001so that's going to take us to our presentation so a couple of things uh as we've said here in this space before we continue in a deep state of reflection about who we are and who we want to be as we move forward I've made statements over the last several board meetings uh in a few months about our work around equity and racism and talking with our team we felt it was important that the board also hear from our incredible leadership team our building leaders uh not just as uh the superintendent speaking but as a collective so please understand the presentation you're going to see tonight it is not all-encompassing of everything that we're doing we cannot do that the evening is uh it's it it's not possible we have been committed to sharing some
002very surface level things that we're doing in this Arena we have committed to spending about three to five minutes per Department uh level of buildings that's not a lot of time to to get into it all but we felt it was important for us to share what we're doing as a collective I am incredibly thankful for this team uh it is not easy to manage the job without prepping for an important board presentation on top of all the other things so I'm really appreciative it is not typical for our team to stand in front of the Board of Education in our community to share all the amazing things that we're doing um and I really appreciate the work that we were able to press pause and do some of this and lots of great collaborative
003conversations I'm also thankful for the board and our community for supporting this work and allowing us to have this opportunity to discuss and share some of the work that's happening I'm going to ask the board that we press pause on asking questions till the end we've got a slide at the end for questions uh jot down any questions you've got and we're happy to maybe take some of those questions at the end I have uh committed the team we're going to stick to our script we are committed to doing that so before I introduce Marcellus before we begin it is important to note that when we talk about racism we do so not as a blanket term historically we've often focused heavily on the interpersonal aspect of racism which is the prejudgment the bias or
004discrimination from individuals to another to cause harm however to make progress we must ensure that we don't just focus our response to the interpersonal racism but also to the institutional racisms that it can occur in which policies practices procedures and the culture of an institution or system can cause harm so it's our hope in tonight's presentation that we are able to share insight into our systemic approach across the district to address these issues Mr Braxton is going to start us off this evening with uh by distinguishing what we mean when we discuss diversity equity and inclusion and how we've used the equity plan to create systemic and structural change some of this will sound like a review and that's good that means you're hearing this information uh before just this evening following that our members
005of our team will walk directly or will speak directly to some of the things that we're doing that is Guided by work within the equity plan which combats and addresses racism systemically this work allows us to build on the notion of anti-racism a principle that our board a principle that our board of education has made clear through statements action and policies which we really appreciate as you know we've talked a lot about this tonight that our policy work does not happen overnight a lot of our conversations around this work and improvements and enhancements and reviews take place in our superintendent's policy committee that is attended as a standing group that is Joanne Victoria Marcellus and myself and we oftentimes bring in other department leads when it fits for that moment so as you've seen before
006changes to policies have occurred in this area with more to come and we appreciate our board reps and Marcellus for joining us the network Marcellus thanks yeah hi everyone um so I'm committed to staying you know in that five minute break so let's see if I can do that and so what I wanted to say is I think all this work starts with the Board of Education and so when we look at what the board of education has talked about we've we've talked about anti-racism in particular and that's really important so I want to take a few minutes just to talk about the systemic approach we're taking which the systemic work that we do in this District would not be possible without all the people behind me and the people who are not present there
007but also when we think about anti-racism you need a strong Board of Education that is going to say this is our priority and so what we we thought was really important was distinguish that work we are doing diversity inclusion representation work but also we aim to do equity and anti-racism work as well and so when we talk about diversity we're talking about the collective collectively diversity happens and inclusion means to be included in the structure and then we often hear the word representation are we represented in what spaces are we represented and that means having a certain Identity or Viewpoint or characteristic that can be seen and ready to contribute and so we want to make that distinction because we are doing that work but we also want to know that those methods focus on
008those who have been harmed in the Pressed that is important but also there's a distinction between equity and anti-racism as well because there's that and there's also the fairness and Justice that goes along with that and what anti-racism means and has been outlined by the Board of Education means that acknowledging identifying eliminating racism by disrupting and transforming through systems structures and policies that's why I'm really glad Dr Fine talked about the work that the board of education is doing in the policy committee for instance that speaks to equity in particular and also by doing this work so just to know oh well no I've already messed up so we're talking about those who have been harmed or oppressed or marginalized or under resourced but also what we're doing is we're examining power structures at harm
009in our in how they're put into place by those who do the oppressing and so I always want to make sure we're giving credit to our staff members because they're doing both they're thinking about diversity inclusion representation but also they're thinking about equity and anti-racism and so I want to talk about the equity plan because all of this is in support of the work that the people behind me and those who are not present are doing and so the question that keeps coming up and we answered it earlier this week is what are you doing with the equity plan for systemic change and so I wanted to give just a brief outline what that looks like the first way to do that is to say well it's a problem right because there's a problem that
