Board of Education Retreat

001all right good afternoon everyone we are now back from our lunch break i'm gonna pass it over i think to dr mabinga to start us off with the growing together initiative the next item on our agenda thank you madam chair i think we had our great sessions this morning and i think lunch was delicious as well thank you and kudos to our staff for putting all these things together so without any further ado i think we have one other item i think is also one of the most important one growing together i think what i'm really excited about this is we brought this plan before we do not have the financial component but today we have the financial components that you'll be presenting to the board as well as we are undertaking this major project

002without further ado i'm tossing this to drama thank you dr mabenga and good afternoon board of education if we could go ahead and start the uh the slide show and start at slide number three please okay thank you all and so as dr mubanga said earlier one of the components that we're going to cover today is the cost projections for the first part of growing together that was approved by the board last month in addition to that for those of you who may be new to this particular item we're going to do a brief review of how we got here which started at least three years ago for me but for durham as a community more than 30 years ago we're going to talk about the rules and implementation that's associated with what we've done

003with the elementary school student assignment boundary changes we're going to tie in that to our secondary programs to talk about how do our students matriculate through career and college pathways through the district excuse me and then we're going to provide a timeline for how we reach the end of our growing together campaign as well as provide an opportunity for the board of education to ask any questions and have any discussion so with that i'm going to turn it over to mr southern and he's going to provide us that brief growing together review hello again board members i am about to disappoint dr monk severely by relying on paper notes revealing myself as a creature of the 20th century if we could go to the next slide please uh this growing together review is going to

004uh talk about sort of the history of the program um but before we go any further i do want to recognize the team you've heard from them before but um this is obviously a collaborative effort that has been driven by people like deputy superintendent nikia hardy dr monk sheena cooper director of marketing and community engagement dr kelvin bullock from equity affairs has been part of the project dr julie pack of cte and magnet programs melody marshall director of student assignment matthew palmer executive director of school planning transportation nutrition and we'll probably find a few more nouns there before too long philip dave our school planner for programs natalie bradsky our school planner for demographics dr rita rathbone a magnet specialist and of course dr debbie pittman assistant superintendent for specialized services so i wanted to

005give everybody their credit if we could go to um actually we'll stay on this slide these are the original charges uh that were given to the growing together uh project uh by our board uh back back when this all began uh about i want to say about three years ago um they linked to the addendum strategies as well as [Music] our goals are related to school school boundaries and student assignments so priorities two four and five this has been intricately tied into the work of the strategic plan our priorities around student assignment boundaries site-based solutions or new school construction developing a capital improvement plan and strategies for k-3 class size implementation um related to this also uh our provision of pre-k classrooms and ec classrooms to ensure that they have equitable access throughout our county

006evaluating our existing dps system of school choice and then developing an integrated plan grounded in equity that balances programming policies and geographic boundaries uh and that is where we are today uh building on each step uh as we've gotten here next slide please we have overcrowded schools we have undercrowded schools as well we have a lack of equitable access to specialized programs we have transportation inequities and efficiencies we have begun the work of remedying that this board passed the school assignment policy 4150 approved updates to our 10-year capital improvement program and then adopted boundaries to support elementary schools uh that are part of a comprehensive plan involving regions academic program updates and rules of student assignment which we are working on right now that's not a check mark that is an in progress next slide

007please so a brief history as dr monk said you know this has been a 30 30 years coming when our district merged in 1992 from that point there were few attendance area changes since that moment despite our transformations if a new school happened to open boundary changes might happen there otherwise those changes were few and far between which created sustained inequities over the years as durham bears little resemblance to who we were back in 1992. those uh we did propose a student assignment boundary study to start all this pro this process going in 2017 but that was postponed uh largely due to leadership changes in the district when dr mabinga came to us and supported us in um and leading us to adopt a new strategic plan to guide us that work began to be

008considered again including boundaries adopted to relieve overcrowding at creek citing givens we learned a lot from that experience you gave us guidance at retreats in april 2020 and june 2021 on how to proceed and that drove our work in the lab as uh dr mabinga would put it and also our ongoing community engagement to make sure that public input from as wide a cross-section of our community as possible was or were inputs in that lab again you adopted policy 4150 in december uh authorizing us to move forward with a regional model and you adopted the elementary boundaries in june next slide please a familiar slide but it bears repeating our system as it is now um as it will be less so in 2024 when the implement when the elementary proposal take begins to take

009effect we have complex rules long bus rides overcrowded schools in some areas outdated school boundaries and others new neighborhoods and residential growth a huge delta between the number of lottery applications and the number of seats that we have available and questions about program and resource alignment and equity therein these are issues of equity they are also barriers to welcoming families to durham public schools and we are trying to address all of these next slide please these community values and themes have come across consistently in our community engagement and have also been reflected in feedback that have come to us from the school board diversity school choice proximity and student enrollment and what we have seen is that some of these are sometimes in tension with each other and a it is not plausible to think

010that we will come up with a perfect cons solution that will accommodate 100 of all four of these there are trade-offs we are working to optimize um and to make the best possible plans for durham public schools that support our families equitably and welcomingly while paying while paying hop heed to each of those themes if we can go to the next slide and if you could complete the content on the slide there we have been very intentional about in involving the theme of diversity through school boundaries student assignment uh formulas and regional equity the regions are super important and i'll come back to those regions in a moment next slide please choice and access strengthening all schools and you will see the investment that we are making in ensuring that all of our elementary programs

011are well served as well as the regional model we want choice and access to support diversity not work against it there are always there are trade-offs this is what optimizing is all about next next slide proximity providing regions using neighborhood planning units application school boundaries we want to provide a strong neighborhood school for every family and if we get all three of these right i believe we are also going to be doing ourselves a favor in terms of enrollment and making durham public schools attractive and desirable and the first choice for durham county families next slide please these are the regions that you adopted uh for us if you take a look uh just a recap they have comparable median household income they have comparable percentages of families that identify as people of color comparable

012utilization keeping in mind that eastern durham is growing like gangbusters and we have to take that into account also a reminder that the median household income in the central region is skewed a little bit because of the presence of college students next slide and a reminder of the schools that are in each region including our upcoming schools lions farm in the southeast and murray macenburg elementary in the southwest next slide please and regionally we have international baccalaureate montessori dual language immersion and year-round schools accessible to families in each region this is an expansion of choice programs coming at the same time as we are also developing rules and drawing boundaries to increase the diversity and equity among those programs so this is brave work that this school board has done we have made a commitment

013to addressing the inequities that have built up over 30 years we're grateful for the board's support of growing together to this stage and now it's time to talk about next steps and indeed about making the investments to support our work going forward and to that i turned things over to dr pittman and i collect my papers julius thank you mr sutter next slide please just good afternoon everyone as dr mabinga alluded we'd like to spend a few a few minutes this afternoon unpacking the cost projections and part of this work that i share this afternoon will include not only the cost for what mr sutter has just outlined through our regional model but also some potential cost savings as a result of some of the transitioning we'll be doing and then we'll have a summary

