School Board Meeting - 02/09/2026

001Uh with a reminder to please silence your electronic devices and that reminder that this meeting is both audio and video recorded. Uh Mr. Laurier, may I get a roll call, please? >> Yes, chairman. Mr. Paul Alexander >> here. >> Miss Ellen Sabodnik >> here. >> Mr. Zach Graham >> here. >> Miss Jen Moyers >> here. >> Chairman Dr. Shante Jones is absent. >> All right. Uh, Miss Savani, would you please lead us in a moment of silence and pledge of allegiance? >> Absolutely. Please stand for the moment of silence to be followed by the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> All right. Uh, do we have

002any additions or corrections to the agenda? >> We do not. >> All right. Uh, seeing no additions or corrections, can I get a a motion for approval of the agenda? >> Motion to approve. >> Second. >> Motion a second. All in favor? >> I >> Okay, moving on to consent agenda. So, owners had a chance to review. Can I get a motion for approval of the consent and motion a second for approval of consent agenda? >> Uh, motion to approve the consent agenda. >> Second. >> Motion a second. All in favor? >> I. All right, moving on to the schoolboard member committee reports. Miss Sodnik for the finance committee. >> We had a finance committee um a few weeks ago um which was then reviewed that same information was reviewed at the work session that

003we had in January 12th before the snow where we reviewed the uh FY27 budget that will be presented to the public. We looked at the CIP as well as the budgets. you got a preview before we have uh the public hearing. >> All right. Thank you, ma'am. Uh moving on to superintendent spotlights and announcements. All right. Good evening, Chair Alexander and members of the board. But first, I want to say um welcome to our first regular board meeting of 2026. I think here we are. I don't know what day it is anymore. 2026 has been a little rocky, but here we are together and it's nice to see everyone and I'm excited to open up the meeting with a spotlight tonight. All right, first up in um January, we celebrated principal appreciation week. Between um

004the snow and everything else we had going on, we did want to take a moment to appreciate our principles. School principles work tirelessly behind the scenes and at the forefront of their buildings to ensure that students learn in safe, supportive, and thriving environments. They balance countless responsibilities, instructional leadership, staff development, family partnerships, students needs, and daily operations, often well before the school day begins and long after it ends. Their steady presence, thoughtful decision-making, and unwavering commitment to excellence shape school culture and inspire both educators and learners to reach their full potential. for their dedication, resilience, and deep care of our community. The principles are sincerely valued and profoundly appreciated. Um, you know, I was thinking back about the time that I was a principal and I remember coming home and I would think, I don't

005know what I did today. I don't know what I did so many things today. I don't know where to start. I don't know what I did today. And I can personally attest that I'm pretty sure Mr. Forest did about 163 different things today. Um, I was involved in some of them. We've seen all the principles today. They've been over here for meetings. they've been back to their buildings. Um, and you know, we definitely want to take a moment to really thank them for their work. Uh, we do have a little token of appreciation for you tonight. Miss Kelsa is going to help me out. So, we want to recognize Margot Perea from Cougar Elementary School. Oh, there's names on here. >> Oh, um, I was going to take a picture on my phone. You can

006grab it when you go back. Uh, Felicia Drake from Manasses Park Elementary School. Kelly Huntley from Manasses Park Middle School and Charles Forest from Manasses Park High School. Miss Kelsey, will you grab my phone? We rarely get a chance to get a picture of our principles together. So, I think we're going to just take this opportunity to have you guys come on up. >> You want to join? >> I will. Usually you me and I'm like no >> no you stand in the back. >> Okay. >> All right you guys go on up >> block of jeans. See I'm cutting it right out. All right. Ready. One. And we just had a little um one of the things that was on this slide was um a quote from someone on Facebook from the community. Um

007I know we're all on Facebook and we see um some varying degrees of quotes on there from people. Um but I think it is nice that we often do see a lot of positive comments about our schools and our leaders and our teachers and our schools. Thank you guys. Okay, next up. So, this goes back a few months. Um, but we do want to take a moment to recognize that we once again celebrated bring your legislator to school day. Um, that happens uh the VSBA bring your legislator to school day happens uh beginning of November every year. The goal of take your legislator to school day is to build a stronger relationship between schools and legislators. This event gives legislators an opportunity to observe what's going on in Virginia schools and provides Virginia's young people

008the opportunity to meet and interact with elected officials. So this year in November we started it actually coincided with I think it was national young readers week. So we were starting the morning in the elementary school with our smallest students reading to them. And I think this picture was taken over there at Cougar. So everybody came in and we read to our students first and then we moved over to uh the firehouse to check out our new EMT program which is where our students are coming to the firehouse every day for their class and at the end of that class much like our CNA program they come out with that certification um for EMT. So, we took our legislators over there to see that. I think that's a great um opportunity for us to really

009showcase some of the positive things we go we have going on in the schools and it was a really well attended and well celebrated day this year. And finally, we just want to take a moment to note that um December uh we did recognize inclusive schools week. So, if you haven't heard of inclusive schools week, it's an annual event that was created to celebrate the progress schools have made toward providing equality education for our increasingly diverse student population and those students marginalized due to disability, socioeconomic status, cultural heritage, language preference, and other factors. Inclusive Schools Week provides an opportunity for educators, students, and parents to discuss and initiate practices to further ensure schools continue to improve their goal of successfully educating all children. It's a wonderful opportunity to involve all your teachers and students to

010celebrate children first. Um so we uh acknowledge that. I think being a small school division, one of our strengths is we can often work with our families and our students on a onetoone basis. Um but it was just good to you know participate in that and just recognize it in the month of December. That concludes our spotlight this evening. >> Do we have any announcements? >> Okay. All right, moving on to public comments. Miss Lori, do we have anyone signed up for public comment? >> No, chairman. >> All right, moving right along to new business. Fiscal year 27 superintendent's proposed budget presentation. Good evening, uh, Chairman Alexander, members of the board. It's, um, hold on, let me try that again. Let's start that over again. Good evening, Chairman Alexander and members of the board. It's

011my pleasure to be here this evening to present uh the superintendent's proposed budget for FY27. This proposed budget, like others before it, aligns with our strategic plan and uh reflects both the realities we are currently facing as well as our priorities that are ahead of us. Our budget uh aligns with the Manasses Park City School strategic plan, which focuses on our four pillars. Reimagining the school experience, building communities and connections, creating safe spaces, and our newest pillar, providing excellence in operational service. These pillars guide our financial decisions and ensure that we are supporting our students with a direction set by our stakeholders. You've seen this slide before and it outlines our strategic plan process. You know, we started the process back in 2023 and um included so many of our stakeholders in that process and

012really got it guided us to those four pillars. Over the last few years, we've been working on developing those pillars, those strategies and those activities. Um to the place where we were this summer in June of 2025 was our target for launching our public-f facing KPI monitoring dashboard. And I'm pleased to say that we have been able to do that. It is it is available on our website. I thought I could click to it here, but maybe not. Um, it is available on our website and it really does outline each of those particular uh pillars and the key performance indicators aligned to those. Our teams of uh of educators are working to meet all of those strategies and continue to make progress along the way. So, we're excited about that. go out to the uh

013website and take a look at that under strategic plan. This is probably my favorite slide of the budget presentation each year because it really is the why behind uh all the numbers and the data and the pieces that I'm going to show you this evening. Um without this, it doesn't really explain uh those numbers accurately. We have so much to be proud of in Manasses Park. We have so many wonderful educators, so many wonderful community members and students. Um, you know, just a few I'm gonna I'm gonna highlight here. Um, you heard a little bit uh from Dr. Rates about our EMT pathway. This is a new partnership. It's our first cohort with the Manasses Park Fire Department and it's exciting to continue to make those um connections both within our community and for our

014students. We are now in our third cohort of our CNA program. We have 20 graduates and we currently have 18 students in clinicals really learning um to to be the best support they can in our community. We have many new internships and activities that our high school students are really getting the opportunity to do through enhanced career and technical education programs. I'm going to put a shout out to so many of our students. Manasses Park really represented at the MLK ortorial contest this year. Uh we had two finalists who were orators um in the um in the ceremony. One, Briana, our eighth grader from the middle school, took home the win uh from that particular ceremony. And for the first time, they had a um an essay contest for our elementary students. And our fifth

015grade student um from Joshua from MPE took home first place in that essay contest. So, Manasses Park was well represented and our students were there just doing amazing things. Um, we've had a great year, you know, for our students, not only in academics, but also in activities and athletics. Our music programs continue to be strong um and and really represent us in so many different ways. And we have many um celebrations in our athletic program as well. We have 10 girls competing in the zone qualifier and girls wrestling. It is it is a great uh number of students and um we are one of the largest teams in our in the state. So uh 10 girls from Manassus Park representing us well. Um, I'm going to put out there the the middle school had their

016first win in four years and um, that's to the the dedication of the coaches and the students were so very excited and just so many other things that are worth um, you know, I could fill up page after page after page of the the amazing accomplishments, but it does ground us in the why behind um, what we're doing each and every day and the in the numbers that follow. So congratulations to all those students and the amazing things that we are able to do. So each year um I share this slide as well. It is uh the law requires the superintendent to um present a needs-based budget to the school board. This estimate must reflect the enrollment projections, staffing requirements, state funding formulas, and local revenue capacity. The FY27 proposed budget reflects a realistic assessment

017of those factors. the all funds were used for budget development and inputs. Uh the total proposed budget for the FY27 um superintendent's proposed budget is slightly over 63 million across six uh six key funds federal operating grants medical capital food services. This is a notable decrease from the FY26 uh superintendent's proposed budget which was nearly 60 foot which was nearly 65 million. This budget was developed using a needsbased and zerobased framework ensuring that every dollar addresses critical priorities. Each fund is balanced through projected allocations, fund carryovers and prud prudent fiscal management. So, I just want to um you know, at this point give a shout out to all the different groups that help us to get to this final budget. It is a needs-based budget. The principles sitting out there spent a lot of time.

