Adams 14 Board of Education, Study Session, August 23, 2022

001here all right thank you for hanging in there with us as we start late again we're getting a little better not too late um we're joined tonight for a study session um all of our four board members are presents um we're gonna start off with the agenda number or actually i apologize to guadalupe do you mind providing the interpretation thank you announcement thank you participants [Music] thank you very much thank you guadalupe um our first agenda item is 2.1 the tntp presentation um dr lorea would you like to provide an introduction yes thank you modern vice president members of the board and everyone here uh we we do have a presentation from tntp today uh it's really gonna be an opportunity to ask questions and to get familiar with the work that we're doing uh

002today is two full weeks now of school actually so we're starting week three so before i pass it on to them we have a video for you just um showing a little bit of the work that we have done so monica you can put it buenos dias my name is dr carla superintendent adam city high school excellent estudiantes my name is dr carla loria superintendent of schools of adams 14 school district and i am here at adam city high school with some of our finest students starting our third week and we're having a strong start we have been working very hard this summer to make sure that we are ready for students we want our students coming in every day ready to learn and for that we the adults have been doing a lot of

003preparation part of our work this summer has been getting our buildings ready making sure that they are not only attractive and clean but also conducive to learning part of el trabajo este verano acido que nuestros nuevos maestros and this summer part of that work has been making sure our new teachers receive induction and orientation making sure our returning teachers are part of professional development that will prepare them to support their classroom instruction investors and also administrators being part of meetings looking at the data just making sure our teachers have the resources necessary to support our students and for students there are a lot of extracurricular activities after school so make sure that you find out what is in there for you is and one of our goals is to get better at involving parents and

004community members because one thing after speaking with many of you one thing i know we all want the same thing to provide a high quality education for our students and together i know we can do it gracias and as a superintendent i can only say thank you for a strong start it's going to be a great year [Applause] i don't know how they put that together so quickly because as you can tell that was today like same outfit here so um [Music] thank you for our communications team we're really one of our goal is to make sure that we are shouting out and um showcasing the great work that we're doing um enough of the you know bad media out there it's time for us to tell our own story to change the narrative for

005our students and that's what we're working on so um to join us in that effort in that objective we have tntp here and i'm gonna pass it on to tim and to sarah so that they can walk us through a few slides here this is a time that you have board members in community and anyone to ask questions clarifying questions and you know just give us your thoughts and feedback of where we're going thank you madam vice president members of the board we're really excited to be here um and excited to share the work that has already started uh and just have already seen a ton of traction with with our team next slide please so our first official tntp adams 14 event was the kickoff many members of the tntp team were here and

006just was really excited to be a part of that next slide so we wanted to talk about uh how we ground the work that we do in schools with our partners and what we're excited to to bring to adam's 14. a few years ago tntp published the opportunity myth and this is an image that comes from that research we came to this report through our work on the ground with schools and districts all across the country from this from this study we learned four very important things four key resources allow students to be successful and achieve really incredible outcomes in their schools the first is grade level assignments assignments assignments that students are interacting with that are aligned to state standards we have new research that suggests kids do just as well on state aligned

007tasks as they do it with remedial tasks and we're excited to share that research with you as well the second is strong instruction we know teachers are critical to the success of students and we are working to ensure that every student in atoms 14 has teachers standing in front of them who have internalized quality materials and are prepared to teach effectively deep engagement we know kids do better when they're excited about what they're learning with their teachers and they want class to be interesting and so we're encouraging all teachers to ensure that the content that they're teaching is coming from a high quality approved curriculum that they're making it their own so that their students can engage effectively and lastly we know kids do better in classrooms where teachers have high expectations for them and

008so we really and as we talk about the goals we've set goals very high with the intention of shooting for the moon knowing that if we get close it's going to really benefit the students here in commerce city i'm going to pause here and can we go to the next slide so it can be viewed in spanish as well any questions about where we're anchoring all right we'll come back to this next slide please so given what we've learned uh and now our partnership with atom14 we're making two commitments to you the board and to the students and families that adam's 14 serves the first is every student regardless of their identity should have access to all four of these resources that we studied every single day and are say and they should have that

009we let me try again every child should have access to these four resources in every single class every single day to make that true the adults in the system have to investigate what's happening and report out on their progress so we really want to make practice public and also how we're moving the data very public so that we can address it where it needs to be addressed and celebrate and elevate where there's awesome things happening which happens every single day in this district the second major commitment we're making to you and to the families of commerce city is that every student and family is an authentic partner in the work that we're doing so we're starting the work of looking at data over the last 10 years for the district we're putting together a working

010group to help with strategic planning we fully intend to have students and families involved in that strategic planning process so more to come on that and we can go to the slide so that folks can read it as well in spanish ah thank you okay perfect so i wanted to introduce you tonight to the work streams uh and what we have been tasked to do uh by the community here in adams 14 and the state of colorado so this year all of our support will be aligned to the colorado domains for rapid improvement including but not limited to leadership so that includes leadership at the cabinet level and and at the central office but also leadership in schools extending beyond the school leader to their instructional leadership team so we intend to support executive directors

011who are doing incredible work supporting their principles and also ensuring that there's a bench in our schools in case we see principals exit we have a really high quality leader that's ready to take to take over the second is talent management and jeff is crushing it right now at solving problems of vacancies i got to i got to hear a conversation where solutions are available to fill the vacancies where they're most needed particularly at central but we're going to support jeff and his team and ensuring that as we continue through the school year we have high quality teachers in every classroom we have a great bench and so next year when we return we hope to be fully hired before school starts so that the training that was really incredibly done this summer is able

012to impact every student because every adult is involved the third and probably most important is instructional transformation sheila and her team are working overtime all day every day and we want to provide capacity and support to improve outcomes for kids and i'll talk a little bit about about the goals in a few minutes but we're really excited to partner with the academic team we have an all-star tntp team who's presented at principal pd and at teacher pd and we've gotten great feedback already from principals and the fine the final thing is culture and climate shift both adult and student culture knowing that kids need to feel safe and adults need to feel safe if they're going to be able to engage with each other and instruction questions about the four domains that we'll work across

013and here they are so what do we actually mean we're going to do and i'm not going to read this slide for everyone but these are some places that we're going to push in provide capacity building and creating a sustainable plan so then in three years when our contract is over adam's 14 is running and achieving incredible outcomes for students the first is we're pushing into leader development and we're currently supporting the team and creating a scope and sequence for what principals will engage with throughout the year very much anchored in the academic excellence playbook that the academic team has worked so hard to put together it's a really great anchor for us and it will get us to the strategic plan the strategic planning process and through the school year uh the second is

014to support leaders in their schools and in classrooms we're excited to see the magic that's happening in classrooms and we're also excited to support on coaching teachers who need needs of pushes we're working on co-designing a strategic plan we will do that with with the district staff we would love to have board members involved in that conversation i think it's really important and as i already shared students families teachers and school leaders will be a part of that and i think most importantly we are differentiating our support based on the needs of schools we know it's not a one-size-fit-all solution for every school and every school leader so we're looking to see where we can provide capacity and showing up when we're most needed the second domain is around talent i shared this before we're

