State Board of Education, December 11, 2025

001Well, Please stand for the mountain. Thank you for person. Howdy. on Saturday. >> Yeah, I am. >> I got promoted. >> Good morning. >> How are you? >> Feel like I was supposed to have a laugh at all. >> Usually I have custom order today. >> I guess so. >> It's funny. >> I guess I got it. Hard copy here. I'm still >> Me too. Me too. >> Here we go. All right. This is the day. That was good. All right, we will go ahead and call the December 11th, 2025 State Board of Education meeting to order. It is 9:01. Would you please join me in a moment of silence before we get started today? Thank you. All right. Please stand and join the pledge of allegiance. >> I aliance to the flag of the

002United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> So, we have a real treat today. We're going to do the national anthem and we have the choir from after after us to a couple Oh, [singing] can you see by the dawn early >> [singing and music] >> What proud we held [singing] at the twilight stripes [singing] and bright stars [singing] [music] we [singing] were so gallently [singing] streaming. And the rockets [singing] gave proof [music] through the [singing] night that our flag was still [music] there. Oh, say [singing] does that star spangled [music] yet [music] for the land of the [singing] free and [singing] the brave of the brave. >> [music] [applause] >> Sorry. All right. Cheers. Sweet silverware. [singing] singer [singing]

003merry merry merry Christmas [singing] merry Christmas [singing] Christmas [singing] merry Christmas merry Christmas. [singing and music] >> [applause] [applause] >> I was following the [singing] following. I [music] was following [singing] the eye. Was following the swing [singing] around to keep their little heads falling in the snow. And I [singing] turn [music] [singing] [music] I [singing] was following the packs of red [singing] [singing and music] and the white Red [singing] strawber. I [music and singing] was following the packatars [singing and music] from falling in [singing] the snow [music] and there you and Michael. [singing] [applause] Would you share about your choir? >> Sure. >> So that people >> So uh we are from Is it okay if I like bring it up? Sorry. We are from P Ridge, Arkansas, which is um in it's close to

004Bentonville, so northwest Arkansas. Uh this is our chamber choir. So these are all students who are 10th through 12th grade. Um and then we have our young lady here who is signing. So she is in ninth grade actually who's doing sign language for us. Um these students uh meet outside of school. So this is um my like top audition group. They do everything outside of school outside of class time. Um most of these students are like all state musicians. Um just very bright individuals. They work really hard. They're really wonderful humans. They make me um they make me have hope for our future that these are going to be like some of our people going out into the world and doing great things. So um we appreciate you guys having us here today. We had

005a lot of fun. >> Okay. So we're going to take a picture. We'll probably just stand up behind you and then we want to come down and meet you. >> And if if I can also say before we go down there, one, thank you for coming here and and sharing your talent, right? like we've got so much talent in this state and anytime we can give you a little bit of a stage is something that we enjoy and to hear that you do this above and beyond your busy days. Some of you are probably working jobs and going to school full-time, but you make the sacrifice to to do something wonderful. It's something that we embrace. And I don't know if you go to solos and ensembles or do any of that, but I'm just

006going to say don't waste your time. We're going to give you straight superiors. >> Thank you for that. You want to remember that. One, two, and three. Thank you. [applause] >> Are you So awesome. So good for us. I can actually Sorry. >> No, you're good. Okay, I think we're gonna move on to recognitions and I'm gonna introduce Stacy Smith to talk about our US presidential scholars and one of whom is actually here today with us. We're really excited. >> Good morning. So, US Presidential Scholar is a high school senior honored by the US Department of Education as one of the nation's top students. Each year around 160 students are chosen based on outstanding academic achievement, strong character character and leadership skills, involvement in school and community. Um sometimes talents in the art or the

007CTE world. Um it's really actually one of the highest honors that a highest um that a high school student um can receive. It's kind of like being named like national all-star team, right? It's a very very big deal. And it's not something you just get to apply on your own. You have to be asked or invited to submit an application. And so in Arkansas, we actually have five students who receive this honor. And today, we just really wanted to recognize and and and name them. But we have a treat because we have one of them here in person today. I want to make sure I'm not missing that there's more not more than one, but we had Taylor Conan from Farmington. We had Xavier Herszg from Alma. Scarlett Huggin from Elkins and Aubrey Sher from

008Rogers. But in person today we have Nadia Fa Fasler. Am I saying that right? Come on up Nadia. Um she is from Russellville High School and she's here today. So I just wanted to give her a few moments um just to kind of talk about her experience, what she's doing and what her plans are. >> Welcome. >> Hi. Good morning. Thank you so much for having me here. My name is Nadia Fler. I'm from Russellville, Arkansas. I had the honor of being selected as a US presidential scholar in career technical education. So everything like I was very involved with HOSA FBA Skills USA and in Russellville I also had the opportunity of being involved with our EMT program and our phabbotomy program which were huge honors and I feel like really contributed to my education.

009So many people call into question whether you should do college or career and technical education and I have had the opportunity to do both and I feel like they did not take away from each other. They supplemented each other and it has made me a stronger student. Hence why I was able to get such a prestigious award. And I am attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where I'm majoring in neuroscience and Portuguese and doing a minor in linguistics. And I have very high hopes for my education and my future. And thanks to the Arkansas Department of Education and what we have done to allow me to be involved with career and technical education, I've had this opportunity to go to such a great college and keep pursuing what I want to do

010in relation to becoming a healthcare professional. So, I thank you guys so much for everything you guys have done and for allowing me to be here today. Thank you guys. [applause] >> We'll probably want to take a picture of you. Come back. Come back. Come back. Hey, we we want to ask you some questions. >> It's not that easy. >> You're you're the center of attention right now. >> Hi guys. [laughter] >> So, what do you want to do after I mean those are big goals. So, what's the plan? >> Yes. Very big goals. I feel like what I've wanted to do is ultimately I know that I want to go to med school and everyone comes in saying that and I've had my own experience this semester that chemistry is really hard and so

011is a lot of um other pre-recourses that [clears throat] you have that they have you do. And so I'm kind of coming in with the idea that I know that I want to go to med school. And ultimately one of my dreams that I've had for a very long time is to go to residency to do pediatric neuroscience, pediatric neurosurgery specifically. But I want to see how I fall in love with the process before I ultimately go around telling everyone like, hey, I'm going to be a pediatric neurosurgeon. [laughter] So I'm a >> smart girl right here. It's it's a big process and I'm very aware of that and I want like full transparency that I'm very aware of that because going into it there's so many steps like 16 years of education and continuously

012pursuing it is a big commitment. It's one that as of right now I'm preparing myself to take >> but I'm also very aware of all the steps it takes and right now chemistry 101 and 102 are like on the forefront of my mind and that is today's goal and once we pass that then we can for focus on organic chemistry and then we're just going to keep going until I eventually do apply to med school and keep pursuing what I want to do. >> That's awesome. Does anybody have questions please? >> What's your interest in Portuguese? >> Um my great-grandparents immigrated from Portugal. My mom and I are Portuguese and my family all speaks Portuguese, but um they grew up on the Azor Islands of Portugal and so my grandma stopped going to school after

013fourth grade. No one in my family can read or write Portuguese. And my portuguese speaking wasn't very great going into college and I found out we had a Portuguese program and I've always wanted to be able to read to my grandma and talk to my grandma in the way that she's always talked to me. And so taking the course, I kind of jumped in like I just jumped in this semester and I took Portuguese 401 and 310 and it was a shocker. I was like, "Okay, I I went in, I talked to the professor and I was asking I was like, "Do you think this course is right for me? I'm don't have great grammar. I can, you know, I can converse with you. I can understand, but when it comes to forming my own

014opinions and deep thoughts on things, I immediately go to English." Like, it's hard to switch into Portuguese as a first language and think in Portuguese. And she was like, "I think you'll do fine." I was like, "I can't read it, right?" She's like, "That's fine." Second week, she's like, "Okay, we have a composition due on Friday and we're gonna popcorn and read." And I was like, "Oh [laughter] my god, this is great." And I kind of had to go back to my dorm, sit down and like start from scratch. And first paper, I did not do great. But then after that, I kind of learned how to sit down and start thinking in Portuguese. And since then, I have successfully completed my course in 310 and 401 with um high grades. And I'm just very

015proud of myself. I'm very proud that I've put myself out there and pursue Portuguese in the way that I did because I've been able to read my papers to my grandma and converse with her and make memories that I wouldn't have been able to otherwise. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> How old are you? [laughter] >> I just turned 19 last month. Unbelievable. You sound like you're 40. You carry yourself quite well. >> In the best way. In >> the best way. [laughter] >> Your friends might not think so. >> Thank you so much. >> You sound wise beyond your years. Arkansas is lucky to have you and I assume the other presidential scholars are similar caliber. Um, what a highlight of our most outstanding students. I hope you won't get distracted by North Carolina and

016all that. I hope you will come home to Arkansas and um and practice medicine. Hopefully that's in your future. I I love your goals. I hope you'll come home and practice medicine right here in Arkansas. But my goodness, >> thank you so so much. >> Very very impressive. >> I appreciate it. >> I think this is deserved. [applause] >> [applause] >> We would like a picture with you so we can say we knew you. [laughter] Thank you so much. Congratulations. Are you so proud? >> Thank you so much. Yeah, it was there. >> Okay. Um, no more Okay. Does anybody have any changes to the agenda? >> No. >> Okay. Well, then we will move forward with the action. >> Um, at this time, I'm going to turn it over to Stacy. We'll have Stacy

017Smith come introduce and set our agenda for the next >> sure. And and as [snorts] Stacy's making her way up, I just want to kind of give some context or some background to why we invited some of the school districts to be in front of our board today. As um many of you know, we've we've been in a pretty long journey of building out a system to support students and school districts to make sure that every student has an opportunity to be on path to be a presidential scholar. Right. And as we've been redesigning the system and and you've been a part of this process throughout this journey, as we've we've updated standards, we've looked at professional development, implementing high quality instruction material, building out a new assessment system so that we can get real-

018time information on student performance and and uh garner supports and and make instructional decisions throughout the school year. We built out a new way that we grade schools and we released um which I think is a world-class accountability model that measures um in a clear and concise manner the overall performance of a school. Whether or not kids are learning, whether or not they're at grade level, are they graduating? Are they graduating to be success ready to be successful in life? And one of the tests that we were given through the legislature was to come up with a district grade. And this is the first time that we've done that. So to to me this is a pretty historic moment because a lot of times you might just look at uh a school district and if

019they're a real small school district some some school districts only have one campus. So if if you're going to say what's a district grade well it's the grade at the the one school and and the community knows the parents knows as we're empowering parents and looking for choice we want to give them information that helps them make the best decisions that works for their families. Well, in more medium-sized or even larger districts, sometimes we're targeting a few schools where they may be performing over well. They may have some A and B schools, but maybe there's a couple DNF schools, and it's really looking at the way we target and support school districts in particular, especially if they have a campus that's not performing at the level that we would like to see. Well, then now

020that we've done district grades, um what what that means is that we've aggregated the data of all the students within a district and said overall how well is the district performing. Well, when we calculate those district grades there there's I want to say 12 districts and networks that showed up on the list. And to me, we need to make sure we're doing our job and our diligence as a board to ensure that the district has the right plan in place and that we can provide the support for those districts to eliminate failure. And we're not talking about eliminating failure as we're going to adopt a three to fiveyear plan. This is rapid improvement that we expect to see within this school year. And when we talk about acting with urgency, that's why we wanted to

021make sure we got this data out that we're immediately working with districts and we're able to inform this board to make sure that there's a plan in place. What what I can tell you is when we looked at those F um networks and school districts, one of them this board is already very familiar with and that's Bville and we've already taken some severe action and put some protocols in place. So, we didn't invite them to come back to the board for a district plan approval because we've already gone through that process. It's probably getting to the point of the year now where maybe in January, I'm thinking it's a good idea to do an update because it's it's the middle of the school year now that we've put some new systems and pieces in place

022to to see what that progress monitoring data is saying. Um some of the schools were charter networks and um if we have charter schools that aren't really supporting the students in a manner that we expect, we're going to hold them just as accountable. And those charter schools and networks are actually going next next month in front of the charter authorizing panel to present their plans because this isn't about being punitive. This is about how do we make sure we're all rowing in the same direction together. Well, we have six uh traditional districts that we're going to hear from today to do an overview of their district improvement plan and talk about the stuff that they've already done to make sure that we're supporting students and teachers and leaders and what we can help support them

023moving forward. I will tell you um uh as I've met with all these districts and I've had an opportunity to meet with every superintendent, visit their districts, I can tell you that it's it's it's um it's encouraging having these conversations because every one of these superintendents have a plan. They're owning the data and they don't want to see failure in their communities as well. And so I I I've told them this is your chance actually to come in and spotlight how you've been proactive and how you're going to lead the state in improving learning and how we can be a partner with you. And what we've done is ask the districts to give some assurances that we can hold them accountable to and they want to be held accountable that we're going to review to

024make sure we agree um with with their strategy and plan. But it's really a three-pronged approach. One, we know that leadership matters. So, we want to hear from the superintendent. What are they doing to support their principles and their teachers and leaders and the decisions that they're making? Two, governance matters. We want to hear, we've asked um the superintendents to bring their board chair. um have brought almost their entire board because what are the elected officials doing to make sure that the operations are working in a manner that's efficient in producing the outcomes. And three, we know that direct support matters. And we've asked the co-op director to come and be part of this meeting to talk about their role in making sure that we're giving teachers and leaders the resource of support that they

025need and how are they going to be a direct support organization as a educational cooperative to eliminate failure. So as we hear from these districts, I think it's important to know why this is a big deal, right? Because when when we say that a school district is an F, that that's a black eye on that community and we need to fix that and we need to make sure we're doing our part in supporting and ensuring that the right work is happening and that's why we're going to bring those folks in here and up and have some updates today. So Stacy's going to introduce each of the districts, give a little bit of a historical overview or kind of perspective of the state of the state of the district, and then we've asked the superintendent to

026provide uh an update on their plan. >> Say I don't know if there's any qu you might want to see if the board has any questions. >> All I was going to say is just the general flow is each district is going to have 15 minutes to do their presentation. I think she Whitlo is going to be our time keeper and she'll keep us moving and we'll open it up for questions after the presentation. Before we get I know we've set a baseline here, but how are we actually measuring progress? Are we putting a time uh frame on this or or if they're making incremental progress over time? Is that really what we're measuring? >> Yeah. So, you know, I I I go back to we have to eliminate failure. We we have an F

027district in front of us. We're not going to let them to continue to be an F. So, we're going to put together a plan that we're going to review. We're going to monitor that plan to make sure we're doing what we're supposed to be doing. And if achievement's not improving and we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, maybe we need to adjust the plan. >> Or if achievement's not improving and they're not doing where they're supposed to be doing, we need to call them back and hold folks adults accountable. And um if we have a system that's continuing to fail, that system may need to look different in a year or two. And that's what happened to Bllyville. If you remember, we went to Bllyville, had a meeting in their community, shared their data

028with the school board and said, "We're going to collectively come up with a plan to implement." They agreed, we agreed. Our board agreed on that plan. We kept asking them to come up and give updates on the plan. The dysfunctional adults running that system could not implement that plan. So, eventually, we came to this board and said, "We got to get these adults out of the way and get some new adults in there." And we did that. And today is setting that baseline to say we got to get this right. And and I'm not talking about in three to five years from now. We need to see improvements throughout this school year in January. And these Fs need to go away when we get grades next summer. >> Okay. So, I'm going to kind of

029just give you a little bit of a background too on specifics of what they were asked to present to you today. Um, each district again was been told that they can give a 15-minute presentation. Um, they've been asked not to just be labor data that you already have, but to really focus on the specifics of the actions in which they are working on in their districts for improvement, like what are they actually doing? All right. You also had on the agenda today an assurance statement. All right. the department actually wrote the assurance statements which are is very actionoriented that they're monitoring that they're collaborating that they're evaluating that they're they're doing certain actions um based on what their district strategic plan was. All right. >> Do we have a copy of that? >> Yes, it

030was on the agenda, but I will get you a copy if you don't have it. >> I see it. I'm sorry. >> Okay, that's okay. Um and so this is today what you're actually accepting. you're accepting the district's assurance that they are doing what they're saying to you today that they're going to do. All right. Um, district letter grades, the Fs that they have is based on our accountability system, which is based on their achievement scores on the Atlas state exam. It's based on their growth scores from that exam as well as their lowest quartortile growth scores which really focuses on um systems of support and remediation and it also focuses on graduation rate and students graduating success ready graduating with those higher distinctions. Okay. So today the conversation should be very um academic student

031outcome focused and what they're doing to move that needle. All right. Um the first district today again Sheila is going to kind of pro if you see the district going over their 15 minutes she's going to get up and let them know. Um and then we'll keep this moving at a pretty steady pace. >> So just to confirm any motion will be to either accept or reject the district's statement >> to accept their asurances that they what they're saying today. And and again, this is a public record and opportunity for this board to either affirm that what you're hearing from the district today, what they're working on sounds like a good plan. It's also the opportunity for this board to say, "Have you thought about this? Why do you do this? This doesn't make sense

032to me." All right. So, this is this is a public record opportunity today um to give feedback, right? And to hear and say what they're doing. Um, again, as Secretary Oliva said, in a few months, if our visits are we're going to schools and we're like, you know what, this these are the things they said they were doing. We're not seeing it, then we can bring them back. All right. So, it's it's our it's our monitoring method to be able to say, here's what we say we're doing, and and us being able to monitor those actions. Any other questions? Okay. Um, first district today is Watson Chapel School District. Superintendent of Watson Chapel is Dr. Keith McGee. He is in his second year at the school district. Um, one of the questions one of the

033board members asked previously was, "How far are districts away from the next letter grade?" So, they're actually um 2.89 points away from a district letter grade of a D. Okay. They are in the Arkansas River River Cooperative there. The school district is made up of four schools. Um things that kind of jumped out in terms of um questions or things that this board may want to ask today or or have the superintendent dig into a little bit at some point. Right now the district has 20% um of their teachers on a teacher lensure plan meaning 20% of their teachers are unlicensed. Okay. So what kind of supports are they providing those teachers? are they ensuring that quality um learning is happening in those classrooms? Um so about 78% 79% of the teachers are licensed in

034Washington Chapel. Um of their four schools um this was a concern that kind of jumped out to us. Their 2024 simulated grades which was the first year we ran our new accountability system based on our Atlas assessments. Um, two of the schools had C's, two of the schools had D's. And so when they came out with their 2025 grades, all four schools had dropped to an F. Um, Watson Chapel is a school district that we have brought to this board before. Um, and had some attention conversations, kind of got kind of got back on track. Um, they have had new leadership and new superintendents um, since that time. Um but again probably to dig down deeper into how are we ensuring that quality is happening in the classroom and what does that growth piece look

035like. Um other data that jumped out was that no school last year increased in growth from the previous year's Atlas exam. So first at exam second atlas exam all four schools dropped in their growth data. So that's an area of question or what you're listening for today to hear how are we improving that. Okay. So, at this time, I'm going to ask Dr. Keith McGee to come up and to present the actions that the district is taking. >> Well, good morning, state board members, Miss Madame Chair, members of the state board, Secretary Lever. Um, I am pleased to join you to share this plan uh that we are doing. I also want to acknowledge our local board um here. Um, I want to tell you just a little bit of context about Watson Chapel. Uh,

036I am very big about all of our teachers being licensed. Um, prior to last year with my arrival 17 months ago, it was about 40 over 40% nearly 50% of those teacher was on at that time 1240 waiver. We had cut that down. uh we had cut that down before the new law came in where we only had about maybe 20 at that time. So that's roughly reflect right now about 20% of our teacher license. Um so I'm going to jump right in here. Uh you know the purpose here I'm going to skip this but I do want to point out the purpose. This is just a clear overview what overview what we have done and what we're doing and really outline the systems we had. systems were a huge challenge for us. Uh it

037continued to be a challenge as well as you talk hear me talk about leadership uh here for the root cause here that since my arrival that I determined along with my team and members of my team is here as well. We are very inconsistent in using our HQIM high quality instruction material. I do want to thank our board our local board because they approve of high quality instruction material that the state approved. We're inconsistent using that those things. Uh we didn't have a guaranteed vital curriculum. We now have one that is standard based. We was just kind of all over the place. Our tier one core instruction was a huge challenge when all meets all. My it's my job that I feel like and and I've encouraged my staff here in the Pine Bluff that

038all of our scholars should have the opportunity no matter their zip code. It should never be an obstacle. It should be an opportunity just like you just announced those presidential scholars. That's what I want my scholars to have. And and and I also challenge my district, my leaders that the zip code cannot determine their destiny. It cannot. Again, I echo Secretary Lever's uh sentiments in his remarks. I've been preaching that same sermon and I will continue to preach that sermon and my action will line up. Another cause of that is our leadership, our building leadership, the the human capital district leadership, the systems just been ineffective and one of the huge pieces um before um is the culture. We just have a strong the culture was not student focused. It just wasn't student centered. So

039our board I'm pleased our board has adopted a new strategic plan. Revise our vision and mission. I didn't put that in there but our vision is simple. Preparing today's students for tomorrow's opportunity. The first priority and priority one and two can flip-flop. But number I want to say priority two creating positive and safe cultures. If you recall, Watson Chapel had an issue with safety. Safety was a huge issue. We now have addressed those issues. So, scholars can feel safe. And how do I know that? Because I meet with them monthly. Middle, elementary, middle, and high school. And they have told me that that they now feel safe. Now, we got a we have a long way to go with that as well because mental health is still real. But the other thing that the board

040adopted is priority number one. I kind of flip-flop, which is accelerate student outcomes. This local board is now focused on how we move students in the right direction. Priority three, making sure that we're operating efficiently, our finance, uh making sure that we are putting our funding back to our priorities. And then lastly, making sure that we continue to build meaningful partnerships not only with our parents, but our community. So the biggest piece the governor is here is again just a that new strategic plan. You know that we're currently building a $40 million high school that is set to open in the fall and it's going to be beautiful. Um but also our board is continue to make sure that the our funds as I stated earlier reflects our priorities. So one of the a huge

041challenge because I said HQIM was a challenge for us. We're focusing on that making sure that all of our scholars are at grade level or above. And how do we do that? Making sure that we are using a high quality instruction material with integrity. And I say integrity because it need to be and I know that we secretary leaving states has to visit the school. It doesn't I want I want to set and create a culture. It doesn't matter who shows up and when that we're going to be teaching regardless at that grade level. I pop in and you'll see that here daily in a minute. The actions that we've taken is fully work and support each of our campuses, building principal, assistant principles, instruction facilitator how to use the HQIM. And let me back

042up a little bit and add to this context. We did not have a district team that supported instruction. We now have that and you will see that we have hired uh executive director of curriculum instruction. We now have a team of about five or six that goes out. It is my job and I say this and I don't mean any disrespect at all. My job is to set up a system where the district support the instruction and not depend on the co-op or the department that this is occurring. We now have that system set up. So the biggest piece right there is continue with the coaching lab and expected results. We want the rigor in the student engagement and just consistency uh instructional practicing. Goal number two uh in terms of academic we got to

043have what we call the multi-ter system of of support. We have trained and we implemented that and that is um that is forthcoming. We've started that process again our building leadership. Sometimes it's a challenge for them on what they need to look like. We've modeled for them. We've even taken them to school sets settings to show them what they look like because again that is just a culture there that we want to make sure that the support of those kids. We got to learn how to use datadriven instruction. What does our data say and use real time data from our common form of assessment to our student work to the observations to the dropins. We got to continue to build that. Some of the things that we do with that is our professional learning communities.

044They meet weekly. We built in a new schedule so they got time to work day weekly inside those professional learning community to look at the data. What does this data say and drive that instruction, the interventions and you see that there and the system strategy that we need to do from the district level and the building operations here is create those things. make sure it's efficient, that we can streamline all of our processes so our schools, our building leaders, assistant principal, instruction facilitators, they don't have to have what the state uses some type of red tape. We want to remove the red tape from the district. So, we are realigning that piece. So, we've aligned that so far and those things there going to keep us moving. We continue to train professional development for our

045leadership. We have bi-weekly trainings for our principles, instructional facilitators, and then we come back and we retrain the assistant principles what they're trained. We bring in some of my colleagues from across the state to share as well. So we also meet week with our principles because you'll see in a minute that we have done from the district level to this date were really the end of November 142 walkthroughs. So those walkthroughs that we found out earlier in September that there was a challenge for our building leaders, our principles. So we now created a system where they check in week by weekly individually and we score them on the rules the leads rubric which is the principal rubric to evaluate them and the professional learning for teachers. We also let me go back to another challenge

046that I didn't mention. Previously we didn't build any professional development for our teachers. Now we have those professional development days spread it out and we purposely spread that out so that when principles able to collect that data CFA data and we collect that data we can determine what professional development is needed during the school year so they can make adjustments so that we can see improvement in student outcomes. How are we monitoring this? We look at the data quarterly and I would say that my team look at the data weekly again the walkthroughs you see that number here in the check-ins and we go and we when we're doing our walkthroughs we documented the HQIM and it's the connected to the standards. So the principles are required to conduct 8 to 10 observations weekly. They're

047also required to the week attend the weekly leadership team meetings and they also must review those data weekly. So when we do our check-ins with them, we've already looked at the data as well. So we are having this conversation with them. And then lastly, they got to continue to track quarterly on the school improvement plans and you can see the timeline for implementation. Still I'm I'm very big on culture and continue to connect with our community. We got to continue. I think that it's three phases that I looked at once in my arrival 17 months ago. It's three phases. Number one, the safety. Number two, it was the academics and number three there was a disconnect with our community in terms of partnership. So we now have addressed the safety piece and we're definitely connecting

048with our community partners. We have we're constantly Reliance Bank is one of our big partners uh uh Central Maloney. So we're connecting back. So now we have to continue to improve this academic piece. That's what you see here. And obviously the city of Pine Bluff just that area the recruitment, retention and retaining of our teachers and really putting highquality teachers in front of our scholars but also putting highquality leaders inside of those buildings. the board at this past Monday's board meeting. I brought to them to uh a one-time bonus for our teachers so that we can show them to how how much we value them. And the board approved that unanimous. So, we got to try to keep them there. Just sitting here just while I'm sitting here at the state board, we just had

049a resignation just while I just sitting here. So now that's a teacher that we got to turn around and find in the middle of the school year. So we're being creative and and and we're going to continue to be creative and we're not going to run from it. I'm an old coach. I played basketball. Two torn uh Achilles tendons and a shoulder uh tore my shoulder. So what I'm talking about is I'm a I'm very competitive. Why can't my scholars be received a US presidential scholar? Why can't my scholars be a national merit? That's what I'm sharing with my my principles, my team. And I'm going to do everything from this seat to ensure they have that opportunity. As I get ready to close and go through what we need, I will say this again,

050our zip codes cannot be an obstacle for our scholars. It will become an opportunity. And what we need from that from our co-op is continue to the additional content support teacher training the job embedded on the high yield instructional strategies but grade level rigor but the student engagement and the guidance there you can see I'm assuring you that we are committed from the updates that we're going to continue to monitor the student performance because I'm I the superintendent Dr. Keith McGee reserve one day a week spend all day in classrooms. That's and I strategically do that so that I can be a but then I also do random popins because that's the right thing to do for our scholars. And lastly, we're going to continue to strengthen the staff and uh leadership stability because that

051is an obstacle in the progress of implementation and monitoring instructional initiatives. And with that, and I do want to recognize my board president, Mr. McMillner is here. And then Miss Kathy Swan with the co-op director. We'll take any questions. >> Thank you, Dr. McGee. Clear clear presentation. Um, I just wanted to uh inquire about and thank you for highlighting your root causes. Um, and I'd like to go to that slide where it comments on culture and expectations. Could you comment on what to me there's a gap somewhere uh where it says strong culture where students were not the focus. I mean that's quite an admission. Thank you for zeroing in on that. You've agreed with us all that culture each strategy hands down. But on the next slide the strategic goals for improvement when we

052go to culture which is priority two as it should be if not one. Um it it uh defaults back to staff. So, let me say this. It is priority one. I didn't want to put all of the bullets in there. >> Okay. >> So, inside of our strategic plan, which we we just approved on Monday, you'll see it. You they have each one of those priority have goals and they have culture breaking down by itself in terms of safety. >> Okay. >> And in terms of it, you I just couldn't put it all in there. I didn't have a 15 minutes. For you don't know, I'm a Baptist preacher >> and and I could be a little longwinded. That's why Miss Whitlow is uh has already given me the finger. So, [laughter] >> no finger.

053>> So, I I did that's the reason this one. >> So, that's the reason why I didn't put it in there. >> Yeah, that's great. That's fine. But, if you could if you could comment just one more time about the the uh the relationship between the student culture and your staff morale or cultural issues around them. >> So, I I would say that the students weren't the focus prior to me getting there. And how do I know that? Because there were decisions made what's best for adults. Our master schedule in each of our buildings, it should be driven by the what the students needs are not to accommodate a coach. >> Yeah. >> Or accommodate a certain person. So when I say that that's what was occurring, which leaves a gap in a void to

054put a high quality teacher in front of student. So those decision even and I'm just going to be again I don't know other way than to be transparent even from our central office. We weren't making decision that was based on staff. Our principles didn't even have a budget. They weren't able to use their money to put support. We have realigned all of that. So we couldn't necessarily do a before school or after school tutoring program. They didn't have a budget. >> Yeah. Well, I would only suggest, Dr. McGee, that that those comments about uh students driving the strategy versus staff be more reflected on the slide, strategic goals for improvement. >> Yeah. I had a couple of questions. Um, what kind of research are y'all doing in terms of why teachers are leaving? Is it

055for safety, for pay, for registration. >> We we we've done a survey, a exit survey. A couple of things. Number one, um the pay, which we are working on that um and number two, some of them just leave because of the accountability. >> That's a good thing though, right? Yeah. In that in those situations. >> Yes. >> The um you talked about the principles reporting out instead of you going to them and doing the walkouts bi-weekly. I think you said they report to you. Can you give us a specific example of where a principal identified reported out there was an issue that was identified and how y'all addressed it? So I don't want to go in a lot of context. I want to go back to the slide that I said that remember I said

056it was we meet with them weekly with leads when they do not report back like that. So that's how we holding them accountable because they can't that is a challenge. So we it's almost I don't want to go a whole lot in detail because of how we set it up. That's just a challenge why our leaders can't identify those things. And one of the things that we have with our conversation with them then if you don't have any context or asking us for support and we looking at your data then share with me how you are holding your teacher support. Are they on a plan? So, I just leave it like that if if I may. >> All right. Thank you. >> You mentioned uh you're doing things to create a I guess a more

057safe environment at the school. Can you be more specific about what what you're doing? >> So, just a little bit again for those that don't know, several years ago, Watson Chapel had a shooting inside the school where a young man died. Um that culture. So we have not only put more security inside [clears throat] but we've now create our own police department with a certified officer is there. We have a police department. We are realigned that piece. We now have more safety measures. They're doing checks. Uh directed them to how to do classroom checks. As a former principal, I used to make my security go do random checks. That is occurring now. And if you look at our discipline data, and I I didn't pull it up, but it's down tremendously from one year. To

058be honest with you, we just had our major incident at a high school last week for us. That's a celebration. That is a huge celebration. And and and I know this because my scholars tell me said, "Dr. McGee, you know, I feel safe in the school." Now, the mental health piece is what we're working on because they have talked to me about they need someone there to talk to. So, those are things that we're looking at. We're putting we reroute our how kids come in and how they exit. We strategically put people in place to monitor. Uh so, those are things that we're doing. >> You said that you've been having conversations with students and they they have told you they feel more safe than >> Yes. compared to when I first got there when

059I met with them when I first arrived 17 months ago they was very concerned and just last in the middle of last year we made those adjustment and they said Dr. McGee, they they feel safe. That's not the issue right now. Now, the issue that they're talking about when we say safety, because it is safety to me, it's the mental health, the mental health support. Well, um I remember not too long ago, this wasn't when you were here, but I do remember um us bring it coming to our attention that day one, day eight, day 10, students still didn't have schedules. So to go from the very basics not being met to working on quality and seeing improvements is remarkable. Um, I'm excited to continue watching how you've changed. You remember that? >> So, thank

060you. Yes, it it it has been. And we're not only doing that, we we we're now getting contracts out. Our contracts will be coming out in March. >> So, we're going to lock everybody in in March, those that we want. Uh so we're trying to be intentional to make sure our basic needs for our scholars are met and how to operate a school. And again, our system was we just had I think Secretary Lee, you say this all the time, bad people beat good systems. We refine the systems. They're good systems. And we got to continue to elevate. We're using the thing now. elevate your impact. Everybody has to elevate their impact. So, thank you. >> Well, and I have a question. I'm not sure when it's appropriate, but for the co-op that supports Watson

061Chapel, is that when >> I was going to say, let's get through maybe him and then I may have some questions for the board chair and so >> perfect. >> Actually, I do. So, Dr. McGee, first of all, I I am a resident of Jefferson County, so I uh actually follow probably you and the Public School District a little closer than I do the other districts. Um, and so I applaud all of the work that you have done. It is remarkable to use a word that's already been used uh in what you've been able to do in such a short period of time. I do think that often times u the community, not just ours, but the community at large looks to the schools to solve all the problems of the communities. and that is

062just simply not possible. We I think we all understand and appreciate the position that all of our schools are put in. That said, I think that there is a lot of um you you mentioned family engagement, community engagement. I think that that is a a huge underpinning of success for not just your district but all the districts. Can you talk a little bit about how you are trying to impact that the families in the community? >> So, I hadn't fully gotten to it yet, but I'm going to implement a parent meeting with the superintendent. I don't know if I'm going to call it something with lunch or because I want to accommodate the parents. Uh the it's a challenge for us to get parents to come out. So, I'll just be honest with you. It's

063a challenge. Um so, we're creative. Uh, so when we have a community meetings, we're creative. We'll let the kids perform because they're going to come out and see their kids and and then we'll have that those conversation. But I still want a a a small nucleus of parents to kind of just meet with to get feedback and then use that as a stepping stone to go and elevate to get the other parents involved. Um, my plan is to start it after the break. Um it is we're trying uh but we just got to continue to be creative to get them there. >> It is it's tough. >> It is tough. >> Thank you. >> Mr. Brown, >> Mr. Wood, >> do have some questions if you got a minute. >> There's yours. >> So a

064few a few Well, first of all, Dr. McGee, hi. Good to see you again. >> You too. >> Uh and you know, I have a lot of respect for you. We go back quite a while into Little Rock School District days and um I'm proud of what you've done where you've been. I do I do have some hard questions. Um I'm going to ask these questions of everyone that takes the podium today. I want to start with some foundational things. Um do you agree that a lack of growth is almost always an adult issue and not a student issue? >> I can certainly agree with that. >> Okay. And do you agree that a lack of achievement is almost always an adult issue and not a student issue? >> I certainly agree with that because

065I think that we have the ability to make a difference and motivate a kid. >> And do you agree that poor students can learn if adults do their job correctly? >> Certainly. >> Okay. Very good. Can you tell me who is the principal at Coleman Elementary School? Her name is U. Marsha Merritt. >> Marsha Mary. >> But she's on leave. >> She's on leave right now. >> Okay. How long has she been on leave? >> Uh I think I estimate October. >> Okay. How long has she been the principal at Coleman Elementary School? >> Uh maybe three or four years if my mind served me correctly. I don't know the actual numbers, but it's around three or four years. >> Okay. And have you done a performance evaluation of her leadership of Coleman Elementary School?