018We start at the at the at the building level and at the um at the category where where the needs are most accurately reflected and that starts to roll up. We start this process in October. Um, so it is a very long process, but I feel like we have a lot of input from people um throughout the school division. So this slide I'm going to take a little bit of time on tonight because it's something a little bit different. This is really the foundational um this slide is foundational to understanding the rest of the budget and the decisions that are made. You can see that a student enrollment and funding considerations are definitely part of this uh proposed budget. From FY25 to FY27, enrollment projections show a decrease of about 237 students. In FY26, actual

019enrollment was lower than projected. That's this school year. and reduction and required reductions to uh to take immediate action including eliminating vacant positions and adjusting staffing allocations early this school year. Looking ahead to FY27, state revenue projections are ultim are approximately $1.2 million lower than FY26. Complicating this further, students with disabilities remain at about 15% of the enrollment. It hasn't decreased in the proportional amount of students that have been decreasing and English language learners staffing requirements continue to increase due to statemandated ratios even though overall our e numbers have uh decreased to 41%. So all of these are very important factors in in developing a budget. You can see the dark uh the black line is our current um school year and you can see it decreasing in the outy years as well. So this

020is a reality for us that our student enrollment is less than it has been. Um this we can see this across all of the uh grade levels. Uh most prominently this year was through kindergarten. Um it was reduced it was under 200 at this point. So given these conditions, I usually share the budget priorities with the board so that you have an understanding of uh what things were in my mind um during this process. So these were the priorities that have come to the forefront. Maintaining competitive compensation and benefits um strategic sta staffing through attrition. sustaining literacy and mathematics improvement efforts, maintaining student support resources, and then promoting sustainability and future planning. I'll start with our first priority, which is maintaining competitive compensation and benefits. You will see this proposed budget uh has a starting

021teacher salary of a little over $60,000. uh that was a priority for me in developing this budget because our local competitors are all at or around or above that number. So being in uh the playing field really was important to us so that we could attract and retain those employees. So I'm I'm pleased that this starting teacher salary does go over 60,000. Uh this budget does include a 5.5% average salary increase for instructional and classified employees. That's a two average 2% step and 3.5% cola. A 4% average salary increase for managerial employees, a 2% step and a 2% cola. And it includes the continuation of the top scale supplement for instructional and classified employees who um get to the top of the scale and have nowhere for that step to go. Linked in the presentation

022are um the proposed pay scales for each of those categories, the instructional, the classified, and the managerial. In addition, in the um budget priority of investing in compensation and benefits, we really did take another look at benefits. If you remember um last year the superintendent's advisory committee um spent some time really talking about what benefits would employees like to see outside of compensation. Where could we begin to work on uh some of those things? And last year's superintendent advisory group, which represents uh staff members across all categories, all buildings, um they really defined that there were three areas for us to take a look at. Leave, insurance, and retirement. Last year we tackled leave um and we spent some time we were able to include in the budget the paid parental leave um a transition

023to PTO away from sick time and personal time to the paid time off and we increased the amount of leave that each individual employee was receiving. So those were great accomplishments. This year's group has uh has been together since the start of the year and we decided to work on the area of retirement. We can't take in all of these things at one time. Uh so this group of individuals has spent a lot of time led by um Miss uh led by Miss Tuttle um who is working with us on looking at all of the retirement benefits. And I think what we've learned, we did a lot of research and um these members of the committee go back out to their departments or their schools and ask questions and gather information. And I think what

024we learned is that retirement is complicated. um it is individual and it depends on um each where each person may be started, where they're going, what their plans are and so there was a lot of education that needed to happen. Um so while in the FY27 budget there are no changes for retirement. Um one of the things that our group wanted to look at were the leave acred leave payouts. I might need some water. Hold on one second. Sorry about that. Okay. So, one of the areas they wanted to look at was acred leave and u what happens to that leave when you get to retirement. We have some policies around that. we started to dig into that and I I think where we landed is we need a little bit more time. Um it

025is very complicated. We do need some uh continued education around that exploration. So what I'm going to ask that um committee to do is to really take another year to look at that particular benefit and understand what might we be able to do and how will that impact our budget perhaps in the FY28 year. Um, some things that did come out of it was this opportunity to really enhance our education around retirement benefits. A lot of our employees did not understand what their retirement benefits were, which ones were self- selected, um, what could be available to them, and so the team has done a really good job of trying to um, articulate that and find ways to engage with our employees over retirement. So, more to come in that area. The second priority of staffing,

026strategic staffing through attrition because enrollment is declining and funding is declining. Staffing adjustments were unavoidable. As I shared earlier, the enrollment decline this year required immediate action and moved us from our FY26 proposed staffing level to our current staffing of 528 FTEES. Those adjustments were made carefully carefully and intentionally. They were accomplished by eliminating vacant positions and reorganizing ex existing roles. We did not reduce people just positions. The proposed FY27 budget continues the same approach. Staffing adjustments will occur primarily through attrition with every vacancy reviewed before it is filled across licensed, managerial, and classified positions. As a result, total staffing decreases from the 528 FTEEs we currently have in FY at FY26 to 50 FTEES in FY27. For reference, for the last three years, we have filled 70 to 80 vacancies each summer. This gives

027me great confidence that these adjustments are possible. One area that is prop that is a proposed reduction of force in this budget is the elimination of the dean of students job classification. These positions are not required under the standards of quality and do not receive any state funding. I have communicated personally this change to those employees impacted. At the classroom level, we've been very intentional about what we protect in staffing. We are maintaining K3 class size at 22 to1 and grade four at 24:1. Grade five will increase modestly to 25 to one and middle and high school class sizes will increase 26 to1. These are difficult but necessary decisions that align staffing with enrollment while intentionally protecting early literacy, foundational instruction, and overall instructional quality. The next budget priority of sustaining literacy and mathematic improvement

028efforts really focuses around our uh literacy positions and our mathematics and literacy resources. One of the things that I referenced in a few slides earlier was our service levels for our EL students. This budget contains 48 ELLL positions, teaching positions. You can see two years ago the state made some adjustments in service levels for our EL students. It used to be that we would be assigned one per one EL teacher per 50 students. And now the the assignment is by level of service. So those students that are level one receive more um direct service than a student who is a monitor student. You can see the chart to the right there. Um really defines the levels for the state. uh level one is one position per 20 students and so on. The chart at the

029bottom highlights for you our projected levels of students. This is at the macro level. This is at the the division level, not necessarily at each individual building. But you can see how the totals uh require the staff number and you can see it's 47.83 which is 48 staff positions. This year we started a program a pilot program at the elementary schools at K5 uh where our teachers were um participating in a dualpurpose classroom. What this means is that the classroom teacher um serves as both the classroom teacher and the e teacher serving those students with their e language profic proficiency requirements. uh those teachers are certified in both uh the classroom and the EL uh classification. Um so they are able to provide those services. We did provide those teachers it where possible um with

030an additional um instructional assistant that will come into their classroom and support the work around English language learning so that they have time to provide that direct service. This has been a a a great model. We're looking forward to the student achievement levels that come from that at the end of the year and being able to expand that in this budget. This budget also includes supplemental and intervention materials K12 for literacy, supports the implementation of highquality English language arts uh and math curriculum and includes a secondary ELA curriculum resource adoption at the middle school. moving that VLA, the Virginia Literacy Act that we've talked about in the past, moving that all the way through the middle school level, the budget priority of maintaining student supports and resources. You know, our students need more than simply

031academics each and every day. Um, so I'm proud to say that our school counselor ratios continue to exceed the state requirements. They provide our students with social, emotional, academic, and college and career preparation um across all the levels K through 12. We're continuing our multi-ter system of support for academic and behavior. Care Soloulless is something I've talked about in previous years. It is included in this budget. It is our 247 365day mental health resource as coordinated care services for our students, actually for our whole community. any student, staff member, parent um can access this resource 365 days a year uh 24 hours a day for support in their mental health needs. This budget concludes the continuation of the community support leaison and parent leaison that support our community um both through things like our family

032market as well as the individual programs at the schools. And this budget does include free breakfast and lunch programs. Again, it continues that for all students. And finally, our budget priority of sustaining the future planning. Um in uh 2023, the board and I worked with the um governing body to include the reserve line item in the governing body's uh budget. I'm pleased to say that this past year the governing body adopted a policy um to codify that and to um to allow us to continue that process of really being um physically responsible with our endofear balances and returning those to the governing body uh so that we could use those for future planning. This reserve line item has grown because of that um really responsible way of of budgeting. And in the FY27 school board

033or in the FY27 uh budget, I request the city school reserve fund in the amount of $97,000 to balance. At this time, I'm going to turn the presentation over to Mr. Lion. Um and I'm going to get some more water um to talk about the budget development process and to share with you the individual highlights around each of the funds. Mr. Hi. >> Good evening, Chair Alexander, members of the board. This, as Dr. Saunders had previously mentioned, this is a needsbased budget and we have a very deliberate um process that we follow to develop a need a needsbased budget. It is a five-phase process. Phase one begins with the budget holders uh examining their their needs as far as strategic plan, student uh achievement, their departments, mission and and goals for their uh for their

034improvement, continual improvement. Then moves to phase two where those budget holders then present the request from phase one to the executive team. The executive team looks at the needsbased requests and uh works with the budget holders to whittle those down to the absolute needs uh that we need to go forward in the process. At phase three, uh that's the executive team and with the superintendent, we work to balance the budget uh with the request versus the revenue that we're projecting for uh the next fiscal year. Phase four is tonight. It's now the school board's budget uh to review and and work with uh as we go forward. And phase five will be when we present it to the governing body for their approval or appropriations per pupil uh uh per pupil funding. Uh we summarize

035every year uh 2025 is the final uh altogether is $18,336 per student. looking at local uh money was 5,041 and as you can see it goes across at 10,1200 for sales tax and 1,200 uh for federal. The 26 and 27 years are projections. Uh again 19,645 and and again it's broken down by the same categories. As you see the local amount went up by 5,000 well by about $600. uh this these calculations are prek through 12 and include all expenditures, capital expenditures and everything. So as we we're starting to really um have a very strong capital improvement plan. So we've had some major repairs in the last couple years. So you'll see um some of the local dollars increase. uh in 27 we the per pupil funding does drop uh a little bit due to

036our enrollment in our reduced FTEES. Looking at the revenues that this budget was built on, about 67% of our projected revenue comes from the state. Uh little over 26% comes from the city, 6% comes from federal and less than 1% from local other sources. Uh expenditures by fund, we have six funds in our budget. Uh the general operating fund makes up for 90% of the expenditures. Uh behind that is food service uh federal our federal um fund budget, our capital improvement budget and then the medical trust. Expenditures by function. Um again these are state um defined categories. Uh 68% of our expenditures are instruction, 10% in operations and maintenance, 6% in technology, 4% transportation, 8% administrative attendance and health services, and 4% in food services. Expenditure by object uh around 80% of our expenditures by

037object is is personnel, salaries and benefits. Uh 7% in purchase services, 6% materials materials and supplies. Capital outlay about 2.8 eight and other charges 3%. Now I'll dive into each fund, each of the six funds. This is our federal fund and our federal fund covers title one, title two, all the entitlement grants, our special education um grants, uh Perkins and so forth. So you'll see here the budget for that is down from the previous year. We're looking at uh revenue about 1 point almost 1.7 and expenditures uh match at at nearly 1.7. It's a $250,000 decrease from previous year. The general fund again this makes up 90% of our expenditures. We're anticipating about almost $56 million in revenue. Uh but our expenses are 56.8. Again, this this budget, you know, covers the cola and the

038steps that Dr. Saunders um had spoken about. So the expenditures do exceed our revenue by $97,333 which is the amount Dr. Saunders is asking to utilize from our reserve fund to balance this fund. Other grants, this is a fund we use for grants that have multi-year performance periods. Uh at this point in time, we do not have a multi-year performance grant. So this fund uh is not um being utilized at this moment. School nutrition fund. Uh this this fund is funded by federal, state, and local uh sources. We anticipate about a $2.2 million revenue and almost a $2.4 million expenditure. Uh the difference is a negative 153,000. Uh again, we carry a fund balance in this fund. Uh we anticipate at the end of this year be around 700,000. So we have uh the fund