014of where we think the big this uh the overall impact is you're a little shorter than i am thank you that's well okay so on the next slide let's uh take a look at this summary chart it's color coded and so let's let me unpack first visually what we're seeing in the first column are the regional application programs that the board and the district is moving forward with and the green columns represent what we expect to be recurring costs and they're separated into two columns one would be to support the operational nature of the program and the second column is to look at the personnel implications and the costs that are affiliated that way the final column in blue highlights what we will need to start the programs to get them started up and you

015can see if you glance down there are different time frames for the programs and so we've costed out the startup and averaged them according to the number of years we expect and and you're seeing an annual cost summarized in that cell what i'd like to do is i'll go through each one briefly and just highlight some of the the costs affiliated so let's begin with the international baccalaureate program that will be located at ekpo the positions that will be needed for that will be two additional foreign language teachers and one magnet coordinator and so you see three positions represented in that column and we expect about twenty thousand dollars in magnet support funding uh once that program is up and running the next call excuse me the next row is little river montessori it will

016convert to a k5 or excuse me pre-k 5 program and for that we do expect the need for a full-time magnet coordinator that person will be responsible for assisting with the five-year implementation work that school will need as well as the work around ensuring that the montessori pedagogy is clearly integrated within the north carolina standard course of study that will take some work and what we're really aiming for there is some fidelity and continuity across program implementation the montessori program also requires or will have a component of parent outreach and parent education so to speak around what does it mean to be a montessori student as well as working with community partners and engaging in the marketing and the lottery management of course with montessori it is a bundled program that begins with pre-k age

017children in pre-k so the positions that you see represented there are the need for four additional pre-k teachers and companion for additional instructional assistance for dual language immersion that is of course we have five programs one in each region the schools here will need some instructional supplementary material for the spanish the students that are experiencing the dual language program and that's a cohort that will begin at each grade level but we will supplement with spanish materials in addition to the textbook adoption that the school has what's important about this you'll see just a half time position for that you'll remember that the dual language immersion program really works with an existing faculty and does some specialized training of one of the teachers at every grade level and so with that specialized teacher we feel like

018with a half-time position supporting the school and the program that should be sufficient to provide the resources that the school would need so that person would be responsible for ensuring the whole school is immersed in the cultural immersion model they would work with instructional lessons looking at collaborative planning and leading the data analysis and the language development work they would also be responsible for the marketing and outreach for the lottery process the next row represents global language at all elementary schools and you remember the theme that was bubbling up all schools growing great schools together for durham public schools and so with that the proposal was to ensure that every elementary school child had exposure to foreign language or global languages so you'll see a range of funding there and what is going to be

019important here is how we determine to implement that model of language exposure so if we do a touch point of one time per week at a ratio of one faculty member per 500 children students in a school we would probably need about 24 positions however if we start to look at a more hybrid model of instructional delivery such that similar to north carolina virtual high public high school where a teacher might do a cluster of classes through a virtual teaching environment and through hybrid lessons the next week do asynchronous lessons and at some point do a site visitor touch point we could stretch the scope and reach of faculty by having an instructional assistant be the positioned in the classroom but the actual teaching and learning of the language itself being done in a hybrid

020model of instructional delivery so each of those models you can see are are articulated on the slide we could think we can manage this with as few as 12 teachers with a model with some instructional assistants or as i mentioned as high as 24 teachers and that then explains the range of funding that is represented on the slide and the difference and then of course in the blue cell that represents some instructional materials that the schools would need for global language and finally on the on the the next row we see we do expect because we are expanding dual language immersion the three schools that have been implementing it this year over the last several years in their in their um through their school choice programs or their their school programs they have been reaching

021out for some support with coaching of the dual language teachers the integration throughout their school so we do expect to replicate that and scale up that position to a full-time position when we're ready to launch in 2425 we're expecting to need a full-time dual language immersion support coordinator at the district level and so we have captured right now we have a 40 position and we to scale it up would take additional dollars there so on the bottom row you can see we've we've summarized the totals and you can see the range for the operational costs the personnel costs and of course the startup so if we can go to the next slide let me also share then the companion of where we think we may find some cost savings so we know that we do

022have some magnet programs that will be transitioning that will no longer remain magnet and they of course receive support from the district allotments through positions and through magnet funding and we expect a cost savings there of 1.1 million a little 1.162 transportation efficiencies by going to a regional model of program delivery as well as not only for our application programs but remember this is also our ec pre-k and ec special program alignment going to the regional model all of that will factor into some anticipated transportation efficiencies and we're guestimating but anticipating about five hundred thousand dollars now think back to little river pre-k by passing by becoming a montessori program we have also increased support for pre-k children in durham county by opening up more pre-k seas with that will come the pre-k sliding scale

023we are in partnership with north durham's partnership for children durham pre-k and we followed their sliding scale and so these families would go through that process we are not sure how much revenue generating that could be we the witted school sometimes will generate thirty thousand dollars in tuition sometimes more sometimes less across all of our programs so this is a very conservative number around cost generating and some cost savings but wanted to honor the fact that that that is a real possibility and then finally through the allocation realignment through the position formula around uh in durham public schools as a whole there are some unfilled positions and so looking at the funding formulas providing the teaching allocations to make sure that schools are receiving what they need but there may be some unfilled opportunities there

024that we could recapture if there were 10 across the district we see some revenue generated there if there were 20 positions that were un realigned with through realignment that indeed could also generate some extra revenue and then the final bullet is our celebration bullet we hope that through growing together we are going to draw families back and increase our district school-wide district-wide enrollment so we do increase uh anticipate some increased revenue through increasing our enrollment so let's go to the final slide and let's put these two slides together if we look at the projected costs in green from remembering back to our green columns you can see the range of costs that have that are summarized on that slide in the orange box it represents the range of our potential cost savings and the blue

025so if we calculated the projected costs using the highest number and we use the most conservative look at cost savings projected cost savings the additional dollars we need could range from a low of being cost neutral up to 1.5 million and largely that's going to be dependent on the growing together global language and the model that we adopt and implement and just to call special attention to that dark blue box once we get the startup dollars the 332 thousand those are not so those are the summary of our costs and i will pause i don't know if we should go on or whether we should pause for pause thank you dr pittman board members do you have questions about financials growing together thank you all for that history too of how we got here thank

026you so much for this presentation um i think this is really exciting i um it seems to me that the dli component will be a major um uh highlight of our of our school system um through this model and i think um that part is exciting um along with you know the overall equity that this is um designed to produce um i have a question in terms of the budget around the global language um and as a newbie i may have missed something that you all discussed in the past but with the global language um i'm just noticing that that is a major part of the the cost projections and so i have a question about um outcomes for the global language program with the students receiving instruction um once a week or once a

027month um i don't know that i've seen a model like um like that exactly before so i wanted to ask more about what we anticipate would be the the outcomes um with that with that um amount of instruction and um would it prepare them um if you know i'm sure there are other models that we've looked at but what would it prepare them to do what would would we expect by the end of elementary school that they would know and also what languages would be included in that thank you great questions so keep in mind this proposal different from dual language where with a dual language immersion we are hoping that those graduates at the conclusion of fifth grade will be fluent in that language this proposal with global language is more of an exposure

