State Board of Education - March 11, 2021

001all right we're going to get this meeting started welcome to the march 11th state board of education meeting welcome to all of our board members that are here and to miss woods and miss chambers that are joining us online good morning mr sutton is not going to be with us this morning he's enjoying his family on vacation this this week and um mr hill will be joining us shortly he is coming from a previous meeting so he's on his way so why don't we get started um with a moment of silence in light of a lot of the things that have happened since the last time we met um i think it's so important for us to take time to really focus on our students here in arkansas and the care and the attention that

002that is needed to make sure that they are taken care of in the best way possible you can take this moment of silence to to focus your mind meditate take this time to pray i plan to take a moment to pray for guidance for what we should do for our children and to ensure that they are protected and loved while they are in the care of educators while they're in school so if you would join me for a moment of silence okay thank you all right do we have any changes to the agenda okay seeing none we'll move forward to uh superintendent of the year i don't see him here right now thank you i think dr hernandez is here okay out in the waiting room they're all out in the lobbies okay awesome they

003can hear us mr poor dr hernandez that group come on in all right well then uh it's time for that presentation for superintendent of the year for uh mike poor and that's going to be pr presented by aae we're so um glad to be a part of celebrating celebrating mr poor's excellence in leadership here in little rock we have um appreciated his leadership here working with the little rock school district and his community involvement and engagement and how he just works so well with all of the stakeholders here in um in little rock so we're so happy to celebrate him um dr jay barth is joining us dr hernandez miss smith and there's mr poor so um i'm sure they they can't hear us out in the lobby so they can't uh okay then if

004we could check to see what's going on there all right okay okay so i'm not sure who's presenting hey okay dr hernandez welcome good to see you again why can't i go backward all right so good morning madam chair members of the board mike hernandez executive director for aiea good to be back especially under these circumstances i just wanted to come and present to you our 2021 uh superintendent of the year this program is part of the national aasa which is our national superintendence organization where every year we recognize on the state level but also gets recognized on the national level for this this very prestigious award and so this year as you may have heard we haven't been able to come to the state ordinance maybe due to kovis but you know we would

005like to take this opportunity to to recognize somebody you all know very well and i would just like to take the opportunity to recognize uh mike poor from the little rock school district at the 2021 superintendent of the year thank you welcome mr poor thank you good to see you it's a pleasure to be back here with all of you and with those that are out there in the virtual world too so i want to say hi to all of you as well uh it's a thrill to be honored by all of you and also honored on a day where we also have jefferson elementary getting recognized as a blue ribbon school it was actually one of the first calls that the commissioner had to give me guidance as the superintendent of little rock public

006schools and that he called and he said hey don't screw this up sander register is about ready to uh possibly retire you've got to whatever you do put some time in early with her to make sure she stays with the district that was a wise uh set of council that he gave me and today jefferson elementary is recognized as a blue ribbon so congratulations mr register and all the jefferson crew today too you know this honor has been really cool because it's an honor to my family of course my wife marianne and i have really had a lot of fun with this my parents it's been really special uh for my parents because you you think of how we all grew up and i had just amazing parents and they're still really highly engaged in

007me and then my kids who were the one group that actually got why when johnny key took me out to dinner at cracker barrel to offer me the job in the little rock schools which i said seriously that's what you're doing you're offering me the job at little rock this is how you court somebody had a cracker barrel and uh but uh my kids were the ones that got it instantly and said this is totally you to go towards little rock and you know try to to work in kind of a challenging environment and work in a place where maybe not everyone wants you there it's a really cool honor to you know to have your peers come in to a board meeting and some of you had that experience as teachers of the year

008where you're utterly surprised and you have all these folks come in you know it was during copenhagen we probably broke some sort of rule who all showed up but it just was overwhelming and it was funny because my wife led the charge into the room and by the time everyone got in and then i finally turned again to kind of take the stock of the room all of a sudden i recognize my wife is here too you know i was like wow this is really a crazy thing so the my peers and all the interactions i've had with them and the superintendent conference that's really special my school families um i will share that as a part of winning this award i got this beautiful ring and when i got the ring the thing that

