but to do that how do we continue to build capacity at home and then provide parents opportunities to we really know what's going on in school and and ensuring that their kids are succeeding and advocating not only for their child but for other children right so i appreciate uh you know look you looking at the care and map stool capacity framework which is has just had an update i love it love it love it love it because it holds all stakeholders accountable educators administrators community members uh so i think it's just just a really great great uh approach and looking forward and so excited uh about this whole

115ambitious plan to really transform how we educate children and partner with families to create better outcomes in this town so thank you for that thank you so i had some questions that i shared and some that have come to mind just in hearing from my colleagues again um this evening one just to piggyback off of what um sunny and biz were saying i think it was mentioned let's not um create committees where committees already exist but i would also say if some committees are going to be consolidated or repurposed that um be mindful of not uh throwing the baby out with the bath water and not um losing momentum or progress that had been made um in the recreation of something else um because that has been i think it's a challenge in education in

116general um but definitely has been a challenge here at 65. um i think that also ties into the idea of how maybe articulating specifically in a preface or preamble or something that may accompany this document about how the seven priorities and how our previous strategic plan metrics are reflected how this miracles framework is building off of or an evolution of some of that work so that we can be um explicit about what those connections are and um [Music] not lose the work that had been done in those areas and to give some kind of homage to that work um and explain why why we need to make this shift and how this is going to get us where we we do need to go [Music] um yeah and i guess just articulating how we are

117not necessarily reinventing the wheel here would be something that i think it would be useful to explicitly lay out um i had a couple more comments and that i i shared previously about the um fiscal section um just waiting to see more detail highlighting the level of urgency that we're operating at now with addressing the structural deficit and having to make decisions to decisions to to do so um and also you mentioned dr horton the smart tea goals just to be explicit what makes a smart eagle is adding inclusion and equity is that right yes so um yeah i wanted we've been talking a lot about making decisions around the structural deficit for the last um i would say year year and a half at our finance meetings um and really since the referendum so

118longer but more explicitly and i think in the last year and year and a half we've really been talking about how we need to make these decisions and unfortunately this pandemic has made that timeline even shorter than we thought it was going to be but we've talked about needing to have an inclusive conversation about addressing the structural deficit um based on some learning that we had on decisions that were made around the last referendum that were very difficult and painful um but also we've been talking about how to use a racial equity lens um in making these decisions about the structural deficit and i didn't see either of those focused on enough and so i'd love to see in these upcoming revisions more detail in both of those areas around the fiscal sustainability section thank

119you that's good this is good feedback from everyone did anyone else have any other comments questions concerns priorities that you'd like to share about um the miracles framework yeah i just have a couple of comments and questions um i think you know it's already been expressed that the framework as presented is dense and so um i just you know be curious how we can how it could be modified to help the public um you know make sense of timelines or what they should be looking for and areas where we want to bring in our community um i think that also there you know there's just some technical words and references that the the public might not be familiar with um so it might be helpful to have some sort of glossary or a reference page

120and as it's already been mentioned a timeline i think would be helpful um and i think i don't know where this is going to live on our website but maybe um wherever it's house explaining um maybe how the process was developed we um we asked i think now it uh it's been two years since we asked the you know noting that our cabinet was very stressed and that there are several initiatives on board um that you know we just we we asked them to consolidate it and i know that those seven initiatives are built into this framework but just you know i think it would be helpful to have some some background information on how um how cabinet members and their corresponding teams work to develop these the different tenants in ensuring that um that

121we have everybody on board um there's you know there's a lot of work that's being presented um and i love the enthusiasm and the full steam ahead approach but um you know i just want to make sure everybody is out is on board and that we're managing change um with care and and mindfulness um again it's it's a very dense document and however we can help explain to the public i you know i would ask if if we're going to translate this document and i think the priority for me wouldn't necessarily be in in translating the 55-page document that we reviewed but presenting it in a way that that the public can understand and it really helps them make sense of what you know what they what they should expect um to see in the