028model it's more of a we want to begin to develop the brain receptors around preparation for language such that they will acquire some foreign language or global language mastery but certainly not to fluency upon exiting but to position them for success in the middle school for language another thank you dr pittman um i wanted to go back to the slide showing the allocations by position and um yeah the cost projections this is so helpful thank you so much for you know outlining you know the costs um and then the positions um and then uh you know the startup costs and so the one that has a zero so district support you know it shows uh zero dollars for startup for the dual language coordinator position um is that because because the person's already in dps

029and the zero i'm trying to look at some of the the ways that even the non-recurrent uh sorry analyzed cost that is like not pertaining to the position but more like the other budget items that's exactly right that's and that zero is in the non-personnel so the 55 000 captures the fact that our dual language the district support would be there we have in kind support already positioned with the programming so for non-personnel were positioned in a in a place that we didn't feel it was necessary to capture and we don't anticipate any supplies or any kinds of you know purchase that might help with the dual language especially like curriculum like anything that they might need in their role as coordinator oh absolutely sure that would be absorbed through our central office budget we

030would manage it that way okay and indeed the to back it up the supports of the instructional supplies of course would be in the dual language immersion line and we've allocated some funding to each school for that purpose thank you so much i'm really excited about this because this is the first of its kind you know a coordinator to you know we've heard so much from the community wanting to see an expansion of dual language and to have a coordinator to assess you know needs and you know help us determine capacity for expanding um expansion of this program um the other question is in terms of titles and roles in dps when it comes to coordinator um it's been my experience and talking to folks who are in that role that that salary can range

031and so we have done some work in terms of analyzing how to standardize that coordinator role i do know that you know we have community schools coordinators we have you know now we're having a dual language coordinator how does it compare to those salaries um and are we going to do any work in terms of ensuring that we put it up to par with other coordinator positions give miss valeris for the question i think um dr lesson was able to elaborate on this that's a part of our salary study so we're looking at all those coordinators from different departments and once we get to that points this particular position will be in the mix of that salary study as well so i really appreciate all of the work that has gone into costing this out

032but everything getting up to that point as well y'all have been working in this deeply and thoroughly and and strategically for so long um i i think i follow some of miss chavez's concerns of really wanting to be true to that global language being at least weekly that's how i've always heard it when we've talked about it i think that's how our community has heard it as foreign language being another special just like how we commit to weekly exposure to art and music throughout dps so that's i think if we sold it that way and and promised that i think it's it's my hope that we're able to fulfill that level of language enrichment and frankly anything in a virtual model just for for young children really um i have questions about really whether that's

033developmentally appropriate at all so i hope that um i hope that we can budget and plan and work with our local commissioners to to fund that but i really appreciate just seeing this laid out it gives us a road map forward and thank you all so much mr sears you have questions as well just a statement i think it's going to be the same as last time where i just wanted to point out something that ms buyer just spoke of anything that looks like remote instruction just makes me cringe a little bit uh we've tried virtual schools if if they were the panacea we'd be doing them all over the place that said i do understand that you know getting access to you know some some unique or exotic language that could really benefit our

034students you may have to tell a teleconnect uh in but that was the only thing that raised eyebrows for me as as you were presenting i'm confident i will have more questions later and i'll send those to the administration but um thank you for getting these costs outlined and um looking forward to the next steps let me say thank you all too for costing this out and i'll see miss chavez i'll come back around i um agree that i would love to i would like us to start the maximum touch point once a week i that is what i kind of assumed and i assume most parents would think it's another special that's going to be in their classes so i would like for us to start there and could see that virtual classroom for

035maybe it's a chinese or some other language it might be something that is harder to staff i'm also like our students could teach our cadet program be a part of teaching some of these specials you know a couple years down the line having our high school students teaching some spanish to our elementary school kids but that's visioning further down i also think we should think about bringing parts of this presentation to our county commissioners i am seeing dollar signs and thinking about we also have a classified study coming up and thinking about in the next three four five years what are the costs that dps knows already they're going to be increasing because we know we have our standard kind of cost of doing business increases every year but we also have some really big

036projects that we're working on so how do we get ahead of that conversation i think will be really important for us okay i just had another question i wouldn't circle back around to um do we know all the languages that will be offered and um we might not know what the variety will be yet and then also about the startup costs what is included in that generally for dli or for global languages for um for all of the categories um i was just wondering if there were some general um things that were um or mine items that would be part of the startup cost for for each of these programs sure so we know that for the programs there will be a professional development component there will be some instructional materials support component and of

037course the coaching support as far as the languages we're looking at spanish across our schools but we're also open to looking at some of those specialized languages too so some of that is still in development i believe for the dli we are thinking spanish and then the the uh global languages we're leaning towards spanish but we're still shaping some of that right the international baccalaureate of course is french chinese and spanish that concludes our questions for this portion okay turn it back over to you dr pittman thank you and um i would like to thank the finance team alex modesto was awesome as well as dr pack and dr um rita rathbone andrew for their work on that last section and now i think mr palmer is coming forward to speak to our rules and

038implementation process good afternoon everyone i am presenting on the rules and implementation update it is a synthetic update both from operations and academic services and administration but we did want to give you a sense of what we've been thinking about what we've been planning for and how excited we are to do the hard work and roll up our sleeves as we look to transition for the 24 25 school year i know many of our parents and students administrators and staff have been asking so when can we know more is everyone comfortable if i take off my mask great much easier thank you okay next slide please so along with myself our director of student assignment miss melody marshall who's here with us today we'll be leading the rules implementation advisory working groups overall the working

039groups are designed to first and foremost really listen to our parents our administrators understand both the hopes and the constraints as we look to implement growing together again this is a program that we're talking about that will impact many students and families in durham but also our staff i know we've had a lot of questions not only from principals but teachers and school-based staff on what will this mean for us and so we want to be very you know there's a phrase that we use in public education going slow to go fast and by that we mean let's listen and make sure we've looked at everything we're bringing together this working group intentionally to get it right so to do that you have to have not only who's at the table but be asking those

040questions who's not at the table make sure that when we look at participation that it is reflective of the mosaic of durham and that ultimately this working group is recommending strategies that will help to minimize any pain points for students and our dps staff while at the same time helping to advance us forward with growing together i remind everyone that we are building a state-of-the-art nearly 800 student school after we opened lions farm called murray macenburg elementary school which will directly relieve overcrowding at five of the adjacent schools that are all in mobile classrooms so you can see how this is a bit of a game of musical chairs that we'll have to be very careful with next slide please so first and foremost we're bringing together uh minds from our school and community leadership

041as well as local experts in education leadership policy and planning and dps administrators to really lay out kind of what are the things that we must do as we develop initial concepts that are possible we're going to be working with our ambassadors both parent ambassadors and our student ambassadors to make sure to take early ideas and drafts to the community to get their feedback to use that as sounding boards both from a parent perspective and a student perspective and then something that we're very excited about is to be partnering with our administrators to hold regional workshops we're not just one or two parents but parents from across durham can come and attend in their own region so they're not going to have to go across the county to do so and to hear about what