009i asked them because there's kind of a stock way maybe that they do it but i said is there a way that i can is there any way i can personalize it and they said yes and so what they allowed me to do is on the inside of it was there's a way that i could honor my four school districts that i've served because if you think about it those four school districts are who i have tried to aspire to lead and and they've helped me grow as an individual and and raised me whether it's cottage springs district 11 which i had um let's see i think now we had um three years in that district and four years in in denver colorado and sheridan and then getting to come to bentonville and and you

010know the impact that bentonville had on me for those five years and now little rock that family of my school family is is so impactful to me and and you know made me who i want to be each and every day they've helped shape me and so it's kind of neat that that i think it lifts up all those individuals to say you know you did pretty good you helped make me a superintendent of the year um you know one of the interesting things when you think about the department and the state board and that's where i'll shift and try to finish with is the um when you look at the department and a lot of times especially in little rock people like oh my gosh you know we we got to get rid of

011them and you've heard me say over and over and over that the department working with little rock school district has been one of the best things that's happened and no one really understands the depth of how hard that work was initially with just trying to create systems you know every system had to be modified and changed and it it's it's it's such a vastly better product of what we have right now to work to make sure that kids are really being taken care of and that also our financial ends of things are in a way that we can really be able to understand how it matches up with everybody else but doing all those things and you know usually you try to go one system um you know in a given year major system we

012were doing three and four um for those first two years of trying to institute those but that happened like you know starting off with mike you know he's been with this thing from the get-go of helping and supporting but sheila whitlow was another person that really especially when we started to get our legs on the academic thing sheila has been just instrumental and then the commissioner's two current right hands of stacy and ivy and the work that they've done to support me but i can go back and look at this gentleman helping us with getting hall started um you know there's there's just so many wonderful things that connects us to this department that have helped the little rock school district and of course our commissioner i appreciate that he and i are friends he

013and i are colleagues he and our peers um and you know we don't we we don't and haven't always agreed um but that is kind of commonplace in a world when you're talking about kids because when you're talking about kids there's there's going to be some things that are going to lead to sometimes some disagreements but no one really will ever understand the significance of the support that we've received from the department as we've worked to make the little rock school district better each and every day and that then ties to all of you as a state board and i want to thank you some of you got started in my life a little earlier than others so i see susan out there and you know susan connected me in in so many different ways

014within the um the bentonville region of always being accessible even as the head of the largest organization in the world leading their human resource department she was trying to manufacture ways that fits into with misstine's concept of community involvement and figuring out a way and we thought the best way to do that was through schools and so um always just blessed that mrs zuck who was as a part of the state chamber hearn randy always reaching out and trying to find ways to support jay barth as the board chair and when i saw jay out there what are you doing here today are you presenting on community schools he goes no i'm here to talk about you and i thought well i'm so glad i had you in my speech because he has uh been

015a a great uh help sarah you and i first got started working on career education and and you read all my white papers and and uh and then tried to help through the governor's office to do things differently with career education and i think of where we're at now on career education over the span of time that was a part of you jumping in and helping us and appreciate that and then and i don't mean to leave out a couple of you as board members i haven't got to formally work with but i want to specifically thank miss dean mistine has been a part of the little rock community as a parent so she believes in the school system and has her kids in the little rock schools she has been a champion for community

016involvement has worked with people like pam smith to try to find a better way to do community engagement she has been on the door and helping us with everything from poor men on the roof to helping us with uh ideas on how we can even you know do a better job of working out with our community and then finally fitzhill and i hope uh dr hill i don't see him on the on this yep he is out there someplace but uh dr hill you know with all the things that he's done as a part of helping us with um you know everyone understands him as being part of the athletic end of things and what he's done has been tremendous in terms of the athletic foundation and the sixth sixth and goal type programs to

017get kids engaged but what people don't understand is he brings even more passion about the fact that we have young people that are losing their life right now in our communities because of a little bit of as the disengagement of people in learning environments and they're not tied into our schools right now in with in-person learning and and there's just a everybody's in a kind of a strange place he is he is front and center on trying to always think about what we go do to get kids engaged and involved and so uh and ms mcvetrix i'll mention you as you know the one thing i just remember some of the conversations we had when we were talking about little rock and you and and brett were always there wanting to always receive my call

