October 01, 2020 Special Call School Board Meeteng

001Okay. All right. This is the virtual special called Meeting for ACPS for October 1st, 2020. Welcome, everyone. I'm calling the meeting to order at 4.03 p.m. And I'm going to do roll call for board members. So when I call your name, please indicate that you're present. Cindy Anderson, I'm here. Veronica Nolan. Present. Megan Alderton. Yes. Jacinta Green. Yeah. Margaret Lorber. Present. Michelle Reeve. Here. Christopher Suarez. Here. Heather Thornton. Here. And have we seen Rami yet? As Rami, she sometimes gets stuck on the attendee side, but I think she will be joining us very, very shortly. So we have one person missing right now, and we're going to start off with by observing a moment of silence. Thank you, everyone. We're going to move on to adopting the agenda for today. Could I get a motion

002to adopt the agenda? Madam Chair, I make a motion that we adopt the agenda for today. Second. Second. Ms. Green seconds Ms. Lorber's motion to adopt the agenda for the day. But I think we have something to add. Ms. Nolan, do you have that language? Yes, thank you. Madam Chair, I move that we add the agenda item donation to ACPS to amend the agenda. Second. Ms. Loeber seconds Ms. Nolan's motion to amend the agenda. And so I will call for a vote first on amending the agenda. So as I go through, that's what we're asking for the vote on. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan. Yes. Megan Alderton. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

003Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, okay. Didn't hear it. Sorry. Maybe my problem. Megan Alderton. Yes. Jacinta Green. Yes. Margaret Lorber. Yes. Michelle Reeve. Yes. Christopher Suarez. Yes. Heather Thornton. Yes. Rami Gentry. She's not here. So eight yes and one absent. So thanks very much. The agenda is amended and approved. So now we're on to communications

004and addresses to the board, which is a big topic of today's meeting. And I should just let you know that if you want to submit written comments to or sign up to speak virtually, you have to go to the school board meeting page to find the link to the form. The deadline is noon on Wednesday or the day before our meeting in order to be included in the next day's meeting. Oral public comments will appear on agendas which do not have public hearings. The school board will hear 30 minutes of comments at non-public hearing regular school board meetings. If you signed up today, then you should, if you haven't already, you should raise your hand so that the clerk can move you over when it's your turn. And everybody should know, as always, we have

005three minutes per speaker, and there will be some tone at the end of that time. And since we have quite a few speakers today, we have 23, we really need to stay within our time limit. So I appreciate that. I appreciate that. And thanks ahead of time for that. We also have we have two things on our public hearing today. The first is a budget public hearing, followed by a public hearing on the ACPS, Alexandria Police Department MOU. We have just one speaker for the budget item, and we are going to start with that person. So the first speaker on the budget and the only speaker on the budget today is Carolyn Lyle. Yes, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. My name is Carolyn Lyle. I'm a

006resident of Alexandria. I'm also the coordinator of a group of Alexandrians who are concerned about the devastating impact of climate change. And the reason I want to talk about the budget is I want to ask the school board to prioritize Karen Hollweg, The design for new constructions that comply with the net zero energy requirement of the city of Alexandria green building policy 2019 and that means that we have to get technologies that will. make the buildings net zero energy where the actual energy delivered is less than the on-site renewable energy. The school board made a great decision for Douglas MacArthur for net zero and thank you for that. Also, when you retrofit, please also put in the budget energy efficient so that the a school can contribute to the city's goal under their environmental action

007plan of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% vis-a-vis 2005 by 2030. So in summary, please prioritize in the budget design for both new construction to comply with the green building policy and for retrofits you want to prioritize energy technologies in the design, either new or retrofit, that do not emit carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases. Thank you for your commitment to the children, to the environment, and maintaining a healthy community. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Lyle. One other thing I wanted to say to people in case they haven't testified before is that board members are here to listen today. And so there won't be any responses to any comments at all, just so that you know. And so now that's the end of our public hearing on the budget for now. There will be

008other opportunities to weigh in later. And we'll now start our public hearing on the between the police department and ACPS. And first up, we have Raphael Lobo. Hello, my name is Raphael. First of all, hello to all the school board members, superintendent, and ACPS staff. My name is Rafael Lobo. I am a sophomore from T.C. William High School and part of the youth group of Teenants and Workers United. I am here to say that I think police shouldn't be in school and the contract between ACPS and police department should end. Students and I do not feel secure because of the situation that is happening nationwide. I don't know why, my bad. Having police present in our school causes the students of color stress and anxiety, thinking if we will ever have a confrontation with our

009officer in our own school. I, being an immigrant, do not trust police in my community and do not trust police in my school either. What I observe is that just because we are Latinos or Black police think we are up to do something bad. In ACPS, if ACPS really wants to create and maintain safe and secure school environment, then let's invest in training our counselors, therapists, social workers, and staff. So we are here today to tell you as a school board members to vote for and add to this MOU because police free schools in ACPS are critical to creating better education spaces for us youth. Thank you for giving me the chance to speak. Thank you. Next up, we have Ruth Kibibu. Hi there. How are you today? I'm doing good. How about you? Good.

010Go ahead and get started. Okay, hello school board members, superintendents, and staff. My name is Ruth Cababo, an educator from Francis C. Hammond Middle School. I'm also involved in the Tenants and Workers United Youth Group. I'm here to say that police should not be in our schools because there are some racial injustices going around our community, such as the Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery situation. I know that we're not like many other cities, and we need... but we need to prevent harm and be proactive. Plus, them being here does not make any doesn't make our schools any safer. If safeties are concerned, we already have a lot of security around our schools. About 76% of our schools at Francis C. Hammond make up the Hispanic and Black population. In this political climate we're in, we're

011targeted by white supremacists. Having police presence does not create any positivity for our school. They barely do anything for our school. So what are they getting paid for? Why do we need this argument? A study has shown that black students are more likely to get arrested than white students. In my opinion, police should not be in our schools unless harm is in our way. then we should call for them as first responders. My biggest concern is that they might use their position for something bad like harming other students. Police in our schools are also taking over work that are supposed to be done by teachers, administrators, such as deans, counselors, and social workers. That is not okay because they are not fit to be those things. They're not qualified to work as teachers, administrators, deans,

012counselors, and social workers. They're just made to be a person that's supposed to protect us, yet they can't even do that. So I'm here today as a black student to say to you to please vote out and end to this MOU in the next few weeks because having this sort of police in our school creates harm to our schools. Thank you for letting me speak. Thank you. Next up we have Alessandra Guevara. My name is Alessandra Guevara and good afternoon school board members. Superintendent and ACPS staff members. My name is Alessandra Guevara and I am a freshman at Minnie Howard. I am also part of a youth group and Tennessee Workers United. Now I'll tell you why there should be an agreement between ACPS schools and Alexandria Police Department. They all make me feel scared

013and uncomfortable, but also make many brown and black students as well. I also feel like they're looking at us if we're up to no good. I know that adults say that we need them just in case if someone tries to harm us. But that's the thing. We have drills in schools to know what to do in those type of situations. But for more than five years, we have continued to advocate you all about improving the own profession. to improve our school climate. But we also have to think about how often we will face dangerous situations and to think about where, what rather a cop will truly prevent anything. Last year I I personally witnessed a teacher researching a police officer just because one of my classmates was not paying attention and he was misbehaving during

014class. This will not be happening. We ask you to not renew, but to end this argument. As much as you're right. I want you to write friendly words to this concept. At the end of the day, they are police officers in our schools. That's why you should vote for an end to this MOU. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Cisen Tesfaye. Hello? Yes, we can hear you. Hello, my name is Sussan Tesfaye. I'm 17 and a senior at T.C. Williams High School. I live in the city of Alexandria and have been part of the youth-led group of Tenants and Workers United since my freshman year of high school. Tenants and Workers United is an organization across Northern Virginia that has been around for

015over 30 years. DWU is about organizing communities of color and creating systematic changes. Currently, the youth in IFTW are working on having their school system and their contract with the police department because we believe that we should have police-free schools because police officers have always had a history of criminalizing Black and brown communities. Youths of color are always being silenced by adults and it's time that the youth speak up on issues that are directly impacting us. We are always underestimated by adults and we know when we say we do not want the police in our schools. In the year 2018, 18% of out-of-school suspensions involved law enforcement referrals and ACPS. Having COPS affect our education because that leads us to be more prone to be in school to present pipeline. Having police officers in our

016schools do not have any benefits because I've personally witnessed that they don't interact with the students and just stand around or scroll through their Instagram. They do not pose in a welcoming environment and the fact that they have firearms is very threatening and it's disturbing and traumatizing for us, the students. The students don't need to get to know the officers because we don't trust them in our community, much less we will not trust them in our schools. Since 2013, we have been fighting to have a proper implementation of restorative practice in our middle schools and high schools. Our youth-led group has made this possible because they had seen over the past years in ACPS that the high disproportionate numbers of suspensions among the youth of color and restorative practice is also a good way and

017it's an alternative to suspension in a program that creates community building in our schools. It's a program that... for young people to be heard, understood, and given a second opportunity. We believe that we need more resources and funding for RP, but it makes no sense if we have restorative practice, yet we have cops that continue to criminalize us. Over the past months, we've been meeting with our school board members because they have the power to end this contract. We've also met with six city council members, as we do not plan to stop until you have school board members end this contract. We hope you can all support our youth, our issues, and our solution. Thank you. Next up, we have Miele Palma Moran. Miele, can you just speak? We can't hear you, so I'm not

018sure if you were having trouble hearing you or you're not on. Hello? Hello. Okay, go ahead and start. Hello to all school board members, superintendent, and ACPS. My name is Mellie Palmer Moran, a sophomore at T.C. Williams, and I have been a member of TWU ever since sixth grade. I think there shouldn't be police in school because we don't feel safe and they do not give the message of safety. When I was in eighth grade. The police officer at George Washington Middle School accidentally discharged their weapon in school. That was scary, and incidents such as those can keep on happening in our schools, such as SROs have training for only two months are a requirement. There are still police officers that are meant to serve you and police as youth. So I stand before you

019to please support police free schools now because school education, not criminalization. Please reimage and improve our school climate and invest other policies that will continue, that will truly be effective because this MOU is not. Please vote to end this agreement. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Next up, we have Abina Bouabang. Hello, school board members and superintendent. My name is Abina, and I'm a freshman at Minnie Howard. I'm also a member of Tenants and Workers United Youth Group. I'm here today to let you know that I think that police shouldn't be in our schools because there are racial injustices in our communities and around the nation due to police officers, especially around black people, notably with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmed Arbery, and Trayvon Martin. Students of color often feel intimidated just

020by seeing them in our schools. Students don't even need to see the officer themselves to know that they're there because we can see their car as soon as we walk to the main office. Students of color are more likely to get suspended because of the SROs and we've seen that in the data of school year 2017 to 2018. We know that the SROs are being paid through the city's budget and approval of the city council. Funding school policing is funding school push-outs, especially for students of color. The funding that is being used to pay for them could be used to hire more school administrators, like the deans, social workers, school psychologists, and counselors. We are here as the youth of color to tell you that the police aren't engaging at all with the students, much

