School Board Workshop - Nov. 3, 2022

001foreign [Music] amazing [Music] good evening that's a great question Melinda Doles here Pat Driscoll here Louise hi here is absent Katie Schwartz is absent Eric Chester here Sharon Van Lear here [Music] the motion to approve the agenda so moved second five are we expected by path all those in favor say aye aye the only item action item we have on the agenda the agenda is three point 3.0 and that 3.1 is the approval of a new employee presented this evening by our superintendent Duke thank you normally we not do not go through the process of uh having our new employees just called out but because this is a workshop meeting we wanted to make sure that the approval for the new director of communication Sean hogendorf is approved prior to his start date which his

002start date will be um November 14th and our next board meeting is not until the 17th so this evening I am bringing forth that recommendation for approval Sean comes to us after having experience with St Paul Public Schools as well as Robinsdale he has a similar training in terms of situation reports and the various platforms that we use so we feel like he will be a nice smooth transition from Pepe Barton who previously served I should say who is still serving virtually for a week as our director of communications so I am asking for approval of our new director okay thank you okay uh can I get can I get approval can I get a motion so move second move right who Pat second five Melinda uh is there any conversation questions concerned all those

003in paper say aye aye I'm opposed motion carry with that we will move to 4.0 and adjourn the business meetings cannot get it okay um moving along we will begin our regular scheduled Workshop meeting uh it is Thursday October third excuse no Thursday that you got October excuse me November 3rd 2022 at 6 PM our first item on the agenda is 1.0 and that is our roll call Melinda Doles here Pat Driscoll here Louise Heinz here semi patnik is absent Katie Schwartz is absent Eric tester Sharon Van Lear here please rise for our project Allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag and to the Republic for which it stands indivisible with liberty and justice for all next we have the approval of our agenda can I get a motion to approve the agenda move by Eric

004second by Louise all those in favor of those opposed motion carried next is 4.0 our Workshop items and 4.1 is our strategic planning update and that will be given by Julie Nielsen thank you I know that throughout the past months the board has received updates as well as a community around our strategic planning process and a reminder classroom to boardroom strategic planning process we have met four times between June and October as part of our strategic planning process we have engaged students staff and families in the feedback loop related to what we are calling their daily desired experiences the daily desired experiences will be the foundation for our strategic plan tonight we have Christine robleski with us from Teamworks who is here to provide the board in our community with an update and summary on

005our work today so Christine thank you for joining us thank you very much okay how about if I just hold it and I think James is pulling up the slide deck great and my understanding is you all received a copy of the slide deck as well in advance and I will just take you through this as you recall Dennis and I were with you early on I think they to describe what the process was going to be I gave you a quick update at your July board meeting and so what I just wanted to do is start with um an overall of the process again and a reminder as Julie just mentioned the desired daily experience is really the foundation for a lot of the work that we're doing we're striving to give your students

006your families and your staff The Experience they want to be having in South Washington County Public Schools so as you see here and as we outline to you early on in the process is there's kind of three main stages of the process and then there's three areas of ownership as we work through the process so the three main stages is assessing our reality and our current context that was the story wall that we did in life cycle with your strategic planning team and what we call an environmental scan so the story wall was looking back historically at the context in the district moving up to now and then the environmental scan is an assessment of what's Happening Now in terms of what's well established what's emerging what's on the edge and what's ebbing in the

007district so we did that work with your strategic planning team we're in the process right now and you'll see in the subsequent slides that we're really working on that describing the vision including the desired daily experience and we're going to be doing vision card work later on this month with the strategic planning team and then we'll be moving into what we call an operational plan with the strategic planning team and that's something that your management team will own we'll start working with you all more closely in about the February March April time frame where we'll be working on a strategic roadmap in your three-year board agenda the circles that you see on this slide really are around that ownership piece that I talked about so you in your governance role will own that strategic roadmap

008you'll take action on it it's one of the final steps of the strategic planning process you will develop a three-year work plan that will be complementary to the management teams through your operational plan but again that comes after we've done all of the work with the strategic planning team I know you already have a district Long Range model we'll probably just take a look at that in line with your new strategic plan make sure that they are working well together and I know you've also worked with Dennis on board structure and workflow but again we'll take a look at that in light of the Strategic plan once you have it in place the management team's responsibility is that through your operational plan so it's a rolling three-year plan always looking ahead to what is the

009learning work we need to be doing what are we researching what is the work that we're implementing and how do we manage that and then um what is the work that becomes standard work in the district so that is something we'll work on we'll Begin work on in the next couple of months with your strategic planning team along with a vision card one of the things that we've changed at Teamworks over the last few years is the vision card also includes measures toward that desired daily experience we didn't used to have that before and it's also a much smaller vision card you may recall pages and pages of vision cards in the past we go to one maybe two pages now and on the most important aspects of what you want to measure and then

010connected with that our department Improvement plans a classroom theory of action we'll be working on that with a strategic planning team as well and then the school Improvement plan so all of that will be aligned together and then the role of consultation is the role that your different interested parties play in The District so your students your families your staff members beyond the people that are involved in the strategic planning team so the story wall and environmental scan you had participation of Staff in those sessions and then with a desired daily experience we had input on the front end from several groups in May and June and we're having feedback on the desired daily experience through surveys as well we will suggest to you strongly that once you have a draft strategic roadmap you go

011out and get feedback about the Strategic roadmap before you finalize it as a school board as well um so this is just another way to show that ownership piece up about the structure of the Strategic plan what are the governance roles what are the management roles one distinction here is that you'll see we have included monitoring reports on the vision cards and on implementation of the um the Strategic plan as part of the management work to the school board so that's something we I think you already do but we would strongly encourage the district to make sure that once you have your strategic plan in place your new strategic directions that you're having regular monitoring reports at your board meetings the timeline we've been able to stay on track with the timeline this is the

012same timeline you saw I think back in May so late spring is when we began and we were doing the story wall and the environmental scan about the same time that we were gathering input from student staff and families a lot of work with your District pulling those together and then in late summer and early fall we started looking more closely at all of those desired daily input descriptions from your students staff and families with your strategic planning team develop those draft descriptions based on all that raw data that we received and and then this month we'll be working on theory of action refining those desired daily experiences and beginning development on the vision card as we look more into winter that's where we'll start working on that three-year operational plan and then in the

013springtime as I mentioned we'll be working more closely with you in beginning the department and school plans aligned to the district strategic plan so as I mentioned some of the work that we've completed to date oops from June through October is that historical context with the story wall we went all the way back to 1987 with your staff and so it was an interesting fun activity but it also allowed the strategic planning team to see the trends that really shape the district moving up to now and we looked at the environmental scan all of those reports become part of the the foundation for what we're going to be looking at as we develop the operational plan and the the Strategic roadmap we've been working on those desired daily experiences so getting those draft descriptions and

014now working toward refining them and then the the last thing that we did uh just a couple of weeks ago was working with your schools and your departments on what we call strengths and needs this is something we haven't been doing in years past if you worked with us but we had just about every school represented every Department represented really taking a close look and doing a self-assessment on what are the strengths and needs and then we're going to pull all those together by level and and be able to say how does that fit with what we want to do as a district how does that fit with those desired daily experiences that we're Gathering uh additional work that you've completed we mentioned the desired daily experiences the input we had a survey that your

015District staff administered between October 6th and 19th and you can see these the student participation numbers the family participation numbers and staff participation numbers we're going to look a little bit more closely I think at some of the student numbers we might want to go and get a little bit more student feedback but the good news is looking at your student participation numbers is your demographics for the students that participate in the survey match pretty closely to your student demographics across the district so that positive I know you've had some questions about the desired daily experience so we just wanted to lay out for you who did we hear from in May and June so we had 10 groups of students and student ambassadors and the students were aged or from grades 4 through 12.