015working on a landscape analysis to really understand where there are gaps what teachers are looking for what leaders are looking for and putting in place practices and policies that support what it requires to get the best talent in the country to come here to adam's 14. like i said jeff is crushing it so much of this work is already happening we just want to provide support where we can instructional transformation this is where we're leaning in pretty heavily to provide coherence not only are we working to support the team in designing leader pd but we're aligning what we're teaching teachers to what leaders are getting better at so that everyone is speaking the same language top to bottom in the district we're also supporting sheila and her team and developing her folks to use the

016same language that we're teaching principals and teachers so that again it does not feel like principals are being asked to do a million things by lots of different folks who want to align it across the district we're working on enhancing instructional systems and implementing in implementation what that looks like this year the district is folks focused on lesson internalization and so we're going to support school leaders in helping their teachers doing that more effectively and the last domain is around culture and climate this is where we're really going to lean into community engagement to understand what parents want in the schools where they're sending their children we know parents vote with their feet one of our goals is that we keep 90 percent of adam's 14 students and adam's 14 schools between this year and

017next year we know we're going to need to do that with community engagement and having parents be part of the solution and we know parents are very involved so we're excited to partner with them and in making magic for their kids and lastly we don't want to do amazing work for some kids we want our work to improve things for all kids excuse me and what this means is when we're looking at data we're looking to close gaps in subgroups and ensure that levers we're pulling to improve things for some kids improve things for all kids and we're expecting that our goals will be achieved by all kids not just some kids so that was a lot four domains of the of colorado domains for rapid improvement plus focus on equity and efficiency and making

018sure we're doing right by all kids any questions about any of those things so i was going to ask about where equity lived in your plan but the fact that it's separate um is interesting to me because you would think that equity would be something that's interweaved into everything that we yeah you read our minds all right take a look so we see equity as living across all four domains it's not called out in the same way in the colorado domains for rapid improvement but we're operating knowing that it is a part of all four of the domains we called it out separately to name it but we're not operating that way any other questions about the work streams less of a question but more of a statement i just want to thank you all

019for how collaboratively you're working with our team and with the board i know we're set to meet with you about what kind of data we want to see when we want to see it so this really helps to lay the landscape as to what the areas are so we can start digging into that so thank you you're welcome and we are excited to share our progress monitoring dashboard with you because it will be for you to use to help us better serve kids here i wanted to give you a sense of the size of the team that's here supporting and understand better how we're supporting the district so i'm working directly with superintendent and and the cio and that's really where i'm pushing in we have two leadership coaches soon to be three leadership coaches

020that will support the executive directors and the executive principal they will also be working with principals as requested we have a talent team of three that will support jeff and making all of his dreams come true in the talent world our instructional leader our instructional transformation team is a team of four lindsay will be working directly with sheila and then she will have a team that she will deploy as needed to support the priorities of the academic team help develop professional development and support in creating coaching cycles for all teachers and lastly although it lives in all four domains we have a very large team ensuring we do right by all kids in the equity bucket and they're driving our strategic planning process and our data analysis so we are looking at all the data

021planning a strategic plan with equity at the heart and then we have a data expert who's going to help us progress monitor and also support the district and student level analysis as requested i just want to add one thing here um that i think it's important to note this is fluid so we're going to be and we already have a series of meetings in which we're going to be evaluating the the um things they're delivering right based on the contract and then making the changes as needed because we know sometimes for example talent management they're going to be individuals supporting jeff we know the need we have um you know finding teachers that in in all colorado right this is not only us this is one of the areas that we know when we started

022negotiating a contract it was a great need uh not so much now things have changed very quickly um based on the hiring excellent hiring that we have done and in that department so it doesn't mean that they're going to stay supporting that department um the three years right so it's very fluid we're looking and evaluating and assessing the needs because we know they're going to be changing as time goes by and as we improve in one areas we may need some support in others so i just want to make that note so that it's it doesn't feel that he's going to be static for three years i really appreciate that and i i think the one wondering for me would be um i mean now we have a superintendent that can communicate that to us

023because that was one of my frustrations previously was we had no idea what was happening on a day-to-day or like even within the schools one person would be there one day and then when it the next or it would be you know weeks so i just making sure we have that continued communication about what's happening it was helpful as we started to roll this out to the district team to to map back who our people were working directly with maybe a little bit less important here but as you can see we have point people under each domain and they're they're working directly and collaboratively with the leader for the district all right so let's talk goals because i know when i i came before you before you we we had some feedback about the goals

024and we really want to dive into that with you tonight so the first major goal is that we have 80 retention of teachers and leaders who are meeting or exceeding expectations i really want to draw your attention to meeting or exceeding expectations we want to retain the best folks in the district because that's what kids and families deserve and we want to work to hire folks that are able to meet and or exceed those expectations for those folks who are not this will be a significant increase from school year 22 and we believe if people understand the vision they believe they're being developed in that vision they feel supported and acknowledged their work is acknowledged they'll stick around regardless of what they read in the newspapers the second major goal and this is one that

025adults really have a lot of control over so it's why it's number two we want 90 to 100 percent of assignments that students are interacting with to be coming from an approved curriculum and be aligned with the colorado state standards teachers have so much work to do every single day we should not be asking them to chase down materials for kids or print things off the internet the district has spent a ton of money on high quality curricular materials we want to get those in the teachers hands we want to teach them to use them and be effective with them and the way we're going to track on this is when we're in classrooms we're looking for what kids are working on and we're looking for them to be working on core content that is

026approved from the approved curriculum and aligned to standards we expect that if that is true and we support teachers and leaders in being great we're going to see 1.5 years growth on star in ela sla and math sla is not on this but we are going to measure it there as well for older students we're looking for 40 percent of students to meet or exceed on cmas in ela sla and math we know this is an audacious target we believe that if we do write and put the right tasks in front of kids we can see significant movement from where the cmas scores are right now and finally and these two these two goals are very important in terms of kids access and acquisition of knowledge and the district being able to support kids most

027effectively we're looking for 95 percent average daily attendance we believe if kids feel safe and welcomed at school they're being challenged in their classrooms families understand the importance of sending their kids to school every day and so we want to encourage them to be there and then finally i already talked to spoke about this one parents vote with their feet so we're looking to retain 90 of kids who start the year with us this year to have them come back next year i'm going to pause there questions comments thoughts when you hear the six major goals would you be sharing a road map as to how you're planning to get to these goals with us as well i'm just curious to see what supports teachers will receive for goal two um how you'll be progress

028monitoring goal three um so just kind of get more information about how and what that road looks like to meet these yeah we can lay out a very clear map for you we're working on it right now with these three goals in particular we're working with dr lauria and sheila's team to start with we're making sure that every teacher has access to curriculum and having principals elevate if they if they do not so that we can get them what they need and i see you ready yes because i also want to add actually we had a great meeting today because this is a passion of everybody on the team uh to make sure that our teachers and in that we are providing everything that our schools our administrators and teachers need the one thing however

029i want us to you know keep in you know the top of our thinking is we need to prioritize where to start because there are a lot of things that we could be doing or should be doing but we cannot do everything at once uh and in one year right so i was pushing the team to say what is it that we need our leaders and our teachers to get really good at right now this year where are we going to start we've heard the saying you know sometimes less is more we want to get good at what we need to get good at this year with a sense of urgency and we are prioritizing or identifying what is that one or two things that is going to be of the highest leverage and once

