001We're going to move on to agenda item 5.1, which is our equity update, the 2024 annual graduation report. Dr. Swift, I believe you're going to lead this discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. I'm really pleased to be able to bring kind of on our new rhythm of equity reporting, taking opportunities to zero in on particular components of how we measure whether we're living our mission of equity. And nowhere is that more clearly seen than in that culminating piece of data, which is our graduation. I appreciate all the administrators who are joining this evening representing the work. that goes on in the district. My job is to open for them and I'm excited that they're going to be able to share great work with you. I think you know them, but they'll say their names
002as they come up, so we'll save that time there, but there they all are. Very proud of that group. I know you've probably all heard about Sonny and Gizmo, the big bear bald eaglets who have taken flight for the first time. This scenario is really about three eaglets and unfortunately one did not survive, but two of them did. They are now three months old and I think they have millions of followers on their cam. Everyone has eyes trained on when they might fly. The big bear... society that kind of watches over them and caretakes the area. I love the quote that they shared the other day. First of all, Sunny flew first in case you haven't been following them. And so then everyone was trained on gizmo. And the quote was, she will fly when
003she's ready. And so I just wanted to share with you, you have to see this to fully appreciate it. Here goes gizmo. And that's how it goes. Our eaglets take flight not after 12 to 14 weeks, but literally after 13 years with us in public schools. We feel like when we look at big batches of data that it's important for all of us to remember the faces and names behind those numbers. And so I asked, I had the opportunity over previous weeks to visit with members of the class of 2025. And tonight at a couple of points in this process, we'll share with you their voices and their experiences, because I feel like that's the best way for us to keep our eyes trained on the goal of having our eaglets ready to fly the
004nest. Here they are. made my high school experience so significant and I think what makes a lot of other high schoolers experience so profound is the fact that everyone finds something and then you're left with skills, passions, and potentially something that you want to spend the rest of your life doing. So I sort of think that that transcends, you know, just the high school experience. Your experience at Lawrence High School is defined by what you get involved in, not just through your classes but also through either sports or clubs that you join. Sports in particular is something that has changed my life especially coming out of COVID when I was almost depressed in a way very mentally fatigued and physically fatigued as well. Sports really helped me to dig myself out of that trench and
005really express myself again. I would say the 3C experience is very inclusive and full of community. Our Firebird spirit is very strong. It's really about finding whatever fits you in and really gives you the experience that you're looking for. Harvard was the one thing for me that I just took a shot on. You know, I joined it because I thought, why not? And it really gave me so many opportunities I didn't think I'd get. Honestly, it's taught me so much. It's helped me do so much. It's allowed me to do so much. It's amazing. Lawrence High School experience, there really are a whole bunch of different nooks and crannies to explore. a place where you can go to really discover your passion. I transitioned to LBS in eighth grade. And at the same time, I
006started pre-professional ballet training. Because I do ballet, again, I do it six days a week, four and a half hours, or even more a day. So all of my high school has been virtual as well as eighth grade. Overall, my experience with LVS was wonderful because it allowed that flexibility. But I think it just feels very rewarding, I would say. Knowing all of this is coming to an end, I guess. And those are the voices of the class of 2025. Their voices reveal our work and the data reveals our work. So as we work through the progression of the data this evening, I just want to share that I believe very deeply that the better we know our data and the better we listen to the voices of our students and families and staff, the
007more informed our work is on the ground. And so the administrators will be coming forward and sharing some of the work that they do on the ground. It doesn't happen by accident that students graduate in four years. They graduate in four years due to very focused and determined work. Rather than burying the lead, I'll just preview what you'll see this evening. And that is you'll see a couple of celebrations. One is that over time, actually over a 10-year period of time in the Lawrence Public Schools, the four-year on-time graduation rate, that trajectory has improved. What we'll see is a big upswing around COVID. And then we're now kind of hitting a new baseline, but it's at a higher level and we're very proud of that. Secondly, we celebrate. that four and five year graduation rates
008have increased over time among five student groups that have been traditionally underserved. So you'll see with African American, Hispanic, multiracial, students with disability, and students experiencing poverty, you'll see an overtime increase in that graduation rate. There are also concerns that inform our work. First is that while we have an overall positive increase in four-year on time, we witness that we have continued disparities. And those disparities fall across groups of students, African American, Native American, English learners, Hispanic. students with disabilities and students experiencing poverty as measured by their free and reduced lunch status. Out of those disparities, I just want to set out that there is a critical concern to areas where not only do we witness disparities, but we see those disparities widening over time. And I appreciate the conversations that we've been having around