016we had about 135 students in all we went to several schools and then we had three staff groups and six family groups wanted to make sure that we had Pre-K all the way up through 12 in terms of the family participation and had mixed representation as well what we did was we pulled that report together and again all that raw data went to the strategic planning team to develop the draft desired daily uh experience descriptions in terms of what we asked in those early sessions when we pulled students and staff and families together we asked them to understand what the whole system view was because when we're doing plans we want to make sure that we're addressing the work area which is really around resources the organization area which is how things are done in

017the district and then culture it's really around the relationships that exist in the district so when we pulled those groups together we said we asked them to use words and phrases to describe what they wanted their experience to be here as if it was already happening so not to to dwell if you will on what isn't happening right now but to say look ahead if you're a parent what do you want your experience to be what do you want your child's experience to be in the district if you're a student describe what that would be like and try to make sure that we're covering all three aspects of that whole system View we would have them develop those descriptions together in small groups come back present to each other and then they would go back

018and edit and refine based on what they heard maybe getting a little bit more specific so that's what we asked many of those groups to do and in the end we had that large report and I think there are some members of the strategic planning team are on the table now it was a lot of data to get through in the end we landed on some draft student descriptions family descriptions and uh staff descriptions I just included him on the slide so that you could see them these are the descriptions that did go out for the survey so we have several more family descriptions we may find that we will have fewer descriptions by the time we're done and that will be refining those descriptions so those are the staff descriptions that you saw and

019then I mentioned that we did the school assessment of strengths and needs and we did the department assessments because we are in the process of making sure that all of those assessments were completed by all of your schools clarifying information we do not have all of that information that we're going to be sharing with you tonight but did want to give you some examples of some of the things that we've heard across the schools so some of the common strengths that schools identified were that positive connection between staff and students that they're seeing across the district teamwork and collaboration a lot of that happening directly at their school level but also in collaboration with the district a commitment to equity and a common theme was really around having student voice raised up more in the

020district some examples of the common needs that were identified by schools I don't think you're going to be surprised by space and facility challenges were referenced quite a bit the need for a more mental health support especially following on covid and then the Staffing shortages that we're seeing beyond your District in terms of what we're seeing with some of those Department assessment of strengths and needs again just giving you some examples of what we're seeing and Julie is going to be working with your department leaders to say how do we make sense of this together some examples again are that teamwork and collaboration of strengths flexibility and adaptability I expect after the last few years that has probably that experience that expertise is probably much stronger the expertise that you have across your different departments

021and dedication and then again some examples of the common needs staffing space and then some desire for either more clarity or continuing Improvement on your processes one of the things that we did in that strengths and needs session also was have your departments hear from schools directly on what the school's perception was of the department strengths and needs so it gave the department heads to get a sense of what kind of service are we providing to the schools it was a lively discussion we did it kind of a World Cafe format and the superintendent I think has an intent of maybe doing that periodically now so that we can have that stronger connection and collaboration I was going to say it was it was so Lively and so positive that it was something that we

022thought we should be including when we do school Improvement plans and our department Improvement plans because it was really good for our department leaders to hear directly from the staff within our schools so that was a really positive ending to that session yeah they your schools and your departments were really digging deep looking closely it was a lot of self-reflection and then to be able to take all that information and say what do we have in common across our departments what do we have in common across our schools and what's unique uh and so upcoming what's happening as we move forward I mentioned we're going to be refining that desired daily experience in your District we are going to be having your student ambassadors do the the next version of refinement for the student experiences

023what we're going to do is we're going to give them the original raw data on the student descriptions and we're going to give them the feedback from the surveys and have them refine those descriptions and not edit refine maybe condense those descriptions as well and then the same thing with parents and families we're going to be asking your District ambassadors to be doing that work and then we will ask the strategic planning team to work on the the staff refinement so the that will be happening over the coming weeks the strategic planning team in November and December are going to do that refinement work in addition to developing a draft theory of action beginning the draft strategic Vision cards and that three-year operational plan that I mentioned earlier and then looking ahead to working with

024you some more February and March is where we're really going to be looking at the Strategic roadmap and some of the other work that we'll be doing with you and I think you know from your previous work on strategic planning that roadmap is really Around Mission Vision Values and strategic directions and all of that will come up from the work that we will have been doing with the strategic planning team as we look ahead and I mentioned that operational plan our strategic growth and change framework is what we will be using when we work with a strategic planning team and that's where I mentioned we're going to make sure that we're looking at what are the initiatives that you currently have in the district but also what are the initiatives that you need to accomplish

025what you hope to accomplish with a strategic plan and how do you stage implementation given your capacity within the district given what you want to be able to do but also not do too much and in implementation that's what I mentioned we have the learning work the implementation work and the standard work that we do in the district we also ask the team to identify what needs to leave the district in order for you to accomplish success with all those initiatives there's one more thing that we have changed probably since some members of your administrative team have done strategic planning with us and that is we take a much closer look at what we call standard work we have found that there is a high degree of variability about how District teams describe what standard

026work is and whether you have actually achieved success and consistency with your standard work so we that's a first step that we'll take with the team before we move into what are the new initiatives that we do we need to shore up any of our current work in order to make sure that it is much more consistent and applied consistently across the district so that's a preview of things to come it's a look at what we've accomplished so far and I would like to invite you to ask me any questions or ask the superintendent if you have any questions of us no I it's been nicely paced um it feels like we've been doing it a long time and then when you repeat that we've had four meetings it feels like it's been much bigger

027but the meetings are three hours the sessions are three hours so they are a nice chunk of time to get together but the last session of course the most valuable part was the conversation between the schools and the Departments so I think we're pacing ourselves we're moving along and we're staying on timeline as it relates to redrafting our strategic plan asking them the same like in fourth grade as you're asking the high schoolers or are there is it very a little bit yeah we are asking them the same thing what they describe and how they describe them is what's really different um and uh principal Williams was part of the group that we did with his school and some of the younger students need just a little bit more help in terms of facilitation but

028they they are very happy to share what they think needs to change how they would describe what they would like to see as their experience I don't think it was surprising it would be surprising to hear you say to hear students talk about at the secondary level that they would like longer passing time and more time to talk to their friends and then at the elementary level you know they want to make sure all students talk about food I've never done this I've never ever done these desired daily experience input sessions without having students talk about food passing time and in your District like in some of the others the space you know how they get through the hallways at the high school level where they are able to sit the kinds of um Comfort

029level they have or not with where they are in school and how that lines up with their their learning but but yeah your students were wide open about what they'd like to see I think one thing we wanted to be careful about too is sometimes as adults we come over the top of student statements and we begin to edit and try to give meaning to their words and what's really important is that the student experience is in student words and not adult words and so as we go back and revisit with our student ambassadors we want to make sure that we keep those experiences in student voice and not in adult voice you know interpreting what our kids believe their experience should be so we should see things that kids might actually say as part

030of their experience any other questions did you find that the comments between the high schools were they similar uh they actually were and you know we've we know that there are some rivalries across schools in the district um and uh and the students had uh similar things to say about what they'd like to experience now there were some uniqueness to each of the high schools but there was a lot of commonality about what they want their experience to be how they want to be recognized how they want to be informed when things are happening and uh and they want to be valued I mean that was across all the groups too you know staff students families it's very common that they'll say they want to be respected we try to push them a little more