030we build from there then we go to the other turnaround work i've said it many times is very difficult because there are a lot of areas in which we need to improve but we need to be very strategic in identifying where those are in narrow focus in our efforts to ensure that we are not burning out our teachers or administrators or ourselves we we are prioritizing in the monitoring of our students in how our students are reacting to instruction so we're not doing a top-down model of you know let's prepare and and give all this pd to teachers and and principals just just so that it will trickle down at some point we're doing a balanced one where when we are you know learning and getting better at uh doing x we're going to go

031in and immediately observe how the students are reacting to that something different that we're doing or um yeah to whatever we're doing and that what we learned so that we can quickly tweak it and then um the key piece is going to be the monitoring like it was mentioned the monitoring and we can and we will be providing updates on on those monitoring um [Music] big rocks that we have selected so i have a question for you guys just thinking with the vacancies that we have open predominantly in our middle school where we have a lot of long-term subs for grade levels how are we going to make sure that they're following that curriculum and that our subs are providing those kids that curriculum we have i mean there's schools where we have one or

032two teachers throughout the whole grade level that are the core teachers and we're missing english math social studies you know like how are we ensuring that those kids where they don't have a full-time teacher is getting that same education that another school may be getting so i can address that and i'm gonna also pass it on to hr because they have been supporting us with academics on that so the big picture that i would like to share is today we just finished 10th day of school so we were projecting x many of students uh you will probably recall that last year particularly at the middle schools we did not cut positions um you know following the projections that we had because we were projected like most of the districts in colorado we have been projected

033to have less students our colorado kids are simply not having children as quick as we were in our generations i guess so so we started classes particularly at the middle school with very few kids per section so we have some classrooms that are you know probably sitting 10 12 kids after day 10 so today was the count day and we have been meeting with principals there have been several meetings specifically with the middle school the two middle schools we have been looking at those students that are not showing up actually later on this week cabinet and members of registration and schools we're going to go out looking for children who are still registered but have not shown up so we need to know where they are so we're going to start with juniors and seniors

034and then we're going to go down the following week to middle and elementary but we're looking at who is a true no show the schools in the east actually are just starting school so we are expecting to receive requests for records so those students are not showing up so we will know that they're no longer with us we're looking also at by section in by subject area where do we need to start combining classrooms so that we still have one teacher with one classroom that is still manageable rather than a teacher and a staff with two small groups so actually we had a meeting today about that looking at um some of the projections and i'm gonna pass it on to uh to dr mckenna to talk a little bit more in detail on that

035in as far as the curriculum i need to add we had quite a few of our substitute teachers that we hired before the beginning of the school year as long-term subs that went through the entire training that teachers went through so we paid them you know to come in so they went through those processes we have every certified licensed with a with a teaching license and every certified individual in central office out supporting schools they have been basically teaching lessons in at the school level as well if they have instructional coaches or if they have certified individuals that have been hired to support outside right now we want to make sure that every child has teachers despite all that we still have substitutes so in classrooms with subs we're making sure we have two substitutes

036to support each other and they're receiving lesson planning from the team so that they are following in pairs is not going to be one teacher so they are following a lesson plan that has been prepared by teachers but i'm going to pass it on to talk a little bit more in detail of the specific plans for the high school for the middle schools thank you dr luria madam vice president members of the board cabinet those at home watching so um a heavy lift was done on the front side we knew going into the school year that we were going to have vacancies so like our superintendent said we wanted to get as many qualified long-term subs front loaded with training as much as possible knowing that we also started early on visiting with those principals

037talking about what plans could we put in place to support the learning that's going on so the only other few things i would add in addition to what dr lorea said is in most cases even going through all of that we would try to get a master teacher in there to demonstrate the exemplar lesson on the front side so they would see the lesson by a highly qualified teacher so that when they took over second third fourth fifth period they not only got the lesson plans they not only went to pd in a lot of cases on the front side but they could see the lesson actually being implemented uh by a master teacher so that they could work through that lesson in following periods now that's what the goal was not every situation we

038were fortunate enough to have that in place but what we did do is dr cochran dr schneider myself we were at those campuses we still are at those campuses working on collapsing campus classes when when we know that the classes may be a little bit larger but we're going to support them with a long-term sub in that classroom to help co-teach to do small groups to do pull up to do flexible grouping while we continue to look for a vacancy our goal is by this week early next week that our kiddos in as many situations as possible if not every situation are with a highly qualified teacher even if the classes are larger with support from staff at ess and the substitute team all while we're looking to hire for those positions the sell on

039that is when we are continuing to look for teachers it's much easier sell knowing that a teacher is going to walk into a classroom that's been supported by a teacher than a classroom that has been supported the entire time by a sub and we love our subs right i want to echo what our chief legal attorney said earlier last week we love our subs but there is no rep replacement for a highly qualified teacher that knows pedagogy and so these two gentlemen have uh been relentless in supporting the work that we're doing to ensure that our kiddos get the best support they get anything else yeah and and just one more thing um for our substitutes we also held training during the evenings uh if they were not um here or were not able to

040be present for the teacher during the teacher training so we provided additional supports as well in the evening so definitely what we and our goal is to have a certified teacher in every classroom we are at the elementary level actually we are working really hard to staff central but in the other schools we only have three teaching vacancies all together so we're doing great um strives the high school is looking also well it's mostly one of our middle schools in one of our elementaries that we're working really hard to to make sure that we have staffing also the the group at the elementary level was tasked to go and look at the classrooms we're starting to balance classrooms in the past uh we have waited probably until october that's too late because you know teachers

041build relationship with the students so we are balancing classrooms so that when we have extra teachers for example based on student teacher ratio in one classroom and we can merge classrooms or you know just balance the classrooms different that will free up a teacher and then we're going to be able to move that teacher to another campus with with a greater need quick question comment i appreciate all the work that's being done and i know we filled it a lot of parent questions which is probably what prompted this i guess my question is around the other end of that as we talk towards climate and and cultured shifts it i would really appreciate it if we could put some directed communication on flyer and at those particular schools where that's happening because as a parent

042i always got frustrated when my son would come home and say you know these three teachers are now different and i always have questions why or even to have like a number if you have questions or concerns this is who you contact because it it it creates a a big shift in the lives of the students and the parents yes and we do not only want to share that that is coming but also anticipating the work and letting them know we are working you know doing this this is day 10 so this is the first day that we're actually uh that we met with okay so let's see what the numbers are because after day 10 those no shows um you know are moved to another um area in our registration for lack of a

043better term not another area just like another classroom of only no shows so that we can start really looking at true numbers because even when we go in and we just count you know heads of students in the classroom sometimes we have a couple of students who may be absent on that particular day or during that particular period so today was the day after 10th day we moved the no shows and now we get through pictures so we started looking at that today but to your point um absolutely but not only when this teacher is going to be new uh just letting teachers i mean uh parents know we're looking at this this is the the process we're following so in the next week or two you're going to see some changes we'll be communicating

044some some heads up yeah okay i have a few questions um the first one being going back to you know the concern of the the lack of staff or teachers in the classroom and i guess we anticipated that we would be short but was there an anticipation that we would be this short at those particular schools i mean there had to have been something that happened between you know may and now because you know the last i heard we had asked about the shortage and were assured that you know with um our new folks that wasn't going to be such an issue that you know it was going but what we're hearing from parents is a big difference to what i'm hearing here so i just want to make sure that like renee said that

