001Good evening, uh, Superintendent Mary Fox Alter, members of the board, colleagues, distinguished student guest, well, Owen. Um, I hope in this evening's presentation, you can kind of see the pathway of the work that has gone into a comprehensive counseling program that kind of gears towards transition, right? not folks working in silos, not folks working at their buildings, but how are we passing along our students in support of their college and career readiness and it all starts at the um elementary level. So I can highlight that at Claremont school uh we have hired a counselor and just last year she started but already took the first step in providing our students with a career assessment. Now this career assessment aligns with John Holland's realic theory. Essentially what we're looking at for our students is is trying
002to identify what are their strengths in terms of careers as well as academic strengths. So it's a age appropriate, grade appropriate assessment that is given to students in a fun way, but yet we're collecting data that supports that if a student is interested in the arts, if they're investigative, if they're scientific, right, and exploring that with the student at that age level, right? And then that information is then passed on to Britney Walsh at the Roosevelt School who is already conducting resume building, right? developing students objectives, their goals, what do they've done, are they, you know, taking care of younger students and incorporating that into uh action verb language to develop their resumes. Now, with that said, one thing that Britney has also done and um has, this is, I believe, her second year in
003doing so is taking students on a college tour. And it's not just a group of students. She's taking every single student at Roosevelt School to Mercy College to explore the college. So they've seen academic programs, they've met with professors, they've seen athletic facilities, they've walked around campus, and oftentimes our students favorite part of the tour is the cafeteria. So they get to see the cool food and the cool like I would say the things that come with being a college student, but also they see the programs available through these courses. And for some of these students, right, we're talking about firstgen students. And one of my goals I had mentioned when I'm actually a senior, two senior, it's my fourth year uh here at Owen. But one of my goals I had mentioned early on
004the onset was ensuring that our students are getting exposure to multiple opportunities that they're stepping foot on a college campus and I talked about my own experience. I hadn't stepped onto a college campus that I started doing tours when I was a junior in high school as I was being recruited and it was very overwhelming at that point in time. Nobody could truly help me. I didn't know who would answer my questions. Um and at that point in time like again I was a firstgen student myself. So, these students are now having comp uh again conversations with their school counselors at at a young age. We're talking about third, fourth, and fifth grade discussing college and career opportunities. And then our students transition to AMD where we've established and again the cornerstone of our New
005York Gear Up program as well as our PEK program. Our PEK program is in its second cohort overseen by Dr. Melanie E uh Roman. and our NY gear up which again continues to grow and our students continue to become aware of is in its third uh full year. So I will say that I participated in a leadership retreat to Wells College with seven amazing students and what that did for our students right it's not only exposure to college but leadership traits as well as how to engage in difficult conversations for young students. Now every year that's the focal point of Gear Up students want to go on that trip. So throughout the year we hold workshops, we hold um career exposures and in part of with our partnership with the department of labor bringing these
006experiences virtually. So having virtual reality headsets that can really put our students at the forefront of the work whether it's working on a highway on a highwire line or working in a medical um hospital as a nurse, they get to see hands-on what that experience looks like. So in addition to that we had a number of students participate in programs um in this past year. Oh and you mentioned mentorship. So New York Gear Up along with the New York mentorship program provided mentorship for 45 students. Now how did we identify these students? These were students that were potentially at risk of attendance and failing courses. These 45 students came to program with Miss Renee Francis, our attendance teacher, every week to experience workshops and also be mentored by upper grade students on some of the
007challenges they may face throughout high school. So that's one of the mentorship opportunities we got through NY gear up. In addition, I would say 300 plus students were exposed to CTE experiences last year and every single student in the 10th grade cohort currently has visited a college campus. In addition to that, with our PEK cohort, again, we're seeing more focal points in um paramedics, cyber security, health information technologies, and computer information systems where our students are participating in summer program exploring these career fields where they'll have six years to not only obtain an associates degree and a high school diploma, but a potential certification in the job, right? And it's the students choice at that point to either further their degree with a bachelor's or to go into the workforce. So, right now, we have
008two cohorts. And another beauty about this um particular um I would say um opportunity is 60 68% of our students in the first cohort are firstgen students and 60% of our current cohort the second cohort are also first generation students making significant impact for those young folks. So now when we talk about college and career, um two years ago I had the opportunity to work with uh a teacher that was coordinating an AVID program here and she invited me into her classroom to conduct a Naviance career assessment, self- assessment and career cluster surveys. Now essentially these surveys are about 15 to 20 minutes and at the end of it similar to what our students are doing at the third and fourth grade level, John Holland's realic theory they get like an outlook and they get