009how this... very much informs our immediate next steps and we'll be talking about those next steps here in a few minutes. Those two areas where we see that disparity gap widening are among our Native American students and our English language learners. So obviously we are about the business of supports. And we know that our system is getting exactly the outcomes that our system is designed for. So if we want better or different outcomes, which we do, we are looking at redesigning and increasing the level of support so we get those better outcomes. With that... We know that our supports fall into a variety of buckets of concerns, concerns that present barriers or hurdles that may slow or take a student off track. for graduation. Not a surprise to members. You all have been around this
010work for a while, but we think of that bucket of social-emotional, mental health supports, engagement and motivation of students. We were talking the other day and talking about there are some students that maybe just don't have the desire. Well, then it's our job to help them connect to a passion or a desire. So we think about attendance, academic supports, about skills, but also about catch-up, keep-up on academics in terms of credit recovery or getting assignments in. And then Mark Pruitt, Principal Pruitt, will be sharing with you more about that diploma completion. program. We have a group of students who are enrolled right now to get their final few credits this summer. And those students who are not able to meet that mark Principal Pruitt will be talking to us about how we connect them over
011to diploma completion programming, specialized programming. So Principal McInerney is here to talk to us about that welcome, connection, and communication. So important. Yes, thank you, Dr. Swift, and thank you for letting us present tonight. I am Amy McInerney, principal at Free State High School, and the focus of our first slide up here is about welcoming, connecting, and communicating with students and families because we know that if students feel safe in our space, they will be much more successful and more likely to graduate. And leading up to graduation doesn't just happen in the high school level. It starts back in the pre-K, those little eaglets. like Dr. Swift was referring to, but it does take all of those years. But tonight we'll just be sharing some of the things that happen at the high school level.
012So the first thing up there on the slide talks about our Link Crew program, which you've probably heard about. That is our upperclassmen who lead the jumpstart day for all ninth graders. They do small groups after some chaos in the gym. They'll do small groups of tours. They'll answer questions and really just building that connection. That's kind of our ninth graders go-to is that one upperclassman throughout the year. We're trying some peer tutoring for math and science which again is another connection. Usually those are juniors or seniors who are going to tutor our freshmen and sophomores and again it's all about connection. Math and science is important but it is about connection as well. Our administrators, our counselors, and our social workers have alphabet meetings every week, and those meetings are to look at attendance,
013behavior, and academic data. If they need to touch base with families, they will, and students as well. We show the families that we care and that they've got a team that's behind them. The fourth bullet is... probably one of the most important I feel in the last five years that mental health support. We've got great social workers and counselors who help students overcome those barriers. Maybe they need clothing. We have clothing closets. We have hygiene products. We have places where they can shower and we've got also non-perishable food items as well. So we don't want any of those resources or lack of those resources to interfere with students participating or attending and being successful. One thing that we forgot to mention up there is that second chance breakfast that's been in place the last few
014years. That has been a huge success. Just give students another meal, whether they're on full pay or free and reduced. It does give them another meal in the mid-morning. And then last of all, ongoing communication with families. That happens all four years. Again, it's that team behind you trying to help you cross that finish line. So to be honest, the freshman... senior year in the spring we do a lot more communicating with those parents and families of students who are on the bubble because we want them to graduate receive that diploma very very important so that's that spring is really when we start to push heavily for them to be successful even though we've done it all four years it's now is now's the go time that is the end of my slide I think
015Mike is up next I'll turn it over to him All right, good evening. My name is Mike Gilman, Associate Principal at Lawrence High School. It's really nice to see you guys. Just like Amy had talked about, sometimes we often talk about the high schools and, you know, how comparison kind of deal, but really everything that she said is kind of reiterate what we do at Lawrence High. And then I just wanted to go over a few items that we kind of do here. But the main focus I really want you to understand is the student support team. That student support team is vital to what we do and our success in our high schools. From beginning till end, whenever we communicate with families, we introduce our counselors. We do our social workers, our RAP workers.