018and so i appreciate that and i'm glad that you're on the state board so i'll finish and and just thank each of you for this opportunity to be with you today it was really an honor i feel like i'm getting to represent the entire state and and represent of course my peers and then my districts my four districts that i've got to serve and in particular the little rock school district uh with this recognition and it kind of lifts it lifts all of us in some ways and certainly has lifted me and i'm very proud to be the superintendent of the year for the state of arkansas thank you dr barth it's good to see you again wow it's great to see you all i miss y'all uh enormously so uh um so thank you

019for giving me a few minutes uh to talk about my uh my my partner uh in in the work of this uh this not just this district but also this community and we all know that a healthy community only is healthy if its schools are whole and healthy and vice versa and that's our philosophy here in little rock to bring greetings from the mayor and everybody else in the city and everybody else in the community uh to my mike um as he alluded to uh arrived in this place uh with uh with a lot of cynicism uh i i think few superintendents have arrived in a less hospitable place it wasn't anything about him it was about the context we all know but he had a lot to prove and uh he was also arriving

020to a place that was very different than cities he had lived before communities he loved before this was a very different place and he just went to work learning this community and letting this community learn who he is and what his values are and how much he loves kids and and believes in the power of public education and over time uh this community um has has uh has come to really have a deep fondness for mike poor and um you know what a couple of things about that make i think mike special as a school leader first are his deep engagement in a community he is involved in everything and he is everywhere and that's that's maybe easy in a small town a small community it's really difficult in a community this size and he

021is everywhere all the time and people know him and have really developed personal um uh connections with him the second thing he does amazingly well is uh build partnerships um he is a natural partner and for as ms dean knows and others of you know this this only works if the community and the part in the school district are in in full-fledged partnership and that has really i think defined our relationship when i came on board as chief education officer for the city you know we meet every week we talk a lot more beyond that and are constantly talking about how we can creatively work together to make this district and this community better and of course the community school effort is front and center in terms of it's all about partnerships but of course

022in this last year we have seen the power of partnerships in this community in response to covet in i think very powerful ways a year ago tomorrow we were all bunched in a little room in city hall it's almost comical now how unmasked and on top of each other we were but we knew that the pulaski county schools were closing and we did not know how kids were going to eat the next day who were dependent upon school lunches and we had a partner we had the district we had the city we had folks who are hunger specialists we had the clinton foundation we had rock region metro to help with transportation all in that room figuring out a plan and over the months after that you know over 750 000 meals were served to

023kids and parents in this district and it really made a difference and we had a very similar partnership when it came to broadband access creating a more digitally equitable city when it comes to connectivity when it comes to devices and when it comes to digital literacy in a community where there are folks who really don't have that comfort level with devices the third thing i want to say about what this this man does very well is he hires great staff and staff that are reflective of the beautiful diversity of the city but also folks who share that commitment to partnership who whose first answer is i don't know if we can do it but we'll try to figure out a way rather than no we can't do it and that's that's at the heart and

024soul and so we know the the sign of a truly great leader is surrounding him or herself with those kinds of staff members those kinds of folks who will reflect them in their work so congratulations mike on behalf of everybody and we we hope you stay around for a while thank you thank you all great to see you hope to see you soon it's this isn't rebuttal uh mike i promise um that chair i i would be remiss if i didn't take the opportunity to speak uh on this occasion i have not gotten to you know when when we had the aae had the presentation that didn't work out for me to be there and and mr poor has gotten a lot of mileage out of that cracker barrel story and so i think he's

025probably glad because if i'd taken him out to a steak dinner uh he wouldn't have nearly as uh good a story to tell um but you know the i'm not gonna repeat a lot of things that dr barth said because as i'm as i reflect on the the years that mike and i work together all of those things are true and so i just ditto what uh what you said jay the thing that uh that strikes me uh about mike and his leadership is that he at a time when things were very unstable he created stability he was able to bring stability to a situation that uh was and continued to be very difficult um but he did that by always communicating always talking you know conti he he's somebody who will even in the

