001Need to call back to order the regular board meeting for the Board of Education January 23rd 2017 First order of business need a motion to approve agenda move we approve the agenda Second all in favor aye Next item of business is our special recognition of students staff and community partners The first is KSDE School Bus Safety Poster Contest K-12 State Winner and National Third Place Winner, Kaylee Clancy from Langston Hughes Elementary School with Jackie Mikkel, Principal, Ron May, Director of Operations, and Wayne Zachary, First Student, Lawrence Branch, Manager. Good evening. It is my honor to be here tonight to honor one of our students. Kaylee was a second grader last year and she submitted a poster for the KSDE poster contest for school bus safety and she not only won first place in our state,
002but nationally she ranked third place. So this is Kaylee's beautiful work and we're very proud of her at Langston. We also have a plaque for Kaylee and Wayne Zachary from First Student has a few things too. We have some gifts for you Kaylee. There's a little letter in there for you and some other little school bus stuff. Imagine that. Congratulations. Congratulations. Can we see the poster? Thank you. That's very nice. Oh, very nice. Thank you, dear. Great job, Kaylee. All right. Next, we have the Back Snack Program, Partners Trinity Episcopal Church and Cornerstone Baptist Church with Howard Deacon, Sunflower Elementary School, representing Lawrence Elementary School principals. Thank you for allowing us to honor a couple of groups that have made a huge difference in the lives of students and children and families all over Lawrence,
003Kansas. We have all of our volunteers coming up. It's a big bunch. It takes a lot of people to make this program work. The Back Snack Program is a program that provides each week food and other things for our kids that might not have food over the weekend. This group is a big piece of how that happens. Cornerstone Southern Baptist Church volunteers do the packing of... the food for two of our elementaries and Trinity Episcopal Church does that for 11 of our schools. And that involves a lot of work because in my building alone, we have... Julie, is it four? 55 students who each week on Thursdays get a pack of food and things to take home and then we supplement those with fresh fruit and and at our building books for kids and it's
004just so exciting to see those kids on Friday come down to Julie's office and pick up their their bag of food because We just know that for some of those kids that may be what their families depend on to get them through that weekend. So it really does make a huge difference. And it's a lot of work. I know our volunteer shows up every week with a trunk full of boxes with all of our food in it. And it's already in the bags, so they've already bagged it up for us. And then it brings them in and unloads them and then dutifully... recycles the boxes and picks them up and takes them away. And it really is. And unfortunately, they don't get to see the smile on those kids' faces that people like myself and
005my other elementary principals here get to see as those kids walk out that door with that bag of food. I want to let Julie just, she's got some thank you notes, but I also want to let her just say a few words too. It is a blessing to have the harvesters' snack packs. And we not only do the food comes in every week, it's always, always the volunteers take their time out of their day. And they come, they bring these heavy boxes, and they come with smiles to and from. And, you know, they know they're giving. They never get to see. Those smiles the kids wondering when is the next day they really do they look forward to the smiles on their faces when there's An apple or an orange that they can pick as
006well So I just want to let you know you don't get to reap the benefits, but I do have a little package of thank-you notes from students at sunflower that receive the snack packs and they were Extremely happy to do this they came to get their snack packs And I asked them would you like to make a thank-you note and they're all over it so some are very decorated you can see all the fun little personalities and we do greatly thank you for what you do the kids just one story quickly I remember going driving home to students that get the snack packs and And the family had been homeless, but they got their own place. I got into the home, and they opened their backpacks, their snack packs, and they started eating, and they
007said, this is a wonderful supper. And, you know, and that's what they had. So this is so needed. It is so needed. So thank you very much on behalf of all of us, our Lawrence Public Schools. Thank you. I'm Todd Sutton, and on behalf of Trinity Episcopal Church, I want to thank you for this recognition. I'd like to extend it on beyond just Cornerstone and Trinity, though, to also Harvesters. Harvesters provides that basic bag that I just passed around to you there. We distribute that to 400 kids in our 11 schools. Cornerstone has another 50 or so in their schools. harvesters values that on their fundraising at about two hundred and fifty dollars a year for one of those packages to go around so that's over a hundred thousand dollars of contributions that are going
008into harvesters that end up coming back into just Lawrence harvesters servicing some 20,000 kids and 26 counties in Kansas and Missouri and they deserve a lot of credit for this program as well so thank you very much Okay, next is the report of the president. I don't have anything this evening, so I'll turn it over to the superintendent. I want to remind the board and the public of our community conversation about racial equity in Lawrence Public Schools from 6 to 8 p.m. on January 30th at Lawrence High School. We hope to have a broad and diverse representation of the community to participate in that event. As expected, we have started to hear of discussions in the legislature about mid-year budget cuts. This is not a surprise considering the deep budget hole our lawmakers have needed
009to fill now that we've had multi-year failed tax policies. As you know, the district has been deficit spending for several years purposefully to spend down our cash reserves because we've received a number of criticisms for a while about that issue. We've already started talking about what we need to do for potentially managing even mid-year budget cuts because that's become a little bit of a narrative in the last week or two. They've talked about cuts of 5.5% to 8.5%, 8.65%. For us, that would be several million dollars. I said million in the current fiscal year. So certainly there's a lot of things that we need to consider. The community support of the bond issue in May is actually a significant operational efficiency that could be gained. So hopefully people understand that by spending bond dollars and
010by spending capital outlay dollars or by spending bond dollars on capital improvements, we will save our capital outlay budget to be used for other things. And we'll also have efficiencies from a standpoint of from utility bills and things of that nature that could be general fund savings. So something that I'll be reporting back to the board on in the coming weeks as far as the finance issues go. At the request of, kind of on that same subject, at the request of K-12 Education Budget Committee Assistant Superintendent Jerry Kimball, Director of Virtual Programs Keith Wilson, and I will be in Topeka this week on Thursday to share information about our virtual school program and how that relates even to school finance. I want to thank the LEAD Center for partnering with Lawrence Schools Foundation on Ovation,
011the district-wide talent show that was last night. I wasn't able to attend, but I've heard some rave reviews about the amazing talent that our middle school and high school students displayed. The coolest thing, I think, as the fundraiser was the idea of a student. Lawrence High Junior Graham Edmonds developed the talent show as a capstone project and as part of an internship with the LEAD Center. So I think he has a great future. ahead of him for sure. I'd like to also publicly thank a One Dream Committee made up of school staff and community partners. Last Thursday's Martin Luther King Jr. celebration at South Middle School was a truly amazing event and very inspiring. Boys and Girls Club of Lawrence will host its annual Youth of the Year celebration Thursday night at 7 o'clock Liberty