016Everybody is a part of this whole entire system and families are super supportive whenever we start reaching out to that. So we really highly encourage parents to always reach out to us. If we get caught in a situation where we're losing a little bit of credit, so we may have failed a class and so forth, we have an Odysseyware program we do for credit recovery. Our student support teams will come in and identify students at those weekly meetings to decide and kind of decipher what we need to do with our students to make sure they're on the right path to recover some of those credits they may have missed or they need to earn toward the end and to recover some of those credits to graduate. After school tutoring, we have the Chesty Academy at
017Lawrence High School. It's an opportunity for kiddos to go to a tutoring session. We have the University of Kansas students that come in at lunchtime and have different tutoring opportunities for them as well. So that works out really well for us. Students try to take advantage of that, but with that small window of lunchtime, we try to get them in and out as fast as we can, but also support them where we need to. Summer school, we're in the midst of summer school right now as it stands. We are doing extended summer for these students that... didn't quite pass their class, but almost. We have that opportunity for them in the summer to really kind of push ahead and try to get those credits earned as soon as possible. So we had a great amount
018of kids recently come in, pretty excited about getting their stuff done, and they know that's really important to their information. AuditSaware, like I said at first, also is an option for them to use. So a quiet time, come into our building, recover those credits during that time. So that's really, really cool to see. And then I'm going to pass it on to Mark here in just one second, but this is part of that student support team that we have these layers to help us to the next level. So if a student is not being supporting, you know, having that support that they really, really need, we try to find them more support. So we reach out to our academy, Lawrence Virtual School, C-TRAN, all these different options that we have. But we're in constant communication
019with all administrators across the district. I know sometimes Amy and I, we talk about students that transfer from us to them, and we have that conversation to make sure they stay supported at all times. I'll turn it over to Mark. So thank you so much. Hi, I'm Mark Prude. I'm the principal of the College and Career Academy, as well as the Adult Ed and Diploma Completion. So I want to share a little bit of a specialized program that just as part of the layers is the College and Career Academy is designed for students who they maybe just don't quite fit in at a big, large 6A high school. Students who tend to be more internalizers, they pack stuff in. A big high school, there's just too many people, too much noise, too much going on.
020The academy provides an opportunity to be in a smaller, quieter space. I talked to several graduates that were talked about the opportunity that being at the academy was the difference between them staying in school and graduating. We're just saying it's too much and dropping out. So we provide those different opportunities for students to find a niche, find a group, and connect with teachers, connect with each other, and finish school. Then another important part is the career tech ed pathways. While I'm at the College and Career Center, most of our pathways are actually located in our high schools. And then we have some that have specialized facilities like a large commercial kitchen or a large weld shop or an auto shop. But for a lot of students, finding that career connection through CTE pathway becomes their
021hook. to staying in school. They have a love of working on cars. They can put up with getting through their core classes because they want to go work on cars. I'm reminded of a student that I knew at Lawrence High that was kind of adrift and kind of bouncing around and frequently in trouble. Found his niche in a career pathway and has just torn it up academically to get stuff done. in his core classes, but is also connected to local businesses. So when he graduates, he will step into a high paying job. So it provides those opportunities as well. And then I want to talk a little bit about AVID. I know that you saw the student from Free State talk about being a part of AVID and the importance that it was for them.
022I want to talk a little bit about AVID school-wide. I was at Lawrence High when AVID launched, what, 10 plus years ago, and I've seen the importance not just of the students who are in the AVID elective, but the powerful and robust professional development when you have AVID school-wide. So it benefits not just the students who are in the program, but it benefits every student in the school. And so it provides those key academic soft skills. opportunities to see some hope and visit campuses and realize a dream while also building those relationships. I am going to turn it over now to Zach to talk a little bit about the LVS program. Hello, I'm Zach Harwood, principal at Lawrence Virtual School. Yeah, I'm just going to speak really quickly about some of the things we are
023specifically doing to support students at LVS. You know, basically all of our supports are built around the idea that a connected student is a successful one. To that end, kind of our tier one support is our homeroom model. Every student who comes to LVS has a teacher. If you're in the high school level, it'll be the same teacher for all four of their years that they meet with one-on-one at least once every other week. We have plenty of students who meet more frequently than that, but the idea is that that is their go-to person for not necessarily like curricular concerns, but help navigating a system or help with other problems. This year, with the addition of our Dean of Student Engagement position, we were able to start offering extended online support two times a week
024for two hours, as well as some in-person support that is currently here at the ESC where students are able to come in twice a week. for two hours just to have some of that structure that virtual school I think kind of naturally lacks. Another thing that we've been really or that I've been really excited about recently is figuring out how we can plug into other programs, other schools within the district. I think we have a lot to offer students. We've had some really, I think, some successful partnerships with Jenna and her students. And then in the future, looking at how do we plug in to the academy, both so that they can have some of the, you know, the classes, the offerings that we have that they maybe don't, as well as can some of