039balance to cover that that difference. And that fund balance needs to be drawn down. The federal government wants us to draw it down further. It's too high. They only want us to have three months of operating capital in the fund balance, which comes out around5 to $600,000. And right now, we do um have free lunch for all students. We anticipate to be able to carry that through FY28 or FY27. When we develop FY28 budget, uh what Mr. Taylor has told me we may need to talk about um whether or not to charge um for lunches at that time. It all depends on the federal rules uh for reimbursement uh when we get there. Capital projects, our capital project uh plan. Again, we're anticipating about 1.6 million from the city. Uh and that's our only revenue

040source primarily. Uh we did receive a grant for some generators this year. So once once in a while we do get grants uh outside this the um the department of education. Um our expenditure is about 1.8 for a short file about 205,000. We anticipate to have a a carryover there to cover that medical trust. Uh this is a fund we use to to cover um retirees um medical insurance uh policies. It's it's a pass through for them. they pay us uh their half and the state pays us uh money for their portion of the policies all funds together. You can see the difference here and on almost every budget line here you see there is a decrease from the previous year. Um you about $3 million less in revenue and about $3.5 million less in

041expenditures when compared to last year's budget. We have a five-year forecast And I don't know. No. Okay, that's fine. The five-year forecast, um, as you may see in your cabinet, uh, where the files are, we take and we follow the same model we've used every year. You know, one year we do a 3% a 2% a 3% cola and a step at 2%. Then the off year we just we model only doing a step. We've never been able to follow that model just due to conditions on the ground and trying to keep competitive with our neighbors. Uh but as you as you look at that, the fund I really want you to zero in on is a general operating fund because in the out years you can see where I'm anticipating uh shortfalls between revenue

042and expenditures. Next year I anticipate uh right now just using the numbers as they are on this on this plan about a $600,000 shortfall. Um, and that's assuming enrollment doesn't drop any, you know, doesn't drop significantly. Um, and it's assuming no one growth either. So, if we did grow, that reduced that difference. Um, but it it gives an idea to the governing body as they plan uh their long range uh financial plans. Uh, gives them something to work to work with. >> And I'm turn it back over Dr. Saunders. Okay. So, uh next steps. Uh this concludes the superintendent's proposed FY27 budget presentation. We move on to uh February 23rd, which is a public hearing on on the superintendent's proposed budget. Uh March 9th is the school board uh FY27 budget work session and March

04316th is uh slated as the budget adoption for the school board and then we will turn around and March 17th present that to the governing body the very next day. Uh so this concludes um our budget presentation. Um I just uh want to thank you for this opportunity. I want to thank everyone in the in the room actually who has been um part of this budget development process. And while these are some difficult decisions uh that needed to be made, I'm uh confident that we can continue to provide the levels of service and really um sort of flash back to those points of pride and continue to be able to offer those opportunities for our students at that high level. So, thank you, >> Dr. Saunders. Um, >> so since we're at the beginning of

044the this process and the next meeting will be the public hearing um if board members want to maybe just compile their questions and just send them in and then I would give you a chance to answer them and then we can review them at the next meeting. >> Yeah, I think um we will send out to you a link uh that'll be a Google uh doc um and you can put your questions in there. um our staff will respond to those questions and then each of you will be able to see each other's um information. We will make those public at the next meeting. Um we'll share that information. >> Awesome. All right. Thank you very much. All right. Moving on to student achievement. All right. Well, good evening, Cherry Alexander and members of the

045board. We are here this evening to finally be able to present our student achievement data for the 2024 2025 school year. As you know, VDOE delayed release of the results due to third-party verification of data that occurred in November into early December with the public release of results happening the second week of December. I want to thank all of our students for their hard work as well as our teachers, staff, and school administrators. There are many data points throughout the school year. What we are presenting tonight is primarily the data from the school performance and support framework. We will provide a division overview of the framework and accreditation data and then get into the student performance at each of the school buildings. Thank you to Stacy Mammon, director of instruction, and to our principles who

046will join me tonight in highlighting our successes, challenges, and next action steps forward. All everything that you hear that you will hear this evening ties into all four of our pillars. There are key parts. the pillars drive us and what we do each day at the division level as well as at the school level. So I want to begin by providing an overview and reminder of the school performance and support framework or the SPSF. So you're going to hear a lot of acronyms tonight as we go throughout the presentation. And I also want to highlight how school accreditation was calculated this year as this is something different than in years past. Accountability and accreditation used to run together. This year they're separate calculations and not dependent on one another. For accountability, this is the first

047year that the framework has been applied to the 2425 school achievement data. The SPSF includes indicators at the elementary middle school levels as growth, readiness, and mastery. And at the high school level, graduation, readiness, and um readiness and mastery. From these scores, schools are assigned one of four performance categories, which I will detail further in this presentation. Schools can also be federally identified and also explain that in greater detail as we go on. As for accreditation, this is now separate from Virginia's accountability system for accreditation. This year, elements of the standards of quality and standards of accreditation needed to be met by schools. Public reporting of both accountability and accreditation can be viewed on the Virginia school quality profile and we will detail each each of these this evening. Schools submitted all required evidence to

048the department of education as pres as prescribed in the standards of accreditation and all evidence is satisfactory and approved for compliance. These were the areas of compliance this school year for accreditation. Promotion and retention, graduation requirements, instructional programs, leadership and staffing requirements, facilities and safety provisions, parental notifications, standards of learning, long range comprehensive plans, and requirements for federally identified schools. All the information shared tonight can be reviewed on the Virginia school quality profile. There's a screenshot of that on the right of the slide. Tonight, I am pleased to say that all NPSCS schools are fully accredited for this school year. So, now into accountability. These are the indicators for each school level and the waiting of each. Mastery is where you will find our assessment performance. Growth in reading and math is measured at both

049the elementary and middle school levels. For the high school, graduation is an indicator that replaces growth. We will get into more specifics on the individual indicators as we go along. So overall school performance from each of these indicators schools accumulate an overall total set of points and from there a score is calculated on a scale of one to 100. Based on the overall points, schools fall into one of four performance categories. Distinguished, on track, offtrack, and needs intensive support. So, you can see where we landed this year. Manasses Park High School with 84.3 overall on track. Manasses Park Middle School 79.7 off track barely. Um, Manasses Park Elementary School offtrack 76.5 and CES offtrack 75.6. The difference between MPE and Cougar. The point totals have to do with chronic absenteeism. Just a reminder that there

050is unfortunately no rounding for overall scores. If that was the case, Manasses Park Middle School would have been moved to on track. That's how close it was. So the school performance and support framework looks at overall performance and the indicators that are listed in the framework. It also looks under the hood at the subgroup performances at each building. Both Cougar and MP have been federally identified as targeted support or TSI schools for reading, math, and science performance for students with disabilities. This means that the performance of that subgroup was lower than the highest performing comprehensive support and improvement or CSI school in Virginia and their students with disabilities subgroup. Thresholds for these comparisons have been set by VDOE's office of accountability and the overall framework score of students with disabilities and the three performance categories

051was lower in our case than the established threshold for all three of those um subject areas. This is definitely an area of concern and we'll be working as a division and school teams on improvement in this area. MPCS will need to complete the VDOE school improvement grant or SIG application focusing on evidence-based interventions or EBIS that will be provided for our students with disabilities. In addition, both CES and MPEs will be completing school needs assessments and multi-year school support plans that set goals for subgroup academic improvement. The multi-year school support plans or MSSPS will be shared with you and we will be asking for your action approval of these plans at the February 23rd board meeting. So per Virginia code because of this federal identification any school that has a federal designation will be lowered

052one performance category. You can see that CES and MPE now fall into the needs intensive support category regardless of the overall points that they originally earned. We will talk more throughout this presentation about supports for students with disabilities and other student subgroups as well as for improvement and overall performance for these new indicators and framework. I'm now going to turn it over to Miss Stacy Mammon, director of instruction, who walk you through the specific indicators in the school performance support framework. Thank you, Miss Chairman Alexander, members of the board. Um, what you see here, a full set of indicators that the Virginia Department of Education uses to evaluate schools. And each indicator represents a different part of a school story. It shows strengths and areas of support. It helps us see how well we are

053how well we are meeting the needs of all of our students. And it gives us a more complete picture than just test scores alone. So in the mastery um area you'll see student performance um scores on so assessments and Virginia alternative assessment program in reading math and science and this will be when when um turn it over to the principles they will take you through their school specific data in each of these indicators our English language progress and proficiency it measures how well students who are learning English are developing their language skills over time that's listening speaking reading and writing that's measured by the WETA access assessment growth um measured by comparing ing expected learning to actual learning at the end of the year based on past so performance. Chronic absenteeism, percentage of students missing

054more than 10% or more of the school year. Um, when we get to the middle school under readiness, you'll see advanced coursework and that measures the performance of students who are eligible to take a high school end of course math or end of end of course math course course while in middle school. Um you'll also see under readiness the six-year extended graduation rate with applied um studies and that um reflects the percentage of students who graduate within six years of entering high school and it does include the applied studies diploma. Um also under readiness a 3e readiness framework at the high school and this looks at whether students graduate prepared for one of the three post high school paths. Enrollment ready to continue education through college or technical program. enlistment, they meet requirements to join

055the military or employment, entering the workforce with career ready skills or industry credentials. And then graduation at the high school federal requirement that reflects the percentage of students who graduate within four years of entering high school. So this will serve um as the basis as you hear all of our principles going through. You'll be able to see on each of the data slides on the bottom left corner the data that a princ the principles are sharing and which which area it relates to. Um, at this time I'm going to turn the presentation over to the principles, beginning with Miss Margot Perea, principal of Cougar Elementary to share the student performance data from last year. >> Thank you so much. Um before I talk dive into our literacy data with the vows, there are a couple

056of things I just want to recognize that over the last two years with our teachers, they've had a new ELA curriculum and a new math curriculum. And I think that one of the things you'll see with our ELA data is the power of having a high quality curriculum. But I do not want to leave here without saying that it isn't something that teachers just pick up and turn around. that the amount of work and processing and thinking and collaborating that has gone in to teachers wrapping their head around benchmark last year and then KDUm for math this year is tremendous. I'm so appreciative we have those curriculums and I think you'll see it play out in our data um particular around ELA for last year and we're anticipating that for next year for our math

057data. Um but I just wanted to make sure that we recognize the teachers and the workload that this has been for them and how appreciative we are of of all that they've done. When we look at vows, um it at Cougar, all of our students, um kindergarten, first and second grade, all take the vows assessment. There are just a handful of students through their IEP process that don't participate in vows, but essentially every single student um school age student in Cougar is tested with the vowels assessment. It's different in the upper grades. Only selected students are are um assessed with that. And obviously, we don't have SOS or anything like this. So this really is our big indicator in terms of performance um around ELA. We I have to say are tickled um that we

058saw the level of improvements that we did in terms of kids moving out of both the high-risisk category and the moderate risk category into low risk. And you think about what the implications of that are for the student. Um we recognize and we own the fact at Cougar we are the foundation for the rest of the district in terms of our academic achievement that it all starts with us. And so we know if we can have kids that are leaving Cougar on track um it then sets a pathway for students um and the trajectory for the rest of their school career. So we take ownership of that even though we don't have SOS we understand that we're a part of those scores um moving forward. And so as you can see we saw in tremendous

059growth in terms of the number of students moving into low risk. Um we did see decreases in terms of the number of students that were high risk. What we also saw within that band, oftentimes there's a range of 100 to 150 points within the high-risisk band in particular. And so we saw students even if they were high- risk um make movement within that band to be much closer to being moderate risk. And so um this year alone we had the beginning of the year um Vowels assessment and then we had the midyear and we've had 86 kids that have moved into low risk. Um so we have been really really excited to see what the power of having that curriculum um and the work that the teachers have done in terms of of student performance.