066>> Yes. >> Okay. And you you believe that she should continue leading Coleman Elementary School? >> With due respect, >> Sure. >> I would prefer not to answer that because of how we're checking them in with leads. I can assure you this, every principal is being held accountable with integrity. >> Okay. All right. because because if if if it's something happened that could >> I understand and fair enough and I'll I'll try to refrain from maybe getting that specific but I'm going to ask the same questions about the other schools. Edgewood Elementary School, who's the principal there? >> We have an interim >> an interim. How long have you had an interim? >> Uh maybe like late last year because that principal medical >> okay so the permanent principal is not there. You have an

067interim >> he since has resigned and retired. He he would have he retired. >> Okay. So, that school is in a transition. Uh what what about Watson Chapel High School? Who's the principal there? >> Mr. Neil. >> Okay. And how long has he been the principal? >> He's been the principal there for maybe this is his second year if I'm not mistaken. >> Okay. Two years. >> Mhm. >> Okay. And what about Watson Chapel Junior High School? Who's the principal? >> Mr. Jeremy Vincent. >> Okay. And how long has he been the principal? Probably about three years. >> Three years. >> About three years. >> Okay. >> Do principles in your school district at struggling schools have mentor relationships with principles whether in your district or outside of your district at schools where student achievement

068and/or growth is more prevalent. I've assigned them one. >> What does that mean? >> I've assigned them a mentor and making sure that they can pair up. Like uh junior high principal, he has a mentor principal out of Northwest Arkansas. >> And so they each have one of a mentor that they can talk to that to be honest with you that we contract with them. >> Okay. >> That we contract with them. >> Okay. And how long has that practice been in place? since I since I've been there and identified the need. >> Okay, that's good. >> What about teachers? Do they have mentor relationships with teachers that have higher levels of high achievement and high growth? >> We encourage the principles to go ahead and sign a mentor. As a district, we work on

069provide the qualification of a mentor so that the teach the principles know because that's their job to go and supervise their own teachers, but we try to give them here's the ones that can be mentor teachers. >> Okay? >> And so those are questions that we ask them because when we look at the individual data of teachers, so that's our way of holding them accountable. >> Yeah. Good. I would encourage you that your mentor pool might not should be limited to your own school district to identifying highquality teachers or I don't like using that term. I don't know what the correct verbiage is that that we use, but anyway, uh teachers that have a higher level of high achieving and high growth students. That pool should not be limited to your school district. I would

070hope that you would seek out teachers in other school districts to help bring your teachers along because if I know anything about the teaching fraternity, it is that they love each other and they want to help each other because at the root of everything is student achievement and growth. >> And we're and I will say this for the record, we're not limited, okay? >> We're always open. That's the reason why you heard me say that my principles, mentors are not in the district. We we partner with somebody that's successful. >> So recently your school district approved a bonus for your teachers. Was that based on merit or was that an across the board bonus? >> No. Let me tell you why the the the why behind that? Our teachers and our classified staff have not

071received anything. The culture and the staff morale was really low. So, in order for us to start to help to try to recruit and reta retain uh some of our personnel, we want to show them in good faith that we're working on a number one a revised salary schedule and we're going to be able to hopefully be able to be somewhere in the middle to compete with the salary. So, I felt the need to give them all a one-time bonus to hoping that it would boost the staff morale. [clears throat] >> Well, respectfully, I think that adults who are contracted to do a job should show up and do their job uh without a bonus. But, um, talk to me about your opinion of merit-based bonuses. Because in the real world, when I have a

072hard time motivating my three children to rake the leaves in the backyard, when I put a $100 bill on the table, it changes pretty quickly whether or not the leaves in my backyard get rad. And I wonder if if you have three F schools and a D school and everyone in the district gets a bonus. I I'm concerned that where where is the external motivation, the external opportunity for, you know, personal income achievement? If everyone gets it, it doesn't matter what what's going on in the classroom. Why why wouldn't you support or do you support the opportunity for bonuses to be parent based so that >> so I'm first I'm not opposed I'm not opposed for that but I will say this before we can get into determined merit pay again I want to go

073back to when I said our systems we were kind of all over the place including fiscal financial so before I could do that I think I want to be a good steward of public dollars. I first need to get a analyze that and so I've made some changes with the support of the board moving away from a private auditor to a legislative audit so that we can get a better sense of where we are. >> Yeah, fair enough. >> I think sometimes a community might have a hard time hearing that not everyone understands school financing, but you're building a brand new pretty school and it does look nice. I've seen it. Um it looks like it's going to be a nice place for your kids to go to school. Um but when you're investing what

074was $40 million is that what you said? >> Yes. >> In that. >> Um but but then you talk about you're having a hard time retaining teachers and whatever. What where do you rank? Where does Watson Chapel rank in teacher pay in the state of Arkansas? I hadn't looked at the rank, but I would tell you that we are we meet the minimum and we do actually exceed some of the minimum because we kind of do a step. >> What is the average teacher pay in Watson Chapel? >> Uh it's it's the average is 50,000 but not all of the teachers get >> that couldn't be it. >> They get some get based on their masters. Some get after so many years we do a step. So it's I would think the average is somewhere

075around without me looking at it somewhere around 50 51 because we don't have enough teachers. >> Sounds that sounds like the minimum to me. >> Well and and that it may be the minimum but we do not have um enough teachers that are the masters. We're encouraging the masters to we working with um Kevin Bowman with impact to try to get some of our teachers to go into the University of Arkansas system so they can get their masters. So we're doing a as many things we can to create and encourage teachers to go a little step further. But we're not opposed to merit pay. It's I think for me I need to know where we are financially because and I just think that I would rather take a step back to get it right so

076that I can go through and pro I know but you just handed out a bonus to everybody. If you handed out a bonus to less than everybody it would be cheaper than the bonus that you just did. But I don't want to get too bogged down on that. I'm also concerned about implementation of highquality instructional material. you you go around the classrooms and you identify teachers that are not implementing the instructional material that y'all have chosen. They're not implementing it with fidelity. Is that right? >> Correct. >> What what is the consequence for that? >> So I address that with the principles >> and again I want to go back to that slide where I said the leads and then we allow that principal to bring the evidence on how he or she's addressing it

077with that specific teacher. Okay. Is is it possible to terminate an individual who who isn't using the materials that you >> certainly >> and you have do you have the ability in your district to terminate quickly for insubordination like that? >> Certainly. I think before we Yes, certainly to answer your question. But I will say this, we need to be strategic because we're also struggling to find teachers. So, if I terminate a teacher and I don't have a teacher that can go and get, and I'll just be honest with you, we needed a ELA teacher for the high school. We just filled it maybe about two months ago. So, we're working not only with our University of Arkansas system, UAPB, to get some of those programs. U the residential, Dr. Graham and I met, and

078we're going to look at that and implement that with the College of Ed. So, we're just it's a challenge for us if we get rid of teacher right then until we get a plan to how we can recruit and retain some of them. >> Let's talk about literacy a little bit. Tell me about your screenings for dyslexia in your K through two. >> So, [laughter] it's going well. I I would I won't brag on that. >> Okay. Brag for a second. This time last year, the screening identified maybe 85 students in our second grade if at that time if they had to be promoted wouldn't have been promoted. When the data came back from that summited and the beginning of year screening data, it was only 30. And out of 30, 19 of those were

079students with IEP. And so it's only about 11 that we really need to focus on to continue to make sure we have the intervention plans. And so the K2, one of our focus in Watson Chapel is that K2 is not to let them get behind in the first place. Several of our master teachers designations are in that K2. So [clears throat] that is in my opinion right now one of our strongest areas. Are you now screening every kindergartener? >> Yes. >> Okay. And what is your identification rate of markers with dyslexia? >> I didn't have it on me. I don't I hadn't brought I wish if I had known I would have brought it but I can't speak to it right now because I don't have it from me. But we are addressing that with

080our dyslexia and Miss Holland is also overspended and dyslexia. >> Okay. And are you having conversations with all of the parents of students who are identified with markers of dyslexia about the rights that they have? >> Correct. >> All of them. >> Yes. >> Okay. And you're doing that in kindergarten, >> first grade, >> and second, >> second grade. Okay. Couple of years ago, I met a principal at a middle school in either North Little Rock or Silven Hills or Sherwood. And I apologize, I don't remember exactly that area. And I was impressed by the fact that this principal had previously had a D school and she had transformed it to a B school. Um, she had an individual plan for every single student in her building. Every teacher had a plan for every kid

081in their classroom. Do your children in your schools have an individual plan for every single one of them? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> And I will say, you know, now whether the plan needs some improvement. Yes. But that is something since I've been there at that we have reinforced they need to have these individual educational plans >> so that they can address every kid. >> Okay. Well, Dr. McGee, a couple of years from now, there will be no excuses. Okay. All kinds of tools are being laid in front of administrators all over the state to do whatever you need to do. And this board is willing to support anything we can do. The legislature I believe is has an attitude of supporting administrators however they can support them. I don't speak for them but that's

082my general sense. We we we cannot have you or any other district leader come back two three four years later and just have the same ash man just this that himhaw. And the reason I'm saying this out loud is because these are lives that matter. And I want you to carry that burden. I know you do, but I want you to. Every day that every day that passes, every month that passes, every school year that passes is extremely important to the students that we are leaving behind. And we must stop this. And there can be no excuses. Okay? We have to get to a point where all we talk about is the turnaround and the achievement and the growth, not the lack of. Okay. I look forward to your report in the future and turn

083around. >> So I and I look forward to giving to you because the next report that I will give you will be more of a celebration. >> Good. >> And I will say this right here in Watson Chapel since my arrival, we don't tolerate excuses. We're not making up an excuse. I'm not making up an excuse. I'm only giving you the facts of what I see, but we also address those excuses. We don't take them. We address the issue heads on. >> Well, we'll see. >> Okay. I believe you. I'm just saying I hear that a lot. >> Okay. We don't accept excuses. Everybody says it, but they accept a lot of excuses. I hope you don't. Okay. >> Can I speak with your board president, Mr. Milner? Thank you for coming. >> Good morning,

084board. >> Um, Mr. Miller, can you tell me how long have you been on the board? >> Uh, about 12 years. >> For 12 years. Okay. And when did you become the chair? >> Uh, this time last year. >> This time last year. Okay. When you rose to this position, is this when you identified that you needed a leadership change at the superintendent level? >> I'm sorry. Is this is that were you part of the decision to bring in a new superintendent? >> Yes, I was. >> Okay. Did y'all identify that or was that decision put on you that you needed to find someone new? >> Uh >> I I don't recall like did the previous superintendent resign? >> Yes. >> Okay. So, y'all did not make the decision to remove the superintendent? >> That's

085correct. >> Okay. Um do you you all vote on the school calendar? That's correct. How many days a week do your kids go to school? >> Five days a week. Okay. Um, you guys set the budget. Do you think that the objectives that your superintendent has put forth are reasonable? >> Yes. >> You think they can be accomplished within the next year? >> Yes. >> Great. Um, how how does your board hold your superintendent accountable? Well, I I can tell you that when we hired this superintendent, uh there was several that were qualified, but uh we looked at it very strategically this time, and we wanted somebody that could make a change. We're tired of just getting by and uh we don't want to be coming up here. Uh but we want what's best for

086the community and we want to be the school of choice in our area. And so we looked for a superintendent uh that was not only qualified but that could um my my words to him was we wanted somebody that could grab the bull by the horns and make a change and make a change from the culture up. >> So but my question is like how are y'all holding him accountable? >> Well, we evaluate. >> Yes, we evaluate. >> Okay. Matter of >> fact, he's up for evaluation right now. >> Excellent. Um, what's your general board makeup in terms of like is it just local business people? Does anybody have an education background? Can you just give me a [clears throat] brief overview of who's on your board? >> Uh, some of us are business people,

087some are um work in the community. I I don't know that we have anybody. We used to have somebody some out of the educational, but I don't think we do right now. >> And I understand you're elected, so you you get who the people elect. I was just curious to get over your makeup. Um, Mr. Wood, do you have any questions of the chair? Yeah. On the I would like for you to publicly address the acrosstheboard bonus in the school district as opposed to a merit-based bonus. Tell me about your view on that. >> Can I can I can I start back up just a little bit? Um I I want to mention something and where we are and what is is going on in our school. So, you know, the reason you called us

088up here because our grade letter dropped instead of going up. But, uh, Dr. McGee has not been with us that long. But, I want to I want to approach it or compare it to this. We're building a school. And if you came to our area physically about two months, I mean, about 10 months ago, you would have said, "What a mess. There is dirt everywhere. There's mud. There's water. They're digging up stuff. what are you all doing? So, you wouldn't know unless you looked at the plan and you would say, you got a big mess going on. But we had to tear down an old school. It had a foundation, but that foundation was for a one-story old building. So, the old foundation had to be dug up so that a new foundation could be

089put in [clears throat] so that we could build a nicer school, but a school that's two-story, higher in quality, higher in uh things that can be done in that. That's the same thing that's going on in our plan with the school in changing of our district and the culture. So, Dr. Dr. McGee has came in. He has grabbed the the bull by the horns to say and uh he started digging up old foundations so that the new foundation can be poured down. So you came to the school, the grades dropped is because you came right in the middle of the mess. You came right in the middle of the things are changed. But if you looked at the blueprint, you'll see where we're going. You'll see the picture. You'll see the plan. and you'll see

090that it it will be accomplished. And that's what he presented you today was the plan. He showed you the blueprint. So now that you can see where we're going and I promise you we won't come back here with an F. The next time we get graded, you'll see an increase because the foundations are being dug up and high quality people are being put in. We're tired of just getting by. We're looking to get people that want to work the plan. You know, if you if you went into uh James chapter 1, I'm a pastor, preacher. So, um you you got to have people that are doers of the word. There's a lot of people that's got knowledge of the word. There's a lot of people that read the word every day, but how many people

091do we have doing the word? That's what we're doing here. We're looking for people that are not just qualified that have the knowledge, have the diploma, are getting by to get to the license. We're looking for people that have got it, that are going to get it, and that are exceeding and to be a doer of that word of the plan. So, what was your question that led up to that? I'm sorry. >> Um, >> the bonus. Okay. So, that being said, we have not given a bonus in a long time. I I am for merit-based bonuses, but this time was a a time to kind of um it's kind of like to get of a shot of of vitamin B into the into the culture of what we have. Is there some that um

092without saying too much that uh all of them there belong there? No. Are are some there that will belong and stay? Yeah. And those those we do want to keep. So, it was kind of like a shot of vitamin B to kind of get things going because we're we're hitting this thing wide open and there's going to be a lot more change coming and there's going to be a lot more expectations to be a doer of this plan. >> Okay, fair enough. Let me ask you this. What What percentage of your third graders at Watson Chapel uh scored a three or four on the Atlas test? We just went over the percentage, but I don't know those percentages. >> Yeah. Do you know what percentage scored a one or a two? >> No, I do

093not. >> Okay. I not trying to embarrass you. I encourage you to memorize that and carry that in your heart every day as you leave the school district. Okay? It has to be in the DNA of how you evaluate Dr. McGee is how are students achieving? I appreciate that you got to manage a budget. I appreciate that you got to dig up an old foundation and lay a new one and twotory building and more offerings for kids and I get all that. I I get all that. But but the the fundamental the core of everything has to be what are students achieving and what how many of our students are growing? Two most important questions that you could ask him every single month that y'all meet together. Okay. >> So in fact that's my next

094question. What are you doing to constantly hold the administrators you've hired accountable for higher achievement and higher growth? >> Well, we do leave that up to the superintendent. And >> I would encourage you not to do that. >> Yeah. >> I'm not telling you to get in his business and be in his office every day. Okay? That's not your job. Your job is your job and his job is his job. But as the community, I believe you deserve a report every month or every quarter. I mean, Watson Chapel for a year or two was coming up here doing a quarterly report. I would think the minimum they could give you a quarterly report. >> He does. He gives >> But I would encourage a monthly report in in the foundations of all of these goals

095and all the strategies. What is being done every month? I mean, y'all y'all are on life support, okay? This is this is critical as a school district. you need. You can't just hire him and like a clock set it over on the shelf and come back and check it in a year and make sure it's still working. I hope that y'all will constantly be asking for a report on how you are implementing every strategy to achieve these goals. [clears throat] >> Earlier Dr. Oliva said that this wasn't to be a three to a fiveyear plan to that point. There's immediiacy and so I think the clock is ticking. We heard you promise great things and so let's see what happens. >> So this is just more of a comment I think. So you meant so

096and I think more of a message back to your board because you said that you were you've been on the school board for 12 years and that the change to Dr. McGee was not a active decision by your school board. So what that suggests to me is that had the former administration continued to want to work that your board would have been okay with that. Uh you also said that y'all were tired of quote just getting by and I would submit to you that you haven't been getting by. I mean, you have really been doing a disservice to the students in your district. Um, so you're not here because your grades went down. You're here because your grade was an F, failure. And frankly, the entire grading scale of the A through F for the

097schools and the districts across the state are low. I mean, generally, our bar is low. Um, But we it is a comparative grading scale and I think that I mean it is what we it is but there is I want you to remember that that grading scale for A through F has a accelerator in it so that the bar will continue to be raised. It's not just an effort to get to a D or a C because one day that D will be an F again as we raise the tide in the state of Arkansas. So, you haven't been just getting by and I would encourage you and your entire board to really take an active role uh as Mr. Wood has suggested in that making sure um you are actively engaged and not accepting

098mediocrity. >> Anything in time? Go ahead. And then I follow up the cooperative. No, that's good. Yes, sir. >> Yeah, I've got a couple of comments. I went first and so some of these are directed to you, Dr. McGee. First off, um I have a little bit different view on the bonus structure. Um, it absolutely needs to be merit-based, but what I'm hearing and what I took from your comments is you were trying to stabilize the environment, >> right? >> I'm okay with that as long as that's it was a one-time event and then you move into a merit-based I mean because good people will leave if they see bad people getting treated the same way they're getting treated. So, you will lose good good teachers if you if you're rewarding poor teachers in the

099same fashion that you do um the stronger teachers. Okay. Um, one of the comments that you made was um about um a bad teacher is better than no teacher. I would disagree with that. You I think you said that you have to uh if somebody um does not follow the instructions and use the material that you will terminate them, but you also have to factor in that you might not have somebody to take their place. That's the way I heard that was you're willing to accept poor performance in the abs rather than have no teacher at all. And that's a that's a very bad trap to fall into because again, you're going to lose good people if they good teachers if you see if they see that other teachers are getting away with things. And

100so go ahead. If I may, let me clarify. No, we're not accepting mediocrity. We're not. What we're doing is being strategic. >> So, we want to I have no problem replacing a a teacher at all and putting a long-term sub that may qualify. >> Yeah. Well, I would encourage you to back up that that decision point for for the strategic decision. Don't find yourself in a position where you have to continue to employ a bad teacher because you don't have any other option. Yeah. >> Okay. Um speed. We were talking about two or three years. We don't have two or three years this year. How many students do how many seniors do you have? >> We have 166 seniors. >> Okay. And first off, I appreciate the number. Um that's a a comment I'm going

101to come to in a second. uh in in two or three years, you're going to have two or three more classes of seniors that are will graduate that you will not be able to impact. You'll have third graders in fifth and sixth grade that you will have lost an opportunity. Um you have to approach this that your students are dying if you don't fix it right now. And so that's the sense of urgency that has to be created. Um um I like the comment about doers. Um you come across very well. I I wished I knew you better than I do. Um, I I hope to get to know you in a different environment than this environment. Okay. I'm I'm encouraged that I think that that's going to happen. You present very well. I'm I'm

102hopeful that the intensity and the passion you brought to the presentation today is the same intensity and passion you've taken to your teachers, to your principles, and to your students so that they can see that you care about them and you can move the needle. But again, speed is of the utmost importance. Okay. And the last one is um y'all knew y'all were coming. For you not to know certain pieces of data like how many threes and fours you have uh I think is um does not sit well with me and it probably doesn't sit well with the rest of the board that you know it's this is not about preparing for a presentation. This is about knowing that if if my folks don't know their data, then I I lose confidence in them. And

103the fact that y'all didn't know that when we were asked um is a concern to me. Right. >> Can we have the representative from the co-op? >> Good morning. How are you? >> Good. Um, so you're here today and with two schools that that that you support. >> Um, so this could kind of be for both, but um, in following up over here with they were talking about essentially addition by subtraction, removing a teacher that doesn't want to be there, that's insubordinate, that's um, ineffective. What happens? I think the fear is, well, we need a warm body. You know, I've heard that a million times over the years. We just need a warm body. We need somebody in the room. What happens when there isn't an adult? Is that where does the co-op send somebody

104to fill in or what support can you give in that addition by subtraction? >> So, we don't have the resources to send teachers into classrooms when that there's not one at the district. But I will say that sometimes when we talk about a teacher who's not able, maybe not doing the job, a lot of times it's that they haven't had the time to learn the curriculum and learn how to implement it. And so we try to model and coach them along. So our specialists will come in and co-e model and coach in the classroom before we get to that point. >> And those are the 20 teachers I think that talked about on the um not an improvement plan, a lensure path, right? So in which we've reduced that greatly. We can do that for

105any teacher that needs support, but we do focus on those 20 by providing practice support, additional coaching, and novice teacher mentoring for them. >> Um, one of the things that I have not been quite about is early childhood and understanding that 90% of brain development happens before they ever enter the school district ever. Um, and understanding that in order for kindergarten teachers, first grade, second grade, to get to those third grade reading levels, the kids have to come with a certain amount of knowledge with vocabulary, with language, receptive and expressive language, with all those um emotional regulation, all those wonderful things. We know that early childhood is, if not one of, but the very best way to get these kids prepared so kindergarten teachers can do what they're trained to do. Um, in looking at

106Arkansas's Better Chance program, um, the co-op has been funded for 733 slots, but currently is only filling 535, meaning you're receiving an overpayment of over a million dollars that will be reduced. Um, I want to talk about or hear from you on what you've done to fill those slots. So what when that that was that data pulled? >> Uh October and November. >> Okay. So we had shortages and I will say that we don't just serve the Arkansas River area in home visiting. >> We serve 14 counties. >> So when you look at that those 700 slots, that's not necessarily for that one county. It's for all 14. And so we are staffing in those situations. So we are fully staffed now. And so we're continually enrolling parents. And most of those slots are our

107home visiting programs. You mentioned that early childhood piece. We have three home visiting programs. One is um from z prenatal to two >> and one is from three to five. And then we also have safe care which is when we go into the homes of families that have been identified in the court system by families in needs of services to keep them from getting to that foster care piece. >> So those are home visiting opportunities we provide in Jefferson County to support the kindergarten ready initiative and supporting families and communities which you mentioned. >> That's the And the hippie program is where the three to five and that's the majority of those slots 107 slots. >> Um >> and that's the program where we are multicountied and multi-reion. >> So do you feel like those

108slots should be turned back in and maybe even converted to centerbased you know combining them and converting them. We have done that somewhat in transitioning, but we I don't feel like we should rob Peter to pay Paul because the home and our educators that are in those homes providing services and helping that family be stronger only makes our students stronger. And so without that support, we can have them all day >> in a in a facility, but if the family's not stronger, then those hours they're not with us in the school classroom facility are not being as impacted as they could be with home visiting. I wish we had enough to have home visiting for every parent and every family in the state and preschool classrooms, infant, toddler, all the way through till kindergarten. >>

109Well, yeah. And I there is absolutely value in both the hippie program and the parents as teachers program. My concern right now is you're not robbing Peter to pay Paul. You're robbing from the state at this point. It feels like if you're being paid for 107, you know, excuse me. I guess it's more like um you know what is it 198 vacant slots that is given the um lengthy weight list for the federal program. I think we could go in and support more of them. If they qualify for the federal program, they absolutely qualify for ABC. So going into that wait list, finding kids living in those 14 counties and saying, "Hey, you're on the wait list for this, but we can offer you this right now." Um, and being taking a more active role

110in filling those slots. And if that cannot be done, if all of your methods have been exhausted, turning them back in because there are 75 counties in Arkansas and we know there are over probably close to 2,000 kids in need of a space. >> And that is our process. >> So those will be turned back, I imagine, in December. Is that right? Or right now. So >> well, when I go back, I'm going to look to make sure what the enrollment is today >> and we'll see where we are with that. >> Okay. because it changes. It fluctuates from month to month with families coming in and out, moving. >> Well, and that's why we, you know, I definitely understand that and understand that you have to keep the lights on and the teachers in,

111which is why um contracted slots are so much better for programs than paying based on attendance, right? Like paying based on enrollment for sure. Um and we looked to the previous year's October number to fund. So at this point, if the October enrollment was, you know what, 198 slots fewer than you're enrolled for now, you know, next year you're going to get 198 fewer. You're going to get a million less dollars. Um so yes that is something that given all of the schools that you support Pine Bluff Watson Chapel um getting in those schools and on registration day having a table for ABC enrollment when uh Dr. McGee talked about a parent night or excuse me a parent lunch having a representative there and saying let me sign up your kids for ABC. >> We

112do that. We have um booths at each of those events and we also sit down with the kindergarten teachers from preschool teachers and have those transition conferences and have parents in. So there's a lot of coordination between home visiting our early childhood special services and getting them ready for kindergarten at the district level. and we still have 107 or excuse me, whatever 198 vacant slots. So, um, you know, it might be time to just turn them back in. Um, >> I'd love to sit down with you sometime. I invite you to come to Arkansas River and look at all of our data and see what suggestions you may have and let let us know. We can tell you what all we've been doing and maybe there's something we're missing. >> Um, okay. I want to

113go ahead and because we're over time and I was responsible for keeping us on time. >> So far, >> no, you're good. Um, if there's no other questions of either the board chair or the co-op as it relates to Watson Chapel specifically in their improvement plan, then I would like to see if the board would go ahead and entertain either a motion to accept or to reject. You can have a seat. Sorry. >> One one clarification [clears throat] and it goes back to my line. Let's see what happens. I don't want that to be read as cavalier. I wanted it to be a bridge into the word consequence. So my understanding is achievement scores go up, row scores go up or Can there be clarification on consequences >> in the immediate? >> So yes, so

114the the state board we we have in legislation levels of support. We have level four and level five. Level five is when we classify a district. And when that occurs, it's the department actually making a recommendation to this board to classify a district in level five support. And when that happens, it opens up um a list of actions that this board can take. Everything from removing a superintendent, dissolving a board, just given directions on changing their curriculum. Um and so at this point today, we're not making any recommendations to place any of these districts in level five. What we're saying today is this was our open hearing today. Let's see. Let you you're telling us what changes you're making. We're basically saying, "Okay, we've heard you today. You've given feedback. We're going to accept the

115asurances of things that you're telling us you're doing. If that doesn't happen and we continue to have concerns, then we could definitely come back and do a classification which then would come with more actions." >> Wonderful context. Thank you. >> And and I think I could add to that also, Dr. Arnold, these plans and and that's why I think it's important to hear from the schools and the superintendent because most of these plans that they're implementing, they realized over the summer that they knew they they had their scores, they had their data, they knew the outcomes weren't going to be positive. So, they're implementing these plans and and we're going to monitor to to see how well they're being implemented. that that's kind of I think our role in supporting them at at this point

116in time. We will have our state progress monitoring data. The next window closes I want to say in January, right? So, we're going to have current year real time information from this past I don't know if it's the fall assessment to the winter assessment and our agency will go through that that data and scores and we can provide an update to the board uh specifically because these are high priority districts for us probably by the February meeting. um we'll be able to do that and we we'll be happy to share that data and then the board may say time to call some of these districts back in. >> Okay? >> You know, so I I I want to use real time current information. We've put districts on notice. We have expectations of these districts. We

117have a statewide unified coordinated progress monitoring system in place now to lead and guide these conversations which we did not have before prior to learns and um this is how we can use that data and that that window I want to say closes in January because there's some folks that are in the testing parts now that the districts have um decisions that they wanted to do their testing at the end of this month or the beginning of next month but by February we'll be able to provide an update with real current year data. Can I make a correction very quickly before we accept a motion? Um, Miss Swan, I wanted to check something. Oh, I checked. I double checked and you are correct. I neglected to include or to remove the dy enrolled children. So,

118children that are receiving both center-based care and receiving home visiting, that being 112 kids, that reduces your vacancies down to 86 and um the overpayment is at 439,000. So, that's a smaller number. Um, still an opportunity. So, thank you. >> No, of course. Well, I want to get right. >> Yeah. Thanks. I want to clarify something too real quick. So, when you vote today to accept the statement of assurance, you're not necessarily endorsing their district strategic plan as is. Okay? You're accepting the statement of assurance, which are actions that we've put together that basically say you're collaborating with your school teams. You're implementing grade level standards in your classrooms and you're monitoring it. You have um clear instructional expect expectations for your classrooms and you're monitoring it. You're evaluating the lowest quartortile data regularly. Like

119that's what this document is saying. Okay? And so they're presenting their plan on how they're going to improve. They're signing this with their board today, right? Right. And we will continue to have conversations on them to them with have you collected the data? We'll have conversations with boards about what should they be looking for when it is a monthly board meeting and they've signed that these things are occurring. How's their board monitoring that these things are occurring? Okay. >> Okay. >> Ready for a motion? I'll move to accept the statement of assurance from Watson Chapel. >> Okay. I have a motion on the table by Mr. Wood. Do I have a second? >> Second by Miss Hunter. All in favor say I. >> Any opposed? >> Hearing none. Your motion passes. >> Thank you. All

120right, we'll move on to the next one. Thank you, Watson Chapel. I I appreciate this. Is this something though that in the future that we could ask the districts to have ready, you know, ahead of the meeting that that we could review before we come in here? >> Most definitely. >> Okay. >> All right. Next district that is going to be presenting to you today is North Little Rock School District. Um, North Little Rock School District is one point away, 1.7 points away from a D. Okay, so one point um the co-op that they're with is Arch Ford. Um they're recently a newer member of the Orch Arch Ford Consortium. Um they probably don't um have probably not been as actively involved with the co-op in terms of providing all all sorts of um professional