042are some initial drafts but to get know we talk about very much listening and the intentionality about listening not coming with you here's a pretty much hatch plan whether you're you know do you like it but very much a here's what we're thinking what else should we know right so these three working groups if you will both the development working group the ambassador working group and the regional working group are designed so that we have feedback embedded and each of these there's loops that are coming back to will these rules work for the most people we cannot hit 100 there is no perfection here but we are going to try to maximize i think as mr cetera said we're going to optimize the good next slide please so a little fine text here before you

043in a general sense we've already worked with rti across this last calendar year to collect thousands of impressions around community engagement and feedback in the initial development of the growing together proposal we then have the opportunity to work deeply on some draft rules that are very lightly drafted to the point where they're intended to get feedback on that can then go out to our ambassadors as well as the regional working groups that have feedback associated with it and our design is to have proposals in hand sort of a final draft for a broad-based community engagement outreach initiative this fall so that not only the regional working groups but really all of durham is able to understand what's growing together about and make sure that everyone understands the rules for implementation so that's a general overview

044for today we didn't want to get the cart before the horse but we did want to give you a sense of what director marshall and i have been thinking about in support of the administration um i think we can pause there for any questions or clarifications board members questions any on this end i saw this thank you it's exciting to um think about so many people coming together to work on this i was just wondering about the um the frequency of the meetings or the timeline um there's a first starting point uh that we want folks to have information as quickly as they can so we're board members now or those that might be the millions at home that are watching on youtube you can go to engage.dpsnc.net and we actually have a project tile

045for this implementation rules working group that if you're interested we'd like a little information like a way to contact you what school your children may attend um and you can register actually miss cooper thumbs up we are live in both english and spanish today um so board members or the general public if you're interested in attending these original workshops uh you can register now and then that'll help us make sure that we have representation from across schools and will also help us understand maybe where we need to have a nudge or a little extra effort to make sure families know at a particular school that there's an opportunity to learn more about the project as well as their thoughts on the rules so we are looking fall of 2021 for that those regional workshops to

046have some initial ideas for feedback up it's another year 2022 this is um great information i think my biggest question is did you mention um future dps families is there intentional outreach and what does that look like for you all for future dps families we're hearing a lot from the community that we didn't know the bail schedule was changing all that stuff but they may not have had kids then right and i think that's i'm going to encourage my colleagues in public affairs to chime in i may give an initial response that is itself kind of a breakout topic around outreach strategies not only to dps families and parents but those with children on the way you know one of the things with growing together was that as the project was coming into a clear

047resolution we were hearing from parents of children that weren't in durham public schools either that were in other schools or that weren't in school at all yet and that was really exciting because i mean that message was getting out to parents with children that are one and two years old this project will influence their choices and opportunities i think the feedback we got was a resounding and positive idea that there's going to be more access and equity for all families but as far as intentional outreach strategies what we're looking at here is a much more robust outwardly facing not just rebel calls and forgive me chip not just robocalls and um our conventional touch points with parents we need to work closely in something we've learned this past year is that different communities within durham

048use different channels for communication some use the traditional you know you have your tweetdeck group but you have your email group you have your robocall group and there are you know really dozens of different ways that families engage to collect uh information but also to communicate with one another whatsapp is a great example we have families that work directly on that platform next door again is a bit more externally facing now i know miss cooper's probably wanting to add more sheena is there anything that we can add to that or is that about good afternoon and thank you so much mr palmer uh first and foremost i want to say that public affairs has been very involved in targeting specific audiences throughout our marketing engagement throughout the district and we understand that our prospective families

049are a part of that so we've been extremely thoughtful with some of our digital strategies as to how we do that outreach and you'll see more of that moving forward also having more conversations with families with focus groups to really listen and learn so we can engage at a deeper level so all of these things are in the works now we certainly look forward to rolling those out in the future to bring more families to durham public schools thank you if i could add to that first i want to tell mr palmer that i will not stand for this slander of robocalls they are tried and true and admittedly limited uh means of communication um we will use every every every tool that we have um obviously we have an easier time reaching durham public

050schools families than non-parents we will have to be intentional and our reach will be limited but as uh sheena put pointed out we have had some experience with that um when um facebook families searched for information on the new uh on the new charter school proposed for eastern durham county the first thing they saw was an ad that we placed for durham public schools um so we've got some tools in our tool build for outreach to to to current non-parents i don't have a i don't have an exhaustive uh plan for that yet just awareness that we have to and we have to utilize tools such as our parent ambassadors and community ambassadors who touch far more people than the percentage of families that are enrolled in durham public schools we will be intentional about

051it we will share more details about it at a later date miss valedares thank you so much dr palmer um you know in the engagement that you and so many departments because this is not just you know operations uh our communications department there's there's been involvement from so many different departments but the the methodology uh i think is um something that folks have especially folks who have been looking for this for so many years um i've gotten positive feedback from folks who have like analyzed it and they're like no this is a solid plan can you tell us a little bit more about the methodology in the sense of how we know that census data hasn't really been the the crux of this analysis because it has its own you know limitations um especially as

052a lot of it is is is coming in but some of the things that you navigated i think it's it's it's good for folks to know how you base this on a complete solid approach that includes so many different variables and if there's anything that you want to share about just the methodology because i know that that is something that i talk to folks about and and and it gives that sense of this is this is a very um very studied approach and um you know within all the variables um you have accounted for under utilization of resources and so i think that that's something that needs to be shouted out with this process it's not a perfect process it can never be because when you're talking about multiple variables and some of the limitations

053you talked about demographics you can't base it on you know the uh the race of of a particular student and format it towards that but you talked about some of the ways that you did take into account changing the demographics of durham so he tells a little bit just um a little more just for for for folks to to hear a little about that method that you use for this sure absolutely and i think um you know we've heard um we have the good fortune of course with dr bullock as our executive director of equity affairs that you know much of our work in equity is bringing resources to students that will benefit the most right and so what we've been able to do um and i would ask mr ratsky to stand briefly our

054student demographics planner with dps he is a highly skilled technician and a member of the community and also um a doctoral candidate on this topic around student diversity and enrollment what we've been able to do is and and i won't ask us to go backwards in the slides but i'll bring you back to some of the bullet points that mr settereth captured with regards to diversity you're right as far as legal precedence and cases go we have limitations on our ability to use student demographic data for student planning an assignment but what we can do is look at the characteristics from neighborhoods and we've gone down again to the neighborhood level and been able to ensure that we understand the resources that families have that live within those neighborhoods as we look at our student

055assignment plans that'll also be relevant for our participation in the engagement itself because one of the character fields that we're asking for is families registers let us know your home address so that we can ensure that we have representation from across durham let us know the schools that you attend so that we can make sure again representation is key we can't just use those words in flashing lights we have to be sort of diligent and authentic in it and does that answer your question ms varadars i um thank you i i just what you know this is a long time coming right we talk about it 30 30 years and over the 30 years and i i was not in those conversations obviously way back but um the conversations so far have been about giving

056this plan and knowing that you're taking your time with making it it is it is a plan that is studied that is you know you have you have looked at all the different factors and as we look to you know move on to secondary schools you know this is the foundation that you're laying for how you're doing this analysis and all the different ways that you are bringing these factors you're understanding the limitations and so um i think that that gives just uh that that sense of we are doing the best that we can do and we will continue to keep the pulse as as you mentioned this is not a something set in concrete like something set in stone we will continue to figure out like expansion of other programs and give schools autonomy