025our students, you know. get some of the structure and support that they have there. So I'm really excited to keep developing those partnerships to benefit every student district wide, not just the LVS community, but to provide new things to them as well. I think I'm gonna turn it over to Jenna. Good evening. My name is Jenna Viscomi and I'm the administrator at Community Connections at Pinckney. I'm going to talk a little bit about CTRAN and Project SEARCH. Some of our little eaglets require more than 13 years of learning and engagement and those are our students that we serve through CTRAN and Project SEARCH. So to ensure students with disabilities graduate and reach their positive post-secondary outcomes, we provide tailored support that addresses both functional academics and non-academic needs. This includes implementing individual education plans that
026set clear, achievable transition plans and goals. We support strong collaboration amongst our staff and families, ensuring consistent communication and early intervention when the challenges arise. Additionally, we have a strong and supportive school culture that promotes high expectations and celebrates diverse abilities, which empowers our students to stay engaged and reach their positive post-secondary outcomes. And we're going to share the video. Is that okay? Yeah. Right on. Project SEARCH is an international work experience program that was started in 1996 at Cincinnati Children's Hospital by Erin Riley and Susie Rakowski. This Project SEARCH partnership was created to not only intentionally represent diversity within the workplace, but to also empower businesses to take ownership in decreasing the employment and wage gap for people with disabilities. Hey, I admit it. Work helps my mental health. LMH Health is a community-owned
027hospital here in Lawrence, Kansas. It became a partner with Project SEARCH in 2011 when Project SEARCH was brought to Kansas and specifically to USD 497. My name is Jackson. At LMH Health Recycling, I did the sanitation route. I pushed a big cart and gathered cardboard, trash, and linens and put them into different chutes. At Lawrence Memorial Hospital EVS Services, I learned how to navigate the hospital by picking up trash and linens from all the floors. I put away supplies and did some deliveries for Shane. LMH helped Materials Management add pulled orders, put them into totes, and put the totes on the cart and deliver kits to the mother-baby unit. Check the oxygen machine to see if it's good or not. On 2 North, I learned how to do lemon for the patients and I also
028stock supplies. At LMH 2 North, I stock the lemons for the patient rooms. The University of Kansas is an amazing place to explore jobs, learn specific vocational skills, and have new and exciting social opportunities. At Monarch Watch I watered plants, butterflies, and caterpillars, packaged kits and information, cleaned and cleaned cages. I like taking care of the creatures and doing the ritual-like tasks. At South Dining, I was able to explore as many opportunities as I could, a lot more than most places offered me. Serve food, learn stocking, make sandwiches, cook in kitchen settings, the list could go on. As you can imagine, it's a lot, and I've never been more thankful. KU Rec Center, I did dry mopping, recycling, vacuuming, and laundry. I rode the KU bus independently from the classroom to the Rec Center. My
029favorite part of age back is filters and working on a probe. I also like it because it's a career I can be proud of. Several of you were in attendance at the Project SEARCH graduation and a good portion of the KU cafeteria team was there and partners. their food and nutrition team were out to support their interns. It's not that they make space for our folks, our students, it's that they welcome and celebrate them. at a level that is just beyond and it's so wonderful because of the opportunities that our students have as a result. Principal Pruitt, were you going to, we have this bridge, you'll see five year data and four year data, so this bridge to diploma completion, we wanna touch on that. So as Dr. Swift talked about our Eaglet earlier that
030she'll fly when she's ready to fly, not all of our students are ready to fly in four years. And so when I look at the efforts that teachers put in, administrators, counselors, all of these supports, social workers. wrapping their arms around students, some are just not ready to get it done in that four-year or even that five-year program. So I am really excited that Lawrence Public Schools offers opportunities for people to slide back in when they are ready and find that success. If you'll notice, some of those graduates that were celebrated that Thursday the 29th. Some of them graduated with their class in a different way. Some graduated a year or two. Some graduated 20 or 30 years past their graduation date. But we had an avenue for them to come back and achieve that
031goal. So the Lawrence Diploma Completion Program, we kind of have two. Two ways for students to get that done. The diploma completion is for a student to come in and they knock out credits using Odysseyware and it's class by class. We can provide credit for work done. We find ways to help them bridge. what they need to get done so that they can graduate. We kind of have two programs. High school age students are required to attend 20 hours a week because we know having them in a seat getting stuff done, they'll be more productive. I think of a student who kind of floundered through high school. Social aspects were way too distracting. Ended up moving into diploma completion the spring semester and got more credits done in diploma completion in two months than he
032had the previous three years. So it provides a really distilled way to get that work done and move forward. For students who are fifth year seniors and above, they have the option to work at home, but they come in to take tests. because we know there's lots of ways to answer questions on an online format. So our kind of our quality control is can they pass the test and they do that in person. That allows flexibility for people who are working to work around their job schedules. so the the balance between being able to work and focus and The ability to do your schoolwork allows people to be successful Then our adult ed program is the the GED program that runs sort of separately, but again, we are one of three public schools in Kansas
