001So welcome everyone. This is the ritual special called meeting, school board meeting for May 22nd, 2020. And we're starting now at 1135. Oh, Heather's here. So that's great. I'm going to call the roll. And when I, when I call your name, please indicate whether or not indicate that you're present. Cindy Anderson, I am here. Veronica Nolan. Here, present. Megan Alderton. Here. Ramey Gentry is going to join us in a minute. Jacinta Green is out of town on business. Margaret Lorber. Here. Michelle Reif. Here. Christopher Suarez. Present. And Heather Thornton. Here. Okay, we are seven people here right now. So may I have a motion to adopt the agenda for May 22nd, please? Madam Chair, I move we adopt the agenda. I'll second that. Okay. A lot of people. I heard Margaret first, and so we'll
002say Ms. Lorber seconds Mr. Schwartz's motion to adopt the agenda. And so I will read your name, call your name, and indicate your vote for adopting the agenda. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan. Yes, and I'm going to excuse myself for a second. I have an ACPS student calling me to find out how to get on his class Zoom, so I'll be right back. All right. Megan Alderton. Yes. Margaret Lorber? Yes. Michelle Reeve? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes. Okay, that's seven yes and two are absent. So now, Veronica, who was going to be the one reading us into closed session, is performing some technical assistance, providing technical assistance to one of our students. I can pull it up. Okay, so we'll have Ms. Alderton read us in. I think. Here we go. All right.
003Madam Chair, I move the board convene a closed meeting pursuant to Virginia Code 2.2-3711A1 for the discussion and consideration of employment, performance, and contractual matters for 15 specific public employees. Do we have a second? Second. Mr. Suarez seconds Ms. Alderton's motion for a closed meeting. I'm going to now call for the vote. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan is off for a moment. Megan Alderton? Yes. Margaret Lorber? Margaret, yes. Is it yes for the closed session? I think she's frozen. Okay, we'll come back to Margaret. Michelle Reeve? Yes. Yes. Okay, we got Margaret too. Margaret Lebert said yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. And Heather Thornton? Yes. Okay, so that says, oh, and Veronica Nolan's back. All right, thank you. Yes. Okay, and so that is seven people and two absence. So we will be back to the
004meeting at noon. And so we're going to, board members, we need to join the other meeting now so that we can have our. Close session. Thank you all. Okay. I think we have enough to then take us out of closed session because we only need five. And I see Ms. Nolan here. So could you read us out of closed session, please? I would love to. I unfortunately didn't have the script. Hold on. Sorry. Okay. I think Ms. Alderton has it. So we'll let her read it out. Okay. Yeah, I have it up. Okay. Thanks. All right. Pursuant to Virginia Code 2.23712, I move that the board certify that to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened and are lawfully exempted by
005the Freedom of Information Act were heard, discussed, or considered by the board in the closed meeting held on May 22, 2020. Second. Cindy, I'm sorry. I think you're on mute. Sorry, too many clicks of that. Okay, thank you. So I have Ms. Nolan seconded Ms. Alderton's motion. So now I'll go through the roll and ask for the vote. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan. Yes. Megan Alderton. Yes. Rady Gentry. Yes. Margaret Lorber. Yes. Michelle Reeve. Yes. Christopher Suarez. Yes. Heather Thornton. Yes. Okay, so we have eight members present all voting yes. Miss Green is on business travel. So now we did have public comment this week that was that's been posted. And if people want to do it for future meetings, they should go on to the website and look. You can either send it normally
006as we have been receiving all along to the board or you can send it to be posted with the meeting. Or there's also a way to leave a message on a phone number. So now could I have a motion to adopt the consent calendar? Madam Chair, I move we adopt the consent calendar. Second. Ms. Alderton seconds Ms. Lorber's motion. Is there anything to pull from the consent calendar? Okay. Hearing nothing, I will call for the vote then. But please answer when I call your name. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan, yes. Megan Alderton, yes. Ramey Gentry, yes. Margaret Lorber. Yes. Michelle Reeve? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes. So that's eight yes and one absent. Okay. Now we're on to the meat of this meeting. We have our first order of business that is the
007strategic plan. And so I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Hutchings. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'm going to be able to introduce our next group up. But first, before we begin, I do want to make just a couple of opening remarks. And I do want to thank Mr. Page and our accountability team for the hard work that they have done throughout this entire process. Whether you all know it or not, I mean, we have been doing this for almost a year now. And it's been a lot of data gathering and conversations and analysis that have occurred. And I know that we would not get to this point without Mr. Page and the accountability team. I also wanna thank Four Point who are our educational consultants for the strategic plan. And they have provided
008us with a number of supports. I know that we could be a little extra at times as a school division because we want the best, right? but we do appreciate you all continuing to support us along the way. So with that said, I mean, everything that you're going to learn today about our draft, it's really exciting because these are exciting times for us in spite of. the pandemic right we still have to think about our future and where we stand in alexandra city public schools and we hope that this will be a road map to achieving those goals for our young people so without anything else to say at this point i'm going to turn things over to mr page to introduce our consultants and to begin our presentation Thank you so much, Dr. Hutchings.