021less during this pandemic. The city is paying the SROs for doing virtually nothing, and they don't even prevent school shootings. We as an organization have seen the contracts, and it describes us as being airheaded and that we can't make decisions for ourselves. This MLU does not welcome students into a safe environment, and after hearing many stories from my peers, this agreement should end immediately. We know you as school board members have an opportunity to make a vote in the upcoming weeks, and we hope you can demonstrate your leadership and trust youth of color when we tell you to please end this agreement. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Karen Adupoku. Yes, hello, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Hello, good afternoon. My name is Karen Edupoku and I am an eighth grader at

022Francis C. Hammond Middle School and also from Tenants and Workers United. I'm here today to speak to the school board members on why we should remove police from our school and end the agreement. As a student, and talking to my friends and peers. We do not feel comfortable having police officers in our school. When an officer is pulling a student out of class just because they are distracting, just that itself creates fear and discomfort. The moment we are living in as youth and of color, I feel unsafe in many of my surroundings. and school shouldn't be one of them. I am seeing so much racism against Black people and the least ACPS could do is remove officers from our school. They are always at our school. We can't have a small activity without them being

023in our way or them surrounding us, assuming, well, we do nothing wrong, something wrong. We hope that in the near future you vote to end this agreement because modifying the MOU will not change anything. Modifying this contract will give the message that ACPS will continue to drive us down the school to prison pipeline. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. Thank you. Next time we're list, we don't see this person but I'm going to call up because sometimes we have someone joining us under a different name. Next up we have Lesbia Benegas. Is that person if you're there if you're here, could you raise your hand. Yeah, I'm done. Okay, we'll go on and come back to check and see if if the person has joined us later. So next we have Teofia

024Gomez. This Gomez is going to speak first in her language, and then we do have an interpreter to follow when she's completed. Hello? Hello. Hello. Yes. Go ahead. Go ahead and get started. Okay. My name is Teofila Gomez. I am a mother of three children, first and third in Mount Vernon, and I have one in sixth grade in York, Washington. I also belong to the group of parents of the organization Inquilinos y Trabajadores Unidos. I am here in support of our young people, and as a mother of a family, I ask you as members of the Junta to vote to terminate the contract between the schools and the police department. Having a police presence in the schools creates more stress, fear in our children and young people. All those resources invested in the police policies

025should be used to create programs for students, more resources for the solutions of the classroom. Every year, we invest more in criminalizing our students instead of investing in programs, in education, in programs, investing in their education. In Alexandria, we always say and talk that we are different and that we are better than other counties and city-states. Today is the time for you, who have the power of leadership, to think more about the education of students and not criminalize them. It is time to change policies that affect our students, to be creative to improve the climate and learning of our schools. As a mother, I'm here not only in support to ask you to finish this contract. We have enough staff, I think, to give support to the resources that our young people need. Very soon

026you will be making this decision. I would just like to remind you that our schools are not prisons and that our children are not criminals. and that it is time for the police to be where they have to be and our education system to do its job in schools. For example, my son is in the YW and before the pandemic I went there, I was there many times and I saw that there was a lot of school security personnel. I don't understand the need to have police officers in schools. Mr. Go ahead. Thank you. Okay. Good afternoon, members of the school board and superintendent. Thank you for giving me a chance to talk. My name is Teofila Gomez and I'm a mother of three children, two at Mount Vernon School, first and third grade, and

027one in seventh grade at George Washington. I also belong to a group of parents and to Tenants and Workers United. I am here in support of our youth and also as a mom. I ask you as board members to vote to terminate the contract between the schools and the police department. Having police present in our schools creates stress and fear in our children and in our youngsters. All those resources invested in police should be used to create more programs for students, more resources for classrooms. Every year we invest more and more criminalizing our students rather than investing in their education. In Alexandria, we always talk about being different and that we are better off than other neighborhoods. and other neighboring countries and cities. Today is the time that you as leaders think more about students'

028education and not criminalization. It is time to change policies that affect our students and be creative to improve the learning environment in our schools. As a mother, I'm here not only in support, but asking you to finish this contract. We have enough staff who can provide the support and resources that our young people need. Very soon you will be making this decision. I would just like to remind you that our schools are not prisons, that our children are not criminals, and that it is time for the police to be where they need to be. and for our educational system to do their job in our schools. I've been at George Washington Middle School before COVID, and I saw enough stuff there, so I see no need to have police present. If we, as parents of

029color, distrust the police in our communities, our young people of color, seeing them in our schools, will also feel that way. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. Thank you. Next up, we don't see this person, but I'm going to call out again to see if maybe they're here under a different name. Alexis Stackhouse is next. And we'll come back at the end and ask for that person again. Sarah Feinberg is next. Thank you. My name is Sarah Feinberg, and I'm the parent of three children in the Alexandria Public Schools. If we are actually committed to equity and equal justice under the law as a community, we cannot let this MOU stand. This is not an indictment of the Alexandria Police. I think that they do a great job, better than most across the country.

030But the entire premise of this MOU needs to be overturned or at the very least revised. There should be no mutually beneficial relationship between schools and law enforcement. The singular goal of our school is to educate children, not make them available to armed law enforcement for community crime prevention efforts. I completely understand the need to have police on site to prevent against external threats to our children, but this MOU is focused on giving access to law enforcement to police our children inside the school building. A few of the most egregious portions of this MOU that must be repealed. First of all, the MOU designates police officers as school resource officers and then claims that SROs are school officials, thereby granting them the same access our teachers or administrators have to our children. This means that

031these police officers, if they deem it necessary for our safety, are granted the right to access our children's records, our family records held at the school, mortgage or rental documents, school directories, health and medical records, and school discipline information on our children's ages five years and older. This type of information should never be in the hands of police without a warrant. It is a violation of civil rights for the schools to provide it. This MOU also allows for unfettered access to question and investigate our children. The MOU specifically states that SROs have the authority to question students who may have information about criminal activity. As for law enforcement officers, SROs have authority to stop, question, interview, and take law enforcement action without prior authorization of school administrator or without contacting parents. In fact, one of

032the requirements in the MOU is that our schools will each provide work areas for the SRO that allow access to technology. private interviewing of several persons and locking storage space for securing physical evidence. I think this MOU also results in an extreme over-criminalization of our children. It even states that school officials should immediately notify the police or the SRO. If during a conversation with a student or school discipline investigation, there's information shared that relates to a required reportable offense. Reportable offenses could include the possession of drugs by anyone or the use of alcohol by minors. I'm against minor use of alcohol and drug use, but I do not think that the first line of defense should be our police department or criminalizing this activity. It should be talking to parents and teachers and working through

033it together. Lastly, I'll say I'm a Marine officer, and my units and I were far more trained than the police departments on how to use weapons, and even so, there were still mistakes made even in a combat zone. I think it's terrifying that we would allow untrained representatives of our government who are armed to be in the presence of our children in schools, and we've already seen what that does with the negligent discharge by a police officer at our middle school. We know that racial minorities are disproportionately a question penalized by our justice system. If we're committed to equity as a school and a community, we must not allow these injustices to be... Ms. Feinberg, I'm sorry, your time is up. Thank you very much. If you have... other things to send to us for

034free. I think you may have already submitted your comments, but if not, then you can do that certainly if you've got more to share. Next up, we have Shira Eller. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Hello. My name is Shira Eller. I'm a community member and a member of Grassroots Alexandria. I'm speaking today to ask the school board to terminate the memorandum of understanding between ACPS and the Alexandria Police Department. As a staff member at a local university, I understand that a positive learning environment is essential to student success. In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests happening all over the country and the recognition that over-policing and lack of police accountability endanger communities of color, we cannot ignore that armed and uniformed police officers in our schools create a hostile learning environment. Although

035individual school resource officers may be viewed in a positive light by members of the community, oppression is not necessarily about the actions of particular individuals, but about the systems those individuals are a part of. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, SROs particularly endanger Black and Latinx students, unnecessarily involving the justice system and school discipline issues and contributing to the school-to-prison pipeline. This has been echoed by local activist groups such as Tenants and Workers United, which has demanded the removal of police from Alexandria public schools. Moreover, APD has failed to provide requested data to the public regarding police activity within ACPS. including demographic data of students involved in police encounters. On June 18th of this year, the American Federation of Teachers, one of the country's largest teachers unions, passed a resolution calling for the separation

036of school safety and policing. Alexandria should join school systems in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Denver, Portland, Oregon, and the Bay Area, which have moved in recent months to suspend or phase out ties with police. As our community considers important measures such as removing the names of segregationists from school buildings, I urge the board to back up these symbolic measures with concrete action. Remove police from our schools. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Pusha Hunt, but we don't see that name, but if you're... If you're here, raise your hand on a different name. Otherwise, we'll come back. And next up after that is Ellen Moody. But again, we don't see you on the list of names here. So we will come back at the end. So now we are to Kevin Brady. Hi, all. Can you

037hear me? Yes. Great. So thanks for having me. I just want to say to the youth, I think you're incredible. And just to follow the students of them, and I'll be brief here, but my name is Kevin Brady. I'm a parent of a two-year-old who will be in the out-of-jail-jail school system shortly. And I have to say it's unsettling to me that we are at a point in our society where it's considered, it's not normal, but it's considered normal to have armed cops in schools. That to me is fundamentally really disturbing. And I have yet to see any convincing data or research, whether from Alexandria or elsewhere, that... there is actually a benefit to that. And in fact, there's quite a bit of harm. It bothers me that my daughter, it will not only make

038her feel unsafe as she gets older, but it'll obviously send a message to her that her Black and Latino brothers and sisters are being treated differently than she is, when in fact, kids are kids. And the vast majority of kids, in my experience, from time immemorial are good kids. And a few, you know, sometimes there's some behavioral issues. And so what used to happen until the last 15, 20 years is that teachers and principals and parents and kids would work together and they'd work out these issues. And I've seen that myself as a teacher. My aunt was a public school teacher in New York for 30 years. There was never cops in the schools that it didn't need to be. And so because of the harm that has already been done and that will be

039done, as we heard from students directly, I strongly, strongly recommend that the school system discontinue the MOU. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Amanda Eisenhower. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Fantastic. So, hi! I know you can't see my face, but some of y'all remember me. But if you don't, my name is Amanda Eisenhower. I am from the TC class of 2017 and currently a senior at Princeton University. And I just want to start off by saying I'm grateful every day for the opportunities ACPS has offered me. Fantastic teachers, unique programming, the ability to participate openly in these decision-making processes. This is what enabled me to reach the precipice of graduating from an Ivy League university and entering a career in non-profit law. But by the time I reached

040high school, I was acutely aware that my experience was far from universal. Walking through the halls as a white, honors AP student, and especially with my father in the administration, I was never subject to the same scrutiny as my Black and brown peers. I was never chastised for my very short shorts. And although I walked through the halls outside of the official transit time nearly every day, I was never once asked to show proof of my past. On multiple occasions, I passed administrators who, while apprehending a student of color for being in the hallway, saw me and said, hey, Amanda, how are you doing? You know, very casually. So this context is not intended to point fingers at administrators, but instead to show the underlying current of institutional racism that seeps everywhere in this country,

041including ACPS. And this has for years been reflected in suspension of disciplinary data until that data was mysteriously reported as missing for this past year. Don't know why that happened. The danger in the MOU has nothing to do with the attitudes of individual SROs. It instead enables the already evident and harmful disciplinary disparities, reflections of complicated, deeply rooted systems of racialized oppression, to lead more directly to carceral consequences. Discipline in ECPS already officially works on a continuum, where administrators are tasked with the discretion to pursue certain avenues of discipline or involved SROs based on the particular circumstances of most misdemeanor cases. The criteria that guide these discussions and decisions, however, are not outlined in the MOU or the documents that define the continuum of consequences, nor can they ever truly be comprehensively described. We have