033that offers a GED program. It also offers English language acquisition, so ELL support, basic education, so maybe you already have your diploma, but you need to boost your reading or math to move into a higher paying job. That provides those opportunities as well. Thank you. Thanks. So these strategies are all the work that go into achieving the data that you're about to see. And I just want to thank our administrators for taking time on a June evening to share out of the work that you do. And here are the outcomes of that work. Mr. Polk is here to share those with us. Hi, I am James Polk. I am the Director of Data and Assessment for the School District. Happy to be with you tonight. As Dr. Swift alluded to at the beginning of the
034presentation, we are seeing this upward trajectory. And so on this slide, you're looking at a six-year trend data. And over these six years since 2019, we've increased our graduation rate 4.5%. As we look at a longer scope going back to 2015, you can see that increase from 2019 to 2024. But you can also see that over that 10-year period. A couple things to note when you look at this data, COVID accommodations in 2020 through 2023, the state requires 21 credits for graduates to obtain their degree. We require 23 as a district currently. And so during those COVID years, we went back to the state requirements of 21. We also want to note the success of the academy programming opening the fall of 20. 2020. Those are for students that might be more successful in a
035non-traditional academic setting and so we can see the results of a program like that opening across our district. We talked a little bit about four-year on-time graduation and we also have five-year cohort data. In the state of Kansas we track both. So five-year cohort data represents students who have completed graduation during that one additional year. Overall our five-year cohort data is higher than our four-year cohort data and we've seen that 3.8 percent increase since 2019 and that's demonstrated visually here on this slide you can see that 3.8 percent increase A couple things that we need to know about graduation rate in order to interpret the data. Graduation rate is a nationally used formula. It's the percentage of freshmen who graduate within four years, and this includes a state-defined alternate diploma for students with significant cognitive
036disabilities. We also want to recognize that graduation rate includes four-year on-time graduates, even if they go into the summer of their senior year. In general, students count towards our graduation rate if we are the last public district in the state of Kansas that they've enrolled with. So if they leave us after their sophomore year and go to another district in the state of Kansas, they'll fall on their graduation rate. Or if they come to us after their junior year, they fall on our graduation rate. And we also want to highlight that students who qualify for C-TRAN and Project SEARCH do count to that overall graduation rate. Again, this slide is from last January's board presentation on graduation requirements. You can see on the left the state requires 21 credits. We currently require an additional two
037units of electives, and so that's where we get that 23 credits for our students to graduate on time. On this slide, you're going to see graduation percentage by rate and ethnicity. Some celebrations since 2019, we've seen those increases in Hispanic and our white populations and a large increase, almost 8% in our multiracial populations. However, we also want to acknowledge the areas of concern, as Dr. Swift stated. We have seen in that six-year period a decrease in graduation rate in our African-American and Native American populations. I want to point out when you look at this slide, you're going to notice that the large numbers in the column represent the graduation rate of those groups of students. The number underneath is the total number of students in that group. So an example would be African-American students in
0382024 had a graduation rate of 84.7%, and that is out of a total of 59 students. The reason we want to highlight that is because Every student counts in Lawrence Public Schools. And when we look at every student counting, we see in 2023 and 2024 a 12.5% decrease in our Native American graduation rate from 87.8% to 74.2%. That's a difference of three students. If we had three more Native students that we were able to support and prop up and get to that graduation, we would have been able to maintain that 87.8%. We also want to highlight our other student groups. We know that we have English learners in our district. Over the six-year period that we're focused on this evening, we've seen a 12% decrease in this six-year period. However, we've also seen a large
039increase in our free and reduced price lunch population of 9%, as well as an 18.7% increase for our students with disabilities and their graduation rate. That's depicted on the next slide a little bit more visually. And you can see over this period we've seen increases in those two student groups we discussed. We've also seen that negative trend line of our ELL students. Our 2024 ELL students represented 53 total students. If we had gotten six more students across that line and provided those supports for them, we wouldn't have seen that drop from 88.5% to 77.4%. We would have been able to maintain that graduation rate. May I ask a clarifying question? Yeah, go ahead. With the ELL students and graduation rate, do you count them as ELL students if they ever received ELL services or if
040they are currently still within the ELL program at the time of graduation? The way that we report it to the state is if they are currently classified as an ELL student. Okay, thank you. On this slide, We wanted to position the data so you could see the degree of disparity. We want to highlight the celebrations where we see where we have upward trajectory in these student groups, where we've narrowed that achievement gap. But we also want to highlight the gaps that are not trending in the right direction, the gaps that are widening. And that is specifically with our Native American population and our English learners looking at... that disparity gap of 13.1% and 10%. As we look at our own graduation rate, it's also important to zoom out. and take a look at what's happening