009And I would love to thank everyone for having us today. It did give me an excuse to put on a tie, which is a fantastic return to normal, or at least a semblance of return to normal. And we are so excited today to bring before you the Equity for All 2025. draft strategic plan. As Dr. Hutchings referenced, we are joined today by our partners in facilitating the strategic planning committee, Four Point, Dr. Scott Joptas, Mr. Rudy Ruiz, and I know we also have members of our strategic planning committee out in the audience for those who are able to attend. So just want to say welcome to them. And for many of those who I know who are unable to attend, given other demands, they will be watching this as a recorded session as we continue
010to engage with them. and others in seeking feedback on the plan. So we will be presenting the plan across two sessions with the board. We can go to the next slide. Thank you. Two sessions across the board. So the first session today really focused on the high level view of the plan, things like vision, mission, core values, and laying that out for the board. And then the second session next Friday, going through the more specifics of the plan. So our goals, as well as some sample measures, strategies, and actions to give the board a good flavor. of what's within the full plan that was shared as an attachment with the board today, as well as the board's role in monitoring and seeking continuous improvement within the implementation phase of the plan. So excited to have
011that discussion as well. wanted to bring the board back to the foundational element and the thing that we focused on throughout the entire planning process, which is our focus on equity. So really thinking about how can we build a plan centered around equity to collectively remove barriers that prevent anyone from achieving their aspirations. With that focus on equity, we know there are some other principles that we had to bring into the fore. The first being to have a equity conversation. We have to illuminate our current inequities and truly confront them and have open, honest, and transparent conversations about where we are to know where and how we are going to get where we need to go. So having that data-informed discussion through the data workbook, the needs assessment, et cetera. was absolutely critical in setting
012the table for the conversations around what is going to be in the next plan. And in that conversation around what is going to be in the next plan, we also knew it was absolutely critical to have a diverse group and as much voice around the table to offer all of the differing perspectives, opinions, and insights to create. truly the best draft plan to bring before you today. And in that draft plan, also knowing that we had to focus on alignment from an internal perspective, knowing that as an internal organization, we have to have alignment between our central office and schools with central office acting as a support mechanism. for our schools and the enacting of the next strategic plan. And also knowing that as an organization, we cannot do it all. We have to partner
013with other organizations to best service the needs and meet the needs of our students and families. So an example of that being through the unified planning process and ensuring that our children, youth, family planning, as well as our health department planning going on in the city and our school planning are all truly aligned and pulling the rope in the same direction. And last but not least, we also had to acknowledge the inherent need to prioritize. And that is not to say that we are going to stop doing the day-to-day things that we know we have to do to best service our students and our families. However, we do need to set out those key priorities and things that as an organization we are going to focus on to be truly excellent at to reach equity
014for all of our students. And I know I mentioned them at the top of the presentation, but none of this would have been possible without the work of our strategic planning committee. We had a committee comprised of 76 internal and external stakeholders representing students, parents, community, city staff, educators, administrators, and special shout out today to our school board member reps who were member Gentry and member Green for their participation on the committee. And really the committee confronted those inequities, had open and honest conversations about where we are as an organization and where we need to go. And then went through the iterative proverbial sausage making process of multiple drafts of the strategic plan, providing critical insights, feedback throughout those processes. So really, honestly, truly the passion, the dedication and the insights of these 76 individuals.