042no way of knowing exactly what administrators take into account in these decisions. We don't know what could lead certain students to have to interact with police officers and face the lasting consequences of carceral interactions. So please, forgive us for assuming that the institutional racism that plagues our criminal justice system may also influence these decisions too. The MLU already admits that it's the district's desire to avoid police involvement in school disciplinary matters. The best way to do that is ending the agreement that allow cops a privileged presence in our schools. It's time to end the MOU. And as Ruth pointed out earlier, Alexandria can do better. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next on our list is Jennifer Berry, although I don't think we see that name, but I'm calling out just to be sure. And

043after that, Marie Eberlein, which I think. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? Oh, yes. Here you are. Thank you. We can hear you. Good afternoon. My name is Marie Eberlein. I'm a resident of Alexandria, and my husband is a teacher at T.C. Williams. I am speaking today to ask the school board to end the agreement between ACPS and the Alexandria Police Department and to invest any resources that are currently spent on the agreement in the students instead. Cops don't belong in schools. Research on school resource officers in recent years has given us insight into what they achieve. We know, for example, that the presence of school resource officers leads to higher recorded crime rates in schools. We know that it leads to more severe responses to student behavior, including high rates of student arrests. We

044know that the presence of school resource officers can lead to worse academic outcomes, including lower high school graduation rates. And we know that these harms disproportionately affect Black students. We also know what school resource officers do not achieve. There is no evidence that they make schools safer. So it is extremely disappointing that the school district is considering a continued relationship with the police department. Particularly now that the effects of COVID-19 have reduced city resources and increased student needs, it is important that we make wise choices with the resources that are available. It is past time to stop investing in harm and instead invest in ways that support our students. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have William Olson. Yes. Members of the Alexandria City School Board, my name is William Olson, and I'm a

045parent of a current ACPS student. My wife, Allison Perrine, and I have submitted a written comment identifying two significant issues that we believe are relevant to your deliberations about whether to renew the MOU between ACPS and APD. Our child is a nine-year-old special needs and mixed race student. His diagnoses include autism spectrum disorder and anxiety disorder. We ask that you consider whether APD and ACPS, particularly the ACPS Office of Safety and Security and its director, John Contreras, are sufficiently committed to ensuring compliance with the ACPS board policy requirement of making a reasonable effort to contact students' parents. prior to police interrogations of ACPS students, either by an SRO under the MOU or an APD law enforcement officer. The troubling experience of our child in December 13, 2019, at the Jefferson Houston School, in which our

046child was interrogated by an APD officer without the knowledge of my wife and me, and the response of APD and Mr. Contreras to these events demonstrate that the answer to this question is no. The interrogation took place after J.H. had determined our child was not a threat to himself or others and had returned to class. ACPS made no effort to contact me before the interrogation occurred. The APD officer proceeded to interrogate our child without our presence and without an opportunity to help our child exert his constitutional rights. It remains unclear why the statements made by a frustrated, bullied, autistic, and anxious eight-year-old warranted police involvement in the first place, especially when our child had been permitted to return to class. This interrogation resulted in our child suffering negative mental health consequences. Even when we informed

047both APD and ACPS about our concerns about these events, neither seems to be sufficiently concerned about compliance with the ACPS board policy requiring a reasonable effort to contact student parents prior to interrogations. While Dr. Hutchings made a commitment in December 2019 to take steps to ensure compliance with the ACPS policy going forward, A January 29, 2020 email from John Contreras showed a troubling lack of concern about whether a reasonable effort to contact students' parents prior to a... prior to a police interrogation occurs. Because of these concerns, we submit that the MOU should not be renewed unless at a minimum both APD and the ACPS Office of Safety and Security present a satisfactory detailed plan on how they will ensure that a reasonable effort is made to contact ACPS students, parents, or guardians before APD interrogations

048of ACPS students occur. If the MOU is renewed, it should state that in the situation where an SRO interrogates an ACPS student, the SRO should advise the student that he or she has the right to remain silent, that the student is free to leave the interrogation, and that the student has a right to request that his or her parent or guardian or an attorney be present at any time during the interrogation. We thank you for your time. That is it. Thank you, Mr. Holston. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Rebecca Zeger. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Yeah. Hello, school board and Superintendent Hutchings. Thank you for your review of the memorandum of understanding between Alexandria City Public Schools and the Alexandria Police Department. I'm here today to urge you to end the

049MOU between ACPS and APD. Through the survey, I've already provided my thoughts around why I don't think police officers should be in ACPS schools. And these thoughts have been echoed by many community members, students, and parents here today. So for the sake of time, I will not reiterate those thoughts. I did want to come here today to comment on some of what I've been hearing through previous school board meetings discussing the MOU. And this relates to the role that SROs play in mentoring students. I'm in the specific portion of the MOU that states that SROs should serve as an, quote, informal mentor and role model. I heard it specifically said during the last school board meeting that SROs are known to do things for students like give them gift cards, organize and participate in soccer

050teams with them, and seemed to indicate that this was one of the primary reasons that SRO should remain in Alexandria City Public Schools. I'm concerned about this line of thinking for a few reasons. First of all, I want to be clear that no matter how generous and kind an individual SRO is, Having law enforcement in schools creates an environment in which students of color are more likely to be disproportionately criminalized and creates a school-to-prison pipeline for ACPS students. Furthermore, I must ask us to all consider why we are asking SROs to fill the role of mentor or role models in the first place. I want to be clear, like others have said, that... I don't want to debate if some individual SROs have positive relationships with students, but it must be considered if at a

051system level, there's a more effective and safe way for our students to receive mentorship and role modeling. If one of Alexandria and ACPS's goals is for students to have mentors, What if mentoring programs in schools were expanded and the funds used from the current SRO program could be put towards counselors, mediators, mentoring programs, etc.? What could our schools' hallways and school programming look like if the money currently spent on policing students was instead invested in counselors, etc.? I recognize that the funds of the SRO program come out of the police department budget and not the ACPS budget, but I would all like us to imagine what could be possible for Alexandria's youth if the city partnered with ACPS to instead of using the funds for the SRO program, put them towards all of the other

052resources I've mentioned. Not only could there probably still be soccer programs, but there would also be more counselors, mediators, and mentors available to students. And of course, for all of the reasons mentioned before, we would also be avoiding the harm perpetuated by having police officers in our schools. Alexandria and ACPS have the chance to lead the way in what a new model of student support could look like. We do not have to maintain the MOU just to try to change the language. to minimize the power police officers hold over our students. Instead, we can end the MOU and create a much better learning and support environment for the students of ACPS. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Adrienne Flakes. Hello? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, thank you. My name is

053Adrienne Fikes. I'm a parent of an ACPS graduate, and I'm taking time out of my workday to speak out in support of the demand that continue to be made by Tenants and Workers United, the Alexandria NAACP, and the Legal Aid Justice Center. We want you to immediately terminate the MOU and remove all police officers from our schools. According to the best data that you have publicly released, the police are doing harm to our children in our schools, and you are responsible for that harm. Greeting students of color with police cars parked outside and an armed police officer at the door is not welcoming. It's not empowering. It's not equity focused. It's not innovative. It's not results driven. It's the continuation of a history of institutional violence and racism in the city of Alexandria perpetuated by

054our school board and administration. Now, I have talked publicly about the genteel racism that exists in Alexandria. A stunning example of this is at the very moment you are conducting public surveys that fail to ask if police should even be in the schools, you are accepting 500... thousand dollars from Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Police Services to quote improve security at schools and on school grounds in the jurisdiction of the grantee through evidence-based school safety programs which good data has shown are harmful to black and brown students. The 160 awards can be used for coordination of with law enforcement training for local law enforcement officers to prevent student violence, metal detectors, locks, lighting, and other deterrent measures, technology for extubation. expedited notification of law enforcement during an emergency and other measures that provide

055a significant improvement in security. As a parent of a Black graduate of ACPS, as a community member, it is terrifying for you to be promoting a strategic plan of equity while planning to terrorize our children while they are trying to get an education. These funding initiatives should be going to invest further upstream, even if that means outside the schools. We already know that the police are not being paid by the board, that funding from the city should be used to improve the quality of life for our children and our families. and begin preventing these problems before they show up to the schools. The dignity and humanity of our black and brown students is not up for debate. You need to remove these MOUs immediately. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Jessie Goodwin. I

056don't think Mr. Goodwin is here. Oh, okay. Sorry. LaDonna Sanders. Hello, Ms. Sanders. Hi. Can you all hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay. Good afternoon, school board members and participants in attendance today. My name is LaDonna Sanders, and I am representing the Alexandria branch of the NAACP. Today, I'm before you to ask that the MOU between Alexandria City Public Schools and the Alexandria Police Department be ended. Organizations like NAACP, TWU, and Grassroots have been working in partnership with ACPS to implement strategies like restorative practices that respect the dignity and humanity of the ACPS community. It is the position of the Alexandria NAACP that the MOU does the opposite. An analysis of the 2018 data that we were able to obtain through a four-year request revealed that there were 140 out-of-school suspensions, which is

057equivalent to 18% of all out-of-school suspensions. A significant enough proportion of the suspensions involved referrals to law enforcement. It is our understanding that the students would no longer be suspended for subjective offenses such as disruptive behavior or disrespect. Troubling enough, As we reviewed the data, it showed that six of the law enforcement referrals were due to disruptive behavior, and two of those six referrals were disruptive behavior of students who were elementary school students. I bring this to your attention to highlight, while this is an ACPS policy, neither the administration nor SROs are following the guidelines. Modification of the MOU is unacceptable. We want the contract to end. Moreover, the racial disparities in law enforcement referrals were stark. Black students were nearly four times more likely to be referred to law enforcement than whites. Latinx students

058were twice as likely to be referred to law enforcement as white students. Reviewing this data reinforces themes like biased polices, discriminatory practices, unequitable outcomes and an apathy on ACPS's part to ensure that Black and Brown students are protected and not traumatized. As the country grapples with implementing best practices to create more racially just societies, one of the issues that our organization views as a problem is that students are expected to know their legal rights when interacting with the police. To place the onus on minors is unacceptable. And finally, we have not been able to obtain current data from ACPS providing the effectiveness of the use of SROs in schools. And more importantly, the transparency of data from ACPS continues to be disparate on almost all levels. We request today that you are in the MOU

059with APD. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. I think we still don't see our missing speakers. So if you are here. And we have not called on you. If you would raise your hand so the clerk can see you. We'll give you a second to raise your hand, but I don't see anything. Okay, so. Thank you all for coming, or for coming, for coming to the meeting, even though it's virtual. And we appreciate your comments. But that is now the end. We're ending the public comment, public hearing section of our meeting. And on to reports by our, from our student representatives, Lorraine Johnson and Ashley Sanchez-Vierfara. Hello, everybody. Just because we're on the topic of this MO, I thought that I should just speak a little bit about my experience with the