041around us. On this slide, you'll notice our four-year on-time graduation rate related to the state and how we compare. Since 2019, we've reduced the difference between the state graduation rate and our district graduation rate by more than half, from 4.7% to 2.2%. That's a huge celebration, but we also need to acknowledge that our goal is to be better than the state of Kansas graduation rate and to exceed that 89.5% that they accomplished in 2024. Zooming even further out, we want to look at the nation's graduation rate. Something to note on this slide, you'll notice the data is from 21-22. That's the last national graduation rate data that we have access to according to the National Center for Education Statistics. So please keep in mind this is not the 24 data, this is 21-22, but you'll
042see the U.S. graduation rate that year was around 87%. The state of Kansas was 89.3%, and this is that year we saw that uptick that Dr. Swift talked about, and we achieved an 89.6% graduation rate. We've since seen kind of more of our baseline data, around 87%, but in this year, we can see how we compare it to not only the state, but also the nation. So we know that this data informs our work, and members of the board, we have all our eyes open. We understand the assignment. And that is that the work we do make the difference between not having a graduation and having the life choices that high school graduation brings for all our students. Those inspiring stories, and I just want to give a shout out to Andrew who... put together
043that video. Julie actually shot some of the video and there's much more of that on our podcast. If you enjoy hearing the voices of students, I urge you to take a few minutes while you're on a drive or on the treadmill just to listen to their voices. We understand the assignment and that is to overcome the obstacles and barriers that get in the way of an on-time. graduation for every child. Our goal is 100%. So as we look at the next steps, we know that our counselors and administrators, the other day I reached out through our principals, was able to understand exactly how many of our students who did not meet the mark just now in May that are currently enrolled in summer school. And a subset of that group, how many of those are
044attending their summer school classes and how many of those are not attending their summer school classes. And so here, as we move through the summer, we'll be closing that bridge. If you'll go to next steps, please. You're there, okay. Very good. We'll be closing that bridge to really get those students into that fifth year because we know every day that passes is a day that they may lose hope, move out of town, do whatever the next step is, and we want to be sure to get them to graduation our best. chance of that. Mark talked about some do it quickly, some do it in a couple years, some do it later in life. We right now are focused on getting our 2025 grads to do it ASAP because we know that's our best way to
045get them to achieve that goal. We will be continuing, as you would expect, with our incoming 10th, 11th, and 12th graders this fall. to monitor closely where the credits are dropping and how to get those made up as we go. That's the work this team does every day. I do want to share that we've targeted some additional FTE and we're working with our partners at NASS and our partners across all the high school campuses. Some of the stories that we heard Member Byers helped us at the equity advisory. We heard some stories there of students who are members of Native American tribes who... The stories are heartbreaking and we know that we need more direct support to just make sure that that relationship is strong and that we have the supports in place. We will
046also similarly refine our immediate action plan around English language learners. So both of those action plans with Native American students and with our EL learners. will be refined and strengthened and members will continue to update you on the steps that we're putting in. But I wanted to share this evening and the board has called on me in the past to consider the additional support. And I just want to share that we're taking that step. So I just appreciate your patience. We've gone on much longer than usual. Following this next slide is a bunch more info that is pertinent, but we just had to cut it off somewhere. So we'll wrap up at this time, and the team is available for questions or discussion. Thank you. Okay. I have a question, so I'm going to open
047it up to the board first and start with GR this time and back. Okay. Shannon? I have a couple questions. Okay. So going back to Mrs. McInerney's part of the presentation, talking about the importance of mental health supports and engagement and relationships for students, I have heard some concern in the community already about... the difficulties that Burt Nash is facing with their own budget and support for their services and wondering if there's any information for the district to share about our ongoing commitment around supporting student mental health in light of some of those concerns that have been expressed. Yes. Thank you for that question. We are still processing exactly what it all means. This board and our team are deeply committed to providing the mental health supports that our students need. We all know that,
048and yet we are working through the details of where those cuts will impact and how to minimize the impact of those reductions. Principal McInerney, if you know more than we do on the ground. No, I don't have any new information. I can tell you at Free State, though, one of our Burt Nash workers left us mid-year and has not been replaced at this point. So we just are down to one. And she is very, very busy. So it would be excellent if we had two back. Also, as a parent of a Free State student, I just want to share that I appreciate the level of communication I receive from the parent perspective. I am hopeful that the new communication tools that we are rolling out for the district helps you. help families have more even
049more easy access to that really important information that you share. So I just wanted to comment on that. And then the final question I had was just when you know what the timeline will be for further updates on efforts around the initiatives that we're looking at to support our students who need support. just an update to the board on the timeline for follow-up on that would be helpful. Thank you. From a process perspective, those updates are first now going to the Equity Council committee for their input and feedback before they come to the board, correct, to those of you that are on that committee? Is that correct? Yes. Yes. Okay. To the extent that that's possible. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Carol? Yes. Can you please turn it to slide 22, if that's possible? Yeah, that's the