057in some ways to if they want to do other programs expand dli they can do that um so it does answer my question with with that particular piece um i had another question uh but i think the the main thing um right now as you are looking to do further engagement and you are leveraging infrastructure is also how we are integrating our study and our analysis with available data sets from the community so for example one of the things that durham county has done and also the partnership with children has done and also there are so many people that are doing data analysis and so how are we integrating those data sets uh whether it's from the planning department and i know that you have talked about the city planning and you know having our

058own planner and i think that there's also what i've heard from some folks is a desire to see a a very comprehensive community assessment um that will integrate uh education health and and so what i'm saying is that this is this is a good strong basis and foundation for equity as it relates to access but it's also something that the question i guess would be what are some of those data sets that we will continue to rely on even ones that we didn't get to use this time but anything for the for the next iteration of this what are some of the those data sets that you hope to include well said candidly under dr mcbenga's leadership we're on the leading edge of diversity equity and inclusion for public education in the united states we're

059not there yet all the way right we have more work to do implementation rules is a part of that we are a team ultimately of applied data scientists that are leveraging every scrap of information we can if it's going to help us improve opportunity and access to opportunity for our children i will say you know the list of data resources that we're bringing into the conversation is dynamic and by that i mean yes there's census data and annually we have american community survey data but that data alone doesn't mean anything without the deep understanding of you know durham as a county and as a city is very diverse when we look at our percentages at a county level we also know that block by block durham can be hyper-segregated and so we have to be

060keenly dialed into that reality we're not looking at things with a bulk lens and saying it's good we're really going down to the levels that we can go to and pushing that edge as far as we can to ensure that opportunities are equitable and that we're aligning resources for the students that would benefit the most and at the same time our rules for student assignment which is what this working group will be doing when we draw the lottery for example we'll need to make sure that the results of the lottery lead to more equitable and diverse schools in durham we know right now that is not the case results of our lottery typically result from the applicant pool because we haven't gone to that level we will be and that's part of what this working

061group is tasked with so we look forward to your feedback and certainly that of the board and the community um if you've got a data set that you'd like us to take a look at you know send it our way we're ready mr robert thank you and thank you for the entire team it really is um heartening to see how well you all work and how you collaborate um i guess i think of this growing together not as a not as an initiative about choice schools at all but as about every school in the district and every um community member and i got most excited about how we can strengthen our base and neighborhood schools and so i would challenge you all as you're working and continuing to have those conversations amongst yourselves and with

062our community to look for ways that we could accelerate the timeline on some of those things like if we dreamed it if we got the extra money we needed for the foreign language teachers could we start that sooner right i mean does that have to wait for two years um you know whatever whatever folks said to us we heard loud and clear from some specific schools and some specific areas of town where folks really hear the urgency of needing support right now and so i want to make sure that we hear them and that we're we're pushing ourselves not just in the choice aspects of this plan but in the strengthening every school aspect if that makes any sense at all to anybody besides me i just um it's what's on my heart because i

063really really really the the longer i'm in school policy work think that everybody's neighborhood based school is probably where most families would be best served right i mean it's just such great stuff going on there to begin with so i don't know i just hope that we can continue to lift all of our schools and i know that's your vision too miss buyer one quick remark uh unsolicited as it is part of why we've thought of growing together as a name for this project and dr monk referenced an initiative earlier is just that it's not just about choice programs and base schools it's a growth mindset durham is a in the dynamic moment and we have to be dynamic with it and continue to grow and think through what our community needs and how we

064can best bring that to our families i do have one question mr palmer what you might have the answer to and that's okay i think we were talking we were talking about neighborhood schools and we also know that neighborhoods are segregated is base school like a better language to that or or does it not matter i just wonder sometimes when we talk about neighborhood schools i think about and neighborhoods are segregated so how do we create the right language for that sorry now it just kind of popped up as we talked to had that conversation well i think we would all agree that words matter and we heard resoundingly from our community that um mr sudderth is the word smith of durham so i'm going to hand that to him briefly to get some initial

065thoughts because i can see he's making his way we need to be considerate about all of that we know that many people in our communities are using neighborhood schools themselves from various different sources and the word base uh can be a little bit challenging because each of our choice schools will have what you could call a base area for them we are using base we are using assignment areas to increase the diversity of these application programs themselves so every school every school for some some neighborhoods has could be defined as a neighborhood school we will be cognizant of that we are uh very much aware that we are dealing with decades of redlining and the legacies thereof um we also know that many of the families that are most concerned about equity issues do want

066to have and use the term a strong neighborhood school we will we will continue to be thoughtful about that i understand neighborhood has a familial feel versus base doesn't have that same feel but it's something for us to just be cognizant of and wonder if there's language that we use that creates that same feeling but feels darn specific in that same way cherem said i think our team can look and do it as well maybe bring some thoughts as well for the board members or those watching at home if you have ideas on terms we'd we'd embrace recommendations turn it back over to you all for the next part thank you and now begins the fun we can go to the next slide when we began growing together we started our journey with the board

067and the board was a awesome conduit of beginning a pulse check of information so we're going to do a similar type of interaction with the board now as we embark on our secondary program work so i want to remind you before we get into our work that the focus of growing together is to increase equity and access to look at how we strengthen diversity not only around socioeconomic but racial and ethnicity while intertwining community engagement so we're going to talk a little bit this afternoon around our secondary programs and in the next section we're going to seek your input so first i want to go through a couple of let's get a shared pulse check of where we are with secondary programming and then we're going to roll up our sleeves together so on the

068next slide i'm going to go through these relatively quickly when we begin our work with elementary we use some of our existing data to indicate community desire of some of our magnet or special choice programs so as we begin to discuss secondary we want to look at similar information so this slide just captures these are our choice programs and choice schools at secondary some of them have waiting lists some of them do not and as you can see those with waiting lists what this does not tell us is root cause we don't know why but what we do know is those with a waiting list have more applications being submitted and we can currently honor through seats no waiting list means the seats that we have available and the applications that are being submitted we're

069able to honor but we don't know root cause so as we begin to think about our programming if we can go to the next slide part of what we do have is some preliminary alignment so how do the new application programs at elementary position us for the alignment into secondary and what's going to be important we're going to disaggregate our thinking is the feeding into middle school conversation going to be a little bit different and nuanced than our feeding into high school 9 12. so as we look at our secondary option we want to consider are our middle school position seats sufficient to support the demand and you can see the alignment in three areas international baccalaureate we have a nice k5 into middle school into high school alignment montessori where we position ourselves with

070feeder from elementary to middle and then all the way over to year round we do have year round elementaries feeding into middle school and also one high school and of course creative studies is middle and high so do we need to be addressing alignment insufficiency such as dli we have no middle or high school currently because dli is a new program but that would be something we want to unpack with our board so let's go to the next slide and i want to pull this this back in front of us because this slide captures the values and the themes that we've been centering our work in conversations with the community for elementary so our work today is do these values still resonate as we begin to launch into our secondary discussions what we do notice

