April 14th Bexley Board of Education Meeting

001thank you as we work to ensure that our public participation is responsive to our communities needs as well as those of the boards to conduct business in an orderly and efficient manner we ask that those wishing to speak at public comment sign in now in advance of the meeting is there anybody that wishes to speak that hasn't signed in yet kyle would you grab the sheet thank you thank you and next is the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance [Music] so the minutes of our march meetings have been provided to the board members does anybody have any corrections to the minutes can i have a motion to approve the minutes so in a second all in favor of approving the minutes please say aye aye any opposed thank you next item is approval of the

002agenda are there any additions or changes to the agenda may have a motion to approve the agenda thank you a second second all in favor please signify by saying aye any opposed thank you that motion carries dr fine yes we'd love to start this evening with some student recognition which is the best part of our meeting we're going to start with uh cooper dennison cooper if you want to sneak up to the podium we want to honor and recognize cooper cooper is a senior and he is a legendary trombone player uh he has been playing the trombone for nine years and liam auditioned for the all-state orchestra your junior year for acceptance into the symphony your senior year cooper is a member of the columbus youth symphony orchestra trombone section and was a previous member

003of the columbus youth symphonic band for several years cooper has performed for numerous omea solo and ensemble contests and in these contests he has received superior ratings he will be double majoring next year in trombone performance and political science from american university in washington dc and under cooper's leadership he has mentored and tutored the trombone section in multiple classes including concert and marching band you have done such a phenomenal job he also traveled i think to cleveland during the snowstorm and put on an incredible show i was bummed to miss it because i think you got there the day before the storm hit yeah uh you are a superstar we are really proud of your accomplishments and uh we're glad you're here tonight is there anything you'd like to say introduce uh your family that

004you brought with you um awesome we're proud of you that's a big deal and well done what we're going to do is take a picture with the board of education we'll sneak right up to the front thank you i think all right here we go second we'd like to bring up freshman phenom millie evans our soy yeah for swimming are our coaches swimming coaches uh there you are come on if you want to join milly that'd be great so sandy and millie we uh want to complement all of your work for uh this past season millie evans placed second in the state championship at the 100 100-yard butterfly she set a school record of 54.49 seconds for those that don't know swimming that is fast at the 2022 ohsa division ii swimming state championships you

005were also part of three new relay records and you lowered the 200 im record in the state finals where you finished ninth you are only a freshman but has matriculated to the team well in the second half of the season you swam also in the u.s junior nationals in december and you continue to push to go to higher levels with your skills your coaches say they are very excited for the many great things ahead and i said to your grandparents i am so excited we get three more years of excitement so we are really proud of you millie uh anything you'd like to say introduce the friends and family that came with you um i brought my grandparents and parents and i want to thank them for supporting me and i think the support i

006got from my team and coaches and also to hopefully continue to improve something and bring down the records more i love it well done thank you all right here we go yeah thank you and our next swimmer nicholas minkin i believe walked in yes there he is my friend nicholas placed sixth in the 100 yard freestyle and seventh in the 100 yard backstroke at the 22 ohsaa division 2 swimming state championships you also set a new record in both of those events you have worked incredibly hard and your extreme focus on what you want to accomplish is uh remarkable and your coaches speak very highly of you as a person and also as an athlete you are also one of our captains this year as a junior and is one of the spiritual leaders on

007the team you bring high energy and great encouragement for all the levels of swimmers that we have and your coaches speak eloquently that you represent the community and you push all of us to be a step better throughout the process that's a big deal so we're really proud of you it is a big accomplishment if you would take a second and introduce who you brought with us anything else you'd like to add um i brought my parents with me um mad and becky and i'd like to thank my parents for their support um sandy and mitch and just this team i feel like we were really close this year and i hoped everybody i love it well done proud of you good work all right here we go and now our cheerleaders are going to

008sneak in from the back we are recognizing our 2022 oassa division 3 game day blue and traditional white building cheer state champions this crew has done a lot uh in the last several years but we're going to compliment and talk about a couple things there are 27 cheerleaders between the two squads uh their coaches uh brooke and lizzie and whitney are a huge part of their success and i saw the coaches here as well uh a couple highlights from the year you were 2022 oassa state champs our traditional white division iii building is three years in a row and they won that competition which i think i was at by 34 points which was impressive game day blue division three game day building back to back champions they won by 40 points and when i

009was there it wasn't even close game day blue won the first ever msl competition this year in the ohio division and every single one of our nine seniors so seniors raise your hand some of our seniors are here with us every single one of our nine seniors has won at least two state titles or more and four of our seniors have won all five state titles the two teams have included several individual awards and coach brooke wojcik was named our msl ohio coach of the year which is a big deal i can't see her but i know she's here yeah so that's a big deal they've had a long season i believe all of our team members cheer at least one season of sideline and many do both in addition to competition that's that's a

010lot of work and uh having been in the gym a lot for the as a basketball parent it was really impressive to see uh your work on the sideline but then also in competition i think this is an important aspect our team average from our cheerleading squad has a gpa of 3.75 so you do it on the sidelines and you do in the classroom that's a big deal so congratulations to our our cheerleaders coach or any of our coaches anything you'd like to add definitely want to say thank you for being there that morning it was super early in the morning and we don't we don't get a lot of spectators sometimes we were really thankful for you being there and just getting to hang out with us and watch us bring home another one

011yeah it was amazing it was really impressive i i told everybody that day if you've never been to one of those competitions you gotta get there it was amazing so well done thank you coaches thank you uh cheerleaders we'll take a picture scoot in as much as you can all right here we go feel free it's up to you if you want to stay for the next three hours thank you thank you [Music] so amazing when you see like what that year program like when lyanna came into the cheer program in middle school it was if yeah and the middle school had four um and for it to be like she usually has close to 60 some girls try out so it's really and she's still she still is like really engaged with her cheerleaders

012once they graduate okay we are up to the board reports um i'm going to try to be brief i'm starting it's not a board report i just want to give a shout out to jonathan and the bmpa for the really great circle of excellence event it was lovely i thought it was a great keynote and the whole event i'm so glad that we're doing that you're doing that great job thank you for that um so i'm going to start with the legislative stuff as the legislative liaison to the osba last month i reported on house bill 51 that's the one that contains a provision that allows a public body including a board of education to temporarily meet remotely and permits individual board members to attend and vote remotely at an otherwise in-person meeting so one

013of the one of the policies that we're going to look at tonight involves a resolution that the board has seen everybody's seen that to just adopt those changes in house bill 51 they expire by their own terms at the end of june so it'll be short um next up is a quick re update on house bill 126. we've been reporting on this one this is the one that kyle has been in particular following for us in its original form house bill 126 placed certain limitations on the process for political subdivisions like a school board a school district to contest the value of properties not owned by the district for purposes of property tax the bill went to conference committee and has came out quickly in its final form and was adopted and is now on

014its way to the governor for signature in its final form it severely limits a school district's ability to protect its tact tax base through board revision board of revision so very briefly it prohibits boards of education from filing residential and agricultural complaints it permits a board of education to file a commercial complaint but only a you know commercial property a complaint with respect to commercial property and those are limited as to time and amount the bill requires a board to provide notice and pass a resolution for each parcel with the notice going to the tax address and mailing address the board would have to give notice to property owners at least seven days in advance when they plan to vote on the resolution authorizing a valuation change but it eliminates notice to the board when

015um there's a counter claim or counter complaint which means that the board will no longer receive notice from the county auditor when a complaint is filed districts will have to file counter complaints within 30 days of the date the owner files the original complaint property owners still receive notice of the b of the of the board's complaint and have 30 days from receipt of that notice to file a counter complaint the bill bans private pay settlement agreements and it provides that the board of revision must dismiss a case if the board of revision hasn't acted on that case within one year it also prohibits a board from filing an appeal of a board of revision decision um kyle and i haven't had a chance to talk about that so i'm he may want to say

016something about it um i'm going to give a quick update in respect to house bill 327 i reported on that at our last meeting and that's the bill that relates to teaching or promotion of certain so-called divisive concepts joanne asked about the impact of of this bill on advanced placement courses and i promise to provide an update so in march um the college board which is the organization that oversees ap posted on its website and sent out to ap teachers a statement called what ap stands for that document provides an overview of ap program principles and the introductory paragraph includes a statement that quote the principles are designed to ensure that teachers expertise is respected required course content is understood and that students are academically challenged and free to make up their own minds end

017quote the statement includes that ap opposes censorship and it says on that quote ap is animated by a deep respect for intellectual freedom of teachers and students alike if a school bans required topics from their ap courses the ap program removes the ap designation from that course and its inclusion in the ap course ledger provided to colleges and universities and i'm still quoting for example the concepts of evolution are at the heart of college biology and a course that neglects such concepts does not pass muster as ap biology the statement that was released by the college board also provides that ab opposes indoctrination and ap is an unflinching encounter with evidence and other similar statements so i believe that the best way to understand the possible impact of the proposed legislation on ap courses is

018to understand that if required curricular content it for an ap course is banned at a school as it possibly could be by this legislation then the college board may decide to no longer give ap credit for that for that course that seems like the kind of straightforward answer to the question that joanne posed the more um you know detailed thinking about it brings me to realize that if an ap teacher is just made to feel uncomfortable by this legislation and there's something that's required in the ap course curriculum that they don't feel comfortable teaching the same thing could happen they could just decide not to you know even if it hasn't been banned they could take the position that they're not going to say something about something because they feel threatened by you know the

019remedies in the legislation if it were to pass so it is possible that there could be an impact i continue to think that what ap is saying is we're not gonna they don't they don't seem to be saying that they want to pull any ap courses i don't see this legislation as really necessarily pulling away banning materials that are required but these kinds of questions are the reasons we need to continue to monitor and be concerned about this legislation and these issues i'm going to give a quick update on some other newly introduced bills of significance to our board and i'll start with the related bill you all may have seen that on april 4th house bill 616 was introduced into our legislation that's offered and referred to as don't say gay legislation house bill

020616 would prohibit the teaching of certain divisive or inherently racist concepts in public schools it would prohibit the training or administration of professional development to employees that promote or endorse divisive or inherently racist concepts it would prohibit k through third grade students from being provided any instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity it would prohibit grade four through 12 students from being provided any instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in any manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate in accordance with state standards it would allow complaints to be filed with the state board of education and it would provide for withholding of funding for non-compliance with the bill's provisions house bill 601 introduced has also been introduced and it would increase state teacher retirement system and school employee retirement system employer contributions

021from 14 to 18 it would that would be phased in over eight years it would require the strs board to annually institute a cost of living adjustment it would prohibit strs from reducing cola cost of living adjustments below one percent for certain contribution levels and it would eliminate a requirement that an strs member be at least 60 to be eligible for an unreduced retirement benefit last senate bill 308 introduced was introduced to prohibit state and local governments including steel districts from investing in granting incentives to or contracting with russia or companies based in russia it would require strs and scrs and and the bureau of workers comp among others to divest from those holdings and um identified companies that are based in russia um that's the first part of my update that's legislative update any

022questions on any of that um miss powers i am curious how house bill 616 impacts our our current is it in um is it up for debate where is it right now so it is at the very beginning of a process and it's always impossible for us to know how that bill will move what will happen it just was introduced on april 4th so it's just just in very commonly what happens next is the legislative you know the people who introduced the bill would give proponent testimony about it they may then give have an another time for people to come in to give opponent proponent testimony then they might look for opponent testimony so it they'll be typically there's a process like that this is very um you know it of course uh heavily overlaps

023with 327 that we've been talking about it's much shorter it's um they call this the compromise no there's no compromise on this well i'm just concerned about its impact on our equity and inclusion um yeah policies and initiatives and are school districts not able to well i guess our osba um platform does whatever it tries to do and it it will oppose this legislation for sure um we have every right as a school board and each of us is individual board members to provide um you know what would be considered testimony but you can just provide it in writing um to oppose the bill there my experience with that is that the window goes up and down pretty quickly and i i've been known to miss those windows so you gotta really i i sign

024up to get alerts and when they come it's like the the stuff's due tomorrow you know it's tough so um i i imagine that you know so when three house bill 327 that addressed much of that didn't have the you know it's not the don't say gay legislation but a lot of it is similar when they finally opened that up for opposition testimony they had a lot of people come in a lot the ohio department of education you know a lot all the different education organizations have extreme impacts against our teaching staff too sure it's part of that same concern that you know was so partly addressed in the discussion about the ap so i i do have a question about the uh the counter claim notice so we are in what is that house

025bill 126 yeah so we are obligated to give notice but they they don't have to guide us that's right a counter claim and is it did i have that raised a seven day window to try to we have 30 days from the date of the filing to file a counter claim but we don't you don't know that it's happening so you basically give notice we give no when we when we were to if we were to file something we do have to give notice and their time runs from the time that they get the notice so it's it's you know the seven days is um we have to give seven days notice of the time if we were to we can't do anything unless we as a board adopt a resolution that we're gonna do

026that around filing a complaint and we have to give seven days notice of our intention to get together to do that is there a mechanism mr smith um to be able to get alerts i know like uh mechanism would be public records requests on a daily basis i was thinking about that question never felt more deflated i was wondering if we could do it like every if we could have a search done every 25 days or something because then we would at least i mean it's crazy but if you pick something up on the 25th day you'd have five days to um file which would not be within a seven day notice window oh right um so i imagine well essentially the barriers are designed to you know it's sort of like a placate we've

027given you an opportunity to to counter claim this but really there are so many barriers to even issue a counter claim it just makes me it'd be difficult um it won't impact us greatly but it impacts education across the state at the end of the day it makes everybody else pay more or carry more of a burden on the tax base i don't have any other questions i'm sorry anyone else i just want to thank you for the thorough um information that was a lot to look at to answer jonah's question so thanks a lot thank you sorry to be long-winded so i do have one other topic um and i will shorten it which is um the superintendent's policy committee met and i forgot to put it on the agenda but i'll give a

028quick update on it um i really want to thank the team that helped with the review of the policies that are on for a first reading tonight that included the superintendent the treasurer deputy superintendent director of curriculum and gifted leader of diversity equity and inclusion and fellow board member joanne pickerel with one exception the policies that we are reviewing this month um the updates as a first reading contain changes that have been recommended to us by the osba as a result of changes in underlying law our district relies on the osba to flag for us changes in the law that require or might suggest changes to our policies additional changes to these policies are included mostly just to provide consistency around references to parent slash guardian pronoun usage consistent use of usage of terms such

029as district office versus central office and just for clarity the policy that contains revisions that did not come from the osba that we're looking at tonight is policy igbb that is updated to reflect the recently adopted changes to our gifted programming pretty much everything else in that policy is language that's straight out of ohio law in all of the policies changes to our current policies are shown in what we look at in green language showing proposed editions and in red strikeouts showing proposed deletions um i already mentioned that we're going to also look at um just suspending the requirement that we be in person um through june 30th by a resolution that would i'll get it thank you so much no notes um our two board policies bd which is our meeting policy and bddf