012Hall. Congratulations and best of luck to those Free State and Lawrence High students who are the candidates for this year's honor. Tomorrow's board lunch, as I said before, at Sunflower has been postponed and be rescheduled. I'll be working with Janice on that too and kind of poll you guys on what kind of schedule you would prefer to see through the coming semester so that we can kind of see what works best for your schedules because that may not be Tuesdays. Thanks, Kyle. Okay, so next we have patron comments. I'm going to go ahead and read the audience participation guidelines on the back. And this now is also on the board website. You go to the board page under the agenda items. It's next to that. USD 497 Board of Education appreciates patrons taking time. to
013talk to us about policies and procedures. We set aside this time during every meeting to hear from the public. This is your time to share your opinions, but we ask that you avoid making comments of a personal nature about any district employee or student, including use of personal names. We also request that you remain civil when speaking and or listening. While you're not required to share your contact information, we ask that you sign the sheet in some manner using initials, random numbers, numbers or letters, et cetera, in order to be recognized. Your contact information, however, is helpful in order to follow up with any specific concerns you might have. In such cases, a board member, the superintendent, or another staff member may be in touch with you to refer your concerns to the appropriate administrator
014for investigation. At that time, we encourage you to share as many details relative to your specific concerns as you are willing to share. If several patrons have the same comments to make, we ask that you appoint one individual to state your collective comments. We also ask that you limit your comments to five minutes. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about policies and procedures with the board. Okay, so first person is Karen Allen. Good evening. My name is Karen Allen. I am the Youth Services Coordinator at the Lawrence Public Library. And I'm here with Kristen Soper, our Adults Event Coordinator, and Heather Kearns, our Marketing Coordinator, to share with you the books that we are asking the community to read together this February as part of Read Across Lawrence. Read Across Lawrence is an annual month-long
015event where we invite everyone in the community to get on the same page by reading the same book and come together at a variety of events to talk about it. This year, we are fortunate to be a recipient of the NEA's Big Read for Julia Alvarez's book, In the Time of Butterflies, for our adult selection. In the Time of Butterflies is a work of historical fiction based on the lives of the four Mirabel sisters who participated in underground efforts to topple Rafael Leonidas Trujillo's three-decade-long dictatorial regime in the Dominican Republic. Three of the sisters, Patria Minerva and Maria Teresa, were slain on Trujillo's orders on November 25, 1960. Their story haunted Alvarez, whose own family had fled the Dominican Republic just three months earlier in fear that her father participation in the resistance would make
016him a target of Trujillo. In partnership with the KU Center for Caribbean and Latin American Studies and KU libraries we have arranged to bring Ms. Alvarez to a public speaking event on Sunday March 5th at the Leeds Center. Other events and book discussions can be found in the brochures in your books. In order to make this a true community-wide event, we're also offering Latin American themed books for children and teens. We have partnered with teachers and librarians across the school district and have handed out approximately 2,000 books for use in classrooms. High school students are encouraged to read In the Time of Butterflies, but we also have picked a book by Alvarez for middle schoolers. Told through alternating perspectives, Return to Sender is a story of friendship and conflict between teens from two different worlds,
017their families and their communities. Tyler is the son of a Vermont dairy farm family in need of assistance in order to save their farm. Mari is the eldest daughter in a family of migrant workers who come to work for them. When Tyler learns that Mari's family is in the country illegally and that his parents knew this when they were hired, raises the first of many questions about right and wrong surrounding immigration. The reader must come to their own conclusions, though, as Return to Sender doesn't provide any easy answers. For our third through sixth graders, we continue our Latin American theme with Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer by Kelly Jones. Twelve-year-old Sophie Brown just moved with her family from LA to the run-down farm they inherited from their great-uncle. She misses her beloved abuela
018and writes to her often, though she is deceased. Everything seems pretty bleak and boring to Sophie until a grumpy chicken, Henrietta, appears. Not only does Henrietta scowl with the best of them, she can levitate objects. Soon more unique chickens appear and Sophie must learn to care for her small flock. She starts a correspondence course with Agnes of Redwood Farm Supply to learn how to tend her chickens and gets mysterious typewritten responses along with her lessons. But not only do the chickens need food and water, water they need to be protected from a crafty thief who wants these magical birds for himself will sophie be able to protect her unusual flock find out in this quirky story of farm life and friendship told through letters articles to-do lists and quizzes According to the NEA sites, studies
019show that reading for pleasure reduces stress, heightens empathy, improves students' test scores, slows the onset of dementia, and makes us more active and aware citizens. These are all great reasons to read for pleasure. We hope you enjoy each of these stories and the community conversations sparked by them as we read together this February. The public can pick up copies of the book at our kickoffs on February 4th at the library. And the adult book is also available on the Hoopla digital platform on our website. So you can just go there and download it and read it right away. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you. It's a great thing offering the community and our schools. Appreciate it. Next, we have Najari Shamari. Thank you for your time. I came on January 9th
020asking some questions, and I just wanted it to be noted on the record that I did receive an email on Friday, January 13th, asking me to reiterate my questions so that I could receive the information. I responded to the email on the 16th with the reiteration of my questions, but I haven't received an answer yet. Thank you very much. Thank you. And we can check to follow up on that. Okay. Now we have board commentary. A couple things. I just wanted to share a couple of things. One, I attended the KASB Advocacy Institute on Thursday and Friday, the 12th and 13th, so last week. or the week before last, I guess it was. And it was a really great event. We spent a morning of the first day. doing some information gathering learning Some really
021great presentations from KSB staff and then they took us to the Capitol on Thursday afternoon and gave us an opportunity to Provide information to our legislators. I actually had the opportunity to talk with all of our Douglas County legislators. I Didn't accept I didn't get to talk to representative Heiberger. I missed him as the day wore on, but had really great conversations with both Senator Francisco and Senator Holland and Representative Sloan and Ballard and Wilson. I think I'm forgetting somebody. In any event, KSB provided a lot of great district-specific information in the packets that I could provide to the legislators. I felt like it really facilitated some productive conversations. Then on Friday, they had some additional training sessions, had an opportunity to actually meet and talk with the senator who is the chair of the
022Senate Education Committee. It had some interesting... dialogue with her. One of the things that she did commit to, which I felt was very helpful. People at the session I was at including myself provided some feedback to her that last session the way that the committee chairs ran the committee's made it very difficult to provide meaningful feedback on policies because of the way that they did scheduling and Sharing of agendas and you know a lot of times we would hear something was on the agenda for a hearing that was happening the next day But oh by the way the deadline to get your stuff if you want written testimony is today at 4 o'clock and you need 25 copies Delivered to the Capitol and it just it made it impossible to be to provide meaningful testimony.