009to identify careers. Now, the cool thing about Naviance is it automatically starts to identify the career fields in their Naviance portal. So, students, the 44 students that took part in this process as a pilot program early on were able to see that if they were artistic, the multiple fields that they could go into with their art arts um with their arts experience, right? If they were scientific, the multiple engineering fields or architecture fields if they were, you know, into um investigative work, right? So we looked across the multiple career paths, clicked on the career fields and they started to heart. Our students love hearting. It's a social media way of them liking things. So they can also do that on aviance. And in doing so, they created a career profile for themselves. So with those
01044, myself and the counseling team here, I just met with them actually this Monday to distinguish how do we now push this out grade 6 through8, right? Like it it had such a significant impact on those 44 students that we want to do it across all grade levels here at AMD. So, in meeting with Antonio Godinho and the folks here, we're going to push into AVID classes. We're going to start in small pockets with groups, but then we're going to expand it to the entire sections of the AVID courses so that students are conducting personal interest profiles, career profiles, career cluster profiles, and then aligning possible careers all with the goal to succeed in the classroom. Right? So, that's the goal is and with the next slide, we can see the importance of identifying careers.
011Studies show that if I have a goal and if I set a goal as a young teenager and I have this goal set on my mind, I can potentially I work harder in the classroom. Right? So, we want our students to take more rigorous coursework and to challenge themselves, right? We don't want them to just to get to their junior year of high school and say, "Oh, you know, I'm going to opt for the um the quote unquote easier math course, right? We want them to take computer science." We want them to take statistics. We want them to take lifechanging uh courses. And it all starts honestly at AMD. And one thing I looked at was the pathway to success for our students when they do take algebra here at AMD. And how Dr. Novver,
012myself, the school counseling team, and the math department here looked at multiple ways to include a variety of students in this pathwork. Now, it started off again, it's not just saying, okay, we're going to open up every single section of algebra, right? That is a culture shock for a student. What we did was just small trans trans um transitions. So again, starting with 49 students and then slowly getting up to the point where this year we have 114 total students in the algebra course. Right now, what does that do at the high school level? I'm going to show you in a few minutes, but I want to kind of highlight the importance of the courses here because 100% of our students have not only passed the class, but they've passed the regions to earn a
013credit towards their high school diploma. Now, how does that impact growth at the high school? We all know that algebra can be a cornerstone of foundational math towards other again even if it's just in the STEM base but also in other areas when you talk about critical thinking math is important and I tell that to students all the time. So what we've done is we've seen the opportunity of our students taking algebra and the exposure to college level and secondary courses by 10th grade right whether it's AP world or whether it's Sunni college algebra advance our students are taking these courses earlier on further exploring them on their junior year to take elective courses courses in super forensics courses in Sunni race like again the opportunity to potentially leave high school with 30 plus credits
014is saving our students significant amount of money, but at the same time, we've opened a lot of sections. So much so that since 22 23 to now, we have 30 331 additional seats in our upper level courses. And when you look at those courses, we actually have two courses that are designated for ICT students. Okay? So, when we look specifically at science, we've added 52 seats, math, we've added 63 seats, ELA 40, social studies 99, and world language 79. Now the importance of social studies and world languages. You might have seen an uptick in our seal of civic readiness and our seal of biiteracy. We can now attribute that to our students taking higher level courses and having access to that. When Mr. Prince reaches out to me who's the uh curriculum coordinator and says
015hey I have all these students in AP US history that are eligible now for seal of civic readiness. That's an opportunity for our students to get a seal that again supports them. And in a later slide you'll see in the future the portrait of a graduate how significant that will be for our students. Now when I also came here, I took a a huge note into the equity of our classes and who's taking them, who's sitting in them. And I think I had mentioned in a early board meeting that this is something I wanted to kind of further look at. And we did look at it. We looked at prerequisites. We looked at alternative ways for students to be referred to a program. Working with the math department to ensure that they develop a Excel
016sheet to provide to counselors and saying like, I ensure that the student will exceed at this course. So all of the work that went into ensuring that our student and our upper level courses also reflect our community. And what I can say to that is is what we're seeing is though that our community is 8% black or um 60% I mean 70% Hispanic right to that notion we're seeing growth in both areas and significant growth. I can also say for our science research program that was also a need and inquiry for some of our families is like hey like is there opportunity for my student to get into this program and we've seen demographical growth in that area as well. Now what does it all come down to? Now every year I am ch I