030which is our voting policy and i think that's all i got any questions on that thank you i'll go next to alicia yes um so i was not able to attend bravo i was tending to my mom that night but um the final numbers haven't been reported yet they're on track to have reached a hundred thousand uh in donations and gifts so we're really excited about that um they just had their deadline to nominate educator of the year award uh and i remind me to um friend of education award um after um and those submissions were due last week so we'll be um they'll convene a group of folks to review those nominations i had the pleasure a few times to sit on that committee and it's it's hard work because you are really weighing

031well deserved individuals like in fact it's hard to choose um in just one you want to take them all so we'll be anxious to hear um who wins that uh recognition um the bef generously donated a hundred thousand dollars to bexley city schools towards lighting and sound upgrades to the schottenstein's theater it's been a while it's well well needed and still be excited to enjoy the benefits of that with our incredible theater arts program i may sound biased since i have a theater kid now but um it's a pretty good program we received 75 000 dollars from jay and jenny schottenstein's foundation and 25 thousand dollars from the nbef grant so it's always great to hear um those dollars being earmarked and we think the education foundation we could not do a lot of what

032we do to this day without their support students in ms mallory's class enjoyed us a seminar from dr jeffrey weidlinger on the holocaust and said that was a really great offering we have not had a finance advisory meeting that's next week so i'll report out in our may meeting um no facilities meetings for for me to date not to give you more to do dr fine let's get it going no i'm kidding um and then i just have some outside of board committee updates um the final steering committee meetings for the livingston avenue corridor um improvement are scheduled i just finally submitted my doodle poll attendance so once that meeting is set i'll report out that information in may and then the bexley city uh police youth interaction policy subcommittee meets tomorrow but i actually

033won't be in attendance for that because it works so they're gonna send me the updates on that and i'll report out um on on that information uh and then last but not least to our new board members we annually award a friend of education award that's from the bexley school board and we have not even circulated oh excuse me sorry i jumped the gun i got all you could have told me back next month so sorry i was just panicking because we always wait and then it's a rush and yeah it just reminded me when i had the bef one so all right well i'll shut up now sorry guys i have nothing else good thank you uh the athletic board did not meet this uh last month so i have nothing else new to

034report so much in athletics right now i don't even know how you pick and choose we got a mold a lot of mulching do you happen to see that uh the ohio athletic association is weighing whether or not to um allow um student likeness and images to be nil yeah is it is that name image likeness yeah uh for high school so i when that comes out we'll see how that plays yeah i'll be interested to hear what you um report out on it i'll be looking for it nobody can be as cool as jack none of this information is that in general the conversations were around mass policies were going you know transitioning pretty well but there was was a notice in sort of the shift of those energies that would be energies that

035were being exerted around masking policies have shifted to school lunches and concerns around equity initiatives so there's a trend across several districts of franklin county and with some of the districts finding the koch brothers funding some initiatives to target specifically in school um and so that was sort of the general it was really just a you know what's going on in the district it's good to see that we're not the only ones that are you know on a constant barrage of public records requests not that that's bad it's just because the amount of time that it consumes and and what have you so that's interesting that that's happening everywhere yeah and it was funny that's actually because uh victoria and i both said in this committee and so we were trying to decide what was

036worth talking about and we and it's good to know that we're not alone right and there was and i actually texted kyle from the meeting because there was a concern that came up at another district where a lot of student data was shared um by accident and so i was like hey are you sure that so it was good it's good to just have that information sort of cross-district you know what are some things that are happening so that i think it was helpful but there was a lot of conversation about public record requests and just the time can you tell me what the opposition around school lunches what what the quality of schools it was so much it's been that was a yeah that was a yes it was the quality right yeah um

037so those were those were the trends of that meeting and i'm also on the um uh mission vision and planning and we haven't yet set a date for that one but we jason i've talked about it a couple times great okay thank you thank you so much uh joanne yes so the bexley recreation board met um last week during the meeting we discussed a lot about pool operations and summer camp as you know a lot of our students are involved in not only the before and after program but also their summer camp program we also discussed um the commonwealth park sorry master plan um they are started work on there's two athletic fields on that park they've started work on the west side they're going to start work on the east side which may impact

038some of our programming which i talked to dr fine about mostly on our practice fields um and then the summer brochure as you know many of us found in the mail today that opens up on april 25th also on summer programs if you know a person who wants to have a seasonal job with the rec department please apply there are still openings we like to get those filled and then as many people know in the room barb griner who has been a parks and rec employee for over 30 years retired uh she's always been an advocate not only for the rec department but for expanding programs as parents and students and seniors wanted more programming she is going to be also working part-time now over at the senior center which is a passion for her

039and helping to expand those programs i know she'll be greatly missed she was always just someone who took your phone call and tried to help you figure it out so um absolutely yes yeah um so she'll be greatly missed and they have filled two positions to cover really her one position so but she's still gonna remain involved so congratulations to her thank you quinn do you have a report thank you um yeah i should have a few updates from the high school um last friday uh we had student council uh presidential elections for next year and i'm excited to say that james mccann will be the next student council president of bexley high school i know him well i've known him for a while and i have great faith in him to lead student council

040next year and you guys will meet him here soon um in the upcoming weeks the current executive board members james and i will be reviewing and interviewing candidates reviewing applications and interviewing candidates for next year's executive board on the event side student council will be hosting a game night um on april 29th in the high school library and we will also be having another class for the classes event which we we held a similar event in the fall but we're going to do it this time outside and towards the end of the school year in may we haven't locked down an official date yet but we'll be in may towards the end of the school year that's all i have great thank you so much any questions when it's prom prom is well student council

041is not involved in planning prom but i'm pretty sure it's may 9th it's that it's that saturday 7th sorry okay just need to know for tuck's friend on purposes because i can't seem to get a straight answer so thank you yeah he goes on and when is quinn's last day in this setting what month so i was i still need to talk to james about this i was assuming that i would come to the may meeting and then after that he would start coming because i think that's what i did last year i think i think my first meeting was in june of last year so i'll have a conversation with him about that and i'll send you an email you know so one more month all right awesome thank you so much next door

042thank you brad's going to help me with uh some slides thank you quinn as always great job i'm excited to have james join us but you will be sorely missed and we'll give you your send-off next month uh just april celebrations you've mentioned a couple things some wonderful things happening throughout the district but one that i think we've done some work around is making sure that each month celebrations take place driven by students and with the assistance of our leader of diversity equity inclusion marcellus braxton recently we sent out communication to the staff and students regarding arab american heritage month and opportunities and supports it's also school library month and other things but lots happening in our district that i'm really thankful for we will move to our athletic facilities update we've talked about this

043for the last several months things continue to move forward we continue to hold conversations with the jewish community center about the possibility of enhanced athletic facilities for our students on their property we are currently entering the feasibility study or stage of this project to determine the options of the site so we will continue to update you i believe kyle and i have a meeting coming up in the very near future so some design phases occurring here shortly that we will be able to share with the board any questions on either of those two items a mixed emotion for us here at bexley susan drake our amazing principal at maryland uh elementary she has recently accepted a role as the director of operations for a non-profit organization this is obviously bittersweet for us she is a

044superstar she is incredible she is a light of energy at maryland uh we were there i think last friday she was in the middle of dealing with supporting students at the time that we were ushering her into the library so that she could share with her staff and that was obviously an emotional moment for everyone involved we are so thankful for her impact on that community as an instructional leader but also most importantly as a connection and a relationship builder i'm really thankful that she has committed to remaining at maryland through the end of the year i think uh you'll see in the approval i think her final day would be june 17th i believe so we appreciate her willingness to stay put and continue fighting for students and staff and she will be able

045to assist us with our transition plan we will be communicating very soon in the near future perhaps in the next 24 hours a process that we will undertake to find our next replacement so we're excited to go through that process but it is tough when you lose somebody like susan drake so happy to answer any questions about susan i was just going to say you know it is a hard pill to swallow and a talent like that leaves us but what a great testament to finding your second act and i hope that students kind of take that example that you know you can do something for so long and and it'd be a passion uh for you and then to have an opportunity to pursue another passion in life after having such a great career

046really great step so i wish her the very best i know she'll do a great job thank you and i would just like to say she has been my daughter's principals for the last three years and she is um really amazing we'll be sad to see your go but i think if you spend time in that building you will see that she's not a principal that stays and i don't think any really of our principals do that when you walk around our buildings but she's out she's the principal who participates in gym class with children she's out at when kids come in in the morning when kids leave in the afternoon um so i know we'll miss her she's a great leader and i think the students just really enjoy being with her too and

047she started some great new traditions there that i hope will live on too but we wish her well but i'll be one of the families that will miss her i love it we will definitely miss her she's been fantastic yeah so i appreciate that and one other thing that i think is just a testament of who she is it is really hard and i'm sure we've all been in the situation i was almost a year ago when you are in a new position that you know you are going to embark on it is really challenging to have your full energy into the the position you're in and to watch susan do that uh recently has been really impressive and she is committed to doing the work uh here and she is told the next stop

048she will be there when she gets there so that's really impressive and i'm really thankful for that approach yeah i'm very uh just i'll miss susan too just having been a parent who was on a search committee that hired her before i was on the board and just as my oldest my youngest kid was at maryland as a fifth grader in her first year and just seeing how she kind of wrapped her arms around the community uh who have been used to a certain way for a while if you will and she still kind of brought her her stamp and uh i think she did a great job during the pandemic trying to really uh rally around that rallied at school so we saw it from afar we only lived two blocks from maryland but

049we saw it kind of from afar as well so we're gonna miss susan thank you continuing along the lines of mixed emotions uh tyler trill our public information officer is also resigning uh we want to thank him for his his service uh he is pursuing opportunities outside of uh the state uh and outside of education so we're really excited for what's ahead for tyler but that's a big loss for us he has had such an incredible creative mind as he approaches his work and he faced some real challenges during covid and other scenarios and i'm thankful for the time that i had to spend with him he was always willing to to step in and get things done uh his final day in bexley will be effective wednesday the 20th of april uh some background

050information as many of you know in addition to our current public information officer position the district has also contracted contracted communication services through allerton hill gianna harrison from allerton hill will take over some of the public information officer duties until we find tyler's replacement we'll talk about that in a minute gianna is very familiar with baxlin has helped support the district's communication uh efforts for a few years she's very knowledgeable about bexley in the school community and will do a wonderful job assisting us alongside our leadership team members as we move forward uh big shout out to brad pettit you saw brad taking our photos tonight brad's running our meeting brad is stepping in a lot of areas with other members of our team and we're really appreciative uh because it is a loss i

051plan to post the public information officer position in the very near future we have updated this job description and also adjusted our exempt salary procedure scale in an attempt to find a highly qualified person to fill this need which would also allow us to discontinue our current contracted services with allerton hill by combining a portion of the funds we have used on our public information officers exempted salary and contracted services with allerton hill we see savings in the communications department and dr fine just really quickly refresh my memory on the um are we bound by like a 30 60 90 day notice with hellerton yeah if you recall earlier i think it was september and kyle will be able to speak specifically to this we asked that question uh and they said they want to

052work with us uh if we stay in communication i think it went to a 30-day uh 30-day notification we've been in communication they they are aware of our plan and and what we're doing and the hope is to communicate with them as soon as we find who we're looking for yeah i'm really thankful for that they've been a great partner to help us in those gap areas where we needed some additional um communication and and flushing things out so um but that's good that we were able i couldn't remember what the window was we tweaked it earlier this fall with with that being our plan i think that 30 days is correct that's also my recollection and i do want to say that um you know in particular tyler was really an important partner for

053us during the pandemic during the toughest times when we were preparing so many communications to go out to our community to explain what was coming next and i know he worked really hard and you know it was long hours and was was there and and um he and i and the superintendent at that time spent you know hours working on a q a you know a faq and answering questions that were coming in and so um i really appreciate all that it was a tough time to be in communications in a school district and it's a it can be a lonely place yeah uh you're you're really not noticed until it's not going well okay and so it's a really it can be a lonely place but he always was willing to dig in and

054support and he gave us some really um true gems uh in terms of uh product output whether it be short videos um you know interview coverage whatever it was something that was new to bexley we didn't you know we operated solely print right um and he really took us to a new level in terms of digital communication um increasing our our um our what do you call them so i'm aging myself here but on social media posts not posts but uh views views yeah uh the increased views and engagement that's the word i was looking for um engagement uh with our community and people that support us whether they have children in schools or not they were now able to hear and see a lot of the work and the exciting things that happen all

055the time in the district um he took it to a next level so um whoever is getting him is really getting um a keen eye for that that uh skill set and he he helped me look really good in pictures well i love that you mentioned his skill set so you will see in tomorrow's newsletter and in your board report and we'll post for some engagement on social media sites his swan song he's worked with our amazing uh early literacy folks and created a video to showcase some of the work that we do which is really going to be helpful for our families and and our community members but it's a it's a perfect way for uh as he exits yeah to leave that that's awesome that lasting impression margaret when when you reached out

056to similarly situated school districts with communication structures that you think are successful what did you learn about costs and structures right like you're sort of reorganizing right you're taking two bodies of money and putting them into one body and and i hope both that get a really high quality single person and also save some money yeah so what are you so what i've learned is most i think of the five or six seven local districts that i talk to every one but one still no matter what system they have they have allerton hill or another firm the one who does not had a different firm it wasn't allerton hill but had a different firm and they've since uh moved away from that and brought in someone someone down the road with a very similar makeup

057as us uh we're at 2400-ish students i think they're at 3 400. they have uh a public information officer that's making closer to a hundred thousand uh and then a twenty fifteen thousand dollar contract with allerton hill some of those bigger districts in the belt are two they have a chief and a public information officer an assistant um so that's as you get into the more like us it's one person with some support on the side from allerton hill for that moment of crisis sometimes they use them for their social media uh helps monitor to protect support but those are the things i'm seeing i i was surprised to see the majority of them uh still have a smaller contract with allerton hill or or a firm so you saw a shift in much the

058same way that you're shifting correct so the more increase in salary and a smaller and a small contract with with them for the for the moment of uh unforeseen issues before you move on from um shift from the position from um uh i just want to offer and i don't know if because this opportunity will come up that you and we talked about this a little bit on monday take the time to offer a runway for yourself in the district before filling the principal position and really rethinking potentially what the principal description is like the job descriptions revisiting that that are in alignment with the policies taking some time to do this process well in alignment with your sort of vision of what the district can be thank you can i ask you a quick