023She did commit to as much as possible to getting the agendas out a week ahead of time. And then she did encourage written testimony as her preference. She said it would be more helpful to the committee's work than getting emails because then the written testimony becomes part of their committee record. So I wanted to share that. I'll be trying to do that if there are items that come up that I feel I'm going to testify on or if we want to collectively testify on because it relates to one of our board positions. But if you're interested in getting on, there's an email list so you can see the agendas. I can share that information with you about how to do that. So anyway, just wanted to share that. It's always great to talk to our
024legislators. They're very supportive and understanding. I did emphasize with them the issue that Kyle mentioned about how we have done what the legislators have asked us to do in terms of spending down our reserves. and emphasize that what that means is that we really can't put off a new finance formula for another year or expect us to operate on the block grants for another year without it substantially impacting our operations at this point. And another interesting fact I wanted to share, some of the KASB information, they've put together aspiration states, states that do better on, there's about 15 measures that they look at. There's only nine states right now that are doing better collectively than Kansas on those nine measures. But we spend, I think, 38 in the country out of that same list. So
025they took those nine states and they averaged the difference between the base student state aid of those nine states versus Kansas. And on average, those nine states are spending $3,000 more per student on their base than we are. And I had not heard. I had not seen that information presented that way before. It was very, it was a bit startling that, you know, if we're continued to ask to do more and more and more and get better results and do more for our students, other places that are doing that are vastly outspending our state. So that says a couple things. It says that it's not realistic to... keep pushing us to do more and more and more with less money. It also says that, wow, what an amazing job our faculty and our staff do
026in our districts to support the students the way that we do given the financial circumstances that we've been in for so long. So anyway, that's all. Thank you. Thanks, Shannon. Any other board commentary? Yeah, I attended Ovation last night, and I just wanted to say that if you ever want to go somewhere and feel like... you're not that great, then you can go watch our students perform and do amazing things. And then, you know, it really humbles you to be like, oh, wow. Lots of impressive kids. And lots of really cool organizations in the community that are working with our kids. I didn't realize we had such an impressive circus school, like, in my neighborhood, actually. I've driven by it, but I didn't realize that they were helping kids to do such really amazing things.
027And yeah, like super talented kids and I thought that the fact that a student who's a current junior at Lawrence High School, Grant Edmonds, that that was his idea to sponsor it and it went really well and was well attended so I was very impressed. It's going to add on about evasion. It was inspiring, and it was really neat to see what great kids that have come through our system and have made our system better by sharing their talents. And I really think it's going to become bigger and bigger and bigger each year and help the foundation, so it's very exciting. I hope so, so I can feel more inadequate every year. Along those lines, there were a number of students that performed at the One Dream Celebration, and I did attend that last week.
028And same thing, just such impressive talents and makes you kind of feel humble in your not-so-great talents. I also wanted to make the offer. I'm hoping to go to the hearing that Kyle mentioned on Thursday about the virtual school if any other board members are interested in going and would like to ride with me. I'd be happy to drive. Thanks. Okay. Anybody else? Going once? I'm sorry. I want to apologize that you didn't get a response to your questions and ask that we follow up. And I recognize that we're kind of voting on the thing that you were hoping to get more data about. So if we could make sure that that happens. Okay. Next is the consent agenda. Consent agenda items are those that are considered routine and are adopted by one motion unless
029any board member or the superintendent requests that an item be removed. The item or items removed are voted on separately. I have a retirement to recognize. I'd like to recognize Roger Paschke, who is retiring after 21 years of service and devotion to our community and its schools. Thank you very much for your service. I have a motion. I will move that the Board of Education adopt the items listed on the consent agenda. Second. Second. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay, we'll move on to our first report, Special Education Program Review with Kevin Harrell, Executive Director of Student Services, and Laura Basham, Assistant Director of Special Education. All right, good evening. Again, my name is Laura Basham and I am Assistant Director of Special Education. We are here to go over our executive summary
030for a special education review process that we have undergone over the last year or so that we've been involved in this. Before we get started with the executive summary, I want to bring you back to why we're doing this. It started with our board goal looking at within student services enhancing the programming and the supports to meet the varied academic, social, emotional, behavioral needs of each student. And under that goal, we're looking to complete our external review for our special education department. And that's why we're here tonight, to share with you our executive summary. So we've got Deb Mayer here and Mike Hughes that are current or have been directors within the state of Kansas. And they are from the Center of Innovation and School Leadership. And they are going to take it over from
031here. There we go. All right. Well, good evening. Thank you for having us here. I am Deb Meyer, and you'll get to meet Mike here in just a moment. We're just going to share off and on a few slides and hopefully get through this pretty quickly so we can stand for your questions. The Center for Innovative School Leadership is led by our Executive Director, Bill Saylor, and he was a part of our review team and was here. in November when we were here speaking to superintendents cabinet central office staff members, elementary principals, middle school, high school, special ed teachers, general ed teachers, paras, parents. We heard from a lot of people as we interviewed here in November those two days. Bill can't be here tonight, and he really apologizes for that. Mike and I have
032been working with these reviews of... special ed for a number of years together I guess eight or nine so we're kind of old hats on this. Whenever KU last won the national championship. Yeah there you go. We were in Pittsburgh the day after that and I know that because I didn't stay up and see the end. We'll never live that down. Bill couldn't be here, so we're glad that we can be here and share with you a lot of really terrific findings. I know Kyle asked us the question, how many of these have we done? CISL, the center, has actually reviewed 75 school districts and just doing general reviews of all of their services and then broke off and started adding in just special ed cooperatives, interlocals, or a single district just to look at.