045there's communication coming out but i think that moving forward there has to be something in place i know you can't anticipate how many teachers are coming back how many are not but there's a way that um i think that this could have been taken care of ahead of time instead of you know right when school started because i think that's what really happened um and not all the schools i get that but at least in a few of them um because those are the ones that are um you know having more of the issues that we're hearing from from parents about so i i just wondering if there's uh i'm hoping and assuming there's going to be a plan in place for moving forward so that that doesn't happen again yeah certainly in between may

046and now because we were actually getting quite some traction especially when hr started in may april and may to be quite frank the state order when they just decided to gank the accreditation in in may and uh and then start having discussions and moved us to the dissolution and then you know the discussions that were happening that creates internal bleeding and i think um that has you know for any school in colorado it has been difficult i was looking at a report today from caspy no not from caspy from the finance the finance project there are only 11 districts in colorado that said that they did not have any staffing needs and those are all 11 are districts with less than 500 kids so that is a reality that we are living but to put

047that on and on top of this challenge put a a couple of um state orders from the state board of education that they're janking our accreditation and that they are going to throw us into the dissolution process impacts individuals not only people who are here and left starting that day that night we received resignations uh but also made it made it much more difficult to attract people to come or teachers to come because many conversations were well how do i know you're going to be there by december because people you know may not understand the process so we did a lot of explanation and a lot of you know trying to understand but that definitely hurts us so um so yes we're having a strong plan recruitment and retention plan in place but to answer

048to your question between may and now the state orders created chaos that terrorized our community and our teachers and you know has created great harm and if i may add one thing a big challenge that was kind of sleeping under the bed in this whole time was positions that we did have hired for through letters of intent who said they were coming and then they well over close to 27 all of a sudden don't show up and so you know and that wasn't a big advertisement hey we're not coming we're assuming they're coming and so when you hire a person you assume that they're going to follow through and take the job so you stop looking right but but apparently they didn't and so even with engagement initiatives in place and you know our goal

049next year is to be overstaffed to be honest with you the superintendent is supportive of that so that we can look at our areas of most need and you know our staffing really needs to be done in january february march even if you're going to get concerned about it right like i think there'll be times where hopefully if things go to plan we'll be overstaffed and then the superintendent will have to call me in and say now give me a reprimand because we have too many people that aren't going to align with the cfo's budget uh but but that's the goal and uh and honest and part of the reason is we didn't know what we didn't know we assumed people are going to come and you know when 27 people are going to come

050and then they don't that sneaks up and gets you and it's a lesson learned that and that's not considering those who actually told us we're not coming back because of the order so um well yeah thank you it's good to call it out so people understand that it's not um well not what it's not but what it is let's just say um let's call it out it is what it is um and we know that um that order hurt and here's the consequence to that is the fact that we are short-staffed um but thank you thank you for all your work and getting you know as many people that are trained to to be in these classrooms i guess that brings me to the next question about um you keep talking about the approved curriculum

051but um being here for a while i thought all our curriculums were approved is there something i'm missing um because i keep hearing well you know they're all going to be teaching to the approved i just want to make sure that that's called out as well and the last thing i wanted to ask is there a timeline i know you talked about not all of these happen at the same time do you guys have a timeline or an idea of a timeline as to when you're reaching these or starting on these goals i think some will be evergreen 96 average daily attendance 95 average daily attendance is always going to be the goal persistence will always look like that our hope is we can get 1.5 years growth for our youngest scholars this year we

052set the goal at 40 meets or exceeds because we have an audacious three-year goal of 70 percent so we've got to start someplace knowing that that's a pretty that's a pretty hard target to hit but we feel like if we're moving in the right direction it's going to benefit all students and for retention we would hope it goes up as things settle down politically we hope that we are keeping significant more than 80 each year and one last question about the dual language um i didn't see that up here but i'm assuming it's interweaved as part of our equity work yeah my clicker's not working could you could you advance a slide please so we wanted to call out for our dual language students that we have the same expectation across all of our goals

053so you'll see our our equity goals have lots of words so we wanted to show you the goals and fewer words and just want to recognize that all of them speak to what you're talking about so if we go one more slide you can take a look at the academic goals oh it works again all right okay you can see here we call out uh subgroups and we anticipate seeing growth from students regardless of whether or not they're exceptional and dual language students and sla we also are looking for no major subgroup gaps for our adults as well we want to make sure that the adults who are teaching students represent the population that they serve and we're looking to hire wonderful teachers of color who represent the community as well so i'm not going

054to spend a ton of time here because we know that everyone in this room is anchored here that we believe if we proactively center the experience of the students who've been furthest from opportunity it's going to benefit every student but did want to call that out as part of our strategic planning process and then give you a sense of what you can expect from tntp in the first six months there's a reason i'm not talking about year two or year three goals yet because we have not yet created a strategic plan to get us through the next three to five years and we haven't had a chance to really dig into the 10 years worth of data that we're collecting right now so in july and august we are working hard to collect data we're

055doing landscape analysis for both talent and academics and we're understanding better what the community wants both teachers school leaders families and kids we're shadowing students in their classes to understand what it's like to be a student in adam's because none of us spend all day in second grade anymore but we want to know what it's like to be a second grader what's exciting to them and where we have gaps that we have and opportunities to improve and we want to know what people think we want to know what kids think families think what teachers and leaders think and what central office staff think so we'll be giving surveys and having conversations with folks across the district in the community we are currently working on finalizing an assessment strategy that allows us to progress monitor effectively

056and move quickly so we'll be excited to present that to you when we get to final we're working on that a lot today with the academic team and the executive team we are setting a vision so we have three retreats on the on the calendar one in september for all of us to come together and really norm in the language we're using with children with teachers and with each other and really make sure we're all clear on what the bar is and when we're talking about excellent instruction this is what we actually mean that will drive the work to support teachers and tier one instruction um in their classrooms and get us to the place where we have a strategic plan we anticipate being able to share a strategic plan with this group in december

057and january is our hope to have it finalized and that will drive the work for the remaining part of the school year and also for for years to come what i will say is it's not going to derail our focus on the academic excellence playbook on the ambassador model there are some things that really matter that adams14 has been doing and we want to continue to do those practices and as part of that work in per the direction of the board we're going to have a board retreat once we have a full board again in those this work and division in the revision the revisiting of the board goals will be covered yes and so that we can continue that work so just for you to know an anticipation that's coming your way as well

058i wanted to share a few key dates because i know you care deeply about the work that we're doing so we have launched the opportunity scorecard what that is is our data analysis that's going to inform our strategic planning it's low stakes for schools but it's going to give us a lot of information to work from our student experience audit site visit sounds really scary it's not it means tntp will be in classrooms in all schools in adam's 14. we're going to be looking at what students are working on taking a look at what instruction looks like both with permanent teachers and in classrooms that that have permanent subs we're going to be in meetings to understand better how instructional leaders on campus are being supported and also how operationally the schools are operating uh

059tnt peers are in schools every day uh and that is happening already uh folks understand now who they can expect to see what the expectations are for folks when they are in classrooms we are never going to be in classrooms without a leader it's important that we're building capacity so that this work lives on long long after we're gone we have tntp folks joining cabinet meetings we have a special operational structure that got put into place today where the first 90 minutes of cabinet is actually spent on making sure we have coherence across the academic team the executive directors and my team so that we're all rolling in one direction the worst thing we can do to our principal is tell them three different things so we're spending time weekly to make sure that we're