010needs to be addressed we pass an equity Equity policy and now we have an equity plan and so the problem that we fundamentally have and not just us throughout K-12 throughout the country they say how do you determine whether there is an issue in equity and then what do you do about it and so I wanted to just go over some ways in which we're starting to implement this Equity plan the first thing is our methods of communication so we have got remark after remarks saying there's something that seems a little bit different about the communication that you're doing now that is directly related to the equity plan because the equity plan operates essentially like a checklist and so when we think about how are we going to communicate to the public how we're going
011to communicate to the students the staff and each other we use that as a guide also if you go to our website you see another way of communication we now have an equity reporting tool through that plan we were able to discover there is a gap so we have our stay safe reporting which is being used but we also heard from our community that says we need another reporting tool we need another way to really think about equity and so what happens is now we have that people on our website we have people who are saying I'm going to use that tool and then what happens is whenever we get something it goes to our Central admin and also our building admin and we start implementing the plan based on that we're also doing a
012lot of work people always ask about curriculum and they say how can you actually Implement Equity within the curriculum when you have state standards and the answer is you can you absolutely can do that so we are working and we're going to talk about it more credit to those behind me we're doing right now K through 12. so we are doing this curriculum review process and it's not just the diversity inclusion and representation and that's why I talked about it representation is saying do you have books that have representation in them that's really important but there's also this component of saying when you think about your curriculum within the state standards are you thinking about equity and so we're undergoing that process as well and so I have some of the questions I wanted to
013just share so when we meet with with our staff members whether that is kindergarten to 12th grade we say let's look at your state standards let's look at what you're doing and let's think about some of the questions you're asking and think about how that looks with Equity so some of the questions we might say is is this a good thing for whom who is harmed what's whose story was told and who is the Storyteller what story is missing or de-emphasized what role does power structure and control play who has this impacted how's it influenced today was the role of bias and how are we examining this so as you see we now have state standards that we're adhering to but we have a different way of making sure that we're adhering to those state
014standards that is based on equity and Basin anti-racism in particular that was just briefly some of the questions that we even think about for that process so now you have people coming to the table saying we're not just talking about representation we're talking about how every single component of every single thing that we teach is guided inequity um just a few other things that we're going to talk about Dr Williams you know I was going to talk about this more elegantly than I could but it the equity plans also allow us to look at Food security it's really important because we look at the hierarchy of needs we have to make sure basic needs whether we're talking about physical mental health Etc but one thing that I am really proud of is that this Equity
015plan has helped us whenever we have a student staff or Community initiated issue and concern so if something goes to Dr fine for instance it's not just okay we have to address this it's let's look at what we have in the plan and let's go through the checklist to make sure all these things have been done in a uniform way to make sure that we have not we have no gaps and that we're addressing those gaps and we're also in doing this we're thinking about how things been done in the past how should they be done and then how are we going to think about this three to five years from now and this has been really helpful with some of the work that we're going to talk about the folks behind me and then
016finally the Strategic plan implementation the Strategic plan and Equity plan work in tandem in particular and so when we have more robust conversations about the Strategic plan you're going to see they're going to be words that say review create and audit the equity plan is allowing us to say when it says review we now have a mechanism for review when it says create we have a mechanism for that when it says audit audit is that word that people hate to hear because they're like what does that really mean but now we have a plan to say oh you want us to audit the curriculum well now our plan is in place to allow us to do that and so each building and department is using that I also want to talk about this term proactive
017that's really important too because people say oh let's not be reactive let's be proactive and so this also allows to be proactive in multiple ways and so oftentimes people think about the first you should be proactive to prevent or disrupt but also one thing that we noted is that you cannot prevent and disrupt everything so there's another way of being practiced and that's being proactive and being prepared to respond to conflict that's why some of the other things I talk about was communication are so important you want to prevent things from happening but if they do happen are you prepared to address that in the correct way and then finally some really Collective District work so our climate committee I want to give a big shout out to them I hope some of them are
018watching is we have from where we were last year to where we are this year the work that we've done in restorative practice has really been impactful we are now at the point where a year a year ago we weren't sure that everyone in the district even understood what restorative practice were some people did some people didn't now we have that understanding and now we're thinking about what does that look like to implement in the classroom and outside the classroom and that's really important because you're going to hear people behind me talk about culture and community in particular and so we're guiding that work to say how do you create a community in which you're disrupting the or disrupting the things you don't want to see and you can respond to conflict and we're doing