017am challenged as the director of school counseling to develop a school profile of our previous senior class that I have to then get to naviance that all colleges have access to. Um so in fact of the 16 college and careers that have visited us um the past I would say 13 days at the high school a majority of them had already come up to me and said hey you know uh is the career profile is the the class profile up there yet for last year I said not just yet because we're still waiting for some students to enroll into some two-year courses and I want to get it as accurate as possible but nonetheless we've seen growth. So in the class profile of 2022 we had 75% of our students going to college in the
018class profile of 2023 we saw 76% and as recent and New York state um so the reason why there's a a differentiation between the class profile and then you have this beautiful graph is nice finally provides a report card for postsecary data so you can actually visit the NICE site to get a breakdown of you know our post-secary data. So for 2324 we've saw 81% of our students going to four and two-year colleges. Okay. Now with that said there's a lot that goes into this work. Our college and career fair which has 70 plus colleges visit. What we've also expanded in the small gym is we've kind of taken our Sunni colleges and placed them in the large gym to have a college fair there and then a massive career fair in the small gym
019where we've included Boseies where we've included the police department, fire department, HVAC as well as our partners with the department of labor. So again, the virtual reality piece, our students were engaging in that learning last year in the big gym. Now they're going to have a whole section of the small gym with more VR headsets to explore those endless possibilities. We have the military. So within the past 13 days as well, we've had 16 colleges and careers from the UN University Universal Technical Institute to Brown and the military visit our students right in room 110. So all of those exposures help when making this executive decision around post-secondary enrollment. The next slide highlights our um what I would consider a very strong relationship with Boseies. Uh we we have developed multiple multiple programs to inform
020our community about the Boseis tech programs that exist. Um we have about a 100 plus students in the spring participate in Bosei tech tours. They go to BOSI awareness nights. We have a Boseis night now that started last year um where we inform our families of what Bosei is and how to how the application process is and we do one in Spanish and in English for our families. So in 2024 we had 159 students attend. 2025 143 students attend and currently 107 I believe. I think I did hear a student come off the wait list today but I'll get that information tomorrow. Now I know that the numbers look as though they're trickling down but to be quite frank is doing everything in their nature to provide our students with the support. What's happening at
021Boseies unfortunately is they're experiencing the impact of teacher shortage and they're also confined with their space as well. There's growing need of the program at multiple different districts. So they're trying to do their best in servicing all districts in you know Putinham Valley and northern Westchester. Um so that's it's not that our students aren't getting in or applying. It's a space issue similar to what we're facing here at Austin. Now with that said when we think about pathways I want to highlight. So there's the 4 plus one. You need a math, a science, an English, a social studies assessment at the high school which are still labeled as the regents and the plus one. Now, what Boseis does for those 106 students is it provides an opportunity as a plus one through their work-based learning
022hours as well as um their career readiness profiles and then again they have uh an employability profile that they fill out that that then kind of substitutes and adds on for the plus one for those students. So, if they successfully pass algebra, earth science, global, right, and English, they can utilize that C do profile as a plus one. Now I will say over 80 plus% of our students earn their plus one either through US history or living environment. We have seen success of our students using the CAS credential and Mary can attest to that cuz she has to sign off on the mo uh often to provide a student opportunity to earn a local or regions diploma. Okay. So that was that's been something that we've utilized for our students as well. Now talking about
023how this transitions to the future. Now, I know that the state is coming out with the graduate of uh uh learner and I think we are already aligned with our portrait of a learner work that we've done and instilled in this district for years now. The one thing I say and will be a benefit for our students is the work that they do outside of just the core content areas. Now, what does that mean? We have courses like skip, we have our Sunni classes and most importantly our Bosei students that leave campus for four periods a day and oftentimes when they come back they have to take the part in government economics. They have to take a gym. Now they can kind of look at utilizing that Boseis experience and kind of alternating that and
024counting that as a math, counting that as a science so that they can open up their uh schedules to take college level courses or elective courses of their interest. So that's what the gra uh portrait of a graduate will possibly uh well I shouldn't say possibly will afford our students is the opportunities right outside of the classroom that will support them. And that is it. So, thank you for your time.