059question on the so is that those small 15 000 contracts with allerton hill is that like a crisis thing or do you know yeah they in the quick conversations it was around crisis it was around small projects that they look for um could be some of those communications that they do quarterly those sorts of things um and then also the social media impact thank you on the principal you are going to oh i'm sorry victoria are you done dude another question okay um you were gonna in your email communication explain the process for community engagement and engagement of staff to go through the process to identify the next principle for maryland correct and is it your hope that that's filled by the time we start school in the fall oh yes oh yeah we we

060we're going to move very quickly we have we have well finding the most oh yeah yeah moving quickly means posting a position communicating appropriately and and informing stakeholders okay thank you so just to clarify your expectation is to post that position and fill it with somebody from the outside my expectation is to post the position go through the process and determine who is the best person for that role so i think as i listen to my fellow board members moving quickly while also having a lengthy runway i'm not into the moving quickly part um so let me say that i am interested in having a incredibly qualified person and giving the community time to make sure that that happens if that means having an interim then that would be all right as well i don't

061think i understood that that's what you were asking for so that makes sense now because i do think we have um we have uh date constraints around hiring and contracts and for administrators like we do with teachers right like windows that they can accept positions or not there are windows that you get into that uh may not be let out of their contract okay your inclination is post an interim for however long it takes or you could probably have an interim for a year giving the community time to find somebody it's late in the process or the community the school district whoever but they have enough community input right so that the process is rushed it is possible within our district to fill that position with an interim so typically interim interims from in my

062experience typically come when you are in the middle of a process in the middle of a school year where you're trying to accomplish a task april is a wonderful opportunity for us to find some really qualified people if we go through a process and we don't find the person that we think is stellar like a susan drake we don't settle we wouldn't settle that's then what i would start considering is there an interim that we need to put in place to make sure that what we have for our students in our community is effective april is it when i say move fast i mean on some amazing candidates i want to make sure that they know that we have an uh an opening we've been talking to some incredible people let's get them into the

063game then you go through a very detailed uh and methodical process why we what i mean by move fast is let people know who are already applying for other positions in other districts we and bexley have an opening and we want you if you are highly qualified to get into the game so i think just because dr jaden and i have and jonathan dr baker sorry and i have all engaged from a community standpoint board standpoint but definitely as community members engaged in the processes of in the last few years of um hiring and you you as well you were on the committee for uh miss drake as well no my kids weren't in school yet [Laughter] um but you know we've all engaged in the process and and there have been we've all probably

064given our our extensive feedback over the years of um kind of how those processes can be improved i think having um mkl help us guide that process mr smith hopefully helping out that process too maybe it'll help sort of um improve it because and i i don't want to speak for you dr j in any way shape or form um but i know having had my own experience with it that there were quite a few choppy bumps along the road and um so you know i can understand you know why you know that we're not we don't want to rush right yep so i i get i get that yeah i didn't want to speak for you i just i was talking through my own experience anything else before the next one all right any

065other questions experiential learning we're going to bring our friend steve shapiro up to the podium this evening our leader of student and community engagement will share an overview of the experiences he has facilitated for our students this 21 22 school year we began the year by identifying the importance of connecting students to experiences of interests through our commitment plan and we are so grateful for mr shapiro's leadership his energy his passion uh and his wisdom as you have worked with our students and our staff so steve take it away thank you jason uh good evening members of the board of education i begin by thanking you for your service to our community i know it's often a thankless job but a super important job so thank you for your work you do i'm looking forward

066to sharing a little bit of uh my work with you tonight and i i just want to break it into three parts one is i want to give you a sense of why do we have a leader of experiential learning i know this position even though it's a relatively new position came from a different board and a different superintendent um so brief history i want to share with you some of the work that i've been doing with students so you can see uh you know a close look at like what some of this work looks like and then i want to take a little look to the future and see what's possible moving forward so to begin with i think the idea of a leader of experiential learning and thinking about experiential learning really rests

067on the fact that i think that our previous superintendent and board were recognizing that the foundation of our modern school system that is the whole way we approach education and the systems and structures that we work on were built in a different era they were built in an era predominantly in the late 1800s and early 1900s in response to the technological innovations of that time which were industrialization and mass production and so we built a school system that was really suited to prepare kids for the kind of work that they were going to be doing in that industrial world which required things like retaining content performing low-level procedures following instructions and and we built a very powerful economy uh using a school system that prepared students for those specific types of of that particular type

068of economy and i think that the school board recognized and i think it's impossible to not recognize that we're living through obviously since 1800s and early 1900s we've encountered an incredible amount of change technologically and socially but probably even in the last generation in the last 30 years we've probably witnessed greater changes in technology and in social processes probably than any generation in the history of the human race so here we are confronting a whole new set of needs for our students what we see consistently and the the world of work consistently tells us that what they're looking for from our students as they approach the world of work is 21st century skills and this has been out there for a long time and i'm sure you're quite familiar with this consistent reporting on this

069advanced communication skills critical thinking critical problem solving collaboration the ability to work well within a team creativity innovation the ability to develop new solutions to complex problems so these are the kind of things that our students need to be successful in the world we also see that there's a series in addition to these skills of dispositions that are consistently reported and this is by not just business and industry but also by universities and colleges in higher education things like intellectual curiosity things like self-directedness resilience adaptability passion this is this is the set of skills and dispositions that our students are really called upon for their success in the future and almost all of those dispositions and skills are developed through experience those are done through actual hands-on participation and experiential learning so the position was

070created i think in response to the needs that our students have for success in the future i want to share with you a little bit about what that's looked like in my position and i also want to add in the expansion of community engagement which happened when lisand smith left the district last year and i picked up some of her responsibility for engaging our community so i'll talk to you a little bit about some of the new programs special learning opportunities career exploration classroom implementations related to experiential learning but then i'll also share with you a little bit about briefly community engagement partnerships learning opportunities and equity initiatives so i want to take you through some of the programs that i've had a chance to work with and develop in my time two and a

071half two and three-quarters years in bexie schools one is the global scholars program which is a partnership with the columbus council on world affairs i work with jennifer cedano a spanish teacher at the high school we have about 50 students 9th and 10th graders who are participating in this program this program is really specialized in focusing on global cultures global issues and global careers so we're giving our students a chance to get connected with global awareness and preparation for their future also had a chance to work and help develop with the bexy minority parent alliance the buddies program i've worked with lisa kelly from bmpa this is a mentorship program where some of our high school students of color have been able to take on the role of mentoring some of our elementary and middle

072school students of color this program has been really powerful not just for the little buddies who have had a role model who looks like them and who they can look up to but it's also been really powerful for the big buddies who have had an opportunity to step into a role of leadership and develop themselves as someone who can make a difference in the world you can get a look at some of the students we have about 17 pairings this year this was last year's group also we formed a new program in partnership with the bexley chamber of commerce this year and i'm working with nancy mallory at the high school on an initiative called bexy women lead we've got 15 9th and 10th grade students who are basically learning about leadership and developing their

073own leadership in in conjunction with some women leaders from our community that the chamber of commerce has identified so these students are basically getting a chance to develop their own leadership and learn about the path that other women have followed in uh in becoming leaders in our community one of the really exciting initiatives i've had a chance to work on is the student leadership research collaborative and this is a program that keith bell at ohio state university dr keith bell has developed this program basically asks students from about 20 different schools around central ohio to identify a problem in their school research it and develop a solution to it and last year we had a group of students involved this year we have another group of students involved they're getting incredible leadership development keith bell

074brings the a-list of leadership speakers i think tomorrow they're meeting with the woman who wrote freedom writers the movie was based on uh here they were meeting with moon really amazing leadership development but the heart of the program is students actually doing independent action research on issues that they care about in their school figuring out what's really happening and then proposing solutions to try to make a difference and so uh these students the students this year in the program there are nine students the three students in the front row are working on expanding representation and belonging for students of color the students in the middle row are working on achievement culture pressure and stress for both students and staff the students in the back row including our new student council president james mccann are working

075on trying to expand opportunities for more student directed learning in our high school so my hope is that you'll have a chance to hear about their research and hear their proposals as members of this board as they roll those out in the next month also as the leader of experiential learning i've had a chance to get students out into the community where they've had a chance to see and interact with adults in a variety of formats these are just some brief pictures from around i won't go into the details of specifics although i share them in board reports so you may recognize some of the opportunities that our kids have had um but but these have been really outstanding opportunities for our students to get outside of school and experience learning in the community i'm

076really proud to be working on expanding the number of exchange students that we serve in our school from outside every student exchange student that comes in brings the global culture with them and gives our students a chance to expand their world view i'm really proud of these three bexley kids i think probably the most we've ever had we have three bexley students who are going out next year for a full year to be exchange students so i'm really proud of these three they're all going to be working through rotary and spending a year overseas as students next year career shadowing has been a big part of the work this you can see is a shot from bexley connect at bexley connect is the database of community members who have offered to become role models and

077to share their professional and personal expertise with our students we have over 500 community members in bexley connect and they have served uh as as mentors and hosts for career shadowing experiences we had one in october and one in march serving about 300 of our students our students got out into the community learned about careers were mentored by some of our community members and it was really some really powerful experiences for kids but i thought what was really great about the career shadowing that we've been expanding for our students is that not only have the kids found it powerful and eye-opening and enlightening and opening paths for their future but our community members have been really lit up by the chance to work with our kids if you if you're running to chad eddie sometime

078asking about his time with our kids uh it's been exhilarating for our adults to be able to share their expertise with our kids even the governor got involved in march hosting a group of our students at the state house we also added the senior takeover this year where we invited some of our seniors to take the take the reins and teach and we had some really awesome sessions led by students on the day of the act where our seniors were basically teaching a lot of our freshmen and sophomores some really cool stuff so we're trying to give more opportunities for students to lead in terms of community engagement um i'll be pretty brief on that we've had a chance to develop a lot of partnerships and these are some of the organizations some of them

079within baxley some of them in the central ohio community but part of my job is always looking for opportunities to connect with who's out there and find opportunities for our students to work in authentic ways with organizations in our community and that's those partnerships for me are really important and joyful and i think uh as as with quinn being a part of this body i think when our students are part of adult worlds and working in authentic ways that's when they really have a chance to blossom into their full potential we've expanded community engagement beyond we had done a lot of like we're sharing stuff with you one of the things when i took over laissand's portion of that job was i wanted to expand not just us sharing with our community but us talking

080together with our community and so we created hey bexley let's talk we've had a series of conversations where our communities come together to discuss uh important issues using podcasts and articles as as foundational discussion points we've talked about equity we've talked about achieving culture we've talked about college rankings we also hosted a session on the dangers of fentanyl to help our parents be more aware of how they can help keep their kids safe in the face of this public health crisis so if you kind of look at the what i've shared you've seen that i've talked about new programs i've shared special learning opportunities and career exploration community partnerships learning opportunities i hope you've seen the equity initiatives although i think that could be a whole other presentation but what you haven't seen as much

081of and i think one of the areas that lies before us is the idea of classroom implementation so most of the work that i've been able to do has been on the side it's been taking kids out for a special program taking kids out for a special day but i think the area that i have had probably less success than i would like to have had so far is on actually transforming the daily learning experiences of kids so that experiential learning is at the heart and the core of what they do and while i'm not here to make any excuses covet has not been super helpful in creating space for authentic learning experiences in our classroom as teachers have scurried heroically to respond to distance learning and you know zoom and a thousand things but

082i think the opportunity that lies before us i think when covet hit um for those you you know you pay attention you know in business they're always that looking for a disruption it takes a disruption to lead to change covet has been the disruption to the education system that we we probably will never experience a greater disruption to business as usual as covet produced for us and i think the first reaction to a disruption is we need familiarity and we cling back to what is comfortable and what's what's recognizable but i think what's been interesting and you've probably heard this this year and i've heard it from a lot of students and teachers and you see it in a lot of researches people saying this year has been even harder than last year this year

083has been even more difficult and i think it's because we're clinging back to the old system and it's it's overwhelming as it as we face it i think the opportunity before us today is to say okay the year is going to end we have a chance to step back how do we reassess what's happening how do we look back and say what vestiges of the old system are still there that we're ready to let go of what opportunities for new models of education are available that can prepare our kids for their future um not our past uh one of the things we're doing and i i applaud dr fine because i think he's really showed leadership on this is i've been working with a team of folks to put together a major summer institute on

084authentic learning and leadership this is going to be a a two-day experience but it's also going to have pre-conference and a lot of post-conference learning opportunities every principal in our district is going to attend this this conference this institute with a team of teachers from their school and i think it's our hope that this will be beginning of a conversation that we can engage our teachers and our principals in really examining what's possible how do we engage our students with more authentic learning opportunities how do we prepare them with those skills and those dispositions that they're going to need for their success so i'll leave it at that and i'd be happy to answer any questions you have i got a question steve thanks for the presentation for superhero it's always nice to see the

085cube thanks um so when you consider the achievement culture that's kind of fueled by grades and test scores and the tracking structures that exist in bexley starting super early on how might they be disrupted by this sort of experiential learning model well i mean i think the the the examples that you pointed out are part of a kind of a structure an organizational structure that schools are based on i always think about experiential learning for example let's use let's use a simple example service learning kids doing a service project it's hard to say how did you do on your service project what'd you get on your service project uh because what you got is something that's not easily quantifiable and measurable and i think we have rooted ourselves deeply in quantifiable and measurable outcomes and

086while i think there those can be important i think a lot of the most important things we learn and the experiential things we do are the hardest to quantify so i think you know it challenges us to say you know if you do an internship if five kids do an internship how do you know who was the best internship was that the kid who is going to do that career the kid who learned that they definitely don't want to do that career so i think the challenge is for us to say can we create authentic spaces for kids to learn that sometimes fall outside of those traditional structures and ranking systems we have because that's where a lot of times that powerful personal growth learning is going to happen right so i mean one of

087the things you're talking about is most of these are happening outside and so what all of what you said how might if brought inside might disrupt some of the challenges the kids have been facing with the achievement culture and also the inequities that exist inherently in attracting i i love the question because i think i i don't think i can give you an answer like what it will look like but i think the question at the heart of the question is a really important point which is that the creation of this kind of learning space is a response to in a potential antidote to the stress our kids are experiencing as well as the inequities that are built into our system and so i think you know and i think this honestly i think marguerite

088what you're asking is a challenge that we face which is to what degree are we as a school district prepared to let go of historical practices that have been hierarchical and structural in service of learning opportunities and experiences for our kids and i i can't answer that myself except to say that that that's a challenge we will confront any time you make change right so i guess along those same line what are you noticing about the students who thrive in those experiential learning settings yeah i think it's a good question because i don't think that a certain you know sometimes people will say oh these experiential learning opportunities are good for kids who can't do the regular school absolutely clearly those kids in the leadership collaborative who you'll hear from they're some of our top