060When we look at grade level specific um we really one of the questions I know the board had a couple of questions about second grade and so I just wanted to address that. um when you think about the curriculum and the skills that kids need to learn when they're in kindergarten and this is not in any way to diminish kindergarten but kindergarten has this much to teach and then you layer on first grade and then you layer on second grade. So the gap students that come to us with gaps or that have been with us and have gaps by the time they get to second grade and above the gaps are so much broader and there are so many more things that they need to learn that it's much more challenging to close gaps um

061because of the amount of skills that kids still need to learn. And so we really have put a lot of efforts into kindergarten um as well as second grade and first grade of course as well. We have a really robust intervention program. What we were seeing in second grade is we had a cohort of students this year that still you know they were in the Lexia intervention. They were in the spire intervention. They were still not making progress with that. So, we added an intensified intervention program that's taught by our reading teachers um that we just started in December for those students that in spite of getting quality core instruction and intervention, we're still not making progress. And so, we've we're about eight weeks into that intensified program, we're seeing some students within that cohort

062are making progress, some are not. And so, we're meeting actually this later this week to revamp some of that in terms of the students that are not making progress. Um but we recognize that second grade um is you know was the most consistent from the beginning of the year to to the end of the year. Um the other layer for our current second graders is they did not have the benefit in kindergarten of having a high quality curriculum. Um and I do I do think that that has implications for second grade and so we're working with that intensified group to really fill some of those gaps in phmic awareness and and pieces that they might have been missing at that point in time. Um, BKRP is a is a a math is an individualized math

063assessment. And the piece that we see here is we see some overall strengths for sure in terms of how our students are performing. Um, the area of of biggest concern is numeracy. And what I love about our new math curriculum is it really directly works on numerousy and number sense and builds all of those precursors foundational skills that we're seeing that a lot of our students are missing. And so, um, while we see strengths overall in in certain areas, the numerousy piece, I think the new curriculum that we have for math really does help to address that. And kids are spending a lot of time talking about math. And it is a very different model of mathematics instruction where the teacher isn't just giving the information to the students, but students are asked to kind

064of grapple with things in a way that um is very different than what they've been asked to in the past. So, we're very thankful to you all for the expenditures you've had around those curriculums because they certainly have made a huge difference in ELA and we anticipate they they will make a difference um in terms of math as well. For um our WEDA progress, we actually have the highest percentage of students um that are level one across the district. And that does make sense because our kids are coming to us in kindergarten. Many of them have not yet had other school experiences. It's their first formal exposure to English. So it does make sense that we have a higher than typical percentage of level ones compared to the other school given the age of our

065kids. Um what we found is we were not satisfied with a lack of growth just kind of a stagnation in terms of the progress. So what we have done this year around WEDA progress is we have embedded writing in all of our CLTs for all of our grade levels. We're using WEDA type assessments um and writing samples. We're using the rubrics from WEDA. the grade levels are creating um the last professional development day that we had off when kids weren't in school but teachers were working our grade level teachers created rubrics for each grade level for to have clarity around what is the expectation at the end of first grade for what kids should know and be able to do um both in terms of kind of the content of the writing as well as

066the mechanics of the writing and then we broke it down and built it back quarter by quarter so that we would have clarity around what are our expectations but we used a lot of the WEDA um writing, you know, prompts that they had and parts of the rubric that they had as well. So that we were aligning what we were doing to to see that improvement with with WEDA. Of course, they've changed the WEDA assessment. We were so bummed to find that out because we really wanted to see the progress with that, but the WEDA assessment has changed um this year, but we definitely are anticipating that we will see continue to see growth with um with WEDA. The area of weakness that we noticed in WEDA was the writing. And so we've done a

067lot of work to focus on that this year. In terms of absenteeism, um, we've, you know, did go up slightly. One of the pieces that we really are trying to do is to work with our prek families to really build those really strong foundations of the importance of attendance. Um, we've created an attendance policy for prek. Um, we're working with those families to really build those habits so that they by the time they metriculate up to kindergarten, we have those really strong attendance habits because we were noticing that in pre-K, we were having they don't count in this chronic absenteeism, but we were noting noticing patterns that we did not want to continue um when they become school age with which then would impact the students themselves as well as the the chronic absenteeism rate.

068Um, in terms of the our data, um, it's a little bit tricky. We do have the chronic absenteeism, but we're a paired school with MPE, and so the data that is used for the state purposes is actually MPE's academic data. Um, other than that chronic absenteeism because our kids are so young that they just don't take the SO. So, the next couple of slides um are related to that. It really is it's MPE's data um attached to Cougar. Again, we own the fact that we are the foundation of that and that we have an impact in terms of how our students perform impacts how the students at MPE perform. But it's just sort of a little idiosyncrasy of this this this system that we're most schools aren't aren't a primaryonly school. And so I think

069the state just gets a little confused about how to kind of process that. So in terms of um our action, we really are looking at um the the benchmark advance curriculum. It really has been a huge it's been a gamecher for us. I think we had Scholastic before and just the quality of thinking and the tasks that kids were asked to do were not nearly as high level as they are in benchmark. Um there are layers that we have also added into the benchmark curriculum in terms of phonics. we've added in UFly and I think that's where we really started to see traction with our vowels data is when we layered in UFly because we found that the pace of the instruction in phonics in ben in benchmark was just a little bit too slow.

070Um and so we've layered in UFly with the benchmark. Um in terms of reading plans, last year we had 318 reading plans and that those represent students who are not on track in terms of their writing their reading progress. Um this year we're down to 233 reading plans. I think the reality of us with kindergarten is we'll always have kids on reading plans because we have kids who come to us who are just emergent language learners at the beginning of the year and as soon as they on that very first vowels um do not make you know either moderate even if they're moderate but are low risk then they're flagged for a reading plan but I think it's that idea of what do we do immediately then to make sure that they're continuing to make

071that progress so we were really pleased to see the reduction in terms of the number of reading plans represents kids that had not been on track that are now on track. Um, and we're certainly pleased about that. We really have a a very strong system system of MTSS at Cougar where we track every kid by name and by need and who needs what and how are they doing and we meet frequently to track that. So, our reading specialists take the lead on that along with our instructional coach and then the um the division supports that we have for that as well. But really making sure we know who needs what intervention and make and are they making progress and if they're not making progress then what do we need to shift in terms of that?

072Some of the interventions are provided by the classroom teacher. if it's a student that might not be as as high of a risk um and might just need a targeted intervention on a specific skill whereas there are other students that need a much broader um we've had the opportunity through some grant funding to do TNTP um walkthroughs um and it's been a huge gamecher in terms of we started with math um and it really was looking at how do you internalize this curriculum that is you know there might be 10 pages that you're supposed to teach in a 45m minute period and how do you really break down what's the what's the most important, how do you teach it? How do you know if kids are responding? And so that has really created just a

073shared vision for what instruction should look like both in ELA as well as math. Um, and then again that focus on writing that the reality of reading, if you don't improve writing, you're not going to improve reading because they're two sides of the same coin. So it's a really important piece for us to really focus on writing um so that we have that continued improvement in writing uh for the sake of that but also for the improvements in the reading math again it is really looking at understanding that curriculum and unpacking the standards to really know what exactly is it that kids are supposed to know and be able to do. Um and a lot of uh Christy Graph our um division math specialist really helps our teams with that and has been um instrumental

074in that. Again, we've gone through that TDNTP process as well. We did part of that is doing teacher leaders, whether they're formal team leads or not, doing classroom observations. There's a protocol. We sort of look at gathering needs based on that. And it's been incredibly helpful for us. And then really looking at common and formative assessments to really make sure that we understand um if we've taught something, did the kids understand it? And if they didn't understand it, then how are we going to respond to that? And then again looking at that inter intervention and remediation um that we do continue to have Lexia Imagine Math and Ignite but it really is looking through some of these grant opportunities as well. Are there other potential um options that we could could bring on board in

075terms of some of our interventions? Spire works for many students but it doesn't work for every student. And if it doesn't work for a student then what are we going to do? Um it's kind of a constant theme that um repeats over and over in terms of some of our meetings. So, and that's Cougar. Thank you guys. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Good evening everyone. >> So, we will be starting um I'm Felicia Drake, principal of Mass Park Elementary. I think I just turned the microphone off. Okay. So, just kind of looking at our data, I do want to thank Margot and her staff. Um, having a foundation is amazing for us. So, kind of looking at our so data from last year, you'll kind of see in our reading performance that we are

076kind of lingering at the third grade level and we've gone down a little bit, a change um by negative one. And then in fourth grade, we did have a raise up to uh three points. and then fifth grade. So, we're c we're we're kind of stagnant a little bit in our reading things. So, one of the things that we're looking at is really looking at our CLT and our professional development for our teachers. Um, having benchmark has been amazing for our staff. The first year that we do something, they're always kind of kinks and things like that that we have to go through. But I'm very proud um of our staff and our reading specialists and our teachers because now what we're doing is we're not just following the manual, following the material. We're actually

077looking at what are the essential skills in that so that we are looking um to really improve our reading performance. Um the other thing that we're doing is making sure that kids are understanding that reading that this so performance is not just the one aspect for them. They're not a number. We're looking at making sure that they're enjoying reading, that it's relating to their life as well. In math, um we have been looking at Kdum and you can see our kids have done a phenomenal job last year. Um all of the scores have come up at every grade level and we're really excited. Even our first quarter data for um this year has improved. So what we're looking at with the inclusion of Kdum is not only as Margot said not only just looking at

078you know the algorithms of math but really looking at the concepts and really understanding why is 2 plus 2 4 why is 3 * 3 3 * 3 9. So looking at the thinking part of it that aspect of it. Our teachers have been very good at um looking at their data. One of the things that we've added this year is not just looking at the assessment, having kids take an assessment and then putting it away, but we're actually analyzing each part of the assessment. What are the kids learning? How did they show their work? What are the misconceptions? So those things, looking at our CLTs, we do have two CLTs per week. And really looking at that student driven data. So we can say, oh, we can't just say, oh, it was the test

079question. we can say, well, what was our kids understanding and how can we move from there? Science and social studies, um, we're really looking at that. You can see our science scores, our grade five. Although we know that science, the grade five test, um, is a combination of all of the learning from Cougar all the way up through grade five. One of the things we're really proud of is that we've put more emphasis on hands-on science experiments. We've made science not just um something to read about, but it's something we do. Um so this year we're going to be continuing with a wonderfest and having kids we're changing our focus of our science um fair to make it more of a wonder. What am I thinking about? How do how does the scientific method fit