033at special ed so we've done eight of those reviews covering 49 school districts in the state so we've seen quite a few districts and we'll be by the end of this year looking at 64 school districts so we're really it's always a pleasure for us to really get to see what's going on across the state and see all the great things going on and we are really proud of a lot of things that are going on here so we're excited to share that with you and all of our team members are either special ed directors or retired special ed directors. I know my last gig, I was special ed director in the Shawnee Mission School District in Overland Park for about 15 years. I now work at the University of Kansas as associate director of
034academic achievement and access. So if students have special needs and go to college, I'm going to see them on that end. And Mike, you introduce yourself and what you do. Thank you. I'm Mike Hughes. I'm the director of the Special Education Cooperative Serving. eight districts that abuts Johnson County, but they won't let us in. And the sponsoring district is Paola. I've been a special ed director and am currently a special ed director for the last 31 years. So I've been at this in special education for close to 40. It's a pleasure to be here, although I think I'd rather be at the program you're describing. You know, I am. Wow. All right. Well, great. Well, we'll go through these really quickly. We have a couple slides. to show you again we looked at special ed
035services only we were looking at the whole organization and leadership of what's going on in special ed we looked at the types of services that you're delivering we looked at the human resource aspect the staffing patterns and that sort of thing so we'll just review some of those highlights of what we saw first in terms of highlights we We were really surprised to hear from people in surveys and as we were talking that they felt as though they needed a lot more staff training. When we heard from people on how high the quality was of services, we were a little surprised to hear people saying that they really needed more. But I think that's really pretty exciting when people are saying we need more information and we're excited to learn more. And so I know
036in our report we put a number of things that the district might want to do to add some training in place for the district. Another highlight. One of the things I found, I was really focused on the service delivery. We see a lot of districts, and we see a lot of districts that over-identify. They're identifying too many students for special ed instead of serving in a general ed setting. And Lawrence was right at the state average, and so I think that's something to be really proud of. That means you're not over-spending on special ed compared to some districts that do over-identify students. And I spent a lot of time digging into something that your superintendent and... your special administrative team. I know Kevin was really concerned and Kyle. Are we distributing our services across all
037groups of students equitably? And they really wanted us to dig into that. So I know I spent quite a bit of time just looking through your data pieces on that. uh... what's really commendable for you is and the federal government is also really interested in this question and they look at disproportionality uh... in a lot of debt in if your district was out of compliance that is you were disproportionate you work over identifying say a group of native american students or african-american students if you were determining that some of those groups of students perhaps were being disciplined more so than others, maybe at a rate of... Three times what you would be typically disciplining or identifying students of the majority population, you'd be found to be disproportionate, and you were not found to be disproportionate
038at all. There were a couple areas where you were discrepant. There might be higher numbers in some of those cases. That's not untypical. Students move in and out of districts. There are... pockets of students in different years where you see some real high numbers in one group in the next year you'll see lower numbers so overall looking at that i know that that was such concern of your superintendent and your special ed director i know in our big report i put maybe three-fourths of a page or a half a page of just suggestions of things to do to make sure you don't get to disproportionate levels and become out of compliance. Because I know that that would be a great concern to you as a board as well as others across your school district. So
039you do need to be commended that you're looking into it, even though it wasn't a compliance issue in any of your reports. So I think that that's terrific, too. Another highlight, we are aware that this school district has a lot of best practices in place. You're well respected. People look to Lawrence for leadership on what can we do across the state in this region and across the state and in other states. What are some of those good things that are going on? So I hope that you are really proud of the kinds of services that are going on. We were also really impressed that the special ed director is a part of the superintendent's cabinet. Oftentimes when we go out to these districts, that's one of the recommendations we make to make sure that special
040ed and general ed are one system and not separate systems. And as we talk to principals, as we talk to teachers, everybody feels that this is a very inclusive district and everybody's on the same page and we're all working together. So that was terrific. All right. I think this is going to be the last highlight I'll talk about, and then I'll turn it over to Mike. One of the things that we heard from some principals, we heard from some staff members, is a concern that we're seeing more and more students at a very young age coming into our schools with more emotional problems or emotional disturbance. We looked at your numbers, and you're not that discrepant from the rest of the state. So it's not that you're... over identifying in that group and you're not
041under identifying in that group there was a concern on what is it that we're doing for those students so we spent some time really looking at that and listening and we put some things in our report suggestions for administration to consider that they might begin wanting to do for that program and one of the things that i'd recommend is that you perhaps pilot some sort of rather than identify a student to remove them from a building and they go off to another building for the rest of their elementary career or be off in a special ed place for the rest of their schooling in Lawrence, that perhaps we try some piloting, some diagnostic placements for those first couple of years as we're trying to decide what's most appropriate for students. So that can be found
042in the report as well. All right, I'll turn this over to Mike. Did you see that button? Yeah, that one right there. It's that simple. It won't be for me. Again, I'm Mike Hughes. I focus primarily on the organization and leadership aspect of the district. And one of the findings was, and you can read the slide, the district reviewed a continuum of alternative services to maintain highly disruptive students. And what we found, and it came up repeatedly in the focus group, the 12 focus groups that... we talked about was there was a lot of concern about there are students in your classrooms in your buildings that have really highly challenging behaviors they have those behaviors and in an effort to i'm sorry to maintain them in what we believe and and we think your administrations
043were confident they believe is an appropriate educational setting requires a great deal of staff time Sometimes to the extent that the staff that are called upon to provide those services to meet those challenging behaviors really feel that they are not able to meet all the needs of the students to whom they're assigned. And that's obviously very problematic. Now, as I said earlier in my introduction, I'm the director of an eight-district cooperative. If we had a review like the CISL review in my cooperative, one of the most glaring issues would be identical. We've got these students. We're maintaining them to the best of our ability. But the cost of doing so is really having a negative effect, we feel. on certain other students that we are charged with providing appropriate educational opportunities to. And so it's
044a vexing problem, it's a vexing problem statewide. It's not unique, specific to Lawrence at all. It's everywhere. I don't think I've had a conversation with a fellow director this year where this didn't come up. And so what we say and what we go and what I'm sure your administration at all levels are committed is. A, make sure that your staff are aware of the continuum of services that are available to them. Deb and I have talked about this. Lawrence has a lot of resources to bring to bear. It's important that, A, teachers are fully aware of those, and, B, that administration at all levels makes every effort to make sure that those, every one stop on that continuum can be available to teachers in a timely manner. That's easier said than done. That's going to
045take some studies, some review of the intervention delivery model. But you have good resources. It's important that teachers know how to avail themselves of them early and often. And this problem isn't going to go away, but it is by no means at all specific to Lawrence Public Schools. It's everywhere. The survey results, this is a little different in that the surveys went out. This is not a reflection of our focus groups. This is just what different groups were surveyed and so this is what you're finding. As you can see, basically there's a high degree of confidence that the administrators believe that they have adequate information coming from special education. And also there's a high degree, 77%, keep the IEP process and meetings efficient. Those are good numbers. These are, you know, it's not always that,