089students and i think they'll tell you that their work in the leadership collaborative is powerful and profound in ways that traditional school isn't not that it's one or the other i think it's both and i think kids need some of those traditional learning experiences but i think obviously kids who are not thriving in the traditional system can really benefit from a different kind of learning experience but i think we make a great mistake if we say kids who are doing well or have high gpas oh they don't need experiential learning they're doing fine as is because there's no kid who doesn't benefit from an opportunity to do an internship there's no kid who doesn't grow doing a major service project there's no kid who doesn't learn being in charge of her developing leadership as part

090of a team developing collaboration skills you know every founder of a company every ceo of a company has to have those skills it doesn't matter that you just have the grades so i think it's for all kids absolutely and i think we should be i mean from my standpoint i think we should be expanding and providing more opportunities within the curriculum for kids to make those choices and i think you know right now most kids in the curriculum have a choice you know kind of an honors class or a regular class an ap class or a regular class but i think we could look at how do we how do we rethink the way we approach offering opportunities to students that doesn't require that necessary that same binary choice that's that isn't necessarily the only

091choice that we could provide kids well i will say mr shapiro i conducted uh over the last several weeks multiple interviews um for to fill positions across our our growing division and um almost all of the folks that grabbed my attention um were able to clearly communicate talked about that level of collaboration spent time talking about their passion and how their experience um working in that whatever division and you know real estate corporate commercial real estate can get real dry really fast but for someone to talk about why something is really exciting to them in that field and articulate that those were the folks that i moved on to the next level to engage with our executive leadership because our organization very deeply values those sorts of um things and so reimagining education has been

092something that i've always been a huge proponent of um so it i i will be closely watching in in all ears too thanks i appreciate that comment i think as part of my work i'm spending a lot of time talking to folks in higher education and talking to folks in the world of work consistently always i've talked with three different uh folks who do hiring in major international corporations consistently they want to see what have you done i mean okay maybe grades will get you in the door but in the end what have you done what's your story i have no interest in grades yeah i'm talking to someone um what they've done what that experience will bring to the table yeah i think increasingly employers are looking and colleges are looking for evidence of

093those skills and evidence of those dispositions that i pointed out earlier and so you know the traditional here is my transcript especially in a in a competitive college you know we're accepting one out of ten applicants they all have high grades into but what have you done and it's that special project and that's what makes you stand out so i always tell kids don't do this because it looks good on a college application but it will do it because you'll develop your potential right i think you know alicia really asks begs the question kind of what is our job what are we doing and if our if we see our job as mining human potential as developing the human resources that each of our kids have we have to look for opportunities to develop those

094through experiences and i think that's that's the challenge we face and by the way every district face faces it and since this board had the leadership to create this position other districts in the area have started to create similar kinds of positions based on the same recognition i'll go real quick uh thank you very much steve i'm i'm smiling on the inside as i think about the work you've done and the work you're going to continue to do and think about for me as an educator and and how there are so many different things we want to do with problem-based learning project-based learning and we have the curriculum to cover but yet we also want to get to different levels with like bloom's taxonomy with creating and analyzing and going deeper and designing right and

095so you're doing the you're kind of doing all this you know it makes me want to smile as a math guy you know like hey we want to kind of just not just learn about pythagorean theorem but how does it apply and and different things like that and even talking with some some faculty today at ohio state you know it's like we're looking at how to reimagine our summer offerings and how to be more interdisciplinary right and and and so your work is kind of leaning that way and even thinking about how now with college applications they're getting away from the you know high achievement tests and just kind of more of a test optional if you will right so then think about these experiences could help the students with their applications but it helps

096them find themselves helps them find their passions right and so i think you're kind of helping them in different kind of ways i think to to margaery's point you know one thing that could help is also uh maybe some kind of oh well talk to me about what kind of assessment you have of the student experience so not so much of a likert scale did you like this yes or no but what kind of reflection what kind of um ways are students thinking about their experience with with you yeah you know it's funny like i love the question about assessment because i think assessment drives all that we do i mean the way we assess and the way we evaluate learning drives all that we do i often think about if someone says are you

097a good parent and each of us could answer that question but there's no metrics to say are you a good parent i mean you could say well whoever goes to the most soccer games is the best parent but we know that that's not the metric the metric of being a good parent is much more complex than that to understand our successes requires a much deeper level of reflection a much more honest and personal take on that and so i think this is part of the challenge of experiential learning is it it belies the simple assessment of like give me a number and tell me how good it is it's more complex because the rich things in life always are more complex and so what we do see in as students go out and do these

098experiences we've been collecting a lot of research from them and some of the students in the leadership collaborative been collecting research and what we find is kids are lit up kids are excited kids are happy they're joyful kids are seeing relevance in the work that they're doing and recognizing it as contributing to their future and i think that you know we the fact that we are experiencing kind of a mental health crisis for young people and for teachers frankly in our country right now is no secret um if the surgeon general has put that forward it's evident in all the research so i think one of the greatest indicators of what's possible in experiential learning is the joy i mean the the theme of this conference is making learning irresistible getting back to the joy

099of teaching and learning both for our teachers and our students because in the end the joyful learning is where a lot of the most important growth happens and i think a lot of that's been squeezed out in a number of ways and the last thing i want to say too is thank you thank you thank you for going to all the teachers going to all the students and really trying to sell and talk about what you're going to do because i'm sure there's plenty of emails there's plenty of correspondence back and forth there's plenty of starts and stops and just to see the the pictures of the students with the mask on and trying to work through logistics at some corporation and how they handle masking and compared to our students and and so thank

100you for all the minutia that you had to go through to get a great product i just want to clear my my question was not to try to how do you take how do you assess with a number system what you're doing my question was actually the opposite how do you take what you're doing and disrupt the achievement culture that we have no i totally get it all right totally together and steve you know this is just a snapshot of your program right this is just 10 minutes of waiting um could you talk a little bit and some of your programming lends more to interaction between yourself and students at the high school level now that we are back in school i mean one of the things that i'm interested in too is seeing how

101is some of your programming trickle down to middle school students too now what opportunities do you see in the future for that age group yeah i think it's a really good question you know the the i think that the middle school model the design of middle school model is more experiential by nature so you know in a in a middle school space experiential learning is probably already happening more than in a traditional high school model um i think there are challenges there uh quite honestly because a lot of our middle school becomes aligned with our high school because we have kids who are advancing courses and kids who are you know we we've kind of created the high school sometimes drives the middle school and can drive out the middle school design or the focus

102of what a middle school philosophy is that's another challenge um but i do think that we have some good examples in the middle school of experiential learning that are happening and i do think that it's a place where we have a lot more opportunity obviously elementary school you know you can't sit a group of elementary kids down and lecture them for too long you figure out that doesn't work kids have to be engaged as kids get older we we get more into that so i think i think part of it is creating space you know in our flex periods for example a lot of opportunity in uh in in some of our middle school model spaces but i think that that's it's a fair question i don't have a simple answer well that's that's fine

103i think i would like you to explore that a little bit more now that uh kids are in school full-time now it just may give middle schoolers a another avenue yeah um you know if they're not in an extracurricular after school maybe this is something they would enjoy doing too so right am i recalling wrong i think you when and maybe your first year of the experiential learning you did focus a lot on the middle school we did do a lot of middle school stuff because the high school model was so entrenched um and had some real successes there [Music] and i'm just excited actually to see that the high school has grown by leaps and bounds in terms of participation yeah and i think jason caudill is a huge proponent of this kind of

104learning we've been working i mean this year we've been working on kind of building some major experiential learning opportunities at the sixth grade level at the seventh grade level at the eighth grade level and you know our sixth graders are going to be out at cam area and doing uh team building and personal development collaboration kind of that moving in um and so we're building some of that but i think there are many opportunities to continue forward yeah and i think there's a very i think the middle school staff and the middle school leadership are very on board with with the process yeah just yeah go ahead are you done i just want to add my thanks i know this has been a great amount of work it's achieving great results not only is there

105joy in these students but there's confidence there's a new learning of complex knowledge that can't be learned in other ways and you know or this at least supports that in a in a really important way i'm so grateful that you took this on for our district your background has been really important i've been able to participate in all the things that you've offered out to the community and and i'm really grateful for that and i think this is really important not just for some students but for all students all students i totally agree with you that all students benefit from these opportunities to learn differently to to grow the way you're presenting and i and i love the way you're talking about what comes next too so i'm very excited for that and have a

106lot of gratitude thank you thanks victoria and i think you know we do know like i see statistics like 51 of our kids participate in extracurriculars and my thought always is 49 of our kids don't and i think you know we have to make sure that every kid is getting and some of our kids we know in this community have amazing summer opportunities and have incredible social networks through their parents some of our kids don't and so i think from an equity lens trying to build up options for every kid to gain that confidence and that that joy is really important all right thank you all very much thank you thank you quinn yeah all right um so i just have a few comments about this the first thing i want to say is i

107really want to express how grateful i am and i know the entire student body is really grateful for all the new learning opportunities that we've had in the past few years like i've noticed a significant increase in like cool learning opportunities that i've had and all of my peers have had and i also think like we were talking about high stress culture and academic achievement culture i think opportunities like this and integrating them into our learning is a really good way to help combat distress like traditional classes and i think it's a great way to have a break from the more traditional classes while also having great learning opportunities and just great life opportunities and like life experiences that like i mean just myself i've had some really cool opportunities that have definitely made me

108realize like what i want to do in college or after college and i think that's the same for a lot of my peers thanks for saying that quit i i'm sure you all read the article about the women in stem group at the school and madison ingram was talking about you know building hot air balloons and trying to figure out how to make them work and like designing this project and it was just experiential learning happening that kids were running and designing themselves and there was clear joy and enthusiasm and excitement for it and so i appreciate you saying that quinn i know having spent 30 years doing this kind of work with kids i know how fun and exciting and meaningful experiential learning opportunities are for kids and so that's why i have the

109passion that i do for it thanks thank you steve i appreciate uh your time your commitment it is interesting how many districts call us to get access to steve because they're thinking of a concept or an avenue to do some things that are similar so thank you well done that's it for my section great that was wonderful thank you so much so next we move into the um items underneath superintendent's comments and we've got a you know pretty long list of things to approve i'm hopeful that we don't need to talk about each and every one of these but i do want the board to say which of these we should pull out for discussion what items do folks want to discuss so what i'd like to do as we've done in the past is

110identify what we need to discuss and with respect to the ones that we can just um vote on as a consent portion of section four let's do that so are there items for b through for o i'm sorry through 4n that people want to talk about i'd like to talk about the gifted policy so in 4-1 and the gifted handbook for jay so that's for um the policies are for i and foreign and the handbooks are 4j yeah um and we've got other handbooks on there the elementary middle and and high school handbooks do you have questions about that anybody else um okay does anybody else have or you know i'm sure those are other people also want to talk about some of those are there any others in 4b through 4n that folks want

111to pull out and talk about if not i would like to ask for a motion to approve items for b for c d e f g [Music] k l m and n you also need h right yeah did i yeah um probably m as well m but but not n yeah okay i mean so we're gonna vote on all of those except i j and eminem i would do eminem together and okay eminent eminem so i would i would look for a motion to approve b c d e f g h k l and that's it thank you second second all in favor of approval of those items please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed thank you that motion carries so let's go to i uh can i ask a process question yes

112are we gonna discuss each of the four and then vote them as one grouping or are we going to discuss one at a time and vote them individually let's discuss them one at a time and vote them each individually unless i mean that would be what i would it doesn't matter to me i just want to know what i'm doing well for me i'm gonna the only one in the under eye that i really want to talk about is the igb policy so i don't does that make sense let's start with the resolution just because it's the first one um we have a resolution before us that um uh would permit us to meet remotely as a group if there's a reason to do that or have any board member who cannot be at a

113meeting to participate remotely the change from our policies is that that board member would be able to vote as our as our policies currently stand you don't have to be here you can you can participate remotely but you can't vote you don't account for a quorum and there's a couple other things i think that apply all of that would be lifted through june 30th so that's what this resolution would do it would lift the in-person requirement for our school board meetings and for our voting um any discussion of that resolution kyle i know you'll stop me if i'm doing something goofy um send up players i see him worrying over there um all in favor of uh i i feel like we should treat this resolution differently is that my belief is just like you

114did with the whole section for talk are there is there just one policy that needs to be discussed uh i've taken this one separately because it's not a first read that's the only reason is that does that make sense to you let's vote on this one then i'll call the question on the resolution if there's no discussion on it all in favor of adopting the resolution please signify by saying aye aye any opposed okay that motion carries thank you the rest of these let's um just identify the ones that people have questions about or want to talk about and then we can take them all as one um okay that's fine we can okay iggb i'm sorry i'm pulling up the wrong maybe i g double b igb yeah a lot of b's going on

115so what i know about this policy is that it is intended to um so we we spent a fair amount of time talking about this policy in our meeting we talked about it in two meetings in fact as a kind of a broad brush it is intended to incorporate into our board policy the work that was already adopted in terms of you know following the the committee the task force that looked at gifted learning offerings and so this this change to the policy would put those items into our board policy around what is offered or can be offered as you guys probably know we are required to identify students who are gifted and that's all set out in law we are not required to provide these services but we are required to have a plan

116for what the services will be and that's what is new in here is adjustment to the plan that we are required to have um to reflect those changes that we made um you know a couple months ago maybe um the other changes here were an attempt at looking through an equity lens there was some clarification we actually tried to make some changes that we ended up not making because when we previewed those with the ohio department of education who reviews our plan annually and approves it or does not they told us that it might not be good to change in our plan the language that came out of there out of ohio law so the changes that were we started with were changes to adopt the changes to our plan that would provide different kinds

117of learning at different age levels the other changes some of them we stuck with and some of them we did not stick with because of the input we got back from the ohio department of education they said that our changes didn't align with the state law or with what their expectations are the language yeah it's it's more that and and honestly we had a was it not aligned with law no it was you know so it was it was language that we wanted to change and i can i can tell you what what it was um that we thought was more inclusive and it was proposed to us by our director of diversity equity and inclusion you know he was with us and we were working on this and we liked the language the ohio

118department of education didn't like it the first question that we talked about was is do we legally have to have exactly their language and the answer to that is no um so you know this is a first read we can still consider adjusting this language a little bit i think the group you know would had a hard time deciding how to come out on that and i'm not sure that we concluded that you know my personal view of it is that um i'd rather change the language and i don't think we have to not change it but i'm not dealing with the ohio department of education every day so i guess my question is if if it's consistent with law and not violating law somehow and it is aligned with our values and what we

119have said as a district we um value and want to capture and we're not violating law i don't i like i don't really understand why i mean we can take their their recommendations is duly noted right but that that's open to their interpretation of whether or not they approve our plan just because they don't like the language i mean there's a lot of stuff there right but their approval is based on law right like they have to make sure that the plan we submit to them is compliant with law i i just making sure i understand and and i will say that these changes are um they would make me and i think other people feel better i don't think it's um you know i i think i think the ode should be willing to