071is when we start to implement any one of these values around diversity or choice or proximity or enrollment there are some natural tensions that somewhat start to play out through implementation so for example at elementary if we look at student at proximity we heard pretty loud and clear our families at elementary loved the concept this buyer of neighborhood or base let me get to a school um in proximity to where we live that that makes sense at elementary so the question tossing to us today is does it make sense for secondary and if it does in what way if it doesn't then how might we nuance that so all of these values we want to spend a minute to unpack to see if they ring true for secondary and how might they be adjusted or

072how might they impact secondary programs okay so at your place settings you have a folder let's open those folders let me do a little bit of an inventory walk of what's in it you will find that's fine you will find worksheets and we're going to you you are going to have one worksheet we have six areas that we want to talk about feedback on that we're going to seek for you set those aside you should have a sheet of blue dots a sheet of green dots and you should have five i have six but you should have five red dots six you have six red dots okay six red dots that's fine so let's look at your worksheet and if you would please go to the next slide okay your worksheet if you'll excuse me

073turn your attention to the slide we have positioned 12 different priorities and clustered them in six different artificial continuum the 12 priorities really reflect those priorities that have bubbled up through community engagement from the board our schools throughout this journey they're artificial continuums and some of them are really um they're hard to contrast and get wrap our heads around but we're going to try to orient ourselves on the continuums for each one when we do we're gonna do one at a time a continuum at a time and what i'd like you to do is find your continuum priority let's start like example one find your worksheet do not put your name on this unlike a classroom do not put your name on this this is for you you can do with it what you wish

074what we're going to do is i'm going to unpack each of the the two categories of priority and then i want you to do a private pulse check of one of two things for the middle school we'll use our green dot and on the middle school line you see an arrow if you are more leaning toward let's let's lift up expanding specialized programs you'll put your green dot on that part of the chart versus the other reproducing reducing replicating and special specialized programs you would put your green dot there now placement on the continuum is going to be important the further out you are from center to margin is going to communicate value and worth that if you think it is extremely critical that we expand specialized programs your green dot on the middle school

075continuum is going to be on the farthest margin away from center as compared to reducing or replicating you say no i love what we've got we really need more of them i would put you'll put your green dot on the margin away from center on that if one of these continuum you really am kind of neutral i don't really know come in toward the center so we'll be able to see which of the two priority areas weighs more importantly for you and based on where you place your dot will communicate its its value to where you are okay so let's try the first one together let's talk about expanding specialized programs so this lends two of our four blocks choice where do we feel for secondary programs choice should be should we be expanding and

076offering more application choices should we focus on more options or should we replicate high demand programs should families have a choice of more of the same or fresh perspective such as we've heard in some of our work uh a desire for social justice program social justice school at middle or high where might that look or aerospace technology those would be new programmings and there could be a plethora of others or do we feel like we should be looking at what we currently have and eliminate some options or replicate this is going to be a hard first choice so take your green and be thinking you have enough to be able to put it on your little worksheet and do it for middle school on that expanding or reducing and the same for high school so

077this is private activity and you just take a minute and think where you personally might fall dr pittman can ask one clarifying question so expanding in more means new programs replicating means more but similar themes but more yes like a different program would be correct different um is the expanding specialized options thank you we have another clarifying question yes different than what we already have or what's in elementary like in the new proposed elementary it could be for instance let's just play dual language immersion if you feel like we should continue that into high school that would be under the new okay because that would be new for second year thank you now you also have post-it notes so on your post-it notes call attention to the top of your boxes what are some of

078the implications for your dot choice if we're going to offer new where does that take us why did you choose that what are some of your implications or benefits that you're seeing that or what are some of the reasons why you move toward not doing more just jot down some thoughts on your post-it one dot all right let's let's move to the next the next one has to do with access so some of the community feedback was really access to some of our specialized programs should be vetted either through audition through portfolio toward an interview process that it should not just be raw random lottery versus should families have secondary links a sibling link excuse me sibling links into middle and high school programming irregardless of of program type or interest that families should be

079able to access magnet programs or application programs through the lottery what we would want to protect and guard with the audition would be that there would be equitable and inclusive vetting that would be a level of the playing field but if a child was interested and had aptitude for something that they would be given a preference into that programming or should we not even worry about programming preference piedman i just want to make this comment all these additions that we're adding at the secondary level we just need to be mindful we're not getting allotment from the states most of these are going to be funded locally thank you and so if you would remember grab your green dot for middle blue dot for high might auditions be different at middle or different at high or

080our interviews and such repentment would uh the lottery fall under the first category as when the schools who have that just have a lottery not an audition process that would fall under this the category on the left the okay um focus on procedures that don't address interest such as sibling priority family priority rather than interest priority okay again if you can jot down the why if you have any thoughts about the outcomes or implications as to why third category let's look at diversity and access should we match students with desired program to or should we be ensuring that there are controls to manage demographics reflective of our diversity and our sc socioeconomic status in our community so do we want students to be able to go to a desired program regardless of controlling for any

081kind of diversity or should we manage that through some sort of a weighted situation and a good example of that is many of our applications into one of our magnet schools we get disproportionate number of girls so we don't control for demographics it's it's just whatever we get and we run the lottery so should we be managing that differently at middle and at high all right let's take a pause with our thinking and go to the next slide a couple of interesting enrollment uh demographics or that wanted to raise to you your awareness that will inform our next several continuum this is a summary of secondary enrollment looking at actually kindergarten through eighth grade at the bottom you can see the grade levels articulated on the bottom row and this is an interesting metric the

082blue is a summary average of our enrollment trends for the last three years pre-covet so what we see there is greater numbers of enrollment but what do you notice about fourth fifth sixth and seventh grade in blue right well that from year to year each grade we're losing enrollment we're going down decreasing enrollment now look at the red during cobit the last two years of covid in the pivotal year of sixth grade which is where we're going to be focusing our work now at secondary sixth grade seventh grade and eighth grade we're starting to draw enrollment back into the district at those grade levels root cause y not sure but as we go to the next slide it's interesting as we look at our demographics how do our schools play out with socioeconomic this metric

083was pulled from um vitaly ratzke i'd like to thank him but he's looked not at our free and reduced lunch rates because at secondary middle and high we know that's a hard metric to grasp for secondary students they don't always complete those forms so he pulled the metrics from the snap applications from the department of health and human services around poverty and this is the supplemental nutrition assistance program or the snap where families might qualify for assistance and aid and also includes our homeless populations or our homeless families mckinney-vento families so if you look at the the cut rate schools that have less than so those would be above 25 percent are at the top of the list those are mostly our choice schools at secondary mostly our choice schools with the exception of jordan

084high school and those below 24 or greater excuse me greater than 24 so 27 and all the way to the bottom of the list are mostly those schools that have neighborhood boundaries with the exception of shepard so this reflects a pulse check of our socioeconomic diversity in secondary secondary schools so i tossed to the board into our work over secondary program shaping should we be thinking about controlling for ses in our secondary similarly as we have been looking at at elementary something for us to consider and then if we look at the next slide i'm going to move quickly through these metrics this is based on our census data the median family incomes with application schools and base schools at middle you can see the variation there most of our application schools tend to show