080into this? Um all of our grade levels are participating in science and in social studies. and I think it's making a difference in how they're learning and how they're seeing their world. So, looking at our um English language progress by tier, we are very excited about our dualpurpose classrooms. One of the things that I think has um been a a huge improvement for us. Um and you'll hear me talk about our CLTs a lot. For us, that was last year was kind of the foundation of our CLTs. And we've been taking survey data and really talking to our teachers about how is this influencing your teaching and it's working. It's not just another meeting because as an experienced teacher, sometimes CLTs are let me go to this meeting and then let me do my real

081work. Our CLTs have really been broken down to see what are teachers needing in order to instruct students. How are we providing rigor for every student? How are we making sure that the assessments are really giving us an indication of what students need to learn? So, you'll see our English language um proficiency progress is improving and we are continuing to u make sure that we have growth in that area. Also, we know that the skills and strategies we use for our Larners, guess what? Those are great skills for all of our students. So, we're really looking forward to continuing that growth as well. Um, Margot kind of already went over the vowels data and the wristbands. Now, one of the things that she did show is that at the Cougar level, all the students are

082taking vows. At our level, we're looking at the kids that have a reading plan and we're um assessing those students. As one thing we've realized is that we might want to assess more students. It's not that we want to um continue to test students, but we want to make sure that we're um kind of putting the net wide enough to make sure that we are addressing all of our needs. So, you'll kind of see the data looks a little bit different. And when we looked at it, we were like, "Oh, we're seeing some growth, but these are just with the kids that have reading plans." So, we've noticed the gap um decreasing. We've also really been looking at the interventions that we're putting into place and how to break how to make sure that kids

083are getting small group um instruction even in their tier one classes because this looks great, but guess what? If our tier one is not where it needs to be be um where all students are reaching a standard, we're not going to be able to close the gaps that need to be closed. So, we really are working towards that. What is it looking like? What does each student need? um and looking at our MTSS and our kid talks that's um newer in our building as well and the teachers are really responding to that and the students as well. So we're able to not just say oh we have 70% of our students at this level we're able to say let's look at Johnny and see what he has been in what interventions he's been included in

084and how it's affected him. One of the things that we're very um passionate about is um we have Spire, we have Lexia, we have Imagine Math. What if students have been in that program for since Cougar and it's not working? What else are we looking at? So, we've been working with our interventionist and working with our teachers to say, let's dig down a little deeper and figure out what scaffold needs to be filled for the students to get where they need to be. um chronic absenteeism. Um we are working towards, you can see that we've had a nice decrease and um we're hoping that that continues. Um working with the uh instruction instructional staff and working with the attendance specialists. We are having meetings with families. We're making sure that we're talking to them. One

085of the things we're still working towards is tardies and things like that. When kids come in, we want to make sure, have you eaten? How are you doing today? It's not a punishment because in all honesty, kids aren't in charge of themselves at our level. It's, you know, the parents have to make sure that they're getting to school on time as well. So, the attendance, we're working on a sense of belonging. So, when kids come in our building, we want them to know that they're loved and they're cared for. And we think that that not only affects our attendance or absenteeism rates, but it also affects their academic rates as well. Excuse me. um kind of looking at our school summary. We're looking at, you know, where we are 75.6. Okay, that's where we are.

086That's not where we're we plan on staying and looking at our federal um our targeted support. We are looking at our students with disabilities, but that doesn't only stretch across our students with disabilities for math and reading. Um it also stretches across our other students. So what we're trying to do is if students have not yet b met the benchmark, we're trying to say, okay, what do we need to prepare to do to make students meet the benchmark? If students are meeting benchmark, how do we advance them further? So we're really looking at rigor for all of our students, not just for some of our students, because if you hold the bar higher, students will achieve higher, all of our students. And so these are some other indicator scores that we're working with. And I'm

087going to go to what we're doing. So what are we doing to make sure um our care block, we're really looking at what that looks like. We have interventionists that are going to be that are working with our students and pulling some of our students for spire, but it's not just there. We're having our teachers work with small groups as well. So, we're looking at in our building, we're looking at the pace and progress monitoring and looking at that enrichment. Sometimes that's a growth area for us because we're still working on what does it look like when I'm working with students? How do I know they're achieving and what are our next steps? So, our care block, we have a dedicated time for all of our students. So, students are working at different levels, whether

088it's intervention and enrichment. Um, and then we're monitoring where they are. Um again, Margot spoke about um the new teacher uh project that has been amazing for our building. We not only used our um teacher leaders, but we went through and walk through classrooms and then we did our debrief with everyone um for the walkthroughs. And what that's done for us is it's it's kind of um allowed other teachers to see what's happening outside of their classroom. The observation piece has been amazing for us. Um to kind of further that, we did ghost walks. And what that was is on one of our twohour uh early release days, we had teachers, we split them up into groups and they went to other spaces and they just looked at the things that were on the wall.

089They they talked to each other and they were able to see um get some questions answered. That's one of the things we're focused on is making sure that our teachers are having vertical articulation and we're even trying to um make sure that we're having that articulation with Cougar because as we transition we want to make sure that Marggo students come to us and our students go to Kelly. So that's a big focus for us as we move towards um the end of this year. We also with our partner teachers. So our students this year um are in two different classes. So our teachers are focused on either math and science or math and social studies and literacy um or in social studies. One grade level is different. So um we thought that that would when

090I came in I'm like oo I'm a little nervous about that. Um but the teachers have really been enjoying it. It gives them an opportunity to be an expert on certain subjects. Um, we have built in time for them to work together to collaborate not only with their partner teacher but with their Esau teachers and their special education teachers as well. We'd like to give them more time to do that. But we have done surveys and what teachers are saying is there are certain parts of it that were are working out well such as they can be experts at certain things. They do have more time. Our CLTs are smaller. Um and it's really making a difference in the assessment process as well. As I stated before, our MTS and and um kid talks are

091really working working well. Um we are meeting probably once or twice a week to go through as a committee and then we bring students up to kind of see where we are. And I'll tell a quick story. This is the first time I'm working in the district that I live in. So I'm in Food Lion. My mom and I are in the store and a parent comes up and she's like, "Oh, Miss Drake." And she says, "Never mind. I'm not going to talk to you about it." But she knew her student had gone through kid talks. And we sat and talked about it. And it was so refreshing that she knew because our teachers have stayed in contact with her what her student needed and how we were addressing those needs and it wasn't a

092secret and she trusts us with her student. So that process we're hoping will continue on. um the Kdaman benchmark me uh lessons um are giving our teachers something to sustain to um in literacy we're looking at uh our reading specialists have gone through TTAC with George Mason have gone through big words um and looking at the morphology of things and so what they've done instead of taking this one big intervention and giving it to five kids they're giving it to all of our teachers at CLTS so guess what we have kids and teachers doing. They're going through these very bite-sized pieces of literacy and the phonics and they're able to break it down a little bit. Benchmark is amazing um with having all the components, but with some of the numbers you saw before, we

093have kids that still need scaffolding. So, that's one way we can do that. Another thing we're very proud of is the data analysis of student work. Um, I don't know about you all, but sometimes we give a test and then we're like, "This child got a a 70. What does that mean? What did the students learn?" If my students are learning one thing, I can talk to my colleague and say, "Oh, your kids did really well on this." So, we're really looking at student work on a weekly basis. So, it's not just and we're talking to kids and goal setting with them as well. Um the grading piece I know as a district we're working on that. We had a huge um shift in our grading this year and it has um it's changed a

094little bit. What we were noticing was that the kids were getting graded more on participation and less on test and accountability. So we're trying to sit down with teachers to say what does this look like? How should we grade? Um and that's still a work in progress for us. Um, again, the walkthroughs in math have been amazing and we're excited about looking at language arts. The biggest piece to that is implementing um the lesson and unit internalization protocol and what I love about it is sometimes you go to a um a professional development and then you're like, "Oh, that was really neat." But you come back and you don't have anything to work with. This protocol is helping our teachers go through um and look at each unit, each lesson um and say how are

095we going to teach this? What's essential? What's a miscalculation or or something that misconception that we have? Um we're looking at data an data analysis and our teachers are implementing KDUm with integrity. One of the things that I really want us to continue working on is the pace. Um, as we are doing these walkthroughs, we we we don't just say, "Oh, that was great." We go through and say, "What are some things we need to improve on?" And pacing is one of the things we need to improve on. Um, for student and staff, um, we're looking at our rethink lessons. We use that, um, we use that for lots of things. Um, one of the things we're working on is our discipline and when kids are making mistakes and we expect kids to make mistakes,

096but what does that look like? So, if they're coming down and need um to talk about something that was a mistake, using the Rethink Ed lessons, all of our students are getting access to it as part of our a small block each week. But if students are making um mistakes, then we look at how we can do a Rethink Ed lesson with them. But it's not just, hey, watch this lesson. It's also let's talk about what that looks like for your life. Um we are also doing intentional counseling lessons. um every teacher says, "I don't have enough time. I need more planning time." So, one of the things that we've been able to do is to develop um counseling lessons that involve um puppet shows and they focus on attention. They focus on belonging, self-value,

097and while the kids are learning those intentional lessons, the teachers are getting time to have partner teacher planning time. So, in addition to their regular planning time, they're also getting this extra time for staff, excuse me, we have uh wellness Wednesday check-ins for our staff. So, it's just a Google form and it kind of talks about where you are, how you're feeling, what are you frustrated about, what are you happy about? Um, and it gives Miss Quinty and I an opportunity to go through. They can do uh an anonymous survey or they can put their name and say, "I need this support." The other thing we're doing is we're trying to get our students to have um to have voice. So, one of the newer things we're doing is our tech squad and we're also

098doing monthly cultural awareness things. So, that is it. Thank you. >> Thank you. Good evening, Chair Alexander and school board members. Happy school board association council month. We do appreciate you very much. Um, I'm Kelly Huntley, the proud principal of Manessa's Park Middle School. I'm not very good at this. The arrow. The arrow. The arrow works better. Thank you. Okay. So, our reading performance um when you look at this, we see that our other than eighth grade last year, um our performance was fairly stagnant, VLA is new to the middle school. So, we needed to make some serious changes to how we facilitated supportive for our students. And one is our pride block originally was one day a week. Now, it's every single day and it's 38 minutes every day. that needed to shift our

099other in um instructional blocks. So instead of being some of them were 87 minutes, some were 90 minutes. We brought consistency across the board, every one of our blocks is 80 minutes with 38 minutes of pride block. And during that time, our students are broken into three different categories depending on their need. So if our students are operating on a tier one level, they're receiving that tier one support and they have a choice board. And then our students that are in mid-level or severe or more intentional need, then they're they're getting the supports as well. One of the things that we did in our PL day this last Friday before Snow Creek happened, um we intentionally did professional development that supported Pride Block. Uh, one of the things that we're working towards at Manasses Park

