001e the recording in progress Board of Trustees school district will meet in special session at 5:30 p.m. Monday February 24th 2025 in the administration building Board Room 613 BW uh Sal Street Crystal City 39 uh call Mr Rosa here Mr Sam Houston abent Mr here Mr Mr G here Martinez here and Mrs Pegg here we do have a Corum call the meeting at what at what time 5:30 530 5:30 on the night okay okay this time we'll take a reflection number four audience the patron sir no one sir okay number five uh action item uh it's got an action to consider approval of the venito Warz Elementary and Crystal City uh High School targeted Improvement plans Mrs Garcia will come up for the uh sorry 25 26 school year Mrs will come up to the
002podium along with uh Miss pente and missas to present their uh Target and Improvement plan for the 25 26 school year good evening um what you have in front of you um what you should have in front of you are your are benites and uh Elementary and City high schools targeted Improvement plans they look like this um I took them to make them a little bit bigger cuz I believe I also included what is going to be submitted in Isam uh through our the TA um secure site it's the exact same thing but mine was just a little bit bigger um and I don't think I have one it's I think it's in the packet oh in the packet oh packet I thought you said in front of packet P I don't have the the
003package so I don't have the page numbers um but I believe the first one you'll see is the Benito ques Elementary um page seven and the first the first question is what is your school Improvement strategy we had to select other because the other items that were um available were items where we would have to um invest a significant amount of money and we decided not to because most of those programs were either also tied to a grant or um we had already done a lot of that work and then in conversations with Region 20 Region 20 stated that we were going to do a some of that portion of the work through uh what is called flips training that we are already going through and we had our second meeting today um so we
004went ahead and selected other um and for Benito Elementary give a one to two sentence description of your strategy for school Improvement in talking in meeting with tea through February 13th uh 13th ta visit with Benes and Region 20 after conducting on classroom observations one of the things that we noticed was the it was a minor it was just checking for understanding it was a teachers asking the students the higher order uh questions and it was just something that we just needed we need to tweak in our lesson plans which is something that can be um done and become and made habit with with time with more practice um so Benito Elementary will focus on prioritizing observation and feedback for checking for understanding through formative assessments we will present the strategy and begin utilizing formative
005assessment trackers at our plc's in order to track all student mastery of the lesson and track all teacher use of the strategies to be observable during observations and be discussed during feedback name at least one evidencebased intervention that is incorporated into this strategy we will utilize a book study on Paul banri santoo's leverage leadership uh 2.0 a practical guide to building exceptional schools to strengthen our Effectiveness on observation and feedback and formative assessments for checking for understanding what reallocation of resources time funding and Staffing are needed to implement your school Improvement strategy based on your ESF diagnostic the resources that we will need will be just funding for uh the purchase of the books and time to work on our our book study and implement the practices this targeted Improvement plan also ask for curriculum
006so grades uh fourth through fifth reading will use Amplified Texas Elementary literacy program in English and Spanish and for math four through fifth stem Scopes Texas math for and I believe for math you already using stem Scopes do you do we already have those in the district yes sir amplify yes and then uh Miss uras had her meeting with her staff and a parent on February 21st uh 2025 to solicit public feedback and now we're at the last portion which is a board approval of this plan and then for Crystal City High School uh we also selected and for Crystal City High School uh the one to two one to two sin description of our strategy for schent improvement is that CHR High School will focus on observation and feedback for curriculum implementation support as
007our school Improvement strategy through our observations and feedback we will focus on ensuring that all instructional efforts aligned with rigorous standards and instructional goals and we are going to utilize the same uh one evidence based Intervention which will be the book study um on Paul bamri santoo's book to string strengthen our Effectiveness and observation and feedback for curriculum implementation and support the reallocation of resources will be the same that we will be uh needing re resources to purchase the books um which we've already done and time to work on our book study and implement the practices uh the curriculum for reading grades 9 to 12 is a resource and for math 9 to2 it's stem Scopes math Texas and Miss uh qu also had her meeting on February 21st with her staff to solicit public
008feedback so you said on the Paul uh some you already order or you already have we already ordered them okay so what was used previously to scop we have been using the same thing or this is something new or cuz I'm not the stem Scopes math the stem Scopes Texas math and I think the orer for the high school come in Texas math um because stem Scopes they they have stem Scopes they haven't been utilizing uh high school has not been utilizing stem Scopes um they've been focusing on lman um and in conver conversing with Region 20 um lman did not meet the rigor that stem Scopes did St stem Scopes was approved by tea as a Ved uh curriculum for school Improvement lman did not okay let me ask now they have they had