019some external work too with some ex some external folks as well so we know that we can't just operate in silos so with the comment committee we're also thinking about what does it look like to have these Community conversations and healing Etc so I'm running out of time but I also wanted to say when we talked about checklist this is what I need this checklist so if any single person in the district and we do this whether it's a student staff administrator they say I think we have an issue of equity and this is happening throughout our district and you're going to hear some about it the first thing we say is what needs to happen now and what needs to happen later long term who should be involved this Collective work we work as
020a collective and also what does it mean to be involved and when should they be involved and what does communication look like and then this has also helped us think about what specific facts and data and outcomes do we really need it's not just a matter of we think it's working it's What specifically do we need and these last two sides are just talking about our approach but I think they're really important just for folks here and Folks at home to really see that we have this approach not just for an individual issue but also when we're thinking about a systemic way systemic way because in order for us to continue making progress as a district we always have to think systemically we can't say we're solving a problem today and that probably only exists
021today it's we're trying to solve a problem today but we're also thinking about what needs to happen a year from now three years from now or five years from now to create the culture that we want and so you're going to hear more about that from the folks that were going to follow me now but this work has helped inform the culture that we're trying to create and also helping us recognize where we have come up short and how we don't want to do that anymore and so now I actually want to turn it over to Dr Harley Williams who's going to tell you some more specific things and so better than I could and from an operations perspective we looked at what we've done the last couple months but it's kind of our task
022and our operations Department around we were asked that what we do in our department around Equity inclusion what steps we've taken what are some new initiatives and things like that so I'm uh happy to share with you uh what what we've accomplished I say in the last couple months so the operation department is made up of food service custodial maintenance Athletics and theater are the areas that I oversee and leaders in each department chose the book what if short stories to spark inclusion of diversity dialogue by Stephen Robbins as a in the book study for our department this year uh that's one thing I'll start off with the next slide please and 12. so our facilities um a couple things that we've created this year and sometimes as Marcellus talked about sometimes we react and
023sometimes we try to do proactively and one of the things that we we're looking at this year is how do we help people that are immobile get out of the building in a time of a crisis and so we created uh looking at Best Practices and created an evacuation guidelines for mobility issues for those with mobility issues and I think it's important to know that we you know our old buildings with the ADA requirements are kind of set when the building is built but what we try to do is communicate with the special needs department and find out students that have maybe accessibility needs that we can accomplish and through renovation or something in the summer kind of small chunks that way um I think those are those are important things from the facility side
024next slide please uh in January 2023 we offered universal access to breakfast for our students for many student-centered reasons these lunches are being paved by es or dollars and we are hoping to budget These funds next year when Esser expires which is about 130k before the program started we were averaging 107 students throughout the district eating breakfast each day and now we're averaging 350. so students eating breakfast each day and we all know how important it is for a healthy meal to start the day so that's that's kind of exciting data for us next slide please in athletics on March 8th uh Ada Goldberg organized a webinar for our coaches title Sports can battle racism the webinar was sponsored by the positive coaching Alliance and the goal of this training is develop solutions that work
025to battle racism within the environment of sports we've created a document for our athletic coaches to us another side a topic here is our gender diverse inclusive inclusivity guidance so we created a document for our coaches to assist them in supporting our transgender student athletes and again doing research through other best practices and um putting that in the hands of coaches as a proactive measure one thing we picked up at a conference too that we were going to put in our coaches handbook is how we protect players you hear a lot of times our our players when they travel other places we'll hear offensive and derogatory slurs and so um we were and one of the things we heard in the battle for racism uh webinars like that's that's a good idea because I mean
026if you coach long enough you figure these things out but not all of our coaches have had years of experience so they're sometimes are 23 24 year old people so we're going to add language to our coaches handbook and this language you'll read anytime players or coaches experience derogatory or offensive comments racist anti-semitic sexist homophobic slurs or behaviors immediate action will be taken to keep students safe Bexley coaches will call a timeout and speak with appropriate coaches officials and referees about questionable behavior and they'll asset the Ohio High School Athletic Association rules be adhered to if the offending Behavior persists Bexley student athletes and coaches have two options one is leave the playing facility report to a safe space and wait for buses to leave the sporting event or two report to a safe space
027and have discussions with athletic directors and officials determine if the sporting event can continue next slide please and it's in our theater Department going forward we'll change and improve the process of selecting shows to perform while we continue to work on these improvements we know that they will include making decisions on what shows will be produced during the summer before each school year ensuring we take time for careful selection guaranteeing the students are part of that show selection process and finally agreeing to a new criteria for reviewing the shows under consideration at this time I'll turn the podium over to the director of human relations and Melissa classroom and Lando good evening everyone and thank you for this opportunity tonight for us to share with you as well as our community that might be listening