031and say what does that look like for you because it can mean very different things for people anyone else thank you so much thank you thank you Christine I gotta repeat myself thank you so much um next we have 4.2 uh a transportation update and that will be given by superintendent Nielsen thank you I know that the board and our community is aware of our transportation shortages our driver shortage um and where where we're as we look forward how we're doing with transportation and so really the why to this update is that we are experiencing significant staff shortages as we look forward with leaves of bus drivers potential retirements of our bus drivers is based on the age of our bus drivers along with most of our staff our mechanics as well as our office

032staff and transportation our all-out driving buses almost every day and so our transportation director would like to make it through the year um and just keep making those slight alterations but it's not something long term that we can sustain and so formally to communicate with the board in our community that we are beginning to take a look with the use of a steering committee um taking a look at possible options to transportation currently we bus students in elementary school who live more than a mile Middle School more than a mile and a half and high school more than two miles the Minnesota state statute 123b requires that school district transport students who live two miles or two miles or more from their school we know that our neighbors Stillwater just went with that plan and

033so we are trying to explore other options including looking at the distance of ways that we could reduce the need to have all these routes with drivers we know that we've done kind of an opt out we know that there's an option to opt in right now our transportation staff they're doing what's called load counts so they're evaluating how many kids are riding buses and we know that there's a concern where people don't want to opt out because they're worried gosh what if on that one day I need transportation and so our steering committee is going to explore various options there are two groups that we're going to vet information through we're going to vet information through the parents of course that are users of transportation and we're also going to make sure we include

034our transportation staff our steering committee will be looking at all the possible options and being and will be making a recommendation to our executive cabinet and then that recommendation will come here to the board and of course along the way I'll keep board updated on where we're at what the feedback is we hope to have should we decide to go with any adjustments to our current Transportation structure that those would be in place and approved by the end of April we want to make sure that we give families enough time if they have to make adjustments with Transportation just a couple other details we currently have 110 regular routes and if you take 110 times 3 because you have to remember we're a tiered system because of our start time we have about 330 different

035routes where kids are going so 110 we consider it but because of our start times they're all running three different routes we currently bus 60 routes for special education and just a reminder a route is three runs technically and we have 250 students right now without transportation I was out at a couple of schools this week as kids were getting on the bus and we were talking about transportation and unless people are impacted everything looks real smooth in our transportation department but for the families that are impact we know we've heard from them but for other people who've had consistent Transportation they don't realize that's a problem that there is a problem and so we need to make sure that all of our families understand that even though people aren't impacted it is something that

036we're going to be looking at it your District so um how many routes how many um it's 250 Dana do you remember what our last count was four or five I think it was four or five and we every week There's a communication process where we take a look at the drivers for the next week and communication goes out so we're really working to restore as many possible routes as we can and we've actually only been restoring and not cutting back so that has been good yes yes they aren't alternating because as part of the negotiated contract bus ride bus drivers select the routes which means there are routes unfilled so it's based on seniority in terms of bidding on routes and we have talked about you know is there an option to stagger that

037and have some kids go without transportation for a while and other kids but we also talked a lot about student safety and when we have different bus drivers going and running a couple of routes and now we're asking bus drivers to change routes and get to know kids it's a lot of inconsistency and so one of the big concerns in doing that was around safety we have four okay thank you any other questions thoughts or suggestions as we enter into this process we have um our first steering committee meeting next week just to set the stage for the committee members to talk about where we are currently and what possible things could we be exploring so if there's any feedback from the board please feel free to pass that along anything you've heard from other

038districts as well part of our plan in our engagement with our drivers will be that we have already worked with our drivers on moving some of our drivers that are currently driving special education routes moving them to our regular education routes and then doing those with contracted busing so just doing some slight shifts so yes our bus drivers will be integral in the feedback loop of how we move forward at what point Didn't at one point um I think the board talked about Contracting a business it wasn't that quite expensive um it was expensive and that is something that of course will be looked at as well as contracted busing but I think we also know that contracted Busters are experiencing the same shortages that we are so it was something we certainly looked at

039before and we will explore I know that Kerry has actually been in touch with other districts Dean I believe Stillwater not only did they change the miles but they also went with contracted busing if I remember correctly from their superintendent correct yep so districts are looking at different things and we hope to be the most creative and figure out a way that we can still provide a high quality service but not put additional stress on our mechanics and our office staff to be out driving every day okay thank you thank you next is uh 4.3 and that is the world's best Workforce and achievement and integration that will be introduced by Christine Schaefer assistant superintendent all right tonight I'd like to introduce a few of our directors who will present the world's best Workforce goals

040and data along with their achievement integration planning goals so as you know legislation requires that school districts and Charter Schools submit an annual summary report to mde and tonight they'll present some of that information to you so first I'd like to introduce Dr Mao Tao Jacobson director of program evaluation research and assessment she will talk through our world's best Workforce plan and share some of that data next James McGee our director of diversity equity and inclusion will present goals and data around our achievement and integration plan also with us tonight is Joyce beard Early Childhood family services manager Arthur Williams director of Elementary teaching and learning and Dr Tia Clayson director of secondary teaching and learning and they each will be sharing strategies and programming taking place in our district to support students so with

041that I'll hand it over to Dr Martel Jacobson thanks Christine so I'm going to start us off I'm going to go through what the world's best Workforce is so it is a state mandate State mandated reporting there are five areas where districts must develop goals in and then track the progress of those goals each year we have to report to the school board as well as to mde this is just an overview of the goals and our status so on the left side is the five areas where districts have to identify goals for the middle column is our measure and then the right column is the status of our progress so in the last couple of years there's been an option to report unable to report this year there was not that option so because

042our goals are span over multiple years the options are on track or else not on track and for all five goals we are not on track um but I'll go through more details about the measure and as well as the progress so our first goal is all students ready for school for this we use data from a kindergarten literacy screener that we administer at the beginning of school and we look at the percentage of kindergarten students who meet the fall benchmarks on both the letter sounds and letter identification so this visual the red line is our goal line so that's what we're striving for and then the blue bars is are our results so the Baseline data was collected in the 2016-17 school year with our goal in 24 25 school year being that 80

043percent of our kindergarten students meet both of those fall benchmarks for the 21-22 school year our Target was 74 however only 46 percent of our kindergarten students met that fall Benchmark so we are not on track to meet that 80 percent go goal and then now I'm going to turn it over to Joyce thank you Dr Jacobson in my portion of the presentation I will very briefly talk about how early learning Bradley supports the world's best Workforce school as it relates to School Readiness the current world's best Workforce School Readiness School addresses targets for incoming case students the strategies and programming in the next two slides are a broad brush stroke of the support the district Early Learning Program areas provide to support the world's best Workforce school by providing providing foundational and holistic skill

044development support Early Learning Program programming prepares children for kindergarten and Beyond beginning with our preschool program our primary strategies include consistent and aligned curriculum and assessment that aligns with the Minnesota Early Childhood indicators of progress as well as an embedded instructional coaching model that supports research-based strategies for supporting young children's foundational skill development and social emotional learning the alignment across our programming with curriculum assessment and embedded code n and an embedded coaching model provides the foundation of content process and norms for professional collaboration it also serves to create a shared Vision toward creating high quality developmentally based learning opportunities for young children the TS gold assessment utilized across our programs provides an authentic system of assessing child outcomes our preschool data consistently shows a large portion of the children we serve demonstrating large gains within