015is what is allowing us to bring before you this draft plan today and I cannot sincerely thank them enough. for their time and for their dedication to Alexandria City Public Schools. It has been fantastic to work with them and it will continue to be fantastic to work with them as we work on finalizing the plan by the end of June for the board. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Joptas, who is going to walk us through the framework behind our planning process. Thanks so much, Clint. And thank you, everybody, for inviting us to participate in this important board meeting today. So right now, I'm just going to give an overview of the framework that was used to develop the draft plan. There's a lot going on here, so I'll just
016kind of briefly give you an overview. So the plan really begins with the vision, mission, and core values that you, the board, were sort of the key players in shaping. That feels like a lifetime ago when we worked on that together to draft those elements. You can see along the left side of the PowerPoint kind of the key roles that each of the groups played. So the school board really played a primary role with the vision, mission, and core values. From there, we go to the theory of action. And the theory of action we'll go into a little bit more detail about in a moment. But in general, what a theory of action is, is a set of beliefs for how we think that we can improve education for our students, and especially for students
017who have been underserved traditionally. how can we, what's the central office's relationship with schools and what's the school's responsibility to make the changes necessary to advance outcomes for all students. Then the way we're measuring the effectiveness of that theory of action are the key performance indicators or KPIs. Again, I'll go into a little bit more detail about this in a moment, but we define those KPIs as the high level outcomes for students that we're trying to change and that we're hoping the community will assess us on in terms of the success of the implementation of the strategic plan. Getting into the more details, we'll be starting to do that more next week, just because of the time. We don't want to take too long today, but we'll be getting into more of the goals, measures,
018strategies, and highlighted actions next week, and we'll go into more about how those fit into the plan later. The last piece of this slide you can see on the right hand side is just the importance of the continuous improvement process and all three of the players that have been involved, all three of the groups of stakeholders that have been involved in the drafting of the strategic plan will continue to play a critical role in ensuring that the plan is implemented as intended. Just a quick overview of where we've been. Again, this feels like absolute lifetime or two ago. When we started in June of 2019, it's really hard to believe. We started that with the needs assessment and with the strategic planning committee kickoff. At the very first meeting, we talked about equity, how we
019were going to define that, and the importance of integrating that throughout all the work that we do during this planning time. And as Clint mentioned, a critical aspect and first step of that is to really understand where we've been by looking very carefully at the data. And the steering committee did an amazing job of digging through that. They were working. independently as well as with us in groups facilitated sessions as well. From there, we moved to working with you, the board, on defining the vision, mission, and core values. Again, really keeping equity as the core focus. And that's also when the needs assessment was in high gear. That involved, as you know, you've seen the report as well as been briefed on the report, but it involved a really wide engagement of stakeholders from across
020the city and across the division. and included classroom walkthroughs, focus groups, interviews, and surveys as well. From there, the steering committee, again, had the opportunity to review the findings from that needs assessment and really create a framework for defining equity. And through that process of defining what do we mean by equity, we came up with five goal areas. I'll touch on those very briefly at the end. We'll go into much more detail about those next week. And then in December and January, there was, as Clint mentioned, this was really the sausage making. So there was the drafting of the plan. It went back and forth between the steering committee, between staff, internal staff within the division, as well as board members and external stakeholders who had an opportunity to weigh in and give feedback on
021that. All of those were incorporated to develop the... KPIs, the goals, measures, strategies, and highlighted actions, which brings us to February and May, which, as you know, obviously, we had quite an interruption with the quarantine and the pandemic. The division did pause, appropriately so, to deal with the crisis that emerged, but very impressively, I would say, was able to return to the conversation about planning for the future without missing more than a couple weeks and we've maintained the timeline as a result as Dr. Hutchings said that we need to continue to do the planning of the future if we're going to address the opportunity gaps and I will just reiterate what Clint said the role of the steering committee throughout this entire process has been incredible and the role that everyone has played in the