060aligned before we say anything to a principal and lastly we've already started to launch cycles of learning with leaders and teachers just to give you a quick sense of what that will look like let's say week one of the month we teach principals how to do something we will immediately teach aps and instructional leaders and academic coaches how to do the same thing we just work with principals on and then then we will teach teachers what to expect from their leaders and how to meet the bar that the new bar that the leader may bring into their classroom so we have these cycles that will happen bi-weekly uh so that we will all be getting better at a very few things which was already shared with you so we can really move the needle by

061going deep rather than trying to do a million things sort of okay questions i'm excited to see this work happen it looks promising and so yeah thank you if you want to come on a school visit with us uh please do we're going to get dates set and would love to have you join our learning walks to see what's happening in classrooms and the support principles in in making magic happen and this is where we started our work uh it's been my favorite moment so far i just wanna to make sure we stamp we are really excited to collaborate we are not here to tell anybody what to do we want to be a part of the solution we know the solution is in the classrooms and in the schools in commerce city we are

062here to elevate when it's going really well and support closing gaps where those those happen to be and we plan to do it joyfully and be part of the team thank you so excited for all the work that's already been done so quickly so i commend you all but just for the work moving forward and i can't even begin to tell you how i appreciate the way you work not only collaboratively but what really impressed me when we first started meeting with you was about how you dig into the root cause of things so we're not just perpetuating things that have continued to happen so thank you thank you awesome sorry my board docks is messed up i got it now thank you and uh dr lauria i don't know um do we need to

063talk about the adjustment in the title of the next agenda i know it was it was um it's done it's done okay we're incorrectly posted so thank you for that um agenda item 2.2 is cogniza's presentation would you like to start with an intro or go ahead yes with a short intro cogna is an organization that has been providing support to school districts as far as accreditation so this is a conversation that i brought up and presented to you listen to your vision i want to say in march maybe sometime in the spring they we i had a meeting i shared with the board the meeting we had and we at that time you know the conversation that we had is like we're gonna wait we have a lot of on our plate as far

064as um the dealings that we were having with the state um never in my wildest dreams never i actually thought we were gonna explore or you will going to explore the need to engage with a company because the accreditation had been jerked by the state never in my wildest dreams um especially for reasons other than performance of students coming after a pandemic tragic but we have a plan and um so here with us is barbara jane paris dr paris uh served um has served students educators policy makers and governmental agencies in careers in a career spanning three decades in more than 40 states in countries around the globe a recognized advocate for school safety dr paris has testified before congress served on multiple white house panels the juvenile justice division center for disease control office

065of national drug control the department of health and social services in the united nations task force dr paris has appeared in multiple media sources including cnn headline news usa today in a national television she is the recipient of the u.s commander's award for public safety the ascd leader of learners and the school safety council awards as a former president of both the texas principals association and the national principals association dr paris is currently serving as the mountain region vice president for cochnea a a global leader in school improvement and accreditation residing in austin texas where she is recognized by official state resolutions from both the senate and the house of representatives dr paris holds a singular belief schools are living organisms either growing or dying there's no status quo so i am excited to say

066that we are on the side of the living organism that is growing organization that is growing and definitely wanting to disrupt the status quo the status quo and the belief that atoms 14 students cannot achieve cannot grow or that the adults cannot take care of the problems within our boundaries that has been a narrative that has been going out there for way too long hurting only one group of individuals our students so we are very excited of having you here we are excited that the board will be able to ask questions and explore if this is something that will work for our district as we move towards changing the narrative of our of our district and the story of our for our students so thank you dr paris do i have a green light yes

067superintendent lauria madame vice president members of the board members of the community and students i know there's lots of students watching tonight right i want to thank you for allowing me to spend a little time with you today and i think i want to just start by saying it gave me goosebumps when you were speaking um because everything that i am going to share with you this evening is not what every educator fears which is oh my goodness another thing right another thing i have to understand another vocabulary i have to embrace another expectation not at all what is so exciting about this is it's you're like the boots on the ground for the accreditation process that cognia uses i mean it is it's sort of magical nothing that we share with you regarding accreditation

068is contrary to what you've said it's not in opposition absolutely supports everything that you have shared to almost to the point where i have to wonder if you've been in my head sometimes so that to me is a huge relief because i know that the last thing adams14 wants right now is one more thing right the other last thing you want me to do and i say this with great shame is to read the slide up on the screen in spanish because i am very ashamed to admit i don't speak spanish it doesn't please me to admit that um [Music] but if you heard me try to read that you would ask me not to it has always fascinated me my last principalship in texas um we have a lot of english language learners right

069and it fascinated me when teachers would come and make comments about our english language learners and i would look and say are you kidding me these children already function in more languages than anybody else at this table so it's to be celebrated and we don't do that often enough um so congratulations on being a district that embraces that i truly mean that that just uh thrills me there is a very nifty looking brochure that we will pass out which has everything in english at the moment excuse me um and so i have shared some of the slides that have the the most important information up there in spanish there's a reason i didn't put up an i love me slide with my email and my phone number it's because i'm not important in this right

070i'm just a vehicle what's important is this that your teachers show up every day every single day your principals your custodians and the work they do is noble and if i don't thank the school board members here this evening i would be very remiss because that is incredibly noble work um that you do for the good of the district and that is never to be underestimated so thank you for the work that you do um most of you probably have no clue who we are and and we're okay with that we don't tend to advertise what we do we don't really need to schools work with us as our partners we're not trying to sell you a product or anything but it is interesting that we are the world's largest accreditation um and improvement network

071and that we've been around 125 years i've been around for about 120 of those judging by my uh bio there but there you go didn't mean i was good at anything it just meant i'm old um we work with over 36 000 schools in districts and we work in 85 different countries currently this changes all the time so um i'm going to beg your forgiveness if i'm off by a country or two this evening um and it's interesting to know is we are the largest um the other reason you may not know our name is we have changed it time or two in the last hundred years there's an awful lot of acronyms up there um we've been everything from the southern association nca commission on accreditation and school improvement the whole map is up

072there for you to see and just a few years ago we switched to cognier we're like everybody else we are in continuous improvement so we are constantly reinventing ourselves to better serve students in your classrooms so we're non-profit we're not trying to sell you anything um our role is to just help you discover and change outcomes for all learners which is exactly what your colleagues over here have alluded to um and i think it's important to understand that we do actually know schools because we're in them all the time um every day we serve such an array of people um it's mind-boggling when i think about it just state partnerships as you'll see on that slide those are just states that actually where the governmental agencies have said okay we we don't want to do

073this by ourselves anymore so we would like to work with an organization that will take on a large piece of this accreditation and school improvement task and those are a few of them we accredit schools in all of those states in fact we have over 160 here in colorado that we accredit um and it's a choice for schools in colorado right so if it wasn't a viable valuable proposition that brings value to the schools they wouldn't do it so the schools that we work with in colorado do it because it has brought value to what you're trying to get accomplished um we hope to serve i have no idea who this lovely person is but i saw this individual on your website and this is who we want to serve we want to support what