100Middle is to look at more blended learning, station rotation, uh, math workshop, those types of, uh, learning frameworks for all content level. Whether you're an elective teacher or a science teacher or an ELA teacher across our school, we want the same framework for instruction. Um, so we made sure that our professional learning also is wrapped around that same type of framework for our teachers. So, we model what we expect to see in our classrooms. Um, and one of our breakout sessions was on Pride Block. So, we've started the first half of the year. We see this this moving along, but we're not seeing a small group. And that's where we're really going to see more movement for our students. And so, that's one of the things that we worked on in our um professional learning

101day was how do we do that? So we actually modeled that and had teachers participate in small group um based on whether they're in which group of learning they were in for their pride walk what they teach. Um we also in our pride block we can also provide additional supports for our gifted students and then our English language learners that are at the level one learning. So, we're really, it's not just BLA, we're also supporting um our gifted so we can shift those kids a little bit further and give them specific times every single day. Um, in addition during our pride block, we also do an SEAL um every Monday just to make sure that our kids get off on the right foot every week um with that support, but Tuesday through Friday, they do

102have pride block. Um, and we see think that's going to support our reading performance more. Um and I'll get into our what we're doing with our English language learner which is also supporting our um language ELA block as well. So with for our math performance uh we we too do not have a curriculum currently for math but we are in the process of looking at um evaluating we're looking at three different programs. They followed the Virginia SOS anywhere from 86 to 100%. Um so we have just started that process. we're very excited about. We've looked at two of the programs already kind of ventured into the third one. Um, but this is all all hands on deck. Every teacher or staff member that has anything to do with mathematics is invited to participate in this

103pro this process. Um, and I'm very pleased with the the the products that we have the opportunity to um utilize. Um currently another thing about our mathematics um I we see that sixth grade uh last year made great advancement but we were fairly stagnant algebra it's kind of hard to top 100% um but but we do need to do some things differently and that's one of the reasons why we're working through more of the the the math workshop um methodology and if you're not familiar with math workshop it is a specific um there's a little bit of flexibility in it but we start with a math talk or some kind of a hook when our kids come in. And then they have a specific amount of time for direct instruction, maybe 20 minutes, but then

104the bulk of their time is spent in a rotation where they are working with a teacher in a small group. They have some kind of technology um that has accountability with it, but then they're also working either independently or collaboratively with students that may include manipulatives. It may be a task. Um, but it gives our our students the opportunity to really get into those domains of uh L services where we they're reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Um, so and we talked earlier in our other uh presentations about that tier one instruction, but we also make sure need to make sure that we're providing that tier 2 instruction. So our pride block takes care of tier three. We have math tutoring after school two days a week all year long. That helps with that tier three.

105tier one is going happening. We're improving on that, but we need to make sure that we have that tier two as well. Um, and that's one of the things that we're doing. Another thing with our mathematics currently, our geometry students go to the high school. We're going to borrow them back next year. Uh, we have enough students that are currently in algebra that we have enough students that we can have geometry back in our building. We're very excited about that for next year. Um, additionally, we've worked really hard with uh, Miss Graph to create a pathway for our students for mathematics moving forward. So, our students have multiple pathways in order to advance in mathematics. So, if they get into a level and it's not quite yet, we have another avenue we can go so

106that we don't build on that math anxiety. We really support our students um, in moving forward with that. um our math and excuse me science and social studies uh we see moderate growth um we're working towards um one of the things that we're looking at with science is really because the eighth grade test is sixth seventh and eighth grade how do we make sure that our students know the information for that test but beyond. So making sure that our we're spiraling that information throughout the the years, not just sixth grade, sixth grade, and then seventh grade, seventh grade, but what parts of sixth grade are we seeing then in seventh grade? Um I was in a classroom actually this week where the hook that morning was what do you notice? What do you wonder? But

107it was all about sixth grade standards in a seventh grade classroom. So, our teachers are starting to spiral that information through to hopefully support that eighth grade um so when we get there. And um so with our our Esau students, you see that it says that we met our growth, but when we look um further at our data, you'll see that we got five points instead of 10. Um, so one of the things that we want to make sure that we're doing with our ESAU students is really providing the most minutes that we can in the the most languagerich environment. Previously, our students were pulled out into small groups and provided that support, but that's exclusion. We want to really push that into the classrooms. So, what we're doing is we're looking at a partnership

108with our ELA teachers and our Esau teachers where they're embedded in the classroom together. Um, I was in a classroom yesterday and it was an amazing teacher or a lesson by the Esau teacher. She did an excellent job and then the general education teacher rolled right into it. So the partnership that they are building and working with our students is absolutely amazing and I expect to see a great um increase in growth for our students. Writing and reading are our more difficult challenging points right now but this framework should support that because they're in that languagerich environment versus being pulled out. Um and writing is an expectation across the the the contents in all areas. Um our absentee rate, I think that's one of the things that um I am most proud of. Um it

109has improved systematically year after year. Um first quarter was 7.6% this year. Um I think that's one of the things that we are doing um exceptionally well at at the middle school is we have provided a very consistent structure and support for our students. So, I'm going to talk about that um in more depth in just a moment, but our students feel safe. Um middle school is it's middle school. Um and and that's why we love it. Um I I think there you need a special person to work in in preK um in preschool and in elementary school and in high school and in middle school. And middle school is is just middle school. Um, but we absolutely love our students and I think that's one thing that we're really showing our kids is that

110we we do love you. We're going to hold you accountable and we're going to provide those structures and supports for you to be successful, but we're going to love you through that. Um, and we've done so through being very visible, not only in the building and between class changes and in their classrooms, but also at their sporting events, at their oral troll competitions, at their chorus um, district uh, performances last weekend. We're there to support the kids and they're very excited to see us there. Um, some of our things in with our academics um, is also being supported with our athletics because we're holding them accountable. if you want to play, you have to perform academically. How can we get you there? So, I think their excitement to be able to be involved in our

111in our school culture and climate and activities is driving them to be a school and it's also driving them to do better academically. So, 79.6, that was hard. I'm a math person. We round up. Um, but the state does not. um unfortunately. Um so that that word off track bothers me a little bit. Um but when we look at that um I fully expect us to be at 80 or above next year. Um this is where I was talking with our English language learners. We got 50 50% of those possible points. I expect to see a greater percentage of that. Our um chronic absenteeism, we should be higher than that. we're we're really moving mountains and the more our kids are at school, the better they're going to perform at and in their academics as

112well. Um, we have all of our our points for advanced coursework, but that's not going to stop us. We're going to continue to move move forward with that and um and provide more opportunities for our kids. So, where we're going with our data to action is um we have really worked very hard to make sure that we have proactive supports for our kids. um not only schoolwide but for our students and then for our staff. And some of those ways that we've done that is um consistent structures and procedures. Our students and our staff know exactly what is expected um how we're going to support them getting there and if we're not meeting that mark, how do we support moving forward? Um there's a high administration dean leadership. Anyone who doesn't have a home room

113and even if you do have a home room, there's a high presence. Every adult staff member is expected to be out and present every class change. So if you're in a classroom, you're in your door way. If you are not in a classroom at the time, you are in the hallway at some point helping support that transition. Um if you drive by in the morning or the afternoon, you'll see a lot of staff outside. It's really cold. Um especially on those like sub negative it feels like negative10 sometimes out there in the morning but we're out there greeting our parents, greeting our kids. Um reminding them sometimes of their language when they get off the bus too early in the morning for that. Um but it's it's again it's that constant reminder that I do

114hear you. I do see you. Love you. Um but we want we want to make sure that we're moving forward in that positive direction. Um, we do have a weekly sto stakeholder communication. We send home a newsletter every single week and it is packed full of information about our school. So, we want to make sure that our parents are very informed about what we're doing, how we're doing it, how we can support, and if they have any questions that how to reach us to um connect on that. Um, I I talked about our pride block. We're very excited about that. Um, our students are doing an excellent job. Um, that's the only time in our building that you see all kids move at one time in all different directions. Kind of like that. Um, but

115it's it's interesting because you see sixth, seventh, and eighth. I mean, every single student is moving at the exact same time whereas all of our other transitions are kind of staggered and you only see one group of of students. Um, everybody go and they go in all different directions. Um, we utilize every viable space in that building, including every conference room and some spaces that are not as conventional because we need every space to make sure that every student is um supported. Every staff member is involved in Pride Block. Um, it's another thing that's our athletics. Uh, we did win our first football game in four years. We're very proud of that. Um, but we another thing is we have a huge turnout for our wrestling this year. We had so many students sign come

116out for girls basketball for the winter B session. We actually had to turn students away and that's the first time we've ever had to do that. And that broke our hearts because we we in the fall we were begging those students who didn't make the soccer team to please join the football team because we couldn't field the team. Um, but now we have so many students that are excited about it that we actually are are every every seat is filled. Um, and we're also seeing the excitement from our parents because they're they're involved. We're seeing students come back to school to watch their peers. So, we're starting to build that culture and climate of just excitement to be in our building and we're very excited about that. Um, our choir band arts participation is excellent.

117Um, we have some amazingly talented students in our building. Um, and another thing we've worked with is the Hilton Performing Arts Center. Um, Miss Kelso has been great about helping us get tickets that are free for our students to engage in cultural um, opportunities. Unfortunately, Snow Creek was not our friend and so it canceled one of our field trips where all of our sixth and seventh grade students would have gone at the same time. Transportation fun. Um, but again, Patty was going to make sure that that took care of us for us. Um, so all of our kids could go from sixth and seventh grade. Um, but that's not going to be able to happen thanks to this the weather, but later on this month, we do have 135 students going to the Hilton. So,

118we're excited that those opportunities um are available to our students. Weekly student supports that we have are similar to um MPE. We have weekly kid talks uh where we talk about our students by need by name. Um, these students are brought to the forefront by their teachers, actually by anybody. Anybody who sees a need, whether it be academic or behavior, we'll talk about that student and we talk about that in our team meetings so that every staff member that that touches that child has has a voice in that conversation. Um, then we look at um whether or not that needs to move up to the MTSS process. Our MTS process is amazing. Um, I've never worked in a school district or in a building where the MTSS process is as good as and solid as

119this one. Um, and that's uh thanks to the leadership of Dr. Marberry and U. Molly. It's just wonderful. So, we're doing that and one of the things I'm really excited about with that is that this data will follow students as they go through. So, when our students coming from MPE to the middle school, we don't have to start over. We have all that data right there available so we can move forward rather than trying to figure out. Same goes for the high school when they leave us then they'll go to the high school. So all that data is going to move along so we know what interventions have already been used and supported and what we need to do as next steps. Um we have weekly grade level meetings um and we one of the

120things that we worked on um in the past our school has needed staff to cover staff. We do not have that problem at all this year. Um, hats off to our HR department. They've worked very hard to make sure that we have plenty of substitutes and then we try to take very very good care of our substitutes that come into the middle school level because again, we're special and I say that in the most loving loving way. Um, but not everyone um is prepared to work with with middle school students and they just once you get in there and you and you figure out that they're they're absolutely amazing, they our st our substitutes don't want to leave. Um, but we don't have our staff subbing or covering classes for each other. We have plenty

121of coverage and we also don't have um concerns really about our our attendance for our staff. So, hats off to our staffs again. they they really do come to work to work with our kids. Um some of our supports that we're working with our kids um new this second semester is we have an academic workshop and that is for our students who may have more zeros in the grade book than what they should. Um and again that's teacher um recommended and then deans and and the administration we support those. So our math tutoring is Monday Wednesdays. Our academic workshop is Tuesday, Thursdays and those students who just need that two hours of set space and time to just focus on academics, we provide that for them. Um, and so we're receiving some really um, positive

122feedback from that so far. We're also continuing to help our students love their laptops um, because they do live with them for five years. So, they need to make sure that they take good care of them. So, we do hold our students um accountable for the way they treat school property and um making sure that we utilize our resources appropriately. Um we're also working closely with our high school. We want to make sure just like MPE is working with Cougar and we're working um from MPE to the middle school. We want to work with the high school. So, we worked together to develop an ontime to school on time to class support systems. Um and while what they do at the high school to support is looks a little differently because our students are different.