122classroom and at their schools and um at a district level um and i would love to challenge ourselves to find ways to incorporate environmental sustainability into this framework um environmental equity should be considered as part of the overall overall motion um towards equity so it would um i think given that we are partners in carp it would be helpful to have um you know it considered in particular the course of study our learning environments and our fiscal stewardship which are embedded in this framework there is mention already about the staff and the the administrators who are responsible to it but for each individual um individual section but again i think as we're we're you know as i was reviewing it um i couldn't help but think you know what additional staff will be needed to

123ensure that we're meeting the indicators um and just be you know being mindful of the resources that we have available um and the resources that we you know we will have um within the lifespan of this um of this framework thank you and this i'm sorry doctor did you i'll just say thank you to rebecca good feedback i just wanted to add i think we all are clear on this but in case we're not um this is a really rigorous dynamic document and plan and i just want to also thank you all for putting it together but also acknowledge that like you're all trying to do this during a pandemic and we need you all to be standing uh next year um after surviving whatever you know the lift on top of this for what

124we all are doing right now is pretty epic so um i i i think i can speak for the board and that and saying that like we want you all to be okay so please go at a pace that is survivable and sustainable and feasible for all of you um it's not that we aren't excited about all the things and we know there's incredible urgency and i'm not at all suggesting that we ignore that urgency but also just accept that we are in a moment that we could not have ever predicted and uh so just please be kind and careful with yourselves as you try to engage in this meaningful work undelete were you gonna say something yeah i just wanted to jump in and just say i think on that point one of the

125things that has been really clear for us as we've rolled out the miracles work is that there is a developmental continuum we are not we are recognizing whether it's our six systems and the spotlight work um and the work that we're doing in our schools we really want to i want to just like convey this message that um we embrace this idea that it's going to take time that there's an arc to how we're going to do this what we don't we don't want to pull back on is the importance of laying that groundwork both in a remote space and in person space and i and i frankly i'll speak for myself having been in this role now for this is my starting my fourth year i'm energized by this opportunity um and i really

126feel strongly that it's going to bring um and a couple of people mention this importance of coherence and coordination i think it gives an opportunity for also see on the table what are the different interconnections between our work whether it's equity there's been a sometimes confusing i think you may be speaking to this a little bit well we're talking about equity here which is different from restored practices why well those two are really integrated right so they're about climate and culture and so when we think about our motion towards equity our moving towards equity this this idea um it really i think across the miracles framework it brings together a continuous way for us to track and support each other and to know what our progress is over time i really think and i've heard

127this dr horton has said this to us multiple times hey create a long on what's the word on on-ramp or on a runway create the longest runway you need to make it successful the more important thing is that you've got i wanna just echo what you said and i and i appreciate a number of people mentioned the density i think part of it is that there's this length of time that we're paying attention our goal isn't to try to fix everything in the next three months right in fact quite the opposite is to really start to say here's the vision we have to be at least thinking about that vision because you can't build something if you don't have a vision for it so i thank you for giving me a minute to jump in

128and say that thank you so um i really appreciate the work that you all have done to prepare these important discussions this evening um i appreciate everyone for hanging in there for three real robust and heavy um conversations i in terms of the miracles framework just some notes that i took um that you know we really would like to see an accessible document including um translation um the inclusion of those smarty goals with the emphasis on equity and inclusion particularly in the finance section that a glossary a preface a timeline may those types of tools may make this document more accessible very usable um and focus uh on environmental sustainability and i actually don't think i mentioned i mentioned it via email but i didn't mention it here but also some focus on early childhood

129and how early childhood is a part of this these miracles [Music] and all of that with uh everyone's workload and quality of life in mind um our priorities for the board in relation to this particular discussion topic um is there anything that i that i missed yeah okay all right so um with that we are i would like to adjourn tonight's meeting at 9 41. be well everyone good evening good night