121development of those things. So today you might want to ask how is the co-op actually directly supporting a district that large and how do they use them? Um the enrollment in North Little Rock is over 7,000 students. Superintendent um is Dr. Greg Palooi as he's in his sixth year as a superintendent of the district. One of the things I want to kind of make a note about North Little Rock is that they actually have 13 schools. The thing that kind of jumps out to me when I look at their 13 schools is four of the 13 schools actually serve their their secondary students. Okay, grades seven through 12. And of those, all four of their those schools are Fs. So, it's when you use the accountability system in which we have in our in our

122state and it pulls all of your kids together. Um the older student grades, those those grade levels um are the areas in which this is really pulling the data down for the district. When you look at growth, overall growth this last year and the year before, um, in the district, you kind of see a mixed bag within the different schools, um, you know, one year, you know, one elementary made growth, the next year they didn't make growth, and it almost flips this the the one year that the school that didn't make growth, it went to another school, and then then they did make growth. So, kind of the consistency piece there that jumps out. But as a whole of their 13 schools, they do have two B elementary schools, two C elementary schools, um two

123D elementary schools, and one of their middle schools that is at that grade level. And then of the F district, there's six in the district. Um three of those are again are secondary students. Um so again, those are kind of just things that kind of jumped out today. Um poverty rate in comparison to Watson Chapel, who we just had in here, like they were 68% poverty rate. when you go to North Little Rock, you're looking at 99% poverty rate. So, just in in context of that, um again, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Pooki. >> Good morning, Madam Chair, Secretary Oliva, and distinguished members of the state school board. For the record, my name is Greg Pookkey, the proud superintendent of the North Lorac School District. Joining me today, Dr. Michelle Reddis, our

124school board president. Uh, Colonel Scott Stanger, chief of staff and oversees all of school operations. Uh, Dr. Thomas Rogers, our assistant superintendent of school improvement network A. Mr. Jacob Smith, assistant superintendent of school improvement network B, Dr. Leanne Stall, uh, who's in charge of our assistant superintendent of network support services. and uh our two coordinators that are here supporting us today. Miss Shawn Domin, our coordinator of school innovation and uh Dr. Carmichael is our uh coordinator of science. Uh I also want to recognize I did bring one principal with me. Uh that is Miss Harrison uh who's the proud principal of NLR6 Academy of Agricultural and Veterary Sciences. And I'm also here supported by Arch Ford which is Dr. uh Mark Taylor and uh Dr. Julie Workman. We appreciate the opportunity to come before you

125today. However, the newly released letter grade for our school district as an F- rating is totally unacceptable. Period. Every child in NLRD deserves a high quality teacher in a learning in a safe and supportive learning environment with a highly effective teacher and leader. Period. We recognize and hold ourselves accountable for immediate improvements and our commitment to our proactive and intentional approach to academic and student outcomes to reverse any negative trends with urgency. Because we anticipate a need for change uh direction, we've already implemented significant changes to improve academic outcomes, improve our overall quality workforce. In fact, in 2024, we began a proactive approach in planning for the 2526 school year based upon a variety of data. As such, this required a new organizational leadership structure uh that will better meet the needs of our students,

126our families, uh as well as our classroom teachers. On March 20th, 2025, the majority of our school board supported the plan. The restructuring began implementation July 1 of 2025 and has three significant areas or shifts in transformation. Instructional leadership pipeline and coaching, network-based teacher support and structure for our tier three priority schools, and integrated support and wraparound services for our families within a 24-hour time response period. School networks are groups of schools in a geographic location that share resources, they share support, and they share expertise to improve teaching and learning to meet the individual needs of the whole child. In this model, the school district is divided into two networks A and B, each led by an assistant superintendent of improvement with a that actually supervises seven school principles. The challenge we're tackling is that

127100% of our principles and our assistant principles require intense instructional leadership training. As such, the assistant superintendent's primary role is to focus on building the principal's instructional leadership through capacity, sidebyside coaching, and daily monitoring of classroom instruction and targeted feedback to teachers. Already this school year, our assistant superintendents have spent nearly 1,000 hours providing coaching and support to the principles they lead, resulting in a semic approach to classroom monitoring, coaching cycles, and feedback to teachers. Uniquely, this model is also framed with creating learning focused partnerships between school principles and curriculum instruction coordinators. Previously, this coordination model between school principles and curriculum coordination was simply ineffective. Furthermore, the model moves away from a level principal supervision to a vertical model. As such, the model provides a tiered support with a priority being placed on tier three

128schools, those receiving letter grades of a D and an F. Equally important, the model also includes an assistant superintendent of network support services, courting all the support from curriculum instruction, data assessment, dyslexia, English language learners, special education, student centered services, virtual learning, and wraparound services to name a few. Finally, the model also moves away from any supervision of operational functions by senior leaders which which now fall under the chief of staff to the superintendent. Hence, having a two-sided organizational streamline structure to include an instructional side and an operations side. In some cases, instructional supervision and operational supervision were intertwined and leaders now are able to focus their efforts supporting quality instruction and learning. The network support model also provides for a network instructional specialist at each campus supervised by a school principal that works directly

129in conjunction collaboration with school coordinators. Our network instructional uh specialists provide with intense monthly professional training in order to transfer their knowledge and their learning back to the teachers that they work with. The challenge we're tackling is that NLRSD has 163 unlicensed teachers and of those 124 are in DNF campuses. Building teacher capacity is paramount to scaling up their instructional content, technology, analytical, interpersonal, and adaptive capacity. With a focus on DNF campuses, network instructional specialists are also working closely with classroom teachers identified as tier three. Those teachers needing the most support. Based on the implementation of this model, we've already seen an increase in the use of uh high-quality instructional materials with nearly 300 instructional walks conducted during the first quarter. Also, the school network-based instructional specialists work in collaboration with our state assigned coaches.

130Therefore, furthering the intentional alignment and coordination of services, this model moves away from an outdated and an uncoordinated model of different instructional support positions and titles with limited direction and focus. Finally, the network model also includes direct support for more intense wraparound services to meet the needs of the whole child. There are multitude of adversities that our families face in our school district today. From mental health, addiction, physical, domestic violence, poverty, trauma, housing, relationship breakdowns, and unemployment to name a few. As such, there are so many factors outside of school that we know that directly impact what happens inside of school. The challenge we're tackling is that in 2024 and 25, one in four of our students were chronically absent due to the following barriers. Whether that be housing, evictions, homelessness, routines, morning stretched by

131jobs, time constraints, health, mental health issues, uh transportation limited to car or gas, and perceptions that daily attendance not always seems to be an essential an essential component by some parents or caregivers. Top requests from families this year include transportation, school supplies, clothing, and food. In this model, there are five network wraparound service specialists assigned to each campus. Their primary role is to support schools and chronically absent students as a barrier to some families and meet those non-academic barriers within 24 hours. As a result of their work already this school year, we've seen a decrease in chronic absenteeism in 24 and 25. An average rate of absence per school was 8.3 days compared to 2025 and 26. Average rate of absence per school is 6.9. Our current average attendance rate as of this week is

13293%. Compared to last year at this time was 91. By working to improve key indicators linked to student success, we're trying to address the issues of the root cost to support our students and our academic supports. In our collaboration with our school board, we've created a new vision, a mission, moral purpose, organizational core values, and our strategic plan, five-year goals. Uh the focus of this presentation will be specific on goal one, rigorous, relevant, and innovative learning, and goal four, high quality teachers, leaders, and employees to improve quality education workforce. In April 2025, our immediate action was to redesign our strategic plan performance targets to ensure alignment to the new accountability and to be able to hold ourselves accountable that are calculated by each grade. As such, we have 20 district performance indicators directly aligned to

133how each school's letter grade, elementary, middle, and high school is measured based upon the new exam based upon the accountability system. Here are some examples. By 2030, 88% of our students in grades 3 through 5 will be proficient ELA. By 2030, 96 in grades 3 through 5 will meet their growth target and 100% of the lower cortile will meet their growth. Hence, we build a performance targets daily from metrics that are used for our straight letter grades. Therefore, as a work in progress, district goals are aligned to performance targets. They're aligned to school targets that are aligned to PPGs, which are aligned to professional learning targets, and which are aligned to teacher PPGs. Although a work in progress, this is the first time the systems been aligned this tightly. School improvement model. Another s significant

134change we made is taken to completely redesign our school improvement plans. Our structure, our process, and how schools report on their data quarterly. Although another work in progress, our school improvement plan process is broken down into 11 sections. As you can see from this example of an elementary school improvement plan, the plan focuses on datadriven diagnosis of quantitative data that is analyzed through time and data available to schools, strengths, areas of challenge and chronic performance gaps which include a variety of data, screener data, interim data, absentee data for examples. The plan also focuses on datadriven di diagnosis of qualitative data which is meaning weekly and monthly walkthrough data analysis in order to a identify those areas of teacher uh practice. The comprehensive needs assessment is a central component to our root cause and identifying improvement

135needed. Our strategically aligning our school improvement plan with the school improvement targets align the district performance plans allows for deep alignment of action plans specifically in literacy, ELA, math and in science. the page. Finally, each of our school improvement plans outline the accountability process for reporting out on data which is known as our collaborative observation backed by the responsibility and accountability of statistics are known to us locally as Cobrastat. All models report on their Cobrastat quarterly data to our executive leadership. School principles in a DNF campus also report out uh at a DNF campus also report out the data to a schoolboard meeting during our monthly meeting during our schoolboard monthly meeting. Finally, any principal of a DNF campus uh will also sign along with their assistant superintendent obviously if approved today. The NLRSD school

136improvement statement of assurance form similar to what a superintendent and schoolboard president will sign as a part of this process. This form certifies that the school will adhere also to the school improvement statement of assurance. Another immediate change we made in September of this school year was to immediately change our 2526 calendar from early release Wednesdays and a reform initiative aimed to increase weekly time for professional development and teacher planning in order to gain back 90 minutes of instruction on Wednesdays for high quality teaching. The purpose of the reform initiative is to implement the approach to further support leaders with additional time and professional learning and to support collaborative planning and individual teacher planning within the teaching and learning process. We know that there should be a direct correlation between high quality planning and high

137quality delivery of instruction. Due to inclement weather last few years, we've needed to eliminate early release in a second part uh in order to make up instructional time. Given the results of the 2425 atlas data and concerns of student chronic acetism especially with attendance by students on early release Wednesdays and shortened instructional uh time uh the quality of that time as a result of this change we've already delivered an additional 10 hours of instruction to students this year and they will gain an additional 12 hours of instruction by May of 2026. Goal one, key actions for academic improvement. And I'll summarize these which go into high expectations for curriculum planning, implementing clear expectations, what we'd refer to as you know as tier one instruction, which is the day-to-day delivery, uh the assessment of the curricula

138to student learning, the implementation and expectations which grow to the monitoring of the curriculum by not only our instructional leaders but our central office staff as well. the implementation of high-quality instructional materials in ELA, math, and science with fidelity. We are exploring an option of a new elementary science reading curriculum for both the top and the bottom rope through a rigorous adoption process that would be aligned to the state improved HQIM publishers. Professional development for teachers on HQIM. Implement targeted development for teachers based on classroom walkthrough data using key levers of instructional for instructional leaders. teachers also aligning instruction with the Atlas achievement level descriptors known as the ALDs in ELA math and science implement the Atlas summit sumitive testing blueprint to support the monitoring of student learning and pacing so our teachers understand the

139standards that are covered and they're going to be tested uh also in 26 and 27 we're predicting that our district calendar will provide for two weeks of professional development prior to the start of school and monthly during the school year professional development sessions will determine based on the needs uh as seen in walkthrough data, observations, and atlas data. Our principles at a minimum are required to do 20 classroom visits per week, report on their findings to their assistant superintendents for ongoing instruction support, and those results compiled to be reported to me as a superintendent of schools. Also, each principal's professional growth plan will include their school performance targets aligned directly to their performance targets and the new accountability system. We've also uh revised our response to intervention with our RTI process of tier 2 and

140tier three at each campus, including the menu of reading and math interventions aligned to the right skill with the right intervention, guidelines for scheduling that intervention for up to 12 weeks and guidelines to progress monitor that intervention and make adjustments as needed. Each school leader team will progress monitor all schools receiving reading and math interventions, individual reading plan, reading at home plans, um high impact tutoring, and we've also added a family support plan. Uh each principal and DNF campus, as I reported on their Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4 data will report on that to our schoolboard. Uh at at the conclusion of each quarter, we've re redesigned our AL program and created initiatives like the Fusion program where we're targeting students that have dropped out to bring them back to get them back on track.

141We've eliminated several external support providers that simply were not demonstrating improvement. We've also the uh expertise of the key external partners such as Arch Ford, the Bailey Group, Kids First, and Palaski County uh Palasky Tech to mention it too. And finally, as I'll go into I apologize. And finally, I'll go into uh goal four, and that is the actions that we'll take for a quality education workforce. Uh our plan is to raise our minimum teacher salary to 55,000 to attract highquality teachers, provide principles uh with teacher growth score data to develop staff development for DNF schools to attract and demonstrate growth. Uh we've established the NLRSD best of the best award recognizing those teachers that have shown tremendous growth. Uh teacher recruitment and incentive programs for our highnee schools. Uh we really need to look

142at and analyze our teacher attendance data based upon our attendance policy and look for those findings to make adjustments. We have a high need uh for language interpreter services. Uh we're also looking at affordable housing and loan forgiveness for our high-quality teachers, compensation for additional time outside of school hours if you're a DNF campus. uh distributed leadership model. So partnering with such institutions as the National Institute of Excellence and uh teaching to develop our grow your own model recruitment in uh the early spring teacher preparation programs using online platforms uh and also creating the NLRSD dogtown Foundation to be able to full-time fund raise to be able to provide additional support for nonacademic barriers as well as supporting after school and extended day programs. Without a doubt and to overemphasize, our biggest lever to reverse

143an F rating is the quality of the teacher in the classroom. Period. By far, they have the most direct impact on improving student outcomes, second only to the quality of the principal and the assistant principal as the instructional leader. And finally, in the fall of 2022, we began to restructure Seventh Street Elementary School, a historically low performing school with high leader in teacher turnover. After meeting with AD accountability staff on available options in March of 2023, the school board unanimously approved the Seventh Street Elementary School restructuring plan, which included zero basing all staff, including the school leadership team and set stipens over three years, targeted intervention and wraparound support, increased teacher support with literacy and math, and additional time for professional development, reconfiguring the school from a preK5 to a preK8. uh in the implementation

144of a theme school model integrating project-based learning to name a few. Implementation began in the 2324 school year and was a complete disaster. A disaster. The principal quit in the first week. The literacy and the math coach quit within the fir within the next month. Central office staff responded rapidly with additional assistance and support, including a dean of students to support a large number of student discipline cases that year. In fact, in 23 and 24, 7th Street Elementary School had 350 disciplinary incidents. Miss Lissa Harrison, who is here with us today, was appointed as a new principal in 24. And then 2425 school year was her very first year as a building leader. In her first year as the instructional leader, she decreased school discipline from 350 to 160 in 24-25. At the request of

145the principal, there's no longer a need for a dean of students. Also, in her first year, she improved her campus letter grade total score by nearly four points, showing another positive trend. We also made a leadership change this year at the assistant principal level. Finally, the school's community advisory board helped to select the theme of agricultural and veterary science. supporting early exposure to careers in the areas while making learning relevant and meaningful through high levels of student engagement linked to real world experiences. To date, NLR6 Academy of Agricultural and Veterary Sciences has the largest number of external partners in our school district that even rival our careermies at our high school. Some key partnerships include the University of Arkansas Monaceel College of Forestry, Agricultural and Natural Resources, Arkansas State University, College of Veterary Medicine, Lions

146College of Veterary Medicine, USDA, Arkansas Game and Fish, and the Arkansas Department of Agriculture to name a few. In short, under Miss Harrison's leadership, the school has come a long way in a short period of time in this context, but there is still a lot more work to do. In addition, we were honored last week to host Secretary Leva, Deputy Commissioner Smith, and their efforts on a site visit and a one-on-one discussion with Miss Harrison. The changes at NLR6 since Miss Harrison's induction and her ability to make and our ability to make needed changes quickly, which result in higher levels of learning for students. I'm sure I'm probably over my time. >> You are. And I was going to say if you could >> conclusion, we remain committed to hold ourselves accountable for the results

147and look forward to sharing our progress with our stakeholders and our success of every student entrusted in us to be future ready to enlist, employ, enroll, and employ. >> Thank you, Miss Hunter. >> May I have some water? What I'll do is I'll start this side and go down and then we'll >> I'm gonna start with Miss Hunter and then we'll we'll work. >> Okay. Um >> Yes, >> I don't know where to begin. So, um wow, that's a lot of information. Thank you for all of that. Um >> Yes, ma'am. >> So, let's talk about unlicensed teachers just a little bit. >> Yes, ma'am. >> So, you have a concentration of unlicensed teachers in your DNS schools >> 24. >> Um can you talk a little bit about their lensure plans and what you're

148doing to help them move into a licensed staff? >> Sure. So uh all of those individuals meet with our HR staff and uh look at those pathways and make sure that they're on a a a plan in order to make their certification. When I arrived in North Little Rock in 2020, we had so many teachers that I think was on the ACT 1240 waiver, if that was right, and they had been on act 1240 waivers for a long time. In some cases, 8 to nine years. And so we stopped that and said, "You have to be on a three-year plan and you have to show progress. If you don't show progress and you do not meet that indicator, I will revert your pay back to substitute pay." And I've done that. If you're not making

149progress, uh that's one area. uh certainly uh working with uh Arch Ford uh our cooperative uh does a great job with our novice and new teachers in supporting them. So that's another level of support but there's a lot with them to make sure that we want to monitor that you're on track to make that certification uh in a timely manner and if not there's a consequence for it. >> Okay. All right. Fair enough. >> Okay. So and I'm gonna just ask one other question we can move on through here. Yes ma'am. >> But um >> with respect to the Dog Town Foundation. >> Yes, ma'am. >> I think that that I mean, at least in my experience, that's a somewhat unconventional approach is unless it's popular and I don't know about it. >> I mean,

150can you just give me a little bit of background on that and and then the I find it very interesting that you say in your presentation that you expect to that foundation to relieve some of the budgetary pressures on the district because you would use those to uh for teacher pay. >> Yes, ma'am. Yep. So, we have we already have two uh foundations in our school district. Uh one is the Wildcat Foundation. They only focus on fundraising for high school and it's predominantly in the area of athletics. We also have the NLRSD public uh education foundation. Uh they support not not necessarily uh students, but they they sponsor a signing day for our students going to college. Uh but they also support our teachers with teacher grants. you can get a $500 grant or a

151thousand dollar block grant for a group of teachers. That's all they do. >> And so the idea or the notion of the NLR Dogtown Foundation is to have a full-time person fundraising for the district with a focus uh on uh not only those academic areas uh and supporting them to be future ready, but we want to target when we have family needs that are out there. uh we want to be able to make sure that we've got resources that we can put out into those families that are at need. So those non-academic non-academic barriers that I was talking about to be able to fund raise for that. Also our extended day programs uh as well as our afterchool programs. Right now we only have one school which is Crestwood Elementary School uh which has their

152own which is funded. We're kind of the pastor agency for that which is a a full-time afterare program. We do have a lot of community support for afterare programs. Uh however uh since I've been there, we've funded uh summer school uh out of uh ESRE funds. When ESRE funds went away, we had to go to operational funds. So we're trying to think differently through the Dogtown Foundation. How can we raise money in the district and not use operational costs and redirect those operational costs towards increasing teacher salaries? >> Thank you. I mean I just want now that know that there are three now foundations. I wonder if there's going to, you know, you only get the >> Well, we tried to we tried to align ourselves and uh right now the other two just wanted

153to kind of wait and see, but we've had that conversation with them because we think there should only be one. Uh but they're different focuses. [clears throat] So, we hope that by leading the way that they'll come and join us and we've asked them to join us. Let's let's do this together. We don't have to be separated, but they serve a different they were serving a different need and not the needs that I felt that we needed to address immediately. >> Understood. I'm just worried about how often you dip from the well. So anyway, I'll move on. >> All right. >> Thank you, M. >> Are these each of these foundations are they 501c3s? >> Yes, they're all 501c3s. That's correct. >> Yeah. So you have three different boards, three different meeting requirements. I cannot

154even imagine. It certainly would benefit everyone. >> Absolutely. And and we're going to be the only one that has a dedicated person that is a full-time fundraiser. That's all they do is fundra. While the other ones are their budgets might be maybe 20 $25,000 a year, our target is a million dollars a year to raise. >> That's great. >> And redistribute that back within our district. >> Certainly common practice in independent schools um in private schools. And so I think it's a great approach, especially as large as as your district is. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Um I had a question about the um tiered levels of support. >> I noticed that Pike View wasn't on there. Can you tell me more about that? >> I may have I may apologize that I didn't put that

155on there. Pipe View is our early childhood center. Um I may have forgotten to put that on there as I was transferring some. So I go back to that. Is it not listed? Is Pike View not listed? >> It is not listed on the tiered support model. It is a A. It's in network A. >> My fear is it's not there because they don't take the same assessment. No ma'am. And they're not getting any support. That is literally uh my mistake as I was transferring from one slide as our leadership institute to this slide. I inadvertently left that out. So I do apologize. >> Do you know which tier they're in? >> They would be in uh tier two. >> Okay. And how is that decided seeing as their assessments are so very different than

156everyone else's? >> Sure. So when we look at you know and we all know the the importance of uh early childhood education. Uh we're all we know that's the foundation. In fact, when I look at prek numbers, there about if I remember correctly. And of that, of those come from single family homes. So my question is, what are we doing for those single family parents to be able to support them with their child's education? And so we've done a pretty good job, relatively speaking, over the last couple years of improving that pipeline from preK to to one to two. Matter of fact, one of our metrics is looking at, and it's been my stance since I've been there, every child by the time they leave grade two should be able to read and compute proficiently.

157So, we're still inching our way there. Uh, but it's it's an essential component. Uh, that is our only site that is uh the early childhood center and then we have uh I believe it's uh seven other sites that have preks. >> Uh let's see, one, two, three, four. Yeah, five other >> three, four, five. Yeah. So, six total. Well, and um what assessment you know understanding these are ABC slots and that an assessment is required and child development surveys as well. Do you know what assessment um Pike View uses for kindergarten readiness? >> I just drew a blank to that and I should have the answer to that and I >> perhaps your network a principal or excuse me superintendent. >> So obviously with our uh screener that would be Dr. Rogers that would be

158here but uh >> you can come back to it okay because I would love to >> I got a lot of numbers in my head and try to think about the assessment obviously our screener data that we just looked at that and we are seeing an improvement in in children being ready. So that's a positive thing at that area. Uh you know as we continue to look at at grade three and and I know Mr. Woods already going to ask me that question which is going to be about 18 to 20% of our students in grade three that are proficient. So that's still a large number of students. We have 275 today out of 568 uh third graders uh that right now would look like they would not qualify to move on. Although we got

159141 that are in uh high impact tutoring grants. So we all know that that early childhood piece is going to feed right into that first year in which they take that assessment. Well, and I I love I think it just worked out this way, but that um the seats belong to you, the funding belongs to you, so the support is also in your private. I think that's because of your most because you only recently joined the co-op because often the co-ops are the ones they're located at your individual site, but they often feel very separated and so the building leadership does isn't involved. So, I appreciate that yours are. I would say to to your point, one of the first things I heard when I interviewed 180 teachers, the pre-K teachers always felt left out

160>> and they're like, we all it's always K12, but they never talk about us. >> They're not included in the support, >> right? So, I have two that sit on my teacher advisory, two preK teachers. Um, and I also very much appreciated the sort of this I mean I identified it as smart goals, >> but um the tangible attainable improvement plan of 10% per year up to a certain level. It chunks it off in a way that feels >> like you're not eating an elephant, I [laughter] suppose, >> like it's manageable, >> right? And 110%, you know, growth. Obviously 100% would be that you've you've met your yearly growth from one to the next and 110% feels very um very attainable. So I appreciate that and I >> hope that um >> those 14 kind

161of key tasks in both workforce development and in academic are also being applied um to the early childhood workforce as well. So >> yes ma'am. >> Thanks. I appreciate >> Yes, sir. Well, we're here based on numbers, but to go off script there, let's go qualitative just for a moment. Could you reintroduce your staff to us and have them stand when their name is called? >> Yes. Yes, sir. Uh Dr. Arnold, I'd be it'd be my pleasure. The first would be uh Dr. Reddis. She is our school board president. I'd also introduce to you Colonel Scott Stanger. He's chief of staff and heads all of school district operations. Uh next would be Dr. Leanne Stole, assistant superintendent of network school network support services. Uh Dr. Thomas Rogers is our assistant superintendent of school improvement network

162A, Mr. Jacob Smith, assistant superintendent of network B. Uh Miss Shondaanda de Makin who is the coordinator of school innovation and also uh Miss Dr. Carmichael is here from uh our coordinator of science. Uh I think our literacy folks are doing training today or they would have been here too. Uh and also Miss Lissa Harrison is the principal of NLR6. She is in her second year as the principal in a tier three school and certainly our friends from Arch. >> Thank you and congratulations on Seventh Street. Would it would it be appropriate or may I have a couple of minutes just to have Dr. Rogers and Mr. Smith come to the podium just for a word or two. >> Absolutely. Dr. Dr. >> Thank you. >> Yes, sir. Knowing it's a public forum and you

163know we're not uh in a back room somewhere, I'm just going to ask uh questions and and look for um you know your heart you know uh Dr. Rogers uh the team structure looks powerful on paper in your mind is it the right one and how is it working? Thomas Rogers, assistant superintendent, network a North Little Rock School District. I want to refer back to the question about the prek assessment. >> Yes, thank you. >> Let me grab that first and then I'll jump to you. Okay. It is for Gans. Great. That's what we use in Frog Street is the curriculum. >> Perfect. I appreciate that. >> Yes. Thank you. I love that you do that. [laughter] >> Now, I'll go to you, sir. You would repeat your question for me. >> Yes. And I'm

164I'm going qualitative uh just to get a sense of the the team the team structure its effectiveness because it's a it's a powerful model. It's it's not your typical model but in this instance I see it has a lot of potential. So how is that potential materializing in your mind? >> Yes. Yes. Yes. >> The way we deal with Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This or chart, your presence, your team. >> Absolutely. Um certainly I think it is a powerful model. Um having been experienced from a large urban school district in Tennessee where I've had a large number of schools in my network and specifically turnaround work. This is the smallest number I've ever seen. So it is a joy to work closely with principles inside of schools every day building capacity strengthening instructional leadership and

165side by side in coaching conversations. One of the things that I think Dr. Palooi was had great foresight in is the way that the redesign has worked and this is part of the redesign model to get seven schools on the A side, seven on the B side. It gives us more intensive support time to work with our DNF campuses, which I see every week. And if my principles were here, they certainly would attest to that. And when we meet, we're always looking at all data points that align to Atlas outcomes. And we're in classroom side by side looking at instruction, aligning it to the ALDs, looking at high quality instructional materials, tier one instruction, and matching assessments from a backward design. >> Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> Mr. Smith. Um, in your mind and in

166your experience, how's the chemistry of this team? >> Fantastic, sir. Mr. Smith, Jacob Smith. Uh, >> apologize. 65. >> You're tall. We're comfortable. >> Yes. >> Jacob Smith, assistant superintendent, school improvement for Network B. Um, and so the way it's working is is great. Um, we're handinand foot. Um, if that makes sense. Moving together as one group, Dr. Stole, myself, and Dr. Rogers. Um, I believe, you know, being in North Little Rock under the previous model and now moving to this model, um, I think the biggest distinction is is we were elementary and secondary split and that was overwhelming because was 10 on one individual and four on another and there was a great deal of need at the elementary level and so this kind of equalized that process and allow more experience to kind

167of be dumped into both if that makes sense. And so, as Dr. Rogers alluded to, we have more time to focus on those schools that are in that tier that need support. >> Qualitatively then, are you sensing gain progress? >> Absolutely. Yes, sir. The the whole culture has shifted and everybody is buying into the process and any old coach, anybody will will absolutely tell you that the buyin is most important. You can't do it by yourself and so you have to elicit that buy in and allow individuals to push forward with you. and that's what we're attempting to do as a whole group. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Yeah. So, so similar to that question, I know a lot of these initiatives are uh planned for, I guess, the next school year and

168just knowing the immediiacy of of all of this s um how much of this do you feel like has been implemented, I guess, so far this school year? And then kind of as a followup to that, um and this is kind of related to Dr. Ar's question just a second ago. >> Sure. How what have you seen, I guess, in the classrooms and and how things have changed so far, not just with the teachers, but as far as like like students just getting it, like students understanding the curriculum. >> Yeah. I I tell you the the three biggest themes that came out of 300 walkthroughs are the following. Number one, student engagement. And so there's too much teacher talk and not enough student talk. Uh that's a big one. Uh, number two would be formative

169assessment. Making sure that we're using those common formative assessments designed from our curriculum team that are used consistently to continue to understand where are my kids, where are my kids, where are my kids, and what am I going to do about it. The last is teaching at a low level, which is the DK1. We know that's that's a low level of instruction. Kids are not going to be tested at a low level of instruction. So, we've got to be able to raise those gains. So, we've taken that data and we're spiraling it back into our individual schools to reju professional development and then we're going to go back in and look at instruction and we should start to see some some changes based upon those three areas. Uh but I will tell you that uh

170you know we continue to you know implement with with fidelity to the best of the ability and uh and if somebody's not meeting that expectation then the expectation is that uh that individual teacher is going to be written on paper on notice if they're not following the directions that they've been given >> here. Um I um had noticed uh as a district I think it's 78% uh students graduated on time and obviously it's a big part of the score. Uh you mentioned uh a initiative called fusion program and you're I guess redesigning that. Can you speak more to that? >> Yeah sure. Uh so the fusion program we have uh 20 I believe it's 25 students today. Uh we implemented that last year knowing going into the looking at our graduation rate and how we're

171going to be able to uh improve that. and we've re-engaged kids that have dropped out. Uh, and I'll tell you this story because it's real. And, uh, it's heartbreaking, but when I talked to one of the students that graduated this past year out of the Fugan program, and when I went to visit him before he graduated, I wanted to know his story because everyone has a story. And I say I asked, "Why did you drop out in the first place?" He had a half a credit, I mean, a one credit shy of graduating. and he talked about his family life. He talked about I had to provide for my family at that time. There was no other reason or no other avenue he felt in his mind to take care of his family first before

172that. We got him to be able to graduate. It amazes me what challenges these kids face outside of school, but still come to school every single day. You know, wanting to learn, they know it's a safe place. Uh that's just one little success story. Uh the other thing is completely redesigning AL. Uh, I'm not happy overall with our AL program. Uh, I think we need to do a better job. We have, uh, 215 students in AL. Uh, when I arrived, this is another thing on my list, but when I arrived and I talked to students and they would say, Dr. P, nobody gets out of AL. Once you're in, you're always in. What does that say? When students are saying that once you're in AL, you're always in AL. Now, for some kids, a smaller

173learning environment, they need that. uh predominantly when you look at our data it's African-American males and we've got to reverse that completely period. >> Thank you Dr. Abbott. >> We got a few. >> Yes. >> The you talked about 300 days of or 300 walkthroughs. Was was that you personally or was that your staff? >> My staff as well. >> Okay. So how many of those 300 were you? >> I was on 15. >> All right. You think that's an appropriate split? >> No, sir. >> Right. >> Um, how many people do you have that work in the district's office that aren't in the schools? >> In the district office that are not in schools, >> your staff, >> all operations staff, all of that. Well, the there seems to be and and with all

174due respect to the the structure and I'll talk about that in a second. There just seems to be a lot of assistant superintendent and a lot of people that aren't directly involved with in the schools and I'm just trying to understand. Sure. >> I understand there's 7,000 students, but >> Sure. So, we actually had more in central office before the reorganization. Okay. And so one of the one of the avenues that we were faced with a $5.1 million deficit, that was a huge factor. So, uh, based upon a variety of factors from the school board, let alone to our employees in our budget survey. And the first thing that the board as well as our staff said, you need to look at central office. And we had more central office staff uh, in in central

175office prior to this school year. So what the model was in the past is you had people that had instruction but they also had operational functions as well. So you might be over top of student support but you have food nutrition and you have transportation as well. Now what we've done is divided all that really into two sides of the house. So an operational side which is what Colonel Stanger oversees. So that's budget, finance, human resources, everything that makes school run and then allows for the assistant superintendent to just zero in on uh the principles that they're supervising. As Mr. Smith mentioned in our previous model, we were leveled. So the elementary supervisor had 10 schools. And so that's a lot when four or five of those are in uh you know in high needs.