120accept this language um it's not a whole rewrite of the of the document it's a small small things change so i just want that's a little heavy-handed on their part it's easier for them yeah um that's just sort of a background um on what we did and what we were trying to do so uh other so are we talking about hey your microphone's not on thanks to pull together in this time so there's going to be things that i'm going to share now that to some degree i may be shared with jason when we talk monday but i didn't get a chance to send an email and so that's not normally the way i would like to because i think people need time to sort of prepare so i just want to put that out

121there and when we're just talking about the gifted policy on page three there's sort of a and i know this is a conversation and it might be what you're referring to the idea of difference between being identified and classified right like an identity is who somebody is right and i find that problematic that we are identifying like you are gifted that's who you are right as opposed to there's been some assessments and you're classified in this gifted category and that means x and y and z when we think about how we're going to provide education that's the language i'm not super comfortable with i think the other one is on page four there's a line that says student can you just i'm trying to classified versus identifying just tell me on page three page three

122we say uh hello that's gonna you're gonna stretch there's a bunch of places where we changed the language to something like children who have been identified as gifted as opposed so i would as a well i would alternate classified for identified would be my yeah and they're you know i'll i know yeah we can you've already said on page four at the very top students who are gifted yeah that is incredibly problematic i would say that all of our students every single student in our school district is gifted i think that's one where we miss the change we've tried to update all of those everywhere that's just a mess if you go through the other parts of the document we we agree with you and i love that you've caught that that's why i'm i'm

123thankful for the second reading our attempt was to not have it read as you see right now okay thank you so that change will be made for sure because that's the same change we've made in other places they're just we we tried hard to catch them all but we didn't catch them all um and victory i'm sorry we and again we did have a very lengthy discussion with mr ruxin about this and can we check if we were going to change the title as well i just noticed that changed the title yep yeah we got to make it there too yep thank you anything else okay so do you want to vote on this one separately yeah okay well we're just we're just doing a first round yep two so these changes get thrown in

124and then we would have a second read you know i don't i'm sorry i didn't understand what you were saying so you don't want you want your changes put into it gotcha i thought you were saying you did it yeah so we're just accepting that this is a first read do we normally vote on first reads that they're we just say we have done the first read it doesn't mean we're adopting the policy correct okay so all in favor of recognizing that we've done a first read of um igg igbb please signify by saying aye aye any opposed thank you that motion carries what other board policies do folks want to pull out and talk about separately hearing none is that right right um i would entertain a motion for the rest of these uh

125board policies that are up for first read tonight to acknowledge that we have done a first read of all of the rest of the policies that are here so i have a second second all those in favor please indicate by saying aye any opposed okay thank you that motion carries um hey victoria when does the policy committee meet again so if we had any further revisions um for the secondary women tomorrow we do but we'll have this will be one of we we've added we're trying to meet more regularly so that we can get the work done so if we don't have time to get to the changes because it's a lot tonight we will have time to to get we want people to have an opportunity to provide the feedback okay and we've got

126more policies that are coming next month and one of the things that we've talked about in in on this board before is understanding what's coming from the osba and what's coming just from internal um and next month we'll have second reads on these and we'll have first reads on some other policies and a lot of that's just internal um so um so um just for clarity uh when we get to the secondary point any changes that have been caught recommended or feedback sent to policy committee those changes get adopted into the second read we will put them into the second read those changes so that what you will see next time will you know it won't be programs for students who are gifted it'll be programs who's for students who are classified or identified whatever

127the word is that we end up with that's what'll be in the second read we'll make those changes and we'll do a second read and adopt the policy or not okay gotcha can i i mean you might have just asked this and i missed it sorry did so for at least these policies that the first read has just happened can we get them before the wednesday before we will get well we can commit to you know i because otherwise we're going to be reading these but you're going to do some more you know i'm talking for carla here but what what we can do is we've got to get a meeting to we got to meet tomorrow we may be able to as soon as we have made adjustments to that policy we will send

128it out and we'll try to do them one at a time instead of doing it yeah and we are cognizant of we it's a ton of work i don't think anybody would would understand how much work you're all putting in especially that week before and coming out so we work really hard to try and get it karla does such an amazing job there are things that slow us down but we know the sooner we get it to you the better for you all right we have failed in areas of that and there have been moments where we have some success but that's our our commitment is to try and get it to you as soon as possible and this policy was one where we we thought we had it done and then we reviewed and

129was like okay we didn't get it right so we had to go through it again and you know it there was a lot of time and effort to get this you know with all the little changes so and the reason that we're adopting this particular policy for first read to move it through the process is because we have this role and these changes in the gifted program that we are looking to implement the reason we yes the reason this policy came into you know this did not nothing came from osba right yes this was one where because there had been that review of our gifted programs we wanted to make sure our policies aligned aligned i think i would just allow offer this feedback um if when work policy committee is um smithing to the

130nth degree on a policy and it's still not correct um i'm okay with i mean we have quite a few policies for first read i'm okay to have waited for that one to hit in may to get it right even if it's just a matter of here's i mean i i'm not criticizing i'm just saying maybe pull it yeah i mean the the changes that didn't get made are are just that the concept is in here right all see i think it's actually important for us to have this opportunity to hear feedback on it now um because there is a timing issue to get these policies so that's what i was trying to identify if there was a timing constraint in there um and i agree it's good to hear it in open session because

131we're not we don't get an opportunity to um hear the thinking behind someone else's feedback unless we're here so um you know that was just my thought process well and on that we actually did pull three or four policies that we were going to bring to you tonight for that exact reason we we decided this we're trying to get too many things done we're never going to get this right so that's those are the ones that we have on our agenda for tomorrow correct but we'll we'll go back and work on these two and certainly not a criticism i sat on policy committee for two years so i understand um what you go through so and thankful that you do the work that you do for it so let's go next to um item j

132which is the k-12 gifted handbook comments or questions on that um so it's kind of an interesting juxtaposition i think between steve's um conversation about experiential learning and the ways that our gifted um program is structured um and i looked through the gifted handbook and i did i didn't read every every single word the document word for word but i focus mostly on the areas where the changes were being made and i reviewed it alongside the equity policy um with the goal of educational equity in mind in particular the part about establishing an environment where where students feel they belong right and valued and supported and sort of a belief i you know if you think about systems change and systems learning that systems produce exactly what they're designed to produce and right now our

133district is struggling to remedy long-standing opportunity gaps and our data around gifted classification special education classification honors and ap course placements would indicate that these programs do not reflect our student body um and while i see an effort towards equity the flexible math groups for instance right mostly the handbook seems to reinf just make adjustments around the edges but did not engage in the deep critical deconstruction of systems required to investigate where inequities originate if we want to do real equity work then when we're looking at policies and handbooks you have to look down deep where the hidden curriculums live where the inequities start and so this policy because it's just playing around the edges right leaves an indication that our systems are currently working and then we either have to believe that these disproportionalities

134that exist are the results of students so we're specifically in in the handbook you oh i'm not even going to get into the whole play by play no no no i just because um so i'm i can i'll get down there in a second so if you want to look on page 34 about preparing our students for the test well the handbook dissuades preparation it does not address why students might fee why parents might feel preparation is necessary you said 34 page 34 a belief that their child will be seen differently or receive a different kind of education if they are somehow classified as gifted this same fear is what causes third graders to cry when the test results come back and they're not classified as superior cog because a nine-year-old knows just like their

135parents that without that classification their education experience in bexley will be different so we are required by state law to test the state i'm just i'm trying to address that point that you just made the state requires the test it tells us what um tests we can use and it it it mandates this 95 piece i mean all of that is just coming from state law right i i understand that what i am saying is that we have a culture and vaccine that says kids who are superior cog kids who are classified as gifted are treated differently have different opportunities are differently valued and i can look at it just through the different opportunities and if we look at the teachers that they have access to and the curriculum that they have access to and

136the expectations that they're held to around who they are in their intelligence it's quite different so even the six kids that i walked alongside i got two superior cog two are identified as gifted in certain content areas one typical and one special ed and i can tell you by far the two who are identified as giften had vastly different educational experiences actually were treated differently right left with a different sense of self than the other kids we should not be creating and re reinforcing a system that values some kids better differently than we value others so i'm not saying we don't classify and we don't re the same way we classify kids especially and we respond to their needs i'm not saying that nor am i saying that we should have kids do curriculum or

137do curriculum that they already have master i'm not saying that either but we have a culture that values kids differently based on that classification we surface it we we talk about it we if you have a nine-year-old who cries because they didn't get classified they already know that getting pulled out for that gifted class means something differently and and this all of this to me is incredibly frustrating right and what we do to kids who don't get that classified classification is even more frustrating right so this is a document that says these kids somehow are worth more than the rest of the kids in our district right and it reinforces that system that we have created a culture we have created around achievement a culture where we've created around gifted identities right and what those

138kids deserve as opposed to other kids that i'm not comfortable with and i think that this handbook had it been done really deeply through the lens of the the equity outcomes that we're looking for would look and sound different so i think part of what i'm hearing is that as we go forward to do our equity plan and our strategic planning and you know more broadly that um making sure that we're thinking about you know about the issues that you're raising should be part of that i sort of look at these handbooks as not um you know or at least at this moment i'm looking at them as reflecting what we are doing and telling our families and our community what we're doing versus charting a new course so i think that this it doesn't

139have to be that way but i think that is um where we are our handbook we want to tell the community i'm telling the community right now that i think our handbooks are telling our like those three elementary middle and high school handbooks i think they're providing information about um what what you can expect you know to have to do to graduate it's just got a bunch of information in it i i think you're what i'm thinking i may not i don't wanna you know i can't speak for you obviously so what i'm feeling is that we need to be looking at these issues and that's a big undertaking um and i think it might occur best as part of the strategic planning and the equity planning that we are about to embark on um

140so i'm you know that's just a response that i'm offering as you discuss your issues here um you know maybe adding my thought is maybe we need to look at that in a broad way as we go through that that process yeah i would offer we absolutely need to look at it broadway and i also worry like we plop a 79-page document you know with well to us but that's sort of separate but also to educators right so what is the infrastructure for implementation right what does that look like in an individual classroom teacher right how did they implement it and in what ways like it was a whole list of differentiation strategies right and okay so that's awesome how what supports are in place to make sure that that's happening because those those are

141not gifted strategies right those are good teaching strategies for all students so are those strategies just living in the gifted classrooms right are those strategies just living in the spaces where gifted kids are clustered or those strategies that we are saying are going to be present in all classrooms for all children right so i i am concerned with the message that this sends because it is alignment with the culture that we've created that i'm not sure is serving all students can i ask a question is the gift get handbook part of a requirement when you submit a plan to ohio department of education that family or is this just an addition that came out of the gifted task force um committee this has been in place what you see right no i understand but is

142the handbook part of i don't think it's required by law um so it's something that we have consistently provided to families um so that they at least know if you're in this identification classification world of being a or b not to simplify it to that degree here's what happens if you are part of that in bexley to um i do think it's a deeper broader conversation um that is part of that sort of implementation of our equity plan um [Music] uh that we that work that we need to do but i don't know what i'm not sure i'm hearing marguerite is um is it just the the physicality of a handbook existing in the first place that you want to go away or is it just the language that's in the handbook that you want

143to have changed because i'm just not sure um where we're going i i just i want to better understand where we're going with the discussion i get that you know you want to have a broader deeper discussion and i think there's a place for that but the handbook is a sort of a guidebook not only for our families but also for um right but language is a representation of values i'm not i'm not debating that i'm asking what what language do you want to see change so that we can make those recommendations so i would want if you look on page 34 both sections right why i prepare my students for testing why should i prepare that what what are the underlying why would a parent even think they needed to prepare right that's a

144question and then i think if you look at the next one the testing covered skills that the testing is covering skills that my child hasn't been taught and sort of our response right is that well some kids don't need to be taught that and what i would push back and say some kids have experience some kids are explicitly taught it they're just not taught it in the classroom because they've got two college educated parents for somebody who's a professor they travel they've got all of the it's more about access and opportunity right it's not necessarily about so our gifted assessments don't always they don't necessarily always assess giftedness right they also assess access and opportunity right and so when you look at at this one i would like us to talk about and whether it

145lives in this policy that lives somewhere else having writing this and not sort of unpacking and speaking to that i think is problematic right not pushing back on the fact that it's not just that some kids learn it whether what's the line in here without explicitly being taught right some kids have opportunities to learn things outside of school that then position them differently to be successful on gifted tests and then to test height right like that is the so let's talk about that whether we talk about it here whether we talk about the equity policy but when we put stuff um out like this where we don't interrogate some of the inequities that live in the systems that produce these inequitable outcomes then we are sort of complicit in them yeah i mean i i

146i hear what you're saying i'm gonna you know this but of course a lot of this is coming from state law um but i i'm our handbook no the language that we're talking about you know like sorry the testing we're required to do that we're required you know they tell us the tests they tell us what a you know gifted percentile is they all of that is dictated to us so um we can take the language out of the handbook but we can't change the law on it you know it's it's just it's imposed so um you know i think the handbook is intended to i mean i i think the handbook is talking about how we are responding to the law right this is what bexley city schools is doing in response to the

147laws related to gifted isn't it some of it is yeah yeah so we have options about how we are going to respond to that law i'm not sure i don't currently feel like this document is representative i think that's where i'm asking what what options or language gets us to a point where we inform our families of information that i mean some of this document this handbook has had some iterations have come from just feedback from our families saying you didn't tell me about this or we'd like to know this information um the extensive work that the task force engaged in just to ask families that are part of the gifted um community now you know if your position is then that they should have just went to everybody in the district and asked their

148feedback no i'm just saying as a as a suggestion to get more feedback yes we could have done that but we were specifically speaking to that particular audience those teachers that you know all of those folks gave this hand feedback that goes all into this handbook so all this document does is say why you should prepare your student for a test we get that in newsletters when we have state testing every we have state testing all the time we get in newsletters make sure they get a good night's sleep make sure they have a breakfast and make sure they have a good meal and don't stress them out like they give us tips and so i look at a handbook in that regard to your point about value statements do matter and so i i'm

149i guess what i'm trying to understand is what language you want to see or you know be added into this document that supports our value system and i think what you're saying victoria is that's where that conversation will take over into development of our plan and equity um so i i'm just trying to get to where like i get that you have a problem with it and i get that you have a problem with the structures that you know a lot of public school systems and beyond certainly private school systems um face and deal with but i'm trying to understand what language you want what am i voting for like if you pulled it from to to vote and discuss what do you want to see do you want that whole line struck like what

150what um edits do you want that so i i'm happy to offer some edits i can't do it right now today gotcha in this meeting which is kind of what i said at the beginning which is why it's the first read right and that's but it's a first read of a 79-page document that we got five days ago so i have three pages of notes probably not ones that i would submit right this second time sure sure and you don't have to submit them to me i'm not demanding those i'm just um what i'm offering is that there's some room for growth gotcha um in embedding equity lens into this handbook gotcha so let's um you know if you've got specific changes to this handbook why don't you get them to us and we'll you

