#DPSCommunity | DPS Board of Education Monthly Work Session | 11/3/22

001good evening everyone good evening the Durham Public Schools Board of Education work session is now in session at this time we wish to extend a warm welcome to everyone who is joining us this evening the purpose of this meeting is to inform our parents staff and constituents about the work aligned with our mission to embrace educate and Empower every student to innovate serve and Lead the interpreters for tonight Martha Romo Gillis and Marty Ramirez thank you for taking the time to join us we will now have a moment of silence I hope that we can take this time to remember all the men and women who fought for our right to vote and remember to execute our right to vote this month thank you the next item on our agenda is agenda review and approval

002uh Miss Rogers I would like to add one item to our agenda um and that is um going to be the superintendent evaluation form I just want to talk a little bit about the process that we use um for the evaluation so we can add that um it can be the last item you can do before we go to summary of follow-up follow-up items second it's been moved in properly did she I didn't okay but I can move it oh move approval of the agenda as amended second it's been moved in the second day um to prove the agenda as amended all those in favor say aye aye it passes unanimously thank you the next item on our agenda is the board work session minutes from October 6 2022. I had a couple of small

003edits um one was um on page four sorry my notes right in front of me I believe it's on page four um there's a word it was effects and it should be a effects with an A on page five it said and I can point this out but um at the top of H5 it said um it was just the wrong tense of the word began and um and then I wanted to add to the things that we kind of concluded um about the lgbtq plus discussion um the task force just add that to the the numbers um the list of items thank you I would move approval of the minutes from October 6th with those amendments oh second been moved and seconded all those in favor aye that passes unanimously we will now move

004into our general public comment so the public comment rules a quick review of the rules first state your name if speaking for an organization speak the name of the organization as well second speakers are asked to present their comments in a specified time tonight it will be three minutes when the yellow light comes on you have one minute left to start winding up your remarks when the red light comes on it will be which indicates your time is up complaints about name staff students or parents should not be voiced in open session however we are very interested in hearing your concerns with regard to public education safety of students or to the operation of the school system finally the board members will listen carefully and consider the comments but we do not engage in a

005discussion with the speakers our first speaker is Hillary McKenzie to be followed by Kumar sappy good evening chair Umstead Vice chair Sears members of the board thank you for the opportunity to address you this evening my name is Hillary McKenzie and I'm here tonight because DPS parents asked me to briefly share my experience as a former School Board member in Orange County Schools I was chair of the board and of the board's policy committee when gender support guidelines were formally adopted to the district's policy manual in 2021 I don't believe that I need to stand up here and convince you that transgender gender non-conforming and non-binary people exist in DPS and that they're worthy of protections I'm confident that you're familiar with the data surrounding the mental health of our lgbtq plus students and how

006incredibly important it is for people to be addressed by their names and pronouns how Student Success is so closely tied to a sense of safety and belonging in school as a school board you are the policy owners of Durham Public Schools along with hiring and evaluating the superintendent and overseeing the budget your main responsibility is to determine the culture of the district by writing and maintaining all of its policies for better or worse your actions and inactions signal to every staff member and student exactly what is acceptable who is valued and what Behavior will be tolerated we unfortunately cannot rely on the good intentions of people superintendents administrators and staff members turn over laws and policies exist because people deserve clear and consistent expectations with clear and consistent consequences when the law or policy does

007not exist its absence sends just as clear a message when the Orange County School Board passed gender support guidelines it came directly from the board's policy committee where it had been workshopped for several months and it was unanimally unanimously adopted at a board meeting in open session it is a procedural policy that is embedded in the non-discrimination policy because it is an adopted policy it is and will be printed for families and staff every year it is searchable in the OCS online policy manual and failure to comply with it results in consequences for both students and staff members in the same way as any other District policy it has empowered staff members and protected students it's a shield for administrators and teachers in an unhinged political environment it provides a safe landing space for parents

008who are trying to help support their children it tells employees that they are safe to be themselves and safe to provide relevant curriculum to their students it lets volunteers know that they're only welcome in schools if they treat every person with respect it signals to students that the people elected to serve them truly value their identities thank you so much for taking this task seriously and for continuing to work towards a policy that will truly protect the students you serve and the people you employ if I can be of assistance in any way please don't hesitate to reach out to me thank you thank you my name is Kamar sathy my opinions represent my own thoughts and not that of my employer good evening and thank you for supporting our Public Schools my name is

009Kamar sathy I'm the district Equity facilitator for Orange County Schools but I'm also a former Durham Public Schools teacher having taught at Pearson Town Rogers Herr and Easley I'm here today to speak about the value and necessity of gender support guidelines and policy from a teacher's perspective I was a fifth grade teacher until I officially transitioned to my new central office role this week knowing that our Orange County School Board not only discussed but created policy around gender support made it easier to support my students and to feel protected when I had conversations that were designed to keep students safe when it comes to tough topics and controversial issues that should honestly not be controversial it is important for teachers and School staff to feel the weight of the institution behind them protecting them when

010they do what is best for students having guidelines and the rationale for such gender support guidelines circulated to school personnel as official documents and printed in student handbooks goes a long way toward ensuring that the act of protecting students is not performative it is imperative having clear guidelines helped me as a teacher know when my role and that of my colleagues in preventing students from experiencing harm due to misgendering or anti-lgbtq plus comments were occurring this role and responsibility to protect students should not be ambiguous thank you thank you our next speakers Heather Redding followed by Harley Cooper good evening my name is Heather Redding and I'm a parent with children in the Orange County School System I'm here this evening to speak to the value that the Orange County gender support guidelines have provided

011to the students families staff and teachers in our schools and to urge Durham Public Schools to implement similar guidelines you might wonder why a parent from another County would be speaking to you all as this this evening but I have watched as homophobic and transphobic bigotry has manifested more and more boldly in political campaigns among policy makers in community groups on the streets and all of it transcends County borders for children to thrive and participate in a diverse Society we must normalize diversity and inclusivity in our schools our homes and everyday Society not only is this policy good for lgbtqia students but it is important for cisidentifying students and staff members as well sadly it is not normalizing itself I'm proud that Orange County Schools took formal steps to protected students and staff but that's

012just the start one public school system is not enough to normalize inclusivity and gender justice we must continue to fight for the rights of students across the gender Spectrum to be treated with the dignity and protections they deserve furthermore the failure the physical and emotional health of lgbtqi students is at stake when systems fail to see acknowledge and support them as a former academic I would be remiss if I didn't mention just one citation one piece of research a 2022 article in the North Carolina medical journal sites the campaign for southern inequality in Asheville which reported High rates of suicidal ideation among black transgender folks than others they served surveyed with an especially High rate among black non-non-binary respondents however the author reports that transgender and non-binary youth whose preferred pronouns are respected by those

013they live with have rates of suicide attempts that are half that of those whose pronouns are not respected by those they live with it is therefore critical that schools pass guidelines and policies at not only acknowledge transgender and gender non-conforming students but support them as human beings by respecting their preferred pronouns and names by providing with a safe environment to learn and grow and by normalizing the diverse spectrum of gender identities that have always been present in human society in short all children benefit when all children are seen and feel safe doing nothing to protect these students is not an acceptable stance and it validates the white Christian heteronormativity that many groups are trying to bring back past weekend I personally have witnessed 20 proud boys and white Christian nationalists scream and verbally attack children

014and their families attending a private Drag Brunch the level of anti-lgbtq rhetoric and hate in communities is very palpable and very real right now and it will not fix itself I ask that you prioritize the implementation of gender support guidelines and the openly disavow the hateful speech coming from groups like moms for Liberty and C Values Coalition and Education First Alliance all who impose a clear threat to lgbtq students and our larger society thank you Harley Cooper my name is Harley Cooper I'm a 21 year old bisexual transgender man and I attended a DPS Middle School in the 2010s during my time at this Middle School I didn't know that I was trans but I'd already begun dressing in a more masculine way which painted a Target on my back as far as my classmates

015were concerned I was a lesbian and thus the harassment began on a near daily basis from grades six through eight I was laughed at teased talked about behind my back asked probing questions about my sexuality and on one occasion shoved every day I was constantly on edge because if I did something that could be used to make fun of me it would be my classmates acted entitled to information about my sexuality and would Corner me and bombard me with questions eventually I admitted to being bisexual which just prompted more harassment I wasn't even safe on the bus people would film me just sitting in my seat and talking to my friends on the occasions that I stood up for myself I got called crazy or a and mocked further whatever I whenever I went to

016the counselor she would just tell me to ignore them if they found out I'd talk to her I would get called a snitch only one teacher in the entire school ever made an effort to help me most teachers would look the other way one seventh grade teacher yelled at me in another LGBT student in front of the entire class for something we didn't even do knowing that she was giving our bullies ammunition reminding myself that one day this would experience would end helped me get through it so it was fairly jarring when I left middle school with depression and PTSD I had flashbacks throughout high school during the day and I continued to have frequent nightmares we were required to watch anti-bullying documentaries every year the people who bullied me understood what they were doing

017and how it would affect me however they were still children and couldn't fully comprehend the consequences of their actions the adults on the other hand had the authority and common sense to understand what was going on and do something about it almost all of them chose not to I wasn't the only queer kid to leave DPS a DPS school depressed and traumatized and if nothing changes I won't be the last thank you thank you Jackie turnwald Carmel Baron Matalan hey good evening um my name is Jack turnwald my pronouns are they them um I was a DPS employee educator for 12 years um I'm here tonight to speak as well on the gender support guidelines first I want to thank you all for the conversations I know you've been having in the work that you've

018been investing in moving forward on this there were a couple things I wanted to highlight tonight um from a teacher's perspective so today I went on the DPS application and was just kind of checking out how things look there and when you go to the honorifics to make an application you have the options of Miss Mr Mrs um doctor lots of different things but there's not the non-binary honorific which is mix MX um and I wanted to suggest that that be looked at additionally where it asks for gender you have the options of male female ex or prefer not to answer my gender is not X and I'm happy to share that I'm non-binary if I'm given the opportunity and it's actually an excellent data point for DPS to have and when we look at

019things like this if an educator coming into this environment is seeing that we don't have an inclusive application what makes them believe that the school will also be inclusive or the district will also be inclusive and we've talked before about how teachers working conditions are students learning conditions and for queer students who need representation this is an opportunity to help create that pipeline um additionally I recently moved um not sure that people know I no longer live in Durham um and I moved to a town in Wake County um that is far less diverse and far less inclusive unfortunately so there's a lot of work to do there I've been working at the polls this week as a poll greeter and when I say there has been angry people yelling at Ruby Bridges Vibes it's