176On the other side of that, the secondary uh supervisor had five uh and as I reflect on it, the secondary principles have had five supervisors in five years. And so when you have five and then you had So it just seemed that if I could get a smaller number of a leader to work with a smaller number of leaders and have intentional time with them that would be better and to focus their work and to support that principle in their work. >> Right. And that reorganization just is just in >> Yes. It just went into effect uh July 1st, Mr. Peacock. >> All right. Um, I don't mean this to be um a negative. Well, uh, how help me feel comfortable that it's not rearranging deck chairs and it's actually making the process better. And

177I know part of that's your presentation, but >> Yes, sir. >> Um, often times we see when an organization's failing, the first thing they go to is reorganizing, and that buys them time. We don't have time. So >> sir, >> how can I be more comfortable that that's not what we're doing here? >> Yeah. I mean, the whole thing is those each of those assistant superintendents, their entire job is living in schools. >> That is their entire job. And they're reporting back each Tuesday when we meet about what's working, what's not working. Um, and they're they're highly visible. They're working with every single uh and sometimes they have to shift the focus. For an example, to spend a little bit more intentional time. For an example, uh, Mr. Smith direction was to spend more time

178for a period of time at the seventh and eighth campus because that's where I needed him the most. Uh but there are other principles that need support as well, but they're they're in schools every day. And I think the opposite side is in a leveled model where you had maybe more principles that had more need and other duties as well. So we're trying to streamline that focus. And then where Dr. Stole comes in is now I've got one person that's completely over all of the services that support schools. that was in a variety of of different shops so to speak as well. So that is now streamlined and now there's more collaboration uh in consistency and that was a big problem. I mean principles would tell us there's a disconnect between central office and schools

179and we can't have it. Uh central office is there to be a direct support not a hindrance and um >> yes >> um you you touched on teacher absenteeism. Do you track that? >> We do. >> What's the what's the absentee rate? Uh well had it by a couple schools. I'm just going to say it's horrible. Uh the what we're finding and specifically it's on Fridays and Mondays where we find the most teacher absences. And then if you compound that with absences due to pregnancy, you know, FMLA, those kinds of things. And I'll give you an example that our instruction at one of our schools has a in fourth grade has a teacher that's out on maternity leave. So couldn't find a long-term sub. So they took the network instructional specialist that's to work with

180all teachers and put them in the classroom to directly work with those teachers. So uh we've got to look at our attendance policy and couple that with uh daily attendance at our schools and we've got to do something different. Uh whether that's you know teachers are allotted I think it's 14 days of of sick leave and so forth. Uh, and I've asked our administrators and assistant superintendents, if you're finding that pattern with the teacher where there's chronic absenteeism of the teacher, then I expect that to be addressed immediately. We we we can't one we got to get the kids there, but I've got to get teachers there uh as well. And and that's something matter of fact, uh, we also include that. One of the things we do on Fridays, uh, we have our weekly

181schoolboard report. So, our weekly schoolboard report goes out to all of our schoolboard members. Uh that's kind of a what's happening this week uh within each of the offices. Uh also included that is our uh teacher daily attendance rate that goes out to our uh school board members as well. And that's another conversation we're getting ready to have on potentially changing the policy as we look at that data. >> When do you plan on doing that? >> As soon as possible. >> Right. Um the you had two schools, Crestwood and Lakewood, who scored B's. Do you track those students when they when they move on to middle school um and their performance and does the performance decrease or does this just the requirements continue to grow and they stagnate? >> It it does. It continues

182to grow. Um uh in our school district, uh one of the things that I've noticed that coming out of elementary school is that We lose a lot of kids. We lose a lot of kids from fifth to sixth. Part of that is because we have the second largest middle school in the state of Arkansas. Uh our sixth grade campus has 550 students and our seventh and eth has 1100 students. Uh it's too big. Matter of fact, it's it's on a high school campus. Uh we're fortunate we just passed the millillage to build a brand new uh middle school. Uh and so uh I think that will help reverse that enrollment issue. Uh but you made me think of something else that when I've looked at the data in the last couple years, we lost over

183100 students that were identified as gifted and talented. And we we were working on this. We had to a different um configuration. We've we've got some support with gifted and talented, but that's another area that needs immediate attention as well is relooking at our former coordinator was doing work in that area. Uh now we have a person that teaches GT, but the other side of her job is looking gift and talented across the district. So she's not a full-time individual that's on that. Uh but I have concerns about gifted and talented education and are we meeting those kids as well. Uh we certainly going to focus on our lower cortile students and making sure they go up, but we also got to make sure that our kids that are three or fours that that they

184grow as well. >> Um this is just editorial. There's there's a lot of um goals, >> but just feels light on how you're going to go. And I understand you got 15 minutes and you got an awful lot of material to cover. Their >> the fact that there's a lot of goals without a lot of meat behind them being presented is just a little bit of a concern for me. >> Okay, >> Mr. Grant. >> In your opening statement, you mentioned that the majority of the board supported this plan. Does that imply that some did not? pass 43, Mr. >> So, not all school board members supported it. >> Is that a concern that there were some that I mean, why would they not support this? >> I I don't know those individual. Yep. I'll

185let Dr. Redoud [laughter] >> proud of the Noar school district. It was reorganization was hard. It was hard for me. I voted for it because I knew I just saw the vision and I knew it would work. But there was personal ties to positions that would be eliminated. And so we're human. And so if you're your daughter-in-law or niece or whatever is going to be affected, it played a part. >> Yeah. So, do you think that's going to be an issue with accomplishing your goals? >> No. >> Okay. All right. >> We we believe in we're working towards >> agreeing to disagree. >> Okay. Good. Dr. Palooi. >> Yes, sir. >> You mentioned the uh reducing the absentee rate in in children. I think there's a in their 10day limit on unexcused. What happens to

186those kids that exceed that limit? >> That exceed that limit? Uh there's um certainly uh consequences for that as it relates to our uh student discipline policy uh that we'll follow up on with those individual students and those individual parents. Uh but I'm very proud of the work of the wraparound service specialist. I mean if if I can wave a magic wand, I would add have a wraparound service specialist at every single one of our campuses. I mean they're doing amazing work to eliminate barriers that are non-academic before they happen. I give you a very good example. This happened yesterday. We had a parent at Boom Park Elementary School that had an $800 light bill, heating bill, electric bill that was way overdue. They were getting ready to shut off uh their services. Uh they

187have four children that are in our school district. Our wraparound service found out about it, put it on Facebook, in five minutes, a good patron of North Little Rock paid that bill. So what that tells me is there's not only community support but we just maybe eliminated a barrier of somebody being displaced that would we know would have an impact on that child coming to school and and being effective. And so to me that you could see that with that attendance rate and that those those metrics but we we need to do more because the the need is great. Uh for an example uh Miss Harrison, I was just at her school the other day. uh there's two students that come every day and they're on time uh and their parent doesn't dress them, doesn't

188get uh them, they're they're actually in bed and actually call the school and say, "Is I'm making this up as a name. Uh is Jamal at school today?" And and so, you know, when I think about the resilience of a child to take that on themselves, to make sure their sibling is getting to school, that's just the reality of of what we're working with. It's not an excuse. uh but how do we help that parent and support that parent with whatever needs that they have? That's why we've taken it even further upon oursel to have an individual support plan for a family. Just like you would have an individual support plan for a student, what are those famil family's needs and how do we prioritize with that family and be able to meet that within

18924 hours? Matter of fact, what our coordinator said, Dr. Pookkey, really 24 hours, how about a sense of urgency? And I said, well, that's the expectation. and we just had our weekly our board report and I'll be darn if we're not doing it within 24 hours and and that's pretty amazing to me. >> We talked about a sense of urgency earlier. I noticed you had a a timeline of 2030 to accomplish a lot of these. How did how did you arrive at that? Uh just looking at looking at the looking at a five-year uh process and looking at uh and I think Miss Kener brought that up as a good point is uh looking at where we are and trying to chunk it for everybody so it doesn't look overwhelming to try to get there.

190Now my goal would be to exceed those targets. Uh but we had to start somewhere and and I'm hopeful or not hopeful I'm uh optimistic that uh the more intentionality we have in the alignment like this is the first time we've got district performance targets map superintendent targets, assistant superintendent targets, school targets. The next move is going to be teacher targets and then PLC targets. We're not quite there yet as I say a work in progress. Uh but all of our principles know we've sat down. We've done their PPGs. They know my expectations. This is where you have to be. It's just period. This is where we are. We're in a high sense of urgency and this is where I expect your school to be at the end of the school year. >> This might

191be a question for Miss Harrison, but you talked about reducing the discipline. Uh what exactly did you do because I know that's an issue with every school we see. >> Good morning, board. Um for my building, um I came in as a third grade teacher. I was recruited from a previous administrator and it was just instability from um teacher turnover as a teacher in that building. I went through nine administrators before I got to this place in the seven-year time frame. Um, and so with that, the inconsistency, students not having a relationship with the teachers in the building, um, having coming in and like if I missed a day when I first arrived, they would say, "We thought you weren't coming back." So the relationships are key just to know that there is someone there

192because sometimes they don't have someone there outside of you know the school and so being there building relationships letting them know that you care for them but also holding them accountable for their behaviors because things that they could get away with in the past when they know that someone is going to hold them accountable it just makes it different for them. >> Thank you >> Dr. Pooi. Do you agree that Lack of growth is almost always an adult issue and not a student issue. >> Mr. Wood, I would agree with that 100%. >> You agree that lack of achievement is almost always an adult issue and not a student issue? >> 100%. Mr. Wood, >> and you agree that poor students can learn if adults do their job correctly? >> 100%. >> Okay, good. This

193is a lot. This is a lot. It's impressive. And And >> try to be intentional. >> Yeah. Um, it's like drinking out of a fire hydrant to absorb all this. And I know I know you only had 15 minutes and I mean I was like hard listening to catch most of what you were saying. >> Yes, sir. >> When when did North Little Rock agree to these goals and these key actions? uh they've the school board is we've been kind of updating this along the way uh that we've presented which our back to school report that we always do we presented our tier three support there I will say to that uh there also are additional actions in here based upon this uh presentation so I'll be doing the same presentation to our school board

194next week uh at the request of >> okay are are the goal when were the goals adopted So the original goals had been a had been a process as the state had ch we always we were working towards our performance targets and then we knew once the state was going to change its accountability structure we had to redesign those again. So, in in my goals, they're in goal one, they're all stretched out for our school board. And I told them our next move is for uh once we get, you know, we only got our data back in the in the summer. And so, working on that was then to be able to finite that into very specific, as you saw, uh performance targets that would last over the next five years. >> Okay. All right.

195So, I feel relatively recently. >> Uh yes, sir. Because what what's written here is relatively new. >> Oh yes sir. Based upon the new I mean in April of 2025 I believe is when the state came out with the new accountability measures. So we were all trying to learn how elementary, middle and high school was different on the accountability and then roll that into going into the summer uh looking at our data now and to be able to start putting those metrics and aligning those to now how the letter grades are calculated. >> All right. So, let's talk about you for just a second. You you've been here for six years. >> November 1st of 2020, right in a pandemic. >> Yeah. So, so just over five years. >> Yeah. Just literally over five um

196five and one month. >> What where were you before North Little Rock? >> I was in the state of Maryland. Uh most of my career had been uh in the state of Maryland. I was there for 21 years. I did one stint in uh Shaker Heights City Schools in Cleveland, Ohio and then uh taught overseas at uh and did part of my student teaching in um London, England at Pimico Secondary School. >> Cool. Um you were you a superintendent before North Little Rock? >> I was a deputy and a one-year interim superintendent before coming to North Little Rock. >> All right. Any of your prior higher leadership experience involve a turnaround like this? Uh, well, this is my first experience, I mean, as a superintendent, but I've worked in some large school districts like Antaronda

197County Public Schools, about 80,000 students. As an example, I've been in Baltimore County Public Schools, 150,000 students. Hartford County Public Schools, 40,000 students. I've been in large districts. Uh, uh, certainly Baltimore uh, county would have been the largest. That was a coordinator at the time doing turnaround work in smaller [snorts] learning communities. So taking our largest high schools, improving graduation rates. That was at the time we were coming out of the Coline shooting in the '9s and we were looking towards re-engaging kids. So that's where the nth grade academy came from, the careermies that we're implementing here. Uh but at this level as assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction uh oversaw when at that time moving to the common core. So some serious uh you know curriculum instruction changes uh that we needed. But as far

198as being a superintendent uh this would be the first time, sir. Okay. Well, first impression is pretty good. I I like what I hear from you. I like you coming in with such a strong plan. I I do wonder though, and I I want to talk about it publicly. This sure you're >> five years into the job and [snorts] the district's rated an F. So, how do you grade your first four years on the job? >> It's a great question. Well, uh I'll first explain my first week here. My first week here, I was given a stack of papers in a folder and I start going through them and their name after name after name after name and I said, "What am I looking at?" And there were 350 people in this stack of papers

199that were either terminated, they were uh they went to seek other, you know, got whatever the case was, but they no longer worked for us. Here's the kicker. their badge was still active. Now, think about if I had a school shooting and when the FBI comes in and they ask, "How did the person get in your school?" And I said, "You've got to be kidding me." All these, we'd never deactivated their ID badges. And so, safety, this is the way Mr. Wood, I would describe North Lock School District when I got there was loose. As an example, uh we've had a near school shooting. We've had many things. We've revamped. Uh that was one of our first priorities. One was getting me some help at this level. The second thing uh was restructuring safety and

200security. Uh we've completely redesigned that. Um how would I rate myself? Uh I'm pretty hard on myself. Probably a C. Uh, I don't, you know, I I don't think I'm the greatest superintendent that's that's ever lived, but I I know I I also uh am intentional about my leadership uh and about improving outcomes for students. We've had lots of change uh especially at uh the central office level. Uh but if I would say one thing, you know, coming from Maryland to come here, uh it would be instructional leadership and and that has to be intentional. We've worked on this since I've been there. We've worked with some outside agencies. We got some funding cut and so forth. Uh I'm probably hard on myself. Probably give myself a C. If you were to tell me how

201would I grade myself? >> Yeah, it's fair enough. And I don't want to get into the college football culture of, you know, two years and you know, we're firing a guy. I'm not I'm not suggesting that. I just What is going to be different in the next two years that you've identified didn't work in the previous four? The intentionality of this structure as it relates to working with principles is completely different from what we've done before and I believe in it. The one who created the model because there has to be intentionality between that assistant superintendent on a regular basis in that school with that principal side by side asking questions digging into their data all those things that we know that will improve outcomes for students. I would say it probably wasn't as tight

202as it as it should have been. >> Okay. All right. You bring up principles. You know, I asked Watson Chapel about the principles and their poor performing schools. >> Yes, sir. >> Um there's nine nine schools of yours, but I'll go let's just talk about the ifs. Boone Park Elementary. How long has that principal? >> She's in her second year. I I removed uh the I removed the principal based on perform based on I'm not going to go into personal. The school was going in a different direction. We didn't move in a different direction. She's in her second year. Miss Harrison is in her second year. Uh Mr. Kelly, that would be um Glenville Elementary School. Believes he's going into his third year. Uh Meadow Park Elementary School. Miss McKinley has been there at least

203five years that I have been there. Um let's see. Now we go to the secondary campus. Uh sixth grade campus. Mr. Clark has been there at least as long as I've been here, which is five years. Miss uh Hampton uh she's in her third or fourth year at the seventh and eighth grade campus. Dr. St. Lewis is the principal of the high school and the COE. Uh I want to say three four years. Uh trying to think anybody else that's on that list. I don't think I missed anybody. Miss Harrison certainly is in her second year. >> Yeah. So you know a few in there. Year four, year five. When when do you start to feel like we have a leadership problem in the building? How long should a principal continue to supervise a poor

204performing school? >> Well, when you asked me that first question, I would say the the the first thing I needed to do was to get the right structure in place and I believe that uh in this in this uh structure. Uh the second thing to that is uh here's the bottom line is if they're not moving schools, then we need to look at something different. That's why I put on there about and I just had a principal's meeting the other day. I said, I don't want you to be surprised when you hear uh the continue to look at leadership assignments, whether that's the principal or the assistant principal uh as well as our teachers. And we needed to be doing something different. And uh that's an ongoing conversation that we have with our assistant superintendent.

205As I'm asking questions, I'm looking at data. I'm like, what about this and what about that? So, uh, as we go into that process into this school year, um, I think without a doubt, I'm sure everybody can anticipate that I will make some changes, uh, as we go into the next school year. >> Yeah. >> I hope that your lead, similar to what I said about Watson Chapel, this is this is a, you know, life support kind of situation. This is critical. Okay? you know, and and I I feel the urgency from you. And sometimes that's my criticism with folks that come in here is you get colorful language and maybe AI generated responses and it just doesn't feel authentic or urgent. I feel urgency from you and so I really appreciate that. >> But

206you know, three years of a principal leading a building and growth isn't where it needs to be says a lot. grow. Growth shouldn't take three years to implement. >> Sure. >> Um achievement maybe that's a little harder thing. Middle school has to deal with what foundations were in elementary school. I get that. >> But growth growth tells a lot. >> Sure. >> And um so I I hope that that there's a culture in North Little Rock going forward that we're not going to tolerate low performance for very long. We expect leaders to get in, lead people. It can happen. It's happened in Little Rock. Your neighbor to the south. I know stories of poor performing schools in challenging neighborhoods that when leadership changed in a building, >> schools went from D's to A's, >> it

207can happen. It is the if the adults change the culture of the building. >> Yes, sir. I couldn't agree with you more, Mr. Wood. I could not agree with you more. >> Changes. That's a key point, Mr. Wood. And so to that point, I think we should ask uh Mr. Smith and Dr. Thomas to return just to see how they would feel your question because they're one level closer. >> And and if I may, Dr. Arnold, the other thing I wanted to say to that, Mr. Wood, as as uh Secretary Aliva said is the state has changed the system. So the system has changed from when I started to where I am here. That's not an excuse, but we went from ACT Aspire to a whole new different assessment system. So as the state continues

208to change and put those systems into place, we're going to go right along with it. Um, so I'll I'll let my colleagues answer that question. >> Dr. Arnold, please uh respond to Mr. Wood's concern as you see it closer in the field. >> Certainly, Mr. Wood, I agree with you. Coming from a turnaround situation that I oversaw in Tennessee, um 3 years was the absolute limit and we had to see incremental changes in year one and year two for the person to remain in year three. Certainly, we're in constant communication with our superintendent regarding what we see in the field as we meet in cabinet meetings every Tuesday. At this point, I don't have a principle in network A that I don't see growth. Achievement is going to be a little longer for us to

209get there. This is our growth target year where we're trying to maximize all of our growth opportunities and next year we're going to be moving into growth and then adding some of that achievement pieces with it as well. But at this point, I don't have any principles that I'm considerably concerned about because I see the growth. Um, now it's going to be certainly coming up on whether they continue to grow and whether they want to continue in the work with us because next year, um, it will be even more rigorous than this school year that we're in because every year, as you've seen from our superintendent, we have different targets. So, we have to start out the gate hitting those targets. And we are sitting on the edge of our seats just like you all

210are to look at that interim data to know how we're going to structure ourselves moving forward. We have a keen tight lens on the bottom 25% sale of students. I mean to the point we're looking at the supports that they're getting. We're looking at their report card grades. We're looking at their attendance. We're looking at any suspensions. We are very serious about this work and all of these things become topics of conversations when we enter the building to work with principles. >> Mr. Wood, I just like to echo what Dr. Rogers said. Um, I'll take it a little further from my perspective, but we're in a brand new system. We realigned everything. With those expectations comes an adjustment period. But there is no doubt that there is a sense of urgency. Dr. Palooki teaches everybody

211John Carter. The first thing you first thing you have to do in any institution that's going through a change is create a sense of urgency. I would echo what Dr. Rogers says is that there's not a principle in network B that doesn't want to get better and that we are not working every day to get better. Those tough conversations might come, but right now we are in the process of making sure that we are aligned. We're systematic. We're all marching hand in step. That's that's the biggest thing I can echo is that the whole system is aligned to making sure that we are promoting and improving a systematic change. And that's where we are. >> Well, thank you. My only response to that is want to is not good enough. And I don't mean that

212disrespectfully at all. I I just think that we have to be tough enough in our conversations with the people that we entrust these young lives to every day to say that it's not about want to. It's about effectiveness. It is about actually moving the needle. We have we have to move the needle a long ways and we can't just want to move it. We have to actually move it. And there are people that are accomplishing that and there are people that know how to accomplish that. And then there are people who are not accomplishing that. And we have to help those people find other things to do. >> Address the individuals that are not meeting the expectation. Yes sir. >> So I want do want to ask about just the culture of the classroom. Do

213we require every teacher to have a plan for every student? >> Uh yes. Yes sir. We do. We have I mean pushed in by learns. We have individual uh reading plans. We have individual math plans. Um we have RTI that we push out and those individual education goals. Um we use products such as success maker and things like that that develop individualized processes for where those struggles are with individual students. And so yes sir even from the perspective of Dr. Palooki speaking about our GT and enrichment. Those individuals that are on level, we want to make sure that those children are challenged and they have individual plans to make sure that they are still growing under the opice of the new system. Okay. >> Well, I don't love where you are, but I appreciate where

214you're trying to go and the plan you have to get there. I do echo what Mr. Peacock said. He did bring up a good point that while there are a lot of good goals in here, there's not a lot of how to accomplish the goals. I understand Uh, this probably would be 10 times larger and I couldn't read it right now anyway if you had printed all that out. But I do encourage you to have real meat how to accomplish every one of the goals that you have in here. I'm impressed by all the goals. Make sure you got the meat. Thank you all. >> Thank you, Mr. Wood. >> Okay. Does anyone have a motion or is there someone else they need to speak to before we can render a decision? I'll make a

215motion, but I do want to one quick note. I made my points I think earlier on the early childhood piece, just so you're aware in case you're not. Um, North Orthodox School District has 81 vacant slots. Um, I triple checked my numbers this time to the tune of 400, excuse me, $413,000. And so that reduction is probably coming shortly. Um, and I'll make a motion to accept the what's the name of the form? Sorry, the >> the statement of assurance. the statement of assurance from the Orthodox School District. >> All right, I have a motion by Miss Keener. Do I have a second? >> I'll second. >> Seconded by Dr. Abbott. All in favor say I. >> Any opposed? >> Hearing none, motion passes. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you. >>

216Okay, at this time I think we're going to take probably a 33 minute break. We'll plan to be back here about 12:40. Um and then we will continue on with the next on our agenda. Okay. Testing one, two, three. Testing one, two, three. Testing one, two, three. How was that? conflict. Fore speech. sensitive Byebye. I have a call that I'm gonna sneak out. >> Y'all wrap it up here. I'm gonna ask you questions. >> We're gonna start with you this time. >> All right, we're gonna call the meeting back to order. And I think next up we have Pine Bluff. Stacy. Okay. Pine Bluff School District. Um background for Pine Bluffs. Pond Bluff was under state authority a few years ago. We returned them. >> Are we guys on? Is that better or am I

217echoing again? Okay. Um they are 23 points away from a D in comparison to some of the other districts. Their enrollment is 2,692 students. Their superintendent is Dr. Dr. Jennifer Barbrey. This is her third year to be superintendent in the Pineluff School Districts. Um, of their schools, um, four of them are elementary schools. Um, this last year for all four showed that they made growth over the previous year. Um, their junior high and high school um, did not. So, similar to kind of what we've seen with some of our other districts earlier this morning is we are seeing some growth in the elementary school movements, but again that high school seems to be kind of um getting stuck there. Um their poverty rate as reported for free reduced lunch is 100%. Um and I will

218let them highlight their licensings of teachers and things like that. >> What was their point? I missed that. >> Um it was 23 points. Okay, Dr. Jennifer Barbrey. >> Well, good afternoon board. Good afternoon, Secretary Levia. Thank you so much for this opportunity for me to come and share with you about the progress for our district. And uh thank you so much. I'm Jennifer Barbrey, superintendent Pine School District. And I'd like to start just by saying um as being the superintendent at Pinewood School District, we've worked really hard to make our school district's focus student centered. We have we worked with a strategic planning committee before I was named superintendent PLO school district. And through that committee and the community process, we've created a vision for Pineville School District. And our vision is that we

219will have a safe, supportive, and student centered community for every child. And that every child is challenged, that they're empowered to overcome the barriers, achieve at high levels, and pursue college and career readiness. And so from that mission and vision shift into what we're doing to make this happen, we we continue to ask ourselves, are we making the decisions that's best for our students? So when I looked at the asurances from the department that was sent to us, it said, you know, identify the comprehensive needs assessment. Well, we have a comprehensive needs assessment. It is large, but we know the root cause problem is the quality of instruction in the classrooms. This is something that we've seen over several years about the quality instruction in the classroom. So our goal is that all students will

220receive high quality instruction in the classroom. In order to get to that goal, we are going to have to really focus on those incremental movements and the systems to get there. The goal is that students are going to achieve. And so everyone thinks, you know, as part of that, it's through academics and it is. Achievement is defined by academics. However, we cannot get to that academic goal without focusing on the systems to get us there. Academics being one, student support being two, and human capital being three. So, as the superintendent over the last two years, those have been my focuses. We've worked very hard to make sure that if we improve 1% a day in every one of our systems, then we'll have over a 100% improvement throughout the school year. But 1% a day

221in academics will get us to 30 37% achievement at the end of the school year. 1% in student support and 1% in human capital. So every single day when we walk to the school and I go to work, we think about what are we doing every single day to improve that 1% and what is my job in getting that done. So I'll start with academics. So as part of this strategic plan, these are the three there are several things that we've identified that are going to take place moving forward. Many of those things are things that we have already have in place. And so I just want to give you an overview of far as far as how I can say that we're supporting this. So number one, district's going to ensure that we provide

222high quality tier one instruction in every classroom. We're going to do that by supporting lesson internalization, providing walkthrough feedback, using tests and leads, and continuing to reinforce our high quality instructional material and that they're using it with fidelity. We're going to develop smart goals. Smarty goals, by the way, was introduced to me this school year from the state department with the evidence-based piece added there. And so I realized that in our district strategic plan, we need to go back and look deeper into our goals for that so that they have all those measures with the actual overall goal. Again, we have an overarching goal in our strategic plan. But I want to make sure we have very specific goals. And we're doing that though from a district level, but I can't do it from a

223district level without every single grade level having a smarty goal per subject per grade. And the building principles are working through that right now. And so that'll be you'll see evidence of those goals in place before Christmas. Uh we are going to evaluate block scheduling this school year. We have been evaluating it but this school year this is some big strong data we're taking. So when I took this superintendent role at Pineluff we moved the high school and secondary schools to a block scheduling. This was done before my superintendency but it was for safety and security. We were trying to we were trying to reduce transitions. We were trying to keep kids in class. Um, since then, now that we can prove that we have kids in class and we're safe and secure, um, we're

224realizing that the block schedule is not the best benefit for our students as far as academics. And so, we're looking to move that a shift from block scheduling back to a seven to eight period day. As far as the uh, year- round calendar, that was something that we implemented my first year superintendent. We have data on that. As far as attendance, we have proof that our attendance data for students has gone up. Um, our teacher attendance is still pretty stagnant. it hasn't shown to make any progress in that yet. It did the first year of the first semester, but since then in comparison, we can't show that there's any growth in teachers there. Uh teacher attendance. Um we also are working with our um we we have adjusted our year- round calendar, but that's something

225that we're going to continue to monitor. But when we speak about academics where we were, we were meeting in collaborative teams. We we ensured that those were taking place every day. However, um the actual models and data that was done in those collaborative team meetings weren't documented. And so that's something that we began as far as where we came from. At the beginning, we had several human capital adjustments that helped with our academics. We purchased and began implementation of high quality instructional materials. We have 95% group for the bottom of the rope, benchmark workshop, and my perspectives for top of the rope. All on the state test. I mean, all on the state list. Um benchmark workshop. We're not utilizing any of the phonics pieces of that. So, we know that it's still feasible. We've

226got specific training in all those uh and all those curriculums. And we continue to work on lesson internalization with that. We have pacing guides for all of our uh subjects and grades. That's including music and PE at the elementary level. So, that's something that our director of curriculum instruction works with our teachers uh in collaborative team meetings. We have uh certified dyslexia interventionists at every campus. We do weekly district focus walks for consistent practice. We increased we increased the district the district observation tool by utilizing support staff um from TNTP and NIET throughout the last two years. Uh we strengthened um I'm sorry we we uh have a strong prek and we've added instructional facilitators to support our teaching. Right now we so this school year we ensured that we put a certified teacher. We

227we tried to move our strong certified teachers to our foundational literacy classrooms for sure. So K2 we have certified teachers in the classroom. Not all but almost all. Um we moved our prek our prek campus had the most tenured principal. And she also had the best rapport with parents. It was a strong campus. Everyone loved our pre-K. We had a strong pre-K number. And so this year we've transitioned all of our kindergarten out of our elementary schools and moved that to the the prek campus. So, we have a kindergarten academy and be we expected 10 classes of prek because of our I'm sorry, we expected 10 classes of kindergarten because of our pre-K numbers and a lot of times we would lose our pre-K students. They would go to other districts or possibly charter. And

228so, our prediction was that we would have 200 kindergarteners because we had 180 pre-K students. We currently have 13 classrooms and we have 265 kindergarteners at our pre-K at our pre-K um academy right now with our kindergarten. This school year we implemented it was a non-negotiable about what every classroom has to have in PineLO school district and we called it our classroom recipe. So we did specific training on everything that would be in the classroom starting with just the basics of every uh performance-based objective needed to be posted or I can statements are posted, standards are posted. Then we had we social contracts are in place. We have a calming corner. We have anchor use of anchor charts. Just everything that needed to take place for a positive classroom environment so that students were that

229we had a conducive place for students to learn. What we know we have to do is continue to strengthen the fidelity of our high- quality instructional material. We have to continue to strengthen the training of our teachers in lesson internalization. We have five teachers currently in the master teacher program uh through Harding University. It's a partnership with our co-op as well. And then we're looking to expand that next school year. Again, to be in the master teachers program, you have to be a certified teacher in that subject area for three years. And so we have a lot of novice teachers. As far as a human capital adjustment, that's on the next slide. Let's go to that. So in student support, I will say one of the things that we are going to ensure that we're

230doing a better job of is tracking our level one students so that we're providing those intensive interventions. We know who they are and they are in interventions, but making sure we're looking at that progress monitoring. the the concerns we have is the comprehension piece at at the upper level third through 12th grade with comprehension progress monitoring is a little bit harder as far as the curriculum that we utilize and so we're looking for um progress monitoring through students writing and through I ready and Lexia but but and power up but those are things that we know we need to do a better job at looking at how we're progress monitoring we are looking to create a comprehensive student tutoring plan to support all students we currently have two 21c CCLC after school programs, but we

231need to be more intentional about how we're placing those students in there and what the data shows. So like a pre-EST and a post- test, more academic um rather than um experiences. We want to make it more academic for actually intervention. We need to monitor the implementation of our inclusion practices. That was something that was a large shift when um when we started, we had over 30 students that with IEPs that were offsite. They weren't even in they weren't being served in the district. And so as part of our corrective action plan, we were bringing students back to campus. As we're bringing students back to campus, we were trying to do our very best to place them in their least restrictive environment. And so we have much larger inclusion practice. Uh and so more of

232our students now are in regular education classes rather than uh pull out resource classes. And there's proof in our data for that. So, our lowest 25% of students have above state average growth in several of our elementary schools because we put them and we believe it's because we put them back in tier one instruction. And we have required all of our special um education teachers to go through the same high quality instructional material training that everyone has. They have the same materials as everyone. We just need to do a better job at modifying those those assignments for students. We require data conversations between students and teachers to set academic goals with all students. It is um spotty across the district. It has been part of our requirement. We were actually able to uh witness it

233in a walkthrough yesterday of a of a third grade teacher um I'm sorry, yes, a fourth grade teacher meeting with his student about his academic growth. We uh are working harder to plan intentional parent meetings to share student performance data. When we have overall parent nights, we have less parent involvement coming to the school. So, our principles are working to ensure that we do that maybe virtually offer it where they're zooming in and so parents can come in that way, but it's also just made us be more intentional about more individual parent meetings rather than just big parent nights. We have a strong PTO at two of our well, we have a PTO at every elementary, but we have a strong one at two of our two two elementaryaries have pretty good strong PTOs. Our