022commitment that everyone has made has been really integral to completing what we think is a really great draft of the plan. So that takes us to the vision and the mission, which, as I said, sort of... frames the entire strategic plan. And this was the work that the board did in September of 2019. So as you know, the vision that we settled upon was ACPS empowering all students to thrive in a diverse and ever-changing world. For the mission statement, ACPS inspires all students and addresses barriers to learning to ensure success. From there, we went into defining five core values. And this, I think, was one of the most powerful aspects, just for me personally, having the conversation with the board, recognizing the shared values that the board does have. We also got some feedback from
023staff. And throughout, there were very common themes. And the challenge was just how do we frame that in a way to capture what were a lot of very shared values. So we're happy with where we ended up. We had the five values that you can see. I won't read the statements to you, but the five values which we hope and expect to serve as a foundation for all decision-making going forward that's at the board level, to the administration, to schools, principals, and teachers include welcoming, empowering, equity-focused. innovative, and results-driven. From the... From that, we really got into thinking about the theory of action. So from core values, how do we translate that into a set of beliefs that will define the way we work with schools to ensure that students meet their full potential? So
024often theories of action are defined as if-then statements. So we went through that exercise. And you can see that statement on the top part of the slide, that if, The division provides high quality instruction and differentiated supports, engages community and families, and allocates resources equitably. Opportunity and achievement gaps will be eliminated and students will be successful. To drill down on that a little bit, I think what is really key to what drives a lot of the power of the strategic plan, speaking to Clint's point about focus and prioritization. The couple bullets below the line are really framing the way the division is reorienting itself towards the schools. So especially bullets two and three, I just want to highlight those. The key driver behind this theory of action is that the division recognizing that it can't
025do everything. And that's the prioritization and that's the focus that Clint mentioned. And so a key aspect of the strategic plan will be defining. select high leverage strategies that all schools will implement. So in that case, we're asking all schools to implement a few or select number of high leverage strategies because we think that's important to ensure equity, to ensure consistency, especially as students move among schools, and to ensure that we can implement a few high leverage initiatives in a way that with fidelity and impact. But then the third bullet of that statement really makes it clear that we're expecting principals and their leadership teams to recognize that that's not all that they do. And we recognize that that's not all that they do, that there will be other efforts, other strategies and approaches that
026will be necessary to shape. and to meet the specific needs of the student populations that they're serving. So balancing that consistency across the division while empowering principals and their leadership teams to address the additional needs of their students is really, in my view, sort of the key balancing act that this strategic plan addresses. From there, we wanted to define what are the outcomes by which we will determine whether that theory of action is right or whether that's successful. And you can sort of see these seven KPIs, each that will get broken out. So it'll turn out to be more than the seven because of the disaggregation of data. But you can see that there's a very purposeful approach. from thinking about kindergarten readiness all the way out up to high school age indicators of success
027and then achievement between those two benchmark points. So it's a very purposeful, focused approach and we think it'll be a really helpful way for the community and external as well as internal stakeholders. to hold us accountable to ensure that we are meeting the needs of the students and that we are implementing the plan effectively. That takes us to the five goal areas. And again, because of in the interest of time, we're going to come back to these next week at your board meeting next week and go into much more detail about how these goals came to be, what they entail, how we plan to measure them, and how we plan to implement them. But you can see the five areas that we believe are the key components for ensuring equity. And each of those then
028get additional treatment, which we'll discuss next week. So as far as next steps go, as you all know, we'll be reconvening next week and we'll go through those next aspects of the plan, the goals, measures, strategies, and what we're calling the highlighted actions. We'll also talk about how the plan will be monitored. That's really the key part. As you know, as challenging as the development of a plan can be and ensuring wide stakeholder participation. The hard work is really yet to come in terms of implementing and ensuring success with that plan. And then we'll also talk about additional next steps after that May 29th meeting to ensure additional feedback on what is now the draft plan. So giving stakeholders an opportunity to respond to what the draft looks like now and give more specific and