020kind of scary um foreign when I think about Durham Durham is a place that was inclusive for me and that I got the opportunity to grow a lot from this community and I know changes like this are hard because you get a lot of pushback from people who are very vocal but I want to remind you that this community is actually far more inclusive than most and there are more people who want to come to the table and do this work with you than not and that's an opportunity to lead for other districts who have much more jarring circumstances thank you so much hey yo my name is Carmel and my pronouns are they them I'm a boy and a girl my teachers need the training so they can support me if another kids says

021that I can be both a boy and a girl that's bullying but if my teachers don't know that then they can't help me please and all the teachers in Durham to good at training thank you my next speakers tell Matalan followed by Ron Baron hey y'all good evening and thank you for having us here again my name is tal matalon I'm a DPS parent and a teacher I was here last month and shared my experiences both as the parents of a gender non-conforming kindergarten student and as an educator in all grade levels in DPS you heard many of us family members Educators former students members of the broader community and we heard you respond and say many things that made me feel encouraged leaving here you spoke of a task force and of immediate steps

022you spoke of urgency that you understood exists you spoke of clear policy and training and I come back today disappointed the immediate steps we asked for were already overdue they become more so each and every day students teachers staff and other community members are being bullied intimidated and invalidated in our schools those of us who want to provide support need the clear guidelines to do so those who bully intimidate and invalidate members of our community need to hear the clear message that their actions are not acceptable we need you to have taken action months ago and we need you to do so now thank you very much my name is Ron Baron and I'm proud to be Carmela's father um after my prior email one of my kids teachers came up to me and and

023thanked us for um writing that for um being there to support Carmel and they said and she said you know we love Carmel we want to support Carmel and we need the training and support from the district lgbtqia and GNC students and staff need support now they need training in how to support our students now they need to know that it is safe to speak up and advocate for their students and themselves now administrators need training and teacher support and dealing with backlash from parents now we need district-wide policy on gender that is clear Universal and enforceable now I'm not one to mince words the ongoing delay in stowing on this board is doing active harm we don't even have a timeline to set a timeline to set policy this board is highly capable Progressive

024and experienced this board can choose to act for the urgency students deserve and it damn well should thank you next we have Amy scuria followed by Anne good evening members of the board I want to thank you for all that you do to create a positive and meaningful educational experience for Durham students my name is Amy scaria I am a professional let me take this off I'm a professional composer a mom a spouse a previous Avid homeschooler and now a proud mother of a DPS student I've shared with you the standard identities to which most people relate what I don't often share but will what feels imperative to impart this evening is that despite what you think or might think from looking at me I am gender fluid what this means is that despite the

025fact that most days I present pretty strongly as a woman some days I feel like a man some days I Feel Like a Woman a lot of days I feel like a mishmash of everything in between I was well into my 30s by the time I embraced this aspect of my identity and the road to reaching the level of self-love that we all deserve to possess was paved with years of self-loathing confusion and feeling completely and utterly like an outsider especially on days when I learned how to play the female role quite convincingly this level of masquerading led me into depression anxiety isolation and I'll be quite blunt too many Suicidal Thoughts I stand before you today to make the argument around why it is so important that we teach our children and the staff

026teaching our children about gender diversity at the very least none of us are deaf to the arguments that are being made in our current climate that somehow teaching our children about gender diversity is sexualizing our children if I impart nothing else to you please let me impart this gender and sexuality are completely separate aspects of humanity gender identity has nothing to do with sexuality sex education is equally important definitely but teaching younger children about gender differences is not sexualizing them nearly 50 percent of lgbtq Youth considered suicide in the past year 73 percent of lgbtq Youth experience anxiety 58 experience depression nearly 30 percent have experienced homelessness and or housing insecurity it only takes one educator to significantly reduce these numbers it takes one affirming adult that would make all the difference for these youth

027imagine all of the staff at DPS these precious and valuable members of our community too many of them will receive not receive the support that they need at home too many of them will be shunned too often in their lives I know from personal experience DPS board you have the power to change that these precious youth deserve nothing less thank you hey y'all uh my name is Anne sakawi HomeStreet my pronouns are they or she I am a queer parent of two young children and live in Durham with my wife and children you've heard from me enough to know what I expect at the schools in my community so I'm going to keep my comment brief um we were all hoping to come today to hear a timeline we're really disappointed that there's still not

028a timeline for a timeline for a policy for for getting our kids the help they need right now so that they are no longer being discriminated against and harmed right now um these supports should have been in place yesterday for all students to be safe and thrive um the other thing that I want to point out is you don't need a task force to know what needs to go into this policy you need a task force to help Implement and enforce the policy but you have model policies you've received model policies you've received uh texts and articles from all of the people here tonight and from other people for months what needs to go into a policy you know what needs to go into the policy what you're not sure about is how to enforce

029how to implement an enforce forces policy so I encourage you to act now and then work with the task force to figure out how to do that in the district on another note many of you have expressed a desire to to learn more um I am the director of rainbow Collective for change I partner with the Durham County Library on Rainbow story times we do what we're asking you to do in The District in the community because you're not doing it in the district me and the library are going to be doing a story time on Saturday November 12th at 11 A.M at the main branch library I encourage all of you to come and listen to read a Quran Story by Michael Hall and we'll be doing a lesson that's a welcoming school's lesson

030both of these are things that we are recommending you do in first and second grade and I encourage you to come see what it looks like to role model pronoun use see what it looks like to talk about gender identity and expression with young children you will have an opportunity to learn and I'm encouraging you to join us there thank you for your time unless others have arrived we have a final speaker Dean Fitzgerald my name is Dean Fitzgerald I'm here representing myself I'm a parent of a kindergarten student in a DPS school I thank the board for continuing this conversation with parents however action must be taken sooner rather than later I would like to say a few words tonight about my family and luck other parents of gender non-conforming kids have told me

031that my family is lucky that my child was accepted to the magnet school that she attends we are lucky that school has a gender affirming principle and administrative staff we are lucky that her kindergarten teacher's response to learning of my child's pronouns was quote which bathroom would she like to use my family is lucky that our child gender is wholly unremarkable to those that teach and care for her throughout the school day I am not satisfied that my family gets this support because we are lucky and other kids in the district don't because they are not this should be the standard and it can be with the resources at the disposal of this board any further delay in implementing district-wide lgbtqia plus support training and policies means that you are subjecting more kids who need

032support to the whims of luck and chance and I believe one of the purposes of public education is to eliminate this those disparities in all forms thank you for your time um thank you I thank everybody for coming we don't typically respond to public comment but we do want you all to know that we're working on implementing policy passing policy and developing a task force as the board has affirmed in previous board meetings and work sessions but thank you all for being here um we're now moving on to our next agenda item which is academic Services Priority One update Dr Hardy thank you so much board member Rogers I'm chair Umstead Vice chair Sears Dr marbinga and other board members I think we have some staff in the hall that they could come in and

033if we can pull up the presentation Priority One presentation although we are looking forward to school Improvement plans thank you so much I would also like to take this moment to acknowledge and thank Dr Stacy D Stewart she serves as chief of schools and also serves as the co-priority lead for Priority One next slide please tonight you will hear an update about our strategic plan Priority One increase academic achievement the presentation will include updates for each goal as well as some of our key accomplishments we will discuss District strategies and later this evening you will hear about those specific School strategies from Dr Stewart's presentation on our school Improvement planning process and school Improvement plans we will share our team members and spend time reviewing each goal strategies and key accomplishments I would like to

034recognize our priority members if you could please stand when your name is called our leads include Dr Linda tagorian interim executive director for K-12 curriculum and instruction Ashley Stevens director of school innovation Dr Laverne Maddox Perry senior executive director student Support Services Dr Kelvin executive director of equity Affairs and professional learning Dr Julie pack executive director for Career and Technical education and magnet programs Miss Joy Malone executive director for information technology in addition to these gold team leads as well as the members that you see on your slide please note this is the work that occurs greatly in our schools and we have lots of collaboration and have gathered input from teachers as well as teacher leaders that serve on stack our superintendent student excuse me teachers advisory Council our counselors our graduation work groups

035social workers as well as our school-based coaches teaching and learning coaches and other content coaches next slide please you'll go forward one more this slide shows a summary of the goals that we have for Priority One the first goal is that at least 90 percent of our schools will meet or exceed standards our Benchmark for the 22 school year was 87 and we were just shy of that at 86.5 percent the next goal is that at least 60 percent of our students will achieve grade level proficiency our Benchmark for 20 for the 22 school year was 57 and we were at 44 this is an 11 increase from the previous Academic Year the next goal is that DPS four-year graduation rate will be at 90 percent our Benchmark for the 2122 academic year was 88.4

036and we were at 84 and the last goal is that 100 of our teachers leaders and staff will use technology as a tool for accelerating and personalizing learning our Benchmark was 80 percent and we surpassed it at 87 percent in our presentation this evening we will look at these goals more closely and discuss the strategies that we have implemented to address the impacts of the pandemic and accelerate student achievement at this time I will pass the presentation over to our interim executive director for K-12 curriculum and instruction Dr Linda tagaran next slide please thank you Dr Hardy Priority One a next slide please priority 1A of our strategic plan focuses on our goal of having at least 90 percent of our schools meet or exceed academic growth as measured by evos this includes efforts to

037mobilize our teaching and learning coaches to use data to strategically inform and improve instruction in our schools it also focuses on culturally responsive coaching and professional development for teachers coaches and instructional leaders as part of this work we have strived to increase access to robust career Pathways for all students additionally we seek to improve access to and use of technological devices to create Blended learning opportunities for all students next slide please as you can see in this slide we are making progress towards our goal of having 90 of our schools meet or exceed academic growth next slide I'm going to highlight some of our key accomplishments related to Priority 1A in an effort to maximize the impact of our professional development the content of our coaches instructional Leadership Academy has begun has been tightly aligned

038with the curricular focus of principal meetings this year we have also implemented a new Core Curriculum resource reveal math in 612 math we now have Core Curriculum resources in K-12 maths K-12 Ela K-12 science and K-12 social studies and are providing teacher professional development to support all of these areas we have also implemented a Content learning Institute to build the capacity of our coaches to lead professional development to support the Core Curriculum resources we are now partnering more effectively across departments to strategically use data to change outcomes for all students and to build effective intervention plans to impact Student Success and beginning this fall curriculum instruction has revised its service model to build content knowledge in teachers and support cross-district and school-based professional learning communities next slide please priority 1B focuses on making sure at