050one. 22. Disparities and rates. Disparities. Thank you. It is, yeah. That's it. Nope. There you go. There it is. There it is. Thank you. Thank you. Unfortunately, this does shine a light on the inequities that our students of color face, especially our Native American students. And this does provide a framework of where we are, what we need to do, and what can be done. But based on the framework that we're seeing, I'm glad that we're here to acknowledge this. But I would also like to ask or inquire. What is being taught about Native Americans at number one engagement and when we were talking about our littles and what I want I would like to know what's being taught to engage our students because we just finished a no more stones stolen sisters campaign and This
051right here is where we go missing. It's the omission is where we are missing and I think that's we need to start here Thank you So what might that look like, Carol, for us to start to see? Okay, number one, I would like to see or hear from our students who are learning the actual... boarding school history, beginning with the U.S. policies of forced removal of our children, and when it's Orange Shirt Day, when our children wear the orange shirts to acknowledge Orange Shirt Day, it shouldn't be an explanation, especially from some of our admin. They've asked in a wholehearted, nice manner, they've asked, what is that? Can you please explain it to me? And so I don't mind explaining, but it shouldn't have to be something where I have to explain every time on
052Orange Shirt Day when it's boarding school history day. So making sure that we're being more concrete about where's the inclusion of indigenous history. Right, beyond land acknowledgement and red shirt Friday or whatever it is, and just beyond going out and performing in a gym. I would like to hear more stories about people like Billy Mills or just, again, boarding school history or maybe perhaps baby steps to learn some of our indigenous languages in schools. Thank you. Thank you Okay, I saw I have a couple of questions so I appreciated seeing the data and I think this is coming at a different time but I'd like to understand the I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHERE THERE ARE SUCCESSES IN PLACES LIKE THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS TAKING ADVANCED CLASSES OR BLUEPRINT CLASSES IN TERMS OF REPRESENTATION. WE
053USE TO SEE THAT DATA. NOT ONLY WHERE ARE WE SEEING GRADUATION RATES AS A METRIC OF SUCCESS, BUT WHERE ARE WE SEEING opportunities for our students and their inclusion in our not only just advanced classes but also in other academic and extracurricular activities. And so because I do think when you talked about the importance, Principal Pruitt talked about the importance, I think it was Principal Pruitt talked about the importance of connecting to a For example, you made the connection of working on cars as an example, but the connection to things outside of academia or other... draws for a student and those are often some of our extracurricular activities. So that is something I'm wondering about that's missing from this particular presentation. It just probably wasn't a good fit, but I would like to see it
054in a future presentation. And then I wanted to talk a bit about the 21 credit. I just want to understand that a little bit more. So when you look at the four-year graduation rates on slide 22, or you can go to slide 20, and you mentioned in passing that when we increased the 23 credits to graduate, but that hasn't gone into effect. The 23 is in effect currently. So for this year, it's the first year, though, that we would see. We wouldn't have seen it in the data here is what I'm saying. Do we see it in the 25? You would have seen it in 2024. Okay. So do we know what the relationship is between the graduation rate and the reduction of credit hours? Do we know? We discussed that in our meeting with
055one of you want to share that. they're sharing with us is that typically it's not that a student would be at 21 and not at 23. Go ahead, guys. You shared in our meeting Thursday afternoon that for the most part, students either have the 23 or they're farther short. And I can be really a bit more specific. There was a suggestion that... principals would have the opportunity to provide students a path toward graduation or diploma at 21 credits if they hadn't met the 23. And I'm just wondering, was that extended to any students or are there any students that... you know, might have been accounted for that are not in terms of graduating. That's exactly what we discussed is how often are we using that tool. Certainly it's at the administrator, the team, the parent,
056the students work together, but generally how often are we doing that? Because most students will finish with seven courses over four years. They have an opportunity to get 28, so 23. is not a huge challenge. What we're dealing with often is not that they're at 21, 22 and close. Often they're at 16, 17, 12 or 13. So it's finding those avenues to connect them to get caught up. So what I'm here, so what I guess what I want to understand is that if a student could graduate at 21, you made... you made the pathway for them to do that and folks are nodding their heads. The students, the administrators have the ability to make that consideration. Thank you so much for that. And then I'm wondering, since you're here, Principal Pruitt, is there a wait
057list for the academy? Pardon? Is there a wait list for the academy? We did not accept everybody because sometimes people aren't a good fit. I'm not aware that we said, oh, we're full, so we can't take anybody else. Thank you. All right. And then can I, sorry, you know, can I go ahead? Okay. They have a lot of patience for me, so hopefully you do as well. The question regarding early childhood education tracking. So we're expanding our early childhood education opportunities. And I'm wondering about... This is probably a leap because it's longitudinal data, but if we could begin to track just at a district level, certainly we know what that trend looks like from national data and state data, but what kind of impact that's having on student success. And one space might be graduation
058rate because that's what we're looking for today, but it sparked in me an interest of knowing what kind of growth we see for students as it relates to our equity work. who are engaged in our early childhood education programming. And I would be interested, and would other board members be? Because we will be investing more resources in that early childhood education is sort of why I'm asking. OK, great. This is it. Last one. Shannon asked this question about the distinction between the English language learners being counted in graduation rates as those that would qualify right now. But what I would be interested in knowing about in terms of thinking about equity is again for those students who have qualified at any point is there something that we know about them that might be important for