234junior high as uh actually has a very active PTO and so does our high school for human capital. We want to ensure that every students achieving by util utilizing our fiscal our you know our fiscal plan and our budget to hire additional instructional facilitators and assign them to our most struggling schools. Currently we have instructional facilitators across the district but they're not assigned to a specific school. They're they're working with grade levels to support teachers in lesson internaliz internalization at those grade levels, but we feel like it's not um getting the biggest bang for our buck because they're spread thin. And so we need to figure out how to make sure we're budgeting so that we can move to hire strong instructional facilitators so that they are actually at every campus. The barriers with that

235are that, you know, our really strong teachers would make good strong instructional facilitators, but we don't want to pull them out of the classroom because we need them in the classroom to affect more of those students as well. So, we're working for a plan to do something like that, especially the leadership pipeline and grow your own. We [snorts] have lead teachers, we have lead principles, we have people going through that types of training, but we do want to hire, retain, and train master teachers. Um, again, appropriating funding for that uh for training and incentives. We want to intentionally use our peer observations to provide targeted constructive feedback to teachers that are demonstrating lowquality instruction. And what I mean by that is we have a building principal that has really uh piloted this where she has

236her district lead teachers or I mean sorry her building lead teachers that are strong and have uh growth the you know their bound scores are higher than anyone else in the campus and so they're actually bringing in those peer teachers to watch those teachers teach as far as a way to help grow our own in that P pipeline as well. But when we get to student support, I talked to you guys about student support as far as academic and how we're doing interventions. I also want to share that we have been um because of our uh district support plan, one of our main goals is a safe and orderly environment, a safe and secure school. And so where we were, and I alluded to it just a little bit, but I will share again. Um,

237the safety of our students was utmost important for us in Pineluff School District when we began as a team. And I say a team because that's what we are. When the board and I came on together with our district leadership team, you know, we had just suffered nine students homicides in one year. They were all enrolled in our district. None of that happened within the school, but it happened. And so it was trying to build a culture to support our staff and to create a pathway for our students so that they're not going out and and involving themselves and things like that. So, as far as a strong community awareness, we partnered with the Juvenile Justice Center and Judge Brown and we have a very strong GBI program, group violence intervention program. Um, we we're

238happy to say that our students are are safe. They're part of this program. We we have data showing we have a 25% reduction in our office discipline discipline referrals. Um our students are actually coming to class. Our attendance rate is up as well. We at well when we compared last October to this October and again last October was year- round school and so we had pretty good percentage. It was right at 92% and this year we were at a 96% in our October one data for uh our attendance for students. So knowing that they're in school, it's a big a big part for us. We're in year two implementation of capturing kids hearts. I believe in this program. A lot of people laugh at me about it because um it seems sometimes that people think

239it's elementary, but you should um if you get a chance, make sure you follow Palo School District's Facebook page and watch our students at the high school talk about their good things um when they're really thinking about what they like about their school. And so that's something that they like to share as far as capturing kids hearts. It's implemented a a culture of belonging. uh many of them are trying to uh make themselves something and yet we weren't holding them to the expectation that they were holding themselves to. And so now when teachers can hold our students to that high expectation, we feel like we're getting we're getting somewhere. Um >> get to your closing part. >> Okay. Uh our next steps for safety and security is continuing to keep our school safe. uh we

240we have a a strong monetary uh budget for safety and security plan and also to make sure that our schools are safe. But I'm I'm ready for any kind of questions. >> I told Jeff Wood he could go first. >> All right. >> I like [laughter] it. >> No stranger to Mr. Woods, so that's good. >> I I did I did not ask for that. >> He did not. Let's be very clear. I just >> post lunch. We're changing it up a little bit. Do you agree that lack of growth is almost always an adult issue and not a student issue? >> Almost always. Yes. >> And do you agree that lack of achievement is almost always an adult issue and not a student issue? >> Yes. >> Do you agree that poor students can

241learn if adults do their job correctly? >> Yes. >> Okay. So, you've uh you've you've been the superintendent of Pine Bluff for is it two years now? >> Two and a half. This is I'm right at my [clears throat] house. >> So, you're in your third year? >> Yes, I am. >> All right. >> And one one thing that struck me in the strategic plan is that it feels like we're we're just now developing these smart goals. Is that right? >> To what the state defines as a smart goal? Yes, we've had goals. >> You've had goals? >> Yes. >> Okay. Um what? Tell me about those goals. What were those goals? Originally, you know, the focus was getting high quality certified teachers in the classroom, ensuring that the district had high quality instructional materials,

242and then keeping students safe. >> Okay. Where where are you on those previous goals that you have? >> So, high quality instruction, teachers in the classroom. I would say we do have we went from a 42% certified teacher population to an 80% certified teacher population. As far as high quality, we're still working to grow that. Now, we have certified teachers in the classroom, but we don't have all of them con making that value added growth and considered master teachers or high quality or highly effective. So, we're that's the part that's still developing. We're we're we're doing that. As far as um the human capital role, we began by non-renewing 75 teachers that were not licensed. We opened up every principal position and rehired for every principal position in the district as well as assistant principal

243to work on that part of the human capital to ensure that we had instructional leaders in the classrooms in the buildings as well. There have been a shift in district personnel as well. Um, we've not filled some district leadership roles because we wanted to utilize that funding for other things like instructional facilitators that would be more hands-on building level. Um, so there's there's where we're at with our human capital as far as developing. We've we're still not strong enough in the classroom. High quality instructional materials. We didn't have any that teachers were trained on at the very beginning. We had just purchased the materials and so we continue that training of the HQIM. So last school year of course when we call it a a non-negotiable but one of the things that every focus walk

244looked for was was the teacher utilizing the HQIM where if they were not what feedback was provided and so that's where as district leadership we had conversations with building principles and so even then that's why it was showed a need for the turnover of building leadership because we set the expectation and leadership wasn't holding our teachers to that expectation either. So, we're I mean I can say we're using HQIM in every classroom now. And then as far as keeping students safe, the data shows that our discipline rate is down. Um our I'm in the buildings every every week. And so the the fact that students are in class and I know to some people that is, you know, something that they're not familiar with because you just expect students to go to class, but unless

245they're held to that accountability and making sure that they're sitting in the classroom, then they're not going to get any instruction if they're not. So right now our campuses are safe. We have a security team at every campus to keep physical safe. But now we also have wraparound services, support services, social workers, calming rooms, behavior management systems, restruct uh restorative bea modules for in school suspension. We're working to get those with fidelity across the district as well just so that kids feel emotionally safe as well so that they want to be there. >> Okay. So, what about I I appreciate that you said there's been a number of principal. >> They were all They all had to reapply. I guess that's how we'll say that. >> Um, so at Broadmore Elementary School, >> that's Go

246ahead. >> How long has that principal been there? >> Well, this is the start of his second year. So, I gave everybody one and a half because we're in the middle of the year, but one and a half years last year and half of this year. >> Okay. So, all right. Uh, and Pineluff Junior High School, >> one and a half years. >> And when you say that, so there was someone at the junior high before the current principal. >> Yes, sir. >> Uh, two years ago, there was someone else leading that building. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. I'm not talking about just a year and a half ago you rehired these people. I want to know, you know, how long have they been in behind the desk at at at that? This is the

247beginning of their second year or they're in the middle of their they're in the middle of their second year. >> And Pineluff High School, >> middle of his second year. >> All right. And uh 34th Street Elementary. >> Middle of her second year. >> Is it the same for all of them? >> No. >> Okay. Matthew Elementary. >> Look. So Matthews, she's actually she's in the middle of her third year. >> Okay. >> Uh no, she's Yeah, she's been there two years. Two full years as the building principal. >> Okay. [snorts] >> So this is Yes, she's in her third. She's starting her third year. All right. And Southwood Elementary. >> She's in now. She's been there for four years and she's now starting her fifth year. >> So there you're starting to talk about

248a tenure of of leadership in a building. >> That's right. >> Um going four years going on five years. It's a D school. what what changes are being implemented right now at Southwood Elementary School that give you confidence that that growth andor achievement will improve at that school. >> So that building again with the new accountability system with the grades our whole district every school has always been an F and so at Southwood Southwood has shown the most growth has the most tenured principal. They're three points away from a C. And so she has she's had some teacher turnover as well. And so that building principal works very hard, has a strong lead teacher pool. And so um some of our best math scores are actually coming from Southwood uh in sixth grade. So in

249fact, those sixth graders that performed well last year are now our seventh graders that still are performing well on their interims in math. At Southwood, she has um they have solid collaborative team meetings. They reach out for support. So, how are we continuing to push that forward? The things that we talked about, the novice teachers that are there are going to have to continue with that uh instructional leader development. That's one. Two is making sure that um that well the high quality instructional materials there, but just really working with our novice teachers because we have we still have teacher turnover. >> At Matthews, they are they're very close to a D as well. I think they're >> very close to a C. >> I'm sorry, a C. They're 14 points away from a C, forgive

250me. and that is our second most tenured principal that we have in the district and she is driven as well on really their focus right now are just su success targets. So the requirement for the district was to have um objectives posted in every classroom, performance-based objectives or I can statements for the lower elementary students. And she has gone through some training and took through the district and took a hold of actually posting those success targets. So teachers have success targets in every classroom based on the cycle of improvement that they're in with that with their lessons. And so they're they're push she's pushing the needle as well. So continuing to grow her teacher population. So we have um we have three teachers I'm sorry we have two teachers in the district that have the

251value added growth score over the last three years and she's placed them in vital areas. So one of them was teaching fifth grade but we've moved that teacher to third grade because of our third grade population of students that scored poorly last year. And so we have um also a teacher residency model that we're partnering with UAPB. So we we're piloting this program. Um it is part of uh learns act that every teacher has a residency. So this school year what we did is we relooked at how we utilize our pair professionals and we made them all also reapply for the position. But in the midst of that we had 15 teacher well UAPB had 21 teacher residents. By the way, when I took the position at Pineluff, UAPB had three three teachers graduating. Um,

252and now they have 21 15 of them are in Pineluff School District. And we're using them, we're paying them as pair professionals while they're working with the classroom lead, their their classroom mentor. And so, um, we have two of them placed in third grade because there weren't that many elementary ed. So, we have two in third grade and we have five in kindergarten. And then the rest are placed based on their certification. So we have one also in our geometry class at the high school. >> So we're trying to build that population. So hopefully and most of them have actually passed all of their assessments to be able to uh be day one, you know, licensed as soon as they graduate. Just have one more semester left of their residency. And so the goal would

253be to hire all 15 of them as certified teachers in public school district. >> Are you evaluating those individuals independent of just, you know, getting a piece of paper? You're talking about the pair of professionals. >> Yeah. The these upandcomers, we'll call them >> actually. Yes. And I I mean I have an example of what we had uh for one of them was not performing as we would expect. And so um we had a very tough conversation with the building principal because they're still an employee of the district. So there's an expectation that you have to do as far as a prayer professional as a district employee, but then they still have that safeold of they're still a teacher resident. And so they're supposed to be growing and learning. And so if we just get

254rid of them right then, which is the moment we kind of thought, you know, they're getting paid to do this and they don't need to be here doing this. We said, "No, this is also the whole point of this. We've got to teach them that that's not the caliber of a person we want in Pine Bluff School District." So we had a hard conversation with UAPB and their teacher person. And so that was a meeting that was held between UAPB, the building principal, and that pair professional. And so we've actually seen results of different things with that. And in fact, and that pair professional worked on both campuses, so they had to meet with the high school and the junior high uh leadership on that. And so per se, they're not being evaluated in tests

255or anything like that, but holding them to accountable to what we expect as an employee of Pine Love School District. Yes. Okay. >> They're being evaluated on their teaching lessons right now, mostly through um through UAPB in that program, but the building principles in the classroom. In fact, we've had one that's in third grade at Southwood um because we had a teacher that um sadly passed during the school year. And so the actually her her mentee, which is the teacher resident, right now is really teaching that classroom. Now, we of course have to supplement with a substitute, but she's the she's the lead teacher at this moment. >> Are you compliant with all of your dyslexia screening requirements? >> We are. We have um you said the numbers so 273 273 students are receiving interventions

256for characteristics of dyslexia. We're using the build program at K1. Uh all of our and our special ed teachers are also trained in build but we utilize take flight two through higher. >> Okay. >> We also offer academic reading at the secondary level as a course. So we have a high school teacher teaching academic reading for our students with dyslexia at the high school. Can you drill in on your third grade literacy strategy? What what >> what's your focus on that other than just, you know? >> Sure. >> This more colorful language on strategic plan. How are you going to improve third grade reading? >> We've placed right now we've placed an additional body in the classroom to support those learners. As far as small group instruction, we have instructional facilitator that is just for

257third grade. Now, she is our building. She's a she's a district testing coordinator as well, but her role is to pay attention and work with and support our students that are just in third grade. And so with that, she has conversations with those building principles about what's taking place in those third grade classrooms. We've placed the most we we've moved teachers to the third grade that we feel like are stronger to support that learning as well. And so those are the big focuses. But as far as the the actual curriculum that we're utilizing, we have um we use PSI data through 95% group as far as an intervention and we have what I need time for every student in in the district. We have that scheduled at every campus where students have what I need

258time which is that intervention time. But at the third grade level, that's where we're using more of those bodies to make those groups smaller so that we're making sure we're >> What about prior to third grade? >> Oh yeah, that's >> that's I mean that's even more critical than third grade itself. >> That's right. So, our K our K12 foundation, it's I'm going to be honest, our K1 foundation is strong. Our second grade foundation, we're we're struggling there with certified teachers in the second grade classroom. We moved most of them to kindergarten. So, out of the 13 kindergarten teachers, 12 of them are fully certified. We just had to hire another one. Um, so that was where we pulled that third. We just opened up a third grade classroom. I mean, a third 13th kindergarten

259classroom. So yes, our K1 foundation and at the pre-K level we use um Launchpad, Frog Press of course and then we took the Atlas prek assessment this year and last year sorry last May we took that as a measure to see where those kindergarters would be and so they start on interventions our kindergarten teach like that was another big positive of putting all the kindergarten in one campus. That principal knew that data she those were her students and we just started with interventions with our kindergarten group. First grade is probably one of our strongest uh besides kindergarten, first grade is our next strongest group of teachers where that's where you're going to see our students really growing. Um intentionality would be putting pair of professionals in those classrooms and making sure that they have the

260HQIM. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. Thank you. I >> think you kind of just touched on it, but in a lot of these reports I've seen where there's more growth in elementary grades than others. Can you pinpoint why that is? >> Well, in all honesty, I data will show it's because they're still learners. You know, not that secondary is not learners, but if they've missed that gap where they've actually gotten that foundational learning, that the foundational reading, then they're then they're always going to be behind. And so, we're starting the race behind in third grade. Now, the goal is what we're doing now is going to make sure that that that we're not starting behind any further, but there are a lot of other distractions that that we can't control. So, we're going to

261control what we can in the in the classroom. Um, and so, as far as the secondary level, it was just holding them accountable for being at school. Um, and so earlier we talked about I heard you talk about attendance. You know, we work very closely with the truency office to make sure that we have fins filed and students in class and parents are before the before the judge, but that's so punitive. So, we've got to figure out a better way to make kids realize that this is interesting. So, we have we're really focusing next year on our career tech pathways. Um, this year we do have, and I didn't mention it earlier, it's the first time in two years that we have two students at our co community college taking concurrent credit. We have two

262students in cyber security awareness and we have two students in welding. But when our new high school is open, we'll have our own welding program, auto mechanics, and different things like that. We also are partnering with UAPB where we have a ninth grade student that's actually taking um concurrent credit agriculture classes because that was an interest and the student was able to score 22 on the ACT. And so we make that that work for that student schedule. So I think we've got to do a better job at making sure that we're placing students in the interest that they need so that they can continue to grow. >> Question about the high quality instruction material. I've seen this again in a lot of reports that trying to move toward that. Is that something new that you're

263having to cycle in or have we always had that and just not used it or >> Yes. And that goes back to I mean it goes back to the big shift [clears throat] in literacy in the science of reading. You know, we were we were a balanced literacy state where teachers didn't always use the curriculum. We weren't I mean when I was teaching, we didn't have a a basil that they gave me to teach literacy. we were supposed to go through that training and and learn how to teach whole child and some phonics. And so now that's where the big shift went when we knew that that's not what was best for students and that we needed to have a a solid phonics program and then a good comprehension program. The state's been shifting since

2642015. But it's just making sure that teachers are, you know, are being trained that way. So that's that's why it's been positive that we partnered with the the higher ed to make sure that educators are understanding that HQIM is important. So, they're actually now being taught different types of HQIM, which is another big positive with UAPB. All of their teachers that are going to go into our program go to our science of reading training through the co-op. They also go they they have our materials. UAPB purchases 95% group. They purchase my perspectives. They're purchasing the curriculum materials to train our teachers on in the actual under in ed prep program. >> Okay. And how do you uh designate a high quality teacher? what distinguishes >> we look at the um the state list and ed

265reports and so whatever's on that list that's approved by the department of ed um we we choose from that and so from there we take those materials and create opportunities for teachers and curriculum teams to come in and say you know and view the different types of materials we did that with math last school year we had a math adoption last year and so we we look on ed reports and and And then we look of course at the state list >> and your master teacher program. Is that something inhouse you do or is that a outside certification? >> It's outside. It's a and again it's a partnership that um our co-op uh was able to grant or get and granted us five slots and so they're going to Harding University to take those classes.

266>> Um and have you seen any correlation between the our new our phone policy and the academic? Well, I academics I'd like to say yes because but we don't have a lot of data about it, but I can tell you we've seen a true positive and I have again student data on this. We've surveyed students. I have my student advisory committee. Students themselves like it. They're talking to each other more now. We still have those same ones that are, you know, figure a way around the system, bring their phones, but you know, you can walk through our buildings now and I see students actually looking at the teacher. I would like to say that they're learning, but they're actually looking at the teacher and not trying to sneak and be on a phone. So, that

267has been a positive. >> Thank you, >> Dr. Still processing so much of this, but thank you for your information. Um, on a whole, how would you describe teacher buyin of this strategic plan? What's the sense there? So as a whole, I think our buy in um is slow. I think many of many of our teachers, they love our kids. Um but there's a culture of this is how we are. This is us. And so we're we're the buyin there is just really adjusting that belief in our system that we can hold everyone to higher expectations and higher higher standards. And so the culture shift is difficult. Um there's a culture of absenteeism. There's a culture of the the feeling that they're not appreciated. Um but they but when we survey teachers why they leave

268it, they feel like they're overworked and underpaid. And so our work is not just trying to grow those academic numbers. And so our teachers are overworked. They're trying to meet all needs of the students. And so we've got to that's why I believe in capturing kids hearts that we empower everyone including the teachers and and bring the good things and really start looking at that. >> That's good. It's a major mountain to climb. Uh were they involved in the creation of the strategic plan the teachers per se? >> They are at their building level. Yes, absolutely. And so each building has they have lead teachers, but then they have their guiding coalition. And their guiding coalition is made up of staff at the at the building level. And they work with their building principal, instructional

269support, district level instructional support to create their school improvement plans. And those improvement plans mirror what we have as our district improvement plan. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> I will just commend you noticing that you had uh I think overuh the last two years at least a signing my numbers here 2% growth for ELA one for math went down one in science your graduation rate did increase by 4% but you're at a very low level so in reality there's only one way right like up and so what are what do you think is is going to be so different about this new plan that's going to increase these percentage points by enough to get you out of this F grade. >> So when we started our teachers, you know, when we have the

270assessment, when we started, they were just learning what then was called PL, you know, our performance learning targets and now they're ALDs, but the targets of what a three looks like. So if I know that I'm teaching this standard, what does the student have to do to even just to perform the three that 1060? How can we get to that three? our teachers were still learning that that first year themselves and um working in collaborative team meetings to actually create their own exemplars of that. Could they perform that target? Could they do it at that level? And so um that was year one. So now we're in year two after they've had that that year experience and we saw growth then where they were just hitting the surface of that. And so building that teacher

271capacity on being able to perform it themselves and then being able to get kids to that level, that's where we're going to see the growth. But I I know that it's going to take where they're going to have to really dig deeper into that. So that's where the lesson internalization is important. You know, we gave them this the script is what I'm going to call it. We gave them the HQIM in the first year. We need them just to read the script, just to get the the vocabulary, the language for them to get that to the students because we had so many novice teachers or so many teachers that were trained in a different type of teaching. And so then now we have to make sure that you have the script. So now let's internalize

272the script. What does this really mean that students can do? So that's the stage we're in this year. So the expectation we're going to continue to grow, but it's our achievement that's getting us and it's just because our students are growing to that two le the level two, but we're not achieving yet. And so um some of our biggest barriers are in math and it's because some of our math um certified teacher our math teachers are not certified in all areas. And then those that are are still struggling some themselves and so that's making sure that we put a high quality teacher in front of them. >> Yeah. You should feel confident that even with not a complet teacher buy in because what I just heard but not yet anyway. Hopefully you get there >>

273that that's something you can get to next year. >> I I believe so. Yes. No, I mean the data is showing that we are we're trending that way. And so that's the that's the goal. And when I see complete teacher buyin, I mean just in the system itself is difficult right now for teachers. >> First off, um uh thank you. I mean, it's you you um took a position to go into a school district that was really struggling and not everybody will sign up and do that and I think we have to acknowledge that if I'm sure that we probably have in the past, but it's my first opportunity to acknowledge it. So, um congratulations on that. >> Thank you. >> Um I will tell you that um it feels this um Q&A session feels

274a lot lighter than the the two we that preceded you. And um I don't think that's being fair to you or to your school district. Uh the um yeah, there's there's a history in Pine Bluff, but there will always be a history of we don't expect Pine Bluff to start to perform at a higher level. And so um I think we owe it to you to hold you to the same standards that we hold everybody that's and who's performing at the C grade, A grade, to B grade. Um, and if we don't, then we're not doing our job and we're not helping you. So, um, there's there's some work to do from that from that perspective. All right. Um, the the presentation is is pretty light um, in terms of details. Um, but I had

275two specific questions. Earlier, one of the presentations talked about teacher absenteeism. Is that something that you struggled with? You mentioned absenteeism. I wasn't sure if you're talking about teachers or students or both. >> Teachers. I'm speaking of teachers. our our student ab absenteeism is improving. So our teacher absenteeism is staying about the same which is not positive. >> Do you have a percentage of or days absent average or how do you what's the metric? Well, we we we do um we've done some incentives across the district. And so, one of the big incentives was we wanted just all faculty, not just teachers. Like, so for the month of September, we asked at each campus for we we documented at each campus who had all staff present the most and it was on a percentage- wise.

276And so, again, speaks to some of our numbers. Our teachers at our faculty at James Matthews Elementary had 10 days total across that that someone missed 10 days total and this was for um sick not we did not count professional development leave against them but was for sick or personal or whatever leave that was and so we we were trying to continue to promote those incentives. So the district was um we got donated money to provide lunch for that faculty so that we're going to continue to promote those things. Now, when you ask if it's hard to find a percentage of actually how many miss or not because the different days that they have and you know, you have some on leave that are just on leave. And then we also still have some classrooms

277that have long-term subs. We're still looking specifically for um special education teachers and a a music teacher, an art teacher. We have long-term subs in those places as well. And uh I think one elementary that we have a sub in. So, I could give you a rough data, but no, I don't I couldn't answer that right now. >> Right. The um I'm going to call you on something that you said. We all know that teachers work really hard. I'm not m I'm not I'm suggesting anything other than that, but well, how do your teachers work harder than the teachers in a in school districts at a school in C? I I would think that it's consistent, right? So, um, you you made a comment that led me to believe that because [clears throat] we're it's

278that they're in a failing school, they have to work harder than than teachers that are in and and principles that are in schools that aren't failing. Is did I misunderstand your statement? >> No, I I think you're accurate in that statement and I'd still agree to that. >> You think that you have to work harder >> for those that do not come with all the things that other students come with? >> That's right. my child's teacher does not have to work as hard to educate my child as some of the teachers at my school to educate some of the students that come to our campus. >> So where in your plan do you address how do you try to level that field somewhat >> the teachers? >> Yes. So that they so that your your

279students come in your in the district um that the teachers are able to to close that gap between your your child and your students. >> That's the goal. That's the that is the magic thing that we're trying to do. So we have to So how are we doing that? We're trying to train the teachers better. We're trying to educate them better so that they can actually pass the practice with the the actual practice score um so that they can actually learn and understand how to utilize that high quality instructional material instead of just reading the script. Um, we are as a district partnering with the local college, but we're still very much not only as a district trying to educate our students, we're trying to educate our educators so they can be better for our

280students. >> Well, earlier today as well, they were talking about mentorship programs for the principles and other school district partnering with successful principles in outside the district. Are you are you following that same model or how are you uh what is your effort in that area? >> Yes. So um for for principles we have so I have one the one at 34th who's just she's newer in the district. She's going to cognitive coaching uh which is sponsored through Aeaea and AD and that actually they provide them mentor mentor principles and support. She also is part of the um instructional leading and learning cohort that's she's learning that through it's a partnership with TNTP which is an outsourcing with that have principles as part of that we have administrators that took it upon themselves to take

281their leadership team over our fall break because we have calendar we have a different calendar and so they actually went to other schools not in the city but outside of the city I'm sorry not other schools one other school that was a performing school where they took a group of teachers there during the their actual school day they partnered with that. And so that's a principle that they're leaning on to get some support in how they grew their how they grew their building. And then um I was trying to think about the different ones that we we well we always participate in what they call capturing kids hearts huddles. And so this is where our building principles are required to meet once a month. It's a it's virtual but it's for uh principles across the

282nation that are also part of capturing kids hearts. So that's a that's a program where they mentor with each other. We have job alikes through the co-op where um our building principles get to go to the co-op with the principles that are in our co-op area and region that they can listen and learn from and talk with as well. Um John Wick has also been a program that our co-op offered and so our building principles participated in that mentorship program through through that. So it's it's definitely there. um finding that mentor that that they can have across the state has been really positive through most of our principles are um novice and so through the novice teacher u I'm sorry novice principal program the beginning administrator program they provide them with a a mentor as

283well so we've had one that was mentored from this principal from Alma you know so there's been some some very strong connections that I don't necessarily make them make but my assistant superintendent as well as part of that and and make sure that we have these connections too. But right now, I'm I can say that I'm proud of the principles for going for asking to do these things themselves, asking, "Hey, can I take it the van and a group of teachers to this building?" Because they're they're they've raised their letter grade and so and asking, "Can I be a part of this program? Will you sign this so that I can get an impact Arkansas?" That's another program that some of our teachers are taking place in so that they can grow their leadership capacity.

284>> Right. Thank you again. It's admirable that you stepped into the role. It's it's a lot of work, but it's going to be one of those opportunities when when you see the progress on paper, it'll make it all worth it. >> Thank you. >> Can I can I ask a followup? And I may have missed it in a previous answer, but what what exactly in your goals and strategic plan is objectionable that is preventing full teacher buy into it? Well, objective I mean it's there. So >> what do you mean the the resistance? >> No. No. And I'm not saying and so I guess maybe I was misunderstood the question. I'm not saying that they're not bought in to improving student learning. They're bought into improving student learning. That's not it. and they're bought into

285the HQIM and they're but I'm saying that their buy in to feeling like they are actually going to be able to accomplish these goals is difficult because there's so many outside things that they are familiar with and used to and it's the culture and so it's that culture change is what >> it's a culture change that is the problem. >> So I could make a lot of money referring people to two specific principles from Little Rock School District. Uh, I could start them a business to do this, but your teachers need to talk to Barbara Anderson and Sandra Register from the Little Rock School District. They were principles in challenging neighborhoods, neighborhoods that people had written off and they turned schools around. They had high performing schools. I just I I would love for them

286for for your personnel to have the confidence that every student regardless of the home situation can achieve and can grow with the right materials and the right instruction for the right amount of time. It can happen. It can happen anywhere. It's happening in southeast Arkansas. It's happened right here in Little Rock. It It can happen anywhere. there there are no excuses if people are bought in and believe in themselves that they can do it. I firmly believe that. >> Thank you. I will certainly reach out to them. I'm very curious how long did it take to turn it around. >> Yeah. I I don't know the answer to that. I >> Okay. >> Short period of time, two, three years, but that that type of time frame. We're not talking generational. >> No, that's what

287I'm thinking. And that's the that's the goal for us. I think >> Yeah. >> Two to three years. I think we can get there. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Well, and to piggyback off that, the um I'm sure you've heard of the 90990 schools where so 90% I think what you're talking about is 90% of the student population qualifies for free and reduced lunch. 90% is are students of color, minorities, and 90% proficiency. And so looking into those um models and sort of the key characteristics of things they have would be very helpful, I think. >> Thank you. Are there any questions for their board or for the co-op? >> I I'll ask a question of the board. >> Okay. You're the president >> and and it's something that I intended to bring up with

288North Little Rock and failed to do so. So, sorry about that. But I believe the boards should be accountable >> for So, you you've hired a super well, we have a superintendent. I I believe It's an odd situation because she was >> state cover >> hired hired under state control, but [clears throat] I I assume that she has been through a review process and a contract renewal and that type of process since the board was democratically elected. Is that right? >> Yes. >> Or I apologize. I shouldn't even say that. Since the board took autonomy >> in in the community. Um Okay. So, she's she's your person. >> Yes. What are are you fully supporting her in the decisions that she makes and specifically in personnel decisions in the buildings? >> Yes, I I think

289that's what the the overall goal of the board is to do. We evaluate those decisions. We look at, you know, uh the ins and outs. Um, of course, we don't always agree 100%, but at the end of the day, if those decisions are aligned to supporting teaching and learning, that's what we're supporting. What we heard from North Little Rock just a little while ago was that in a very split decision >> there there was some dissension maybe based on favoring this person over that person. It came down to you know personnel decisions. They didn't want us they didn't want this person to not be in that position anymore or whatever. My my encouragement is that you look past all of that in the decisions you make and that you support the superintendent as she makes

290personnel decisions. If she wants to replace a principal, if she believes that an ineffective teacher needs to be relocated, you all have to look past the the personalities and the relationships and you have to support a superintendent's decision. So, I hope that that is the culture of the new Pine Bluff School Board and that it will be that culture going forward. >> It is. Thank you. questions. Okay, if there are no questions, I will look for a vote either to approve, accept, or reject. Thank you. >> All right, I have a motion by Mr. Peacock to accept. Do I have a second? >> Seconded by Mr. Bragg. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Uh. Any opposed? >> Hearing none, motion passes. All right, next up. I think I think I think All right,

291next up on the agenda for the state board today is um Lefayet County. Um it is currently one of our districts with a letter grade of an F. It is 66 points from a D. Um it is the lowest performing district of the D districts. So 66 points. Um they are in the southwest co-op. Um they have 453 students. John Estus is a firstear superintendent in the district. Um their poverty rating is reported at 86%. Um this has been a district that is in declining enrollment. Um averaging anywhere from 50 60u students a year that they're losing. Um and so at this point I will ask Mr. Estus to come forward for his presentation. Hey, >> how are y'all? I'm John. >> Tired. >> Hey, [laughter] wake you up there. >> I'm superintendent of Lefaya

292County School District where we uh like Miss Smith said, we have the lowest test scores in the state. As a native of Lefaya County, I'm ashamed and embarrassed to admit that. And I'm ashamed and embarrassed to be here today. That's where I grew up. That's where I just went back to. I'm ashamed and embarrassed because our people, our kids deserve much better. Lefay County is better than this. I want the state board to know that uh that we own it. It's nobody's fault but our own. Uh and we and we will fix it because again, our kids and our community deserve better. The solution started when the state when the school board, let me back up. I've got Mr. Harvey Sers from the school district, Miss Phoebe Bailey from the co-op, Mr. Johnny Brown, board

293president, Miss Christine Dunar, uh, board vice president with me today. Uh, solution started when the school board realized that we need needed to go into a different direction and they hired me. I got a phone call about 9:00 at night on April Fools, Mr. Brown calling me telling me that I got the job. Before 9:00 the next morning, Miss Sheila Whitlo was calling me telling me, "John, what are you doing taking that job? Uh, telling me what it was in bad shape, not only academically, but financially." I knew the district was struggling, but I had no idea how bad. One of the biggest concerns was the large number of unlicensed teachers, uh, many of which had been on 1240 waivers. I related this concern to the previous superintendent who immediately began working on it and