039least 60 percent of all DPS students achieve grade level proficiency as measured by the end of grade and end of course testing the strategies include efforts that relate to Core Curriculum content academic interventions and the Strategic use of data to inform instructional practices next slide please as you can see in this slide we are recovering from the disruption associated with the pandemic but are making progress toward the goal of 60 proficiency next slide this slide sorry this side highlights our key accomplishments related to Priority 1B as noted in the discussion on priority 1A we have adopted a new Core Curriculum resource in 612 math we are rolling out a new Panorama data dashboard that will provide quick access to data for students in a One-Stop shop for teachers in school and District leaders we will

040install a new public-facing Hanover data dashboard that will provide public access to data and improve and transparency and accountability mtss is revising its standard treatment protocol and mtss supports as part of a cross-distert collaboration to improve outcomes for students receiving tier 2 and tier 3 interventions and at this time I'd like to turn the presentation over to Dr Laverne Maddox Perry who will discuss priority 1C thank you Dr tedarian good evening the information on this slide is familiar to many but we've added it as a reminder Nick is it next slide please yes thank you the information on this slide is familiar to many but we've added it as a reminder of the five strategies to achieving goal 1C goal 1C utilizes Innovative methods and time-tested best practices to increase our cohort graduation rate to

041at least 90 percent next slide please a review of the four-year data Trend since the Inception of our strategic plan reveals steady increases in our cohort graduation rate and yearly meeting our Benchmark goals with a dip below our Benchmark in 2021 2022 our first full year of in-person learning following interrupted schooling we recognize that both societal and institutional impacts contributed to the 84 percent cohort graduation rate after a his and in historic high of 87 percent in 2020 2021 just a year before in addition to looking at the overall cohort graduation rate we also look closely at how students categorized in specific subgroups have experienced both inclines or declines in graduation rate each year then with a laser-like focus this final year of our strategic plan our interdepartmental collaboration continues to adapt our approaches and

042innovation the collaborative group including all of academic services but specifically the office of equity and professional learning student Support Services exceptional children's Career and Technical education and our English learner Services Department continue to engage in problem solving data analysis with triangulation with our current student achievement data student climate survey data and social emotional learning screeners as indicators of where our students are how they have expressed their needs or demonstrated their unique needs and as the guide for our continued collaboration next slide please foreign years we have worked diligently with tangible results to increase our cohort graduation rate and still recognize there is much more to do in this area as we are now in the final year of goal C we wanted to highlight accomplishments correlated to each strategy as a snapshot of the work

043into accelerating students and their matriculation to graduation strategy one identify barriers to graduation for black males and Hispanic males and females we recognize that academic performance social and emotional development as well as School attendance are factors particularly in the early grades and predictors of a student's matriculation towards graduation we are currently increasing our strategies to address this identification of barriers strategy two develop a centralized early warning tracking system beginning at elementary school that identifies students who are at risk of disconnecting from school through a collaborative effort and the support of our superintendent and school board thank you we are excited about the current implementation planning for our data dashboard to launch prior to the start of second semester our data dashboard will include a feature called Student Success this feature of the dashboard allows Durham

044Public Schools to customize the data to be included in a One-Stop shop for data analysis progress monitoring intervention planning and yes an early warning system for Early Intervention when students exhibit signs of academic Behavioral or social emotional risk our teachers administrators and District leaders will now have direct access to data indicative of student performance to use to improve our instruction prevention and support for each student strategy 3 Implement system structures and processes related to students and Staffing to dismantle the barriers we've identified to graduation in addition to the actions taken in previous years we are now strategizing ways to expand for instance evening Academy we're increasing our creative daytime scheduling and other non-conventional methods of providing credit recovery options in addition to an early fall start for evening Academy the expansion will include additional sites

045and additional instructional support staff to increase the Equitable access our high school leaders are determining how best to allocate these fiscal and human resources to better assist our unaccredited over age students in on in achieving on a cohort graduation strategy four ensure every student develops a four-year plan upon entry into High School by partnering with our Career and Technical education department we are expanding career and college readiness using digital tools as well as more traditional academic advising like the minute meetings minute meetings are utilized by school counselors to ensure multiple more frequent one-to-one contact with students these meetings can Target a specific area like College admission processes available internships or other career options for students while also building relationships and lastly strategy five increase the number of Career and Technical education completers in all high

046schools our awareness efforts have progressed to moderate increases in the number of students considering CTE Pathways as well as those who have made gains toward pathway completion schools are engaging in deliberate two-way communication and conversations with parents and Guardians earlier in a student's career to make sure they are informed about best fit options for their students as we engage in the final year push for 90 percent cohort graduation rate DPS has had a number of accomplishments that are evidence that the goal ninety percent cohort graduation rate is not only attainable but also likely if we continue along our current trajectory at this time I'd like to introduce Miss Joy Malone to speak to Priority One Day good evening priority 1D is to ensure that all staff use technology as a tool to accelerate and personalize

047learning for all students the strategies in this goal are directly aligned to the North Carolina digital learning progress rubric for schools which is a planning tool intended to support North Carolina's Educators schools districts and communities in the transition to digital age teaching and learning the components of this rubric include the goals of the priority number one professional development and learning number two leadership number three content and instruction number four technology infrastructure and devices and number five data and assessment next slide please the data dashboard for goal 1D brings to light significant progress in technology adoption our ongoing work will continue to focus on professional learning strategic strategy 2 as well as ongoing Improvement in instruction through our learning management system canvas strategy four we also continue to have ongoing focus on sustainability and Technology use

048according to our data dashboard we were able to meet and exceed the yearly Benchmark this indicates that as of last spring 87 of our teaching staff were regularly utilizing technology to personalize and accelerate instruction we will do a final survey this spring and anticipate meeting our 2023 Benchmark of 100 percent next slide please as part of goal 1D Durham public schools has invested in canvas as our learning management system for all teachers students staff and parent Observers during our implementation of canvas we have developed K-12 teaching and learning expectations provided professional learning opportunities configured all elementary schools for canvas for elementary which is a friendlier interface for younger students and supported the teaching and learning coaches role at each of our schools We are continuing to integrate tools like Zoom McGraw-Hill Mastery connect nearpod and

049sharpen our canvas design conventions by learning from courses provided through ignite Online Academy and ignite next courses we have developed the canvas design conventions and standard which provide consistency for our students in addition we have provided professional learning around the iste which stands for international Society for teaching and education technology and education standards for students through their digital learning and learning coaches our digital learning and teaching coaches help teachers integrate technology in the classroom to enhance learning opportunities for all students at this time I will turn it back over to Dr Hardy thank you Miss Malone I think I forgot someone and I apologize I would like to also acknowledge Dr Al Royster executive director for research and accountability in closing we would like to thank members of our team would also like to acknowledge

050that student achievement lives at the school level with our teachers and our school-based leaders and our academic support staff I would like to thank them for their work with our children every day and for truly bringing this work alive in our classrooms each day as part of our continuous Improvement and learning departments within the academic office have had the opportunity to participate in conferences and webinars over the past year in these conferences there often is a focus on recovering from learning laws some of the promising practices that have been shared include acceleration and intentional focus on specific subgroups such as Els students with disabilities and students of color providing a safe learning environment which you will hear and we will discuss more about in December when when we provide a priority to board update access

051to high quality instructional materials and regular progress monitoring of academic performance as well as parent and family engagement some of the key accomplishments you have been able to hear about such as our Panorama data dashboard professional learning in the areas to support students of color and specific subgroups core curricula adoption with the help of this board and regular monitoring of student progress serve as evidence of implementation of some of these promising practices to help accelerate learning for each and every young person and our DPS students every day this time I'll turn it back over to board member Rogers for questions and discussion anybody have any questions uh thank you all so much for this presentation and everything you all do for the in your work um I really appreciate also the acknowledgment of our teachers

052and Educators and principals right um and I use Educators because that's every person in the building from our I.T techs to our school nutrition all those folks so I really appreciate the accomplishments and I think the ways that y'all have pivoted to as we are recovering from the pandemic I did have a question statement and then some questions around 1C the um first strategy is around identifying barriers that address uh black or that are preventing some of our Black and Hispanic or latinx males and females from succeeding I wanted to know we were able to identify some of those barriers if y'all could speak to what those might be what specific interventions we're doing that's the first part of my question I'll save the second part for them and I think Dr Maddox Perry and

053Dr Bullock can come up I will say even just yesterday we were having a conversation with our high school principals um about some of our especially some of our males that are needing to work during the day and really wanting to make sure that they have the opportunity to recover credits and so evening Academy is really a specific strategy that we have not only used in the past but are actually refining to make sure that it is more intentional for groups of students specifically some of our latinx males where we know that that is going to be an opportunity hearing directly from our principals yesterday and uh they're both right there ready reasons actually Dr Hardy took the words right out of my mouth that's that's exactly what I was going to speak to in

054terms of um just thinking about the different educational opportunities we have for some of our students who may be off cohort that we're trying to support them in gaining credits that they may have missed and tools or resources like evening Academy have been instrumental in helping people to regain those credits and get closer to cohort if not on cohort and graduating within four years so those are just that flexibility with scheduling has sometimes been um an opportunity that students need and if we have students kind of stuck in certain structures where they have to take classes at certain times or things of that nature that structure has sometimes been a barrier for them being able to catch back up get on cohort or um you know to maximize their time in schools so that's that

055was the first thing it came to mind for me got him at his period the only thing I would add is that we've also been identified that a barrier is for men like for many students it's the ninth grade and getting a good start in the beginning so one thing that we've been trying to increase and curriculum instruction has been really good at doing this is eighth grade credits that could be taken to with student well taking credits in eighth grade that could be used for high school credits as we know that we need to get students and promoted from ninth grade as quickly as possible and that leads to higher graduation rates more than almost any other strategy and sometimes when you may have a turbulent ninth grade or something happening if you've got

056some credits that can be something like a safety net that can help increase your success one more thing I will add is um the addition of programs like for example at Southern with the skilled trades pathway programs like that have also been shown to be beneficial for students who you know are looking for ways to possibly get like licensure or things that are going to help them into the workforce so those have also been on some programs that have helped with our cohort graduation rate yes y'all can stay up here um I have one on the second part I think both of your answers though are lined up to my second part because it would my second piece was are there systems changed that we need to be doing to better support some of our