045a program year the data and the slide shows a percentage of four-year-olds within the meets or exceeds level by Spring of 20 21 22 with a sampling of the 53 indicators measured the indicators show the percentage of children who met or exceeded skills in letter naming and letter sounds as well as those social emotional indicators required by mde by Spring teachers ongoing professional development is also important in supporting School Readiness all Early Learning staff in all program areas are provided with ongoing professional development through teaching and learning services and early learning program training professional development throughout our early learning programming occurs through teacher evaluation peer coaching teacher mentors professional learning communities the annual teacher Academy and an annual TS gold and pyramid training for all new staff training is also provided throughout the year based

046on the program teacher directed needs collaboration with Metro exu and the Minnesota Department of Education provide ongoing training that supports best practice in early childhood education in addition to preschool other Early Learning Program supports include interconnected and coordinated programming efforts between Early Childhood family education otherwise known as ECFE Early Childhood special education and early childhood screening these early learning programs all have different purposes purposes separate State allocated funding and separate guiding State statutes but all work internally together as well as with Community collaborators to support schools Children's School Success thanks Joyce um so the second area is uh focuses on third grade literacy so for this we use reading proficiency on the MCAS and a little bit about the MCAS um so this year our participation rates in MCAS have gone up close to pre-pandemic

047times so for third graders the participation rate for reading was 99 so the data is accurate it is useful but even with that said it is also important to consider that last year was not a typical year for our students and for learning so just some things to keep in mind as we go through the MCA data um so there's two goals for third grade literacy this is the first goal that by the 24-25 school year 90 of all students will be proficient in Reading um so this year the target was 80.8 percent and about 53 of our third graders were proficient in Reading the second goal is that across student groups including race ethnicity groups and support service groups that 85 percent of students in each group will be proficient in reading by the

04824-25 school year this graph just shows the data for the 21-20 school year or 21-22 school year I did Link in longitudinal graphs if you want to take a look at those for each group but this is just to show our progress for this year so each group started at a different Baseline in the 1617 school year and to get to that 85 percent in the 24-25 school year each group has a different annual increase expected so for example for our Hispanic and Latino students our Target this year was that 70.8 percent of Hispanic and Latino students would be proficient in Reading in third grade but what our results were that about 37 of Latino and Hispanic students were proficient so as you can see across groups the targets were not met we also look

049at Targets by support groups so students receiving English learner Services students receiving special ed services as well as students eligible for free lunch and across these groups the targets were also not met um and then now I'm going to turn it over to Arthur good evening over the next three slides you will see some of the strategies in programming that we at the elementary level are doing to help students and Achieve our goals so first starting with the district level our goal as the district is to build capacity of our school and District leaders to do so you can see we will deepen our understanding of the Minnesota state standards for literacy we will take a look at all of the resources that we are using in ela Arc lli Sunday and hegarty and build

050a deep knowledge and consistent use in those resources we are going to prepare Educators to effectively Implement those resource materials coach teachers on implementation of resources and as you can see from the next interest group the principals we'll talk about what that coaching and how that looks like and then build cater capacity to engage in regular view of data to identify areas of success and potential opportunities this year our elementary principals are going through a learning leader series we are in an early adoption year for our new Ela resource which is named American reading company or arc Arc which we call it this learning leader series is very exciting for our elementary principals it gets them to be the best instructional leaders in literacy that they can be we have an arc executive coach that

051comes in 10 times during the school year six in-person visits and four virtually and they really work with our principals as you can see here to build consent consensus around implementation goals and metrics principals spend a lot of time looking at real-time data from students and by looking at that data they can examine the ex existing systems and infrastructure and then help Implement and scale change and then principals are learning how teachers collect that data and then they are making that real time data based decision decisions excuse me the next group we have are our reading Specialists as you know each of our 16 Elementary buildings have a reading specialist with the principles going through the learning leader lab the reading Specialists are going through a learning laboratory like the principals they have 10 visits

052with an arc executive coach six in person for virtual and what we are doing with the reading specialist is really making them be the leaders in our building to work with the teachers on the implementation of our new reading resource so as a reading specialist they are going to meet with intervention team and classroom teachers instruct small group interventions coach and work alongside and train teachers and attend plcs to review data and monitor student progress as well as help incorporate High leverage strategies that teachers will use into their daily practice along with the reading specialist we have reading interventionists and the reading interventionists are going to work with and provide direct instruction to students identified as needing extra support for reading in a small group setting along with the reading Specialists assess the progress of

053students on a regular basis and provide consistency to develop a student's full acquisition of knowledge skills and Concepts and attitudes towards literacy next we go on to our classroom teachers and with our classroom teachers they are getting the job embedded PD with on-site visits with through our Arc coaches and that takes place like with the reading Specialists and principals 10 times a year and with the classroom teachers they are learning the literacy framework for American reading company as you can see that includes a morning message read write discuss complex texts a reading lab interactive read aloud writing and a reader's Workshop they are providing one-on-one our small group conferencing with students and working on a gradual release model when it comes to independence with reading and writing and then leading lessons and phonemic awareness phonics

054and vocabulary development as well as writing and what's most exciting is our students they are engaging and independent reading and interacting in texts at their independent and instructional reading levels and this has just been a really um great few months of learning that we've had with our American reading company coaches and it's really fun to see today in fact the reading specialist had a coach visit from our executive coach over at Crestview and our 16 reading Specialists were able to meet with groups of students in third fourth and fifth grade and do a levels check on um their reading level and just the conversations that they're having with students and hearing students share their favorite texts and what they like about reading and how they see themselves as a reader has been very powerful for

055all involved I will now turn it back over to Dr Mao so this leads us to our third area which is closed achievement gaps so for this area there's also um multiple goals so it is to close achievement gaps in both math and reading so across all students the goal for the 24-25 school year is that 90 percent of students are proficient in math and reading and then across groups it is again 85 percent of students who are proficient in math and reading and those um that 90 and 85 goals those align with the Minnesota Essa plan so it is also Statewide goals for for this Slide the what the visual is showing is for math proficiency for this year so the red bars again are the targets for this year and then the blue

056bars are our results and across groups none of the targets were met um across racial and ethnicity groups this is the data across Service Groups and again here none of the targets were met this is reading and it's again the same goal ninety percent for all students and 85 percent for each group by the 24-25 school year across race and ethnicity groups and for all students the targets were not met and then across support groups the targets were also not met for contacts um I did pull together a comparison of our district MCA data versus Statewide so historically we have our math proficiency rates have been higher than the states um where in 21 22 51 of so washco students were proficient in math compared to about 45 percent of students Statewide and then this

057is the reading proficiency so again historically our district rates proficient rates have been higher than the state in 2021 to 2022 um 57 percent of our students were proficient in Reading compared to 51 for the state now I'm gonna turn it back to Arthur with math as you can see some of the strategies and programming that we are doing building thinking classrooms was a book study this summer with a curriculum writing time to shift math practices into the classroom providing more time for collaboration and discourse around math we have a number of avid math strategies and trainings number sense training and dream dream box training and application for assessment and independent practice and DreamBox is something that all students have access to either on their iPads or Chromebooks and now I'd like to introduce Dr

058Tia Clayson our director of teaching and learning for secondary good evening everyone I wanted to spend a little uh talking because you've seen the data and to explain a little bit uh as what secondary is doing to continue to address the needs of our students especially in regard to reading as you know as students move up in grade levels the Gap can get wider and students who are struggling in literacy it can continue to exacerbate um we know this and one of the things that I'm very excited about was the creation of a secondary literacy intervention teacher um who is working on special assignment that that person um had her sole job is support for reading intervention at secondary and it's not just in Reading intervention classes or Ela classes the state standards that are