009training on stem SCS Texas math high school has not gone through the full-blown training they've covered bit and pieces but not uh not the full-blown but that's why this plan is for 2526 because that's what we will focus on during the summer and then the dates that were met I kind of have this odd feeling that we're just checking just to being compliant somehow it kind of feels like that in a way I mean I feel that I don't know it's just my opinion no I get the I get the same thing I mean you know the timing we're here on the 24th trying to approve this for the 28th um also that I saw with the you know the Ben the wat is you guys put out a post to solicit public feedback from
010the parents but it was put out on the 20th trying to solicit feedback at 7:30 am the next day you know so not too much time to to give the get enough feedback right or seeun this has been a work since last year since we had our ESF diagnostic report this a lot most of this stems from the es ESF diagnostic report that we received back and it's tweaking observation and feedback which is what we received back as a need for the campuses um in both both campuses as well um so it's not something that's new it is something that we've been working on uh we've had coaching as well um coaching on observation and feedback Maybe not maybe we're missing some critical pieces but that's why we're putting that into the plan because we
011all we ourselves need to become more effective in we know the Fe we know the observation part we need to become perfect in our feedback in our feedback conversations but this has been work that we've been doing since last year now you said you guys chose the other just you know for I guess cost effective you know so it's not any cost were there other programs that you would rather have chosen some of the other programs we didn't qualify for because of they were tied to a grant the only other program would have been the what is it called Texas um Texas instructional leadership and that was going to pretty much cost about 12,000 per person that was going to be trained um and most of that work is already in it it stems from
012that book um from the book that we have here Paul bamri santoo's leverage leadership it also stems from his other book U Get Better Faster there's a lot of work from his from his pre other book um data data driven um which we've covered somewhat in in the past we've had training but that training was about three three years ago how many people would have to get trained at that $112,000 cost the three of us and then y'all would facilitate the training to the rest of the yes can I hear from the principles I mean just four five minutes I mean about your experience with the I mean ta came and talked to to you guys I mean what was the conversation I mean so we did meet today um with the trainer it was
013it was osana Gonzalez I'm not sure 20 um she did come I did get you know some good it it was a flips training um in San Antonio unfortunately I wasn't able to attend that one but I did get an update back St wi in my place um and then he did share that information with me it it gives us a lot of leadership strategies um today we did focus on um the um observation part um where we can Implement something quickly and not take so much time because what we were doing was doing observations giving feedback but it was more in a written form through D and it today her strategy is you do a four minute just meet with the teacher give her but we have to do the pre-work and then just
014talk to the teachers and share with them what they can implement quickly to help them in the classroom none of the instructional coaches that we had were were observing this or had issues with it or took note of it or so the instructional coaches when they conduct a walk through their lens is different piggy because they go in strictly for instruction not for Fidelity and and and things like that so uh there is more instructional strategy Ty feedback so that brings up another question that were instructional cultes involved in this process no no this is purely uh the leadership staff it's um even last year when we met with our ESF um coordinators from Region 20 they wanted to meet with the campus principles with the dcsi um they did not want to meet with
015any other staff and they went um um we had a pre- meeting and then they conducted their campus observation which was an all day event um different days and they spoke to focus groups which were comprised of teachers um some leadership staff and some campus uh I believe they met with the campus leadership things did um and certain teaching groups um and then afterwards they looked they looked at everything everything from uh students an arrival to campus campus procedures um they went into the classrooms they they conducted observations of the classrooms um they had meetings with the instructional groups not instructional the instructional teams um campus leadership teams and then they looked at lunch they also looked at uh campus dismissal um they looked she looked she looked at everything um and then we had
016our post conference and then she presented our fin fin um final findings how many days were they here one one each day one time this was last spring for b elementary it was last spring so they Deborah can't remember her last name Ros Ros spent the day with us from Region 20 and she did exactly what Miss gcia just described and later on we got a report uh effective schools framework uh report and it told us here are your strengths and these levers and your some areas that you could improve upon and So based on that we you know we also Incorporated some of that work into our campus Improvement plan and so we've been rolling out those strategies this year um through this extra leadership training that we attended the flips that um Miss
017bua mentioned we're learning more about how we can be more effective principles and that's what um this book leverage leadership is all about I I read the introduction already and it's it has three search there that says you know they conducted This research study in Miami Dade County Public Schools and the author um found out that um most of the principal's time is being focused on organizational and administrative type of tasks that only about 4% of their day is spent on instructional type of leadership and this is across the country so that's where that book comes into play is how can we um leverage our time better so that we focus instruction and other tasks and I can tell you that just a few days and working with osana Wales from Region 20 already today