057students and I know when we change the schedule for high school to be later that decision was based on research but I worry because I know some kids who sometimes might skip out on that fourth period because they're going to work and that three to seven or three to nine work range like works really well for them they're supporting their families and so I'm not saying we need to change that today I know we that's a big decision but I wonder as y'all are learning and doing more of the other things that we need to be thinking about on a systems level to support students towards graduation please don't hesitate to bring that so we can start thinking through what that looks like um because again we can do this one and you all are

058supporting individuals but there might be something we need to do system-wide um foreign to this question because it's along the same lines of what I was thinking as well so when you ask the questions like yes that's exactly what I was thinking what are the barriers that have been identifying what systems can be in place so when I hear you Dr Maddox Perry talk about the courses that could be taken in eighth grade to get credit the first one I think about is math one but not everybody's on track to take math one by eighth grade um so I'm wondering like what are those courses that could be considered and how is what's what systems are in place for our middle schools to get students to take credit ready courses courses that are credit that

059are able eligible credit that's really not hard to get in not hard to get in Pittsburgh you know what I'm saying not as hard as math one I would think so we have math one in our middle schools we also have opportunities for math too and in exceptional circumstances math three and for middle school students so those are all possibilities English one is another course that we offer in our middle schools and this year we are piloting Earth and environmental science as an option at Rogers Herr and so that is underway now and we hope to expand that we we've also part as part of our robust summer programming provided acceleration opportunities over the summer for some of our students so not only opportunities and courses in the middle school but courses in the summer

060so that they are even better prepared when they get to high school and so that was part of the summer learning that we shared with you I was it's actually this year but it was in the spring that there were opportunities for first-time credit that credit by demonstrated Mastery so that's in it that's something else but we did have first-time credit as well as part of our summer learning I was I just thought of one more thing there are opportunities for students to take courses through the North Carolina virtual school as well and get credit uh in that way and it makes me think too um we look at data math one was one of some of the lowest areas that's ninth grade how do we build kids up in eighth grade is summer learning

061also eighth grade math Camp doesn't sound exciting we could think about some other names for that so that though when they start ninth grade they're in a better position to get out of math one right so all that stuff is correlated and it y'all probably are thinking about this makes me think about how do we get 8th grade counselors ready for getting you into skills pathway or you're interested in culinary let me help you already get you into that pathway starting in eighth grade so that they're already connected and hooked in ninth grade versus later so anyway that's all the things I thought about was thinking about how do we get systems change work the other comment I had is just I would love more data in these presentations I think I said that last

062time how many students have we caught with the early indicator how many have exited that um how many students are where Educators have been through the certain training I would just love to have a little more numbers on that thank you all Miss Travis I have a question around the same topic so maybe don't sit down yet thank you um but I just um I appreciate the conversation on this and I was wondering if you could share what opportunities black and Latino male students have for mentorship by black and Latino adult males at this time I know some of it happens informally um but I was just wondering if you know you could share a little bit about and also I recognize that it's um that's an area where it's hard to recruit both you

063know black and Latino male teachers but but I wanted to see if you could um just share a little bit about what you are observing right now uh thank you for that question that also reminds me of um one of the things that our principals have spoken about in terms of helping to support the Boost in graduation rate particularly that we saw in 2021 was our principals who were able to bring on bilingual counselors and bilingual staff to support in building relationships and learning more about the barriers that students were facing and ways to you know dismantle those barriers to help them get to graduation in terms of so that makes me think of mentoring but specifically um as you may be aware we have the we are Kings we are Queens programs in uh

064several schools at this point I think last year we had about 60 programs and in those programs the target audience for those are our boys and girls of color and so with that we have a full curriculum designed for K-12 to um support students in identity affirmation but also also to support them academically with tutoring supports things of that nature so those programs have proven to be extremely successful we have a draft of an impact report that we have developed um on you know just how beneficial those programs have been that we're planning to share very soon we're still working on our final tweaks with that so um with that we have seen some great opportunities with mentoring and we're looking for ways of expanding that and also we have new people coming on board

065who have ideas of ways that they can support it also and if that doesn't answer your question please feel free to share it again and I'll see if I can address it more directly that's a little bit of a preview to a future work session item as Dr mabingo works with the chair in the vice chair we do have some updates in the area of equity Affairs that we would like to share with the board awesome we'll look forward to that thank you so Mr Sears has some follow-up I have a question Ms Lewis and i'llgueles but Miss Lewis and miss welled okay um so I think this is largely for you Dr mombenko something that I would like to see related to the two metrics that are in this presentation um is some peer

066District data to help us better see how we're doing you this is this is a great presentation showing us how we're doing against our own benchmarks and we operate in an ecosystem of Education with peers that have similar property levels similar sizes and it would help us I think do our job holding the administration accountable to high standards if we could see how we're doing District to District so I don't need a response on that tonight but if you could send us some of that data that would be helpful I completely agree uh Mr Sears that's a good observations and uh this is going to be a follow-up I'm going to work with staff to be able to bring to be very um transparent when it comes to data how we compare to other districts

067but I also wanted to make a journal comment regarding uh the strategies that was pre uh were presented here it's not comprehensive there are other strategies that we are using that we're not listed here um and I don't want to give our board and our community false hope that our students will be getting credit from high school just want it to be transparent with that uh to be in math one or English one is really demanding you have to meet those prerequisites uh but what is really essential as we all know when you get to high school you you can get up to eight credit every year multiply by four that's 32 and our students only need uh 28 credits to be able to graduate I think we're going to work really hard making sure

068that our core instructions is working really well and then try to catch up those students uh during the summer the one that are really behind so they can be ready uh especially those F graders Uprising ninth graders to be ready but uh there are also two other strategies that are really important to the question regarding our student of color when it comes to our latinx I think we are really beefing up our strategies out to be able to have a robust um parent engagement that's really important because they are really critical when it comes to the achievement or the graduation of our students and also another strategy when it comes specially to our student of color that we have not tapped into is uh to look at Sports and be able to look at those

069mentors those athletic directors and those coaches if our students are not really achieving the way they're supposed to there should be some study skills before the practice and all that kind of stuff and those students will be able to listen to their coaches and I think that's another strategy that can also be implemented to make sure that a student of color are there really excelling so all we presented today are those are the strategies that we have in place but we also have our schools they have their own strategies as well they're implementing to get our students where they need to be I just wanted to give that comprehensive response but to uh Mr Sears and definitely we're going to bring data so that we all can be in that fair I mean uh place

070that we're seeing how we're comparing with other District Miss Lewis Miss validarez Miss buyer thank you so much for the presentation um again very well received as well um thank you for acknowledging our Educators and all the hard work that's happening to recover from covid um and the learning loss and Dr Hardy thank you for also including just the awareness of the practice at the conferences that you all are attending to get the best practices and aligning to show that we are doing those things and implementing those um in those places I have just a few uh just a few questions and a recommendation um we'll remember Chavez and I were at an event at nccu for the pending ceremony for the marathon teaching Institute which is a pipeline of supporting black male Educators that

071are coming through nccu Dr Bullock was there Dr sang was there as well Dr Los Angeles recruiting as best as she could while they're still in school but as we think about the mentors the question that um board member Chavez asked earlier as we think about mentors I'm would very recommend be curious to know if we can get some of those guys to Mentor now being part of we are Kings if that's an option I'm sure you're already thinking about how to plug them in if they're not already plugged in Dr Bullock um so that just made me think of that when you asked about the mentors and what we're doing and just it was um just a really fabulous program only in this third year and just trying to support black male Educators in

072this pipeline that we've talked about it's really good to see that we're focusing on our metrics from the strategic planning we have direction to know that we're at 90 getting to that 90 of exceeding growth that's really what's most important we want to grow our kids right it is still disappointing to see that we're at a 36 44 proficiency rate um we want to get that up and get that over so one of the questions I ask I have is around we talked about with Esser funds before and looking at doing Saturday academies um are we is that still part of the plan where we are now we're starting this Friday with all the math one students we have up to 150 students that will be attending Northern High School Hillside and Riverside and we're

073able to pair those students with uh students that have proven data from other District to be able to reach out to those students um teachers will be well compensated and students will be getting uh serious incentives and they're really excited to be there as well so we're starting with math one and then I know my staff they're working with uh other subject areas so that we'll be able to bring those students I think we're starting this Friday I mean this Saturday and we are really excited for that opportunity thank you so much um also the last thing I'll say I just appreciate seeing the different dashboards that are coming to be the Panorama dashboard the dashboard for early warning systems and also wanted to commend the work happening with it congratulations on technology adoptions really

074moving us into the 21st century and um and Beyond with the education professional training that's happening as well so thank you for your report thank you for all the hard work that you all are doing and again um just keeping the commitments that we made so thank you thank you so much um I um Echo gratitude for the work that is happening and the early warning system Dr Hardy you met with us prior to this board meeting we had really rich discussions and we were talking about the holistic approach how our students don't just show up to learn isolated from context one of the contexts something that we as a district need to be very receptive to is the context of this engagement that is happening not with one student not an individual but more

075of like an entire classroom if we have more than 50 percent of students in that class performing with these and and you know not showing proficiency and all that like what supports do we have for those Educators who are doing their best um to engage your students but are finding that maybe there's there's some factors right and what kind of supports and I think the mentorship is one piece but then there's also as we know Maslow's hierarchy of needs right like how are we ensuring is is it is it about nutrition is it that these children are not having adequate lunch you know what is happening in terms of um screening for mtss starting an mtss process with them and I know that we already have systems in place that will identify a particular student

076but I'm also looking at a contextual things how are we looking at the classroom space the management um any supports you know do we need to have more instructional assistance um helping us in certain classrooms um just all the layers of support because I think that one of the things that I am seeing is that children again you know um a lot of these Dynamics don't happen individually they happen within a context of um what their peers are doing um what are some patterns and so I'd like for us to continue to watch and continue those conversations that we had about um our early warning system and how it gets developed how it's not just looking at the one student but also are we having Title One schools that have many classrooms that are that

077are that are also showing um exhibiting just that need of more supports the other thing for me is that as we are talking about the um just the data um and more of the options that we have for students and how we're preparing them early we continue to work with CT I'm so glad to see Dr Julie pack always anytime because I I think that that is definitely work that is happening in terms of students knowing their options whether they want to go into a trade whether they want to go into college some of our students want to serve want to serve our country so JROTC programs and those Avenues and I think that more of those stories of how they can see themselves represented I love what our you know team is doing in