074you're doing and serve people like this i sometimes feel that when we do these presentations they get a bit um full of edgy babble it is really easy to forget why you're even sitting here on this tuesday evening so i just thought found that picture to be absolutely adorable um just so you understand a little more of the background the partnerships that we have take on so many formats we work with early learning schools we work with stem certification we work with digital schools we work with faith-based schools we work with students in therapy-based situations we work with students who are incarcerated so you name it we work with schools and we find a way to better support what it is that you are trying to do and how as that last statement says take

075what you're doing to a new level change this narrative that has been wearing this amazing district down and lift these people up lift these teachers up because you've already said it all that matters really is what happens when that door closes and that teacher interacts with those children right that's the penultimate goal and i i have to say this i applaud all of what you're doing regarding your staffing because the problem you explained is universal with all 36 000 schools that we work with and what nobody said which was so interesting is you had this trifecta around losing uh the hemorrhaging of educators first started because of covet teachers just stopped and said i this is too hard i'm not doing it anymore so you had that you had your concerns with state expectations um

076and then you just had that normal attrition that comes with teaching and so what you have already been able to accomplish i find phenomenal when i asked about your attrition rate i went that is not unusual at all especially right now so your agony is universal but the things you have put in place to fix that should be applauded also so hang in there we're so excited for for what you're doing to make sure there's somebody in a classroom who cares about kids every day because that's where it starts right okay here we go this is my best spanish here it comes help me here cognia is that close enough i could do french french is my other language but i don't think that's going to further our mission is it but so why why

077on earth would you even partner with us why are you even sitting having this conversation well remember i said we know schools because we're in them which is why we embrace accreditation for continuous improvement that's just a sample right there right of just a handful of years of 30 000 hours of observation we've been in more than 87 000 classrooms in way over more than 5 000 schools it's much higher now so we do know what you're doing we do know what the challenges are which is why schools and districts engage with our accreditation process it's because we're not trying to dictate to anything to you we're here to help you achieve your goals it's not our goals it's not our school and i believe those are your staff members aren't they out there that's

078a wild and woolly bunch i would love to be in any one of their classrooms look at that don't ever lose that enthusiasm i mean that i pulled that picture up it just made me smile and it i always judge schools and districts by what i want my children and now my grandchildren to be in that class or with that teacher and i say unequivocally yes when i look at this picture um so that's our vision is that we're dedicated to your goals not our goals right and we have experts everybody who works for cognia has been where you are most of you pretty much okay i i was explaining earlier that when i retired as a principal and left from working at the national principals association i was called to take on this role

079and i said i'll give it three months and that was over eight years ago i believe that what we do makes a difference for children every day just as your partners over here do the boots on the ground i'm just going to keep calling you the boots on the ground i won't remember your names at the end of the evening but i'm going to go you know those boots on the ground people um the data that we look on and this depends on what country i'm in whether it's data data or data so whichever one you want feel free do you all know this gentleman that was a trick question i just pulled him off the internet i don't know him either um [Music] we know that you have a ton of data right it's

080so evident and the way that you've already said that you're going to work with them on their data is important but what is what is so much more important is helping you turn that data into information into something that's completely actionable right that changes behavior i don't mean that in a disciplinary sense but changes what we do to narrow that gap in student achievement for every child that sounds edgy babbly again but date is useless unless we do anything with it and i'm not just talking about um that very all of those spreadsheets with quantitative data i'm talking about qualitative data i'm talking about experiences perceptions that data cannot be underestimated so it's very embedded in the accreditation process for us ours is a very global outreach so we have a very wide perspective we

081have a clear understanding of what the expectations are out there in the world when students leave i know one of the studies i read of yours was about how children do exactly what they're supposed to do they're very compliant they have bought into as as teachers have that if we get them in the classroom pay attention do what's expected of them they'll go out in the world and be successful and what your studies have shown is that's not always the case so how do we embed that understanding into the accreditation process and i think you'll see it's it's absolutely fundamental to how we approach this um any trainer some of these things you you don't have to know the more you raise them but you should know that we offer them we do a lot

082of professional development and i will tell you i'm the world's worst i have the attention span of a net i can't sit in pd for more than 20 minutes without having to go do something it's just not in my nature and teachers let's be honest we're the worst well actually that's not true principles of the worst right the sense of being able to pay attention so we have we have a really amazing team that does professional development for schools when they see a need sounds like you have a lot of that under control but it's good to know that it's out there for you if you should want to avail yourselves of it it's everything from growth mindsets to progress monitoring and feedback instructional strategies you name it whatever the district needs we have a

083team that is there ready to do that for you another reason uh that we would want you to engage with us is we've got a hundred years i'm sorry i'm looking at that image and that's supposed to be an image of oxford university which is my alma mater and i have just looked and realized it's actually harry potter i know i recognize i'm like wow thank you dr loria this was intentional because you can all make magic happen that was cheesy but it was a great recovery thank you for that oh my goodness and you you sold this you already called me out i thought it was intentional too no you could have told me before i sat down i could have changed the slide oh my goodness but there you go that's what's what

084a hundred years of a magic looks like in education um but it is important we just don't we didn't just appear to yesterday and say we can make this stuff up um sorry i'm never going to get over that um so we believe that we can work with your institution with our boots on the ground here to make accreditation something that is viable that is voluntary that changes outcomes for children it is not compliance driven by any stretch of the imagination because we know that doesn't work this is about absolutely 100 percent respect for your reality that's what we do first and foremost we get to know the communities we serve okay that's critical to doing any kind of accreditation with us yes we offer these other things and i'm going to whiz through this

085a little bit because i know some of you are you've had a long day um but i do want to point out what the other pathways of support are that we offer uh the professional learning i have already kind of indicated that we have a lot of professional lining out there that's available for you and it is oftentimes teacher driven we have a program called my voice where teachers can go into learning libraries and literally build themselves a playlist of things that they are inspired to learn about to improve their own instructional strategies in the classroom so we have all sorts of manner of in that particular pillar or pathway for you um we get asked a lot about assessments we do have a lot of assessment contracts with different states formative interim and summative

086assessments for those states that wish to avail themselves of it in no way shape or form is it required but it's there for the states that want it and districts our improvement services again you will hear all sorts of things that cognia does some districts ask for a diagnostic review they do want to be told they say will you come in here and evaluate and and give us a to-do list i mean that's very simplified but that is the part of the process other districts will say will you come in here and do sweeps and a sweep it's what we call an elliot sweep i'll show you that in just a second but that's where we come in and we do hundreds of quick evaluations of the learning environment and then we hand the data

087over to the schools and the districts to look at so our improvement services take on many different forms in addition to accreditation but this is where we are landing right here at accreditation and certification it's 100 a collaborative process we know that because that's how we do it and we want to make sure that you see how important it is because if you look up here our whole accreditation standards uh there is 30 standards and they fall into one of these categories and what is the the word that strikes you that is universal to all four of those it's learning focus everything about it is learning the culture of learning is first how do you create that culture of learning um how do we embrace the leadership of learning and the engagement is huge right

088um and then that growth in learning so everything again is not another thing it's exactly what this team is talking about with regard to what they are trying to do with the strategic plan okay we offer strategic planning for districts often they call us and say okay we don't like our plan um well how are you going to know if you've arrived if you don't know where you're going and so we do offer that as an option for districts that need it we have a tool actually a platform you can actually put the plan into again we know schools because we're in schools what have we learned okay you're gonna like this this is so attuned to everything you just said take a look now by the way this is not this is a disclaimer