059shifting are bringing literacy back into the content area and we know that students read every day all day in school and so being able to navigate the content areas and the specific reading skills needed for those specific disciplinary um uh areas they the teachers um oftentimes they know how to do it um it's it's a matter of being able to show the students how to do it as well if I'm a history teacher I know I know how to navigate history textbooks right I love them which is probably why I majored in history but it's another thing to be able to have to be able to really work with the students in navigating those texts in specific ways we had August professional development for social studies teachers especially now that I'm talking about social studies

060and how to incorporate existing literacy resources into their instruction and their student learning it was very engaging for our teachers and it helped to empower them and were we're continuing to support that as we as we launch the school year we have um a strong TLS has a strong partnership with our multilingual learning El supervisor regarding co-teaching and the teaching of academic language throughout classrooms I'm a firm believer that language objectives are good for everybody because they're all of us no matter what language we speak our learning language as as we continue throughout our lives and so having that partnership and being able to actually tease these things out and help support our teachers to better understand and and plan and Implement will be helpful for our students um we uh the building thinking classrooms

061for math was also done at the secondary level um which was super exciting but we also did a summer book study focused on book clubs and a focus on building the love of reading teenagers if they if they don't like reading in eighth grade it's really hard to get them to learn how to like right but they want to they they want to and they want to get better and and so figuring out ways to engage them and motivate them and and tap into their interests and to show them the power that they really do possess inside of them um it will be helpful because we know in the research shows that strong readers read more and the more they read the stronger they get um so that was um some of the summer book

062club uh work that we did again it included some curriculum writing and it was um it was really wildly successful I want to say that we have um instructional coaches at all of our buildings um those they are boots on the ground they are our I don't know I can't even describe the importance of the instructional coaches and helping our teachers improve their craft we our standards and review cycle um are are it's our Circ process it was um previously known as ccrt we chose to realign the name to better realign the work we are focusing on standards and instruction we are focusing on what students need to know understand and be able to do and the best ways to get them to successful in that we have an intentional focus on pedagogy student learning

063and student experiences as you well know we have all four major content areas in review or have been reviewed science is leading the charge Ela is in review right now has gone to commissioner approved social studies is next and then comes math one of the things that I wanted to say about that is in previous standards iterations from the state of Minnesota literacy in the content areas was brought under the English language arts umbrella that is no longer the case disciplinary literacy is back in the discipline and so it is incumbent upon us to um to support our teachers and to continue to help them build their craft Avid is now under the teaching and learning Services umbrella we're working very closely with Molly Lester I'm learning a lot about Avid and it's great and

064one of the things that we are really focused on is bringing the Avid wicker strategies school-wide so that when I go into a you know a chemistry classroom or I walk into a 8th grade math classroom I see these you know writing and inquiry and collaboration and reading strategies in play in the classrooms so this leads us to our fourth area all students career and college ready by graduation for this area we use data that we get from the act so the measure is the percentage of students meeting the ACT reading benchmark of 22. and it is statemented dated that districts provide a college entrance exam for grade 11 and we do Implement to the we do administer the act so it is it aligns with the data that we have but this data in

065particular is from the ACT profile reports that we get from act and when this work started there was a goal set from 2016 to 2020 and so this year we had to re-establish that goal thank you um one second so this year we did have to re-establish the goal for 21 to 25 and in discussions um with directors and with um instructional cabinet we decided to use 2021 as a new Baseline and continue with the three percentage Point increase every year just thinking through the last couple years of the pandemic but also changes in post-secondary institutions waiving ACT scores it's a test data optional now um so for this year our Target was 54 of uh students in the graduating cohort of 2022 meeting the reading benchmark and we had a 50 of students that

066cohort who met the Benchmark and benchmarks are set by act so they are uh if you if a student meets that Benchmark it is an indicator that they are likely to pass college level courses for reading in particular it is the likelihood of passing a social studies college level course um the ACT profile reports does provide Statewide data so this is a comparison of um the so washco schools a percentage of students who met that reading benchmark compared to the state so across the years that we had data available for our percentage of students who met that Benchmark were either similar or higher than the states and then the last world's best Workforce area is all students graduate so the goal for the graduating class of 2025 was about 95 our Target this year was

06793.3 percent and for the graduating class of 2021 92 percent of students graduated so we were close but not quite there um now I'm gonna oh there was also um I did include comparison to the state um as well so across the last five years um so washco schools has had a higher four-year graduation rate compared to Statewide then now it's back to Tia so some of the things that we're looking at for the goal of all students graduating some some of the strategies and programming um we have time during the school day for students to receive additional uh support from their teachers in order to pass classes and that is the additional support um is something I'm going to come back to in just a minute we do have credit recovery options to make

068Optimus credit and we have a retake policy so students can show Mastery of relearn content um part of the time during the school day will to help provide some more support so that students understand what it is and where they you know where they had the misstep on an assessment to relearn from that and then go back and to show what they know a focus on standards-based grading practices for January 30th professional development it's really a focus on grading for learning that this professional development day with secondary teachers will be focused on solution finding and also sharing of successes already we're seeing successes in our classroom we want to be able for our staff to share those successes with their colleagues it you know it grading for learning is grounded in the ability of students

069to be able to show what they know and it's it's um an opportunity for students to um you know when they're taking an assessment you know grading is a tool to show learning and when students are taking an assessment it can also show them um what it is that they still I use the word yet right that what what they haven't mastered yet it doesn't mean that you know they won't it just means not yet um it's uh so grading is a tool to support learning um and to communicate what students have learned and what they haven't so one of the things that we would like to be able to do is is to provide consistency across the district um you know Middle School is a little bit different than High School the students are

070different the learning is different um you know they're just they're just different people um but that we want to ensure that the students are being challenged that they have rigorous coursework um that but that they're supported all along the way and that they are you know they're they're I can't use any other word but blossoming because you know students are continual work in progress and I just think of them always as just continuing to Glow to grow and and to open kind of like a flower um the professional development will be delineated by Middle School and High School we're starting out with everybody together um but then breakouts across districts and then by content area by school foreign so that covers all of the five goals for the world's best for Workforce and here's what

071comes next so um it is required for us to submit a combined work world's best Workforce and achievement integration report to nde so I'll do that before the deadline which is in December it is also required that we post that report on our website so it will be posted on the assessment and Grading websites another requirement is that we engage our community and the results and getting feedback so my department runs a district data and assessment committee we have a meeting coming up in December which I will present this work to and get feedback from them and then you know while we're in the midst of strategic planning once that process is done making sure that the goals and measures between our strategic plan and the world's best work force a line so that concludes

072the presentation for the world's best Workforce and I'm going to turn it over all right to begin I'm going to give you all a moment to read the definition this is from statute 124 D .861 regarding achievement and integration in Minnesota so I'll give you a moment to read that and then I'll provide some context so what I'm going to be presenting on tonight is part of a three-year goal so in the state of Minnesota the achievement integration goal is set for three-year Cycles uh these the goals that we're going to review tonight were set and adopted by the school board in the State uh in 2020 for the 20 20 21 school year uh and next fall we'll be reporting on the last year of these goals this spring in the spring of 2023

073we will be approving the next three-year cycle for the achievement and integration plan for our school district I want to just clarify some terms so I'm the director of diversity equity and inclusion I oversee the achievement integration plan and the responsibilities of it uh these terms are not synonymous however the goal is an intent of these acronyms are still the same so 2020 we set the initial goals uh five initial goals first being students that meet one of the School Readiness risk factors will have a pre-kindergarten experience prior to enrolling in kindergarten a second goal increasing the percentage of racially diverse students succeeding in advanced course Advanced courses decreasing the out-of-school suspension rates for black and histine black and Latino students over the three-year period increasing the number of non-white or bypoc a qualified effective