078terms of featuring alumni alumni and showing the different paths and we need to continue to continue to let them see themselves or in these different paths um at the end of it it's not just one singular path but it's we're offering um just ways that our students can connect to just the different ways of being successful um and going out and and having productive lives and so I just want us to continue to connect these things to you know connect the content kind of like core knowledge content that we connect um and that I know has been really instrumental in many schools where they talk about the math that is in in sports right talk about the math that is you know helping students design things talk about the math that is helping even chefs

079you know do their measure to create the perfect recipe and you know entrepreneurship and so many different things so to continue to show those stories but also like connect those with these basic core knowledge um things that we're doing so just a lot of support a lot of gratitude and um I also Echo that I'd like to see um more of this work developed into the holistic approach that we have to support our students I just want to join the chorus of of gratitude from my colleagues for this is a there's a reason this is Priority One in this strategic plan this is where everything starts and this is where we all get grilled the most and you all know that you live it um I Echo the call for kind of deeper data going

080forward um you know one thing that occurred to me is Dr Mingo we do have the 22 credit diploma and we need some data on how often that's being used my fear when we put that in place was we overused it and I never want us to not maximize the Mastery of content that we get into our students um and I don't want us to rely on that too heavily while we're working to increase graduation rates um and so kind of data on that data on just being frank that credit recovery isn't the quality that we want children to have if at all possible it's a it's a credit recovery but it's not the the intense like Mastery kind of level excellence in in content that we want for our students so making sure that

081that as much as possible we are getting these kids ready for their future so data on our yeah if we get a if we get 90 of them graduating our 90 of them able to be admitted into Durham Tech or are you know how many of them are into able to get into a UNC system school like that that next indicator and that next Data Tracking kind of looking at are they ready um and I know y'all are thinking deeply about these things um and then I I think we've done an amazing job marketing a lot and we've really upped um social media and and that use but I had to dig to find where I could find information on our website about evening Academy just now and um that should be easy for folks

082to find if we really think it's a strategy for our boys of color like that and um what else was I looking for CTE Pathways I think we need to brag about those a whole lot more we do it every time we have the culinary students here but there are so many reasons that there's a variety of Pathways and people still aren't aware so I look forward to ways that we can continue to kind of celebrate that and lift that up um Dr Hardy I'm gonna ask you can you remember that software that people got upset about us changing that I can't remember the name of this year I.T wise there was something that they used to like somebody let yeah just because it's on here and we talk about the you know I'd asked

083in the future that we have a talk about how we're going to refresh and keep up with their needs since we're going towards 100 and they are gonna need more and more and we can't even get the projector bulbs sometimes for them which drives them nuts right but that one specifically that piece of software they had so and I thought it was more yours than yeah it was a monitoring Land school is a monitoring software and either I think Miss Malone or Dr gurian can um speak to that if you um remember we did um initiate that when we were completely remote to make sure that we had the availability from our teachers to make sure that our students were fully connected um now that we are back fully in person and there is an

084integrated hybrid approach we we want to make sure that just as 1D says using technology as a tool we want to make sure that in the classroom they are using that as a tool to access resources maybe even engage in discussions with their students submit assignments but it is not the only tool so there is this expectation regarding how teachers are monitoring within the classroom and that is a tool that the district has not um district-wide supported since we are back now fully 100 in person and teachers and students do have the opportunity of remember again to use that device as a tool not as the only mode for learning which is what we had to do when we were 100 remote and um I don't know yes it does um was it expensive is

085that the reason that we made a change that is another reason and Dr ravinga prompted me to say that as well that it does have an expensive cost um as well Miss Malone or Dr to Green if you want to add yep so um during the pandemic so there was a kind of incentive to have land school from a kind of free perspective um but in analyzing it and getting ready to have to renew that contract and there being a cost Associated we looked at the usage of the tool during the pandemic so how many teachers were actually using the tool how are they going in to observe kind of the the things that were going on in the student devices also there were some security issues so that product had some ways where our

086students could go into the back end and change change some of the settings and do different things there so based on that we did not renew it from a district perspective we did communicate out to our schools that we have vetted three other products and which they can use at the school level and so we've communicated that out to our principals in leadership weekly um two of those I know uh dainaway uh dino which was I'm actually already being used uh in ignite Online Academy yep net opt and then there's one that is actually being piloted right now called go Guardian so those are the three products currently vetted through curriculum and instruction that are available for our uh schools to purchase that's great um it seemed like just online that maybe they weren't all

087the way aware of those new options and maybe they'll be PD about that in the future because a lot of the chatter seem to be folks didn't even know it was there and then once they heard the functionality from their peers they were like I would have loved that so um maybe there's there's some opportunity maybe there's to educate going forward I think sorry I think I would say the feature that they're most interested in is being able to push out a particular link to younger kids and not have to go to each device and make sure they're at the right place because if the link is long or shortened like a bitly that's difficult for kindergarteners and first graders to get correct thank you so much for that feedback just just as a follow-up

088um and Dr Hardy I think we've talked about this but I just want to know if there was any um analysis of dead spots um we have heard that there's you know in terms of equity every classroom having all the tools and especially the technology right like every educator having access to technology to do instruction every student having access to that and I know that we have multi-factor authentication which is something that keeps us you know um uh free of of of hacks and attacks and all that but when it comes to how we're working to identify what is the process if an educator is constantly having issues maybe um getting the authentication the MFA um they just I know they they would call it but do we have a way to keep track of

089what those work orders or requests are um and where are we having most of those dead spots and throughout the whole district and um yes and I know Miss Malone can definitely speak we monitor those tickets very very carefully to make sure that we we are seeing any Trends how do we need to respond to those just a clarifying question when you're talking about dead spots are you talking specifically in partic maybe a school area so in a a classroom might be experiencing that or you talking more when we're at home and in particular areas of the Durham Community or it's both it okay I have heard that there are particular schools school buildings like there are certain areas in the building that are not as um uh that don't have seem to have the

090same signal strength and and so they're not able to access um the materials the tools technology um consistently and so it's affecting the learning environment for students okay so miss valued rs2 to address that question and I did hear that at one of the previous board meetings and um provided some context around that so again as we have our Educators or even our students if they have a mobile device so that if that's a non-dps device um again you know it could be Verizon Sprint at T that cell coverage in our buildings may vary and so we don't have that vendor or they provide sales service in our building um we do have wireless access and we have that for mobile devices as well as personal devices to get on our network with different secure

091passwords and so what we have is we have go out and do assessments to make sure that we have coverage in our buildings if any of our students or staff find that they cannot get onto our Wi-Fi network they should submit a request to it support we do monitor those tickets we can go out if we don't have the technology we can send a vendor out there to get that technology assessed to make sure that we if it's adding an access spot or if it's tuning some of those configurations we can get that done can I can I think about just you hit a nerve if you're ever in a meeting with Verizon it infuriates me that we can be at a very large Middle School Lucas and have no signal like this is Durham

092the city of medicine R1 University universities we ought to have cell coverage across the county but thank you thanks thanks everybody thank you for the presentation um most of my questions have already been asked but I do want I do have some short follow-ups the first thing would be um just really kind of confirming that when we talk about graduation cohorts and getting to that 90 we're making sure that our students are graduating career in college ready and not sacrificing their ability to present and um demonstrate that they can be successful in life After High School as we go forward I do have a question about uh as they move forward I'm sorry I do have a question about the four-year plan in high school um which is great for freshmen this year or last

093year whenever it was started is there something that we're doing now to help with sophomores and juniors and seniors to get them to that place um whether it's using Zillow or a shorter plan or and that our counselors are prepared for that um yeah I'll start with that I guess whoever wants to answer so for many years um you know it has been the expectation that we have a four-year plans for students as they arrive to high school we have just increased as you've said over the years our not only our monitoring of that but also our vertical alignment so that some of that planning does begin in the middle school and the middle school and high school school counselors are now working as a POC at different times of the year to make sure

094that they are sharing practices around how they're creating those plans and there's High accountability for yearly and within a year monitoring progress on those plans so that's where every conversation with a student and about a student Begins for many of our student support services staff or in the school before Dr pack um John Payne I know we've been doing some work with Durham Tech uh you attended that those meetings as well so we have a plan uh JB box that will be meeting with him tomorrow as well to see how we can increase uh I graduate up to 20 of our students graduating with our social degree as well as those credentials if we're talking about those students graduating ready for career I think that should be a good point for you to be able

095to highlights that yes um so there are a lot there are a lot of options for students uh and looking at the four-year plan and as they've matriculated the options have expanded as Dr mabinka talked about we're really focusing on our students graduating with a degree a diploma and uh or a credential right and that's the work that we're doing with Durham Tech we're also collaborating across CTE and student services so our cdcs our Career Development coordinators and our school counselors are working along the career trajectory together and helping students make that pathway so what do you want to do after you leave school let's figure out what the next steps are some of that is formalized in Zello and held in Zello and they can use that to then the platform itself is online

096and they can take what they want to do they can find education options along the lines of as well as job options so it's a multifunctional tool thank you um and in the presentation you also talked about um having you're having the earlier meetings with the students and the counselors and the parents are we tracking how often we're having these conversations with students and counselors and parents I'm a strong advocate for parent engagement but we know sometimes it's hard for parents to be engaged um but and we also know that it's important to get a mentor somebody to advocate for the student in that space instead of the parent if the parent's not responsive after a while or unable to attend for whatever reason are we tracking those things so we know when to bring

097folks in I'll say that work is pretty much done at the school level uh every school they have the way they set up those meetings whether or not they bring you cluster meetings with all the councils or principles being involved I don't know if anyone in the central office have that data so I do just to add and to what Dr marbinga said the parent engagement we know that that is parent and family engagement is a critical piece in not only accelerating learning but really making sure that that communication so that's ongoing work that we're having not only at the central service level but really making sure that that's happening at the school level our Title One schools that's a component of their Title One plans it's also a component that you'll hear in the

098next few minutes from Dr Stewart as part of our school Improvement planning process and school Improvement plans and what you heard today about the data dashboard and early warning system that we know is also going to be an opportunity for us to quickly Identify some of those groups and then parents excuse me principals and teachers can use those to also help there is an expectation that during the first quarter all of our elementary school families have a parent-teacher conference and then our principals and supervisors monitor that conference to make them aware of the progress of those young people thank you and so many people have loved on the we are Kings and we are Queens program I want to ask if we could add an element of mentorship where we have high school students coming