046we don't always find that when we go out. We feel that, wow, special ed is efficient. That's good. That's something that you should be really proud of. Now this is something that is a little different. Administrators don't believe. that they provide adequate training for general education teachers and staff. And 58% of administrators feel they're recurring special ed issues that need to be resolved. That's a pretty significant number. And in talking with Kevin and other administrators here, I'm sure that's something they're going to be looking at. We don't know specifically what these recurring issues are. I will say that the training issue... again, is everywhere and it's been there every year. Training takes money both in time and resources and as Kyle was pointing out, we may have less of that rather than more as we
047go forward and that's been kind of the way it's been for a long time in Kansas now. So these are things that I'm sure that your administration, your special education administration, in conjunction with your general education administrators will be looking at. We don't have specifics because it was survey data. But I'm sure that's going to be the topic of groups that they will be conducting and probing and say, what are these issues? How do we address them? 68% of the teacher staff believe that they're appropriately communicated with. That's high. That's very, very good. Teachers believe the special education department supports a tiered intervention. Again, commendable. It's just another effort to make sure that kids are placed in the least restrictive environment as per federal law. And I think that's something that Lawrence has prided themselves
048on and has been respected and admired from close and afar for doing that. And this just says that you're doing a pretty good job of it. I will share a little aside on this. 25 years ago, I applied for the special education director's job in Lawrence. I didn't get it. But one of the issues, one of the foremost issues was we need more staff development. We all need more staff development. Again, it's hard to bring about. It's got to be focused. It takes money. It's money for substitutes. It takes money for presenters, money for materials, a lot of time. It'd be great if we had the freedom to do that, but this is a long-standing problem. We're always going to work on it. We're always going to try to provide the most focused training we
049can. It's never going to seem like it's enough when you're out there dealing with challenging behaviors. Can you move that for me? Okay. I like to wander around. And 39% of teachers in, I believe, the special education department provides adequate instructional materials. That, having said that, from a survey, that never was mentioned in any of the focus groups. So we really don't know anything about that. Again, that's probably something, 39%, that's a pretty good percentage, that probably your district administrators at all levels will be looking at and review and see if they feel that there really is a problem there. Here is one I like. 71% believe their child is receiving educational services that help them improve academically, by and large. And with the parents we talked to, it's pretty well a high degree of
050satisfaction with services they are receiving. And this is a shocker. 79% of the parents think the meetings are efficient. I'm not sure I'd find that high level of saying what you do is efficient at your meetings. But you're really committed on that. That's a good finding. And I think I'd be remiss in saying, and I think I can speak for Deb, that when we do these visits, I think we learn as much as we try to impart. The district, the things, the issues that we see are very, they're more similar than different, but they're all nuanced a little differently for that particular setting. And I think, speaking personally, I grow from that experience, see what other people are doing, and as in Lawrence, see what they're doing very well. Makes me a more aware administrator
051when I see problems people are saying makes me feel introspective and that's something I have I should look at too And also I've been able to share the information so it was it was a great visit It was tiring there was lots of lots of people to talk to but it was very productive for us and At that point we would be happy to address any questions you have at this point. Anybody question? So I guess it's maybe slightly surprising to me that 71% of parents believing that the services their child receives help them improve is a good thing. That seems like, I don't know, that's a low C. Is that, I mean, that compares like statewide to be that's a good number? Like I said, in the reviews that we've done so far, looking
052at about 49 school districts so far in the last seven or eight years, we've never seen numbers this high. And it's not uncommon that maybe a third of the parents there would be a complaint about something that's gone on with their child's IEP or something would happen. This high of a number of parents that are... satisfied and believe that their child is really improving and getting something from the program, I think this is an unusual number. I've said this many times, but sometimes what brings a child to special ed is there's a lot of unhappiness about their growth or lack of growth and a lot of concerns and worry. And they're maybe not in a happy place. And it appears as though students are going into your program and parents are finding some real relief
053and some successes. So that's a really high number. We were quite impressed with it. Other questions? I've got one on the equity piece real quick. So the compliance with federal guidelines, can you put that in a bigger, I don't know what that means. Is that good? Is it a high bar? Is it a low bar? Where does that set? And then that's the first question. And the second part of that is then the recommendations that you made with respect to that, I think you said something about it maintaining. You know, so that it didn't get any worse. Would those also help us improve, I guess, from where we are? Good. Okay, so two things. I think all special ed directors, I'll speak for myself, you guys can nod, but one of the bars we hold
054ourselves to is that there are some very high federal standards for special ed services to assure that we are in compliance. what I know I lived for every single day. And so being in compliance with all those indicators, are your students making progress in reading? Are they making progress in math? Are students being served in their home schools, in their general ed classroom? Are students being evaluated in a timely manner? Is your district over-identifying? Those kinds of questions that come from the feds. and are annually looked at through data reports, you can't ignore it. And to be in compliance with almost all of those indicators is really, I think it's a high bar in the fact that you had a good compliance report last year and you had the previous years, last few years as
055well. I think that that's really outstanding. Can we always get better? Absolutely. But you absolutely want to hit your indicators in your compliance report. So I think that if that answers your first question. I mean, I made a note here, too, because I have a follow up to that. I mean, I think the basic thing that I was thinking and I think you're thinking the same thing is so the federal. We know that as a nation, we have a problem with special education services being disproportionate for students of color. in addition to a lot of things, we want to take on that issue head on and we want to be a district where that's not true. And so the federal guidepost or the federal requirement isn't sufficient for us to judge ourselves on. If we're
056meeting that, that's alone not good enough. And so I guess, yeah, is that kind of where you're coming from? And what is our internal goal in terms of what we feel comfortable based upon the... beliefs and values we have as a school district in order to make sure we're doing the very best we can for our students. Gotcha. Okay. So in terms of that federal compliance report, disproportionality would be your district has failed at something. You really have an issue that you must resolve now. Unfortunately, I was in a district once that had that fail and they say to you, you cannot spend your federal money the way you want to. We're going to take it away or you'll spend it in this manner. So it's pretty serious if you hit that disproportionate level. You
057had some discrepant numbers. You're not happy with that. Your administration's not happy with that. And they do want to address that because you don't want to move to disproportionate and you do want to lower those discrepancies. And so I think that that is, I can hear what you're saying, that it would be a concern that that's, they would allow you to still be in compliance even though you have some discrepancies. I think they were just, at the federal level, that disproportionate level is, okay, you really have a problem that you need to address, and they didn't find that for you. So I don't know if that answered the question that you had. I think maybe it gets to your point. I think maybe it's not high enough for us. Okay. Well, you certainly can raise
058that bar and have it even higher. So I want to clarify a finding of disproportionality is if your rate of identification for a certain subgroup is... About three times higher than the majority group or the typical group, yes. Okay. Is there a definition of disparate or is that just... It's usually about... under three times. Right. The definition is under three times, but usually we say you're discrepant if you're different. If you are just a couple points different one way or the other, you'd be discrepant. So it's a very wide range from disproportionate. And then three times the average of what? Your state, the nation, your region, your... If you were... had a percentage of students that you were suspending and expelling, let's say the white population of students, the typical or the majority population, and