060SROs and the police officers, like, in general. There was a time when, like, last year, when me and my friends were hanging out at a party, and then when everybody left, I looked to this side of the road, and I see all of the young Black men who I just, like, hanged, who I just hung out with. were on the side of the road, police, five, four or five police cars right in front of them, police officers surrounding them, knees on the ground. It was, it was really, it was really bad. And I had to call my mom. My mom took them home after an hour of like just leaving them there, talking to them, interrogating them and everything. And it was just one of the most worst experiences I've had in my life. Stuff

061like this, situations like this happen to our young black and brown students more than you can ever imagine. The nation is really at the brink of like, with the police officers and with the police department in general. The fact is that there has to be. a longer, a better, and a more effective training on how you deal with students of color and especially students with disabilities. When I'm at school, I've only seen the SROs involved in situations dealing with like threats and drugs and weapons and stuff like that, but I haven't seen them involved in any day-to-day conflicts like fighting or anything like that, nothing really dire, but There's been numerous stories about how when the SROs are, how the SROs aggressively interrogate my peers, most of them, which are black young males and who

062they just interrogate them on like certain situations. Like maybe that deals with, I don't know, not any like federal charges or anything like that. Just something like maybe even a misdemeanor or anything. It's something that's not that big, but. My point is that there has to be better. I think that there has to be better training for not only the CROs, but Alexandria City Police in general. We are, Alexandria is at a point where we are doing a lot of what I like to call revising of our narrative. And with this whole... with this whole reopening of schools and renaming the schools. We don't want to put an end to the schools. We didn't want to add another school. We needed to revise the one that we had now. We needed to revise T.C. Williams

063when we're talking about, what else were we talking about? Especially when we're talking about this M.O. I don't think that we need to put an end to the M.O. I don't think that we need to put an end to the... to the SROs. We just need to revise it. We need better training for these officers and officers in the community of Alexandria. And so, yeah, but Ashley is going to now talk about a little bit of the things that we've been doing as student representatives and a lot of the events that we have planned coming up. Thank you Lorraine. So good afternoon everyone. So as Lorraine mentioned we're currently organizing for our first student engagement chat which will be on October 7th from 6 to 7 pm. So for this student chat we decided to

064have four panelists alongside us and they'll provide their perspectives, experiences, and feelings on the identity project and beyond. So in regards to the theme for each student chat, Lorraine and I collectively decided on the following. So the first student chat is going to focus on where we've been, which is going to be about our feelings and experiences within ACPS leading up to right now. The second one is going to be where we are. So talking about the present. So it's going to be addressing and analyzing the events which have transpired over the course of the year and its correlation to the renaming process. the systemic issues present within ACPS. And then the third one is going to be where we want to be. So it's going to be focusing on the future and centered around

065reflection and our hopes moving forward. In addition to the new identity, we wish to create collaboratively as students. So for each chat, we decided on having three or four questions that each panelist answers. And then afterward, the discussion will be open to students that have attended the conversation. the conversation. So this process we decided it will be repeated throughout the discussion and for the other two forums. As of now, Lorraine and I are currently working on the publicity for the student engagement chats through all platforms, so Instagram, Canvas, Twitter. And we really want to ensure that all students feel their voices are being amplified and heard by everyone. And just to go off a little bit of what Lorraine is saying about the MOUs, I personally do agree. I think someone that was in the

066public comments mentioned that I personally agree that SROs are giving too much access to students. And we need a better, we need to revise that. And we really need to look into that because they are given too much access. And they're given the same access as educators, administrators, and ACPS staff. And that can be very psychologically hindering to students of color, especially. And I just wanted to say with the whole revision or whatever we decide to do with the MOU, we just need to understand that. It only requires us to continue going on about our lives and to not care about it for this to continue to self-perpetuate. And so the SROs and the issue with police brutality and police authority, if we just don't, if we don't revise this, if we don't look into

067it, if we don't hear what people are saying, this is going to be something that's going to self-perpetuate and just contradict against everything that we're trying to achieve at collaboratively and together as a school division. So if we really want to be equity driven and really ensure that all students feel supported, respected, and included, we really do need to make significant changes with the MOU, whether it's that that is completely taking it off, ending the contract, or revising it, but we do need to make changes. Thank you. Thanks to you both. Next up, we have our consent calendar. So if I could get a motion to adopt the consent calendar, please. Chair, I make a motion that we adopt the consent calendar. Second. Ms. Gentry, hello, Ms. Gentry. Ms. Gentry seconded Ms. Werber's motion. And

068is there anything to pull from the consent calendar? Seeing nothing, I will call for a vote on the consent calendar. Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Megan Alterton? Yes. Ramey Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber? Yes. Michelle Reif? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes. All right, the consent calendar is approved 9-0. And now we go on to actually the report for tonight. which is the Equity for All Strategic Plan Measurement Update. So, Dr. Hutchings? Thank you, Madam Chair. And I also, before we even get started, I'm looking forward to our work session that's coming up on October 15th, because we'll be able to actually have a discussion about the MOU and to talk a little bit about what SROs do and don't do within our school. So I really hope that all of

069our speakers today tune into that work session, because I think it's going to be very informative for everyone. Today, we are going to talk about the ACPS. Strategic plan 2025, which I cannot believe we're saying 2025, but this is talking about, I think, one of the most important components of our strategic plan, and that's making sure that we're monitoring our progress and that we have metrics to determine our success with implementation of our strategic plan. I'm going to turn things over to our chief accountability officer, Mr. Clinton Page, so that he can, one, introduce or express, you know, some of the team that were a part of this development, and then also get right into our presentation for this evening. So Mr. Page. Thank you so much, Dr. Hutchings, and good evening, board and members

070of the public. Really, honestly, thrilled to be here tonight to talk about this topic. I know all of you get super excited when we say words like monitoring metrics and data. And that's in all seriousness. That was not meant to be glib or sarcastic at all. So I'm super excited to be here tonight to talk about this. I do want to mention that obviously this is work that I am presenting, but there is a full team who really drives this work. And in particular, Ms. Angela Green and Dr. Jennifer Whitson within my department are overseeing the measurement and metric side of this work as we work towards the implementation of the strategic plan. So just a big thank you and shout out to them for all of their work in putting together the presentation and

071the thinking for tonight. So tonight we're going to go through some, in terms of objectives, we're going to go over the use of the strategic plan document as a map in terms of necessary measurement needed to track progress, and then also speaking to within those specific measurement areas, identifying formative and summative measures, and then also go through the structures and timelines for the reporting on those formative and summative metrics for the new strategic plan. And obviously, I can't help myself in terms of a quote, but really in terms of my excitement tonight, I think a lot of it is bringing what has always been a future conversation for over the past year around the strategic plan and development of the strategic plan. And really now, we're really getting in deep into the implementation as well

072as into the monitoring and how we go about those continuous improvement cycles and learning within the implementation of the strategic plan. So this is a slide that I know is familiar to all of you as we talk about systemic alignment and the need for this. And to be the umbrella under which all other work and board as well. I don't know. Are you are you are breaking up for you or is that just I broke up. Okay, I don't think I think you're going in and out, Mr. Page. All right, I think I'm back. Okay, you are. Okay. You know, the internet unstable sign comes up exactly after you've been frozen for however long you've been frozen, which is super helpful. So under systemic alignment, you know, you'll see the various we talk about and

073tonight we are putting forward in terms of the outcomes and how we will know the progress we're making and what that looks like within the new strategic plan. And so specifically, again, within the strategic plan, we have various levels of measurement. So we have our key performance indicators, and then we also have our process measures, which are a deeper level. And this evening, we're going to be focused specifically on our key performance indicators, which at the board level is going to be, as our governing body, your primary area of focus as well as we monitor. and discuss the implementation and progress throughout the next five years of the current strategic plan. And really in thinking about our key performance indicators, one of the largest shifts that we're making under the new strategic plan is this

074shift to the here and now. Historically, we have at times relied on more autopsical data. So having reporting structures and processes where we're reporting out outcomes in the fall or winter for the previous year. And what we really want to do now is talk about how we can use KPIs not to assess change, but to affect change and getting that into a more formative stance. So we are responsive to the needs that we see developing within the environment across all levels of the organization, including the school board as the governing body. So a little bit about the guiding principles that led us in the creation of the system of measurement. Certainly wanting to, again, incorporating those leading indicators. So ensuring that the indicators that we are tracking are telling us here and now potential shifts

075and pivots that we need to make as an organization to be responsive to the emergent needs that we see coming throughout the environment and the system. We also wanted to ensure that we are allowing multiple stakeholder voices across all entities to inform the progress that this is not something that is just quantitative data. but that we are collecting the relevant qualitative data and collecting that data from all segments and all stakeholders as much as possible to ensure that all have a voice in the conversation and providing that feedback to inform potential adjustments. that we're also implementing a progress that supports continuous improvement and learning. Ultimately, that is what this is about as an organization. We have to be open to feedback, and then we have to have the structures and cycles that are going to

076allow us to make those adjustments to continuously improve. And then most importantly, ensuring everything we do is reflecting of the core values within the strategic plan with that laser focus on ensuring racial equity by removing barriers. So just as a reminder, this is our graphic that we typically put up around the strategic plan. So we can clearly see here, and I know as you all are aware, having racial equity at the heart of the work and everything that we do. And obviously that is inclusive of the measurement system that we're going to go through tonight. So I wanted to provide just a high level table that shows the different inputs and data collection processes that we're proposing from a broad strategic plan measurement process. You'll see in this table we have on the left hand

077side the different goal areas there in colored boxes and then at the top, you'll see the different areas in terms of how we're collecting data so whether it be a survey, whether it be rubric based data or whether it be quantitative data. So certainly within systemic alignment, having student, staff, and family surveys, as well as rubrics around the school and department improvement plans and ensuring that we have alignment across those structures aligned to the areas of focus. Within instructional excellence, ensuring that we are having the student equity audit. the staff administrator survey around support and training, family community surveys again, as well as from a rubric perspective, the teacher classroom observations, ensuring that if, you know, in the strategic, in the moves that we have selected as high leverage instructional strategies, how are those actually

078being implemented within the classroom? And having a data collection process to gauge that implementation so we can ensure what next steps we need to take. as it relates to those high impact strategies. From a quantitative data perspective, having kindergarten readiness, MAP growth reading, as well as MAP growth math. In student accessibility support, obviously we have a student survey here around feeling safe and valued and then also quantitative indicators relating to chronic absenteeism, SWD identification, suspension data, dropout data, etc. listed there. And then what you'll also see on the right, you'll see the KPIs are being highlighted for you within that bracketed group there at the top of the quantitative data. Then within strategic resource allocation, ensuring that we have a staff survey that's focused on climate to pay attention to the retention topic that we

079know is so important in terms of staff and the services that we're delivering, as well as, you know, ultimately staff retention rates, as well as resource allocation analysis, et cetera. And then last but not least, around family community engagement, having survey work there. as well as who is participating in surveys and making sure that we are getting that voice that we are seeking. So this is a very high level overview of a broad measurement system that we'll be putting into place. And along with that, I think it's important to note that here within the areas we've identified that these are areas that are controlled by ACPS. and are tailored to the local development of the strategic plan. The strategic plan is a local plan. Therefore, as we continue to grow in the strategic plan, as

080we make adjustments to the strategic plan, we want our measurement system to also be adaptable to those changes, to those adjustments. So that is something that we also prioritized in the development. of this. With that said, we also know that there are state monitoring requirements that we absolutely will continue to adhere to and incorporate within our broader decision-making context. So things like SOL performance and growth, our accreditation system is absolutely something that will still be going on from the state level. Our graduation data, our post-secondary enrollment, our L progress and proficiency, as well as our discipline data. These are all things that we report. to the State Department on a regular basis and will absolutely be things that we continue to monitor and track as we go through the life of the current strategic plan.