026highest levels of disagreement he continues communicating and that's not that's just not typical uh in in our society today we we tend to go off into our corners when we get mad at each other and and maybe we never you know speak again in a productive way and you know mr poor has shown that uh you he's kind of a throwback to hey we just got to keep talking and we'll get to a solution and he does that to this day i mean all the solutions aren't there yet they've not they haven't been implemented uh all the issues have not been resolved uh there are as this board knows there are things that that happen in state takeover or that in districts that the state takeover is not a magic pill um you know there

027is still a number of things there are still a number of things that have to be dealt with and he's dealing with them uh and he has a great team to do that but a great team doesn't come about without a great leader and so congratulations to you well deserved mike on on this honor i think it's a great selection i think you'll represent arkansas well at the next level aasa and you already do so you know i thank you for the years we've worked together and for whatever years we will continue to work together in whatever capacity i really appreciate what you have brought to the state and we appreciate what you've brought to this community thank you so much for your your service with the lorac scholar school district and the previous school

028districts that you served did like he said ditto to everything that everyone else has said it's it's been um a pleasure having you here in little rock school district and and the the community has truly benefited from from your presence and we look forward to the great things that you'll continue to do for the city so thank you all for here for your time and for being here okay we usually get a picture i don't see kimberly you got it all okay okay well let's go ahead and get a still dr hernandez dr barth could y'all come back in so thank you okay next we have the international social emotional learning day state board resolution and that will be presented by lisa tyler susan jobe good morning and welcome good morning thank you you're welcome

029march 26th is being celebrated as the second annual international social emotional learning day and in honor of this day the division of elementary and secondary education is requesting that the arkansas state board of education proclaim the third week of march as god for life week awesome wonderful i think we have that resolution here would you like to read the resolution sure whereas the arkansas department of education's vision is to lead the nation in student-focused education by ensuring that every arkansan is equitably prepared supported and inspired to succeed in school career community and life and whereas it is our mission for all arkansas students to graduate with a strong foundation of academic knowledge experience proficiencies and soft skills in order that they are actively literate critical thinkers and actively engaged in their communities in positive ways

030and whereas the arkansas department of education has identified five guiding principles that support educators business leaders communities and students in their efforts to help all arkansans develop these critical skills and whereas the guide for life program with the support of arkansas educators is designed to give students a plan they can follow to achieve personal success and whereas by incorporating the guide for life concepts throughout the school experience educators can help cultivate these real world skills for success in all arkansas students now therefore be it resolved that in honor of the second and annual international social emotional learning day the arkansas state board of education encourages schools to celebrate the guide for life program during the week of march 15 through 19th all right thank you thank you so much um this is a great resolution

031it it kind of goes back to what we were talking about before is it's educating the whole child not just academically but to have those soft skills and be able to communicate be great communicators as we were talking about earlier with superintendent poor so thank you so much and we appreciate your time today thank you if you'll let me sign that before you take it this is on recognition but being a resolution i think we do need a vote by the board for adoption do we have a motion for adoption okay we have a motion by miss mcfettrich to adopt the resolution i have a second second by miss moore all in favor say aye aye any opposed seeing none motion passes we might need to reprint that that's okay okay let's move on to

032what's next on the agenda all right now we're down to the recognition of the 2020 blue ribbon schools and the presenter for that will be mr bobby lester there is good morning mr lester welcome thank you when i was asked to recognize the national blue ribbon schools and distinguished schools i got really excited because the facts are i work in federal programs in the accountability office and usually when i make a call it's usually bobby what did i do today i get to say we love what you do so really excited about recognizing these schools today first ones i'm going to recognize is the national blue ribbon schools the u.s secretary of education recognized 367 schools as national blue ribbon schools for 2020. recognition is based on a school's overall academic performance or progress in

033closing the achievement gaps among student subgroups the education department recognizes all schools in one of two performance categories based on all student scores subgroup scores and graduation rates the two categories are the exemplary high performing schools these are among the state's highest performing schools as measured by state assessments or nationally normed state schools the exemplary achievement gap closing schools these are among the state's highest performing and closing the achievement gap between the schools student groups and all students we have two schools to recognize in the exemplary high performing schools first one is jefferson elementary in the little rock school district the principal there is sandra register and the superintendent we just met mike poor so congratulations to jefferson elementary our second high performing school is bernice young elementary it is in the springdale school district