029detailed feedback. So with that, I will turn it back over to the chair and welcome any questions that the board has. Okay, thank you very much. It's so nice to see all this work that's been done and that it's continuing even during this time. I'm looking to see if anyone, I don't see any raised hands. Dr. Eve? Yeah, thank you. Thanks for that presentation. I was interested in, it looked like there's a plan for the steering committee to continue to continue this work, you know, throughout the five years of the plan. Is that accurate? Can you just talk a little bit about that? Clint or Dr. Hutchings, did you want to address that or would you like me to? Yes. So, yes, that is a part of our plan. So the goal is that, you
030know, and this was a part of the commitment of being a part of the Strategic Planning Committee, is that over time, we're not going to be meeting as often as we did to create the actual draft and to get input. But we will have to have mid-year and annual check-ins, and not just with the board, but also with our strategic planning committee, so that we have people who are being committed from an outside looking in, because they're going to hear things in the community that we may not in regards to some of our work. And they also can serve as our messengers to get information out into different constituency groups that are throughout the city of Alexandria. So yes, we will be meeting with them mid-year and annually. I would just add also to clarify
031that the steering committee is a subset of the full strategic planning committee. Okay, next we have Ms. Nolan. I'm going to go on a limb here. I've actually never done this before, but I think I can just safely say on behalf of the majority of the board, this is just outstanding. So I really didn't have any questions. I just wanted to just sincerely thank what just a top-notch job done by both 4Point and, you know, Mr. Page and your team. And so I just wanted to just thank you. I'm just so excited to dive into this. I think just the focus, how data-driven it is, and just the cadence that Dr. Hutchings just described is really good. to help move the needle forward for this division. So I just again, just want to celebrate this
032moment and just provide my sincere thanks to all involved. Thank you. Mr. Suarez. Thank you, Chair Anderson. I'll keep it brief, too. I just I wanted to echo what Ms. Nolan just said, which is that this is a really a remarkable effort. I just commend everyone involved. It's very robust, very thorough, truly aligned with the principles that the board has articulated. And so I'm just really excited to, you know. take this off the shelf and use it. And that was just my one comment, which is that, you know, I'm really excited for this piece that you mentioned on the last slide about monitoring for continuous improvement. And I know this board's really excited to sort of, you know, truly understand how we can best do that and execute on that. And that's the real work
033and that's the real challenge. And so I'm just looking forward to kind of hearing how we can do that and how we can continue to have work sessions and other sort of check-ins to ensure that we as a board. are held accountable to make sure that we're delivering on this plan. So I'm just very excited about all this and look forward to the next conversation. Ms. Gentry, I have up next. Thank you. I just wanted to say, as somebody that had the pleasure of serving on this committee, it really was. really inspiring to get to have so many interesting conversations with so many different groups of people. It really was an extraordinary group of people that came together. And I think one thing that really helped was a lot of the people that were in
034the room, whether they were a community member or they were a staff person or they were somebody else, they had some really great knowledge of where ACPS is right now and kind of the current strategic plan that we've been using right now. And they were really focused on how we can, you know, kind of go to this next level and how we can, you know, to what people are saying, how can we make sure that this is a pragmatic plan that doesn't stay on the shelf, that we really can use in a really thoughtful way. So I know other people have thanked the committee. I wanted to thank the committee as well for all the great work. I also just want to encourage my fellow board members, you know, to maximize the richness of our
035conversation. Again, you know, let's all make sure we take the time to really look at this and get the questions in, you know, some of the questions in if we can earlier in the week so that we're giving. So that we're giving 4.0 and the staff some time to really prepare some robust answers to maximize the discussion that we have. So thank you, everyone. Thank you, Ms. Gentry. Next up, we have Ms. Alderton. Yeah, I actually just wanted to ditto what Veronica said, because even just in this, you know, small snippet here, I see a major, major difference from our last strategic plan to this one. So this is very exciting. And one of the things is. I was looking at it and looking at, you know, how we were thinking about outcomes. I'm really