059you were suspending or expelling the Native American students at three times that rate, you would be disproportionate. So it's comparing groups. Internally? Yes. I do have another question. So in all of these numbers, when you're talking about special ed, for us it's special ed including gifted. Yes. Correct. Okay. And I'll clarify, at the federal level and in the compliance report, the disproportionality issue across the country is really around disability. So they don't look at your gifted numbers. That's only a state mandate. Very few states have a mandate for gifted like we do in Kansas. So they're only looking at that from a compliance report on disability. I think the only question I have within the next steps is that what Kevin you're going to. Well, thank you very much for letting us be here. If
060you have any other questions, we're happy to get info to your team. Pleasure being here. Thank you. Kevin Harrell, Executive Director of Student Services and Special Education. Our next step, as we looked at the final report, there are some concerns. We think we do some things well, but we know we have a lot of work to do. Some of the things we are aware of, some of the things were a surprise to us. And so when the next step is our... Our special ed team is going to meet to talk about internally. Also, we are in the process of setting up a parent advisory council. Many districts have them. Lawrence hasn't had one as long as I've been here. So we're going to create a parent advisory council, also a teacher leadership committee to kind
061of work through all the data. There's a lot of things that we know we need to work on. But we do believe that working with our teachers, with our parents, that we can solve some of these. And again, the training is something that we're aware of and trying to find different ways. And we're working with the district, general ed also, because professional development is something that's on our focus. Just to clarify, when you set up the Parent Advisory Council, the Teacher Leadership Committee, those groups would look at the data and recommend tactics and things you could do to start changing some of these numbers? Because some of the information is fairly clear. Some of the things, it may be communication. It's just we're not sure where everything is coming. We want more information on what
062that looks like and what steps will help our teachers, our parents. Do you have any sense for a timeline? I cannot tell you for sure as we're looking at the Parent Advisory Council. We started the process. I know that we'll have it running by next school year. I'm not sure how soon this school year. And with the teacher? We should have that started this school year. Okay. That's an easier process. Thank you. And then as far as disproportionality that you asked about, it's a pretty stringent, but I will tell you that the feds and the state, they're even making that tighter. So this next year we will have more information and something even more strict than it has been. We're not sure what that looks like. The state is working on it with the feds
063right now. So my question I think that kind of answers it but I mean I think it's important and great and we should be commended for staying in compliance with all of the federal requirements and I recognize that that's not a small feat sometimes so that's really good and I don't want to discount that but I do I do have a question about how internally as a district we go about setting more rigorous goals for ourselves and then measuring ourselves against those when it comes to because I know that that this issue has come up in the board goals several times and that it's a big piece of our equity work, kind of tackling that disproportionality. And so can you talk, will that kind of come out of the work groups and the? Some of
064that will, but a lot of that is in our practices, especially identification is, it's a process and some of the things we're required to look at in that process is equity and how looking at. different impacts. So even when we're looking at different assessments, we're required to look at how that assessment impacts different groups and what it means. And if we feel that it's an inappropriate assessment, we don't use it. So those teams are continually looking at that. I will tell you about... Seven or eight years ago, we were flack for disproportionality at the state level. And we sat down, looked at our data, looked at our district practices. Some of the things we ran into at that time, there was a lot of students that moved in into our ED programs. But still, our
065responsibility when those students move in with specific labels like ED, and it wasn't over-identification in special ed, it was over-identification in ED. emotional disabilities and we looked at that data but it's our responsibility when a student moves in to look at the data see what's needed and review whether that's an appropriate setting for that student or appropriate identification for that student so we continually look at that with our with our staff and our school psychologist This question is going to probably go all over the place because I'm not exactly sure what I'm asking even before I start. When we identify kids for gifted in particular, specifically, not emotional disturbances or anything else, but gifted students, and the differences between AP courses versus advanced courses. So you don't have to be in the gifted program to
066be in an advanced. algebra or whatever, right? So, and maybe this isn't a question for you, but in a question maybe for Angelique or somebody else, what exactly is it that we do now that encourages particularly students of color to take advanced courses, even whether they've been identified as gifted or not? So that our numbers, because you know, looking at numbers in some of our just enrollment numbers, they're low, right? This sort of... we should be having more students of color in some of these advanced courses. Where is that? How does that work? That's not gifted education, but it is a lot of our work. We do some of our AVID programs. It's pushing that. And just our conversations about race, it's making connections with the students. really giving them the opportunities and challenging them
067and helping them meet those expectations because some students if you don't have that connection with them they're not going to go out on a limb and try new things without support if they're not expected and then when you start to get into the institutionalized racism and the impact on students it's it's it's it's more than just saying hey you should take this there's a whole culture and i think as we as a district really start those conversations and teachers working with students i think that's what will improve those students chances of getting in those courses and support being successful. So at this point would you say that the way that's being handled is sort of teacher by teacher? relationship by relationship rather than sort of a policy that we want a certain percentage and let's
068let's do things that make that work yeah I would say it's it's it's relationships and relationships are teacher by teacher student by student I don't think you can policy putting students in there and into a course that doesn't support them that's not what they need stick them in a course without the support throughout the relationships without that I don't think That's how we practice. I don't think we can expect success that way. So I think there is two different questions you're asking there. In separating the gifted ed piece of it with the advanced placement with those courses. I think when we look at, let's see if I was to summarize all that. So this last week you got the equity audit data report. So our buildings look at that. Our district equity leadership team is
069looking at that and trying to look at it more closely across a multi-year period to see how we're growing. So it kind of goes back to a little bit about our board conversation before the meeting. If we're not satisfied with the fact that there's a discrepancy, period, then we have to identify, well, what should be our strategies and our goals to get to this and then to this, you know what I mean, to close that gap, to close the gap, because we don't want to be measured against just the national standard or the state standard for that. As we look at that information and that equity audit includes everything, you know, at SPED, whether it's disability or gifted or even student support plans as they're on their way maybe to being identified for a student
070with disability. That's where I think we can kind of set our benchmarks. and see, measure the growth and then measure where we want to be and then establish goals based on that. You asked a question about, that's probably a different report. If you wanna hear about what are we doing to, or even a written report, we talk about what are we doing in our high schools in particular to identify students or... get them into advanced programs because there's a lot of different things that they've been doing over the course of the last couple of years that our high school principals could articulate. But that's separate from this probably. Go ahead, Shannon. So one of the thoughts that I had as I was listening to the executive summary talking about over-identification is that Over the years
071that I've been on the board one of the areas that I frequently hear from parents about has to do with Gifted our gifted services and it seems to me that in that area over-identification wouldn't be a bad thing so so help me help me kind of think about that because I hear from lots of parents who think we're not doing enough for those for those high achieving kids and that that Yes, they're you know, we have kids on gifted IEPs and I and I do kind of understand the the distinction of can we meet their needs in a general ed classroom or do they need special services? But the thing that I keep struggling with in these conversations that I have is that there are kids who are not on gifted IEPs that probably need
072more than what they're getting in the general ed classroom. And so what do I say to those parents when I have those conversations? And how do I... how do I articulate to them that we're doing things to support those kids? And I guess this is probably even less of a clear question than Jessica's question. This is an area where I have struggled the entire time I've been on the board with. What what what we are doing in this area and so when they said you know we're not over identifying kids well that that's great news in terms of our Special ed because you know you don't want that but when it comes to gifted services And I think some of that discussion, as Deb alluded to, is that in some states, gifted and talented is