099and having breakfast with the middle school and elementary students and talking about how that work is continued all through their trajectory within DPS thanks so we are really excited about the work that we are doing yeah go ahead uh go ahead first I was just gonna say yes we can definitely um look into our options for you know connecting some mentors from the high school level to the younger grades we have had some success with that in the past and so but there's a great opportunity to make it more systemic so we've we've had those connections particularly with some of our Queens programs I remember some of the Queens from one of our high schools or middle schools went to our elementary schools and they built some relationships there but there's a lot of potential

100there that we could work on realizing and tell us what you need I will pretty much I wanted to say we are really excited about the work that we are doing I think all the strategies that we presented we're giving our families hope that's how we in the right trajectory but I also wanted to bring this up as we're looking at those vacancies I think we are seriously concerned about easy I had a meeting today with Dr Bill I mean we're putting money out there seven thousand dollars to recruit by easy facilitators and all that we're not funding anyone when it comes to those vacancies we're working really hard we're having an opportunity to go to ECU meeting with our Dean bringing all these students when they're coming for the clinical and all that kind

101of stuff but a lot of these universes around here they're not producing enough EC as our population somewhere around 14 15 we are struggling in that area um I don't want to give all the false hope here but we are really excited we're doing really great work but uh easy area is really challenging area for us when it comes to Staffing so I think I also you're reminded me that that this these vacancies district-wide are impacting all of this priority one I mean I had a great conversation with a parent of an elementary student who has an IA that has stepped up to fill a classroom role but they're they would be the first to admit they're not as ready as they want to be right and so um it's not just DC and it's

102not just science and it's just not just math and to see these vacancies nationally and not to have a systemic change that we need and and that these students deserve is um is heartbreaking I mean and and um we can't just rely on stealing teachers from nearby districts they need them too right so um Aspire I might ask that we consider adding that to our legislative agenda um this is not about a progressive communities versus conservative ones everybody needs you see teachers just like when we're not getting CDLs processed fast enough we need to go to our state partners and say come on like let's get past this and get some help so I'll leave it at that and I wonder if we have our current IA to instructional assistant to teach our program if

103we reserve some of those spots for ecias who can become teachers who hopefully maybe can become facilitators because I think that might need to be an intentional pathway and if we do some recruitment maybe at Durham Tech folks already got two years worth of a degree to help get into a pathway and yeah I'm thinking trying to think a little long term people who got two years who might be a great I a and can move into a teacher position or facilitator these are some really great options and just again it's systemic and what we're looking at system what do we need to do with the system and I think for Durham and all the millions of people who are watching right now part of that system is our community our churches our volunteers our

104families and like we have to really pull together because our schools are suffering and I know that our educators are doing the best that we can I know that we have a plan coming forth all with this engagement looks like and everyone's is at as is pooled and that odds and and you know at capacity right but if we really want the best for our children and their future we have to pull together as a community so I just want to appeal as well legislative our Educators and and being able to move things around and also our community to step forward and us to make it easy for us Community to step forward and have these Partnerships in place Dr mubenga and our Administration um I'm really really grateful that you met with um JB

105Buxton uh from Durham Tech I do know that that we have such a great Ally in this work of creating I mean I also have heard from him that he's creating certification programs he's creating so he's helping you know create like go out of the box and figure out what are the specific needs um if we have I think what would be helpful um when I talk to community members who have in a past life not past life but like literally like they moved from another country here and have had you know teaching experience and then we're trying to figure out like how do they pair up right with the requirements those were conversations we need all hands on deck and there are a lot of programs like participate learning and and you know we

106have we can we can do stop Gap Solutions and hire H you know Visa you know get get some Educators or visas but we also need to continue to build those pipelines and so I commend you on being interactive and meeting with our our Ally up the street you know who's definitely like very much interested in um collaborating with us and then figuring out what certifications um what else do we need you know when it comes to EC what is what are those steps to continue like to create those pipelines because we can't have 120 is that where we're at with EC vacancies that that would be all positions if we're talking 120 um for all of that but I can get some updated numbers for you as of today last meeting was 40. Dr

107Bell said four four zero that's teachers 40 teaching positions but we have 120 vacancies throughout like in terms of how to serve all our students around that number 40 EC teachers and so you know just continuing to to figure out like how to leverage these these these Partnerships and I definitely agree with our colleagues that this is definitely there's so many layers to it in terms of advocacy at the state level National Trends um Recruitment and and everything else that we're doing but definitely leveraging our partners here in the community as well thank you thank you Dr Hardy that's all our question are we ready for uh the next agenda item the school Improvement plan Dr Stewart chief of schools thank you all good evening here Umstead Vice chair Sears all members of the board

108and Dr mobinga we are excited to finally showcase the work that has been occurring since July 1 as it relates to school Improvement planning for Durham public schools for the 22-24 academic years I am joined by two of my outstanding teammates Dr Dietrich Danner the senior executive of federal programs and Community engagement and our talented Miss Ashley Stevens director of school Innovation I have asked them to drive this presentation good afternoon thank you for having me here tonight and I'm excited to share this information with you next slide please tonight we're going to take an overview of the work that we've done this far the cut the core content of our work and continuous Improvement is ensuring that all of our students are successful our number one goal with continuous Improvement is not only Student

109Success but making sure it's aligned to the work that we're doing as a district this year we started off through alignment to our strategic plan and Alignment to Dr mabenga's non-negotiables this was a team effort so we worked with different District staff School faculty staff students and family and Community Partners our schools did the work by starting by looking at a variety of data resources this does not just include student learning they also looked at data sources that include perception data demographic data and school processes data after their initial work schools presented to the office of chica schools including principal supervisors and other key Central Services Personnel including curriculum and instruction student Support Services exceptional children English as a second language an equity and professional learning our schools were able to create their school Improvement

110plan and then present this presentation on the next slide we have prepared a video for you that is the summation of the work that we have completed this far next slide please a few years ago I stood in this room and shared with board members that we were working towards a continuous School improvement process that the goal was to move from being compliant checking the boxes to being committed to the process so I'm most excited about this opportunity for a school level persons the school Improvement teams inclusive of teachers administrators and parents to come together and have authentic conversation around areas in need of improvement and their focus for this Academic Year I'm Susan Taylor the very proud principal of CT Jordan High School and we're excited to share about the school improvement process for

11122-23 I'm thankful to Dr Davis Dr Stewart other cabinet leadership members for preparing us with the recipe for Success what we're most excited about is our incentive plan we want to recognize teachers and students who are doing everything they can to ensure that all students graduate one time and with options we have clear expectations for our community and our students are meeting those expectations come join us for homecoming 2022 Falcons to see all the celebrations in action so just reflecting on this process in its entirety uh Hillside actually we met as a as a team last year we began the school Improvement planning for the current school year the previous school year and so we launched this work uh back in the spring of 20 2022 and um a lot of feedback from different stakeholders

112uh were taken into consideration as we chose our indicators those indicators actually those uh Focus areas that we believe will drive our work uh at Hillside High School and most importantly these are the indicators that were chosen that will help us achieve the goals that we have included in our school Improvement plan [Music] they're working with Dr Stewart and our team with the office of chief of schools we worked to put together a process of support all schools as they work through continuous Improvement one thing that we really wanted to focus on was making sure all of our efforts supported Dr mabanka's non-negotiables so every District indicator that we've worked with connects directly to a non-negotiable because we want to have a consistent process yes and so that's going to be important that when we

113start the day that the entire team understands how we're going to guide this process my goal is again if the school comes and I present that data right we ask them specifically for uh Mission Vision School enrollment data DOI data and teacher right like is there anything else we need to be able to triangulate because now is the time when like you said you'll have their Title One plan where you're going to say wait a minute but you know when we get to be bad something's not aligning here and as we get the back to schools I'll capture your papers type it up right then and there as we're transitioning share it with the principal and they'll have their feedback darnese Massey I'm not sure if you worked with her last year she will be

114like your school Improvement person okay um because she has that really good lens on looking at budgets and human resources and those flexibility so she'll be reaching out to you guys to kind of just say like I'm here for support okay um so I'll still be able to help but you can still always ask for me but because she has additional special projects to work on we couldn't include her with schools but I was like I'd rather you work with my research principles because they don't need the leadership coaching right it's really like I have this budget how when do I put money in my you know 030 piercing 031 whatever it is render I use my title one when do I you know um need someone to Advocate that I need some flexibility money

115stuff like that so I think that'll be a good view for her [Music] plc's professional learning communities are an important part of the improvement process this is a time for teachers support staff and school leaderships to come together they can work on things such as their intervention plan how they will support students school goals teacher goals student goals they can also work on things like professional learning and how they will Implement their family and engagement community plan let's talk about pocs so we put these particular pieces in here again because again as we said we do have our way in our Raider way um as my illustrious boss likes to say this is our recipe right my recipe is never going to or I call it a pound cake recipe my cake is never going

116to taste like Dr Jones okay she's an actual cook so was my mom but this is my recipe and I will say that these are the things that will assist us in making sure again like I said we get to that double dish growth I have to stand on trochastan I have to be there but here's the thing number one we're setting high expectations and making sure that instruction is happening from Bell to Bill and we're making sure too that we are not only grouping students based upon the data but then also too that we're continuing to analyze that data within pocs and then we're basically kind of basically trying to you know ship that locus of control when it comes to instruction so that we teachers are the facilitators of the learning and it's

117the kids at the end of the day that are tired because I remember saying very constructively to a teacher last year but I said to her when I did her some of it but said I bet you were exhausted every day when you get home and she said Olivia oh my gosh I am I said I know I said I know you're working hard because I'm seeing it I said but that's but that's what I want you to think about I'm seeing it the kids are not working as hard as you are and that's the disconnect um our plcs are really focused they're focusing on a lot of different things whether it is making sure the team is on the same page collecting really important data and actually learning what to do with that data

118um and then also just working on improving our literacy strategies making sure we are up to date with what works best for students and making sure we're all on the same page as a class and a building so that when a kid leaves or a student leaves my classroom they're going to get the same instruction in the next one um and I think that's been really powerful for our students so plcs this year have been a real plus um it's really great to just be together as a sixth grade team talk about students talk about the things that are working well or not what we're going to do today is something that you've already done on September the 6th if you think back you guys along with Beth did your student your teacher data trackers