085that they are higher families with higher median family income as well as at high school those families that have secured seats in our application programs are typically showing higher family median income so let's go to the next slide for number four access to specialized programs as we look at right now specialized programs should we make it accessible to everyone or should we control for some transportation in inequities at elementary school magnet programs if you get into a magnet school you get transportation secondary is very different and the rules of access you can be placed in a secondary program but um if you're in a pathway you have you go to a hub and then you get transportation but you have to be able to get to the hub so if i don't have a family

086that has a car to get me to the hub there's some inequities there whereas some of the other programs have full range of access a special magnet program at high school would have full transportation so we have rules of access through transportation that through the years have evolved that bring access and play out very differently for families and we can see it on the differences of our family in medium family income our snap it's our wonderings what do we do with what is causing these differences of access and the implications for the school ses demographic so as we look at number four access to specialized programs or transportation where's our priority should access be open to all or is transportation efficiency something we should continue to monitor and manage those hubs all of those arrangements

087are due to efficiencies of transportation so if you could reflect in middle and high on how you feel about that i'm going to push us along in the interest of time the fifth one is aligning with current job realities versus respecting community traditions and by that we mean should we be looking at the relevancy of some of our programs such as we talked at elementary about stem science technology engineering math is in all of our schools it's now integrated into all of our programming in like order at middle and high if that is the situation do we need specialized programs in that arena we may say yes we do so those would be the traditional type of program considerations versus they're a brand new career and job and the dynamic nature of durham should we

088be focusing more on the new job and careers and and creating programming around those opportunities for students and then the last one is choice so as we look at academic and career focus versus holistic school experiences should application schools continue to specialize their focus and align them in deep ways to specialized career and academic focus or should our specialized schools provide holistic school experience broad range of sports and athletics broad range of clubs broad range of extracurricular around the arts or as we know now our specialized programs have streamlined offerings in that arena so where do we land with continuing career focus or is the holistic experience regardless of where a child attends more important to us their extracurriculars all right now it's time for the red dots you have six red dots find the

089sheet in your packet that looks like the slide that has all 12 priorities they don't have a worksheet in their packet okay all right so if if each of your sheets this is what you're going to do with your red dots if you can look at the handouts that you have of the six where they have each of the two priorities listed you get to pick a red dot on the top six priorities where we force choice you on one of each now you get to look at all 12 in the bundle in the basket and say i'm going to pick these six things as my top priority this is really what we should be thinking about you will but be thinking before you go so as you look here if these were all equal

090and in a list a random list not named rank your top six rank your top six and then we'll redot them so to that end on the tables under the windows are each of your worksheets replicated now what we want to do is an aggregate pulse check of where are the green dots from each of you unnamed and unaffiliated with individuals but in aggregate as the board so rita would you just hold up one so now take your your worksheets with you and your greens and your blues you should have extra now we want you to record your dots continuum example number six is on table six the sheet for continuum example number one is on the far left two is in the next table three four five six if you would just and you

091can scramble you don't have to do them in the same consecutive i mean each of you can take a table just put your dot down of where you have landed your blue and landed your red green middle and high and try to position it where you are on the continuum and then at the end with your red dots let's vote with our red on what are your top six anyway all things created equal where do you put six and you can also transfer your sticky notes your post-its to the to the posters too so we can see where we land with our sticky notes thank you doctor you need more i have more red dots you're all ready okay okay looking good um foreign okay thing underneath um all right so let's cluster around our

092continuum contain the continuums and i think mr palmer is going to facilitate our debrief and we'll get the board members around the table and i think we're going to start with on the red what patterns do you see bubbling up from the board around the top priorities the board is interested in doing everything is what i see the the one that feels really clear is the top two so offering more specialized programs and or expanding the ones we currently offer and the other part of that continuum is reducing and replicating everyone has their dots in offering more specialized programs the third continuum of closely matching students with programs based on their interests aptitudes and career goals the other end for all those watching ensuring diverse school demographics reflective our com of our community through assignment

093and lottery policies all the dots are in the right part of that ensuring diverse school demographics with one dot on the middle and the rest of the dots are a little yeah we have a tie and a couple of options the next group of maintaining or increasing access to specialized programs for all students has a majority dots versus the other end of that spectrum efficient use of district resources including transportation and existing specialized facilities the board is interested in prioritizing students right which makes sense there's only two dots in that one but for the rest we're pretty split i would say that's trends dreaming big what members are there any things you'd like to lift up so maybe we can go through each of the six real quick and just see if there's any comments

094that folks want to share about i think the continuum priorities up here we have again offering more specialized programs or expanding the ones that we currently offer versus reducing or replicating specialized programs we see from the red dots as well as from here the majority seem to be focused both in middle and high school on we kind of think of this one as breadth versus depth right perhaps more breadth as far as additional programs that are more boutique or specialized yup inspire i felt tension in this one as well like i hope y'all are going to look at those programs that have waiting lists middle college early college whichever ones and and think about growth though within existing programs i'd and this did this felt like a forced choice a little bit in that since

095i don't know how y'all are thinking about existing programs but i don't know that that's just if there's a waiting list doesn't that indicate an existing strength right any other comments before we go to the next section i think two on that there's a smaller school environment also which is not necessarily it is a specialized program but we often talk about like the fact that it's the city of medicine or early college there's another program that there's people are interested in small high school experiences which i think we don't always highlight um when we have these conversations huh okay so maybe less of uh multiple versions of the same program whereas maybe at the elementary school level we were kind of talking about that geographic distribution here it's more of like different types of program

096affording different pathways at that secondary level okay the second section here adding equitable and inclusive audition portfolio review or interview processes to summer all specialized programs versus adding sibling priority or other priority seating rules um yeah please um so for me on this spectrum um it's important to me that sorry natalie uh that our neighborhood schools still have a wealth of talent to select from when we're talking about programs occurring in our neighborhood schools and as a dps graduate with a twin sister i know families with twins that have gotten different uh placements and that's difficult and we have done our best and align the bail schedules so everybody's going to school at the same time but imagine if you have two kids or three kids and everybody's going to school at the same time

097how do you get everybody where they need to be if they're in different schools they're more independent then i think a lot of these kind of go together and to me um i definitely think with um you know our high schoolers we really want to prepare prepare them for whatever's coming next and so i think to me that goes that's why i think it's more important at the high school level that they have that that the their school entrance would be based on um an audition or a portfolio review or what have you um the sibling preference is uh i can i can just see that more from middle school um obviously it impacts parents when they have to drop off kids at multiple schools and that can be a hardship um but to me

098that one goes along with expanding our array of possibilities for programs especially in high school um i think if we look at like the jobs that young people have now they're much different than they were even a decade ago and so that's where i think um all of those those kind of line up along with this one alignment of program offerings to current job and career realities i think we're just doing them a disservice if we're not preparing them for the many different kinds of um uh professions that they might have yep that's very helpful we're seeing some linkages was there another yeah i think i just also want to make the statement for me personally don't believe that any of our students should be admitted just on a audition or portfolio and that that