081So with all of that, I wanted to zoom in specifically on the specific KPIs that will be tracked within the strategic plan. So specifically within the KPIs, you'll see the KPIs listed there on the left, and then we have the formative indicator as well as the summative outcome indicator for that KPI. So for kindergarten readiness, we'll be formatively tracking enrollment. and what we're seeing in terms of students' access to pre-K programming, and then ultimately looking at fall kindergarten PALS for percentage of students meeting that benchmark from an outcome perspective. In reading and math, we're focused on proficiency as well as growth within math. So within the formative indicator, we'll be tracking typical performance and students who are meeting that threshold in the fall assessment. And then in the summative indicator, we will be focused on

082growth. So the students who are showing significant growth from the fall to spring assessments and what we're seeing there, as well as also reporting typical performance. Apologies for the sound of monsters in my house. That is simply my two-year-old advanced coursework. Formatively, we will be tracking TAG referrals as well as our secondary Honors AP and DE course enrollments. So what are we seeing again from that access perspective? And then ultimately from our outcomes, what are we seeing as it relates to TAG identification as well as persistence in those courses for Honors AP and DE? Within chronic absenteeism, we'll be tracking that formatively. So looking at Q2, what we're seeing around chronic absenteeism, and then ultimately at the end of the year, what we're seeing there with identification of students with disabilities, looking at the referrals

083and students found eligible by race and ethnicity, as well as disability categories, both at the mid-year mark, as well as at the end of the year. And then for percent of ninth graders on track to graduate, we'll be looking at grade reports at the end of the first semester and critical courses that we know are linked to state graduation requirements. And then we'll be looking at the end of the year for those percentage of ninth grade students who have met those state graduation requirements by the end of their ninth grade year. So with all of that said, we also know that we are in an extremely unique time as it relates to the current pandemic and the virtual plus environment in which we all find ourselves. So certainly there are some specific considerations for this

084year in terms of our benchmark year in the data collection and reporting process. So certainly within MAP, we know this fall we're going to be doing the screener and not the full growth assessment. We also know there are going to need to be some considerations given around absenteeism. and potentially if a student is absent due to technology difficulties outside of their control, etc. And we also know for our students with disability identification process, as well as our talented and gifted identification process, that there is some impact there as it relates to the in-person assessments that are required as part of both of those identification processes. So working through all of that. And we also wanted to give the board an overview of the timeline of deliverables. So at the end of the quarter, at the

085end of the first quarter, we would be providing the board an update focused on school and department improvement plan updates. So giving a summary of where we are and what we heard through our Q1 chats, both with schools and departments in terms of their progress in the areas of focus and within their plans for the current year. And quarter two in February is when we would be providing that mid-year analysis on the formative KPIs and discussing progress and areas of continued focus and improvement for the remainder of the school year. In Q3, we would come back again reporting out on what we're hearing from our chats from our schools and our departments. And then in quarter four in June, we would be giving the annual analysis and report on our summative indicators. So again, wanting

086to build that structure where we are moving this conversation to the here and now and leveraging information as it comes in and making it as actionable as possible. And last but not least, wanted to give the board a sense of some of the data reporting ideas that we are currently having as it relates to leveraging data to illuminate inequities. in alignment with our strategic plan and racial equity at the heart of the work that we do. So here you'll see just a mock-up of a sample potential equity scorecard where we would have the KPIs represented there on the left. And then we have our student groups represented by columns at the top. And what this scorecard will do is will highlight areas of inequity in terms of where we're seeing under-representation. So if we're seeing

087lower rates of kindergarten readiness within groups, you know, those would be lower numbers that would then show up in red. If we're seeing lower levels of math growth within individual groups, again, showing up in red and really allowing a visual snapshot of where we're seeing under and over representation across our KPIs across all of the groups, because ultimately we want to be able to provide information that is digestible and actionable while illuminating the inequities that we're seeing within our current context and system. So in terms of next steps, we will be working to finalize the measurements, identification, and development of instruments, so things like the surveys and rubrics, etc. getting those going, ensuring that we have alignment within our school and department plans, and ultimately working to fully flesh out, develop, and launch the equity

088dashboard. And with that, I just want to say thank you and open it up for any comments or questions. Okay, thank you. I see Ms. Gentry has a question. Thank you so much. I see a lot that I'm really excited about here. I think one of the things that's really great to see is how it's aligning with some of the priorities that we've talked about previously. When you, you know, some of the suggested you know, measurements related to some of the early grades and the focus on the reading and math, you know, really lines up well with some of the K-2 literacy. I also thought the checking on the ninth grade and checking the high school credits to make sure they were on track to graduation really ties in with some of the focus that

089we've put on. the high school graduation so I just I'm really excited about that. The thing that I wanted to ask about and I really appreciate the reporting you know the really clearing clearly laying out the you know the times that the board will be hearing if you all can elaborate a little bit on how what you learn from the first quarter and how how the division, whether it's there's something they're seeing at a particular school or a particular grade or something division wide, how they will be able to make a change within the school year. Because I think one of the concerns is that we could amass all of this data and we can very accurately track how we're not meeting a KPI. But I'd like you all to elaborate a little bit on

090how you see this process and this plan allowing you to be able to make those changes and adjustments as you're receiving this data. So, Mr. Gentry, I think that's one is a great question that we have been talking about internally. And that was one of the reasons why when we did our reorganization last year, especially in our Office of Teaching, Learning and Leadership, that we developed an executive director of school improvement. And that is Dr. Sims, who I'm actually going to ask to speak to answer some of this question, because I think that it is important for not only our community and the board, but also for staff to understand that this is an investment that is going to, I believe, provide some huge dividends for us as a school division. with Dr. Simms' background

091and the interaction and supports that he's going to provide our schools continuously is really going to set us on a trajectory that allows us to get to those goals that we've set. But Dr. Simms, if you can just elaborate on some of the work that we have planned in regards to how you're working internally with each school. and how we're taking that data and specifically, I know we just talked last week about cohort data and some other areas. Dr. Simms. Absolutely. Thank you, Dr. Hutchings. And thank you, Ms. Gentry, for the question. One of the exciting things about the work with the district is helping to shift this conversation from focusing on school improvement plans to improvement science informing. improvement work. And we are currently, I have the opportunity to meet with schools. I've been

092meeting with each school to talk about how enhancements to our current school improvement process, our new process that both Clint and Natalie helped me to understand for the district is really grounded and anchored in improvement science. So I really saw it, see this process as more of helping to provide some enhancements to our current school improvement process. One of the major enhancements is ensuring that what schools have identified in their improvement plans aligns with the strategic plan for equity, that we now have an equity for all plan. And we want to make sure that all of the plans reflect the areas of focus for the district. So that's one major enhancement. The second area that you... talked about that you referenced is how do people really make plans actionable in data cycles? And this is

093something that I've talked to schools about. There's often a misnomer in the school improvement planning process that it's all about the plan. Really, the plan is an artifact of a comprehensive improvement process. And so when we think about that and I have commended the district. The first thing I thought is I've never been to a place where superintendents are part of the quarterly chat, where people are coming in to talk to the superintendent about what's happened. Well, Clint talked about data tending to be autopsical. We actually want the quarterly chats to reflect a data cycle. Improvement plans are actually plans for educators. Too often people focus on student-facing data as the primary element in the plan. When improvement, school improvement is about how we shift educator practice and student performance is as a result of

094shifting practice. So the two areas that I've asked schools to work on enhancing is one, if we thought this was the absolute best action. a lever for us to move student improvement. Where was the evidence to say that this was the right action? So as we think about sort of theories of change, there's an inherent theory of change on why we thought this intervention was supposed to move student. So where was our evidence for that? To really reflect on what was the educator evidence to show that this was where we should invest our resources and time. The complementary part is when we look for evidence of progress, often people will cite participation in training or signing up for training. We really want complementary evidence of practice to show growth. So growth in knowledge and implementation.

095So if you identify professional development as the lever. to improve this area if it's level literacy, then really you are talking about looking at data and hopefully you've used more than one observation of classroom instruction to see whether we are now implementing the practices that we've just trained staff on so that we speak to fidelity of implementation before we start to look at if students are improving. Because if the intervention doesn't have fidelity, then we shouldn't expect necessarily that there's a commensurate improvement for students. So that's the other thing, looking at the evidence. that we're using to show progress, ensuring that we have both educator-facing data and student-facing data. So those are some of the major areas that we look at in terms of enhancing our plans to show the evidence for why we think

096this is important and the major lever to shift practice and improvement for students, and also ensuring that we have alignment with the focus areas. The phrase that I've used is if someone were to come in from another country and say, oh, you have a really robust and comprehensive equity plan, but I don't see it in the school improvement plan. Why is that? It should be very transparent in our work. And lastly, an example. of connecting our work to the equity work to improvement is that oftentimes when we talk about high school performance and in particular our ninth grade work and I've done some work in early warning indicator systems, probably the most compelling aspect of that work is not just what happens for high school students, but the implications for looking at early warning indicator

097systems for ninth grade, the implications for our middle schoolers, how we strengthen our students in middle and elementary school so that their persistence, their academic esteem, all of those things, that we have a better read on where our students fare even before they enter high school. I'm hoping that as we begin to look at our data, specifically around some of our race, racial inequities and also academic or disparities, that we look at the implications for both persistence in high school, but how does it inform what we need to think about in improving what happens at the elementary and middle school level. So I hope that helps, Ms. Gentry, in terms of... That was a super exciting answer, Dr. Sims. I want to say particularly the things that leap out. I really like the idea of

098making sure that you're not just looking at student results, but that educator focus and that fidelity to plan. Because I really do think those are the kinds of things that any well-meaning division could maybe inadvertently trip up on, right? You know, the ideas are all there, the commitment and passion is there, but if you don't figure out a way to make sure that those ideas are really being put into practice. So thank you so much for that response. I'm excited to see you getting to work on that. So thank you very much. Thank you. Next, we have Ms. Alderton. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to say to Clint and all involved, you really touched my teacher heart here. The formative indicators and summative outcomes, I love that. Because that, for me, really highlights

099this notion of we are, you know, we're formatively assessing along the way. And these are the ways that we're going to formatively assess. And then at the end, we know what we're looking for. So I just wanted to give some props and kudos to that because I... You know, that was pretty brilliant. I think I don't know if it was intentional, but if it was, it was very good. And it's just another way that I think here is our opportunity to model from the top down what we want to be seeing in classrooms and how we want to be evaluating school and teacher performance. So that was really good. Was that on purpose? I will always take credit. Sure. No, it was. No, it really was. I mean, we do, you know, we want to,

100there's power in language. So we do want to align language, right. And shared understanding. And we want to model what we value in terms of what we want to see in the classroom, what we want to see from our administrators within schools. It's incumbent upon us to model that. So that, yes, that was purposeful. And I think in addition to what Mr. Page said, we want to make sure we're not blaming, you know, the students in regards to what our issues are. And it's a shift in saying, how do we now serve our students differently so that we can see them reach levels that we all want them to be versus what's wrong with the kid, you know? And unfortunately, a lot of school divisions, they put all of the data on students who are