028appreciate your time uh like Dr Williams said my name is Melissa Klosterman Lando director of employee relations also HR enrollment licensure Title IX residency a couple other things our approach to equity specifically in recruitment hiring and diverse diversifying our staff as Dr Fred and Mr Braxton have shared is not a standalone event or one thing rather requires a systemic approach to review what is in place how it has marginalized or excluded people specifically black people and people of color and consider how to repair and address barriers that exist in our practices specifically our hiring practices asking ourselves how can we change procedures how can we ensure our practices are more inclusive in what we're doing our Equity policy one that you put in place allows for our Equity plan to come to True fruition and
029be live an opportunity for us to act intentionally and focus on addressing racism and change towards betterment we're asking ourselves how have I changed how do I need to change how do I receive information from others how do I respond what do I need to do to unnormalize our hiring practices and make new norms for us to change our narrative it begins with providing a structure that embeds inclusion into each step we are asking how is this opportunity more Equitable to our potential candidates how can we diversify our profession and School District how are we expanding our candidate pool how are we eliminating barriers for our candidates and interviews I had to rethink our hiring process as a whole from off-boarding of the resignations and retirements to vacancy postings to job description revisions advertising openings
030networking marketing polling candidates vetting interviewing hiring and onboarding so we ask how can we expand and diversify our pool well by sending job postings and inviting our community organizations to be part of the process and the advertisement we can begin to diversify our pool by not just putting it on our website but actually sending our postings to our community organizations like darn bmpa septo Bexley Pride job boards are technical schools our college and university partners for sure as well as a recent partner with us which is Chris the community Refugee and Immigration Services that's those are one way we've also increased our advertising pool Beyond just newsletters and social media and we've shared our employment opportunities on radio stations we're currently in negotiations with Urban One Columbus magic 95.5 1063 107.5 which is a media
031company that amplifies the voice of Black America we're also setting up a partnership with Columbus black a media outlet that but also a partner in Black Wilderness which includes an email distribution to support black employment most recently I've also connected with Central State University's office of strategic Partnerships and external Affairs to see how we can partner with them as one of the very few hbcus in Ohio these are just some of the ways that we're expanding our pool to diversify our staff in Bexley we also continue to look at a better way to diversify our interview teams and to better assess our candidates and eliminate barriers for candidates by reviewing this practice we can allow ourselves a better opportunity to get to know our candidates Mr Braxton and I have teamed together many many times
032but most recently and continuously we review the framework for interviewing some of the changes include asking candidates for feedback after the interview or the pre-interview process asking questions like what made you feel like you should apply to Bexley schools how did you feel included highlighted even in bexley's process we have ensured intentionality in the interview questions and also accessibility we place a copy of the questions on the table or paste them in the zoom link if it's an interview um on Zoom so they don't have to solely focus on hearing the questions but can have them in front of them this Excel of stability allows for them to participate with a little bit more ease so we can get to know them a little better I screen candidates who aren't licensed for positions and make
033sure that our our positions are filled with licensed people but I also now screen candidates who are competent to answer questions about diversity or belonging equity and inclusion also in our process candidates are now sent a copy ahead of time of our Equity policy and our commitment plan which highlights belonging equity and Wellness similar to other tools that are principals directors and admin are using we're asking questions like who does this include who could this potentially exclude who are we missing or rather who are we not identifying and not being in tune with our conversations are happening at all levels of hiring and recruitment across our district but also our system of hiring reaches beyond what our administrators and staff can do we need to support the support from you and our community which leads
034me to share about our most recent event which was our networking and informational event this past February we partnered with bmpa Bexley Pride for lgbtqia plus and our special education PTO to host an event that focuses on a time for potential candidates who are currently underrepresented in public education to gather and learn about employment in Bexley schools studies show that approximately 60 percent of Educators work within just 15 to 20 miles of where they grew up with that in mind it is important that we continue to host events with our Community Partners to diversify our Educators in our pool next I want to share about our partnership with the Ohio University's College sorry Patton College of Education specifically the brothers rise which is rallying to inspire and shape education this is with Dr Jason Rawls
035and Marquis Parham which intends this program intends to impact that adversity with the teaching profession specifically affecting how black men are recruited retained and graduated in the education profession OU has written a grant to the state of Ohio and asked us to partner with partner with them you might know but statistics share currently on a national level and show that black student population is around 15 percent yet the percentage of black male teachers in the United States is 1.3 percent the State of Ohio's condition is worse with just under one percent of black male teachers while black students are around 16 percent of Ohio School population we know that students benefit from having teachers who look like them the work in diverse diversifying the education Workforce has led to our partnership with the patent College
036of Education specifically the brothers rise to confront this problem with a rather Innovative approach Brothers rise your University students will meet and work with Bexley students in the upcoming year and two years specifically our bipoc males in grades 6 through 12 to increase enthusiasm and interest in becoming an educator or potentially attending OU's College of Education and attending the brothers Rise program the other part of the partnership is that the brothers in the rice program would come here to student teach or observe teachers instructions we are also currently in conversations with the Ohio State University's bright fellow program the bright fellowships leadership development program is a paradigm shift from traditional training models to a unique partnership between osu's Fisher College of Business and OU's College of Education and human ecology because of this distinct collaboration