151know get them to dr fine and we'll figure you know look at those um don't know whether they can be made or not because you know i'm not in charge of that and but but then we what's the timeline for when we circulate the handbook in the first place those go we try to get those out because course uh course options are happening when i think about this handbook the elementary middle in high school especially in the upper grades we want that in the hands of our families so that they have access to refer to as they're making some of those decisions so to be fair um the the the size of the document obviously and if if you know members of the board have edits that are um significant what's the timeline to get

152those back to you and have those reviewed in time to have it before us before second read it all comes down to once we get edits we work as a team we make those changes it however long it takes to get to us then delays the time i'm going to get it to you so but we're we're flexible we want to work together uh it it compounds the issue that you've ex you've experienced in the last couple weeks where i've got five days to read all these things so as soon as we get the ability to update and i would want to work with our team and and uh get your feedback i'm trying to i think it comes down to how fast we can get it back did we first get the edits for

153the gifted handbook it was a few weeks ago i don't remember i think it was in a weekend update yep a couple weeks ago yeah um and marguerite you feel like that's still not enough time to get through um i'm just trying to give some feedback in terms of like when we throw it into the policy rotation for policy review if and i think this goes back to when we discussed it in our retreat if we know that it's coming like the handbook has been in our weekend updates at least a couple of times i think so um as soon as we get them as soon as we get our drafts we will make sure you've got access huh yeah whenever or you it may even be in this this may be in a separate

154email i'm okay with just the call out like hey this isn't coming right on wednesday right this is you know weeks out that way you know 10 pages are a little easier to digest at a time then 79 when we've got a ton of other and like with the um policies we'll make an effort i'm speaking for the superintendent here but i'm hearing that he's going to make an effort to forward that stuff to us as it becomes available and and the policies as well yeah and i and i can't speak to my my brain is in the same arena i think it was in weekend updates i'd have to double check i dr boyle i feel like we received the handbook a couple of times in your weekend update to us i believe at

155least once okay all right um just that's just you know some feedback i think might be helpful when we're um looking at like a really big document because then that gives folks time to really digest what we're being asked to whether we voted on the first read or not right um hey here's some updates to take the policy committee which i think are really profound um it's really profound feedback you know and ones that we need to be considerate of all right um good discussion um i would like to entertain a motion to acknowledge that we have had a first reading of the um handbook that is at um for j is there a motion it's so much is there a second second all in favor of that acknowledgement please signify by saying aye aye

156any opposed okay thank you that motion carries next is m approval of the public information officer job description i think i asked for this to be pulled out and i think it was kind of by mistake i just wanted um i i think we and i was like i think we already talked about this but i wasn't sure just about the so we may not really need to pull it out it was really just about the language around we're combining the two you talked about it so i think i pulled it out and then it was like that's fine i feel like you talked about it so we can unpull it out that's fine i do note that there's a like a typo or two in there that i just i'll give it to you

157thank you so let's vote on that one um acknowledging a first re and oh no this is one that so my comments my changes are just moving a comma right and then a couple of things where there's plurals just for consistency so there's no content no substantive change do i have a motion to approve the pio job description that's at 4m i make the motion that you that uh grammar errors um be made and then and then and then approve and then we can approve it now with those yeah okay so move a second second do you have time for questions i'm sorry yes i thought we were done with that i apologize yes yeah the goal is to post i would say early next week we're processing what that process will look like we're

158going to send it out to lots of avenues we're hopeful that we will get somebody that can come in here and do it's not an easy task it's not an easy job to come in and do the things that we have expected from tyler and gianna combined yeah and i think that we definitely want this kind of hand and glove relationship between the district and i am also looking at this relative to our other financial concerns so i'm looking at this position and a few others and how i think we have a retreat coming up here i think i like to have more confidence about how this fits in with other the public information officer yeah i think the conversations that we're having about the current structure is is really important and and i welcome

159the conversation i think the public information officer the funding is there it is a we will not function without the public information officer uh coming in that's effective to come in and do that work i don't see a world where a public information officer is not part of of this makeup but i welcome the conversation love the conversation taking the the funding of what we've been paying our public information officer taking what we've been paying allerton hill and the firm i i see a world where we will be spending less on uh communications compared to what we have been but once we see this play out we'll know more yeah i think it's kind of comparable to the conversation about the gifted uh i think they'd almost kind of take a step back to see

160how it reads so you know otherwise we just kind of repeat the cycle of making minor edits and keep on going right and so i think the same thing here like okay let's take a step back and just think about our uh core executives just think about those okay yes like yeah it makes those sense but we don't have time to kind of pause we just have to keep on repeating everything over and over again so i'm just kind of pausing and thinking about things a little bit yeah any other thoughts or comments on um so we had a motion and a second all in favor of approval of this revised job description please signify by saying aye aye any opposed thank you that motion carries and then the last one that we pulled out

161is the exempt salary range and this document has been updated um to move the pio position from exempt level three to exempt level four which dr fine already talked about uh in his um remarks uh just permitting us to essentially um increase the opportunity that the pay scale for that position recognizing that we believe that we would eventually save money from reducing or eliminating our contract with allerton hill did you does anybody have any questions or comments on this one okay um so i will that's the one she pulled out though yeah i don't think so that's the thing we're good right yeah sorry you're good all right okay a motion to approve 4n the revised exempt salary procedure thank you and a second a second thank you uh all in favor please signify by

162saying aye aye any opposed thank you that motion carries tonight just before you go into the next one so i looked through the april 1st i looked through the april 8th the first time we got we did get a bunch of harley sent a bunch of um handbooks on the six but the first time that i can see in my email that we got the gifted handbook was on the seventh which had been last thursday i just remember reading it and i just remember reading it in advance of um the agenda coming out so i you know of course i wasn't trying to assume or accuse i just really i was giving feedback to our administration that if we have yes really the sooner the better especially um if there are underlying issues that we

163want to address and call the question we want to make sure that things like as simple as our handbook are aligned to everything else that we're doing so yeah all right thank you for all of that um mr smith thank you i'll be brief i've just now notice this too sometimes when you copy and paste things um from one agenda to the next we're approving the march financials not the januaries um so this will will change that yep um the attachment is the march um nothing too significant um standing out in the march financials we uh fi we have our final property tax collections uh that came in at the very end of the month uh doing just a little bit better than forecasted which is always a good thing uh april we will have

164our final income tax collection and after that we'll pretty much be done collecting revenue after this month one other thing in this month is line 1.05 property tax allocation will receive that from the state as well i believe this month i just was talking with someone from ode and it was approved this week to be sent out on the expenditure side salaries continue to do better that's the probably the best part of on the expenditures everything else is running a little bit hot purchase services um oh no i'm sorry supplies and materials is doing better um but that is going to be a timing thing as near the end of the year things really pick up and we've got some expenditures coming our way in that category um and then just to address a couple

165of things that that's been mentioned tonight miss powers you did a wonderful job explaining 126. i don't think i have anything further to say um house bill 601 which was the pension reform just so this board knows that would cost this district 900 to a million 900 000 to a million dollars extra by the time it's fully implemented that's phased right now it's phased in i think it's very early in in its existence um the bill the bill yes um so that would be that that'd be a significant expenditure for us 601 yes when is that expected to like don't know i don't even i've heard i got a huge update this morning for about two hours on legislation and they're all they all mix together so i can relate with miss powers but i

166don't know if that even has a sponsor with or if others have co-signed on to it but i'm curious how it that timing would hit our collective bargaining it really wouldn't um because that's not part of um well actually i'd have to look at our it's an employer contribution it's not an employee contribution so we would not that really wouldn't impact collective bargaining it it impacts the the money that we have available to do anything whether it's collective bargaining or right anything right um because that's pretty significant out of a 40 million 44 million dollar budget big number yeah um to just add on about the bef theater purchases um we as a district are also contributing to that project as well um using using permanent improvement dollars so we use that for not only

167just maintenance or athletics but also in the arts as well so i wanted to point that out and then also in the treasure section of the agenda there are several things that um i really can't speak to as your treasurer regarding english language arts but we kind of put it there because uh of the purchases uh they they exceed 25 000 and and are significant purchases so we've just kind of slotted them in here and i believe we do have um dr boyle to to talk to us in 5d but before i do that i'll uh open it up for any questions um on the financials um the renewal of the meta service agreement um [Music] i'll leave it there sorry i asked my questions early no i you know i don't mind that anybody

168have any questions about any of um kyle's section five a through f other than um e kyle in base of one question are purchase services could you just explain what that line would entail because i know we're running a little bit higher than forecasted uh yeah so that line is actually lower it supplies this oh no i'm sorry you're right higher sorry looking at the wrong line um that is that holds a lot so that is utilities that is our substitute teachers our classroom and special education aids come out of there some a lot of support services for students that we may not be able to provide in-house that are maybe one-offs um professional development is in there and um but the big players are our substitute teachers utilities and our classroom and special education

169aides those are the big players and the ela curriculum that we're going to be talking about that would be more on the supplies material yes it would be it'd be a textbook supply yes okay because that will bump that line depending on when we pay it yes if we'd pay before if we paid before june 30th uh it would it'd show up in that line we've got it budgeted for this year um it just depends on when we receive and pay we originally were thinking when you did your four five year forecast it really would have been last year right if you because isn't it yeah last year that line was significantly under budget yeah and we didn't have really any curriculum adoptions that i believe because of our inability to meet and discuss because

170of cohort right okay thank you i was going to tell you uh kyle my purchase services line is it's like it gives me nightmares when i look at it so when i saw it on the budget i mean i've seen it before i'm just like oh just makes me nauseous as you all know i was with treasures the last three days and the big the big words are inflation um and that's you'll you'd see that in purchase services and supplies um and we're already seeing it now um sourcing equipment is awful right delays and and you name it um i mean from delays in finding personnel from delays to finding whatever food pencils it's just hard to get anything anything that's what yeah i believe we've had issues yeah but with even though we're over

171you look at that bottom number down there i think it's important yeah the very bottom is is is looking great um a lot of that is due i mean luckily the least the way it looks right now our revenue is is um keeping up yeah with that the lines 1.035 and 1.04 are going to change by the end of the year because of how state funding is going to work with us and we'll talk a lot about state funding in the may forecast next month um how that's looking for us um but yeah okay so before we head to colleen just a huge thank you to kyle kyle i know you all know is an incredible asset to this district and some districts have unique relationships between the superintendent and the treasurer and it can

172it can be a challenge i'm just so grateful for what kyle does and kyle jokingly says i don't know a lot about ela curriculum he digs in he knows what's going on throughout the district he's very uh intentional about advocating for what's best for kids so i'm thankful that you're here and i appreciate all that you do appreciate that i just didn't want questions yeah well it's out of the bag now we're on to you okay so um let's entertain a motion to approve section five um b c e and f somewhat or yes so i forgot what i'm doing in a second please thank you all in favor of those items please signify by saying aye aye any opposed that motion carries and then we're gonna do the yes dr boyle tonight we'll be

173sharing an update on the is that all right here we go yeah on the ela curriculum review with specific focus on the elementary process of revision and resource adoption while curriculum maps and course guides will be shared with the board next month tonight dr boyle will talk specifically about the elementary resources selected by a representative teacher team uh take it away all right well thank you for having me come speak with you kyle actually has probably learned more about ela curriculum in the last couple weeks than he's ever cared to i appreciate that he takes an interest and asks the questions so i am going to just give an update on our process i will touch briefly on 612 but as dr fine mentioned the focus tonight really is on the k5 resource adoption for

174ela curriculum review is usually a five to six year process year one for ela actually started in the 1920 school year under ms abraham she was pulling together teams from all across the district and they worked on developing a vision hallmarks and a strong framework for ela instruction of course then right as that work was really gaining ground a pandemic hit and it put it all on pause and so that work was paused through last year with the exception of the diversity equity inclusion audit that we did with 612 curriculum and texts we picked up the process again this year and so our 612 teachers really have just taken what they learned through that audit last year and have been incorporating that into their curriculum apps which i'll talk about in just a moment but

175really the focus was on revisiting the work that was done in the 1920 school year updating and modifying to reflect where we are now two years later values that we hold changes in what we know about practice to try and and really be most current with that and this is also the year that we would look at resource adoptions so continuing on um i will touch briefly on 612. as i mentioned before and as several of you were aware from last year we did do an audit using the culturally responsive education scorecard that's developed by nyu for using um for doing a review of ela curriculum we focused on 612 last year and this year our 612 teams have been working on updating their course guides and curriculum maps making some changes to both required

176and optional text for students and refining those curriculum maps and course guides to reflect those changes they also been working diligently on as we indicated we wanted to do in the commitment plan coming up with some common writing assessments that we can use across the board those changes and updates will be presented to you within the next week or two in anticipation of the main meeting so you'll get more details about that as we go so then in k5 our focus this year was also on updating our curriculum maps identifying key resource needs and developing writing assessments again just in line with what we've talked about with the commitment plan and the updated maps and writing assessment information will come to you with the 612 updates for next month today we're just going to really

177focus in on that resource need piece so we started by working with our grade level teams i need to give a shout out to our grade level chairs for k5 because they really were sort of the go-between between the classroom teachers and all approximately 60 k5 classroom teachers and the coaches and me and for a while ms abraham in trying to really take a look at what our resource needs were and part of the work that our grade level chairs did was lead their grade level teams through a review of what our existing district adopted resources are and how those align to the core elements of ela instruction what areas where are we good and what areas do we have a gap and what we discovered is that and this wasn't really a surprise to

178us we had a really strong foundational skills program with the adoption of foundations and we have some word study skills programs available through mega words but the grade level teams in all grade levels noted that we don't have a common district-wide resource for teaching reading writing language and vocabulary across our grade levels teachers really have been in many ways given a lot of academic freedom to use resources and tools that are best suited to their classrooms but the flip side to that is without that commonality we can't ensure that there's some consistency of the quality of instruction in every classroom across the district so the other part to this is as many of you may know ohio has adopted a new law addressing dyslexia screening and support and so we wanted to make sure that

179we have resources in-house that will help us meet the needs of kids who may be at risk of dyslexia and really help our teachers address those needs it was this kind of push and pull between wanting some structure and framework that lends consistency while also giving teachers the space to use their creativity and to be flexible to meet the needs of their students and then finally one of the other key pieces that came out of our conversation about our resource needs is really recognizing the range of students that we have we have students who need some intense interventions and reading supports and we wanted to make sure we had the resources to do that we also have students who are highly advanced readers or who are identified as students who have other thinking critical reasoning