101from certain neighborhoods. That to me, that's a curse. Don't do that. You know, because I was a free and reduced lunch student. Now I'm the superintendent of Alexandria City Public Schools. So if you think that because of somebody's circumstance that they're not going to achieve, you've already failed the kid. So I just love how we're shifting now to what can we do? What do we have control over? Because we can't change a child's household. We can't change their parents. But sometimes we want to, but we can't, right? So we have to focus on the things that we have control over and monitor what we can. And sorry, I just have to add to that. I really appreciate that. Dr. Sims, you bringing that up. Dr. Hudgens, you bringing that up. Because I always said, you

102know, as a student support director and special ed leader, if you are coming to me for with a referral, or if you're coming to me to request support, the support is for you, the educator. I'm not in the business of fixing kids. And so that shift is so important. It makes me so happy and excellent. Thanks, guys. Next up, we have Dr. Reif. Thank you for that presentation, Mr. Page. And that was a great conversation we had. I really... I totally agree with that. It's great to see that shift. And I really appreciate that. You know, you frame the KPIs as being something that will affect rather than assess change. I thought that was a really important point. And I really appreciated hearing the perspective from Dr. Sims as well. I wanted to ask about

103the qualitative data. that's listed here on the summary overview, which is the surveys. And it sounds like you're still kind of working on identifying and developing the instruments. But I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about what conversation has been happening around the timeline for these surveys. I see we're doing surveys for students and staff and also families as well. And I know we did this equity audit survey with KickUp. last year and I was wondering, are we planning on doing that again? And then I'm interested in the school climate survey that's referenced in the MOU with APD as well, especially listening to some of the comments that we had tonight. You know, one of the things we're looking at is are students feeling safe and valued? And I think that

104I'm really, I mean, I'm really interested in, you know, that measurement as well. So like just... The timeline of when you think you'll be doing these surveys and is it going to be multiple surveys and when will the board, what points in the year do you envision the board getting feedback from those? Yes. Thank you so much, Dr. Reif, for the question. And in full transparency, within the current pandemic context, planning is something that is difficult. particularly when you get months out, let alone weeks. So I can say, what I can say is that these surveys would not be transpiring in the coming weeks or even within, you know, the months in advance of, you know, say Thanksgiving, that this is something that is more future oriented. But the plan is very much to have

105the surveys this year. With that said, we know we have to balance our ask. of stakeholders to fill out surveys and forms and instruments. So we will absolutely in the planning of the when. be ensuring that we are respectful of our stakeholders time and asking them the critical questions that we need to know and not the nice to knows. So that will certainly be something that we'll be providing more information with the board on in terms of the specific timing as we get to that place. But the current plan is certainly this year and it'll probably be looking December or later. And as Mr. Page mentioned, I mean, it is this year. One thing that we are striving to do is not to have multiple surveys. So in the past we had. tell survey, climate

106survey. This, you know, we really need to have, and then people, they don't understand, like, okay, I thought I just filled out something, and then you don't get the same kind of feedback. So what we're going to have, which we don't, we haven't identified the actual survey instrument, but we do know in regards to like the framework, and we want to make sure that we have different components of the survey. that might focus on climate, that might focus on the academic piece, that might focus on the strategic plan and our progress with that. And that we are doing this annually because a part of our five-year plan is that we're also monitoring and evaluating and assessing our staff, our families, and our students, you know, so that we can see some progress in those areas

107over time and that we can also make adjustments based on that feedback. One thing that we heard, or no, one thing that I heard when I was doing my 100 days, which it seems like it was 100 years ago, but it was only two years ago when I was my first 100 days. And one thing that I heard from our staff was that they did not feel that our TEL survey data was being kind of like used to make informed decisions. So they felt that it was like a formality. and that it wasn't something where we gathered their information and it actually changed our either process or changed our policy or changed our actions. So we want to really make sure that our staff, our students, as well as our families, that with the feedback

108and with the data we're gathering, that there are responses and that we're making informed decisions using that information and that you can actually see that. we can articulate it when we are doing our annual updates to the community and to the board. So we don't have the identified survey at this point, but we're close. We're close. We've just been trying to do all these other surveys with reopening and things of that nature. But it will be annual and it will begin this year because we can't miss our baseline. This is our baseline year. So, you know, we can't really stop our work. We may have to slow things down a little bit and give each other grace. And Mr. Page gets a lot of grace in your team. But we also know that we can't

109miss the baseline year, which this is year one of our plan. Next up, we have Mr. Suarez. Thank you, Chair Anderson. And yeah, and I just want to ditto my colleagues' comments about this being a really well-done presentation, and the discussion has been tremendously helpful. It's really exciting just to see us moving in this direction in terms of, you know, using the strategic plan and using these KPIs effectively going forward. And I'm really excited about some of the stuff Dr. Sims talked about in terms of how we're going to use this methodology at the instructional level to really move the needle. So that's great. So I have a couple comments and a couple questions. So first, I'll just pick off on something Dr. Hutchings said that I am curious about. And it's just sort of

110a question about What can we do? Because I kind of see this as a year zero, right? We've executed, implemented the strategic plan. We have these new KPIs. We have a lot of exciting opportunities to springboard off of that. And we're going to have to have some sense of how we're doing this year. And so I'd like to understand. To what extent are we going to look at the data we have now to establish our baseline right now so that we can meaningfully, you know, evaluate our progress this year to the best of our ability? Obviously, there are constraints, the pandemic, some of these data points, we're not going to be able to have them perfectly. But, you know, what are we able to do on that front? And I think there are some data

111points where we might be able to do it better than others, but I'd like to kind of understand what our thinking is around that. And then my second question, if we can go to slide 15. I found this slide to be great because I love that it is not only holding, you know, the staff and instructional leadership of the division accountable. But it's also holding the board accountable so that we have these sort of regular check ins about, you know, how are things going after quarter one and so on and so forth. But I do recall us having a conversation about possibly looking at KPIs on a once a month basis or looking at, you know, categories on a once a month basis and sort of thinking about where we are in those categories and

112then holding the board accountable to kind of model discussions around these progress indicators. So I kind of want to understand what our thinking might be. Aaron Shaw, MnDOT Consultant, Around those issues. And the reason I say that is because it kind of goes back to something Dr. Simms was pointing about, which I want to reiterate, as others have said, is great is this notion of fidelity of implementation. Aaron Shaw, MnDOT Consultant, You know, I personally think it's really critical that the board starts modeling fidelity of implementation as quickly as possible. And so I love that comment that Dr. Simms made about making sure that that happens instructionally as well. But I'd like to see that thread through the whole division. So I'm just sort of wondering what your thoughts might be in terms of how

113we can start doing that at the board level as soon as possible. You know, understanding that there are constraints, you know, through COVID-19 and so forth. But I think a lot of my reaction is my excitement around seeing. they're here. Okay, now we have a set of indicators. And what can we do to really start hitting the ground running to implement this with fidelity, but begin to really modeling, you know, implementation of this as swiftly as we can under the circumstances. So, Mr. Suarez, I know that Clint, he texts me, he's rebuilding his computer, but I'm going to respond and he'll join us in a minute. So, first off, let me just say that, you know, yes, this is our baseline year. However, for us to develop the metrics that we introduced today, we had

114to use our current data. to even determine where we needed to focus. So for example, that was the importance of us having our data workbook that we shared to really start the whole strategic planning process last year, which was really our first time taking all of our data, like accumulation of our data and having it in one place and being able to analyze it that way. So we didn't start from scratch and we had to use our current data to get there. One other piece that we got out of that, and this is why We are able to collect our data this year. We're not focusing solely on state data, right? And when you do that, that's when you put yourself in situations where we have a global pandemic and there is no SOL administered

115last year. So if that was our main source of data, guess what? We would have none. We would have nothing to share, you know, and that has been our... You know, that's why we didn't have a lot to share at the end of last year, you know, because we put all of our eggs in kind of like the state basket, which is just not good practice, you know, for us. We want to make sure we're focused on local control items. And that's why we have put in MAP. as one of our assessments because we have control over math. Those are going to be administered this October, so this month, and we're going to be able to really see where our students are academically based on that assessment. We're making sure that we're looking at our

116credit data because we issue credits to students too, right? Yes, the state establishes guidelines, but we have to make sure that we have an early warning system where we're monitoring students credit hours in ninth and 10th, 11th and 12th grade so that we're not waiting until we have a dropout rate, right? That we're catching students early. So these are things that we're gonna be able to share with the board as well as the community this year. I also think your second question was the first question was about what are we doing with the data now? And then the second question was about how the board can can get more involved and have more access. I do think that it is important for us not to over kind of like not estimate is not the right

117word. Expect the staff every month to come back with, you know, with with information to the board, because, you know, having every 9 weeks is allowing us to actually see a trend. You know, by the time we, for example, when we are coming to present to the board, we don't want to just hand you information. because we haven't analyzed the information. We haven't been able to provide some of the trends. We haven't been able to have those internal discussions so that we can answer questions like we're doing today with our board. So that was one of the reasons why we looked at a quarterly basis because we know that every quarter we're getting new trends, new data. We're able to kind of come back and share what has transpired since our last time seeing or

118presenting to the board. We did incorporate this year, though, making sure that every meeting we're touching on our areas of focus. And that was a shift that we did this year. So that's why you see now on our board agendas starting in September this past month, you will see that every board meeting, every work session is an item that relates to our strategic plan, as well as to our areas of focus, which is aligned in our strategic plan. So that's why today we're talking about the metrics. That was one of. our item areas of focus and we're going to do metrics this year we're going to um make sure that we had a way to progress monitor um you know our success so that is how we're incorporating these touch points with the board so

119we're building capacity next year is going to look a little different right uh in regards to what the topics are because most likely we may have different areas of focus so we're not going to now start replicating. We may replicate the timeline, but the topics and the discussions and the data will be different moving forward. So the board is going to be heavily engaged between, we have an item every single meeting and work session between now and January. So that you're going to be heavily engaged. And that's in addition to our quarterly update. as well as our mid-year analysis, which is going to be a full presentation to go through our trends, and then another quarterly update, and then an annual work session where we're able to talk through the entire year. And a part

120of our jobs internally is to make sure that we are providing the necessary supports to our school teams so that they are making the necessary progress so we're not having the same. picture and the same story to tell every time we come back to the board. That's what's going to be key for us. I know Clint or Mr. Page, I think he's back via phone is what I just got a text about. I don't know if there's any addition that Mr. Page would like to mention. I am here. So that's fantastic. I hope you all didn't hear me swearing. Not that I ever swear. But no, I don't have anything further to add. Dr. Hutchings, you did an excellent job. Pray me well, Mr. Page. Thank you. Thank you both. Ms. Nolan. Thank you, Chair

121Anderson. So Dr. Hutchings, forgive me. This is when sometimes what happens when you're the last one. I think my question might have already been answered a few different ways, but. That said, if you don't mind, I'm just going to go ahead and ask it. And then I'll let you determine for yourself if it was interwoven from other answers. So essentially, I just want to, again, echo my colleagues, just sincere kudos to Mr. Page and his incredible team, including the amazing Ms. Green, who I also see on the Zoom. And it just speaks to the talent of your team and all the hard work that everyone does. It's just been exceptional. I know we've gotten to one of the best parts of the strategic planning process is getting to meet several members of your team and