119right you set up your goal uh for your classrooms for course one two three and four for Discovery you also set up your Gold Tracker and then for a team you plugged in those numbers and a number came up and that was your goal today what we're going to do is go back to that student data tracker make sure that the students that you have on your roster are indeed your students we've done a lot of pulling in taken out changing around so we need to go from core one two three four and Discovery to make sure that matches up with with what's in PowerSchool and also what's on your Discovery um list please make sure you are using your word of the week because admin uh myself or the teachers are coming around asking

120your kids I know one of the good things this morning was in seventh grade um a kid was like tracking down his teacher so he can give the teacher the word the definition he gave him a antonym and he also gave the teacher a sentence so he wanted that Dragon dollar so um he gonna have to come with that same energy for next week but he did a great job he really did with that in mind I'm gonna solved it yourselves y'all know which ones are going to be the most problematic y'all know what they're going to be thinking about I'm going to split you guys up um well and Larue and Mr Jowers if you want to join that group you need to even I need y'all to figure out which one of these

121need to become application followers right so remember we've been talking about how to intervene in a moment so which one of these can we turn into application problems changing the numbers changing the names to help prepare the kids for the word problems um Miss Johnson scarborville and Alan Powell I want you guys to think about what fluency should we create right you can also think about which ones we already knew what fluency should we create in order to make sure that they're getting that practice and repetition okay so that's what y'all are talking about y'all are talking about application problems I mean you got seven minutes on the clock again try to figure out as many as you can um and what that would look like when I think about the school Improvement planning process

122I will say uh in times past it kind of like began as a process where we did it in isolation we could do it in our offices as administrators put the plan together because ultimately we knew it would sit idly in a binder on somebody's shelf um and there would be no questions asked about it uh one of the things that I like most and I think the the vehicle uh that has made this process more transparent and made everybody accountable is in the star in the end of star largely uh it puts everything on public display uh our parents have access to it when it's posted online they get a password and login to actually see it from a parent's perspective same thing with our students same thing with our faculty same thing with

123central office administration same thing with board members the community can see and so we want to make sure that we put the best work that's out there so I firmly believe from times past um NC Star has NC industr has really made this process one that is transparent but most importantly it is one that has made everybody accountable uh so that we're just not frivolously just putting information out there to suggest uh to the public where what we are supposed to be doing but it actually communicates uh what our commitments are and what we're aiming to do and how we actually can uh Garner support from everybody else to achieve the goals that we've outlined in the school Improvement plan what are some ways that we can maintain students following the rules at this school

124incentives recognizing students PBIS PBIS consistent PBIS plan dojo points whatever I feel like I am leading I don't want to leave I don't want to leave this is a team we all know where we want to be and the work that's got to be put into getting there and we're ready for um that journey and I would say that the fact that everyone is involved in the process is what makes it successful um you know in terms of collecting data and then looking at that data and using it to inform what we want to work on and then thinking about what the end result is going to be and backwards planning but it involves everyone in our school Community the parents and the staff so it's not just something that's being led by the administrative

125team But it includes everyone's voice it's been beneficial to be able to be a part of the school Improvement team and be a teacher at the same time it's nice to know that you can have the ability to lead and have input and make decisions and be involved in the process of making our school a better place not only for the students but for the staff and faculty as well the school improvement process for us has been very um impactful it's nice to hear the teachers the students the parents collaborate and talk about what needs to be improved at the school and then we work together to come up with a plan to ensure we work towards those goals there's some goals that we have every year right like we always want to be in

126a school that is going to be our goal and our determination but to really start diving into what are the things that we do at our school that is impactful towards student learning that is what we really dig deep into as we are um doing our school Improvement planning I I actually appreciate the superintendent non-negotiables this year it allowed us to align our goals and it allowed us to create specific plans to those goals for example our reward and intervention plan I'm most proud of our family engagement activities we have a lot of those and we ensure that our families are in the loop we communicate with them every week they know that my staff and I have an open line of communication via email and phone and this year we even implemented a reverse

127progress report so that we could help parents learn how to work with their students to check their college grades and then those parents report those grades back to us so we are doing a lot of innovative things at Middle College High School The Continuous improvement process takes everyone everything we do every day is a part of this process we start with a plan we work to make sure we all Implement that plan with Fidelity and consistency and at the end of the year we look at the progress we've made and we make any changes to that plan so that we can continue moving forward every day we all come to work we're making a commitment to make schools that are great for our students and our community and through this process we can continuously improve

128them to ensure that they get the absolute best that don't know what schools we all are excited I look forward to persons from various departments entering into buildings doing learning walks to make sure that together we are indeed DPS [Music] thank you for taking the time to watch that video as DPS continues The Continuous Improvement Journey our main steps moving forward will be focusing on the monitoring and feedback as I'm talked about in the video that looks like continuous support and managing and updating but also walkthroughs and working with schools School Improvement plans are a living document so as schools work towards accelerating Student Success schools are able to work through their school Improvement teams to add or amend action steps that will support their need today this is a snapshot in time of what

129that work will look like I now introduce Dr Danner that will highlight a little bit more about our family engagement process good evening board members we are related to share that all of our schools presented robust meaningful family engagement plans beyond the minimal for family engagement programs doing the Sip review process many schools highlighted how they are engaging families in student-led parent teaching conferences reverse Pro reverse progress reports ESL steam digital learning and SEL programming as well as partnering with external partners to promote academic and social emotional learning we continue to review and monitor family engagement plans as well as provide ongoing feedback to schools so we are well on our way and we are excited that even as we begin the second quarter we are seeing community and family engagement happening in our schools

130next slide please it's important that our families and communities are able to access these plans our plans are housed in a system called NC stars and a star a platform provided by the state every school has a guest login you can access that guest login from the school's website and there's a comprehensive list in the district subject site to ensure access for all of our families any family may request the support of our interpretation services to access the contacted content and endless star by the end of November each school will have a one-pager highlighting their comprehensive plan available in English and Spanish as well I now turn it back over to Dr Stacy Stewart thank you all are there any questions Miss Lewis the Miss buyer thank you so much for this presentation in the

131video was outstanding to see so many of our principals and Educators at work um just felt like bring your board member to school day Dr Danner our first interaction with Durham Public Schools was around school Improvement plans and you were explaining to me the process several years ago and to see and hear that it's not just a document that's put on the Shelf but it's truly a living document to see the work and progress you all have made to um increase comprehensive team coming together to pull this document together it's just it's amazing work and progress being made you mentioned the family engagement Dr Danner and I know a strategy four speaks to family engagement we have some benchmarks there so I like to see where we've landed with those benchmarks not today but when

132we get the strategy four I know we're going to get an update right Dr Hardy so I just it's just known that's coming um but it's important to write the vision to make it plain so to me this uh School Improvement the school Improvement plans that I see um I do like the intentionality that I've seen around our latinx families I like to mix students and um filling in academic gaps and accelerating education there's a lot of specific targeting that I see happening in the plans and to get that attentionality and doing these data walks has been super helpful one question I have um I liken the school Improvement plan to our district-wide strategic plan and I know when we had our accreditation one of the areas for improvement was that there was not necessarily

133A a strong understanding or linkaging from what is our strategic planning to what's happening at the schools and I know that was mentioned non-negotiables can you tell me how do these two things line up where how are we working with the feedback we've got from the CR this may be for you Dr mabanga but the feedback from the accreditation report to having a strategic plan having school Improvement plans how are we getting alignment there thank you for that question I think the feedback that we're able to receive from our accreditation team that's the reason why we came up with those non-negotiables and with those non-negotiable that's what we started with that every schools they have that they have a templates posted in the schools and our expectation at the district level as they're doing their

134work with school Improvement plan they have to be able to communicate that with their families and the school Improvement plan is not separated from our strategic plan everything is pretty much aligned as you're gonna see they're presenting this everything is pretty much aligned and our hope and our expectations pretty much at the school level as they have in meetings with their families and all that they got to make sure that they're communicating the Strategic plan as well as good Improvement plan expectations to all our families everything is aligned and that was the one comment that I heard one the Educators say is that the non-negotiables have been helpful but I've also heard that there seem like they're a barrier to people how are we making sure that Educators see this as being a help and

135not a barrier with the non-negotiables sorry I wanted to kind of talk about how we worked on that alignment the non-negotiables definitely directly align back to our strategic plan but it really focuses on the operational pieces of it so when we think about plcs it's not one specific thing that's happening many of our strategies presented during Priority One that's a vehicle for it to happen so when we look at all those specific things yes while focusing on making those entities very strong all of the things that have to happen in order for those to be successful and efficient and effective areas all the other work we do so it seems like five things but in order to really put those into operations is where we have the flexibilities of what works specifically for our school

136communities that's it thank you so much putting it into operations and the flexibility that I know that people are looking for thank you so I wanted to thank you all um for this presentation it I wanted to also clarify um are you all expecting action like approval of these tonight or will that come in two weeks because typically we have um a chance for folks to actually get the passwords and our public to be able to go lock in are we taking action tonight are you expecting that in two weeks action was requested action has been requested but we can hold it until November 17th the next board meeting I just have a slight preference for that just in case our families and communities have feedback that they they want us to consider that would

137give that some time and getting the it's it's rare to have a piece of software that the state adopts that actually is user friendly so kudos to whoever made that decision I also appreciate y'all's video it tells a story in such a compelling way I'm sure it will win Oscars um you know things like that going forward my other specific question is two specific questions one plc's how how many of them this year are actually district plc's and how many are School level how many they always just want their time at the school level have we given them all of them half of them how are y'all thinking about plc's issue based on the presentations led by the principal's 100 of our schools have school level plc's and that is an expectation in the non-negotiables

138that at least once a month each department and or grade spans meet their plcs and all of our principals verify that that was indeed happening like having that protected time um and then my other question is this notion of student incentives and it's because I think some of what guidelines do we give at the district level about some of these student incentives I saw last year like it's one thing to have PBIS incentives and wholesome things that all children can enjoy last year I saw lots of video game consoles and like really high-end things that kind of celebrate One winner and don't have space for everyone so what guidelines how do you all think about that as you're talking about that so when it comes to incentives we don't give specific guidelines we really trust

139the school to go to this site management which is a school Improvement to come up with decisions so which means teachers and all the staff around the table they have to come up with ideas that is going to incentivize their staff and students we did not give any specifics all the districts we did were able to give them funding twenty dollars per students for example Jordan high school they got about forty thousand dollars go to your staff meeting the staff come up with a decision how you're going to spend the money and I just like to add one other thing to that the one specification that we asked for that these incentives for students and staff be data driven so I I appreciate that I trust our people to give great feedback and make good