099just feels really important to me i don't want it to become another you know now we're all prepping for our test or for our portfolio so i can make sure i get into this special school right like and we want to be able to cultivate talent for students who maybe didn't have access to some of the arts um a specialized arts or something before then so that feels important to me to say yes you might be able to show some special interests in art or whatever but that should never be the deciding factor about whether a student goes to a school or not and that's a good segue into this third area right closely matching students with programs based on interest aptitudes and career goals versus school level diversity right and so it looks like

100maybe we have some differences between midland high school here as well um any thoughts to share are you shorthand on my notes there's an up arrow next to what i say but i think that middle school is a really crucial uh time where students are learning to navigate how to interact with other people they're learning cultural nuances and um about how special derm is really they're really getting that and this is the first opportunity um for them to be in a more diverse atmosphere and we need to honor that um so they can be the best versions of themselves i really like the i really like this one and the idea of promoting equity through very conscious decision making about demographics and you know having more making sure that we have students of color in

101in some of the programs like more students of color black and latinx students at dsa or other programs making sure they're girls in stem programs um low ses students and in all of the programs and and so i think being very conscious about that and and naming it is part of equity and i like that you all put it put that in there yeah we have two more areas to kind of focus in on uh the fourth one maintaining an increasing access to specialized programs compared with efficient use of our district resources like transportation uh it seems like at the middle school level and at the high school level there's some themes there but we also have maybe some important discussion to have any thoughts that folks can share so one of the things that

102i've talked about in my community is making sure that all students have access to dps resources and that dps isn't working what's the right way to say isn't penalizing families or um or by supporting resources um so i want to make sure that we're not putting our families at a disadvantage when we make choices and so students deserve to have access to specialized programs and then we can talk about how we're going to be efficient in achieving that but yeah that's hard i don't think it's going to be easy for you i think the balance is challenging and this reminds me what dr mabinga talked about at the beginning that a lot of these programs will be locally funded and not necessarily reimbursed by the state and so that's just something for us to be

103considering here are there other creative ways to leverage expanding the specialized programs um so that we're not carrying the burden of all of that and we can make sure students and families have access okay any other comments before we go to the next section we have here area 5 alignment of program offerings to current job and career realities right that dynamic economy that we all live in juxtaposed with respecting community perspectives and traditions and maybe we have another pattern here where middle school is a different conversation in high school i really feel like this one could be both in my personal opinion um we can respect where community traditions are and how if we're talking about a you know i hear a lot of people talk about vocational programs how does that evolve to the

10421st century to still prepare our students but like respect where communities were this one was more challenging for me because i felt like it could be both and yeah i think we have a lot of base school pathways that are strong and working and so i want us to make sure that i mean our policies in the past where we've kept neighborhood boundaries together feeding from elementary middle high as the first you know i want us to make sure that we're planning with that as a foundation and to me that's that was maybe captured in respecting community perspectives and traditions like there's a long history of hillandale broad and riverside they have chorus concerts together every holiday season i mean it's cool beans i mean but so i didn't see that reflected in any of

105these other places and i was trying to capture that's that's kind of how school systems are built at their heart and then there's little extra i don't know alternatively breaking cycles is important sometimes um especially when they can cause harm so and that's why when change happens it's so difficult and so i think it's important for us to honor that and respect the community perspective and traditions but also not like bind ourselves to that for choice programs there's certain schools that certain demographics that people do not apply to and that's not okay and we have to work on those things and we see that even in high school and middle school especially when we think back to what were city schools and what were county schools people still fall into those uh traps and those

106stereotypes and we need to be cognizant of that as we're making these changes and i particularly see that when i think about the year-round options of roger's her and scs okay and that's only because of my history here right um and and neither school fell on my radar for my kid for those very reasons and so that means we have to find some way to make sure that people are interested also we gotta keep in mind as we're looking at historically our middle schools when it comes to enrollment our middle school have struggled but high school uh high school are pretty much full even school student that's left us by the time they get to high school they come back to us so this is telling me that uh what we're doing for high school

107is working okay one more category to go we've got uh continuum here academic and career focus of specialized programs and holistic school experiences traditions rites of passage and extracurricular activities i think someone threw out like for example sports right and uh that sense of identity and connection so looks like at middle school maybe a little bit more focused on the holistic experience possibly maybe remember virus some of those ties back to the community we referenced earlier but also at the same time looks like it may be at the high school level a more intentional focus on academic and career focus of specialized programs any comments or reflections there pretty clear okay dr pittman i think it's all yours so we will this begins the journey as we did uh years ago of we'll collect and

108aggregate this as a team we'll use this to begin to shape and inform the work with secondary programming outreach and engagement there are two more slides in our packet let me share with you what it says they say the timeline is such that we're on our trajectory to make sure our rules are positioned to open our lottery schools for the 24 25 school year so the rules and engagement team will implementation team will work through the fall secondary programs launch today uh in an official capacity and we'll be working through the fall as well our goal is to align this such that our secondary schools know where we're headed certainly by the end of this school year but hopefully prior to that thank you board uh you are all very patient even though when we

109started with uh technical difficulties thank you to our iit team i knew that they were going to figure this out um so we pretty much get to a conclusion of uh our retreat and i just wanted to say a few remarks here i'm really excited with the work that we've been able to put in place with our strategic plan and with the accomplishments where we are today very excited about it and then this growing together has been really a dream uh but uh slowly is becoming a reality by the time we're gonna have this secondary component folks will be able to see the whole picture uh we don't know what the end is gonna look like but uh we are very optimistic that's how we're gonna get to the end of that i just want

110to take also this opportunity as i have this flow um i know in about a few weeks our traditional students will be back um we are doing really well with our year-round schools they've been open our specialty high school they're on their way and things are looking really good um we have open house coming up i know our families will be expecting a lot of information when it comes to uh covert guidance and now monkey parks and all that kind of stuff but this is what i will say about uh kobe whatever protocol that we had in place uh last year we're continuing with this protocol in place as well but when it comes to monkey parks we have not received anything from state or our local health departments the only thing we have been

111able to receive are just some links those are links that we'll be sharing with our families as well at the open houses um we're going to have a great year and i really want us to be positive as we're communicating with our families as there is a growing concern about all those vacancies i'm telling you our principles our central office they're working day and night to be able to fill up those positions uh case in point here we have our year-round schools they are functioning properly there may be one or two vacancies here and all that kind of stuff that's something that i said at the beginning i'm planning to send something at home to let our family know exactly how many vacancies we have and what plan of action how to cover those classes

112and that's correspondence will be going home a week prior to uh the traditional school starting thank you board thank you staff this was well planned and i think the food was delicious as well it was very relaxing uh activities that we have today so with that that pretty much concludes my remarks back to you madam chair uh thank you dr mabinga for those remarks we know families are gearing up for back to school time so we're excited about that i want to say thank you to our staff who put everything together today from the presentations to the food and nicole smith lavinia foster executive assistant did an excellent job making sure we had everything today setting up the room and tech team everything we really appreciate that um we did a lot of thinking some

113heavy lifting today dr bing mobinga may relax but i think we had to extract our brains but i think it was good a good way to set us up and consider what we have the work ahead for our school year um so with that board we we and we have another piece about board of education team building but we'll reschedule that at a time where all board members can be present we know a few had to leave out to get to some of those open houses so with that we are adjourned thank you all