122you just do an outstanding job as a leader hiring. So thank you for that. And that's what's going to get good results is when good people do good things. So that's what's going to have value for our students as well. That said, so Dr. Hutchings, I really appreciated so many of your comments in terms of like the shift that we're having and making sure we're coming from a place of like students as an asset, as well as, you know, using the work and Mr. Sims you've talked about this too about the importance of the improvement teams and all of that. So, given that everyone has obviously has belief in this plan it was so well thought through and mapped out. Is it the quarterly chats? I guess what my question is, is let's say we

123find out data. We're going to obviously find out data. Where's the course correction of the plans along the way? How are we using this tool as the feedback loop? And then what is the implementation for teachers on the ground, for folks in curriculum and instruction, for principals to be using this information to then have real... course correction on the ground or to even know like, hey, this is going well, let's continue doing this. So I guess I just would like to hear a little bit more about how are those on the ground going to be using this data in order to ensure that we're providing students with the best resources and work possible. And then my second follow up, if you don't mind, is I do want to I really appreciated that part of the

124conversation was about COVID. And it's a struggle, right? Dr. Hutchings, like on the one hand, we do want to have a baseline, we can't we can't lose information knowing where our students are. But on the flip side, Is there a balance in terms of, you know, oftentimes in education, and this is not just to Alexandra as an isolation, but. Unfortunately, the national standards require a lot of assessment. Like, is there any assessments that could perhaps be put on pause this year during the year of COVID, knowing that our teachers are struggling with a lot in terms of like even proctoring an exam over Zoom? So again, the twofold question is, how are we ensuring that the data we're going to be receiving as a board and as a division is then filter down to course

125correcting to teachers and principals and those working on the ground? And then the second part is, is there any thought during COVID of there are going to be certain things in terms of assessments that are on pause, given the nature of the global health pandemic that we are currently in and that we have to have, you know, understanding of that? I know that Dr. Sims, he'll be able to elaborate, but specifically with your first question in regards to how our, you know, our staff, meaning our leaders at the school level, as well as the staff at the school level, how are they taking these, this data and this information and making, you know, pivots or refinements or stay in the course, you know, and I think. One, that's a great question, Ms. Nolan, because one

126thing that is so important, this is one of the reasons why we developed this executive director of school improvement position, is that. Dr. Sims' role is to work directly with schools and their leadership teams, and that is his job. You know, whereas before you had to work with the leadership team, you had to evaluate the principal, you had to meet with it, you know, it was, you were stretched that how could you really roll up your sleeves and be a support? at the school level so that they can make those you know immediate shifts so that we're not having to wait for a mid-year or the end of the year and things are getting kind of worse especially in situations where we're not seeing a practice work But Dr. Sims, if you can elaborate a

127little bit more on what our kind of our feedback loop looks like with the staff and the school leadership teams, and then how school leaders are then able to work with their school teams to pivot, to refine, or to stay the course. Yes, Dr. Hutchins. Thank you so much, Ms. Nolan, for the question as well. I just wanted to make a distinction in the question and the type of data that Mr. Page just mentioned, you know, sort of data analysis is about asking the right questions with the right data and many of the data indicators, the indicators that we just looked at are sort of these broader indicators versus the kinds of indicators and what would happen in your quarterly data cycles, right? So that when we talk about an opportunity to implement an intervention

128and then see where that intervention where that intervention takes us in terms of staff shifts in practice and then any related student in performance, that that's a little bit different than some of what you looked at in terms of indicators around graduation rates. What I would stress, Ms. Nolan, in terms of where those data exist is that Every school improvement plan includes data that drives why we chose this as a goal area for us. So all of the goal areas really emanate from some data that we've used to say, this is an area that we need to address, a disparity that we need to address. So those data exist within the plan. One of the enhancements that I've talked to schools about is ensuring that there is alignment. within the data that you're using for

129evidence of progress, right? So if you've said, and Dr. Hutchins already addressed this in his comments, if you said that you want to look at student performance in improvement in some area, your data cycle has to include data that would allow you to look at it within that cycle. It shouldn't be SOL data because you wouldn't have that data within the cycle. So one of the enhancements that I've asked schools to look at is where you've identified student-facing data. Ensure that the data that you are looking at allow you to report on that within your cycle. If not, then you have no data to report on in your cycle. The other piece that you've asked about is one that our planning teams are grappling with right now around the next iteration, you know, in terms

130of our virtual learning platform. And that is, how do we ensure that we have valid and reliable data sources as we're impacted by this dual pandemic? some of the data that we, the implications for the impact. on data that we normally would administer person to person that we're not able to do now. What are the implications for the data that we're using? How do we fold that into our planning for the year is very much a question right now because we don't want to sacrifice the reliability of the data, right? So we have to figure out what are the data sources that we can use because we can't lose a whole year of checking progress. We're very focused. on obviously instruction, how we deliver instruction, but what are the reliable ways that we can also

131assess learning. and how we use those indicators within our data cycles. So that's something that we are talking about. There are schools that have already incorporated unit assessments and across the school, they can use those unit assessments. They provide a reliable measure of progress. So they have those student facing indicators already. What I'm saying to schools now is look at what you said were your actions. Let's look at the data sources that you've identified. does this match in a reliable way and allow you to report in a quarterly cycle? If it doesn't, then we need to do some rethinking about this. So one of your questions is very much impacted because of where we are in this virtual learning environment and trying to find those sources. Some of those things will be addressed by the

132district's adoption of math. So we now will have a broad and very reliable indicator to guide us around math and science. And so schools will be helped in that way. It's a great question because that's what I mean about enhancing our current and school improvement plans, ensuring that when they come to that quarterly chat, that they can speak to data within that cycle, as opposed to saying, we'll know when we collect SOL data. That's just not a good improvement process. I couldn't agree more. Thank you so much, Dr. Sims. That was super helpful. Thank you. For your second question, Ms. Nolan, so we're hoping, and that's something that the state superintendent is having discussions with superintendents across the Commonwealth now, is how can we, you know, get some more waivers for some of the state

133testing that is required, especially when just the testing environments, if we're virtual, are just, we can't guarantee, you know, what the testing environments are. you know, in regards to students being at home. But as of right now, we have not received some of the waivers that we're hoping to get. But, you know, we have been advocating about this. I hope to have some more, you know, information about some leniency that the Commonwealth of Virginia or the VDOE, the Virginia Department of Education, can provide local school divisions. Thank you for that, Dr. Hutchings, because I mean, I'm sure we're all on the same page. On the one hand, it's really phenomenal and phenomenally lucky that we have the strategic plan this year, because that fact that in COVID, we now do have a path forward for

134five years on what to measure. And so I have all faith that, like Dr. Sims just said, we're not going to lose a year that we have other means of collecting data. But I think, I imagine we're all on the same page. I'm just really worried about our teachers and principals and the tremendous stress they're under and like in this environment. And I just think that if we have maps and other assessments that we can use to understand where our students are and use that data to move them, their instruction forward. I'm just concerned about just a few of the other tests that are nice to have sometimes, but not always necessary. So I do hope that, I appreciate you continuing to be in those conversations on the state level and keeping us informed, because

135I'm just hoping we can get a few waivers so that, again, as Dr. Sim said, we have the balance in terms of like. not losing a full year, we'll have data to know where students are because obviously we are very all nervous about making sure there's not that COVID slide. And if you don't have the data, you don't know how to address it. But on the flip side, I just, again, worry about our students, the staff, and the tremendous pressure they're under. And so if we can take any of that undue pressure off, all the better. So thank you. Thank you to you both. And I just wanted to ask Mr. Page to just elaborate a little bit more on the account from the accountability perspective regarding assessments too, because he is our direct liaison.

136Thank you, Dr. Hutchings. So thank you, Board Member Nolan, for bringing up this point. And it's something we are acutely aware of. As a division, as we went through 4.0 planning, we did prioritize those diagnostic assessments specifically and wanted to make sure we had something at each grade level in reading and math. And then we stripped everything else away that we typically do in an annual year. So things like the NNAT, the COGAT, the curriculum benchmarks in science. history all have been removed for this fall, understanding that we need to be very targeted and specific in the priorities we set and really focusing on what we have to have to best inform teaching and learning moving forward. Also, I will say with that said, we continue to have weekly, if not more frequent meetings with

137both our principals as well as our school testing coordinators. to ensure that we are working together in the implementation of these assessments as we approach October. We understand certainly the why and that there is a high level of anxiety within the environment in general. And so we're wanting to do everything we can to provide the supports as well as the needed flexibility if the time and need comes to ensure that we are best supporting our staff and our teachers from a... just from a humane perspective and making sure everything we do is focused on that support. So we absolutely are going to continue to monitor and have those discussions throughout the administration windows within October. Great. Thank you. Dr. Reif? Thank you for that. I appreciate that conversation about the process of continuous improvement and

138addressing the unique situation we're in right now. My question is a little bit, one of the more farther out goals here, but it's about the equity dashboard. And the summary overview slide, I thought it was... It's good. I wanted to say that it's also very complex. I know there's like a lot of data and trying to like capture that and how it all relates to each other is really challenging. And I think I made this comment before that I know with the 2020 strategic plan, one of the issues was that there were so many KPIs. And so, you know, we wanted to get a little bit more focused. And I think that that's good. I'm thinking about this from the standpoint of communicating out to stakeholders. And my question is kind of a little bit

139like with the equity dashboard, who is really the audience for that? Is it something for us to use as if we're school leaders or is it for like the wider community to understand, you know, how ACPS is doing as a division? And if it's for the wider community, you know, how might that, like how might we simplify or break it down so that it's a lot more digestible for... for folks and I was thinking about you know with the communications audit that concept of the bite snack meal I don't know if there's some way to think about that as you're going through you know designing it but also I'm curious about the launch the launch timeline if you have any sense of what you're thinking for that but maybe I'm getting too far ahead I

140don't know. So no, actually you're not, because that is something that will also be developed this year as well, because this is our baseline year. I think that the community right now, we don't have data, that was sample data. So once we have official data that's in there, we'll be able to have an analysis that goes along with that. So we're not assuming that the community can do an analysis of underrepresented versus overrepresented. So what we'll be able to do is we're sharing with the board now. what the tool looks like. But there will be an analysis that's conducted that will also have verbiage around what trends we are seeing. And I think that is when you can get into the bite, the snack, and the meal. Someone who wants the full meal is going

141to look at the deeper data, and they may have some type of data background that they want to see those statistics. But we will be able to kind of show our trends in a more concise and a lay person's language. Ms. Alderson? Thank you. The discussion around sort of the Ms. Nolan's question like around, you know, what is that on the ground process going to look like actually brought up another question for me because I think, again, what's exciting about doing the map is, you know, we can sort of retrieve a baseline. That baseline is across the district, but also that gets narrowed down to schools and which, you know, can help sort of begin that process of looking at as a school where we are, where our students are, and then where we need

142to go. And then, you know, so there's the, then the instructional piece of that, you know, you're making decisions about you know, X group of students here, what's going to be the instructional plan to make gains? My question is that one of the things that I struggle with is intervention and how we define intervention. I've really sort of gotten to this place where I think it's become essential that we have a common understood definition of what intervention actually is. And I'll just give some examples of things that I've seen. A student is struggling with reading and the response is, well, let's just do more guided reading with that student. you know, in my sort of purview, doing more of the same thing as an intervention. So are we going to, as a part of, as