180needs and so we wanted to make sure that the resources we adopt met the needs of those two groups and everybody in between that we want to do it something that would encourage critical thinking and reasoning for all of our students and some programs are better at that than others so together the grade level chairs the coaches and i talked about what we wanted to use as criteria to evaluate our programs there were three key pieces that we looked at the first was looking at the ed reports reviews ed reports is a non-profit group made up of educators that evaluates curriculum they look for primarily based on alignment to standards not just surface alignment but really deep alignment in ela they're focused on text quality and complexity and then only programs that meet that rigorous

181review of text quality and complexity go on to be further rated for usability both by students and teachers they're also looking to make sure that the programs develop knowledge through literacy and then those reports are shared publicly ohio department of education and infohio have partnered together with ed reports to come up with this site called ohio materials matter that really helps guide districts and choosing the highest quality materials so those reviews were our starting point when we were looking at what programs we wanted to take a deeper dive with the second piece that was really important as we were looking at choosing a program was being culturally responsive and so again we brought out the culturally responsive scorecard from nyu it's the same scorecard we used with 612 last year and we wanted to make

182sure we were applying that to programs as we were looking at them and then finally as the grade level chairs had worked with their grade level teams they gave input on what they felt would be necessary and valuable in a program and we developed an in-house rubric to write programs based on the criteria that came straight from our classroom teachers who would be using this with our students so we began with a list of 13 programs that included some that were highly rated ones that we had heard positive things about from colleagues and other school districts and some programs that teachers in our district have been using independently for periods of time the grade level chairs coaches and i took that list and we narrowed it down to six based on a surface review the

183six that we thought that just from first glance and looking at those ed reports reviews would probably deserve the greatest attention and real critical look and so then with that we brought our grade level chairs and a whole slew of other people to form our resource review team in some years we would have done a pilot because our teachers really communicated to us that they've got a lot on their plate and they really were looking for a representation of them to do this deep dive work they they were making it clear to us that they were kind of at capacity so we brought together this representative team you'll see that we have classroom teachers from every grade level we also have included made sure that we had representation from every building and then we wanted

184to make sure we had specialists that work with various student groups be involved with this um our elementary specialist for english learners is not on that list he was unable to attend the day that we did our review but he did provide input to us separately that we then used in our feedback so on march 24th that team came together but prior to march 24th we communicated the information about the six programs we were reviewing to all of our k5 staff we also sent them a link to a survey that they could use to provide feedback and invited anybody who had any thoughts questions comments to please submit that to us and that we would include that in our review with the team on the 24th of march the team came together and did a

185look at both print and digital samples that those companies provided to us it was really interesting as sort of a side observer to listen to their conversation each grade level and each member of the team did individual rankings but as they were examining the materials they were certainly allowed and encouraged to converse with one another and it was neat to watch teachers point out different features that maybe their colleagues had missed or something that really stood out as stellar or challenging to them and have that conversation um as we went through the day we would dedicate a certain amount of time to each of the programs and after they had their time to review each individual person would then do a rating for the program using our locally designed rubric and then they would select

186a random unit from the program to do the culturally responsive education scorecard so that's how we were able to balance the two after we went through all of six of the programs we had a debriefing time at the end where we looked at what the individual ratings were everyone had a chance to share what they thought were strengths of the programs what the challenges were it was again interesting because we had k5 there and some of our specialists to hear the different considerations that each of them had along the way and after that deliberation i asked each of them individually to rank the six programs top choice to sixth choice and i was expecting there to be some differences of opinion but the first go round we had a near unanimous top choice and it

187took less than five minutes of conversation afterwards to get to 100 consensus i have never in my years of teaching been with a group that came to consensus that quickly and they all felt very strongly about this particular program that we chose so the program that the team selected is called written wisdom it's published by great minds publishing this program focuses primarily on reading comprehension and writing what stood out is that it is a natural complement to the fundations program that our k3 teachers already use and that was something that we heard from many of them they did not want to change foundational skills programs because of the learning curve so this program allows them to bring on something new without having to relearn everything there's some familiarity that goes with this the program uses

188trade books and literature as the text sources as opposed to a condensed basil we liked the idea of having authentic books in kids hands and the curriculum is centered on themes that are rooted in science and social studies so we're building academic knowledge and academic vocabulary along the way one of the other standout features of this program is that there are thinking routines and graphic organizers that are consistent throughout the whole program they're starting to be introduced in k and they're built upon in first grade second grade third grade fourth grade so across the years the students really have those instructional and thinking routines reinforced and allows them to become experts in approaches that utilize executive functioning skills critical thinking and collaboration all of those things that we heard steve talk about earlier there's opportunities

189for that within this program the common strategies and graphic organizers along with scaffolds that are incorporated throughout the teaching manuals will help provide supports for our students with disabilities the other thing that was unique is that written wisdom is a partner with the english learners success forum which has resulted in recommendations for supporting english learners using this specific curriculum it was the only one of the six that we looked at that has that partnership with the english learners success forum and then additionally the broad unit themes the level of questioning and text complexity throughout and the flexibility to bring in additional text at varying reading levels really allows our teachers to differentiate for our highest readers and our readers who need the most support and when we did the review of diverse representation in text

190i will say that this program scored second highest of the six um it was just a fraction of a point below the top scoring one in full disclosure all six programs were middle of the road there was no stellar program that stood out on that culturally responsive scorecard however i'm going to show you some resources on the next slide that we are asking to purchase in addition to this that we feel will strengthen that representation in the text that our primary students have access to and then last year we had an opportunity to purchase classroom libraries for our fourth and fifth grade classrooms through a grant with the bexley education foundation and that purchase was made specifically to provide increased access to texts that are representative of many people groups and one of our elementary

191librarians has already taken the time to go through those purchases that we made last spring and align them to all of the units for white and wisdom so that way when our teachers open the curriculum they already know how they can slide those texts in and have it make sense with what we do with our students i'm finally the the staff really felt like this program was user friendly for both students and teachers some of the programs that we received came with a million pieces and one of watching one of the teachers try and model what she would do juggling all the different books it was kind of funny to watch as she which needed to be an octopus really to have enough hands to handle it this particular program has enough additional pieces to

192provide the extensions and supports we need without overwhelming our teachers and our students with the materials and they really felt like if we have a teacher who's absent one day a guest teacher can come in can pick it up and continue instruction so that our students don't miss out on reading instruction because of an illness or family emergency so we felt like it it really gave a solid framework for consistency but there is still room for teachers to bring in texts that their students love that aren't necessarily assigned in here and and really respond to that unique group of students that they face each school year so the supplemental resources that we're also wanting to purchase are called geodes these are decodable texts for our primary students these are also published by great minds the

193same company that publishes wit wisdom what is unique about this set of decodable texts that was different from the other five programs is that the sequence of phonics skills introduced in these texts aligns perfectly with foundations it doesn't the other programs that we looked at everything was in a different order and actually some of the order didn't match what we learned from research about the sequence in which you should introduce phonics sounds phonics skills to our students so we really felt like this was a great compliment to what we already have they're what i would call a modern decodable text i'm sure we all experience those decodable texts from your kids you know the fat cat is sat or something like that these have much more interesting story lines and sentence structure so that they're

194engaging for our students but still very calculated in how they introduce and reinforce sounds so um we will purchase with your approval a set of these for each of our buildings this year and once we see how they are incorporated we will revisit whether we want to purchase additional sets but we feel like one set per building will really get the ball rolling with our teachers to be able to use these with our students we felt like this was also a really critical piece because we have noticed a slight decline in our kra literacy scores for incoming kindergartners this year we also noticed a slight dip in our map scores in the fall for our first graders and we really feel like some of this has to do with the fact that covet hit when

195those students would have been in preschool and having those early literacy experiences so by using these types of resources now we can close those gaps right away before they take hold and become a bigger issue for our students and finally these will be a great tool to use with our students who are at risk of dyslexia they support some of the science of reading work that we've seen and really will complement that foundations program in other multi-sensory structured literacy programs that we have so tonight you were presented with legislation to both approve the adoption of these resources for our elementary ela program and the approval of the expenditure upon that approval we'll place our order and we'll begin working with the company to plan for implementation so we can hit the ground running in the

196fall and that will include staff training both initial launch training and ongoing support actually um jana clark who's behind me and has been hugely instrumental in helping this work come along and getting our curriculum maps in place and making sure everybody has the information they need she and i have already been talking about what do we need to be doing throughout the school year to make sure our teachers are able to implement that and then we'll also be thinking about what evidence do we collect along the way to see what kind of impact it's having because the cycle will begin again in five years and we want to make sure that as the years progress that we really know is this being effective with our students so that will incorporate a lot of measures both

197achievement measures but also classroom observations feedback that we'll gather from community members and teachers on their use with that um we also will be developing some additional reading lists with suggested trade book titles that teachers may want to use to expand upon the units those will be living documents that we can continually add to as new high quality high interest techs are both published and discovered along the way one of the other things i mentioned earlier tonight that is also part of this process is we are working on our plan for implementing ohio's new dyslexia law our district dyslexia team will actually have their first meeting tomorrow we will be able to do some preliminary work we are actually in a holding pattern on the vast majority of it as we wait for the ohio

198department of education and state board of education to come to terms with what the guidance will be and to approve the assessment so that we can decide what our screeners will be but our team will be meeting tomorrow to start to make some decisions about things we can and anticipate other decisions to come but i will say that we are really excited our staff is excited to have a new resource and to be able to have some consistency and so we just thank you for your ongoing support of that work thank you so much that's super helpful great detail um does anybody have any questions about the um proposal or the funding yeah but good question thanks that was super thorough i appreciate that colleen and i appreciate i know you sent some quite answers

199to the questions i'd given before i'm curious um [Music] um oh shoot oh you you as steve mentioned and you reiterated that teachers are super overwhelmed right now so i'm curious why this is a hugely complex process right we're like you really want to get in as many voices as you can into the process because you're gonna because it's a big shift right people have been able to kind of do their thing and now you're asking them to do a standardized thing and that's going to cause some feelings for people particularly people who have been teaching the way they've been teaching for a long time and now you're asking to teach a different way having been an educator for 30 years i'm fully aware of the feelings that exist um where i can presume some

200of the feelings that exist you would expect me correctly yeah so i'm just wondering why it felt important to do this now when we know people are a little bit over it like how much engagement could you get when people are kind of feeling like and then are you setting yourself up potentially for people's feelings to be exacerbated because they were too overwhelmed to engage in the process and now they're gonna have to do it so i'm just curious on what the why it felt like now was the time it's a great question i will be perfectly honest with you when we went into this conversation this year we fully anticipated we would not be adopting a single resource for the district we really felt like um our teachers wouldn't want that we thought that

201we know that they very much value their freedom and flexibility and so when we started the conversations about finishing the curriculum maps and the framework and we talked about okay let's we're going to build off of what we have and not adopt a resource we received instantaneous pushback from the teachers they made it very clear to us that they wanted something provided by the district in hand because the not having one was more overwhelming to them than the thought of bringing on something new and i i will say that we we hear both sides of that from our staff but the overwhelming majority opinion was we need something they felt like they were spending more time trying to pull together tier one whole instruction resources and didn't have enough time to differentiate for student needs

202and so what they communicated to us was by us bringing on a resource that would take care of the tier one and then they could focus their time on differentiation so it was an interesting push-pull and to be very honest it was very surprising to me so when you talk about you know the teachers said are you talking like are you surveying so you said there's 60 teachers who this is impacting so like overwhelming like 40 of the 60 50 of the that conversation actually occurred during grade level team meetings so all of our k5 teachers were involved in those conversations and they had small group conversations with their grade level chairs and an administrator was present at each of those conversations as well just to take notes but our grade level chairs really led

203that conversation and so it was really input from all 60 of them i say 60 that's my rough number i've been using as we calculate sections for about 60. so it was the grade level chairs who brought that data back to you on what their team said and i said it on some of the meetings as well so i got to hear the principles actually the principles echoed the same thing that the grade level chairs were telling me that came back from their team and i was hearing that theme at my recall i think in december january i was spending time in each building and that was a theme that continued to come up in those conversations one thing i just in my time of serving on school board that i've often heard teachers share

204is just the the constant change like it gets set in one direction or um one i don't know what to call it i'm sorry this is my lack of expertise here but you know and then we've got to switch it because the standards have changed and and they may have just now got to the point where they've got a system down and that's where i i can see where you had all the different alignment we had three different elementary schools for 20 plus years all teaching a different philosophy around literacy so it wasn't until about five years ago that the school board started just asking a very simple question why you know if we're seeing this data come out around test scores that didn't support why we did all these different and we would have

205these long-winded presentations around best practices and they were best practices but they were best practices for some and not all so i'm really i'm really really thankful for all of the um work that has gone into sort of um aligning that process and uh miss clark i have seen her many many times um telling us these very things so thank you i didn't mean to interrupt your line of questioning so this is a big change right and so what what systems or structures are in place for supporting implementation like to alicia's point right you're going from a looser structure around ela instruction to a tight structure right or a tighter structure you've said there's going to be some leeway for teacher professionalism and choice and autonomy in their implementation process but you're still this is

206a big undertaking at an incredibly stressful time absolutely so what does that look like for 60 educators to understand what implementation is going to be going into next year like what is the what's the plan for professional development so that plan i'll be honest is still under development for a couple of reasons um one we know that there are some pieces we know ahead of time we are aiming to submit the purchase order tomorrow actually with our goal being if we can get the order processed we're hoping then that our teachers will have at the very least access to all of the resources digitally over the summer we've had several teachers say they want as much time to preview it as possible not that we expect them to look at it over the summer i

207want to be really clear on that but they have asked for it and so the earlier we can get that order the sooner we can get those materials into their hand which will help instantly alleviate i think some of the anxiety some may be feeling the other piece is we know that when they come back to school there will be a full day launch training led by the company that will walk them through here's what you need to get started beyond that that's the part of the plan that is still in development jaina and i have talked already about where the coaches can step in um we also had ideas about using the we have almost monthly grade level meetings that can become an opportunity for teachers across the grade level from all three buildings

208to talk about okay well here's the unit i've been working on here's what's been working they can preview units that can help be some of that collaborative support um but jaina and rachel also have ongoing conversations with them that as the role of coach will help provide that implementation the part that's still unknown is once we have a contract with great minds to purchase they also will be able to share with us their recommendations for sound implementation we really want to rely on some of their expertise on here's what to expect here's where we know teachers need more support so we want to incorporate that that expertise as well so the first professional development is in the fall right before school starts correct correct um we just i i can't require them to come over

209the summer and we the team really felt it was important that we have a professional development launch session that everyone is expected to attend i think in the past there may have been times when that was done over the summer and so it was an optional thing and it really just didn't set our teachers up for success so um there are some digital trainings that we can also make that will be made available to our staff that they can preview over the summer as well just from a pure logistics standpoint if i do it over the summer i can't guarantee that every single teacher will get the training that they need to implement successfully i i definitely appreciate that it complements foundations because then um they're not recreating the wheel with a whole new system

