001um it is now 6 52 on May 22nd and we would like to begin our Dei um meeting on our agenda tonight is to discuss the district Dei goals and review our request for proposals for the Dei audit number two update on Dei initiatives regarding professional development and number three District action plan and future planning and I will give floor over to Dr Irvin okay thank you Miss Johnson so the first thing I wanted to talk about is the RFP I have been in communication with an individual from University of Pittsburgh who has submitted a draft proposal because our request is pretty complex um they felt that it would be best if we had a couple of conversations about that so we actually chatted twice um in the past couple of weeks and then on
002Friday Thursday I think she said Thursday she sent a draft but she really wanted me to look that over before we presented that to to anybody else so um with a lot of things going on um I have not had a chance to peruse that yet but I will go over that carefully and then I'm going to give her some additional feedback in terms of whether or not we believe that it's targeting what the board wants and then when they feel comfortable taking the draft off and there they have a couple of other things that they want to add on their end as well then I wanted to talk to you all about how we wanted to proceed with that so what we would like to do is if you read it over and find
003it to be something you want to learn more about we I'm suggesting that we would bring them in in June to the Dei committee meeting or if you want to the regular board so first of all like you know say in about a week I would have maybe in time for next what Thursday's packet we would have this draft ready to share with you do you want it to go in the packet to all nine board members or would you like the Dei committee to take a look at it first I don't know I'll start doing the other way no I don't either I think that's fine if it goes to all of us okay yeah let's more eyes the better right so okay so then we yeah because that was the other thing I
004mean I did put a little uh notice about this in Thursday's update that that it would be forthcoming so we will provide the copy and again it will still consider it a draft but this still has some spots that are incomplete uh as the as the team is looking for some some other things that they wanted to add in terms of background information and that so so what we'll do is when we have the the final draft um we'll put that in the board update for everybody to peruse and then um you know and we don't have to decide tonight if you want to talk to Mr Weiland about it but um the the individuals are interested in you know would be interested in presenting um so we could again have them come here I
005think it's one of the reasons what we thought originally 45 minutes might be more useful um to give them time to maybe do an overview and then time for questions um but we could do that you know it's the same night so what I had already given her uh the date I think it's June 19th it would be the disc would be the voting meeting but we typically meet before the voting meeting or we could talk about and I can reach out to her and see if they wanted to come to the discussion if you want to have a conversation about that with Mr Weiland Alaska and Dr steinhauer how they'd like to proceed or we could do it here but then we'd have to wait till well you win we don't mean in July
006so then we won't be able to take any action on it until we either have to amend the agenda to add it as an action item okay so it's a little more complicated right but I I just wanted to bring it up to speed on that I did talk to one other individual from uh from a pittsburgh-based organization um who was going to send something but they again the level of complexity in terms of what we're looking for um and the need to go back and forth with dialogue um you know if I get something from them you know we certainly can can include that as well but I haven't heard anything back from that well so right now it's just the one yeah yeah and I have something in hand I mean I'm looking
007at it right now that there is a draft um whereas I don't you know I only had a conversation with another individual so I mean again we would certainly want to look at that if it's possible you know if it's available but I also know that there is a sense of urgency around this um when I spoke to this individual one of the things that I said is um you know we would probably like for them to get started even possibly in the summer early fall do a lot of the data collection around the curriculum pieces particularly during the school year and then by the end of next year have some solid recommendations to make for going forward so okay alrighty so that's my update on on number one Dei goals request for uh D
008the audit doctor so is it right once you yeah so we could talk about that in future planning about it yeah what I was hoping we would do yes yes so um I I have a little I have some things to fill you in about that too I am really sort of excited to talk about number two though which is update on Dei initiatives professional development because I do want to take a moment to talk about the amazing day that we had on September 16th um September 16th was our Dei K-12 in-service day and how we had it arranged was we had uh I mean I I forgot we had 36 sessions We Had Each we had three breakout periods and in each breakout period there were 12 workshops that folks could choose from many
009of the options were repeated multiple times um so that people you know depending on what they were truly interested in seeing and then the last breakout session at the end we mixed the teachers up so we actually put them together alphabetically so that event we had high school elementary middle science teachers music teachers you know whoever um and we had a PowerPoint that I had put together and we had uh folks leading the breakout sessions Miss Ross uh Dr Davis myself the principals had all LED them and they're really wrong questions on reflecting on how the day went what was some of the most powerful things you heard what were the most challenging things you heard and then we talked through some scenarios um all of the feedback what about the in-service day was so
010positive I mean I legit had people that I didn't really know secondary teachers that I don't know were all coming from seeking me out at the end of the day to tell me how amazing that they thought it was um in addition when we started off in the morning we started off all together to sort of set the stage why are we here um what is the purpose of this day and we had I think about 10 to 12 students high school students who joined us for that um just um they when I was at the podium they stood behind me sort of as a solidarity and then uh three of the students chose to speak to the teachers um about their own personal experiences as being a student from a you know a marginalized
011group or a group that has experienced discrimination or identity-based harassment so that was so super powerful um I think really set the stage and for that student group then we also allowed them for the first uh session we allowed them to pick from the workshops so um they were in a couple of different options and then we also had the light initiative come and present for them at the second Workshop time period and then when we broke for lunch we fed them all pizza and cookies and then said go and enjoy the rest of your day off um I want to talk a little bit about the sessions that were offered um so we had everything from um things around uh specific to Identity and that in um in ela and in uh in social