143we do this work, really start to refine and nail down and say, and sort of own, like, how we're defining intervention and maybe even sort of coming up with some examples of what we would like to use across the district. So, Ms. Augustine, what you're speaking of is our MTSS kind of like process, and that is exactly what we are developing to refine our MTSS work. We were already doing multi-tiered support systems, everybody. Sorry, MTSS, that's what that stands for. And those are supports. You know, I like to use the term supports versus interventions, but that's just my personal language. I know everybody knows there's interventions, but I always, I just feel like there's a negative connotation when you hear it. intervention. Like you need an intervention. You need support as a student that comes

144in a lot of different ways. But what we are doing with our MTSS framework is making sure that we have like this is tier one and these are all the instructional supports that are provided to all students, regardless of any situation. So every student has access to that particular instructional support. So, for example, it's like. Everybody is in class with the teacher and there may be like a period during class that teachers can get some kind of individualized instruction from the teacher. Right. That's something that every kid could get at some point. Right. So that might be a tier one support. I'm just giving some examples right now. Dr. Mozingo could do it so much better than I can. So you can chime in at any time, Dr. Mozingo. But then at the tier two

145level, you're looking at some of the supports that students who may have. a 504 plan, students who are just not responding to some of the supports that everybody has access to, that they need just some additional supports, whether it is after school, whether it is some type of pullout for a student for just a particular period of time during that period, that might be a tier two level support. And then we have tier three, which is going to be our support so that that just may be a little more extensive or intensive for some of our students and it could be a self-contained environment for a particular period of time you know for when you get to your tier three but Dr. Mozingo I don't know if you want to add on to our MTSS

146because I know you are spearheading that that work. Nice job. Good afternoon, everyone. Dr. Hutchins, as always, did a really nice job defining that system. Briefly, though, we did have, we have, I think, revitalized, redesigned the multi-tiered system of support in collaboration with student services. So there has actually been a team. working and redefining the behavioral side, as well as the instructional part of the multi-tiered system of support. One of the things we've also done is that they've identified MTSS leads at the various schools. In addition to that, and I think Ms. Alderton, you are absolutely correct, we have also expanded the model even beyond like a program to maybe there are adults that can actually serve. and provide intervention support in tiers two and three. So one of the things the team did, they

147went back and identified, and we've done an evaluation of, first of all, all, we want to make sure for tier one, which is the core, that everyone has access to the core. That's where we start. But then what this team did was they've done an analysis of all of the resources, the programs, and they've tried to scale. and reduce the number of programs, for example, in terms of tiers two and three. For example, when we administer MAP, we know that some students will do extremely well, but we might have a few students that might need additional support. And that is when we would invoke like tiers two or three. But I was just, I pulled it up just to look at the document. They've done a fabulous job because again, whether it's case managers, whether

148it's paraprofessionals, it's different individuals that can also provide support. for kids in tiers two and three. Also, the other thing that we've done is we want to provide the services for tiers two and three, but we really want to have more children meeting more of their needs in tiers one. And we can also, I mean, Dr. Hutchins would like for us to do that. We can provide a board brief on how the system has been redefined and re-evaluated and we'll have a better level of implementation going forward. especially with the analysis of eliminating some of the programs that were a part of the MTSS system. Yeah. So if I can maybe just jump in and clarify, because I think, I guess what I'm trying to get at and maybe, you know, I can ask more

149and we can discuss later is like, you know, really outlining. like what that system is. So for example, I'm thinking about back to MAP, you know, if we, I'm at a school, I'm a principal and I've got, you know, 30 students whose RIT scores show me that they are two grade levels below in reading or math, you know, you know, really being clear on that system of when that happens, these are the, you know, interventions that we utilize and that we have in place, you know, really formalizing that. And I know it's kind of tough because you don't want to do it to be too rigid about it because everybody needs something different. But at the same time, like, I just want us to be able to make sure that we sort of have, you

150know, clear avenues that don't make it difficult for us to provide. certain things. So just if I could just quickly add, yes, that was one of the major changes. I know that when I first arrived, we had some programs in tiers two and three. but we didn't have the right data set to say that this is a viable program for this particular student. So one of the things the team had to do was an analysis of all these different programs because not every program is the best for a particular child, right? So what they've done with MTSS now is we need to make sure, it's almost like a prescription somewhat, that if you... have this particular, whether it's a scale score, an achievement level, or some particular indicator, then that triggers a type of intervention.

151And what Dr. Sims was saying earlier, we've got to get to the point that we know that that intervention works. for that child and other kids. But the new MTSS has been redefined to accomplish just what you said. The other goal was to sunset some of those strategies that were not successful or some of those programs that were in tiers two and three. And Dr. Muzinko, I know that you work directly with our principals and our staff as well on this because we really needed teacher input around, you know, what supports were working and what were not. You know, what we had prior to our refinement of our MTSS framework was everyone just had, it was just, it was too much. It's like, you know, you're like a, you know, a kid in a candy

152shop, which you've got, you can just got too much to choose from. So you think you don't know what to do. And now what we had to do was we really had to streamline some of that. And not that we want to take things away, but we want to look at the best practices. and really have them as an ACPS tier one or tier two or tier three support. And that's just what we do in Alexandria City Public Schools. And then that allows us to do alignment with our professional learning, alignment with our school improvement plans when we're having our SIP meetings each quarter. we're able to understand what people are discussing, not saying, oh, well, that's a new strategy. Tell me about that. You know, like we're learning, we're not going to be in

153a situation where we're learning new stuff from everybody. And that has been our issue, I think, as a school division. That's why we've seen, you know, statistically our data so flat for the past eight to nine years. You don't really see a lot of change. And it's because everyone is just kind of doing whatever you pretty much want to do. And not to say we want everybody to be, you know, we don't want to be rigid, but we do need to have some structure and just you can have autonomy, but you can still have structure. That's great. Thank you. Great. I think I think that's all the hands I see for this evening. But certainly this will not be the last time we talk about this. So moving on. We're to the point of the

154meeting where it's the chair's report and I have a few announcements because I just want to make sure people know about some of the events with the Identity Project. And one of them actually starts in about 40 minutes, which is the second read-in with Professor Reed and Ms. Wood from ACPS. So that's from 7 to 8 on Zoom. And Vice Chair Nolan will be hosting that. So please join for that. And then the last of three community read-ins with Professor Reed will be on October 8th. There will also be several student and community conversations, but rather than reading them all out, I think if you just consult the website under the Identity Project, you'll see all of them. And then lastly, the public hearing on the name changes for both T.C. Williams and Matthew Maury

155will be on October 29th during our meeting, starting at 4 o'clock. And that's all I have. So on to Dr. Hutchings for the superintendent's report. So, yes, I just want to first give a huge shout out to all of our staff, because this pandemic, I'm telling you, trying to do virtual plus and trying to adjust to this whole new world of everything and doing this from your living room or your kitchen or your home office or wherever you are, it is a challenge. And I just want to validate that we know that this is not easy. And we understand the sacrifices that our staff that they make every day. When we talk about first responders, educators are first responders too. And I just want us to make sure that we're continuously acknowledging them. And I

156just need them to know that I can empathize with them every single day. You know, a lot of times you're like, but Dr. Hutchings, you're still smiling. You know, you got to keep smiling. You have to keep, I have to be optimistic, right? I have to know that someday I'm going to be able to say all of this is over people. I don't know the date, but someday I'm going to be able to say it. And I just believe that. And I know that we have. some of the best professionals working in Alexandria City Public Schools. And if anybody out there who is watching or anybody who knows a teacher or staff member or any custodian, a bus driver, any person who works in Alexandria City Public Schools, please just say thank you for your

157service because they are really working tirelessly. Next week, we will have our data in regards to the surveys. Our surveys went out this past Friday, and we're really encouraging our staff, our families, and our students to take the survey. We cannot make well-informed decisions without that feedback. This is not one of the surveys to, you know, just because we're not doing a check-in. This is going to help us to determine what our next steps are. as a school division. Where do we go from here? And we really need everyone to complete. these surveys. I looked at the data today. I mean, it's still the second highest right now. We still got a few days left, but we're not where we need to be. We need to have every family complete the survey. We need to

158have every staff member complete the survey. It's like the census. That's right. It's like the census. And that's the only way we're going to have a clear understanding of what we need. to provide for our community. So, you know, board members talk, if you all can talk to your constituent groups and just remind them to complete them, we really need them. I know our principals are doing a huge push out there and we're doing text messages and things of that nature to try to get people to complete these, but we really need those done. I'm going to stop there because I know I'm going to be on in 30 minutes with the read-in, and I'm looking forward to this opportunity for us to really talk about our history, the good, the bad, and the ugly

159of our history. Just this past week, I've heard from several people who said, I did not know. So I'm excited of the fact that when we talk about educating our community, we're really educating them about who Thomas Chambers Williams is. And now they like absolutely changed the name right after hearing this information, because a lot of people really just didn't know. So I just say hats off to the board for allowing us to be able to have this educational process, because it definitely is making the difference. And it is allowing our community to understand when we get to the point of having to change this name. why it's being done. It's not because of Fairfax. It's not because of the world. It's because Thomas Chambers Williams didn't want black and brown children in the same

160space, house, room with their white counterparts, period. And he did not believe in integration. So I hope that we are expressing the truth around who he is and what he stood for. That concludes my report. Thank you. Next up, we have if any board member needs has an announcement. This is the time for that in the meeting. OK, I don't see anybody's hands up. Jacinta is waving her hand. Oh, she's waving her hand. OK, sorry. I guess the whole thing. I can't reorganize. I can't organize my square so that I can see them on. I didn't see your hand. OK, Miss Green. My apologies, Terrence, and I should have done both things. I just wanted to, and I think Mr. Ballas is on the call, I wanted to say thank you to Mr. Ballas. His

161Key Club student members were looking for some volunteer activities to do, and I guess, you know, they're finding some difficulties throughout COVID, and Mr. Ballas sent them my way because I lead a voter registration initiative in the city of Alexandria right now, and I have put our students to work. And they are, they have, they have really stepped up. the president Kiernan of the of the Key Club she has said Miss Green I will staff I will staff your registration events each week so it has been a great help and they are just so excited to be doing it so you know just hats off to our students they are wonderful and they continue to impress me constantly so thank you to Mr. Ballas and Miss Moran their sponsor and just all the Key Club

162student members appreciate you. Way to go, Jacinta. Thanks, Margaret. Yes, I'm always happy to see that you're registering voters. Good job. Anyone else? I don't see anybody waving. I'll try to go through the... All right, I don't see any hands. So now we get to that moment where it's time for adjourn. Madam Chair, I move that we adjourn. Second. Ms. Lorber seconds Ms. Gentry's motion to adjourn and I'll call for a vote. And my name, Cindy Anderson, yes. Veronica Nolan. Oh yeah, she's back on. She got kicked off somehow, but she's muted. We'll come back. Megan Alderton? Yes. Mamie Gentry? Yes. Jacinta Green? Yes. Margaret Lorber? Yes. Michelle Eve? Yes. Christopher Suarez? Yes. Heather Thornton? Yes. Veronica Nolan? Yes. Sorry, technical issues. Yeah, no, I figured. That's why I came back. So 9-0, we're in

163approving adjournment and it is now 631. So see you maybe in 29 minutes. Right. Again. See you at the meeting. Thanks. Bye.