294today all of our teachers are licensed. Uh the main problem at both the elementary and the high schools was a lack of structure conducive to teachers being able to teach and students being able to learn. Before you worry about tier one instruction, RTI, HQIM, or anything else, you have to have an environment where teachers can and are teaching and students are able to learn. At the elementary at the elementary school at the f my first board meeting, I recommended that we close two campuses. They have one house kindergarten, one house first and second grade. And uh the school board agreed to do that, voted to do that, and we consolidated kindergarten through sixth grade into one building. Uh, this was huge because it allowed the principal to monitor each classroom regularly and hold teachers accountable

295as needed. No more kindergarten starting at 8:35 when everybody got down there and and got ready. Now classes start on time every day with quality instruction instruction. Teachers teach better when they are being monitored and observed on a consistent basis and giving feedback and closing the two buildings and consider and consolidating all the students into one building uh was the structure that made this possible. Elementary we talk about third grade test scores. I'm not even flipping through my things. Uh But y'all got it. Uh, talk about third grade test scores. I think last year we had one student who was level three. Everybody else was level one or two. That's terrible. We've utilized uh the services of Karen Harris to support K2 teachers. Improve uh reading ability of K2 students. test scores show that this

296is working great. Uh the co-op is providing assistance with a math specialist, Miss Wilson, who works with our teachers and while in tier one instruction uh and Atlas test prep for both the elementary and the high school. Uh speaking of testing, there's our that's much better, much improved than what it was the previous year. Uh, speaking of needed structure, one mistake was in the way that we administered the Atlas test. I'm still not sure why, but at the elementary school, they gave their interim practice test during the first week of school, during the first weeks of school this year. Uh, so obviously there isn't much growth. The problem has been identified, solved, but and will not happen again. They're testing again towards the end of January and should show expected improvements. At the high school,

297when nine ninth and tth grades begin their interim testing, their practice test, uh the internet went down. So, we moved it back a day. Instead of uh instead of administering the interim test on two days as pre previously scheduled, they decided since we moved it back a day, let's just do them all in one day. And so they again this led to lower test scores on the interim test. Uh again though this problem has been identified and addressed and will not happen again. The seventh and eighth grade tests were properly administered and show growth. The high school first thing we had to work on at the high school was again providing structure. You don't worry about mice when you have elephants running through your house. Last year at the high school, the need of structure

298was not there. 15 fights a day, 30 fights a week was not uncommon. Uh teachers not coming to work can't find subs, kids going to the gym to spend the day was not uncommon. We did not provide an environment where students could learn. Expectations for teachers and students were clearly communicated at the beginning of this school year. And when you expect more, you get more. We have turned the negative learning environment around this year. Our school is doing good. Teachers are teaching. Students are in class learning. Expectations are high. Excuses are not allowed. We've only had two fights all school year. Uh teacher absences are way down. Our interim test scores show taken over a month ago show that we are already scoring higher this year than we did at the end of last year

299uh when we when the tests were properly administered. Our science teacher who is responsible for all tested science subject is being coached by the Arkansas Teacher Corps as well as being monitored and observed by the principal and myself and the co-op staff. Our two math teachers are being uh coached by the math specialist from the co-op. We are currently working. We are currently working with uh Brent Miller to reconfigure our class schedule for the next semester to asssure the best teacher for each subject is teaching that particular subject. I actually met with him this morning whenever I got here. Danielle F with the Bailey group is working with uh our English language uh ELA teachers. Sarah Goodwin from the AD is also working with both teachers. Dr. Goodwin regularly zooms with each teacher individually to

300increase lessons lesson internalization regarding HQIM. Uh we have ceased operation in our AL program and we are finalizing steps with hope school district purchase slots if necessary. Our former AL teacher is serving as a second teacher in the ELA classrooms, providing RTI small groupoup interventions and one-on-one tutoring and instruction at both elementary and the high school. We are focused on protecting sacred class time. We do not not disrupt instruction time with class or club meetings, field trips, free days, or all calls over the intercom. Uh Russ Cheryl with AD works with both principles to ensure they are staying on track with observations, quality tier one instruction and using HQIM. He and his team are there to answer any questions and get us any help we may need. I have personally met with all 10th through

30112th grade students explaining the benefits of earning concurrent credits through uh University of Arkansas Community College hope. I expect to see the number of students graduating Lefay County High School with college credit significantly significantly increase over the coming years. We uh we just had 12 students take the ACUPPLACER test on Tuesday. We have two new students who are starting college. They're juniors. Uh they're starting college in January. Uh we had to figure out how to make ACUPPLACE more accessible to our students in the future. uh working with teachers on grade level grades. Make sure that your grades reflect where the student is. If everybody's making a and they're scoring ones, that's grade inflation. We don't want to do that. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. We had to stop digging our hole

302deeper so we could start climbing our way out. Many of the problems that plagued us in the past have already been corrected. We are nowhere near where we need to be, but our truck is heading in the right direction. That's all I got. Questions, comments, concerns, cuss words? >> I [snorts] have I have a quick question just to start to make sure I understand timeline. When you say you started in April, are you talking April 2025? >> I I got hired in April. I didn't start till July 1st. >> So, you're six months, seven months into this job. >> Yes, ma'am. This feels more in my opinion like a board question and answer because you haven't had time to do anything. >> Sure. Um, I've been trying to be relatively quiet today and let let

303the board ask the questions of the leadership and the superintendent, but I I feel compelled before we get into board questions to give some background I think on the state of Lefaya who came on our radar last year and um we had great concerns as a state about the status of that district and the performance that we were seeing out of students and that's when we had our school improvement team start going down there regularly to have conversations with the previous superintendent to start developing a plan because this is by far one of the lowest performing districts in the state and I'm not talking about just an achievement but I'm also talking about in learning gains and I've got to visit Lefay with Dr. Estes walked through some classrooms and um how this district got

304lucky to have somebody from the community that just recently retired willing to take on the dysfunctional mess that is called Lefaya County. And I think it is appropriate to have these conversations with the board because for the life of me the decisions the elected officials would make in this community were what's best for adults in that system and not for students. And I think we have a superintendent who we've had some very serious conversations with that says we need to change that mindset and that culture and he's up for that challenge. Um I commend him for taking on that challenge because that's not an easy challenge. But if if you're one of the lowest performing districts in the state, would you think it's a good idea to have kids come to school less? Let's take

305a 178 calendar and turn it into 136 because that's going to help the lowest performing district in the state. That's the decisions that LeFay County is making on their own. That's why they're the lowest performing district in the state. You heard from districts that are two, three points for Media and that's nothing to celebrate, right? But when we talk about systemic failure and it's financially, it's leadership quality, it's professional development, it's teacher quality. I went we walked through some classrooms and I will tell you I was very encouraged by the very quick actions that we have seen in place and now when I tell you that there's been some change in expectations principles are in classrooms teachers are using their instructional materials that there is a momentum happening and this is why I worry about

306urgency because I have a feeling that board members we're going to hear from are going to say things that are hinder progress. That's what I'm worried about. But I've never talked to these board members. I just look at their track record of decisions. And when Mr. Woods talks to other boards about are they supporting the superintendent, I think we need to have that conversation and ask these questions as well. But when I sit there and talk to teachers in your classrooms and ask them, why are your students level one? And the teachers tell me it's the parents. That's an embedded mindset and culture of low expectations for a community that's not going to be cured overnight. We're talking massive overhaul needs to happen in this district. So, I I love that we're here to do

307this update. I I just want you to understand my sense of urgency for the students that are in a failing system. how um we're going to hear about these plans, but if there was one district that I want to elevate that I have grave concerns about the future of it's Lefayet schools. >> Can we talk to your board president? Good afternoon. How's everybody here? >> Good afternoon, Mr. Brown. How long have you been on the board? >> Uh, about 29 and 30 years. >> 30 years. >> How many superintendents? >> Sounds like a problem. >> How many superintendents have you had during your time? >> We've had four. >> Four. Okay. How long was the last one here? The last one was here uh about three years. >> Okay. And the one >> going on

308gone on a third year. >> Okay. What about the one before that? >> Uh about four years. >> Four years. So have these superintendents left or have has the board decided to terminate them? >> Uh they left uh last year, this year, Miss uh Anderson got sick. Okay. And cancer. And then a health charge payment. Uh she did us a good job, but then she had another fall one night at the uh courthouse and was began to have some uh leakage around the brain. So she had to take a medical >> medical leave >> and she left by some of medical. >> So let's also Okay. So let's talk then about the budget that there's been budget issues. That's your responsibility as a board. Would you agree? >> Agree. >> So are y'all passing budgets?

309Yes, we are. >> You are. Okay. But the budgets aren't working. So, are you changing them or are you rubber stamping them? >> No, we just change that as needed. >> As needed. Okay. >> With the lead uh you know, with uh student enrollment declining, we're having to look at other other things that might be needed in the future. And so, right now, we just with the Mr. testers. We trying to give him a chance to get us on a different direction of where we was going. >> What sort of vetting process did you do for your last two superintendent? Did they come out of your district or did you pull them from elsewhere? >> Uh Mr. Anderson was in our district for years. Uh and >> was she a teacher or she was she

310an administrator? She was administrator and then she she took our financial uh position uh due to illness. Then she got better and then the position came up as Mr. EP was getting ready to leave and we decided to to go ahead on and and give her a chance as superintendent. >> Okay. I'm gonna open up the floor to my colleagues and then I may have some other questions. Anybody want to go first? >> I'll go first. >> Go for it. >> So, district overview page on the the presentation. This this is this is really kind of boggling to me. A K6 building with a a student population of 200. You've got a second year principal, 88% low income, but that's lower than some of the other districts. uh average class size of 15 students, 14%

311special education, average teaching experience is nine years. These are there are there are schools and school districts all across Arkansas that would complain about numbers that are way worse than that. That that seems like an opportunity to to do better than worst in Arkansas. What what have you what what what has been identified as tell you what give me the three most fundamental root causes of the failure at Lefayet County. >> Well, one failure was like the superintendent just said uh last year we had uh problems with teachers teaching coming to school. uh problems with fighting. We got some kids from different states that came back to Arkansas and we was having problems every week with a fight. Every every every week we was having fights and we was having a lot of disciplinary hearings.

312We had to get rid of some kids that uh was just troublemakers that didn't want in education and that was causing problems within our whole district. But when you get one bad apple and he started turning the whole bunch into bad apples and then not really hungry for education that that's a problem for any district. >> But hey, Mr. Brown, let's I I appreciate that you probably can think of depth to these examples, but >> we'll be here all day if we go go that level. But so you've identified teacher attendance and student fighting. What else is a core problem at Lefayet County that led to worst in Arkansas status? Well, what else? >> Just teacher attendance and kids fighting. you know, participation, kids hungry by education. >> Maybe I'm not. >> So, yeah, Mr.

313Brown, I I can't accept that >> because you're a you're a rural southwest school district, >> right? >> I think I don't think the kids in Lefayet County are very different than the kids in Seir County or and and the Queen schools are doing pretty well. Uh, I I don't I don't think that I don't think the kids in southwest Arkansas are less hungry for education than the kids in southeast Arkansas, but I can show you examples of elementary schools that are A's and B's. >> Sure, there are some that are not. Don't get me wrong, they're not all, but it's possible to take a group of elementary kids or high school kids who would rather be playing Xbox and have them achieve or have them grow in in learning in one year's time. And

314and Lefayet County just hasn't shown a commitment to doing that. So other than blaming the kids, >> what what else? I mean, we've got teacher attendance. What did you do as the board chair to promote better teacher attendance? Well, we tried to instill in our principle to deal with it. uh superintendent to deal with the principles and getting the teachers more enthused in handling the classrooms and the instructional um of their classrooms. >> How what you do you just pass a message? Hey, y'all get >> No, we we changed our we changed we didn't went and changed our policies and all this. We updated our other policies to put more uh on the the teachers for their instructional um abilities. And as well as we brought in um this organization to work with the teachers

315on uh their teaching abilities and and the classroom structure. So >> here's my opinion on this. I don't think you know. >> Yeah. I think you've been really disconnected and so we're just getting these like top level answers here and I'm frustrated because we have to decide whether to accept this assurance and I'm sure Mr. Estus can probably implement a plan but I have no faith to know whether the board is going to support him in doing that. >> The board would support whatever Mr. Esters put forward that we think that would bring us back to where we need to be with the achieving of the of the students. We have no we have no assurance that you you have done that because we have no history of that. >> You're a failing district. >>

316I I go back to the luck that Lefaya County has to have a citizen who retired and saw a local need that says I want to help. and he knows he's a lifelong educator who's had success in other districts that we've heralded. He knows there's decisions that need to be made in that district. I don't think this board is going to stand behind him because those those decisions are going to disrupt the status quo. And the reason this district is failing is because the adults in charge of running that district want to protect that status quo. So, I can tell you of all the boards that I do not have a lot of confidence in, this is one. Now, I as I stated at the beginning of today, today is day one of letting a

317district know where they stand with our board. And I want to go moving forward in good faith that they've been put on notice that we're going to monitor their performance and their actions because we're going to have an update in front of this board. So I I want to walk away from this in good conscience to say we we are here talking about some asurances that need to happen and we have to do our part with the co-op and the superintendent to make sure that's happening. And if if we find out it's the board that's not letting that happen, then I'm going to probably be making future recommendations about that board. But I but I can tell you I've been trying to be quiet today and let let the districts present, but this is one

318district when I look at the abysmal performance of a school district that's failing a generation of students. This is by far one of the worst districts in the state. >> Well, I'm almost [clears throat] speechless, so thank you for speaking up so strongly. um newer on the board. My experience with BLville was very informative and I don't I recognizing that there are processes and protocols for the uh level designation of school districts. I mean there's a unique classification here of being lowest in the state. Um, and that might call for I think it does call for a state board visit to this uh district in 2026 so we can hear from the community >> get feedback direct from the people that are entrusting their children to such a dysfunctional abysmal uh school district. And thank

319you. Hats off to Dr. Estus. I mean what you've done in a half a year or less is remarkable from your testimony. I was curious if I can ask about the this may be a question for um the superintendent. >> Mr. addresses. >> I noticed that um only 64% of the students that took the summitive evaluation took the interim and the English language arts um in November. That is of course problematic because then you don't know how they're doing. And um I know that the summitive has a requirement attached to it with accreditation. Maybe the interarm doesn't. So maybe we got a little more relaxed there. Can you talk about that? And >> would you ask me the question? Could I look at it? >> Yes, of course. Okay. So, ignore my chicken scratch, but

320the um English language arts the summit of evaluation at the end of last school year, 309 students took that. But during the interim in November, only 197 students took that, which is 64% of what I imagine to be near close to the total population. Do we know why so few? Was that attendance? Was it just didn't get it done or >> can you come back to the microphone? >> Oh, sorry. Yeah. >> Doc Dr. Smith whenever she told about our population being 450. We're down to 390 something now. We've lost that many kids. I I think maybe taking a closer look at the number of students taking the interim assessments is going to be important as well. Um because in all of the situation now ELA was the most dramatic where only 64% took it

321but only 71% um took the interim in mathematics only. Now, it was 95% in science. And I know those numbers can kind of move around a little bit, but the interim assessment is pointless if you don't have a full picture for the kids. Right. >> Of how the kids are doing. >> I agree. >> Other questions? >> What do you attribute the enrollment? Like what what's going on there? I've I've tracked the kids and uh the tracked the kids at the elementary school and see who requested records for them. uh the majority of the kids we've lost since the end of school last year to I think it was October of this year uh they had moved out of state >> and and you went from in 2022 and this this may be a question

322for Mr. Brown I know 91% graduation rate 91% 2023 and then 78 in what happened in between between those two years >> uh between basically last >> 23 and 24 >> up until last year uh you had a smaller class so the less kids that so if you had four kids who did graduate last year made a bigger uh it was a bigger percentage than four kids who didn't graduate four or five years ago. Uh Mr. Sellers could speak on where those kids were about the the four or five kids that >> Yes, please. >> did not graduate. He was there. I believe there's about eight students involved in a small school district. Small numbers, just one student could be five uh percent, but there was eight students. Uh one went to Job Core, which

323you don't get any points for that. Two received the GED. We didn't get any points for that. Uh there was a uh shooting in the the the town and two students ended up in the jail. They couldn't make bail so they weren't receiving any services. So those student if they would have went to a juvenile facility they could have kept getting educational services. So those students uh did not uh count for us. They counted against us. Um, and I believe there was one more student and and some uh there was a student that was special education did not take the DLM test. They was moving back with Easter Seals in Little Rock and somehow they didn't get that DM test on the graduation correction window you have to do. So that was about eight students

324that counted against us. And this year when that correction window came out, there was about five students. Two, we had proof that moved out of state. We sent that in. So I anticipate that graduation rate to go up uh next year as well. No, no doubt about that. Uh I I will say if I could uh there's no doubt our high school this past year we had several grades and subject areas that was percentage-wise was the lowest in the state and our school climate was not good. We had two principles the a principal and assistant principal the year before and then last year at the high school we eliminated the assistant principal uh position. school climate really did get out of control. Uh Mr. Esters brought back a halftime assistant principal this year. Climate and

325culture, I would say 75% better this year. Uh elementary climate and culture was good. Uh the the test scores uh went down. Our our K2 came out. Uh kindergarten, we was only about 2% off literacy of of the state average. I think it was 44 and 46%. First grade uh literacy uh our students had a higher scale score average than the state. So we we had some great results there. Uh our literacy coach that we had provided by Desi. She retired uh November 14th. So we're looking to get another literacy coach back from Desi to to help us this year. we I've participated with her in those learning walks. It's been great. Uh I will say uh whenever we say a long time of dysfunction, just to say uh not this school year, but the

326year before report card, uh we was uh our elementary was uh about nine points from a D. Now we're probably about 40 points. So we did decline, but the year before it was better. In the high school, we had a seat just two years ago. In 2024, we were recognized by the University of Arkansas having the second highest Ella growth in the southwest region for our high school. That's from Mina all the way down to Elora. We got an award for that. We had high growth. We had 2.5 FTE high school teachers for Ella that did that. They're all gone. They didn't they weren't there last year. They left in the middle of the year. We had to hire two non-traditional teachers during that time. That was some of the reasons why we really took

327a a nose dive on some of the test scores. [clears throat] >> I'm sorry. Could you repeat that last thing? What' you say was the reason for the decrease in the test scores? That was I think a question earlier about some of the what could be some of the reasons maybe that went down and like I said we you go back two years in 2024 we get recognized for high school Ella scores having some high growth second highest growth in the region but I'm just saying off those 2.5 teachers FTE they all retired or left the district we didn't have them last year So we then we had to bring in two uh non-traditional teachers. That was one thing that we've had a lot of non-traditional pathway teachers that we have to work through. So

328now we have to retrain. Uh we had those veteran teachers. Now we have to retrain. We're getting a lot of support from Desi, a lot of support or from the Bailey group that we have coming in to help retrain them. And hopefully we'll get the scores back up again, increase the learning. >> Yeah, but we're I mean we're not talking like a couple points, man. I mean, we're talking monumental. >> It's It's more than two teachers. I was just talking about the the the Ella at the high school. I was just giving an example of where it was before getting a an award, high growth. The next year, all those teachers left. We went down to two teachers instead of 2.5. And >> yeah, >> and the two teachers we have now, they're they're working

329hard, but their bachelor's degree background is in health kinesiology. >> What are they teaching? >> They're they're the our two English teachers. Now, the master's degree and so forth, MAT, that type of thing. Yes, they are licensed. they pass the practice test but their background. So that's what happens a lot of times. We get non-traditional uh teachers and then you have to teach them up and then once you do that then they may leave to a neighboring district. >> You know I I don't want to there is there are school districts performing significantly better than Lefayet County nearby in the same kind of region. I I don't want to overgroup people together, but when you look at DQ and when you look at Hope, when you look at Casat River and umpire alone, less than

330a hundred kids in that school, K12, and it's an A school, uh I just I like I have a really really hard time reading what I read on this paper here and and believing that there is any kind of excuse. There's no excuse. There's no I'm truly speechless and I I hate to say it takes a lot to make me speechless about [laughter] >> this. >> Madam Chair, does the cooperative have any insight? >> Well, can I make a couple of comments before we the um my observation is we don't have a student problem. We got an adult problem. Um there's from you don't you don't have 35 feet fights a week that are spontaneous. They build up and this clearly from my perspective and I've never been to the school. Um but teachers are

331are not intervening in situations. They're sitting back wait and things continue. There's and and I think that accounts for why the test scores you you don't drop from two to 40 um because students suddenly forget everything. you drop from two to 40 because they stop being involved and it's like just checking blocks or whatever. So, it's a it's an adult situation that's got to be that's that's the problem. It's not the student population that's the problem. Uh and somebody suggested we go visit. I I think you said earlier, Mr. Estus, that um you're doing your next round of testing in January. I would like to come visit as soon as the test results come out because I think that you're going to do a lot of good things if if you're holding your staff accountable

332and reinstituting the discipline that you need in the school system, then those scores are going to come back quickly. And I'd like to come down and see if that's actually the case. So, I I I don't suggest that we come down in 2026. I say suggest we come down in January as soon as the test results are down are um are released so that we can see firsthand for ourselves that um what's going on. The other thing, Mr. Brown, I I I'm sure you're a fine gentleman. I have a lot of respect for you having served for three decades on the school board, but the school board's not helping Mr. Estus and the school district. And they either need to change their ways or they need to get out of the way. And I hate

333to be that blunt about it, but time moves on and then um Mr. Estus and and those students deserve the support from a a vibrant engaged school board that is looking to the future for those students. And if the school board can't do that, please don't ask the state to to to come and fix the your problem. >> It's not we're not we're engaged. We're trying. >> But what you're doing, sir, is not working. Y and if it's not working, we need to do something different. Right. And I say that with all the respect for all the work that you did um that you poured into the school district for 30 years. Right. >> Could we possibly hear from the other school board member that's here? >> We we can. And I just want to

334say we are firing teachers for not doing their job in the district. And if you as a elected school board are taking funds from the district, you're not doing your job. Yes, we would love to hear from the other one. [clears throat] >> Hello. >> I have a question. How much um annually is the district paying to the Bailey group for support? >> That number I can't tell you right off the bat. Uh >> you can come up and answer that question. >> She's from >> Oh, she's from the co-op. >> From Sorry, she's from the co-op. >> Co-op. Okay. >> Can you introduce yourself? >> Sure. Phoebe Bailey, director of Southwest Co-op, and we the Bailey group is through the communities of practice grant that runs from the co-op. So, it's from it's grant

335funded from the co-op. It's not costing the district anything. >> Okay. Interesting. Thank you. Do you have questions specifically? >> Yeah, sure. Uh, I'll I'll ask you the same question that I asked Mr. Brown a minute ago. Could you maybe identify for me the top three issues that have led to the poor performance of Lefayet County Schools? >> Sure. Um, first of all, I'm Christy Dumbar. Um, I've been on this board probably two almost maybe three years. So, um, and if I, if I may, um, what really prompted me to step up and run was because I was not satisfied with what was going on in the district with the schools, with the students, the performance, everything. So, you know, you can sit on the sideline and complain or you can try to get in

336the game and make a difference. So, that is why I ran. But what I found getting on the board, um, because it's different when you're on the outside looking in and then when you get in, I felt that there was a total lack of accountability uh, being for the teachers. They they they just weren't held to what I thought should have been a standard of accountability. I felt that there definitely was um a lack of discipline going on in the school due to in part what some of you all said was just not getting involved standing by because I'm not understanding how I can see these fights being broadcast on social media and all I'm seeing are students. Where are the teachers? where's where where staff um and I'm not trying to bash I'm not

337but this is just from my heart and what I feel um and then it's sometimes I felt and and and granted I I came on the board when we had already gotten in this problem so I don't really know but Um, I think a lot of decisions were made in my opinion, um, and take it for what it's worth, um, that shouldn't have been made. Hard decisions that should have been made weren't made for whatever reasons. I don't know. >> Like what? >> Um, >> let's I mean, >> let's just you're you're you're an elected official, right? Are you elected? Okay. and you go to public meetings. Yes. >> And y'all discuss public things about the spending of public dollars. What do you disagree with? >> Well, um well, one thing, um you know, I

338I felt like maybe when I say the hard decisions, let's just go to staff. Um, we were keeping people on, I think, just for the sake of keeping them there. They weren't doing, as we can see. So, I'm not seeing anything that can't be seen in in the numbers in the paperwork. Um, but there there was nothing that was I didn't really see the improvement that I thought we ought to be seeing. We're in we're we're contracting these groups to come in and help. Um but at the same time it's like we're still getting the same result. >> So what are we going to do different? >> One thing y'all decided to do different was have less school. >> Like let's just be honest. That was a decision that was made decision made last year.

339>> We we did make that decision. Um, >> so that's the decision. >> When it came time to um vote on the calendar and uh the PPC came back and um in their group discussed um >> the PPC, what's that? >> The Could you please say what it is? [laughter] Everybody answered >> the the personnel policy committee. >> Yes. >> I'm sorry. Um you know that >> the teachers >> the the teacher staff >> came back and they said what >> you know they when when they were voting on the calendar and and one of the suggestions was a alternate calendar either um the 4-day or the year round calendar 12 month I I'm sorry 12 month. And so initially um we did not want to do an alternate calendar and but then when we

340had the amount of absenteeism from the the teachers from the students and then we were paying way more to have subs and I'm like we have teachers why are we paying this much for subs. And so, um, also too, we thought that it would be a better morale booster for them, um, to want to teach those children. Um, we thought that as far as the absenteeism with the kids, you know, because they were missing school. Um, we thought that that would allow the parents and or students an opportunity instead of missing for doctor's appointments and all of those kinds of things consistently that day off that would take care of itself, you know, with with that kind of thing. >> And has it >> and >> or do you still have absenteeism? We do, but

341it's not and I don't know the percent, but we do not have as near amount of absenteeism as uh we used to have. And Mr. Estes um is he he brought that up in one of our meetings about the number not being anywhere near what it used to be. And I I want to pivot for just a minute on Mr. Estes. I support him. I was a was one that um and I will support him because I felt like he is what this district needs in this time. I was happy he accepted the position to come and try to help us out of this mess that we're in. We didn't get in it overnight. And that's one of the things I had to tell myself was, good lord, you didn't get in it overnight. So

342Christy, hey, you're not going to get in it get out of it in a year or two. But we were going to have to have the right leadership and the right direction to clean this thing up to fix it. >> But see, I I disagree. I think this can be turned around in a year or two. You you only have 400 kids. You only have I mean, you've How many teachers? >> Well, no. I was saying in reference to when I had first got on this board, but yes, it can. He is making significant changes and I can see it and I appreciate it. >> What What is the weekly schedule? Which day did y'all vote to not have school? >> Mondays. >> So, everybody has Monday off and we go to school Tuesday through

343Friday. >> Tuesday through Friday 7:40 to 4:15. >> Was that a unanimous decision on the board? Um, no. I think one >> No, no, no. It was unanimous because one was just absent that day >> of the meeting. >> Okay. Has did Mr. Estus bring up going back to to a traditional model for this year? >> I'm sorry. >> When did y'all vote on the calendar for this year? Was it prior to Mr. >> It was prior to Yes, it was prior to Mr. Est's coming on board. And then also too, um, looking at his resume and everything, he came from a district similar to ours, if not exactly the same. He guided a school through a 4-day um, school week. But we also understood, too, that um, this wasn't something that would be ongoing.

344So if there were problems, issues persistent, if nothing changed per se, we had no problem going back to a traditional calendar. >> So I want to hear from the co-op here in just a second, but I want to give you a piece of advice. I understand being new on a board, you clearly saw an issue and you stepped up to run and you got elected. And I know it can be hard to be the new person and be that voice of change because you don't want to be looked at as the person who's constantly being negative. But that's how change happens. >> Yes. >> And so you if you're the only person in that room screaming at the top of the lungs that we're the building's on fire, keep throwing water. >> So can we

345talk to you for just a second? >> What supports are you currently providing and when did that start? We've always been supportive, but currently we our math specialist is there. She has such a routine that if she has to change a day or time of the week, Mr. Estus is like, "Where's Jamaica?" She's usually here. I I see her in the halls on Thursday. And today it's it's Wednesday, you know, is she coming? So, but our math specialist is there in both elementary and high school. Science specialist is there. Our dyslexia person's there. our CTE person just um was it last week brought a team from the state down to make sure that the career pathways that Lefayet's offering will match up with the new jobs that we anticipate and hope that are coming through

346the lithium project so that our our students will be ready. technology at back the end of last year, their technology coordinator quit. So, ours was down there helping, got a new technology person. We have special ed um testing for them. Uh we've got a preschool there. I'm down there. My assistant director is down there. So, I I just told Harvey while ago, I said, I guess, you know, maybe instead of me driving back and forth every day, you're just going to give me an office sometime. So, but we are and one thing we do seriously is we meet with our staff because Lefayet though are their only F district, we have other districts that are in need. So, we sit with our staff and say, "Look, these are our district grades. These are our building

347grades." Because as Secretary Olivas pointed out, at times you've got districts or built districts that have those buildings maybe that are hiding an F and it's really easy to kind of overlook them because oh look, their overall grade is a C or a B. So we meet with our our specialist, our team, and say we need to prioritize our time. We, you know, we've got great districts that are performing and we're not saying we're not helping them, but similar to you've got a house on fire, you've got to save the kids, save the save the building first. So we make sure that it's not just the squeaky wheel because sometimes your A districts, your B districts are the ones wanting to improve and calling and we make sure that we have our time prioritized so

348that we are actually in in our districts. >> But when did you get involved with this district? Was it just this year? >> No, ma'am. I actually taught there back in the day. [laughter] So as long as I can remember, I've been But I mean it goes back. They used to be two separate districts and when they combine that's part of the financial issue is both of them have their own cafeteria staff. I mean we've got other small districts that they're all under one building and so they can share those services but in Lefayet you've got the cafeteria staff in Lewisville and another one in stamps and you know you're either having to figure out how to get that food from one place to another. So, no, we have been involved probably not as heavily

349as we are right now. I don't know that I've ever had as many staff down there committing two to three days a week every day every week, but we've always had a presence in in Lefayet County. >> Questions? >> I have a couple more questions I want to ask. Um, one one of the board then one of Mr. Estus. >> Um, >> any more for me? I was the I'll start with the board. Either one of you I guess you come on up. Um was the support like for was the vote for Mr. Estus unanimous when he came before the board? >> Yes. >> Okay. That I think that'll be all for you. Mr. Estus, um you have both board members today have said that that they that you have their support. Do you feel

350not just the board members present today, and this may be kind of an unfair position to put you in right now, but I want to know, do you feel like you have the support of your full board? >> I do. >> Okay. >> Tag on, does your community um are they satisfied with the school board at this time? Is there public concern about it? >> I would I would just respectfully intercept that question. >> Okay. I >> ask you to think about the position you're putting a superintendent in to comment. >> Well, it kind of politicians who are test it kind of test the support theory, but I I as a courtesy I will uh I will retrieve my question. >> I'm going to answer anyway. [laughter] >> We have five more. I thought you

351might >> and I can do this and we have five board spots up for reelection. >> Uh, two of those are contested. >> Okay, >> three of them are not factual. >> You talk about other schools, if I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times. We're on highway 29. 18 miles to the south of us is Bradley, Arkansas. 18 miles to the north of us is Hope, Arkansas. The names are the same. The names of the families are the same. If they can do it in Hope and they can do it in Bradley, we can do it in the middle. >> Motion. >> I move that we accept the >> accept the statement of assurance. Okay, I have a motion by Dr. Abbott to accept the statement. Do I have a second? >>

352Seconded by Mr. Bragg. All in favor say I. >> We have to do a roll call that one. We'll start with Mr. Peacock. >> Dr. Arnold >> present. Yes. >> No. Out of concern with the board leadership, not the superintendent leadership. >> Correct. >> I have 32. So motion passes. So, I just want to remind the board what what we're doing is accepting their assurance, meaning the district has a plan. They have support of their board, support of their co-op and the oversight of our agency through school improvement and support. I I do think um if if the board wants to follow up and I'm not saying it needs to be condition of this motion, but to act with urgency if we want to go ahead and say we're going to make a commitment and

353work on scheduling a calendar day in either January or February for an on-site um we would I think as an agency welcome that and we can start maybe after holidays working with Mr. address to find out um like with hopes team when we'll get that data and do a deep dive and invite the community to come hear from us um and hold a community forum like we've done in other communities in the past. So I I I feel like I know where I feel in my confidence with this board. Um I feel like we should just go ahead and be proactive and take that suggestion if that's the will of the board. >> Yeah. And I would just say that my my vote and motion there was an acceptance of plan. I I am in