036excited about what this means for the superintendent's evaluation. Because one of the things that we struggled with, Mr. Suarez, Ms. Nolwenn and I and Dr. Hutchings and all of those who worked on it is, you know, this concept of like, what are going to be the measurements? And really being able to focus. And I feel like this really, I can already see exactly what we're going to be focusing on. And that's a really big deal because that's how you get stuff done. And so this was exciting. And thank you to everybody. Good stuff. Great. Thanks. Now, Ms. Thornton. Thank you, Chair Anderson. And similarly, kudos to everybody involved. This is truly a thorough, comprehensive, and dare I say, bold strategic plan. I really thought just the language used to kind of describe what ACPS has
037done and where we intend to go, I really thought it was relatable and it was very clear. And the one thing that I think I like the most was that you dared to define some terms that have been a little bit controversial, let's say. You defined privilege, you defined advantage, and these are words that you really cannot. glaze over when discussing issues of equity. And so I thought that was spot on. And furthermore, the fact that this was done in partnership, I believe this is the first strategic plan ACPS has done in partnership with other agencies in the city. So it includes the Alexandria Health Department, Partnership for a Healthier Alexandria, and the Department of Community and Human Services. So we're all in this together, literally, and we're developing some core values and language. And
038this is really critical, I think, because Alexandria City Public Schools does not operate in isolation. We are part of a bigger microcosm, and it's going to take truly a community effort to really see equity in our schools. So thank you again for being bold and not being afraid to kind of involve everyone in this process. Okay, thank you. That's all the hands I see raised. I think that covers most people. So thanks, and we will see part two next week, right? We will have more discussion. And I agree, as Ms. Gentry suggested, the more we can digest and ask questions ahead of time, the better off, the more efficient we can be with our meeting time. So now the next here. Yes, Dr. O'Jings. I just wanted to say one quick thing. I also wanted
039to thank our communications office because as you all read through the document, they did take all of this content and context and have to put it into something that was visually stimulating to the eye. And I just want to thank our communications team as well as our equity team because our equity team was a part of this along the entire way. We wanted to make sure that equity wasn't like an add-on to our strategy. plan, but that it was the center of our strategic plan and everything that we do. And I'm just, you know, I know this is our initial discussion. I know you all haven't had the time to really delve into all of the details. And next week, I know it's going to be a lot more robust and we're going to get
040into more of the goals and metrics and all those wonderful things. I know you all love to talk about, especially Ms. Nolan and Mr. Suarez. All of you love to talk about it. I know they really, really love to talk about it. But we're going to be able to talk about that next week. I just want to thank everybody who was a part of this and a part of our work is continuous improvement. So we should see a better product with this strategic plan and the next strategic plan after this should be better because if we're not growing as an organization, that means that we are not serving our kids and our population well. We should not be exactly how we used to be or how we were or how it was yesterday. You know,
041our goal now, especially with this new normal that we're all experiencing, we've been, you know, I think given a lesson in that we don't have control of tomorrow and it's all about adjusting and trying to make sure that we pivot into the next level in order to serve our population well. So I just wanted to make those final comments and thank you, Madam Chair. Great. Thank you. Yes, the ever-changing environment or whatever it was, it was a little bit more changing quickly than we thought, right? Okay, next up we have, so thank you, Four Points. We will see you next week. And so next up we have a Q&A with Dr. Hutchings. However, I want to say that we're half an hour behind our... time. And so I'm wondering, you know, if no one has
042objections, I think we might, given that we had a kind of targeted Q&A before. uh if we can um if there are no objections i'd like to adjourn this that we could get to the work session because i think that's really what we need to spend our time doing so if there are no objections then i will ask for someone to make the motion to adjourn this meeting because the work session is is in fact it's just that work session madam chair i move that we adjourn Okay, there were three seconds there. I don't know who hasn't had one. Mr. Suarez, maybe he hasn't had one. Mr. Suarez seconded Ms. Gentry's motion. And so I'll do the roll call for the vote. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan. Yes. Megan Alderton. Yes. Rami Gentry. Yes. Margaret
043Lorber. Yes. Michelle Reeve? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Second. There's yes. And Heather Thornton? Yes. Okay. So that's eight yes and one absent. So the meeting is adjourned at 1.03 p.m. Thank you all.