123One of ours is our um academic workshop. Um because if our students are missing academic time, then they are they need that time to to get reinvolved. Um again, that's that's sponsored by the deans and the administration. However, we have teachers who volunteer to come in and and support because that's their students and they want to make sure that their students are successful. Um we also have um with our teacher supports we're looking at a balanced approach to increase our teacher pedigogy and um through that we're doing scheduled common planning time. Um we've kind of differentiated our CLTs. We do meet twice a week as well but one is a PLC where they work with our content specialist from central office and the other one is where they work with their grade level content um

124team. And so we are very intentional about teacher planning. We preserve that because that's what our time teachers have time to actually get together and work on. Yes, they have a base plan in common curriculum, but that's the base. How are they going to take that and then differentiate it for their students? And yes, science has just taught that. So, you think you would roll that plan over, but your students aren't the same. They have different needs. So, how do we take that base plan and really differentiate it to make sure that we're meeting the needs of our students? Um so weekly we do meet in a PLC with our our um district level specialists to incorporate that evidence-based instructional practices focus on student engagement, mastery learning and the development of common formative assessments. Um

125in our weekly CLT meetings, they work with their colleagues to design instruction before, during, and after assessments. And then during our teacher planning, they have weekly grade level meetings, including those kid talks, weekly MTSS meetings, and required parent guardian communication. I'm big on communication with our parents. Um, and there is communication, and there's a conversation. So, yes, we can send an email, we can leave a a message, or we can send a text, but that's not communication. Communication goes two ways. Um, so that's one of the things that we're really focused on this year. Um, one of the things that we're doing across this the school we talked about a little bit before is that professional um, learning through a whole school book study doing balance with blended learning and then the math workshop. And

126some of our teachers are actually taking it the step further and they're doing um, a building thinking classroom which if you've ever seen that that is um, it's exciting way for our students to learn. It really puts the pen in their hand and that the the teacher really steps back and is just a facilitator of conversation. Those kids are doing all the work. Um, so for our chronic absenteeism rate, uh, we are doing perfect and near-perfect attendance awards. Ice cream goes far with middle school still. Um, and we also have structures and procedures to support our student safety. Um, our attendance meetings. We work very closely with our um, attendance officer and we do home visits. So, no middle schooler wants to see me in their front foyer, but there I am. Brush your teeth.

127Come on. So, we we we'll we'll go to every length to get our kids in school because that's where they're going to learn. Um, and again, we care about you and we care enough to come and and help you get to school. So, um, it is a it's a love support forum. Um, that they they do better after they see me there. Um, and then uh that secondary attendance for as well. And then as far as our um the advanced course work, we're going to increase the number of advanced math courses offerings for this coming year. And then we'll continue to work with um the high school and our district level to make sure that um there are multiple pathways. And we're excited to have geometry be in our building next year. So, thank you

128very much for your time and we appreciate all of your support. >> Thank you. Good evening. So, thank you uh for having us this evening and um just want to say I first of all I am very proud of our students for all their hard work um and our staff as well for the way they have supported our students. Um we have a lot of great highlights um but we also have those areas that need improvement as well that um we will continue to work on. Um, and I'd also say too that we have lofty goals as well uh as we move forward um that we're going to hold our students and and our staff to as well. So if you look at our reading um just a slight dip um from 78 um the

129previous year to 76%. Um the state average is around 74. So um we are right there. Um, a couple things that with our juniors, they do take their writing assess state assessment in the uh first part of their semester and then they'll do the reading. Um, as we work on our graduation plans for our seniors, we will eventually pivot them over to an alternative uh reading assessment uh to enable them to meet that graduation requirement as well. So, it could be slightly higher, but our our English teachers, especially English 11, they do have a really great um strong remediation plan for those students. If you look at our math performance, um algebra 1 is probably like the largest pot of students that we have. So whether that's firsttime takers of algebra 1 or those who

130haven't really been successful with math with math, they tend to be in our algebra 1. So that is a pretty high number um of students who test there. Um this past year, geometry, we had less than 40 testers um that were um in taking geometry. Um but our geometry teachers again have provided extensive remediation for those students. Um and then algebra 2 had really great numbers last year. So if you look at our overall math performance just as a math department, um we were at a 77% pass rate. Um and again, the state is at a 72% pass rate. So um our math department they do have strong remediation plans um targeted interventions that where they work with our students. If you look at our science biology in particular has been an area of focus.

131You can see um the dividends that paid off there. We do have a very strong core of biology teachers um that now this is their second year um teaching the content. So we expect really good things from them. Chemistry um sometimes is is a little bit of a hard one for us. we had 14 testers um that made up that percentage. Many times um those students if they're taking the chemistry so then somehow along the line they um did not pass biology or they did not pass earth science. So um chemistry can be a tough one for them. So that's why that number is a little bit low. And then with earth science um they made great strides there. We added a second earth science teacher or a teacher who could teach earth science. And

132I think just having that ability for two teachers to kind of plan together, look at assessments together, talk about data and have those academic conversations um also paid huge dividend for us. Um as you look at that increase that is there. We pivoted away from the um world history 1 so um and we went with some of our alternative assessment there um strong writing um portfolio for those students. So, we're excited about some of the growth that we're seeing there. Our teachers have begun to refine that process um and have been and especially our social studies teachers um are now moving that process into world history too and US history this year. So, um it'll be great to see those numbers um at the end of the year and how they've progressed. If you look

133at our English language, um our growth probably wasn't quite where we wanted it to be. We had a really strong in 2024. um the percentage of progress over time that you see um and so this is a focus for us. We have identified that speaking for our students is one of those domains that they our our students have kind of struggled with the most. One of our goals um we are doing a book study this year um on the seven steps for a languagerich classroom. So the whole faculty is working through that together. Um and so that we can see that across all of our disciplines. Um and it's been um it's been fun to watch our teachers embrace that. Um just this past faculty meeting as we work through it um teachers had to

134find an accountability partner um as they begin to implement these activities in their classroom and begin to do some peer observations with one another. chronic absenteeism. Um we've seen some increase there looking at the data already at the end of the first semester. We're making progress. Um I think kind of what Kelly spoke to of um creating environment at school that students want to be a part of whether that's athletics, whether that's activities or just knowing that faculty and staff care um is a huge part of um impacting our absenteeism rates. um when it comes to four-year graduation indicator. Um so there's always a little bit of a story with graduation. Um and I feel like one of I tell our faculty all the time that one of our superpowers is really helping students um

135get across the graduation line. So, um, if you look at, um, the percentage, if you look at the numbers of graduation, it's 86 around 86% or excuse me, that was a six-year. For a four-year graduation, it's around 82.75%. Um, the state has our cohort as 313 um, from this past year where we graduated 259. And so um the state identifies that cohort of any student who enrolled from 9th to 12th grade um if they needed to graduate within four years. So if we have students who transition out of the high school and they say that they're going to enroll in another school and they do not that counts as a dropout against us. So kind of going back to our superpower, we had um last year at the end of the school year we had

136262 seniors in the building. So there were three who did not graduate. So that's a 98% um graduation rate for those students that we were able to work with last year. Um as you look at the six-year cohort, so those students who um within six years were able to earn their graduation diploma. And again, if they are have special plans as well, then this is where we kind of regain them uh in our pass rate. So of the three that did not graduate last year, we already had one who completed all graduation requirements by November. Um and then we are definitely working with um one of those seniors from last year as well um who is call him a boomerang senior. So he he um there's things that pull him out of our our building

137and then out of our um city and then he comes back in. And so we will continue to work with those students as well. So if you look at our um 3E readiness framework, so enrollment, employment, and enlistment um you can see where uh we've had some success or what percentage of our students were able to um fulfill each one of these categories. Uh if you look at enrollment, um definitely the dual enrollment has helped us quite a bit uh with some of those percentages that are there. Um, it's a great way for our students to earn college credit as well as meet some of their high school requirements. Um, sometimes the motivation for some of our students to take the AP exam at the end of a AP class is not quite as strong

138and so that dual enrollment really helps them and is so easily transferable to NOVA or to other institutions that they're looking at. Um, we've had some great success as well with CTE, especially with our workbased learning. Um, if you look at the CTE and industry credential, um, we are having our students take as many industry credentials as they possibly can, um, not only is it something that, um, will show up in our 3E readiness framework, but also so that they have those certificates as they go into the job force or into their career, then that will help support them with those um, with those pursuits. And then if you look at the enlistment part, so it's the armed forces, that's the AFQT qualified test. Um, ASVAP would be a part of that. Um, and again,

139it's really about aptitude. It's not about military or um, having our students join the military, but it actually shows them kind of career paths or areas that they might have some success. Um, and so again, we're um, we're looking and expanding a testing as students are interested. Um I will say with a government shutdown that happened earlier this school year that impacted some of our testing dates. Um and then u we are working with them to uh to reschedule some of those dates for this year. So if you look at our overall school summary that we are accredited um if you look at our mastery category um we had great success in that area. um we are focusing on our readiness as well to um increase that percentage of points that we earn in in

140that category. And then if you see a little bit of a further um breakdown here, um I've kind of asked our staff to really think about 90% possible points in each one of those categories talking about a lofty goal. Um again you can see with our so scores and performance in reading math science um and our EL students as well that that um helped us significantly um for our overall score was in that mastery level um and then continue to work in the other areas that are there below. So some of our action to data. So uh already mentioned a couple of these. We're looking at expanding the the locally verified credit um just beyond world history one into world history 2 and also in our US history. Um coming up with plans to support

141our seniors. Again I feel like that that is something that we do very well. Um, we have kind of extended our summer testing into the first part of August uh and September as well to try to get more of our uh seniors as they enter in their senior year if they have any deficiencies uh with any of the testing that they need for um verified credits. Um we have started this year strong with senior class meetings um and having meetings with individuals uh seniors and their parents to make sure that we have a plan for them. Um we've been reworking some of those plans now that we've transitioned out of semester 1 into semester 2. Um so whether it's a credit or whether it's a test that a student needs to pass um to make