059the board to understand in terms of resource allocation or how we can better support from the board table the success of our students who are English language learners and who in some cases might also be accounted for within the Hispanic outcomes that we're seeing in terms of the graduation rates. And other groups as well. Okay, those are my asks. Other questions from board members? I don't have a question, but just to remind you that in February, we voted in starting with the class that graduates in 2028. We will require 24 hour, 24 credits. Yeah. Thank you, Ann. Okay. One question. Yeah We're trying to maintain on track with the four-year on-time graduation, correct? So when principal pure mentioned every minute some kids come to the Academy with 14 15 credits Doing credit recovery when are
060we reaching out to the students? That will we see that they're not going to make that for a year without some intervention. Are we reaching out? at the beginning of 10th grade year and working to get them there through senior year? Or are we waiting until they are literally in 12th grade and now they're struggling to, and they have to go to summer school? So before we reach the extended time in summer school, are we catching them and trying to get them there so that they don't have to do the extended classes? I know that counselors have multiple meetings with students, so there are multiple touch points. So counselors will meet with all of the sophomores. They'll talk about course selections. They'll talk about kind of where their credits are, the trajectory to graduation. They
061do that all four years. In addition to that, those SST teams, as they meet and start calling in students, that are maybe way behind. So students will start on credit recovery sometimes as soon as their freshman year second semester. You know, for an English class, since you need four, we're trying to get those students caught up from day one. to continue on so that it's not something that waits till April, May of their senior year and surprise, hey, you're not gonna graduate. Those conversations have happened multiple times over four years and students have had multiple opportunities to do summer school and credit recovery and different ways to make those credits back. Thank you principal prude and I would just add that I thought I heard from you all That that can even be through an
062academic support class that they can do some of that right during their school day As a tenth grader they can go ahead and get that credit Okay, hearing that My question then is do you have any ideas as to what we're missing? Because if we're sitting here talking about students who we've been working with since freshman year and we come to our senior year and they're in the same boat, my question then becomes what are we missing? Do you have any suggestions or ideas as to what? Going on that's a great question as a public educator for 22 years. It's the one question that I ask often is All the supports that we put in place I mean, we just gave you a few snapshots of it, but Amy and I could spend the rest
063of the evening telling you all the supports we have in place. And it becomes that missing part of what are we missing in this part. And it's heartbreaking when we have those conversations in our offices with just kind of a give-up mentality, but we remind them there's an extra step we could do. We can do this and we can do this. So those are the things that we try to really navigate as much as we can with the parents in full constant. talking with all the time, having constant communication with the families and the kiddos. Yeah, still ends up at the same point. Obviously we're missing something. And I say that because what I look at is we have the disparities we have. Absolutely. So somewhere something is not being hit and I'm more of
064the let's figure that out. I applaud the work that we do. I think we do an excellent job. I'm not criticizing the job. But what I am searching for, or would want us to search for, is we're obviously missing a point. And I don't know what it is either. And we absolutely agree and that's the substance of our working conversation. I got some clue when I heard the speakers at the adult ed graduation and I went back and got to speak with this group again about what I heard is the commonality in those stories was a separation or an isolation. And at some point, And so that connection, and that's why we're talking about an additional FTE that might go to the home, find out where the child is, you know, because I believe as
065long as they're in school, you all are doing all the things we've talked about. But at the point of separation, there is a vulnerability to lose. contact with that child. Amy, you were going to add? And related to that would be attendance. If a child is in school, we can get them through, but we've had probably a decrease in attendance rates since COVID. our teachers will tell you that that makes all the difference in the world in their classrooms as attendance. So if we had a silver bullet for attendance, I think that would make a huge difference. Thank you. Additional questions? Okay. Can you share to Shannon's question when the next update will be? on the equity series. The next one that's coming is attendance. I'd love to speak with you all, board leadership, as
066to how to schedule that. We are waiting on that data to be audited, so there's some natural, it will probably be more September, but I need to confirm some details on that. And as you go forward, and I know this is probably about... very similar to what you've done in the past, but just wanting to say for clarity that as you dig into this as a team and you're working collectively, as you find there are things you need from the board, that would come back through the equity counselor, through you to the board, and as quickly as we can take action, we would want to do that. Thank you so much. We also had the students, the enrollment in advanced and rigorous coursework, as well as extracurricular activities, we have that as a report. It's
067one that will take a lot more intensive data accumulation. So, but that is on our list because I think it's very important. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you all for coming tonight. We really appreciate your work. Thank you.