354concurrence with Mr. Wood. >> Dr. Right. I would say if we can let's calendar it for February time frame. >> To those in the room who are sitting under the the ducks, I know how cold you are, so feel free to move closer. [laughter] All right, we'll move on to CrossFit. >> We need to go back and keep going. You said >> good. It's good. >> All right. Next. Um Yeah, we went from hot to cold, didn't we? [laughter] Okay. Next district um is Crossit School District. Um Crossit is um seven points from a D. Um Crossit is in the Southeast Cooperative. Their enrollment is around 1,500 students. They have three schools, and this is a little bit different. You've only seen one other school like this today, so I do want to lift this

355up to you. They have three schools, an elementary, a middle, and a high high. And in their letter grades for 2025, we had their their elementary and their middle were held harmless. Okay? Because we had legislation. Their letter grade actually under the new accountability, it was actually an F, but they got to remain held harmless because we had legislation and we had data points that because we were placing a new accountability system. We went back and looked did their achievement, did their growth, did they have factors to say that they were moving in the right direction um and went under our old accountability system would have remained at that letter grade and in our determination it was yes. Okay. So you actually had cross elementary and crosset middle who were held harmless and remained a

356D um because they did have achievement growth. They did not have they had achieve they had they had they had their achievement scores went up. They did not though have individual student growth that was above what they had the previous year. Okay. But they did get held harmless for that. Um but it was definitely one of those moments in terms of um needing to pay attention to what's going on with individual student growth growth and and all students moving. Um, so I did want to bring that to your attention though about the hold harmless on those two schools. Um, in all of their buildings this last year, um, their growth went down. So that's just something to be able to ask about. So their superintendent is at Anthony Boyin. Um, this is his third year

357as superintendent in the district. >> Good afternoon, board. My name is Anthony Boy and I'm the superintendent of Crosset School District. The way I've tailored this PowerPoint is around the statement of assurances that were provided to us from this board to show you the plan that we've put in place to move forward. We've actually been doing a lot of work over the last three years to make some changes within our elementary school and our middle school specifically. What I would like to do first is go through the actual PowerPoint. Um, I was told 15 minutes and so I've kind of summarized the PowerPoint down to allow you all an opportunity to ask any follow-up questions that we might have. So within the PowerPoint, we have the statement of asurances that were provided to us for

358myself and my board president to sign. Uh, and then that moves us into the comprehensive needs assessment that we've placed for Crosset Elementary School, Crosset Middle School, and Crosset High School. is pretty much the same whenever you look at all three buildings. The biggest problem that we're running into within the classrooms is actual tier one instruction occurring on a consistent basis. What that means is is we have a lot of time where we're teaching below grade level. We have highquality instructional materials. We have teachers that are trained on those highquality instructional materials. We spend a lot of time teaching below grade level. The reason that there's a lot of time taught below grade level is there's a concern that trying to get our students up to that level three and four, the rigor needs to

359be lowered in the actual classroom. We know that's not actually true. We can see that from our scores that we've gotten for this current school year. Uh so all learning that's across the district is focusing not just on tier one, but making sure that tier 2 and tier three is also done appropriately at the appropriate time. that is provided inside the actual schedule that we have. And not only that, that is connected to the Arkansas state standards. So, something that and I know I said 15 minutes and I would summarize, but I just I kind of want to give you an overview here of what what I've noticed because I am in the buildings every single day and I walk in the classrooms and I observe the classrooms. And so, we have for English language

360arts, we have Whiten Wistle through great minds. It's a very heavy uh curriculum. It's a very good curriculum. It's a really good curriculum. Um I I I think it's a good to move our students forward. Um what you have whenever you're actually walking inside of those classrooms is they'll follow the curriculum the way the curriculum is actually prescribed. but the individual pedagogical decisions and the teaching decisions that the teachers have to make to ensure that they're actually internalizing that lesson to ensure they're teaching these state standards so that whenever they get to the end of the lesson and they assess the students they understand that what they're actually the end product is based off of an actual learning of the material that's tied to the state standards and that's the reason why you see a

361lower outcome come whenever you provide these assessments whenever you're just strictly sticking to the script and you don't have any type of internalization and I'm not saying that's across the board I'm saying that's some things that I'm seeing that we need to make some changes on compre so going back to the comprehensive needs assessment we actually have a team that we pull in a progress monitoring team and what we do as that team is we go through and we look at what we've observed in the classroom This uh team consists of myself, my director of curriculum, my federal programs coordinator that's at the central office, all the building administration, both uh the principal and the assistant principal, all the interventionists that we have in the district and all the instructional coaches that we have in

362the district that go through and look at the classrooms. we come together and we say, "Okay, so basically, what are you seeing that is a deficit inside of these classrooms in terms of what are we not providing the teachers to get them to the next level to where what they're putting before the student is going to push them to the next level?" And that's where you're going to see in this PowerPoint a lot of the professional development that we're prescribing to these teachers. Um, we get that through our actual uh classroom observations as well. Um, so some of the professional development that we've already had, um, and I got a little ahead here. Let me back up just a second. Um, what we see is the tier one, the tier 2 intervention, and the tier

363three and implementing them appropriately. That's the biggest thing that we're seeing in terms of comprehension and moving kids to the next level and making sure that what we're doing is appropriate for the students. Moving into the implementation of the core instruction districtwide. Again, we've had help from the Southeast Arkansas co-op where they've come in and they've provided coaching. We've had teachers go to the Southeast Arkansas co-op to receive professional development. We've also contracted through Solution Tree to provide a 15-day challenge where we have somebody from Solution Tree come down, work with our teachers, work with our grade levels, take a look at the standards, take a look at the actual curriculum that we're teaching, and try to move it forward. Now, just recently, uh, I was actually blessed to have Miss Sandy Shepard and Miss

364Alicia Whiteside come and visit the district. That was a very good visit. I spent the entire day with both of those ladies at my elementary school. We walked through every single classroom except for maybe two or three. And one of the ahas that we had whenever we were walking through there was you have the HQIM, you have the teachers, the class sizes are manageable, the behavior is good, it's marrying the two, the standards and the curriculum to make sure that it's being taught with fidelity, but it's also being internalized during the actual planning period. And again, this is just across the board. These are some expectations that we've established. These are expectations that we've had. Um, and these are expectations that we're going to ensure that we're actually achieving. So, something different that we're doing

365this year whenever it comes to classroom walkthroughs is being intentional whenever it comes to the principal actually going into the classroom and observing. Something that I've assigned my principles, all three building principles to do is they have to conduct 15 classroom observations every single week. Whenever they do those classroom observations, I go through and I look at the the actual feedback that they're providing to the teacher. And then I have a follow-up with that principal to tell them whether or not I feel like that is adequate based off of what I'm seeing in the classroom as well. Because what we do also is we have um walkthroughs with myself, the director of curriculum, and the building principal to calibrate what we're seeing in the classrooms. Meaning that what I see, what they see, what that

366director of curriculum sees is all three lining up. Because if what I'm seeing is not tier one instruction and the principal is seeing, they think are would be considered tier one instruction, that's a problem. That's a problem that we have to address and we have to make sure it's not happening. So, we're having these calibrating walkthroughs. It's not something that's a oneanddone. It's something that we actually are doing periodically throughout the school year. Going back to the 15 classroom observations, it's not that principles weren't observing in the classrooms before, but we're making sure that they're being intentional. How I'm monitoring that is whenever I go through and I look at the classroom observations, I look to see what the feedback's given. And if it's surface level, I follow up. And then what I ask the

367principal to do is if they're seeing something that is considered a deficit, then they need to go through and have a secondary follow-up direct observation with that teacher. Whenever they have a direct observation with that teacher, it's more in depth. They have uh the ability to follow up afterwards, ask questions, talk about the lesson plan specifically given during that lesson, the pacing, word align inside of the standards where they should be during the day, uh excuse me, during the school year at this point in time. And whenever they have that conversation, they're to follow up with that teacher through another observation. So that's three observations. If they're seeing no fruit from any of those observations, the teacher should be placed on an intensive growth plan. And that's where we prescribe the professional development to the

368teacher. They do not have an option on what professional development they receive. If that does not show fruit, then they are non-renewed at the end of the school year. And that's something that we have done in the past because failure is something that I I do not accept. I'm not I'm not here to make any excuses about this letter grade. I'm very upset about this letter grade. I have three kids in this school district. I have a vested interest in this school district. I want to lead this school district to greatness because I think it can be a very good school district. We have a great school district. We have a great staff and we have a very supportive community and a very supportive board. And so what I want to do is I want

369to push it forward and move us to the next level. And so this is not satisfactory at all. So, we are moving with a sense of urgency based off of these scores. When we got these scores back, we wanted to make sure that we started to make some pretty effective changes to begin with. And it's not to say that what we were doing before was not making changes. Um, and I'll get into that because I'm sure there's going to be questions pertaining to what have I been doing over the last few years. Um, instructional expectations districtwide. Something that we do at the Crosset School District is we provide a new teacher academy. That new teacher academy is for all new teachers that come into the district. It's not as in you're a first year teacher.

370You could be a 20-year veteran teacher. If you come into the Crosset school district, you go through the new teacher academy. That's where we provide you with professional development on our highquality instructional material, our pacing, our process, and what we expect that to actually look like uh as we go throughout the school year. So what we're doing with our lowest quartortile there was there was a question on and I'm will go off script just a little bit. There was a question on calendar. All right. So the buzzword and the big thing around the state was alternative calendar. That was one of the things that I heard quite a bit whenever I was a superintendent. Well, you know, I know other school districts have an alternative calendar. They have a year- round calendar. They have a

3714-day calendar. They have a minutes calendar. you know, there was just endless examples that were given. And so I've I was resistant to any change to our calendar, per se. However, last year there was the thought again with teacher absenteeism, student absenteeism. Maybe we'll try an alternative calendar and see if that shows any proof. And we did go five days a week and we did have our minutes that we were required to do, but it was the minimum requirement. And that was something that as you can see with our score, I attribute a lot of where we're at right now with that alternative calendar. So whenever it come to the 2526 calendar, whenever the prof the personnel policy committee came to me and said, "Mr. Boy, we'd like to propose an alternative calendar again for

372the upcoming year." I said no. Uh now that's their prerogative to present it to the board. Um they they do not have to listen to me at all. Uh but what I did is I told them if they go before the board with an alternative calendar that is anything other than traditional, I will not support it and I will let that support be known to my board while we're sitting there in an open meeting. And so we're back on a traditional schedule. We're back on a traditional calendar. We've actually added days. Our schedule is completely student focused. uh as we move forward. We tailored our master schedules around our students for this upcoming school year. Um and so I just wanted to touch a little bit on that because I'm sure that was a question.

373I'm one of those that I like to preempt questions just to try to give you an answer so you can think about it. Uh but uh I wanted to give you an overview on why we made that change and what I personally felt was part of the root cause to that slip that we saw. Um, we do screen our students. We screen our students for dyslexia. And we actually have, uh, with them, I'd like to kind of go through [snorts] some data that I jotted down before we actually got here to talk specifically [snorts] about what we're doing. So, kindergarten tier three, we have 24 students in our build program with reading intervention. First grade tier three, we have four in building in the building program with reading intervention. First grade tier 35 with classroom

374teachers fun and focus from Wilson's reading. Second grade [snorts] tier three we have six in Wilson's reading system and reading intervention 16 and take flight with dyslexia therapist or reading intervention six in Barton. For second grade tier 2 we have nine with classroom teachers fun and focus from Wilson's third grade tier three 15 in take flight with dyslexia therapist or reading interventionist six in the Sunday system with trained classroom teacher. Fourth grade tier three, we have six in take flight with dyslexia therapists. Two in Barton with support staff one-on-one setting. Uh fifth grade tier three, we have four in take flight with dyslexia therapists. Sixth grade tier three, we have three in Wilson. Seventh, one in Wilson's, eighth, currently reviewing data with the teacher. And ninth grade, we have four enrolled in the strategic reading.

375And so those are some of the things that we're using to address uh based off the screeners that we deploy at the beginning of the school year to see where we're at with with the students. And so to go back to I wanted to mention that to hit on what we're doing for the lowest cortile and something that uh I mentioned uh whenever Secretary Oliva actually come to the district and I'm sorry Secretary Oliva actually I I'm it was cohort to cohort whenever I was giving you that statistic. It wasn't the same cohort moving into the upcoming school year. And so just to give you a good idea, uh so in 2425 with our beginning of the year screener, uh [snorts] 95% of the students were potential risk and 5% were ready. That was last

376year. Uh the screener for this year, 66% are now considered ready. Uh so we went from 5% to 66%. Uh and you're going to ask me why. What did you do to do that? Well, that's easy. That's human capital. We made some changes whenever it comes to our human capital and the teachers that we actually have in the classroom because one of the things that I actually look at are the VAM scores whenever we get those in LEA insights. I take a look at the VAM if it's available take a look at the classroom data and we look at that to make decisions whenever it comes to placement within uh the classroom. So that's our lowest quartile our workforce. So, I mentioned that with the 15 classrooms, but you know, mentoring, this was a question

377that I heard you ask. So, building, so my high school principal is in his first year or he's had a year. He's he's a year and a half in. Uh my [snorts] middle school principal is uh three and a half years in. My elementary uh principal, she's our longest. She's got 15 years in. Uh, one of the things that we have asked them to do is to actually go through kids first and that was something that was provided to us by our co-op. What that does is it's somebody that works with our principles to mentor them on what they need to be looking for and what they need to do to move the ball forward. We also have a coach from Solution Tree. Uh, Dr. Vera specifically focuses on ensuring that not only is the

378tier one instruction occurring, but that the tier 2 and tier three instruction that the teachers are providing is appropriate and that your master schedule aligns with that. And so that's some of the support. Uh I've also required them to sign up for the AD virtual leadership development series. That was something that I mandated to them. and as I review their performance for the upcoming year and whether they continue in the role that they're in, these are some of the things that we're going to look at and have conversations about as we move forward. Um, we have we we've got a lot of support. We really do. Um, I can't thank Secretary Oliva and his team enough. Uh, Miss Stacy Smith, Dr. Tiffany Pride, Miss Sheila Whitlo, very sorry that you're retiring by the way. Um

379she's she's been wonderful to talk to. She answers my questions uh as I call and text quite often. Um and uh so the support we're receiving has has been great. And and like I told Secretary Oliva, I'm not one of those superintendents that shies away from any type of support. Anybody that wants to come to the district, if they see something different that I'm not seeing, then I welcome it because we will change it. I'm not one that's going to say we're not going to change it because like I said, I have three kids in the district. I have a sense of urgency. My babies go to this district, my babies are in these classrooms, I want my babies to have great educations. And just like I want everybody in our community's babies to have

380great educations. We hold their most valuable resource in our community. And so I want to ensure that we're giving them the best product and we have it. And so that's something that we're going to improve as we move forward. Additional support is comprehension strategies, meaningful learning activities, appropriate scaffolding, tier 2 small group centers, questioning, and purposeful learning. Here's what I mean by each one of those comprehension strategies. Are what we teach the kids something that we know they are actually comprehending? And how do we know that? Are they just sitting there? You can teach all day long, but how do you know that they're actually comprehending what they're teaching? So, we're actually creating a data protocol where each team has to go through and dig through that data and it's going to be aligned K12.

381It's not something that's negotiable at this point. Uh this letter grade, as horrible as it is, allows me to say to anybody that pushes back, none of these things are negotiable. We we have no room for negotiating. We have to move our kids period into story. That's just where we're at. Many >> interrupt you. You're you're at 20 minutes, so you >> That's what I was afraid of. All right. So, uh let me just let me end with this because I've hit a lot of the things within the slides, so I apologize. I'm a history teacher by nature. I don't know. If you've been around a lot of secondary history teachers, we tend to talk quite a bit. Um, so let me let me back up here. Um, these are our next steps that we're

382implementing as in the now. These are not things that we've already done. These are things that we're implementing in the now for each one of our campuses. specifically whenever it comes to I cannot emphasize enough the small group structure which is tier two and making sure that it's appropriate the elementary level the center specifically are the centers that's going on in the classroom appropriate to the actual learning that should be expected and for with that I will answer any questions that you might have >> do I I just want to say to for the board um you know we visit a lot of districts We've been on the road a lot and the challenge that Dr. Boyin's mentioning around how do you improve tier one instruction? That's not just a crosset issue, right? Like that's

383the conversation we have across the state. And when he says that he's open to feedback, he's willing to work with partners, he truly is modeling, I think for other superintendent that cycle of inquiry and that belief and that continue the cycle of continuous improvement. And I and I I wanted to share one story because he was even brave enough to have Miss Whit, Miss Smith, and myself do classroom walkthroughs all across that school, all three of us at the same time. So, you're going to get an earful, right? You're going to get a lot of feedback. And um he manned up and he took it all day and we would walk through classrooms and talk about we were seeing. And I remember we walked out of one classroom, we were all talking about, you know,

384the quality of teaching, what was the lesson, what was the standard, what were students working on, and we were all were standing. I was like, "Yeah, that was one of the best classrooms we saw, you know, so far in the district." And I think there was a sigh of relief cuz that was his wife's classroom. And it could [laughter] it could have got really awkward, really quick, and we didn't know that he was keeping that from us. And so, kudos to them. I I just figured I thought I had to share that story. Well, kudos to her. >> Yeah, it would have got awkward. [laughter] >> It would it would have been for an awkward >> night, but I would not have been afraid to have a tough conversation. >> That's right. >> And that

385is from 8:00 to 3:00. >> Yeah. >> The the one thing that jumps out at me is the the um the consistency from presentation to presentation about teacherism. I that just blows my mind. Um the what are those conversations like is um I know in my world if a salary person doesn't come they still get the full pay. Um >> right >> that is there is there a comp impact why has this been a historical problem and it's just getting worse or is it a new phenomena? >> It's been a historical problem. Um, we I will say that um we are seeing an improvement with teacher attendance. We really are seeing an improvement with teacher attendance and a lot of that has to do with some of the decisions that were made with the teachers

386that we allowed to continue within our school district. Um, you know, whenever it comes to teaching, specifically teaching, if the teacher's not in the classroom, the teach the kids not learning period. there. That's just that's all there is to it. You can't you can't phrase it any other way. And so, one of the things that we're looking at is to try and provide some type of an incentive for actually coming to work. However, my incentive as of right now is you get to keep your job. And so, that's where we're at currently. >> Yeah. Two things. One, you um you lead by example, right? So, yes. How do you expect the students to come to class if the teachers won't even come to class? >> Yes, sir. >> Um that's basic leadership 101. And whether

387teachers realize or not, they're leaders for their class. >> 100%. >> Um the um second one is um compensating people for coming and doing their job. Um you're going to be you're going to be spend a lot of money on it. My experience is it's not that doesn't change behavior that um that you'll be paying more money out to the teachers who are going to come to to work anyway and you're not going to be paying the ones who don't come to work that you're trying to incentivize aren't going to be motivated by a small change in compensation. So I I would suggest that's not a a a viable path forward. Um the other thing is the um and I don't know if if the results in the scores are the results of the change

388in the the evaluation. I know we got some um um information on that earlier, but it it's what I understand all the things you said and there's a lot of good things in here. >> Yes, sir. But how is that going to change the direction that you're on or the you it's when you look two years in a row you move the needle up into one percentage point and the other one down a percentage point. So it's for all practical purposes it's flat and it's flat in a really low area. >> Yes sir. >> And so the why do you have confidence that this plan is going to make a difference? So, I can give you uh I'm going to try to give you an a bridge version on why I feel confident about this.

389Uh good example, whenever I took over as superintendent at our elementary school, for example, our elementary school's hallways were set up in colors. So, you had the blue hall, the green hall, the yellow hall, the orange hall. Okay, those classrooms were set up K uh K4. So, it was a kindergarten, the first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade. They didn't see what everybody else was doing in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade. they they did have time where they would plan together, but then they would break apart and it was just kind of like, you know, I'm doing my thing. I know what I'm doing. I've been doing it for 32 years, so I've got this. So, one of the things that we did is we changed that. Uh we put

390our teachers back in grade levels. So, we have a hallway of fourth grade teachers. We have a hallway of third grade, second grade, first grade, kindergarten, preK, and infants. Um because we offer free child care to our staff. That's something that we piloted last year. That was something that I put in place to try to stabilize our um our attrition whenever it comes to teachers leaving. Uh one of the biggest incentives to keeping people is if you can take care of their kids while they're actually at work and provide them a safe environment. So in that building, we actually have birth until uh fourth grade. But what we did is we put the teachers to where they could actually have collaboration with one another. That was year one. Year two was strengthening what that collaboration

391actually looked like because teachers would rely a lot on our instructional coaches for the pacing for the data digs for the internalization of what that data was telling how they were going to teach the lesson moving forward. There was really no buyin from the teacher because it was something that was actually handed to them by the instructional coaches. We did away with that. One year I didn't even allow instructional coaches to come into team meetings. It was just simply the lead teacher that was in there. they had to establish a lead teacher for to begin with and that's somebody that was actually going to lead it. Typically, it's a teacher that has a model classroom. And so, we've started building systems over the last three years to where now we can actually start fine-tuning this

392work to where we will start to see fruit from this. Uh, one of the biggest things that we did at the middle school is we did away with our block schedule. So, our middle school was under a block schedule. Whenever you throw a schedule like that out the window and you start over completely different, it causes something that I I probably would not want to experience again. I'll be honest with you. Uh but we aligned fifth and sixth grade to where it was an elementary schedule and we aligned seventh and eighth grade to where it was a high school schedule. And the whole idea behind that was is that it was a transition year. What we had is we had fifth and sixth grade teachers teaching whole core because that's what we had at our

393elementary school, meaning one teacher taught math, science, English, social studies. We discovered very quickly that that was something that was not going to work. Midy year last year, I completely did I'm I'm not one of those that's afraid to make a change in the middle of the year. So, we completely revamped that schedule going into the spring and made that change. We also made a change with our fifth grade and we created it to where they had partner teachers to where they weren't trying to gobble up so much of the curriculum to where they could actually get in and actually teach the curriculum to the depth that needed to be taught to move the kids. So to answer your question, it is a lot of the things that we've put in place. We've done a

394lot of the heavy lifting. Now we're actually able to start fine-tuning it to get the product. It's kind of like building the factory. We built the factory. We got the machine in place. Now we can make the Corvette hopefully. Or the Prius, whichever way you want to go with it. >> Definitely the Corvette. >> Um you have a 81% graduation rate last year. I mean what well below 90%. What what do you attribute that to? >> I can I can tell you exactly what I attribute that to. So one of the things that we did whenever I became superintendent is we looked at our alternative learning environment that we had and we wanted to do something a little bit different. And here's what I mean by a little bit different. We had a traditional alternative

395learning school where you had 15 high school students inside of a classroom. Right? There were also other options out there called the hub and connect care. where connect Care come into place was students that we would expel from school in order to ensure that we offered them the ability to continue in an education. We provided them a Chromebook, we provided them a hotspot and we place them in Connect Care, which is an alternative learning environment. What that turned into were students that would have typically went to homeschool that wanted to still be a part of our school. They went to Connect Care as well. What you have in connect care is you have a lot of instances where whenever you're monitoring these kids, they fall off and then you lose them and then they're tied

396to your graduation rate and then whenever it comes time for scores, you see a drop in that graduation rate. So I attribute a lot of that to job core GED and our uh connect. >> So what are you doing to fix? So, uh, actually looked at our, uh, graduation correction window, and so if we stay on track, our graduation rate should actually be 90%. >> Great. >> Yep. >> Um, you mentioned earlier, uh, with the classroom walkthroughs, you're doing some triangulation there to kind of check and see how that's going. I I would be curious to know, are you finding that you're seeing the same things that your your principles uh, are seeing in the classroom? How's that going? >> So, that's actually going pretty well. uh when they're having really honest conversations about that

397and what that actually should look for. Um and what we're seeing is a consistency there. There's a there was a little inconsistency whenever it come to the calibration like what they considered tier one. Like I think back to whenever I first did the calibration walkthroughs I went I'm sorry I don't mean to turn my back to you all. Um I what I noticed whenever I was in a a history classroom because I I mean excuse me a high school classroom. I was a high school principal. I was a high school history teacher. So, one of the things that I noticed when I was doing that calibration walk is whenever we walked out, it was, "Man, didn't you think that was great?" It was It was Yes, you could tell the teacher was working. Absolutely. The

398teacher was working. They were working very hard. They were teaching. They were using the HQIM. However, did you notice that five of the students had their head down or three of the students were the only ones answering questions and it was only the students that were at the front of the classroom and not at the back of the classroom. So, it's fine-tuning those things because I I'm not looking for a 500 foot view at this point. I'm looking for granular. >> Yep. >> Mr. Um, all these reports have references to tier one, two, three. >> Yes, sir. >> What What distinguishes between those tiers. Is that a statewide standard or something that you'll determine with [snorts] yourself? Just kind of walk me through how all that works. >> So tier one instruction is on grade

399level instruction. That's that's actually teaching on grade level. So if you're reading a third grade text, you should have a third grade text in your class in your hands. That's what the kids should actually be looking at. That's what should be going on during the actual traditional school classroom day. Tier two is an intervention that's put in place for those students that we're seeing are struggling to get on grade level with that actual grade level. Tier three is something where you have a student that is multiple years behind in a grade level and so they need very intensive intervention that is one-on-one to help move the needle very quickly with those students. >> So they're pulled out of the classroom for this intervention. >> No sir. So actually what we did is we tried to

400again student driven whenever it comes to lessons and the schedule. We tailored our schedule around the kids needs. And so if we have a student that needs tier three intervention whenever it's a tier 2 time inside of the actual school day. What that usually looks like is the teacher sitting behind their kidney table and then you have centers that are around the classroom. The kids are rotating around those centers. the teacher has a group of students back there working on the actual lesson where they're struggling. An interventionist would come in and pull that student for a quick 15 minute tier three kind of like injection so to speak. >> How do you anticipate uh looking at this third grade reading level and being able to make those standards as far as intervention and >> Yes

401sir. So something that I asked the board to approve and again I've got a very supportive board. if I ask for it and it's legal and it's something that we can do, they usually approve they they approve it. Um, and so, uh, to answer your question, I asked the board to go through and allow us to take the teachers that we consider to be high performing in the third grade and allow them to work after school and to get their hourly rate of pay and to pull in those third grade students that are in need of support and work with them after school. Something Secretary Oliva pointed out, and I'm a money guy, and I did not even realize this, is we actually have availability to the $1,500 to become a vendor for the uh

402tutoring, and I did not realize that the school district actually had access to that. I thought that was something that was going to be more tailored toward an individual vendor. And so, what we're going to do is we we've actually we've got the round one and the round two letters, and we've got uh we're going to go through that process. Uh, Miss Smith, I'll be calling you quite a bit to ask you that. Um, and we're going to apply to be a vendor to where we can open that up. What we're going to do at that point is we're going to have a family night. We're going to bring in the parents and we're going to show them the process for how you get registered for it. We're going to bring in more teachers and

403more kids and we're probably going to extend it down as far as we can go. >> Thank you. >> Yes, sir. [snorts] >> All right. I'm ask you the same questions. Do you agree that lack of growth is almost always an adult issue and not a student issue? >> Yes, sir. And do you agree that lack of achievement is almost always an adult issue, not a student issue? >> Do you agree that poor students can learn if adults do their job correctly? >> 100%. >> Ask these questions. Helps eliminate excuses. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. Don't blame kids. >> No, sir. >> Um, you you've been the superintendent how long? >> Three years. This is I'm three and a half in now. >> Yeah. And what did you do before you were the superintendent? >> I

404was the high school principal. Where? >> Yeah, across it. >> Okay. All right. Cross high school has an F grade now. >> Yes. >> What did I have when you were the principal? >> Uh we had a C and then we went into COVID and we dropped down to a D. Uh then I went into the superintendency and the principal that took over. Actually, if you look at the simulated grade, we we were less than a point away from a C and then we have a new principal this year and we went down to an F. Okay. All right. You referenced Crossit Elementary. I believe the principal has been there 15 plus years. >> Yes. >> Okay. What what gives you confidence that that individual can bring that elementary school out of its D status?

405>> So whenever you go back because I have been in the district so historically Crosset Elementary School was a C under the accountability system and they were high performing under her leadership. One of the things that um we had really in-depth conversations about her and I was excuses and the lack thereof. And there is no need for excuses. What I have done is monitored. I've been in that elementary school from the first year that I took over. That was the one that I saw that needed the most support. And so I've spent a lot of time with that principal, growing that principal. She no longer gives me excuses. She accepts where she's at. and she is very much so meeting with those teachers to outline those expectations. So confidence level is we'll see changes or

406we won't. If we don't, there's different avenues. >> Okay. And Crosset Middle School, how long has >> Three years. >> Mhm. >> Okay. I guess I consider three years kind of on the cusp. >> It is. It is. And here's here's where we're at with that. Uh it was like I was saying whenever he took over we did a completely total overhaul of the master schedule with block scheduling. We completely did away with that and we put in a process where it was five six looking one way 78 looking one way and we changed it again because it just wasn't working. And so to be fair to him, he's had three different schedules in three years to try to move the needle. Plus we've uh we've had some staff changes that we've made. >> Yeah.

407And so, uh, I we've put pieces in place to see where we move for the end of this year. >> Looking your general region of the state >> there, there are there are some other school districts that need some help. There are some others that are >> doing a decent job. I mean, Elorado is not far from you. Got North Smackover seems to be doing okay. Harmony Grove, County >> Beardarden slightly less. >> But what what have you done to reach out to your contemporaries in that region to help improve the processes in crossing? >> So, one of the superintendents that I've reached out to quite a bit uh has high performing schools in our co-op region, and what I've asked him to do is share his master schedules with me, his teacher hub. So,

408this is something that we stole from them. Uh, here's what a teacher hub means to us. We actually have a Google document. Inside of that Google document are hyperlinks, and it literally tells every single thing that a teacher needs to know. What is the pacing supposed to look like? What are the summit of assessment supposed to look like? Here's the curriculum that we actually have. Here's what a second grade student should know by the end of the second grade to make sure that they're prepared for the third grade. And that's something that we're building to implement this year. So to answer your question, I I do not shy away from calling other superintendents. I I qu I call quite a few of them. >> Um your dyslexia testing, >> you're compliant with your requirements. >>

409Yes. in that. >> Yes. And I believe you mentioned it maybe at the beginning of your presentation, but what what were you identifying with dyslexia in >> kindergarten, first grade, second grade? >> Mhm. Uh I was going through and I was talking through uh based off the screener specifically how many students that we had inside of those interventions. And so uh we have 24 kindergarteners. We >> What percentage do you know? Um 20 uh uh oo my goodness um 30% 20% somewhere somewhere in that neighborhood. >> Okay. >> Because we have 118 kindergarteners. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Well, that's in line. >> That's oneish. >> Yes, sir. >> Um kindergarten. >> Okay. And what what specific strategies are you implementing in your K one, two, three to have higher performance on third grade assessments.

410>> So making sure that the students are actually receiving grade appropriate reading material for one, making sure that the the books that they have in their hand while they're reading is on grade level. Making sure that they're actually doing the reading. For example, in fourth grade, the teacher doesn't have to read the entire paragraph to you. You should be able to read the paragraph. >> In what grade? >> Fourth grade. >> Okay. Sure. >> Yeah. Third grade even. Yeah. Third grade. I have a third grader. So, yes, absolutely. Third grade should be able to. One of the things that we notice, I can speak to this as a parent of a third grader. My son can read to me all day long and he reads very well. What he cannot do is he cannot formulate

411exactly what all he read into a cohesive comprehensive summary. Yeah. So we can read a book all day long but then whenever I say okay Asher tell me exactly what you read he'll give me surface level information. So that's something that I've noticed as a parent that I've relayed to the principal to relay to the uh to the teachers to also that I've relayed to the uh ma the English coach excuse me. You know, one of the things that I note to our director of curriculum, my kid can read, great, but I want to make sure my kid can read and comprehend what he's reading and then tell me what he read. And so, to answer your question, because I wasn't trying to walk around it, here's what you here's what we actually put in

412place. Making sure number one, that we're teaching tier one in the classroom. That's something that we're really focusing on that we we don't spend a lot of time scaffolding. Here's what I mean by that. That we actually put the book in the kid's hand and not stand there and read the book to the kid. Whenever it comes to actually the phenemic awareness in the bottom of the rope and the top of the rope, making sure that we're following our systems with precision and that we're actually aligning those, internalizing those, and implementing those to our students. Our centers, our centers are so important. What I discovered is we have a half-hazard approach to centers whenever I walk through a classroom. It's not that the teachers are not working. I can tell you my teachers are working.