142them um more ready for graduation. This semester too uh in the first semester using our cougar cougar time for academic support for interventions. Um we've already issued almost 2,000 passes uh during semester 1 for students to receive some kind of academic help or academic support. Um so we'll continue to um to to track that for semester 2. But again, I think that's great testimony for our faculty um who realize that individual plans are needed for our students to meet them where they are. Um whether that's simply to pass a class or to pass the test that is needed. We continue to uh to work with our CLT teams on instructional planning and data analysis. Um and then as I mentioned, we're going through the seven steps to a languagerich interactive classroom uh for our EEL

143learners or just to support really student engagement in each one of our our departments. Um we do conduct our monthly SEAL meetings um when we do have some outside support that we bring in as well. And I will say um kind of talking about athletics not only just fitting and and helping for a sense of belonging and engagement uh we've utilized a little bit more in athletics and other activities of as these opportunities come up we want to make sure that our students are passing that they are in great academic shape. Um so it is sometimes a little bit of a hard sell because we want them interested in um in in sports, athletics or maybe other activities but we also want them to realize that uh academics comes first. So there's been a little

144bit of a culture shift with that. Um and as we have those conversations with students and parents, um they understand the need for that. So that is where the high school is and these are our action steps moving forward. And now this mammoth, >> as you've heard tonight, um each of our schools is responding to to their specific data based on the needs of their students in their school community. And I'd like to take take the opportunity to recognize and thank our principles, assistant principles, our teachers, and truly every member in each one of those school communities for the work that you're doing day in and day out for for our students. And at the division level, it's our it's our role to support these efforts with consistent and sustainable systems. And so as you

145look at some of our division data to action, you see we're focusing on strengthening tier one instruction through high-quality instructional materials and literacy and math supported through coaching, collaborative planning, and professional learning. Also working to strengthen how data is used through aligning our assessments, progress monitoring, and structured data discussions so that schools can identify student needs earlier and adjust instruction more effectively. All of this is connected through our K12 MTSS framework that really is integrating those academic and behavioral supports, ensuring that our students are receiving the right support at the right time. Um, so our goal is that all of these supports allow our schools to move from their data to action in a way that is intentional and sustainable so that all of our school all of our students and all of our schools

146have access to highquality instruction, timely support, and really clear pathways for growth and success. This time I'll turn it over to Miss Kelsey. >> Want to thank the the principles. Their passion, dedication is clear and and the thorough overview that they provided tonight as well as Miss Mammon and the instructional team. Um, everybody works together for the benefit of our students and families and the staff here. I do want to highlight as we close out two important developments that have recently occurred. Um, Manasses Park City Schools was awarded the comprehensive literacy state grant, CLSD grant. Um, this funding is over $300,000. We received the full amount that we requested. It's going to be used to provide summer training for secondary teachers on literacy development, how to work with struggling readers. Well, it will allow us

147to continue to partner with TNTP, which you heard throughout the presentation this evening. um but this time in the English English language arts and reading as well as the implementation of highquality instructional materials. It's one thing to get a curriculum, it's a whole another thing, and you heard this this evening to actually implement it. And it takes it takes quite a while. It's not just something that happens. It's year over year. It's the implementation of the the materials, the lesson planning, the assessments, and all the pieces that um go into that. So, it's really going to allow us to work with our teachers on that. And then in addition, purchasing intervention materials to support tier 2 and tier three interventions. And just last week, we were we found out that we were awarded over $400,000,

148the full request um that we made for the VDOE mathematics innovation grants. So, these grant funds will allow us to continue to work with TNTP for the KDUm implementation. Um, as well as the resource adoption of curriculum materials at the secondary level for math, grades 6 through 8, algebra, AFDA, and geometry into high schools. So, very exciting news. Um, we'll also be applying for the school improve improvement grant um which will be about 100 almost $100,000 for total for Cougar and MPE to continue to support um interventions and evidence-based interventions and supports for our students with disabilities. So, we're thankful for these opportunities. Um, want to thank everybody for their help and support um getting these grants together, submitting them, and taking advantage of that. So, want to thank you all for your attention this

149evening. I know it was a a long presentation, but worthwhile to see everything that that happened, all that goes into um student performance and achievement. There are so many moving parts, and we do appreciate your support. So, thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Keelso. All right. Uh before we get into board questions, I uh I made a mental note for next year, we will we'll try to break it so that we can kind of ask Q&A to each school. We don't have to bring you all back up at separate times, but >> for the next round. Um who would like to lead off? Anyone want I have some, but I'm gonna go ask you've been vigorously writing, so >> No, go ahead. >> All right. So, I just have a few notes. Um, first off,

150on the absenteeism note, I think ultimately like every school showed over a two-year span that their numbers were cut in half. So ultimately, like my even if you know last years weren't as good as this year's from the drop off, the still that the it's it's extremely impressive to see how well that message is being received and it obviously is reflected in how much shows how much work you guys and emphasis put on it. So hats off to all of you for that. Um the uh I'm telling the the out and present thing resonated. I really honestly that jumped out at me. I really really enjoyed hearing that because I I think it's been evident in the middle school, you know, that that that the teachers being there helps. They're middle schoolers. So like, you

151know, it's uh again it's um I really appreciated that. Um I did have a question. It's kind of high school, middle school related to what's the impact on the SOS as it relates to the middle schoolers taking like geometry now coming in back into the middle school. Does that do you see a correlation in the scores at all as it relates to because I know once they've taken it once, they don't take it again. Is that correct? So like do you see like you know I remembered years ago we ran into situations where we were like well a lot our our top kids are taking it at middle school and it was driving down high school scores. I was just curious is that kind of an something to plan for or see coming down the

152pipeline? Yes, you're we're um Miss Graph, Miss Mammon, the instructional team has worked with the administration on new mathematics pathways so that we capture that advanced um even starting in elementary school, what that looks like, what it looks like in middle school, combining some courses, um what it looks like in high school with what they're going to take. So there'll be very kind of specific tracks um depending on what students need and and what they're capable of doing because I think you can see in the school performance support framework there are a lot of opportunities to capture advanced coursework points in mathematics. Um you're going to see history and potentially science being pushed down high school courses to the middle school level. Um at least statewide they there's some discussion about that. So, right now

153it's math. Um, but you're going to see a little bit more of that going into into eighth grade as well. So, back to the math, I think being able to have these different pathways will be will be good to look at as we go forward with adding any advanced coursework at the middle school. And we're just going to have we will need to support at the high school um through remediation and scheduling and whatever it takes to make sure that students are able to um continue to perform on the SOS that they take at the high school level. >> Okay. Awesome. Um, and the only other comment, thank you. I know I'd sent some questions in in advance, so I kind of appreciated just hitting them beforehand, so I don't have to ask him that,

154but All right. So, >> thank you, >> Jen. You want to go? >> I just have one question. It has to do with the high school. Um the elementary schools did a great job explaining you know the the vowels test and um you know catching some of these um um reading and you know reading and writing issues early but the students at the middle school and the high school level never went through that. So, for those that are potentially in um not ESOL learners, but just, you know, in in regular classes at the high school or or in eighth grade, how are we going how have we thought about trying to catch those reading issues, you know, as early as possible before they get to that 11th grade so and then they obviously, you know,

155don't don't do well on that. How how um how are we thinking about kind of trying to catch those as early as possible? I think the um whole MTSS process that's really um grown at the middle school this year the um bringing in the pride block we're able and in veils the v Virginia literacy act moving up into the middle school is allowing us to identify students student by student um whether it's through the kid talks or through testing we're able to really get with them and spend that time and and I would say the pride block's been a huge asset to having um small groups of students really connecting with an an adult. Not only is that good socially for middle schoolers and supportive um but academically it allows people to really follow our

156intervention. The the intervention materials are very scripted. Um so they're getting very direct direct instruction during that time. And if that's happening every day, you know, you're getting almost two hours a week of that. So going into high school, um we actually had our quarter two data. We've had a lot of data today. We had our quarter 2 data discussions at the middle school and the high school where um the instructional team comes together with the school administration and we follow protocol and uh we're looking at a lot of data um specifically for literacy. We're looking at some of the growth measures um to to identify progress as well as on students um quarter exams, formative exams. Um we're getting to see specifically how they're doing and where their strengths and weaknesses are. So we

157did have a good discussion at the high school level. Um you know really making sure that even seniors what how are they performing? What's their Lexile level? Um are they ready to finish high school and and go out into the real world. So we want to make sure that everyone's as prepared as possible for that. >> Perfect. Thank you. >> I just wanted to say I didn't have any questions but I just wanted to say uh thank you for the presentations. I heard some really great instructional shifts. Um, I heard building thinking classrooms, uh, project based learning, seven steps, kid talk, MTSS, which is great that we're catching those, uh, students both academically and behaviorally, high quality instructional materials, interventions, and uh, enrichments and remediation. Um, I just want to say it's clear as a

158leader to a leader um, that you guys are focused on students and creating a uh, caring climate and culture. Um, sorry, I'm running on low caffeine, so I had to write it down. I forget it. Um, obviously there are areas that we have to improve across the school district. Um, but you guys are very clear on what those are, which is great to hear and I really really appreciated uh hearing your thoughtout plans and I look forward to seeing the improvements in the next cycle. So, thank you just for all of your hard work. It was very evident in all of your presentations. Um, I know you didn't name students by name, but I I could tell that you could name those students, you could name those needs. So, thank you very much. >> Thank

159you. >> Okay. Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right. So, um, moving on to upcoming meetings. We have a regular school board meeting Monday, February 23rd at 6 PM city hall. Um, and we have a work session March 9th, city hall on 6 pm on the third floor in conference room upstairs. Uh, seeing we have no students here, I'll assume we do not have student representative report. Um, any board member comments? I just wanted to say thank you again to the principles and assistant principles. Happy administrator week. I know it's late, but thank you for all the hard work that you do. Um, we don't get overtime, so thank you for all the hard work that you do. We don't >> I know they got to come back early tomorrow morning. >> I

160know. >> I have two quick comments. Uh, one, thank you to all the effort for everyone on the grants. I know that it's a lot of extra work. uh and we have reached out to Dr. Saunders to look at the feasibility of potentially trying to you know weigh grant writing on staff positions whether some way shape or form just to explore the options. So that's uh one thing. Thank you. And then also this um this is just I want to thank everyone for the all the work that went into during the snow week and the planning of the snow week and the um the the meetings and the calls and the city help uh transportation specifically. I know there were a lot of work went into, you know, driving through the city, checking bus stops,

161seeing roads were clear, providing that information to the transportation, uh Calvin Odell's team specifically, uh they were out responding to all of our respon all of our, you know, we dropped off maps of these are the places we hit and they hit them. So, I just I it goes, you know, a lot of people don't realize the amount of effort that went into it and the amount of planning that went into it. I just really wanted to give a shout out to the city as well as to staff here with all of the work that went into it. So, >> can we say special shout out to facilities for all the cleanup, the snow removal? >> Absolutely. Absolutely. >> For sure. >> So, anyway, um if that is the case, uh can I get a

162I know no one else has anymore. Can I get a motion and comment or motion and second for adjournment? >> Motion to adjurnn. >> Second. >> Motion second. All in favor? >> I All right. is journ. Thank you all. >> Thank you.