073a program. Right. And it is access to different things. Special education means that there is this deficit. The district is not able to meet the students' needs in the general ed curriculum. One of the things with some history in Lawrence is that in some activities, you weren't able to access without being gifted. Right. is services, it's not activities. So special ed services are a need because we cannot meet their needs in general education. And one of the things you think about the things that we offer in Lawrence as far as courses and activity courses, I'm sorry, not activity courses, access to KU, different things, students have access to being challenged and that's the goal. And I think that's where some of the things we struggle with because gifted is services, it's not a program and
074it's individualized. I think at some point if we'd like to come back and have a bigger discussion about gifted and what that looks like, that process, and we could do something like that for you. I think that would be helpful if other board members would find that helpful. Because it does continue to be an issue that comes up with parents. In fact, I had a conversation yesterday at a soccer game with someone that's this very thing. And the thing they were talking with me about is the practice that we have, and I understand why we do it, of sometimes pulling kids out. to get services with the gifted instructors along with some of the gifted students, but they're not identified and so it's a short-term thing. And that is something that, it's a recurrent issue.
075So I think I would like to talk. about that more if that's something that other board members are interested in. Well, and I wonder if that can somewhat be tied together, right? This notion of, you know, what are we doing to identify kids to suggest they take advanced courses or to ask them to take, like if I'm teaching X course and I say, you know, will you take my course because I think you're awesome and I know you'll do great, right? Which I'm sure some teachers are doing. And then you said there's other things that you're aware of. I think that'd be good. But I think it goes hand in hand with this notion of not necessarily am I identifying a gifted, quote unquote, because I think that's a loaded term, student, but a student
076that could deal with some sort of enrichment service or, you know, more, could handle more. And what, you know, what you're talking about is I think we do a good job or a better job at the high school level. making families aware of those things. And we have programs like AVID. The level I hear the complaints about most frequently is elementary school. Well, but also when it comes to students of color, it's kind of a pipeline, right? It's starting in the elementary school level. Are those kids being pulled out for those enrichment services where they're hanging out with the gifted kids doing extra stuff? And then maybe they're not getting identified down the road. You know, I don't know. I just think it all goes together. So maybe that could be one. comprehensive discussion with
077whatever the high school principals but also I think principals from elementary schools our staff will talk about the best way to deliver that I don't want to necessarily we'll talk about it yeah I mean because it's it is still clearly two different things you know gifted ed and then what we're talking about as far as enrichment opportunities for all students and really what we're talking about is educational opportunity period so Right. And on that note, I think the better we get as a district in delivering personalized learning opportunities for every student in every classroom, which is a goal we have and a direction we're moving, you don't need gifted services as much. or as compellingly because kids have the opportunity to every single day have enrichment at the level that they are regardless of what
078level they are at. And so I do think that that's another important thing that we should keep our eye on the prize for what is our goal? Is our goal to give everyone a little gold star that they can be like, look, I'm gifted? Or is our goal to make sure that every student gets enriching opportunities every day that they're at school? And depending on what the goal is, then you get your vision. And the purpose of my question is really more helping to educate me better so that I can communicate that message better to parents because it has been a recurrent question. Any other questions? Thanks, Kevin. Thanks. Next is the approval of high school course offerings for 2017-2018 with Terry McEwen, Director of Curriculum Instruction and Assessment, and Patrick Kelly, Director of Innovation
079Learning. Hello. How are you again? My name is Patrick Kelly. I'm the director of innovative learning and I'm back again to talk to you a little bit more about high school course offerings. Last two weeks ago we visited with you about some of the goals that you had and some responses our team had in looking at those goals and today Mostly this is about you taking a look at that proposed list and approving, but I was going to give you just a little bit of background about why we're here. One is three pieces of board policy. So IC means that you get to approve the educational program. IDA is any revisions to that program can be approved by the board and that then constitutes our district curriculum and then finally I at HF which means
080you can adopt graduation requirements exceeding the minimum set forth by state regulations seems pretty appropriate regarding your last conversation so that's why we come to you with this list each time our graduation requirements are published in our high school course guide and in our secondary school handbooks Quick timeline and some of these slides look very much the same because I just updated them from last time Tonight if you approve our course changes, we will make those changes in the course description book and enrollment begins early February It actually begins Thursday. We have our first middle school visits to the high school on Thursday when we'll stop talking to them So these timelines get super short Staffing allocations are then provided to principals in mid-February and enrollment ends prior to spring break. Principals will begin developing
081schedules based on staffing availability and student choices and we try to complete those schedules in mid-May so we can give them to students before they leave in case they need to make any changes. We talked about graduation requirements. The only change that we're asking for is shifting that civics course, and we talked about that last time. I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have those. We talked a little bit about our current traditional high school, and I gave you all each, and there's some in the back of members of the public, these new plans of study that we're trying to distribute. They are on our website now. Maybe I got a little bit ahead of you guys there, so I can take them down if you don't approve them. But one is for
082a traditional high school plan that a student could fill out, and it follows the exact schedule that you have up there. They'd be required to take civics just like normal. They'd have the same number of electives they've had all along. But we also looked at some personalized plans of study. You have nine different personalized plans of study, beautifully color-coded, I think, throughout. Thank you. And it gives representative careers. It tells a little bit about them. That actually can be in the course planner. So when the students pull up the course planner, they can click on a link that will take them to a page on our website and see that course plan. Parents can access on our website. And we actually have a student who's working on a little short video right now to sort
083of explain that in student-friendly language. We talked about last time why we want plans of study. Plans of study are good because partially the Kansas State Board of Education has announced an outcome towards them that having each student have those is really important. But more than that, it's so that students are able to find a path for what they, if we thought of it, I think, Rick, you said it really well, it's like a major and you can jump off a major at any time and it's about finding the guide and having a map. for where you're going with your educational plan. It should connect to your post-secondary goals and maybe eventually to your career goals. Not all of our kids go straight to post-secondary college. A lot of them go to a little work
084and a little college and then more work and then more college and back and forth and back and forth. So this helps guide how they'll do that each semester. Course offerings are determined by what's first in the guide that you approve and then what requests we have from high school students and what staffing we have to fill those. Courses may not be offered for lack of enrollment, available staffing, or facilities and equipment. Our principals have some tools that are at their discretion for meeting that need because usually we find a gap between what we want to offer and what we can offer. And that gap comes for a number of different reasons. It can be we don't have enough money to staff it. It can be that the facilities aren't appropriate for it. But those
085tools include we can increase the number of students in each classroom. That's one thing we can do. We cannot offer a course or a program because there are low numbers of requests. We can combine or nest courses. Or we can offer courses at one locations. And in your board memo, we talked about the drawbacks of each one of those. None of them are great opportunities, but in a case where we have continued reduced funding, it becomes harder and harder to meet all of those needs. So that's my report to you, and I'm here, and our principals are here, and Keith Wilson is here from the virtual school if you have any questions about what we've given you as a proposal. Any questions? Go ahead, Rick. Just a couple comments. First, this is gorgeous. Oh, good.