037between the two colleges the bright approach to K-12 leadership training is rather Innovative diverse and without an equal Across the Nation our hope is to host two bright fellows this next school year in our school buildings you might know that Raquel Armstrong our current Middle School assistant principal is a graduate of the bright program from several years ago and our commitment would be for a long-term long year-long School leadership residency slash internship next school year to support developing capacity and leading anti-racist change there's truly much more that I could share but at this time I want to introduce my esteemed colleague Dr Shirley Hamilton to come up and share with you about curriculum gifted data and assessment thank you you're welcome good evening thank you for the opportunity to share I guess this doesn't move
038okay um and I am the first of four speakers representing the teaching and learning department so I'm going to talk about curriculum and gifted which is my area and uh in terms of curriculum review processes I have to to give Marcellus to a huge shout out for all of the influence that he has provided in the in this uh in the revision processes we've done all of the Committees uh in terms of the social studies and World Language which are the two areas that we're reviewing this year have looked at uh as Marcellus indicated representation voice perspective language consistency alignment and we've conducted these uh audits uh with Everett with each department through the lens of equity and inclusion um and and recently as Marcellus pointed out we met with the elementary curriculum review team
039for a half day session and they they were very Marcellus was very helpful in terms of helping develop these questions that additional questions that he mentioned that we've asked of all of our of our elementary social studies and then we've also shared these questions with our middle and high school group as well just yesterday we had a half day session again with Marcellus and Steve Shapiro was there Barb was there a number of people Mr Cottle you know was there as well and we actually looked at these questions and hopefully they'll be able to incorporate those in the middle school and high school so basically uh all of K-12 has been influenced by this lens of equity and inclusion based on marcellus's influence so we really appreciate that and I think uh We've really changed
040how they're looking at their curriculum looking at Equity looking at inclusion and it's uh it's made a huge difference I believe teachers are also working Marcellus has met with the Elementary uh teachers the review team to uh to work through various units as uh grade level teams uh we're going to do that uh in the future in the next couple weeks he's going to meet with them not only did he meet with the review team but we're going to meet with all teachers at each grade level and Marcellus is going to go go through look at their actual lessons and influence their daily lessons and so as I said just recently yesterday we did the same thing with middle school and high school social studies department members and we again looked at those questions and
041examined uh and are we are examining our curriculum through through all these questions and uh and audits as far as the talent development program goes which gets into kind of the gifted area a new program we have this year we're really excited about is for all students in grades one through three is teaching higher level thinking skills and enrichment activities in every classroom every building grades one through three approximately 40-minute lessons are conducted each week by our talent development coordinator and they focus on four types of it's based on the primary education thinking skills the pets curriculum and it focuses on four types of thinking skills and higher level thinking convergent thinking Divergent thinking visual thinking or visual spatial perception and evaluative thinking and the purpose of this program is to build critical and creative
042thinking skills in all of our students provide opportunities for students with potential to be challenged and number three assists with identifying students from underrepresented populations who may be eligible to be identified as gifted and talented we've conducted staff and parent surveys about the program we did this in January as a mid-year progress monitoring check-in we also did a conducted pre-assessment and post assessment student growth data and looking and reanalyze that by grade level and the results of these assessments are very we're very positive so that's uh again a couple of things that we're that we're looking at and I'd like to welcome to the podium now uh Barb Gentilly green director of student services and accessibility and Kathy Rhoda heifer special education coordinator thank you thank you it's good to be here um Kathy and
043I have worked together on this slide to try to highlight a couple of systems that are proactive and then as well as like Marcella said we need some systems to respond when there is a crisis so the first one is our crisis team we developed a Christ District level crisis team this year with representation from many members of our staff and we actually use that team to be able to respond to the February incident and what that team does is look at what is needed what action steps who's responsible for following through and doing those different action steps what did we need to support our students what do we need to support our staff um as at this time we have all of our school counselors School psychologists and our Mental Health Specialists and one
044administrator so far trained in the prepare method which is an evidence-based taste crisis response mental health support model and so the next step with that is to train the rest of the administration in that and another step is to have our building teams our building crisis level teams the um next thing I want to talk about is our um mental health and behavioral support we are very fortunate to have a partnership with Nationwide Children's Hospital they have counselors in our buildings they collaborate with us to meet the needs of our students and in fact after the incident in February the school psychologists came together the school counselors the mental health providers from Nationwide children Marcellus our school counselors developed the talking circles for students who needed the support um with our black students and um