074teachers over the three-year span and then a professional development goal that 100 of our employees will receive at least three opportunities to engage in culturally proficient professional development each year as you can see we are not on track for four of the goals and we have met uh the final goal so due to covid um let's stick with gold one here increasing the Early Education experiences among kindergartners battery okay uh there we go uh that was not collected in uh school year 2020 21 uh as you remember the fall of 2020 was the first fall after the pandemic had started and so because of distance learning because of the interruptions to our regularly scheduled programming data was not collected that fall so while the Baseline was supposed to be collected that fall the true Baseline

075was then collected in the fall of 2021 last year once again not a typical school year as we understand it however this was the first time we were able to get a baseline read for the Early Education experiences among our kindergartners because we weren't able to collect that Baseline goal we're not able to show Now growth or lack of growth or steadiness toward that uh or against that Baseline that was what will be reported in the fall of 22 or fall of 23 next year foreign students who took at least one college in the schools course now we want to provide some context here when we're looking at the goals so Dr Mao and I both are coming into these positions have not been the ones to write the initial goal uh and then we

076know that there was interruptions due to covid interruptions of programming due to covet and so as we're going through what we found is the way that the goal was worded may not have actually been or may not have articulated the data that was shown so while it talked about Advanced uh bipac students in advanced coursework what we found is that goal is likely linked to college in the schools courses uh so College in the schools courses are uh college courses taught by certified teachers in the high school um and this is only for grades 11 and 12. social partners with the U of M for these courses in 1920 there were six courses that were offered uh in 2021-22 there was only five courses I believe German uh German was the one that was dropped

077French order um so this is the percentage of students by box students that were in the college in the school we did think it was important though to also then show how many of our bobhack students by racial ethnicity were able to participate in advanced coursework which would include AP College in the school pseo International Baccalaureate or IB and as you can see those numbers go up AP is offered 9-12 inter Baccalaureate it's been offered for 11 and 12 along with college in the school which is also 11 and 12. and pseo is primarily 11 and 12 although there are some offerings that are open to our 10th grade students as we look at our comparison if we go by that measure then of all of our Advanced coursework AP college in the school IB

078and pseo we broke it down then by the percentage of students by race or ethnicity in the student population versus students that were able that were participating in that coursework and as you can see across our racial and ethnic groups there seems to be uh equal representation uh compared to the population of students the goal was not equal representation the goal was an increased participation for our bipoc students and as you can see there is a over-representation of our Asian American students under representation of white black African-American has been a Hispanic Latino two or more and then not enough students um to or less than one percent in both American Indian and native Hawaiian or Pacific one of the things I think it's important to point out as we look at these goals that are

079based on based on race or ethnicity um race is a broad term these races are not monoliths so as we even you know I say that Asian students are overrepresented in our Advanced coursework we also know that that does not mean that every Asian student uh performs similarly or that every Asian ethnicity uh performs similarly our students have very specific needs based on culture based on language based on home language based on family Dynamic and so these are Broad categories however we do not think that and and we do not operate as if any one of these race or ethnicity groups is one monolith and that they all require the exact same type of programming or teaching strategies our next goal was decreasing the percentage of Black and Hispanic Latino students who receive out of

080school suspensions we are not on track to meet that goal at this time in 21 22 37 percent of the students who received an out of school suspension were black and Or Hispanic Latino regarding the percentage of licensed by POC teachers were not on track to meet our goal however we have seen an increase in the number or the percentage of teachers in sawashco that identify self-identify as black indigenous or a person of color to be the goal that we did meet the goal of having all employees this is not just teaching staff this is all instructional and non-instructional staff would have the opportunity to participate in at least three trainings regarding cultural proficient school systems across the years this is something that we've been able to consistently provide for our staff as that type

081of programming even during the pandemic when we were virtual we were able to offer virtual asynchronous or on-demand opportunities for all of our employee groups and we've had a number of them in person our teaching groups specifically get a number of culturally proficient training opportunities both at sites and district-wide so next steps for achievement and integration right now we're in the process of developing the plan that will take us from the 23-24 school year through the 25-26 school year with updated and responsive goals and the reason why I say that um I'm going to go back a slide to meet a professional development goal is actually an action step that should be in service of something so something like a professional development goal is not something that we're going to see in the 20th uh

082plan because this will be an action step that will end up being in service of a goal that has student uh success and achievement in mind we've also uh as you can see we're working very closely uh in TLS uh in early childhood across our department groups to ensure that a TLS goal is not separate from an equity goal and is not separate from a world's best Workforce school we are all on the same team growing in the same direction because Equity is not just for students of color Equity is not just for students that are from protected groups Equity is for all students and so when we look at what our most Equitable practices are and what we want them to be that requires participation and buy-in from all of us so we're working

083together across this department to create this achievement and integration plan additionally we've reestablished the Dei parent advisory committee uh it will consist of up to 20 community members from across original ethnic groups that have applied to be part of the group they will be key feedback um interested parties regarding this plan because we know that a plan for someone or for a group of people or for a group of students works best when it's created with the people that it's meant to serve we do not want to do unto we want to do alongside our community uh and finally expansion of depart departmental support uh to address the student and Community needs uh in Dei over the last year we've been able to um increase the number of days from some of our Dei support

084people to be 12-year or 12 year 12 month employees which ensures that we're able to provide consistent programming year round for all of our employee groups so that is the end of the the formal presentation part or the formal presentation of the world's best Workforce and achievement integration plan uh because it's a workshop I believe we can take questions if you have questions we're all here and we will answer what we can if there's things that we can answer we will definitely take note because we want to get you we don't want to speculate on things but we want to get you the most accurate information that we can so I guess at this time we'll open up the questions foreign so this is what I think your question is asking is if we um

085do we take the assessment data and compare um do we take kindergarten assessment data and compare students who did have preschool versus who didn't right um and we did we have not done that analysis all right because I want to know um if preschool Works do we need more preschool and how much is that going to cost there are some gaps in our data around for data on our sponsored preschool programs like early childhood family education Early Childhood special education and Pre-K we don't collect data on private preschools I think there there is also like a Statewide Early Childhood educational longitudinal data system that has that collects more data and links data on a state level so they do include like children who participate in child care um Public Child Care programming the three programs

086that are sponsored by school districts but they also um will will link and track um students regardless of districts so if a student attended a preschool program in St Paul and came here then that that longitudinal data system does track that but we don't have that data another another thing do we have any students who attended Head Start pretend Head Start that we we don't know because we don't um collect data from Head Start okay we don't because I'd like to know if Head Start kids who start in instead of preschool they go to Head Start those kids are doing better than the kids who attended preschool I would just say that we do collaborate with Head Start and we actually our coaching model we work with Head Start so I don't know about the

087data piece but I do know that we work pretty closely with our local Head Start Head Start okay yeah another question I have about reading is if we have so many students who don't read how many minutes are we spending teaching reading I mean we have like over half of our kids not reading at grade level right yeah I can answer that question for you um all of our Elementary classrooms the literacy block is 100 each day and that as you saw from my slides I'd include okay yeah read aloud who's reading aloud the teacher yeah if it's interactive reading loud interactive read aloud so the teacher is reading a grade level text they're asking the students questions the students are either responding or they're turning and talking to a partner um and incorporating um