089here this is not adam's 14 but this is just a glimpse at evidence of how we know what's going on this is how a hundred and four 000 teachers described what students do in classes right so just kind of just do that photo moment there notice work with others teachers say that students work with others completing worksheet sheets is teeny tiny but here's what those same students say is going on in those classrooms let me go back a second so you can see where we're going with this look at complete worksheets that one just makes me smile isn't it priceless this is the teachers i love it and here is what the students say isn't that great so here's another variation on this this is another data set or set of data points rather oh

090wait is this the same one slightly different slightly different high school that's right but you see a common theme here right look at this memorize i like memorization complete worksheets tape tests now of course we recognize yeah we recognize this as perception right but it's their reality it's how they a lot of our surveys and things that we offer the school districts they engage in accreditation it's their perception we measure both their perceptions and we measure their experiences so not only do we offer surveys that say you know how do you feel about your teachers or your classroom but we also do more quantitative pieces where we say things like how many times have you had a one-on-one interaction with a teacher in the last two weeks is it zero to one two to five

091so we actually are able to get you some quantitative data to support how they feel they are experiencing their education we don't tell you what to do with this what we hope will happen is you will take your data data data and turn it into action that helps improve instruction so that that disparity becomes less so yes we have a lot of tools that support that so as part of accreditation we do this effective learning environment tool it's it's what we use in our schools and what sets this apart from from all the observation tools you see is we're not going in and looking at teachers we are not sitting in the back of the room staring at what a teacher is doing our tool measures what students are doing right so you know how

092when you're a new teacher you always think oh my goodness when somebody comes to watch me i need to talk a lot to show how a i'm in control of the classroom and b that i could show them what we know it's the complete opposite here we really don't want teachers to talk we want to see what students are doing with the learning and one of the the things that just i like you can tell it's one of my favorite tools i'm getting all animated now but one of the things i love about it is you can run data reports on things like the beginning of a lesson right so you look to see what all what kinds of things are happening in a classroom at the beginning of a lesson and if you find

093when you examine 30 of these that there's they're still doing warm-ups at 45 minutes that tells you they don't really understand what a warm-up is or likewise if you run a report on what's happening in a classroom for the last 20 minutes and all of your reports show that students are reading a book drawing on their cell phones that tells you that we might need a little help around how to close a lesson right so this effective learning environment is not judging the teacher it's saying here's what works in the classroom and here's what your data is telling you we have the diagnostics that come as part of accreditation but we don't throw you under the bus we give you a workbook that you can literally follow page by page as part of the accreditation

094preparation and i can guarantee you that everything i heard your team say this evening a hundred percent evidence um that you are meeting those standards so again it's not another thing you've already done the work and when it comes to uploading evidence is everything you've talked about our surveys are actually offered as surveys and inventories i said both qualitative and quantitative are offered in multiple languages because i know you serve gosh students that speak is it bashkir korean navajo swahili vietnamese urdu ukrainian i don't know that we have all of those surveys in all of those language but don't ask don't get right so just ask um and as i said we do do strategic planning ours process is around up to four phases where you have to envision envision i cannot say that word

095i want us to change this so i don't have to say envision envisioning phase one of the most fascinating experiences i had in a district in arizona a few years ago we were doing strategic planning and we were going through the envisioning phase and on a good strategic planning team you have a couple of students right to represent student voice and one of the challenges was they had to look at what are the technological challenges economical challenges cultural challenges that are going to impact how you conduct school and when it came to the breakout an 8th grade girl she stood up and she said well our table discussed what would happen to schools if suddenly they couldn't come to school anymore and they had to work from home until this day i remember somebody in

096the team going that's silly that'll never happen and that was probably two weeks before covent so there you go never say never so that's part of the planning process and all of the support that we offer in training is both online and i thought i was very modern when i learned the acronym f2f face-to-face so i'm very proud of that my grandchildren were really impressed they were even more impressed when i talked about schools had to go from briquette to click it that's about as modern as i'm going to get so moving on some of the other things that you can avail yourself of as members of cognia everything from our cognier learning community we have leadership chats we have think tanks we do these fabulous solution circles where principals can get together and um

097dissect a problem with like-minded people from other districts so you can kind of get your head outside where you are and get some other input we're very proud of those those are going very very well and as i mentioned before we have my voice which is a teacher driven process for improving classrooms it's not top-down so those are all going swimmingly here's what we don't do we don't dictate we do not come in with a laundry list of you must do this we 100 percent respect your current reality and for all of our collective expertise what we see is just a peek through a window into your world right it's your world so we respect that reality we do not oh there's a typo in there did you notice that one earlier too yes thank

098you thank you that was the test and you passed actually i think i added this at four o'clock this morning you know how you do that i must remember to say here's what we don't do we don't we don't critique you we invite your reflection on the evidence that you gather and we certainly do not see accreditation as an event we're not gonna we don't measure schools based on some some standardized achievement tests that will make you all break you this is a process and it's a continual growth growth process right and we certainly don't sell you any programs what we ask you to do is just commit to one another and to the work that you're doing um i i have always said programs don't improve education people improve education and you have them

099you have the right people leading these schools that's going to be the change we don't have to sell you a program oh that was the so what don't we do shared commitment that's it it's not a program it's a commitment and it is not anything in addition or different or deviant from what you already know to be the right things for kids so porque cognia here's some quotes from other people um elliot was that learning observation tool and if you notice these quotes are all just how it's helped districts reflect this is out of kentucky i almost said versailles but i don't think they say it like that in kentucky this is a quote from the state department in oklahoma again it's all about reflecting on your data your improvement journey not some outside mandate

100this one i love because he talked about how the process was inspiring again remember nobody's required to do this it's all through choice and the last one i put one in there that represented your own state validating what you already know about your own community is hugely important so i know you've heard enough to me so i'm going to wrap it up and take questions here's what we believe cognia plus adams 14 equals improved outcomes for more than 6 000 students you have 45 english language learners i think that's spectacular that they function is it higher now that's impressive i mean really that's impressive that 62 of the people in your community already speak another language i was learning absolutely i remember you saying that dr laurier when we met yes oh so it wasn't

101your idea you borrowed it from her i remember it that's right that's beautiful we we so respect that and honor it um the process of accreditation is about caring for your students right we know if you said they feel safe they feel fed these are important pieces about nurturing them when you look at that and you see one percent what does that make you think that's a small number but you know what it's not that means even with my limited math that you have about 60 students in any given moment that come through your district and you're it for them you are in their moment you are their reality and they are so dependent on you in order to be able to move on to wherever they're moving on to so so these are pieces

102that you have to to nurture them and hold on to them we can't dictate that to you there isn't an accreditation uh system in the world that can measure that and go these students were not successful right you have what it takes to get this done let's not forget we have to collaborate you have talented and gifted students they shouldn't have to sit around and teach themselves so what do we do as part of the accreditation process that makes sure that they reach their full potential okay and you have 14 on individual education plans you know what i have always thought seriously and you kept mentioning you mentioned it at least six times about progress monitoring we wouldn't have to spend so much time on assessing any of these children if we spent more time