045really was able to meet their needs over several sessions that they held we're ongoing with that with some circles at the high school to develop those skills within our school counselors so it's a great partnership between between us and and Nationwide Children's we also have Crisis Prevention Institute trainers in our district I've never worked in a place that have their own trainers it's wonderful we have two staff members and they're really able to provide that targeted training embedded right in in our school schedule and all of our staff this year received the verbal de-escalation those preventative strategies that we can use to support our students and de-escalate situations that might be becoming escalated and then we have certain teams throughout the district who are response trained in the physical control portion of CPI so that
046if there is a need we do it safely to support our students um with the physical support our data on restraint and seclusion is reviewed every month and we are in a very much better place this year than we were last year in terms of our numbers and um they are each month we look at them with our Behavior specialist and they are um not Rising as they had last year so we're really happy about that then mtss guidebook was developed last year as a result of a corrective action that the special education department had to respond to from the Ohio Department of Education and that was because there was an over identification of black males in the category of specific learning disability and so the um the team had to develop a response to
047that and how the district gets to that is the state gives a risk ratio factor and if it is over 2.5 meaning you ident over Identify two and a half times peers over any certain subgroup then you are in this corrective action so the previous team developed the multi-tiered system of support guidebook but because of the timeline it wasn't able to be trained across all staff so when the new team was hired this year in central office we took a look at that and are refining that guidebook with a little bit of a more focus on on a proactive removal of barriers and kind of a different approach in looking at what is wrong within our what barriers are there within our environment or instruction or assessment versus what's wrong with the child it's a
048it's a shift in how we're looking at supporting our students and then what interventions do we have in place so um those are the four kind of programs that we kind of wanted to highlight from the student services department thank you and now director of Technology Brad Pettit thank you I'll be brief I know some of this might sound secondary to the things that you're hearing here but uh as Mr Braxton mentioned and others about being proactive we want to make sure that we're a part of that as well so uh from our perspective of the technology department uh we're looking for those proactive ways to improve supporting student interactions with their peers online and how we make sure we treat one another uh this is our digital Wellness that's ultimately uh our Focus for
049this so before the pandemic our district was one of the leaders in the state on trying to prepare digital Wellness Resources we were part of a Consortium to do that work we created a website for parents to uh find ways to help when it comes to social media and other pieces with interacting now what we're focusing on is making sure that this is a huge pillar of our next tech plan that we would hope to adopt in the fall so continuing that work moving forward focusing more specifically on uh online etiquette and digital citizenship and making sure that we give teachers resources so that in those moments of Technology integration that we're able to address and prepare for those moments um when reactive isn't uh avoidable when we have inappropriate treatment of one another we
050want to make sure that our administrative staff are getting the information is fast and as helpful as possible we have started to increase our ways in which we're able to identify devices on our networks so when we're doing those investigations and next year we're going to be doing a redesign of our wireless network to be able to do that even further that is all I have I'm about to cue up a video from uh Dr Robbins and Mr Cottle to talk about high school and middle school good evening and thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you this evening over the past few years we've seen the power of student voice in action during times of Crisis right here in Bexley but these moments have often come when we as adults aren't
051clear what the next best steps should be we knew we had to do better this time and that meant intentionally listening to and supporting students last summer we were fortunate to have 52 districts staff members participate in professional development at the summer Institute for authentic learning and Leadership this two-day conference has helped us better understand the power of student agency we've continued this learning with learning inspired throughout the year and we believe that this learning has allowed us to better support student agency and respond differently and more effectively than in other incidents that may have seemed similar here are some examples of how we supported our students over the past few months first of all we acknowledged into accountability for the harm done through district-wide and building specific Communications second we intentionally focus on those
052that were directly harmed in this case black students and staff rather than talking about everyone third we first created safe spaces to allow black students and staff to grieve and process and share what they needed and fourth based on what we heard we aligned time and resources to meet those needs for example students identified microaggression microaggressions and other acts they have personally experienced and that make them feel unsafe in our schools and as a result we provided peer-reviewed strategies to our staff members for interrupting acts of racism in the classroom and practice those together High School staff worked on strategies for recognizing and avoiding Equity detours Equity detours are mindsets that create an illusion of progress toward Equity while cementing or even exacerbating inequity middle school students were provided the time and support to address
053their peers during grade level assemblies about their own experiences in Bexley City schools and the impact on the school community Middle School teachers have been leading Community circles during study hall time the circles encourage connections and provide a structure to discuss a variety of things including difficult topics that impact the student's sense of belonging we know that our schools and Community will continue to be challenged by instance of racism sexism ignorance hatred and intolerance but we are better equipped Now to respond and Empower our students thank you thank you foreign [Laughter] thanks for letting us be here James I'm so proud of you um Rachel and I are here to represent the elementary principles um we're a tight Trio some folks call us terrific but it's an honor to work with Naisha and we've asked