140decisions that's um and I love incentives that every child can have a chance to participate and and celebrate in and know that they're all working their hardest right and recovering from pandemics so last year when I heard that we that some of our schools were doing one massive thing that was Out Of Reach For Everyone um it made me wonder kind of let's think that through and let's make sure our sit teams really consider what that might feel like to be a child that worked their hardest and then didn't win you know it's it yeah some of that stuff just so I I appreciate you all continuing to have those kind of thoughtful questions and conversations with our principal leaders and our Educators as they as they work to use incentives in a way to

141lift all children um but thank you foreign [Music] thank you all for the presentation I'm excited to see how the input and the alignment are going to work um out as we look at these plans this year and for the future uh one question I had is if you all could share a couple highlights that you've seen this new process roll out from like different schools and then maybe where we still have opportunities what you're kind of keeping your eye on as we're moving forward Okay so a couple of weeks ago once I checked the Google form soliciting feedback on this process at that time 31 principals had responded and um it was on a Liker scale from one to five one being ineffective to five being highly effective and uh I will say probably

14298 of that was highly effective so we received a lot of anecdotal notes and comments regarding the process that it was highly effective um initially some of the principles noted that they were a little hesitant about the process because you know what change does sometimes it breeds fear but as a result of engaging all persons students parents staff giving them a voice in the process looking at the multiple data types not just student learning that was mentioned earlier but perception data listening to what teachers have said in the teacher working condition survey listening to student feedback from the student climate survey any information that they received in terms of feedback from parents utilizing it to guide the process and being um courageous to say all things are not working we have listened to the voices

143we've heard them and this process provoked reflection at the end of the day one of the slides said you've got to utilize your end of grade end of course data as well as your teacher working condition data look at that information and share what's the impact and so some principles were very honest and they said it hurt but it is forcing us to make some changes that are needed so um the feedback was very good moving forward again as noted by um Miss Stevens we look forward to the vetted process walking through the buildings to say at the end of the day you said this is what you're going to do we know that what gets monitored gets done and so we're going to leave that process going into those buildings into classrooms for transparency

144saying we're doing checks checks for highly effective implementation of what you said you were going to do based on your data and your conversations with your team one more follow-up question for that is there a place I see the the bubbles that you guys kind of laid out is there a place where you kind of laid out your process too I'm a very visual person so I heard the video but I wonder if there's kind of like a one two three that makes the kind of shares how the process flows that's a little different or the changes it highlights the changes that you've made this year yes there was a PowerPoint presentation that was shared with all of the principles and it does outline everything I think it may have been about 10 slides but

145we wanted to be a little innovative and share the compilation through video but yes we do have that and we will share that thank you all so much I really appreciate this and I'm excited to see kind of the impact of where we go thank you um I I I'm so grateful for the school Improvement plans I think that um this is definitely something that we're supposed to do but you know we're trying to scale it up but do it in in ways that are intentional um there's ways that we can continue to work on that intention one of the things as somebody who's sat in school Improvement teams I just remember some of the barriers with Working Families the time of the school Improvement teams you have to you know drive up to the

146school and for a lot of families they can't leave their work site and as somebody who works with parents right I've been in meetings literally just the benefit of those voices um you know so many of our families are so diverse even within race there's all kinds of diversity you know there's there's all kinds of diversity with our families and so um you know outside in meetings or families are actively working but they're listening and you know you can see them at work you know their hands are moving and they're doing but they're listening and then they're saying I have a question you know how are we working towards Hybrid models of Engagement with our families so for example if not if somebody can't leave their work but they're able to join in through Zoom

147joining through teams whichever platform that they can engage and that voice can be counted and so we have representation across race class you know gender all the all the different identities uh that are that are representative of our school Community how are we working to ensure that representation thank you for that I will say that some parents do zoom in but that isn't a system it's not system-wide so thank you for lifting that up and as we compile best practices as they relate to each of those non-negotiables that the principles presented on we will make sure that that is part of that thank you thank you for the presentation um some words that were coming to mind um as I saw it again this week um were just the cohesion um the support from your

148team and also dialogue you see that in the video and um and I think that's so important I was also reflecting um when you were speaking just now Dr Stewart about how um it can be hard to let things go that we thought should work um and and adopt new practices but I appreciate the focus on on data because that tells us you know so much um that you know we can utilize um going forward um I just wanted to ask and I know we talked a little bit about this last week but about the um the ways in which we're able to facilitate conversation with our primarily Spanish-speaking parents and um if you had any um just more information about that how we were how the schools were sort of um working to be

149inclusive using the MRC um to make sure to engage latinx parents yes um I would like to say um Miss Stevens Dr Danner myself and Mr Friedman Pablo Friedman we had a PLC around that conversation and either the two can follow up with that question thank you for your feedback so one thing we were able to work with um Mr Pablo and Mr Friedman and MRC is one adding the information to our website that our families can request interpretation services for the end of star site so while we're going to work to get that one page highlighter document that would be useful for All Families we want to make sure that all families can also engage in the full in the star system which at this time is not a system that allows for that

150translation services so they can actually have the time to sit down and go through all of the information and ask any questions as they go through it so we'll make sure that's included on the school Improvement pages and on that one page document also I would just like to give you all a preview of some other things that we have that will be coming up very soon in reference to additional resources that we will provide for our English Learners and their families soon to come will be a series of ESL academies across the district so that we can continue to boost not only a Latino achievement but also a black and brown our Brown actually our black achievement as well but we want to ensure that those families are highly engaged and so we will

151be planning with schools on how to operationalize that Development Across The District thank you all for this awesome presentation the video um I like Miss Lewis got involved in the school improvement process and have been a school Improvement team Junkie um and so I'm really grateful to see all of this this way and I'm ecstatic that we are waiting to get feedback from the community in regards to the school Improvement plans before we take action on it I want to ask two things one is if we can get a call out to families to check their school Improvement team and into star and telling them how to do that and when the one pagers are ready for principals to include that information and whatever the communication technique they use with their families to let them

152know the one pager is there and they can access that on the school level because it's important that we're pulling in students I'm sorry families uh to engage in that process because so many people don't know these plans exist and the importance of those plans so we're not just assessing students but we're making sure we're providing the best service to our families through our school Improvement plans thank you thank you Miss Chavez I appreciate all of that work I just it's you know it's amazing when people are able to communicate um it's simple but um I'm really appreciate the work of our district to bridge that um and um and so I wanted to just um take it a little step further and and this may be embedded in what you already were saying um

153but I just wanted to ask that um School Improvement teams be made aware that they can use the MRC to invite latinx parents um or Spanish-speaking parents to participate in the team as well I appreciate the you know the increase the access of the of the um plans themselves but I just wanted to um also put that in there so that they can have those cross linguistic dialogues in the actual planning teams again that might have been in sort of embedded in what you were saying but I just wanted to add that point thank you so much thank you one of the expectations is that the parent representation on the school Improvement team is reflected of the student demographics but thank you for lifting that up and we'll make sure we reiterate it thanks everybody

154thank you thank you so much um the next item on our agenda is the summary of follow-up Ida I'm sorry there was an addition the superintendent yeah um evaluation for it thank you uh board member Rogers for passing that off I just want to give the board a quick update um we have used the superintendent's evaluation form and process for the last several years I wanted to think about is that the same form is that the right process as we also are doing this new um strategic plan and updating that do we want them to align maybe differently so I spoke to Ron Malone our attorney to ask him to get us started in this process of thinking about what does that form look like um and so I just wanted to make sure the

155board was informed that we're going to get started with that and wanted to make sure that there's any questions or Rod did you have anything else to add no I'll be reaching out to board members individually or in small groups to work through that process and then to bring something to the board to consider at some point soon so question Rod like I know in the past a lot of districts use the macrel cookie cutter like tool are you going to bring that one to us are you going to bring our existing one what are you thinking will lead us to a Durham instrument that we come to termed on we have had Boards of late asking about different tools and we've probably identified that we just kind of found maybe six or seven my

156thought was to get those in your hands and then we can pick and choose from what you like and don't like and try to come up with something that's uh probably Durham specific I doubt that we'll find anyone out there that kind of meets your needs but some version of all of them will probably get us something that aligns with what you've got in mind that's my thought right no that's great I'm glad you have six or seven or eight because I can't tell you how much I dislike the macrel as like the very Bland kind of Bill yes okay thank you you know that was just for an update we do not want anyone to think that we are doing something different with Dr mobinga we appreciate him and his leadership here we just

157want to make sure that tool is capturing what we need for Durham that was it thank you thanks man we'll go to the summary follow-up all right good evening everyone I'm going to start with the Strategic plan Priority One update um one of the things that the board asked us to follow up on was a system level um to support our Black and Hispanic students uh want to know what we can do at a systems level to do that I would like to see more data in the presentation that demonstrates how the different initiatives that we've undertaken are performing would like to see how peer districts data looks compared to ours as well as what can we do to support our Educators who may be having a little bit of trouble with some of their

158students achieving we also were asked to provide data on the 22 credit diploma and how that's performing as well as data on College and Career readiness we were asked to update the website to be more accessible to families so they're able to easily find the different programs that we're offering and um uh adding district-wide Staffing shortages to the legislative agenda School Improvement plan um there was a question about where we had landed on priority four of our strategic plan based on the work that we're doing with our school Improvement plan so how is um in which we'll provide an update here soon about how we're performing in that area of the Strategic plan based off of what our schools have prepared um we're gonna do the adoption of the school Improvement plan on the November

15917th meeting as opposed to tonight um what we were asked to at a district level to discuss the best incentives for students and how we can make more student students eligible for those incentives um the board asked that staff shared the school Improvement plan process laws that were shared with principals with the Board of Education um there was a a call for us to make sure that we're reaching out to families and that they know to check into star and review the school Improvement plan prior to the November 17th adoption um and then we want to make sure that our schools and our families are aware that the MRC is available to support development of the and understanding of the school Improvement plan and that's the summary that I have I did that off the

160top of my head and I got to write it down thank you I move that we go into closed session for the reasons stated on the agenda opposed [Music] we're now in closed session we're now back in Open Session Dr Ray banger Madam chair I'm here to seek for your approval for the Personnel report as discussed at the closed session [Music] a second has been moved but I'm inspired to approve the Personnel report dated November 3rd 2020. second about my thumb said all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed weird answer