012studies we had a couple we had whose story we had a workshop on asking questions to help students uh you know lead their own learning we had purposeful power pedagogy in elementary social studies as well we had organizations representing lgbtq from psad and pflag and they all talked one was P flag was specifically on supporting students and families with lgbtq we also had some learning opportunities around soji which is sexual orientation and gender identity and expression um so really helping folks understand uh you know what the meaning is we talked about safe and uh impact like safe learning environments for all students we had identity-based harassment and understanding difference from the ADL um we did a follow-up to the race Workshop that we had offered during the fall and spring a session on black history
013in Mount Lebanon um taught by one of our own teachers let me see what else we have in ableism that Ms Webb our principal at um Washington did that was amazing honestly I mean I couldn't get to all of them I was like popping in and out but um unfortunately because she had another she had another training in the morning she could only offer that once but people are already saying like that was so good it was about language especially that we use when we talk about students who learn differently uh let's see um oh and we because we've had this partnership with lights we had um Nick Haberman from the light initiative talk about this was I thought a really good topic and very popular inspiring and preparing the next generation of humanitarian humanitarians
014we had culturally affirming relationship building in schools seeing ourselves and each other reflecting an empathy and around our identities so just a lot of a really amazing choices um and teach so teachers could direct their own learning they could really think about like if they are one of our staff members is like I'm not even sure what lgbtq stands for there's a session for you but if you're also saying like I'm ready to take this to the next level and think about how I can take this information and work on it with students there was that so really a great day our only Downer was um we didn't have as many staff there as we would have liked um but I was able to touch base with all of our speakers we all ate together
015too which was nice so they with the students and all of the speakers and they all want to continue partnering with the district uh the the cultural um culturally affirming relationship building is actually that speaker um somebody knew that we learned about through teach plus uh which Ms Ross leads um but he's here at local in Pittsburgh whereas the folks from teach plus that we generally work with are Philly Austin kind of all over but he's right here in Pittsburgh and did a great job um in that in that particular Workshop it was very inspiring so just just was an amazing day yep you said September 16th does that is [Laughter] dyslexic about what day it is so but I do think that we are going to want to capitalize on these relationships that we've
016built um and look at uh ways we can continue to bring these folks in to help support learning um and also uh you know how we can hit the people that we missed I'm hoping that they're all feeling bad although it was a beautiful day but I think they might be feeling bad that you know this was the day they chose to use comp time so so can I ask um about approximately how many people did it it's like we had close to 200 all in we did have some folks that left early um like they came for the morning sessions um we won't have quite that many evaluations because that's a Act 48 requirement and a lot of our teachers don't need that so they'll come but they don't necessarily fill out the eval
017and we did a different eval for this as well because I asked them to choose which session they were in and then you know feedback on that particular session so I could look at it easily like in a clump and that's where I just going through it I haven't printed it all out yet but the initial dive and looking at each of the of the sessions all of the evaluations were very positive great um teachers seem to you know really respond to it so it was very rewarding my last in-service planning ever yes great thank you yep um then number three District action planning future planning and I see Dr freezes in the audience so um I will say that in in the meeting that she talks about I think uh in the in her
018report to the board that that we met we are planning to meet to talk specifically about eei just to really hone in on that initiative I can show her and share with her all the action plans that we've had you know we've developed kind of what boxes we've checked off you know where we are in the process um and then you know I think she's going to want to decide then you know who she wants to lead that moving forward but I will make sure I told her I will make sure I turn over everything um you know what put it all on shared drive so that anybody who needs it can access it and you know again even like this new list um you know the emails and contexts for the number of different
019folks that we've met through through planning the end service so uh it's definitely gonna be something you know we know that it continues to be a focus of the board and I want to make sure that I leave it in good hands in a good organized way so that whoever takes over the Reigns is going to be able to Jump Right In and um find everything that they need and if they want to reach out and ask questions I'm fine with that too since I'm sticking around great thank you so with that we've gone through the agenda um do we have any questions or comments from residents yes you are I don't know if the spike is on but I just want to make a brief comment because we haven't really done an update on
020what's going on with teach plus but I wanted to note that our partnership with teach plus has been really fruitful very positive not only do we have connections with workshops and things that they're hosting in the area that we had a presenter come for our in-service day but we have two current teachers who are part of their policy Fellowship which is ending this year so Val Brown and Don Davenport but from that relationship other teachers I've told I can't officially say are finalists for the next cohort so our teachers are actually By Word of Mouth participating in this and it's teacher advocacy those that aren't aware teach plus mission is really to bring more teachers of color to the region and working with Recruitment and Retention efforts so our teachers have really stepped up and
021become involved with teach Plus on their own and I'm hopeful to see in the years to come that every cohort of their fellows baby has a Mount Lebanon teacher but I'm very excited that we didn't you know say anything to these teachers about doing this Fellowship that they've just continued that on their own so I'm really proud of that that work we've been doing so I wanted to note that great thank you so much so with that are at the end of our time if we have no further questions or comments and our next meeting we don't have a time yet but it should be June 19th and we look forward to seeing everyone there thank you