054her to sit this one out so that we can represent for her we know that it's important for our institution to do that and offer her some Grace um we collaborate we communicate and we actually plan the three of us together to meet the needs of our distinct buildings um for the betterment of all Bexley Elementary School students and it's an honor to be able to work with these amazing women to do that there was absolute agreement from our elementary team that a response was warranted from every single Elementary faculty member to students and families in our school district there was no question from us about that um anti-racism is a lifelong and career-long Endeavor for many of us and we felt passionately about that and still do we felt that when an incident like
055this happened in any school it impacts all of us the steps that we took immediately were to ensure that each staff member read the historical context that Mr Cottle had shared with Middle School faculty staff families and students we also shared that historical context with our fourth and fifth grade classes and communicated with families about that we wanted there to be no question about a further response should and when another incident like this would happen or should another incident like this happen we shared toolkits with teachers and shared Resources with families as well around that incident um we also aligned and took a look at our protocols for establishing our morning announcement routines making sure that they were in step with our colleagues in the middle school and high school and that there was clear
056oversight we took steps to communicate with families of students of color to acknowledge the incident provide space for students to process and share their voices should families be interested in that and connect with other students and faculty of color we also provided opportunities for those conversations with our faculty of color wanting to make sure that they knew that space for that was really important and critical for us we shared emails with families about resources as those conversations were taking place too this nice wander would like to talk about our next steps hello our communication move from response to our next steps moving forward the faculty conversations helped to inform the ways that we are honing our methods and our practices staff had space and time as Miss Hessler had shared our teachers sought permission to
057pause the academic River to prioritize the importance of our conversations surprise Delight enjoy because you know I'm James Joy but we intentionally made sure to highlight black Joy we refocused our responsive classroom which is like our morning meetings our activities to strengthen our relationships between peer-to-peer and our staff and our students those conversations allowed more honest and open and safe space for our students these are similar to the high school middle school conversations and their Community circles as we talked about literature and our read alouds we knew that we needed to talk about the responsibility that we have to vet the materials we looked at representation ensuring that portrayals are informed our focus is to equip students with skills for deep and close discussions critical thinking multiple perspectives as well as that representation we want
058to talk about the Highlight in our work with bmpa and our PTO collaboration through our literature that we've shared our Resources with websites that we've shared how we've worked with PTO to talk about our artists in the schools our guest speakers to look at more diversity for our students and their representation we've had lunch and learn seminars for students called difference makers parents Teachers Community engagement and critical important conversations through books again there's websites podcasts and our own articles and conversations coming back up to touch base with about our written wisdom experiences that PTO has also helped to engage in making sure that again we're vetting and clear representation for our students I want to shout out to Naisha who's established the difference makers lunch and learn options for students at Montrose it's a model
059that we went to and explore and employ at cassingham and at Maryland to make sure that we're providing that a similar opportunity certainly can't capture all that's been put out there already at Montrose but we want to build on that format it seemed to be really really helpful for students um could we go to the next slide Please Mr Pettit thank you so much teachers are engaged as Rachel was mentioning in a critical review of our written wisdom Matrix which is here on the slide for you this outlines the units or modules of study that students are experiencing across the school year and we've taken a critical review of those um we really are excited because this curriculum provides an opportunity unlike we've seen in a long time for transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary studies to return
060to our Elementary classrooms and we're using this as a structure and foundation so part of the work that Shirley was alluding to with Marcellus and review with our social studies curriculum review is to make sure that we are using this model then to integrate and embed our social studies curriculum and work take that step and then as we review science we'll make sure that we're embedding and making alignment across the year for students so that they see the connections within and across English language arts social studies science and math mathematics it's a really exciting curriculum it helps us really take a deep dive into those critical thinking skills um we've had some very specific discussions about particular modules and we wanted to highlight two of them with you our second grade module number three second
061grade module three civil rights Heroes how can people respond to Injustice that was just beginning in February so we want to take a step back with our second grade teams make sure that they had what they needed felt supported as they began that unit and asked what else they needed to teach that unit in that module in the way that they knew that they wanted to teach it in light of what we were going through as a district and one conversation that happened at Maryland was very transformative for all of us and that was teachers said can we pause on academics for a minute so that we can have some read aloud conversations make sure that we're building that community and really connecting again with students we were like uh of course that's what this