086I'm glad you like it. And the fact that our parents are going to be getting this or have access to this, I think is great. When you say parents, he means us again, right? Well, I'm trying to think more broadly. Well, sure. But it's still gorgeous. And a comment, I think you were interviewed by Channel 6, and you made the comment that... This just gives room in kids' schedules to kind of pick the courses that they're interested in. I think that's a really good way to frame it because I think, as I mentioned last time, I think there are some parents who see that, well, my kid's being forced into this pathway, but clearly that's not the case. So I think to the extent that that kind of sentiment can be communicated, I think it's
087going to be helpful. And the last comment I'll make is I think last time I asked you how well this was aligned with the eighth grade career and life planning, and I think the answer was not much. We continue to work on it a little bit. It's a timeline issue. You know, you have to approve them before we can get out there and share that with them. And so I think that's something that will improve over time. presentation we made two weeks ago to you was sort of our long-term vision of what and we want to take steps towards that as we go well and i just want to encourage you to do that because i think that there are going to be eighth graders who are going to you know haven't really been thinking
088about these particular nine plans and so the earlier you can get them thinking about that i think is going to be helpful so those are my only comments Admittedly, this is sort of a self-centered question, but how do you envision students that are currently in high school falling into this? Or do you not necessarily? No, we actually do. I mean, as we look at it and... If I speak wrong, principals, just throw something from back there. You know, it becomes a tool that we can use for students. Most of them, I did some sort of course enrollment analysis because it came up since our last meeting about what happens to our 10th graders, especially when they maybe didn't start this cycle. And surprisingly, we're going to see about a dozen kids. that we may have
089to have special occurrences because they took a class in ninth grade that's now not offered until 10th grade. And so they're sort of a little ahead of the schedule. I expected it to be a whole lot higher. And we have that happen sort of all the time is that we have a kid who either transfers in and has taken a course that we don't offer till later and we have to make those adjustments. I think for our principals, and I was just dealing with a student this afternoon, it gives us a tool to help a kid. work his schedule so that that he can take what he needs to take without it being too cumbersome and and so it's a tool that we'll use as we phase it in along the way does that make
090sense we're going to have to make some special accommodations for some kids just because we're trying we're getting something new in the pipeline but I don't think it's going to be the large number of students that I originally expected So they won't be left out. They'll just be sort of the guinea pigs. I hope not. I mean, I think I hope our teachers use these tools in that second level course, you know, so if they did take intro to business, finance, marketing and management and now they're in accounting, we can still use the plan of study for those students. I mean, that that really should be so that they know that, well, you have your choice of marketing or advanced accounting or personal finance or you're testing me here on my course titles. I think
091one of the questions that's come up in just the really small number of emails I've gotten about this particular issue has been, so what happens if you have a student who say in their first couple of years thinks, okay, I am all about... business, finance, marketing, and management. And they get through the intro course and then the next level course and decide, you know what, I actually think I want to be a lawyer. We've talked a little bit about how they go from pathway to pathway, but then in some of the materials in the board enclosure, it looked like some of those intro courses really were supposed to be designated for 9th and 10th graders. So what if you're an 11th grader who suddenly develops an interest in sports medicine or becoming a lawyer? Is
092that a place where we would make a special accommodation to let them go back and take an intro course as an elective that normally they wouldn't? Yeah, a little bit too. First, thank you for reading it so closely. And then, I mean, the reason to offer intro courses in ninth and tenth grade was very specific and was listening carefully to teachers. Sometimes we have twelfth graders who think, ooh, I'd like to try that, and sometimes we put them in the intro course, and there's some... developmental, you know, where they are in their life cycle between having a senior taking an intro course and a freshman taking an intro course. So one of the things we suggested to do is to compress that down to ninth and tenth grade. You don't have to take the intro
093course to take the technical level course. That's something. The only time there becomes a prerequisite is when you're thinking about taking the application level course. If you hadn't had taken anything technical so far, what skills will you use to apply? in the application level of course. You explained that last time, but having it laid out like this, kind of now I get what you were talking about in that regard. So that makes a lot more sense. And of course, if it's developmentally appropriate for the student to take the introductory course, our teachers can always say, that's okay, put them in that course. That would be the best place for them. So I know we're not eliminating civics, we're just eliminating the requirement, the course is still there and I see it's like on a number
094of these pathways as being an important thing. You'd mentioned before that it was somewhat duplicative in terms of what was covered and that that course is being looked at for kind of a complete overhaul. When is that overhaul planned for? Maybe this isn't a question for you but like what's that process going to look like? Well, we have a we have a curriculum review process that we would go through and a new course application that we would do I would think we would probably start on that next year and seeing We have to sort of see one of the things we just don't know or how many kids will choose to take civics Verse taking those intro courses. We just don't know And so that will tell us a lot more about how much room
095we have in our schedules to be able to do that. So, thanks Any other questions? We have a motion. I'm happy to make the motion. I move the Board of Education approve the USD 497 high school course offerings, including the graduation requirements beginning with the class of 2021 for the 2017-2018 school year. Second. Janice? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick. All right. Do we have a motion for adjournment? I move to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Meeting adjourned.