210and get getting what a matter of days before kids are walking into the classroom and they're expected to start um you know knocking out the cobwebs from over the summer and magically get them ready to um take state tests in a matter of weeks or whatever um i are are you done marguerite i didn't i wanted to first just applaud the fact that um this recommendation focused on differentiation something that we have often often often talked about and the necessity for it while still providing some consistency that's in line with what i think the board of education has been the expectations the board has been setting not only from our strategic plan but our expectations for our superintendent and and beyond i appreciate the efforts that um it included some diversity components to it as

211well i know for a fact that my daughter lit up when she saw texts in the library that where she saw herself reflected and she is the type of kiddo that would rather see an audiobook and never read a pet and it's so baffling to me because i'm a reader but she hated it and now she's she's she's working on it and seeing great success i do have a one quick question um though i know you said that the cycle begins again and it's like a five-year cycle um are there plans to have sort of a midpoint evaluation to just sort of see how this is working if this is going the way we all hope and expect it will i you know because five years feels like a long time oh absolutely absolutely five

212years would be when we really do that kind of deep deep dive where we're thinking ahead to what comes next but absolutely we would want to be gathering information both in terms of student outcomes and staff feedback and monitoring that implementation along the way so we can know how to course correct that way we can figure out do we need additional pd does it need to be on a specific topic or a specific component to help support our teachers um do we need to look for some additional text to broaden the differentiation possibility so yes i know some of you have had an opportunity to talk with me more than others no by now i'm pretty analytical kind of girl and absolutely yes we will be analyzing progress along the whole way because we can't

213we can't just like to your point wait five years and then say oh okay it worked or didn't when we probably could have made adjustments beginning in year one and then again and year two to make it the most effective program it can be thank you that's great i appreciate that was one of my questions and and really you've done an awesome job of anticipating and answering the questions i'm really happy to hear that this is something that's going to be solving something that was a problem for our teachers it sounds like it's it's taking something and making it easier instead of asking more and so the um the thoughtfulness that's gone into how this has been um arrived at is really um reassuring to me that this you know and the results that everybody

214got to this particular program really quickly and there was so much to buy and i'm i'm really excited about the the work that you've done and the work that you're going to be able to do that our teachers are going to be able to do so i appreciate it very much okay and i just have one question we talked about the new dyslexia law does this package of materials we have to also supplement this new package of materials to meet those i'm just trying to think how broad these materials are so foundations will actually target much of the support and instructional piece geodes will help reinforce that i think the thinking routines that are going to be starting kindergarten on all the way up into fifth grade will help students develop the academic language they

215need to really support reading skills one of the biggest components of the dyslexia law is actually screening for dyslexia risk that will be separate from this we will have to identify a screener once ode determines what is approved as a screener and we'll have to make that as a separate purchase and separate implementation um that will be more of a screening measure and then the follow-up to that will be having district and building level committees figuring out how do we support those students we actually are in a really good spot in that we have more teachers with some of the training that's required than i anticipated there will be more required training for our staff next year we will focus on training our k2 teachers the following year i believe is sorry it's k1 and

216then 2-3 the following year and 4-5 the following year so there is a sequence of professional development specific to that that the state will have us do but i think it will complement this nicely okay all right any other questions for doctor boy yeah uh yeah thank you for the kind of implementation plan and the intermediate kind of assessments you're going to have on how's it going and the rolled out for the teachers in august and so forth so will there also need to be some kind of acculturation for the parents and getting them on board and aware what's going on yeah i think that that would be a really valuable part if we can either do it in conjunction with curriculum nights at the buildings or we may do something separate but yes we

217will want to introduce families to the materials for several reasons one they're going to be seeing some new graphic organizers their kids are going to be using some language for thinking routines that may be new to them we'll want them to become familiar with that because there are ways they can reinforce those thinking routines at home we also will need to make sure they know how to access the materials digitally i think one of the things we learned during covet is the digital is valuable but you need to know how to get to it and so we'll want to make sure that we can help them access that every single one of those geodes that we showed other student techs are available to them digitally and so we want them to be able to do

218that as dr fine mentioned earlier one of tyler's final projects was working with jana and some of our teachers and rachel holland to put together a short video about how we teach funding foundational skills you actually will get the link to that video in your weekend update um it's also already posted on our website if you ever want to go take a look but that is actually intended to be the first of a series of videos that the team wants to put together and it would be very appropriate for us to do a short video as well introducing families to the program so they can access it at any time yeah thank you for your your kind of research as well about the maybe pending covet gap that we might see as other disciplines start

219to look at their curriculum we'll see if there's persist across courses it was interesting because i think we initially focused in on our older students that had already been in school prior to covet and so we were worried about what they missed during that time i don't know that we thought early enough about our students who hadn't yet gotten to school and missed out on that preschool experience coming to us and so i think thankfully we have only seen a small dip i think many of our students families found ways to provide some of that reading enrichment and an early literacy experience at home or had other avenues so i think some of the gaps we saw are not nearly as large as what some of our neighboring districts are experiencing but it was when

220i was looking at the data and i'm like oh wait a minute that's not the trend we want to see but i think this will help close that before we have any serious gaps to address thanks wonderful and brad said he would love to be the voice over of the part two of that series excellent i think um uh it should be jonathan you know what i'm gonna talk about you can use jonathan being the we're getting off topic here so jason i guess i'm thinking about like we're considering this major investment right in k5 um ela curriculum and it sort of brings up two things for me because what we know for true is to be true is that curriculum matters ish right but matters more is implementation right what matters more is what

221happens in the classroom right the actual practice and that really is a byproduct of really good professional development right really good professional learning communities where they're constantly opportunities and the same financial investment that we put in buying books we need to invest in offering teachers time to work together and you and i had this conversation monday so what structures might not this is not a question but what i'm obviously to walk away questions um what opportunities might we put in front of teachers because not everybody's going to want to work over the summer but lots of people are and they should be compensated for that right like we're asking them to adopt a new curriculum that's going to happen now and they're going to have to somehow put in place in august and i would

222guess that a majority of our teachers are going to spend a lot of time this summer doing that right so what okay so we know that to be true so let's create some infrastructures where they can be paid to not just work individually but also to work together right and i think about this huge investment in the yeah so that's one what does that look like for the k5 as they sort of navigate this adoption and then i think well we're putting all this money into buying this curriculum for k5 we do for six eight and 12 right like i know you're going to talk about it next week so maybe it's a walk away question for both of you right like so we asked those teachers to basically create their own curriculum in many

223ways right on their spare time in their 37 minutes of planning right like the reality is they're doing that on their own time and so if what we know to be true is professional development or com learn uh professional learning communities or collaboration is where good thoughtful instructional planning happens then let's create opportunities for that to happen and let's invest as much of our money in the actual planning of how you're going to teach it as we are investing in the buying of books because in the end people it's what matters right like people have been teaching kids to read for a long time in the absence of that right but the way that it happens is in the the planning and the collaboration and so i would you know offer that that be on

224the may agenda is what opportunities are going to be available paid opportunities for educators to implement either the curriculum we're buying or the one that we're asking them to create you have something yeah i do i do i agree wholeheartedly with you i'm making sure that our staff has time to do that i do want to just kind of update you a little on the 612 piece um last summer we actually provided some of those paid opportunities for our 612 teachers to come together to to do that very thing because we agree with you that that's absolutely important the reason you are not seeing a resource purchase for them is because the message that i got back from our 612 teachers was they didn't want a set of usually a high school it's more of

225an anthology and then they were really clear they didn't want that but what they did do was look at some of their required and optional reading choices and decided we do need to swap out these texts or those so we have made some smaller purchases based on their needs they have gotten resources they weren't to the degree that they needed to be board approved but um we wholeheartedly agree with you that we we need to make sure that they have that time to collaborate that's a great point um i do recall though in the fall our teachers kind of loudly told us in a nice way um and that burnout way um that pd was feeling like a little overwhelming because of you know they they had pd they had very little planning time i

226mean did they even get to go to the restroom in a day you know i don't know like so i just want to make sure that when we're um structuring professional development and creating those opportunities that we're not forgetting that they are also telling us from a very human space you know that's a little too much i'm suggesting self-directed pd no i understand um i i get it and when we start spending dollars that we haven't budgeted for then we got to ask those questions you know do we need to build that into the budget somehow going forward so that that self-directed piece doesn't feel like work but it feel or even though it's work they're they're compensated for their time i mean i i don't expect people to work for free but at the

227same time i'm not a proponent of just you know writing a check that we haven't budgeted for so it's just my two cents all right yeah i was just going to thank colleen and i love that we've got some superstars in the back with with colleen we are so grateful for the work lots of work put into this in a fantastic presentation very thorough and and we're excited for what's ahead so thank you absolutely thank you so much to all of those folks um so yeah let's can we vote on this and then yes um i would like to uh entertain a motion for approval of the purchase of the um curriculum resource including both the um main uh written wisdom piece and the supplement for um geode what's called um any further discussion all

228in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed thank you that motion carries thank you so much thank you all right i just need a break because quick break i'm getting that you're getting that update okay alicia had told me that she had something going on she needs two minutes two minutes so we'll just take a two minute break thank you yeah yeah yep that's a blessing i just needed to i could feel my phone go the board welcomes the opportunity to hear from our community members we encourage your participation within certain parameters when you come to the microphone please state your name and address our policy requires that you limit your comments to five minutes public participation is an opportunity to be heard but it is not a q a session with

229the board the president is responsible for the orderly conduct of the meeting and the appropriateness of the subject being presented our public participation policy allots five minutes to each person wishing to speak until a total time of 30 minutes is used speakers of course are not required to take the full five minutes i don't know that we have more we don't have more than six people right we have one okay um so please state your name and address and we will put on our five minute timer kyle miss lana spector yes thank you can i request more than five minutes since i'm the only person signed up that way i can kind of slow down through my presentation i've always said no to that and so i'm just going to stick with our policy it's

230um you know we won't haul you off stage but but we try to build within it because otherwise we've got to adjust that for everybody and it's just not you know fair and the tips and tricks i've learned is try not to look at the timer yes because it will make you rush yeah well i've just seen other people have more than one slot so um am i in the right spot for the microphone yeah okay it's on okay so i'm alana spector i live at 244 fair i'm sorry sorry terribly but i still don't like to touch anything that other people have touched um i'm so you already started on me okay so today i'm here to review the panorama data that was presented to the board and i realized that most of you

231weren't on the board at that time last november by sam mcmasters i've emailed you some slides uh which is what i'm going to be going through for anybody watching at home they're out on the buzz they're out of other places in public if you want to follow along today i'm sorry you're taking up my time um the panorama survey is given twice a year to our students and it records their feelings on sense of belonging and school climate uh this fall the third slide is the slide that ms mcmasters presented you'll notice that it's unlabeled and to me and two i would imagine the average person looking at it these numbers look great 70 80 90 for sense of belonging but these numbers aren't real and there's two things that tell me that number one

232they all end in a zero it is highly statistically improbable that across grade bands the way this test is registered that they would all end in a zero on top of that we have an 80 sense of belonging favorable sense of belonging for high schoolers i i just didn't believe that number and no one asked a single question so i did the next slide is the breakdown grade level for sense of belonging i'm sorry i've forgotten which test uh which testing period this is for grades 6 through 12 and i added a line at 80 percent you'll see that no grade level particularly in high school came anywhere near 80 so so what is that number well if you go back and you listen to ms mcmaster's presentation you will see that she threw in

233a bunch of qualifiers what she said is if you take the raw data what our students told us about their sense of belonging in our high school and you compare that to suburban high schools with low incidences of free and reduced lunch that our ranking nationally was 80 percent nobody cares i don't care where our high school compares with rich suburban high schools i want to know what our students told us and what our students told us is very clear we had 596 high schoolers respond to the survey of that 298 responded with a positive i'm sorry a favorable sense of belonging 298 students did not half of the kids that responded to that survey did not have a favorable sense of belonging in our building that's a very very different number and a very

234big problem that we are not addressing uh the next slide that i put in there is the comparison of what was presented meaning our national rankings versus the i'm sorry i am on the one number nine that's no problem and to be honest with you the sense of belonging data the 70 70 70 80 for grades four and five i i don't know where these numbers came from they you would think since it's in the same chart it would also be showing our national rank but it isn't our national ranking was close to i think 90 across those great bands and you can see from below that it doesn't match the raw data either i don't know what these numbers are i can only assume that they're in error and i just find that to

235be unacceptable i don't think that you should accept your administrators coming to the board and presenting data that's just incorrect there's no calculations involved you're literally copying numbers but you can see when you look at the numbers below the sense of belonging was 49 in the fall and 50 favorable not 80 and that's a very big different number so what are you going to take from this the first is that the data that was presented was at best misleading i think it was deliberately so i don't think our community would be happy to hear that half of our high schoolers don't feel that they belong in our buildings i think these numbers should have been apparent to their supervisors her supervisors and also our building principals they should know these numbers by heart up and

236down and yet it's been five months and we've heard nothing about any of this i i don't understand how the administrators building principles did not look at those numbers and say that's not right especially the elementary school because their numbers were under reported and i think that we need to look more closely at this problem because clearly it's a bigger problem so what else can you take from this recently our district announced an initiative to look into our special ed services after years and years of complaints from sped parents about the lack of quality services who is leading this initiative sam mcmasters the same person that has been responsible for delivering these fed services for eight years clearly there's a conflict of interest clearly this can't be best practice she hand-picked the committee of the

237people that would provide input on this committees i know i received an email in february i think it was the 24th saying that the committees were set and i wasn't on it nobody that i know was selected i've asked all of my sped friends nobody i don't know who's on this committee i can tell you that we did receive a survey asking for input but what was lacking in this survey is who if anyone would be reading it and what that input was going to be used for how is it going to be used without that it just feels like more gaslighting you know we'll get your input so you can feel good about giving it but we're not going to tell you that we're even going to look at it or use it that

238makes no sense i think today i'm here to ask you for two things number one insist that any district employee that comes to present to the board and to the community shows unfiltered real accurate data there's just no excuse for anything less and i think you should even make a consequence because it seems to be a fairly regular thing as from the data that i followed the second thing i want to ask you is i want the board to take control of this initiative the special ed initiative we need to have an independent body such as ode or our state support team come in look at our processes look at our procedures look at our iep see if they're written appropriately see if they're written legally i can tell you from what i've read i

239i would not support that statement i'm asking you to do a real look because you can't fix a problem if you don't acknowledge it exists thank you i appreciate your coming in i know the board does dr fine i assume that you will look into the discrepancy or the errors the mistakes that the issues that are being raised here and report to us about it make sure you have a report to the board as soon as we dig in and on all of that yeah thank you um i'm sorry so i think that we have no further um uh items to come before the board this evening if that's the case i'll entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting it's so much all in favor please signify by saying aye any opposed thank you that

240motion carries