103monitoring their progress and giving them feedback in the classroom i can remember a teacher telling me i spent four hours a night grading papers and i said well you are misunderstanding the process i'd rather you spend four hours a night planning engaging lessons and then you wouldn't need to be grading papers for four hours a night right so that was the slide i didn't share at the beginning because i am not important in this process so before you ask me questions i've got one for you here it is that's not rhetorical you have to answer that's your ticket out the door this evening bright i heard bright what else self-determination equitable i heard two at the same time oh joyful what did i hear from over here differentiated student yeah student driven student driven thank

104you for that student voice the place to be yes and absolutely the place to be and cheesy as this sounds i want for uh this to be the place that cognia helps you with all of that also so at this point i'll take questions actually that's a very valid question um the next step would be for the district to fill out the simplest application in your lives and immediately get access to all of those tools it's a very simplistic process to get going and the process itself the first step is candidacy that's where we give you the information we give you the standards we give you a workbook and what we're trying to say is does this district have the capacity to meet the standards that's the whole purpose of candidacy it's not a got

105you it's does this district have the capacity not do they have a perfect strategic plan or brilliant campus improvement plans right now but is that part of their thinking and do they have the capacity to make it and you move i stole this from doing department of defense reviews in europe but we let you move as quickly as you want to but as slowly as you need to it's brilliant isn't it i want to steal that saying as quickly as you want to but as slowly as you need to to do the right thing for students so that was actually a great question that was a very long answer wasn't it sorry other questions that either means i did okay or i bored you all to death yes so my real question um how does

106what you do compare with what the state does or how do you work along with what the state mandates because i see what you do is not it doesn't come from a penalty point of view right it doesn't penalize you for not meeting certain things which you know at the end of the day we don't want the students to be penalized because that's pretty much what happens um when you're looking at things from the perspective from the state accreditation process versus your accreditation process but is there a time when or is there a process where you guys have to mingle and figure things out or is it how does that work the answer to that question is no there is not a point at which we have to mix or mingle um it is a

107separate process we hold ourselves to a very high standard um and and i will say this you know what you have children that are walking in the door tomorrow you know they can't wait for everybody else to figure out what should and shouldn't be happening you've got children needing you tomorrow and that's entirely what our process is about is the path forward that gains the most traction for your students but it is globally recognized it's not you know it's a globally recognized accreditation process so it doesn't impact the colleges or universities on the contrary it helps it it helps immensely where we're highly regarded um even as a state director i got calls all day long regarding students going to colleges that weren't even in public schools but they were called near accredited institutions around

108the world and i touchwood have never seen a problem so i um i looked at your list of many many schools and districts that you accredited and i noticed mapleton westminster and um there were on there um but i really appreciated that there was such a mix you had community schools you had public private um so i think it would be not only helpful like regardless of what happens with the state like i would love for us to pursue this for our students thank you and i i looked at your rubric i'm i'm very i love quantitative data but i love yeah i need the numbers yeah but i i just um compared and contrasted it to our um state review panel and to see that it's based on information and not like a biased

109uh this is what i think kind of process i just wanted to give you kudos for that because it's very impressive to see the rubrics and thank the steps that are there you know we're very realistic with with the team that does evaluate the schools because we we would be naive to think that we as part of this process we know everything about you we don't and we never will because that's evolving so we really do see this as any information that we give you back as part of accreditation it's just a glimpse through the window into your world and we're very mindful of that um so thank you for that any other questions comments yes sir do you need mike sorry thank you so how does being accredited through cognia if it does at

110all does that change assessments and having to do standardized tests cmass things of that nature through the state that's a great question and no again that is we do not dictate how you evaluate we have districts that are standards based grading project based we do not dictate how you determine whether children have mastered the essential knowledge and skills that you set out for them to master right and again things qualitative things like what do what you mentioned so many of them the things that you want your students to be when they leave your schools you want them to be resilient for them to be innovative creative all of those things and yet how many of those things are measured by a an assessment that comes from it we don't we don't and those are important

111qualities that you measure through your internal metrics so we do not require or dictate what types of um metrics you use to measure progress we just want to know that you have taken the data from those metrics and used it to improve those outcomes for your children any more questions for the good of the order jolly good thank you thank you so much yes very exciting work so excited great our last um item for this evening is 3.1 regarding board vacancy next steps we did have one applicant thank you for stepping up and i believe on our resolution we did decide that tomorrow we would have a community forum so i just wanted to open it up for discussion on what the board how we would like to move forward if we i mean we

112have to weigh what we promised to our community i don't want to cut them out and i i very much value i know we all do their their input on this decision um but i don't know that we've prepared anything for a forum tomorrow for one person so um ideas on how to proceed could we just uh take some of the questions we've had for the previous ones like mine i mean we have we've had it we've done it before so um we have the practice i think now that maybe just taking some of those same questions and asking the candidate or the applicant um those questions and then um you know if people will call in maybe and then they if they can chime in if they have other questions i don't see it

113as being anything major because we only have one so we have like a conversation with the applicant's conversation with you yeah okay any other thoughts well and i personally wouldn't want to skip it i think it would it would be wonderful to do it virtually just so we can open it up to more people um given we didn't put a time or location or um i don't know if that's possible too late but you have to post it did we have to post it has not been noticed okay but it's not a meeting either when you make a decision another option also is we can engage that in the process as well because that you see the community that will that represents the larger community school community so that's also an option for you and

114i think we should post it so that we give our community a chance to be there because not last minute that's the biggest thing about communication yeah so if we can that would be post it and then pick a time and date so that they know and we can get it out through flyer get it out through the schools for everyone that will be involved okay so it unfortunately puts more work back on monica if you don't mind reaching out to the board and the applicant to um find a date that we could do this um do we need to adjust our resolution mr salazar because we did state in there that we would have um yeah we did also add additional special meeting dates would be scheduled but we didn't we didn't fluff on

115the dates so i think that uh the resolution to talk about having special meetings based off of the discretion of the of the board and i would recommend that we notice you having that discussion so that way you're not making any decisions here but that that we notice in another meeting so that way you can all come to terms with the process and make any adjustments that um that you believe are important i think dr lauria's point about having the candidate meet dak is important to get that that community feedback and also to uh director amadors to his point is that providing notice also provides notice to the to the community so i think that maybe we can get something up and running by by this week and then of course um you know outreach

116to the candidate to let them know that uh there might be an adjustment um and so um but that that should probably be done after you meet next um so that way um you know you you all aren't being accused of making decisions without providing that notice yeah this is just ideas that you can start tossing so that when you need to discuss then you have a plethora of ideas or options yeah okay are you gonna say something all right i [Music] would recommend for you to consider we can have a special meeting through monica we can find out what a good time for a special meeting is and during that time then with this ideas you can sleep on it and maybe think of additional ideas that you in speaking individually with constituents then

117you can come and discuss and then you can set up time for a meeting at that during that special meeting set up time and date and then we'll move forward and and post it and invite the community okay that sounds perfect yeah and madame madam vice president um the beauty of it is you still have time you know through the resolution as you still have time to uh to work this process through okay thank you yeah thank you that sounds good we just want to make sure we reach out to the individual we'll let him know and as soon as we through monica find out what time works for a special meeting he will will communicate with monica will communicate with the candidate and then from there will go great well we have no further

118business tonight or we didn't have business it was a study session we are adjourned yes thank you all for joining us this evening thank you thank you for having me appreciate it do you want me to leave some of these in case somebody else or are they