088those skills and skills and strategies that the teacher is modeling as and then in k123 are we measuring small goals for reading achievement for children and what are we using is a standardized or why why aren't we using nwea for those kids So when you say small girls are you talking I mean we could get as granular as like Running Records that might happen weekly or we use uh The Benchmark assessment system to do uh reading assessments on our students uh three times a year and so I mean I guess it depends on the type of assessment we're looking at what they know uh potentially yes because we do use uh as an instructional practice things like Running Records frequent check-ins formative assessment with students now those are not things that would then get reported

089on a proficiency because those formative assessments aren't measuring or not being reported as proficiency because they're not standardized measures although they are normed against uh what the grade level expectations should be and one of the things in our new American reading company resource that we're using each level that a student is um they take an erla and they're given a level and each level has entry requirements and exit requirements that are specific to that child's independent reading level so teachers meet one-on-one or in small groups and conference with those students based on those entry and exit requirements perfect and how far up does that great system go right now we are in our district using American reading company for our K through five classrooms so if a child in fifth grade is it isn't grade

090level and it comes time for social studies or science do they have to read the grade level text or are they given an option or another yep so um so I just brought this as an example it's our erlr independent reading level assessment and so um and the levels are based on color so if I'm a fifth grade student and I'm reading let's say at a 2R level which is below grade level 2R has specific entry and exit requirements and then there are toolkit lessons that go along so let's say they're missing something in phonics so as a teacher let's say I I have Tia in class and T is missing something with phonics I can go to the 2R toolkit and pull out lessons that will help okay but what about this the science

091lesson um does the student have to struggle through the fifth grade science book uh with science we are using our new Discovery Ed and that is um I can come back I'll write that question down and get specific answers for you the other class that they have to read in that's above their grade level you know if it's at grade level but they're reading down here that child would be really really frustrated and not like school and potentially drop out that's my concern so um are we providing for that too and if we aren't I want to know because I want to know how much money you're going to need I don't and yeah I don't know uh I win the lottery I think it's important to note that when when we're in especially in

092elementary instructing in um social studies or science uh the instruction very very rarely if ever would be students sit down and read three chapters of a textbook our learning and teaching opportunities especially for science art uh social studies is more interactive where teachers will be presenting and then collaborating with students on the learning rather than having students sit down and read a textbook as their sole form of uh knowledge intake okay so what about then secondary level and I would say on top of that what's nice about American reading company these are research they have do units and so our next unit unit to for example um is informational or zoology and so students pick a topic and based on their reading level they are engaged in Tech so I could be a fifth grader

093reading below grade level but the text I'm engaged in will be at my independent reading level based on I'm very happy you picked that program I looked at it and it's wonderful wonderful Tia I'm wondering would you mind talking a little bit about uh Newsela uh and how that adapts into secondary instruction actually I could talk about a couple of things so um we do have news Newsela which is a resource that is a subscription base we've it's it's used quite widely in ela but one of the things when I was talking about the August professional development that we worked with our social studies teachers on um on how to use that more effectively in their classrooms because it will actually in that situation it's it's less about teaching them how to read the text

094as it is about them getting the content and so it naturally um it you can pick different levels of text that have the same that are focused on the same content but that the students aren't using all their cognitive power to try and navigate the text when we want them to actually absorb the information we have Discovery Ed in the Middle School we've started with sixth grade this year much of our science and social studies in the middle school as well is pretty is pretty Hands-On pretty integrated but the Discovery education system that we have which is we have for K-8 sixth grade is starting at this year seventh and eighth grade we'll be doing it next year and they're dabbling in it this year they have access to it is again similar to like

095a Newsela in that we can that teachers can pick into use texts that that students will be able to navigate more easily when the purpose is to actually learn the content sorry um what somebody's missing that usually asks all the questions I'm kind of picking up the slack here so my next question is about social emotional learning um are we still doing that and are we measuring it I mean are we are we fine do we have enough staff so that every child has a person they can go to and talk to or are we understaffed if the question is do we have um a social emotional uh curriculum resource that's being used K-12 across the district the answer is no uh not at this time uh and I don't know that that is necessarily

096the direction that we're meant to go what we do know is uh our cultural competency training um and then our instructional uh strategies that we that are solidified in Avid uh in uh and linguistically responsive teaching our instructional coaches like all of our our teacher leaders are trained in socially and emotionally affirming practices both for adults and for students so we have some of our elementary sites that are using a programming called conscious discipline which is really about mindset toward learning mindset uh that helps eliminate deficit thinking about students but it goes beyond just um sit or um lessons where we are articulating social emotional learning skills it also comes out in some of the the assessments that we do and the strength leveraging that we do so for instance our talent development process is

097a whole child focused process where we're looking at more than just do you have a high map score or do you exhibit certain qualities in class we have a whole child approach to looking at the strategies that we're using leveraging strength and then trying to teach to that child specifically and so when we talk about social emotional learning it's not a package that we have that we give to everybody it's embedded in all of our content then what beyond that some sites have adopted some specific explicit social emotional learning resources like a second step conscious discipline responsive classroom things that have been around for a long time and things that are more Cutting Edge to articulate specific skills that we want students to be able to know and be able to do yes that's that's

098not what I wanted to I wanted to ask what I want to ask is um our class sizes small enough or are they the right size for every child to have an opportunity to be heard and seen and have their voice recognized or are they too large my standard response would be that we could always have smaller class sizes but we need to really think about and evaluate the scope of us providing Services when we look at our elementary schools our average class size K5 is approximately 24.5 students it's really tough to tell families when they're sitting in a class of 30 or 32 why 24.5 how can you tell me 24 24.5 is the average well I can tell you that because number one kids do not come in nice packages of 24.5 number

099two we are Staffing across 16 elementary schools ranging in size from 240 to 800. there is no way that there's ever going to be a perfect example now if I talk to any elementary teacher and they had 24 kids they'd probably be revved up this is great and fantastic but in some sites we're talking about 28 30 33 and that's when it gets difficult to make sure every student is getting the 10 attention that they need and it really depends upon the makeup of the class right we all know that that depending upon the needs within any class I think the great thing about our schools is the Reliance isn't just on the classroom teachers we have other supports that come in that support they come into the classroom students may have additional support outside

100of the classroom and that's really how we've been able to maintain those relationships and connections with other people but not just solely the classroom teacher and I think when we think about it it really is everyone's responsibility but with both and see if you're paying strong relationships with students our bus drivers our nutrition services all of our staff to be somebody that is a connection a or a connection point with students so when we talk about social emotional learning a curriculum resource that we make intended to ensure that all of our staff are empowered to create connections with students 10 percent age yeah so um MCA data is publicly available on the Minnesota report card website and you can choose and compare multiple districts we haven't gathered that data yet but that's something that can

101be done through the Minnesota report card Louise oh yeah I'm hearing some really great things about the arc resources so I had a couple questions about that um certainly with teachers that takes time to become familiar with the the framework and to be proficient with the framework so I you know I saw supports in terms of District what I didn't see was the instructional coaches as opposed to like the reading interventionists and such is there something with the instructional coaches that will help support our teachers as well yeah the instructional coaches have had a session with our Arc executive coach as well on the instructional coaches went through that same training on the six components of the literacy block that our elementary principles and that are reading Specialists went through and I'm in the process

102of working with our Arc executive coach to provide more training for our instructional coaches so that way they can support teachers with American reading company I think might also be important to point out with that is our instructional coaches while we want them trained in the things that are happening in the classroom whether it's Arc DreamBox newsella um they the programming that we're going through right now for our our instructional coaches is cognitive coaching which is a facilitative type of coaching where the coach does not come in as a Content expert that is meant to raise the level of a struggling teacher rather we are looking for teachers who are seeking uh to grow and the uh an instructional coach is being trained right now to be able to really go into any setting uh