062is about and we can't do the other work unless we make sure that we regroup and do that so when we say that we have these conversations with faculty it's not just that we're talking about that and reviewing we are taking action steps and making sure that we're implementing what our faculty is letting us know um unit one for fifth grade cultures and conflict this does a really beautiful job of setting the stage for our fifth graders to begin to really critically analyze cultural perspectives and beliefs they do that by starting to look at the expression of cultural beliefs by one perspective and locating evidence through critical close reading of arguments being able to make an argument about someone's perspective based on what they've written finding that evidence then they're able to take that skill
063forward and create and write and express their own perspective citing evidence about that perspective they've really taken on a Critical examination of the world around them too our teachers report over and over again how perceptive our students are I've been privileged to have some conversations with students that are transformative and I can directly correlate it back to the conversations that they're having as they examine these units and really look at themselves their culture their world and figure out who they are in it so we're eager to continue this critical review and to create year two of wit and wisdom with an even deeper implementation of our other curricular areas and then audit how we're going moving forward I'd like to turn things over to Dr fine thank you Brad if you'll help me we're going
064to go a little quick here not because it's not important but because you've heard these updates uh before we're in phase two of our strategic plan which we're really really thankful for the participation we've had uh during phase one which is right before winter break phase two is taking place since winter break uh and the slide shows you that we started this conversation with four subcommittees culture subcommittee Dei subcommittee facilities subcommittee and Brad's going to click along with us and uh I think culture as we've had those conversations over the last month or so next slide for me please uh we've had some really important conversations coming out of our Dei subcommittee uh our subcommittee chairs have been really instrumental in this work uh the recommendation uh was to make a decision to weave the
065Dei objectives into the recommendations of the other three Focus areas rather than separately State a Dei specific goal and we thought that was really powerful we supported that work and as a result the next strategic plan will consider uh decision making with the lens or through the lens of Dei we wanted to make sure that Dei was not siled through our strategic plan but woven throughout so that's an important piece tomorrow just so that you know we're meeting with our sspac our strategic or our superintendent's strategic planning advisory committee we're going to meet with our subcommittee participants we're going to share where we are we've got some really exciting uh goals and objectives to share with that group we appreciate Dr Jade Ms Powers have been a big part of those committees as well as
066our steering committee and we look forward to nearing a rollout at the May board meeting so you'll have some information to read here shortly thank you uh Brad we are now going to move to uh one Bexley one Bexley is a really important initiative I want to share that we also recognize that this work is not just done in our schools uh we have heard plenty of feedback from our community that this is also a community conversation uh this issue is not unique to Bexley but we believe we have a unique opportunity uh to unite as a community uh to address it collectively so one Bexley uh in early February I got a call from the mayor Ben Kessler who talked about how can we come together as the city as the schools and as
067our library to uh provide programming for our community so Steve Shapiro couldn't be here tonight he's been a part of this you'll hear that Marcellus uh Alicia and Joanne have been part of this as well alongside me and uh Brad's gonna hit play so Steve can share a one minute 45 second version good evening tonight's board presentation highlights the many steps we're taking to make Bexley City Schools a welcoming safe and Equitable space for our students and families other institutions in our city are also taking actions to move their organizations toward these goals in addition to these initiatives Dr Fine has joined with mayor Ben Kessler and Bexley Library director Ben Heckman to spearhead a more Universal Citywide effort aimed at fostering a welcoming and inclusive actually for all they've titled that city-wide initiative one
068Bexley they've convened a collection of city leaders to begin to ideate strategies to make a culture shift in Bexley to help us reckon with our City's history of exclusion and with the legacy of non-white people's experiences of exclusion and marginalization when they attempt to live in or travel through Bexley the goal of one Bexley is to help Bexley residents collectively create an intentional culture of allyship and belonging for all people Bexley City schools has been represented in this initiative by Dr Fine By school board members Joanne Pickerel and Alicia Mitchell by Dei leader Marcellus Braxton and by myself one Bexley will expand Beyond its initial leadership team with an opening planning meeting for other community members who would like to be leaders in this charge which is charged we'll go the next one next Wednesday
069Bexley Public Library at 6 30 pm all are invited to attend we'll also hold an even larger Community event for anyone interested in one Bexley sometime in May Our intention is for one bexley's educational and engagement mission to create the experience of universal belonging that sets a positive context for the many equity and belonging initiatives that we will continue to take in Bexley City Schools so thank you Brad the next slide just gives you the information about the uh event that we're having next Wednesday April 19th 6 30 p.m in the Bexley Public Library Auditorium anyone is invited to attend uh and we look forward to having a conversation as a community uh level to determine next steps so I know that that was a lot and I think that's okay I think it's important
070that we put that time in and I want to thank this team uh this team is a gift and I'm really thankful to be a part of this team and to walk alongside this team uh I never hear I can't I never hear I won't I never hear uh we we don't think it's possible and it is not easy to stand uh in this type of setting and share all the incredible things that you're doing but we're not done we have a lot that we still have ahead of us and again we scratched the surface and I really appreciate the time and commitment from this group and really appreciate your support and I'll pause there and take any questions that you might have