413They are working very hard. But the way I describe it is it's kind of like swimming upstream with logs coming at you and then there's a bridge. So I can jump in the water and swim upstream with all those logs or I can walk along the bridge. Whenever I get to the bridge and the person's finished swimming upstream and then the person swimming upstream's mad because they're wet and I'm not. You can't really be frustrated at that. And so what I've tried to teach to them is is quit swimming upstream. Walk across the bridge. It's it's right there. And so that's what we're working on because they really are I don't want to take anything away from my teachers because they are working very very hard. We've made some human capital adjustments that that that

414were needed to be completely honest with you. And I think what we have is great and those that are struggling whenever they get in on an intensive growth plan. It's not to get you out the door. It's to actually help you. We want to keep you. Southeast Arkansas is a place that does not have a high number of teacher applicants. And so what I do is I look to grow my own teachers. For example, I was the high school principal. I have quite a few teachers that now work in the district where I was their high school principal. I know I don't look old enough. That's where people are supposed to laugh, but I'm getting that to where that don't laugh very much anymore. >> You actually don't look that old. >> You talked about

415like 30 years ago. I was like 12. >> Yeah, I know. Good jeans. Um, but anyway, that's that's what we're doing to address that K3 and again offering that after school reading for three, especially for those that are struggling that we've identified as struggling. Take advantage of what we have out there with additional monies to where we can hire additional people. >> I would encourage you to think about expanding that into second grade and first grade, not just third grade. Third grade is where we identify it first, but right, if you can prevent it from getting there, you're ahead of the game >> 100%. Um, listen, I I feel like you're honest enough with yourself that you know that it's about more than just trying. It's about achieving. >> It's about accomplishing moving the needle.

416>> I can tell that you really want to move the needle. >> I love it that you're from CrossFit. >> Been there. Well, I don't know if you're from >> I'm not from Crosset, but but you've been in you've been there a while. >> But here's what I say. I can't say that very much anymore because I've been there so long. All three of my kids don't know anything but cross it. So, uh, the community has been wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to me. We've got a fantastic community. If you ever get a chance to visit, I'd encourage you to. >> You inspire confidence in what you're doing. >> Yes. >> You got to get this up >> 100%. >> But I but I believe that you believe that you're on a path to do it

417and >> one way or the other. >> So, well, good luck. >> And I'm sorry. That's all I can say. Uh, no, I'm saying I'm sorry because I know I'm being watched. it's live stream. Uh but you know, I just I want anybody that's listening to know that I do have a sense of urgency. My principles have a instilled sense of urgency. My teachers do. They're not happy with this. I'm not happy with this. Nobody in my district is happy with this. And so for that uh I do uh appreciate actually I looked at this as not something to shy away from because there's a lot of things that typically float around and whenever you don't know what's actually going on you make up what's going on in your mind and it's a lot worse

418than what's actually going on. So I welcome this opportunity to present what we're actually doing to show that we are trying to move the needle. >> That's why it's a conundrum this one is because uh [snorts] apparently self-aware, good leadership, good knowledge, an okay plan, and uh as you say, great context for potential improvements, but it's it's still a conundrum to be because I just don't know if the c real core issues have been adequately addressed yet. >> Um so that's where we'll have to uh see how this plays out. But um does that kind of clear what I'm trying to say, Jeff? I mean, >> I think so. >> Yeah, it's uh maybe the board might want to address it, but there's been a lot of specificity, but I'm still not sure if we

419we know exactly what has to change to get out of the F category. >> Do you know what are the top three things that have to change? >> Tier one instruction, we have to teach on grade level every single day, all day. We have to be consistent with it. We have to plan and internalize that planning. planning just to plan for plan's sake is not planning that's just going through the motions and going through a checklist so internalizing that planning and again to answer your question I do understand what you're saying by that but I want you to know that we are self-aware of the deficits and we're trying to we're not trying we are putting things in place to address those so tier one instruction whenever it comes to every day every child all

420the time in that class period planning appropriately making sure we internalize that lesson plan and then whenever we get the end product what are we actually doing with that end product and and and how is that going to reshape our pacing moving forward. So, I hope that gives you a little bit more confidence that I do know where we're at and what we need to do moving forward. >> Yes, I know the knowledge is there. I just feel like it's a good package. Something's missing and we haven't been able to put our hands on it yet. >> That I think I have my I think I honestly do feel like I've got a good hold on it. I really do. >> Okay. I don't know if I was attributing it to you. >> No. No,

421no, no, no. I'm saying I I scratched my head and asked the same question. And here's how I know that is because I actually called Miss Smith uh whenever we got our test force back and I said, "Honest to goodness, I'm ready to beat my head against the wall. I do not understand where the disconnect is." And we actually had a follow-up conversation and so I I know where the disconnect is. >> Okay. >> Yeah. I I think several of us are saying the same thing. That makes sense >> from your presentation that you've got an F school district. Yes, sir. It just there's a there's a it just doesn't make sense. You you this is one of the the more um one of the better presentations we've had all day long. >> And if

422if you told me to pick one of it, it just doesn't make sense. You got an F school district. And so >> we made some changes in staff from last year. >> Yeah. the um it goes back to um the previous comment that it's time for the results to come. >> Yes, sir. 100%. I agree. >> Based on that motion second >> motion from Mr. Peacock, Dr. or Dr. Arnold. >> Yes. >> Second by Dr. Arnold. >> All in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Very motion passes. Thank you. >> Thank you all for your time. Thank you. >> And my apologies to poor dice. I do have to step out. >> But >> no one else can leave or we lose a quorum. >> So let's hear for >> no disrespect at

423all. I will be listening to what y'all have to say. I'm very interested in what you have to say. >> Do you want me to ask your questions? >> Somebody needs to ask your questions. >> Yeah. Say >> say them again just so I can run them down for >> you. Sure. Do you have Two minutes. >> Yeah. >> Two minutes. >> Yeah. >> Before you do your p portion. >> Okay. >> We're going to go out of order. >> Yes. >> And then we can go and do the highlight overview of the district. >> This is Ford ice school district. They are very similar to the last district in terms of points away. They're seven points from a deed. They have 635 students in their district. This is Rhonda Lawson. Um this is her

424third year to be superintendent in the district. Um they also their high school was on that hold harmless as well. They actually um met their um achievement and growth there. But Rhonda Lawson, >> like you said, I'm Rhonda Lawson. I'm This is two and the two and a half year mark for me. Um Mr. Wood, do you have questions for me? >> Sure. Yeah. I'm going to ask you the same three questions. >> Okay. Well done. [laughter] >> Well done. Do you agree that lack of growth is almost always an adult issue, not a student issue? >> Definitely. >> Do you do you agree that lack of achievement is almost always an adult issue and not a student issue? >> Yes. >> And do you agree that poor students can learn if adults do their

425job correctly? >> Yes. >> All right. Real quickly, do you have any building level administrators, principles that have been in their building more than four four years or more and have an F or a D? >> Um I have I have one the elementary principal. This is her fourth year. >> Okay. >> Um she is um she has an F. >> Okay. And what gives you confidence that her continued leadership there will move the school from an F rating? >> I feel that I've seen a shift in her this year. I feel that she has stepped up to the leadership role and she's taking the criticism. I know I shouldn't say it like that, but the crit I mean it is criticism. I think she's taken that and she's turning it around and she's using

426that and she's asking the question. She's asking those indepth questions that she needs to ask and she's getting into those classrooms. >> Yeah. What did you do before you were the superintendent at Ford Ice? >> Um I was the principal at the elementary. >> Okay. What grade level did it have? What letter grade did it have when you were the principal? >> They were two points from a B. >> Two points from a B. So they were a C. What year was that? Was that postco? >> Um, >> Right after CO. So, look 22ish area. 23 maybe. >> Yes. >> Okay. All right. You have a member of your board here. >> Yes. I have my um board president Mick Cranford. >> Lee. Mr. Cranford. You know, I I'll give you the same admonition kind

427of that I gave board members earlier. You must support your superintendent's decisions. You've hired a superintendent. You've entrusted them. You You must be active in accountability. You you you are here today because things aren't going well at Fort Public Schools. Too much failure. And the community must be involved in in accountability. And that that doesn't mean be in the way of what she's trying to do. If you believe she's not doing the right things, get a different superintendent. But hold them accountable to achieve the results that you're looking for and support them in. And I'm namely talking about personnel decisions. Too often that is the problem that boards get in the way of is because they know a friend or because a friend of theirs has a job or because somebody's kid has a job,

428they won't support a decision that a superintendent makes. I have no idea if that's what's going on. I'm just I'm just giving you general yes >> former board member here advice. You must put that stuff aside and support superintendent when they need to make the hard decisions that are going to hurt somebody some adults feelings. Okay. Support your superintendent. >> Thank you so much for letting me go out of order here. But >> and I also want to introduce my um vice president Susan Writings. She's here with us today. >> Thank you all for being here. I'm retired now. So long history got a long history. >> Well, good luck to you. I look forward to listening to this and hearing what's going on. >> Okay, we're just going to reset now and allow Miss

429Lawson to go through her presentation that she prepared for you. Okay. >> Um, good afternoon. Um, I thank you for the opportunity to tell our story today. Um, I want to begin with complete honesty with you today. Our current performance as reflected in the F rating is completely unacceptable to myself, to my board, and to my community. I we owe more to our community and our students than that. Our students deserve better. Our community deserves better, and the teachers and staff deserve better. So, as superintendent, I take responsibility for these outcomes, but I'm going to show you what we have done and what we're going to do to fix this. Okay. Okay. Okay. Through our comprehensive needs assessment, um these are some things that we went through with our district admin team, the teachers and

430their PLC's. We started looking at some identified issues. The first one was we saw a lot of varied instructional practices and they were not good instructional practices. So that's one thing that we are working on that tier one instruction is key. We had a um we had a workshop yesterday or a PLC with the whole staff. APSRC came in yesterday and met for two hours with our teachers on tier one instruction. And it amazed me at the teachers that did not know what tier one instruction is. We have to clear that up. That's instruction for all kids on grade level every day. So that's one thing. walkthroughs that showed us our instructional strategies were not in place, that people were using all different kinds of instructional strategies. Another issue that we found was the training

431and support for teachers was not in place. You know, South Arkansas, it's not an excuse, I promise you, but we don't have a high applicant pool. But you know one thing that I've learned this year that I'm gonna stop hiring because that's the only person that applied. I will have to figure out another way to get it done. I have promised myself that that I'm going to stop saying that is the only person there is because the only person there is may not be best for our kids. So, we've got to work on getting training and support for our teachers, and that's going to be done through PLC's. The co-op has been instrumental. I will say that the our math department has struggled as you can see in our scores in the high school. Um,

432the math specialist from the co-op has been with us from week one. She has been there once to twice, once or twice a week, every week since school has started. That has come to a conversation where our seventh and eighth grade math teacher, he is making progress. Our high school math teacher, algebra 1 and geometry, not so much. We are making a change at Christmas. I'm not afraid to make changes at Christmas. We are flipping the schedule. We're putting two other teachers in those roles to teach high school geometry and algebra. I do not have time to wait. I've wast I feel like I've wasted a semester. I do not have another semester to wait. Um also our curriculum is not aligned. We are working on that through PLC's. The next thing is staffing. Some

433hard decisions had to be made at the end of last year because I am on the campuses every day and I'm in and out of the classrooms. I saw things I did not like. So last year at the end of the year I did not offer four contracts to four people because of what I saw in the classroom. And you know that's hard in a small town but it's the right thing to do for kids. So, and with that, we replaced three of those spots with certified teachers because we do have a lot of people that were on 1240 waiverss that were not completing their pathways. We've gotten a handle on that. They have to the principles have a form each semester the teacher has to fill out. They also have the TLP through the

434state, the teacher lensure plan that they have to have completed. So, we are keeping a tight rain on that. But the goal is to find certified teachers. And I did find three to replace those four spots. I didn't need the fourth spot, so I didn't have to replace it. Um, restructured federal and state categorical funds last year to bring in instructional facilitators. What I did was um my dyslexia specialist, she works half a day as our dyslexia specialist and half day as an instructional facilitator. In turn, at the elementary, I have another teacher who does K6 science labs, half a day because we know that science is an important part now too. We're not, you know, our science scores are we've got to start somewhere. And the other half of the day, she is an

435instructional facilitator. Both of those teachers have been through NIT coaching training and they meet with teachers weekly in PLC's at the high school. I did the same thing. Our testing coordinator, she's testing district testing coordinator part of the day. The other half day she is um an instructional facilitator. I have an English teacher. She teaches three English classes and the other half day she is an instructional facilitator. that's how we're working things. So, I took that I restructured those federal and state categorical funds from ESA and Title One to meet those needs. We were partnering with a company and I that wasn't there every day. They were doing a good job, but I felt like our teachers needed that support on a daily basis from someone there. So, now there is someone there to support

436them on a daily basis besides the principal. The next thing supporting our teachers daily classroom walkthroughs principles instructional facilitators and myself we have there I've charged them with doing two walkthroughs a day at the least. I charge myself with doing two walkthroughs a day. I try there's two campuses I try to go to one at high school and one at elementary every day. >> [snorts] >> Sometimes we go together so that we can come out and calibrate because sometimes what I see they may not see. Um the next thing is we have weekly admin meetings with the instructional facilitators and the principles. That's where we review our observations, what we're seeing, the trends that we see, the adjustments we may need to make, any kind of PD that we may need to bring in or

437what we need to do for our teachers and our kids. And also that timely feedback is important because teachers need to know how they're doing. I don't need to wait till the end of the semester to say, "Oh, hey, this is what I saw in your classroom." they get that immediate and timely feedback. And when the principles give them feedback and instructional facilitators, it comes to me also because I want to see what they're telling them. Um, lesson plans are reviewed with feedback. Lesson plans are due every Monday morning by 8:00 a.m. Instructional facilitators go through those, spot check those, principles check them, and I go through and spot check them every once in a while. our instructional practices that have changed. Um the instructional facilitators and co-op specialists, they're building teacher capacity in both

438content and instructional strategies through their helping them plan. Like I said, that math specialist has been on site from the co-op from week one. I've watched her. I've gone in with her. She sat with those math teachers. She's planned with them. She's taught them lesson internalization. So, they've been there. Now, we're bringing the science specialist on board. She came and gave me some bad news last week for elementary. I haven't told my board yet, but um >> I know I'm just going to tell them right in front of y'all. Um that our um science that we're using is not HQIM. So, I'm going to have to purchase some new science, which I knew at the high school that we were, but I thought I didn't know that elementary didn't have the green lights that I

439thought they did. So, we're going to have to review that. HQIM science across the board. Um our elementary interventionists are trained. We have a retired teacher who comes in and provides three days a week Barton um inter reading interventions. We have another retired parah that comes in that three days a week that provides Sunday system um interventions. We also have paras that provide that are trained in Sunday system that provide interventions. Um, we also are basing our PLC's around the Atlas blueprint and the content standards and the high school is looking at those ALDs. We now have a state appointed literacy coach for the elementary. She has come in, we've had her for about a month. She's doing a great job. She is um providing feedback to teachers. She's going in and modeling lessons. Um,

440she's keeping me in the loop on things. Um, I've gone in with her a couple of times and she's actually taught me some things that I did, you know, some things I didn't know. Um, and like I said, we are reviewing all of our HQIM and we did find out that our science, we've got to work on our science. Um, our academic supports, um, we've got targeted math interventions. You know, math interventions are mandated in elementary now. And I'm proud to say that we have a teacher in elementary, a third grade math teacher that has a VAM score of 86. And um she teaches we've restructured our math in third and fourth grade or let they rotate in third and fourth grade between four teachers. There's a third, fourth grade literacy teacher, a third and

441fourth grade science teacher, a third, fourth grade um social studies, and then a third, fourth grade math. So, she is touching, she is teaching all third and fourth grade math. So, I'm anxious to see what her scores are going to look like. And also, she is they have a 30 minute math intervention time. She is seeing the bottom 25% for 30 minutes a day in fifth and sixth grade. So, I'm anxious to see and she's had those kids before and when she saw their scores, she said they can do better than this. When I had them, they did better than this. And they did. Um, our high school science labs is a big thing this year. Um, our K2 have never really gone to the science lab. We have a room that's a science lab

442now. Um, and that instructional facilitator brings in once a week the K2 kids get to go by classroom for a science lab. And she does the same thing for 36 for science labs. our high school dyslexia. We were kind of lagging in that, but now we've um the co-op specialist has come in and she's gotten my high school people where they need to be with the screeners and all that kind of stuff. And like I said, I knew I needed HQIM science for high school, but now I need it for elementary. So, I know that and we are working on it. Okay, we're giving we were not giving interim test at both campuses. We are giving the interims at both campuses. Um lowest 25% have been identified at both campuses and we are looking at

443curriculum gaps and that's an ongoing process. >> I do want to let you know you're at 15 minutes if you want to. >> Okay. Okay. These are our future plans. We've got to continue to strengthen professional development for leadership. That's the first thing. I've got my high school principal in her second year, my elementary principles in her fourth. I've got to strengthen that leadership and strengthen the leadership for the teachers. And I've also need to create incentives and supports that reduce teacher turnover and elevate instruction because we do have a high teacher turnover. Um and then I want to form some partnerships with teacher prep programs to strengthen our recruitment through them to get teachers straight out of who have gone the traditional route and then in and then we need to integrate ongoing professional

444development that's aligned to our student outcomes. And that's it. I know that was quick but questions. >> Can I talk just a little bit on your um identification? So, do you use screeners in K2? >> Yes, >> K2. And what are you using? I know you mentioned Barton. I think that was for dyslexia. >> Yes, we use Barton. Oh gosh, if you wouldn't ask me. Barton Sunday. >> Okay. Do you have any Is anybody certified in TakeFlight? >> Yes. Looking for that? >> That's what my dyslexia specialist is certified in. Yes. >> Excellent. And what are you seeing in terms of who you're identifying for early intervention? >> It kind of varies from year to year. to me this year it's a lower number than I thought like I think it's she did she told

445me maybe in kindergarten maybe six or seven kids we've got like 50 kids in kindergarten >> and what's your typical trajectory through if you have identified in kindergarten do they start receiving intervention then do >> yes we do an early intervention then >> and then are you seeing are you tracking those students to see how their progress is over >> yes >> um Dr. Uh you said you said you you're doing interim tests at both campuses now. Have you already given those this year? >> We have one in January. >> You have one. >> We have had an interim um but that's not the Atlas test. And it did show a lot of growth. Like my instructional facilitators called me and they said you've got to get here right now to see. And it showed

446a lot of growth especially in the area of math. But like I said, my teachers touching them. >> How did you um how did you learn that your science HQIM was um not approved or >> science specialist from the co-op? >> So how the obvious next question is how did it slip through until >> honestly I it's pro it's my fault. I thought it had green lights and when we went when she went back and showed me she said no it in Ed reports it doesn't and I but we've had it for a while so it's it's it's old. >> Do I'm assuming then that you went back and looked at all of your materials not just science to make sure that there was nothing else >> and science is our worst. >> Um can

447you speak to teacher ab absenteeism? We have a problem with teacher absenteeism. And I do agree with you. We've tried the money thing, giving them incentives. That doesn't help. I hate to say this, but this is it has to be in your heart. Teaching is a passion and a heart thing that you got to want to be there every single day. And that's what we've got to build in the try to build in these teachers because it kills me to miss a day. I I mean I can't I hate to miss days because when a teacher's not there, kids get nothing. So we do I mean I haven't found anything that works but we do have an absenteeism problem. >> Thank you. I enjoyed your presentation. I like this the fact that you know you

448you identified right out of the gate that you had four underperforming teachers and you dealt with them. So, yes, a lot of other people skirt those types of issues. It looks like you >> tackled them head on. >> I did. >> I see uh everybody's talked about these walkthroughs. What is Do you have a specific checklist or things you're looking for when you do those? >> Yes, we have a tool that we use. >> Is is that your primary way of evaluating teacher performance? Well, the primary way is with tests, but that's but the walkth through is is the daily one that they're used to. >> And that's docu do you document? >> Yes, it's documented. >> You mentioned your curriculum not aligned. Um wouldn't that have an effect on your test scores? >> Yes,

449definitely. Because here's the thing. Sometimes we think, "Oh, these kids, they can't do this, so I'm going to give them something lower." So they're never exposed to grade level work when they get to that test. They're exposed to grade level work on that test and so they give up and they don't want to. They just mark stuff. I mean they do. I'll just be honest. >> So you're in the process. Are you going to have that completed say by the end of this year? >> I'm hoping so. Yes. >> Okay. Um your literacy coaches are have you been able to see results yet? >> I've seen a lot of results. There were Yes. I think that was one of the better investments that we made. >> Okay. >> Can I talk to your board president?

450>> Yes. >> How long have you been on the board? >> Uh I think this is my fifth year. Five and a half years. I got in half term five years ago. >> Five years ago. Okay. >> And do you feel like your board supports your superintendent? >> I do. I support her 100%. >> Okay. Do you have you reviewed these changes with your board that she has proposed? >> Yes, ma'am. >> And they >> Yes, sir. >> unanimous support or Okay, sounds good. >> Any other questions? >> Okay. Nothing else then. Well, and I and I'll add, you know, I had a time an opportunity to spend some time in Fort Ice and you know, when you when you talk about a superintendent that's the courage to release four teachers in a really small

451district in a small community that has probably not happened in a very long time. um that's a recommendation that goes to the board that that board has to support and I guarantee those are um people connected to the community and um I I applaud the courage to make those decisions because you're doing what's right for kids and other people are going to notice that in the buildings too. And so I I I would encourage you to stay the course, hold high expectations. We can love our students into mediocrity, but lowering expectations is actually hurting them. And the only way to help set them up for success is to keep raising that bar. So stay the course. >> I just keep thinking about what you said to me Friday that we're not an employment agency and

452we're not. >> You wanted to speak to the dismissals. >> I wanted to speak on what you were saying about the four people that we non-renewed last year. Uh you're right. You you said what I was going to say. That was tough in a in a in a town the size of ours uh that small of a town. We knew that you know it's personal. It's tough. Uh and I support her even more for having the gumption to to be able to do that because we know that's what's best of our kids because uh I will tell you I'm probably not the easiest board member for her. I I support her more than anything, but we hold her feet to the fire and she she exceeds my expectations, you know, with it every time. And

453and the ability to do that really lets us know we are we're moving forward with that, you know, because that was not that was not easy to let them four four go. So, >> Thank you very much. >> Now, I'll entertain a motion. >> I'd like to move to accept the the assurance document. Okay. I have a motion by Dr. Arnold to accept. Seconded by Mr. Bragg. All in favor say I. >> Any opposed? >> Hearing none. Motion passes. Thank you. >> All right. We will go on to the next point on our agenda, which I think is approval. We had tabled last month the board meeting dates. Um I'm going to recommend that we go ahead and keep the board dates throughout the next year. If we end up needing to convert them to

454work sessions or school visits. We at least have the calendar on date. Yall are good with that. Then I just need a motion to approve the >> I move move to approve. >> I have a motion by Dr. Abbott to approve the 2026 state board of education meeting dates. Do I have a second? >> Seconded by Ken, Mr. Bragg. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Hearing none. pass and I believe uh consent agenda is next. Okay, I need a um Is there any new business? I'm sorry. No, keep moving. Okay, then I need a motion to accept the consent agenda. >> I move accept the consent agenda. >> I have a motion by Dr. Arnold to accept the consent. I think I have a second by Mr. Brag. Yes. >> All

455in favor say I. [clears throat] >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Hearing none. Consent agenda has been passed and then we will move on to yes. I will go ahead and do public comment and then um Miss White from >> equipment. Hi everybody. I want to thank you for letting me giving me the opportunity to speak again. I want to start by saying that what I have to say is very important. It'll take me longer than three minutes. So I've asked somebody to tag in so I don't disrespect you in any way. It sickens me that I must continue to stand here to defend the honor and safety of my family to defend my son from individuals who failed to protect him at Quitman Public School. also want to say um clear something up that

456my husband it's been put in the paper that he changed he recanted his story the same night his story never changed my story never changed and my son's story never changed at the state uh board hearing regarding the equipment coach false test false testimony was presented by the coach unfortunately we were not allowed the opportunity to correct the record the evidence was in the file yet we were denied the chance to point to the board the evidence or refute inaccurate statements. The record clearly shows that administrators were aware of locker room abuse long before we disclosed the abuse on May 10th of 24. Yet, the coach said they had no knowledge. The fights shown in the videos provided in your packet did not happen years ago. As the coach claimed, they occurred when my son

457was in the seventh grade. We provided those videos. This confirms that the fighting in the locker room has been gone going for years. There was also evidence of teaagging in 2022. Despite there being four victims, the school filed only one report with DHS on one victim and one perpetrator. This occurred they occurred when my son was I'm sorry. Even that DHS report contained inaccurate birthdays, inaccurate and inaccurate narrative. Again, there were four victims, six perpetrators, yet they only filed one report, one victim and one perpetrator. It is true that the DHS made an unsubstantiated finding in these sexual assaults. The reason DHS declared the sexual assaults as unsubstantiated is because quote there was no evidence to support sexual gratification. End quote. The coach told his board that he believed there were automatic this board there

458were automatic jail blasters but claimed there was no evidence they were used. However, the Renion report documents multiple students reporting jail blasters, repeated wars, and one student being shot in the face and/or nose. Imagine if he had been shot in the eye. Why would a school district allow students to bring any type of gun? BB guns, airsoft guns, jail blasters, anything like that without consequences. Four victims came forward. Yet only two had their day in court due to mismanagement and I believe incompetence or worse. There was a courthouse confession stating they had held a boy down and teaagged him. Despite this, only half the perpetrators were disciplined by the school. All while the parents were assured that the school had punished to the strictest way provided by the handbook. Charges for six of the perpetrators

459ranged from harassment, assault, and battery. Of the six perpetrators, the court sentenced five to six months probation, fines, fees, community service, mental health counseling, letters of apology, online bullying class, and a no contact order issued on July 11th at 24. That's very important. >> You're at three minutes. >> I'm at three minutes. Okay. >> Is this yours? Okay. >> Oh my goodness. >> A no contact order issued on July 11th, 2024 should remain in effect through their probation. One perpetrator received a sentence of 12 months probation, fines, fees, community service, mental health counseling, bullying course, and a no contact order that was to remain in place through his probation. The no contact order was between the victims and the perpetrators and between the perpetrators themselves. Despite that, my son never spoken despite the fact that

460my son never spoke in court, the administrator who appealed who appeared before this board on the state ethics charges reported to both you, Mr. Mr. Oliva and the attorney general multiple lies in a four-page document. In this document, it stated that my son testified that he had participated in the humping. This is not true. My son did not even ever testify in court. These people have seemed to try to rearrange the truth to blame the victims. It's shameful. Tragically, the victims were punished more harshly by the school than those who abused them. Perpetrators were allowed to practice football while victims were sent home. Contrary to the coach's testimony, the two victims who did remain on the football team did not start every Thursday night, nor did they even play. The coach also claimed perpetrators did

461not play at the start of the year. Yet, photographs submitted in your file prove otherwise, and the perpetrators were playing together despite the no contact order. No one was surprised that the victims didn't get to play as they were rarely allowed to practice because the perpetrators were practicing and there was a no contact order, so the victims were sent home. Again, our boys were victimized. The Renion report is not a title N investigation despite what we were told by the administrator that it was a title N investigation. It did find that there was sexual harassment. No total no Title 9 was ever conducted. Had there been a real Title 9 investigation, counseling could have been available to the victims and the and the families. Both the students of the perpetrators and the victims would have

462had been able to review the investigative report prior to the finalization to correct any errors and provide additional information. Since this wasn't done, the report ended with many inaccuracies. One administrator testified in court recently that he believed he was going it was going to be a title n investigation. Yet an email from him to the district's attorney states, "Would you let her Emily Renan know that we're good with rolling with an informal Title 9 process?" For the record, under federal title 9 rules, there's no informal process. You would think an ed a seasoned educator administrator who has previously been the Title N coordinator would know this fact. Muddy the water to make it seem deep. This seems to be their MMO. Oddly enough, the district has paraded this report as a vindication for them. No

463one in their right mind could read this report, even with all of its inaccuracies and being proud of its finding. It is shameful. They claim our stories changed over time. That's false. Every document transcript from the beginning to the end shows the same facts. Our boys were whipped with bull whips, shot with BB guns and automatic jail blasters, thrown into lockers and laundry bins, humped from behind, forced to fight, hazed, bullied, teaagged, and threatened repeatedly throughout the year. A review from the compliance assistant complaints over the past five years in this very department shows that the equipment school district has repeatedly failed to follow bullying laws, hazing laws, terroristic threatening laws, federal title 9 requirements. These reports come from the department within the desi and they were we were told that these reports would be

464added to the investigative report but they were not. This board should request to see them. >> You're at three. I don't mind if you want to just defer your time to her to let you finish if that works. >> So, yeah, I'll just take Melanie's time, transfer to you, and whatever. Go for it. >> As if everything had as if everything that's been said so far wasn't bad enough, we the moms and our sons have experienced retaliation for reporting the abuse. Two of uh two of the many retalatory events are this. We were sued by the coach and administrator for harassment, torturous interference, civil conspiracy, and defamation. All because we came and made public comment to you the board. All but the defamation part was thrown out by the judge and then the defamation claim

465was withdrawn because they would not verify [clears throat] the statements of facts that they had made against us. Ironically, I believe we were defamed in an attempt to silence us. The coach sent a text message out saying, "Well, half of what they say didn't happen. The mama has lost her mind. She's a crackhead. Her kid is awful at football, too." During the eth ethics complaint process, complaints were treated unfair. Our complaints were treated unfairly. Our documents were censored and we were not allowed to refute false statements made by the coach and the administrators. Lastly, in court recently, equipment administrators and equipment board member testified that they don't follow state laws and desi rules. For example, the board president testified that he admitted on the stand that the district agreed in executive session to pay the

466coach and the administrator's legal fees without ever voting in public. There were many more revelations from their testimony, but we will save them for another day. I could outline many more lies told by the equipment employees and the justifications for and the injustices for hours, but I don't get ours. So, I'm going to leave you with this. In the Learns Act, the E stands for empowerment. The A stands for accountability and the S stands for safety. None of these were afforded to our families, especially our boy. >> And with that, we will move into reports. Um I know think >> I think Yeah. So, Miss Wil Coxson just had to step out, but she did have a presentation attached. Um, I did want to just make comments about some of the work that she's been

467doing. Um, she has been getting into classroom after classroom after classroom. She was um awarded um teacher of the year as a math teacher and she is phenomenal. She has been getting into classrooms co-eing with other math teachers, current math teachers, helping them upskill. She's also reached out to these districts that you saw presentations from today um to see how she can push in co-e work with their math departments and their math teachers especially in the upper elementary middle school grades. So they're we're very lucky to have her um and her passion for not only um getting out there and working with kids but getting out there and working with teachers to make them better in math education. >> What a great what a great partnership. >> Do you have any reports? My my remarks

468will be brief. I just want to thank the board. I know it was a long day, but I I I feel like this is important work. This is some of the most important work that we can engage in when we're talking about improving learning and outcomes across the state. And um this is the first time we've started holding districts accountable for their letter grade. It's not going to be the last time we have a meeting like this. I think we're going to get some lessons learned on how to make these meetings more um efficient and help better prepare you with some of the background data so you can be more informed in the questions um that you're asking. But a lot of this work that the heavy lift to make a lot of this happened

469today is because of the people leading our school improvement team. And I just want to one time formally recognize Sheila Whitlo for her dedication to some of the lowest performing schools across the state for the last few decades. And unfortunately, this is her last meeting with us because she's retiring and we're so going to miss her. And I I know she's still going to watch every board meeting. That's the kind of person she is. And she's going to give us feedback on how we can get better. And she's still from afar going to help improve the state. But um Sheila, we appreciate and the students in this state benefit from your passion, dedication. So thank you for your years of service across the great state of Arkansas. So Jeff, if you want to give her

470a WELCOME [applause] she she does not like the spotlight for those that know her. And then um you know it's that time of year it's just kind of natural we get people retiring um all through the agency as they're get going into their next chapter of life. But another person that supports this board's work who's retiring at the end of month is Mary. And she's been phenomenal the last year or two keeping us organized and in compliance and and on notice. And um we're we're really appreciative for your commitment to helping our meetings run efficiently and we're going to miss you a lot. So, thank you for your service as well. >> What a bummer. Like, what a way to end this. >> Merry Christmas. [laughter] >> Is that better? >> Um, I know we

471had talked about having a work session. I think >> we can still have EFA discussions. We can table that for a Zoom meeting. >> We can set another meeting for January. What's the pleasure? >> I think we need um complete attendance to be effective. >> I think that would be a great idea. So with that, motion to adjurnn. >> So moved. All right. I'm going to be honest.