018uh my assistant principal and I learned a wonderful strategy that's going to cut our time in half or even more in giving teachers feedback immediately just through one 4our session it made such a huge impact so but that's basically why why they come to try to give you ideas and suggestions and everything and resources and resources they going going to finish the book by tonight when do you start in the I wish I could I'm gonna try my best to get through it so we can Implement those strategies quickly and aana has already um is an expert in this area so she's going to be that person to you know answer questions and so she's going to be like the contact person she is so next meeting she's going to come in um we scheduled
019the week after spring break 26 she'll be coming in and at that time she's going to uh share with us the feedback portion today we focus focus on the observation and um next time it's the feedback and then we're going to go and Implement that feedback in the classrooms she'll come back about I think a week to two weeks after that and we're going to then um uh go into the rooms together with her and conduct walkthroughs together and then we'll come back and we'll discuss again are we seeing the same things and what kind of feedback would we give our teacher based on what we saw and um I like I said just today alone I can see the impact in one 4H hour session so I'm really hopeful that this is going to
020make a difference and also I want to just you to know that um something that I discussed with the staff at our meeting was that this is directly tied into the teacher incentive allotment as well because you know we we want to make sure that our teachers uh are closing gaps right that our students are growing and so the more the more relevant our feedback is the the better they'll be able to um address those gaps and um another something that we found out when we looked at our data review report that we got from ta was that across the district we could all benefit from calibrating our our um observation and feedback so that's a plan that we've already put in place for the teacher Inc of allotment where I'm going to be visiting
021High School Miss qu they will come to my campus and we'll go to the other campuses like that Miss bionis and district office will come to our campuses as well and that way we can ensure that we're all on the same page that we're evaluating our teachers you know fairly across the board and that we're all seeing the same things grow most importantly to imp student performance it's so it always goes back to student performance on this Mr rers uh we need to approve it will it be sent to uh ta it or or just it has to be submitted into ta but it's ours to implement okay I just got any question so with the selection that was made you guys are comfortable with that and it wasn't forced upon you it was not
022forced upon and I am comfortable with it with the selection of the whatever selection yeah I'm comfortable with it it it'll help us we we do concentrate on other goals in our in our um plan but this one's more targeted and it should help directly impact the and stuff so how quickly will we see improvements um we should I mean we we had the meeting today yeah so we should you know start implementing the observation I gu one question I guess yes you know the you guys are using the same book at bonit the hes you know and the high school with the Paul the Paul brrs does do the strategies tie into the same because beneath the what is you have a certain age group you know and the teachers have a different mindset
023than the high school and I just want to make sure that the strategies that they give you know do help High School along with Ben the wates and the other campuses just because the the teachers are thinking different the students are thinking different and you know maybe the op ations that are given should be a little bit different or anything I mean I just want make sure that you guys are getting what y'all need at the campuses right I think I think it focuses more on our leadership and and and on the specific content yeah it's just how how we can improve as leaders and give the best feedback for our teachers um in across the district it should be the same it's going to be on what to look for uh which is one
024of the things that we found it was what what to look for and it's a lot of it has to do with the higher order thinking questions it's so it's providing teachers the question stems for the students as well and stims for students to be able to respond and be able to reach that higher order thinking that's going to be required of them for the star test and EOC assessment as well and something that missana Gonzalez you know repeatedly tells us is that this is a process we're in the building phase right now this spring semester is about building you know these strategies and and giving our teachers an opportunity to kind of get their feet wet but once we we you know we explore we're kind of the explor phase once we get through
025this phase then we can come back in the summer she'll be visiting in the summer and we'll finalize what this for us this uh formative assessment checklist is going to look like so it's we're it's a it's a process and we're we're starting it and you know we're going to implement with our teachers of course buying you because we need to make sure that there we do this collectively that we we work on these assessment rubrics or checklists with them so that we're all in it together any more questions from the uh board Mr Min recommendation the recommendation is that the Board of Trustees consider the approval ofes Elementary and the Crystal City High School targeted Improvement plans for the 252 uh six School year as disc as presented okay do I have a motion
026motion motion by Mr crw second second second by Sammy Houston uh questions concerns I all in favor passes 70 thank you thank you ladies [Applause] at this time uh we're going into uh close session the time on recording stopped is authorized by the Texas government code section 5