103and be more of a thought facilitator and help teachers frame what issues they're experiencing and what they want to work on rather than coming in as the content expert uh or you know so we don't have this uh expert Apprentice situation our facilitative coaching makes it so that our instructional coaches are quite Nimble and can really end up in a lot of different places and be effective coaches across grades across content areas otherwise we wouldn't have the capacity to have a quality instructional coaching program because we would need science coaches and social studies coaches and primary coaches and so by training them in facilitative coaching it makes them more flexible with where they can go and be effective that makes good sense did the teachers have some PD time prior to the beginning of the

104school year to take a look what did they have to look at yeah so during our teacher Workshop week there was a day either August 22nd or 29th where grade level teachers could um they attended one of those sessions with an art coach to get an overview of Arc of what Arc provides and then the erla as well and as I said in the presentation there are 10 times during the school year six in person and four virtually where the art coach meets with individual grade level teams to um work with each team where they are and work on the erla and power goals and things like that to help the students and then I sort of wanted to talk to Pat for a minute because I hear the concern about reading levels as I

105go into secondary so I just want to promote the Avid strategies also have reading strategies that are really helpful I don't know if anybody wanted to add to that but I know that in particular was helpful in Middle School thank you and I will say for American reading company one of the things that students have to engage in that independent instructional text they have what's called an arc bookshelf so they have a wide variety of books at their instructional and independent level that they can access at home through the iPad or the Chromebook one of the beautiful things about the American reading company and what they do when we talk about the erla all of our acronyms is that they actually have a full data wall and so as the superintendent I can look at

106a the full data wall of the entire District all of our students and watch our kindergartners our first grade moving through the system and they keep Shifting the targets and it's all color-coded so we can very quickly see with a very quick Benchmark where our kids are at and if they're on track and so that is something I think when we look at our test scores and certainly something that we know we need to improve on this is one of the first steps we've taken as a district with a large-scale implementation of our English language curriculum this has not been done for many many years and so teachers and staff in the district have been utilizing various resources and so I think for the first time in many many many years there is some consistency

107when it comes to the um the teaching and learning in the area of literacy and I would add on top of that to see the partnership between our elementary principals and our reading Specialists just the conversations that they're are having looking at going to the to superintendent Nielsen's point of the data wall making those real-time data decisions based on where students currently are has just been outstanding what was that and then one last thing I just wanted to put in a promotional plug for the mctn conference the author of building thinking math classrooms is doing the Symposium on Thursday and he's the Keynote Friday Saturday yeah Eric you have anything yet okay well I'm a fan of avid for sure but um I think it's important one of the things and this is how I

108um came about being involved in the community was the integration board and I think bringing that back Christine and I were part of that bringing that back is important number one for communications and listening and to get uh to have provide transparency to the community and I tell you you learn a lot and I hope that we get a um that The Advisory board has a a group of members in it from all over the district so that because everybody is I mean in each of the the schools there's different um facets that happen but to learn a lot so I'm glad that you're revamping that okay with no more further thank you so much if this was great to um to hear yeah I would just turn before you maybe close up I would

109just say that for our new directors that sit in front of us and um fairly I could say fairly new like within the last year maybe two moving around we have great people on our team and I think that as we think about moving our students our staff training and most importantly our kids in our test scores forward I think there's no better team than this group to make that happen so thank you I think when we report we want to make sure we report transparently about where we're at knowing that we can always improve and grow so thank you excellent thank you moving along next we have a 5.0 information items in the first 5.1 is the first reading of proposed policy changes and that will be presented by our superintendent Julie Nelson that

110was just a lot of information and now we get to talk about policies all right here we go um tonight I am presenting the first reading on a number of policies uh Mr Dan Pine who wasn't able to be with us many of these policies were reviewed with our policy Review Committee a couple of weeks ago so 716 our employee recognition there is just one adjustment to that policy and that is in the way of the amount I believe and help me if I'm wrong did he say it has been about 10 years since that amount had been changed so eight to ten years since that had been changed so an adjustment was made there 717 thanks to another board member there are procedures in that policy and I know that we are working diligently

111to get procedures out so when you see the corrected version of 717 you will see that there will be a procedural document that is attached to 717 we do want to make sure we clean those up no other proposed changes there 718 District credit card program no recommended changes there 719 is the authorization to solicit bids no proposed changes our nutrition services management no suggested changes there 721.3 kitchen use there actually is a procedure and it says like in big letters procedure for kitchen use that will be pulled out as we finalize it and it really does I think when you're reviewing policy and looking through things you go through and it's like okay but we really want to clean that up so you will see that there will be a procedure for kitchen use

112that will be pulled out of that policy language it will just keep the policy language 730 post issuance debt compliance no proposed changes there 801.4 conducting Bond campaigns the one recommendation from the policy Review Committee was to add the statute there appears to be some confusion around when school districts can go out for elections so you'll see that Dan just inserted the Minnesota statute that allows special elections to be held on the second Tuesday in February the second Tuesday in April the second Tuesday in May the second Tuesday in August or the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November so that has been added in there as state language and then finally 806.3 Insurance Recovery and replacement there are no suggested changes after reviewing with the policy committee so at this time I think

113we open it up Tyrone if anybody anybody asked to comment on the policies all right next is thank you Nexus 6.0 reports and comments and we'll start with our different tension I feel like we hit on all the high high points tonight but um just a couple of things tonight concluded our eighth listening session and that was our eighth Community listening session we had a couple of sessions with legislators and elected officials of course our schools our advisory groups there is a lot of information online I know as board members some of you had have been going through it you've kind of been sharing already what are some of the summary points you're seeing but we are concluding our last listening session and as a reminder the listening session information will will be used in

114two ways as we move forward and think about a plan but most importantly and uh most recent or in the next weeks we'll be using that information to draft questions for our district survey that will be conducted by the Morris Leatherman company I attended the Masterworks concert after doing an intro at the First Community session the Masterworks concert was held at Eastridge High School and again our students are so talented and just want to remind people that one way that we're vetting many of our feedbacks Loop Loops through our through our advisory teams we have special education Community Education Dei curriculum cfac which is our Dan's group so our finance group we have our district ambassadors and so this coming Monday we have an all advisory meeting and that will be all of our advisors

115some are community members many are parents that we're going to get together and just kind of give them the who we are as a district and so that will be occurring on Monday I think that's it hmm here you go mine works oh okay all right um next um I'd like the reports to this evening to be stick to your committee report so melinda916 you know uh support self-evaluation okay uh Pat amds hamds meets tomorrow morning at seven o'clock 7 30. so and I went to the last one and it was just amazing I still have that book I bought for two get it to you I forgot it everyone's project okay um Louise do you have a committee report the ambassadors met at a really exceptional I thought what are you hearing out in

116the community session um there's some new ambassadors um on there and it was just a really really good mix um things from cfac you saw here all right thanks um and I'm on South Washington cares and I think uh the play starts tomorrow at is it at Woodbury or I think Woodbury starts this week in East Ridge the next two weeks so legally blunt so if anybody wants to go to those goals oh okay okay well if um if be sure to support the schools so go to the play okay um this thing feels weird holding this thing okay 7.0 are our future meeting dates um the next meeting will be will be a business meeting on Thursday November 17th 2022 and we'll have another business meeting on Thursday December 15 2022 and both of

117these meetings will be held at 6 pm here at the district service center this puts us at 8.0 and we are adjourned