034the principal there is debbie flora and the superintendent at the time was dr jim rollins our blue ribbon schools that close the achievement gap first school is eudora elementary the school district is eudora the principal there was ross sims and the superintendent is billy adams our second closing achieving get to close the achievement class i'll get it closing the achievement gap school was crawford elementary it is in the russellville school district the principal there is siobhan jackson and the superintendent dr mark gotcher give a hand for all of our national distinguished schools our next group recognized is the national esea distinguished schools the national association of esea state program administrators now known as nayspa formerly the national title one association has been selecting examples of superior federally funded school programs for national recognition through the

035national esea distinguished schools program they celebrate the efforts of schools across the country making significant improvement there are two categories for the distinguished schools the first category is the exceptional school performance and academic growth for two or more consecutive years the second category are schools at a closing achievement gap between student groups for two or more consecutive years our exceptional performance for two consecutive years school is pottsville elementary it's in the pottsville school district the principal there is mr shannon davis and superintendent larry duggar our closing the achievement gap school is nashville primary it is in the prime it is in the nashville school district the principal there is nathan evans and the superintendent is douglas graham let's give them a hand we have an additional i'm very excited about this because it's it's uh

036it's pretty rare and we should be very proud this is the recognition of the terrell h bell award the terrell h bell award recognizes outstanding school leaders and the vital role they play in guiding students and schools to excellence frequently under challenging circumstances principles are nominated by their school communities during the final stages of the national blue ribbon schools application process u.s department of education together with the national association of elementary school principals the association for middle level education and the national association of secondary school principals bestowed the bella award on a handful of principals each year in 2020 10 principals across the nation were recognized arkansas was blessed with one i miss siobhan jackson the principal of crawford elementary school in the russellville school district the superintendent there is dr mark gotcher let's give

037mr jackson a big hand each school district including miss jackson will be receiving a plaque that we will be sending to you under the under normal circumstances we'd have them here and presenting it to them we'll have to do it this way um i wanted to take just one second of your time to the program administrator over that sees this process through is misogynistine smith and she has been working with me for 10 years but she has worked for the state for 42 years and she is retiring this year and i wanted to just take a second to say thank you for all that you've done for arkansas and seeing this process through when we went to national conferences she had these folks in order and she had me in order you've got to meet

038her okay she kept it going it's behind the scenes gathering the data making the process go well so i just wanted to recognize her and to tell her appreciate the service that she had for us thank you terry i'm gonna i'm glad you said something bobby because uh i was going to ask you to say something anyway if uh if you if you didn't but uh miss otistein uh is is one of those gems that you know you you you just value and just the the idea that she is retiring not going to be here that that's a little hard to take because she is so effective at what she does and she is very organized i can't imagine another state in the nation that has someone that administers this program as effectively as ms

039osteen has for the last uh several years and uh it's definitely going to be we will miss her it's going to be a loss to the agency you lost to the state but she is a great example of what i tell the team here that whatever position you hold you have an impact on a child in the classroom all of these kids that have been into the in these blue ribbon schools and and probably maybe all or most of the the teachers and the principals they're not going to know the name otis dean smith but without otistine smith they would not have gotten that recognition uh i believe because she is very has always been very diligent always wanted to make sure arkansas had representation always made sure we got our deadlines met and that's

040just that was just a small part you know the blue ribbon and title one schools and all that's just a small part of what she does did but anyway i just want to say to the board uh to the public that might be listening and uh ms otistein you heard me brag on you uh once already last week but i'm going to do it again and to just say congratulations we we we wish you every uh good wish for your retirement and we will miss you when you're gone so yeah thank you all for letting me have a minute just know about them thank you for that too you're welcome can i add something to that as a teacher over the years i've had contact with ms smith and just her professionalism her kindness for

041for sometimes we would be in in situations that would be a little tense on our end and she would always make us feel at ease and work with us and and i just have the highest regard for her and her all she's done for education over the years and i just want to wish her a very happy retirement i want to do the same i've enjoyed working with her as a part of the committee of practitioners she always has everything lined up she gets us our material ahead of time she's sending emails checking with us you haven't um or letting us know if we've missed uh checking in with her and letting her know that we were going to be a part of the meeting it's always been a joy working with her and dealing

042with her the short time that i've had to to get to know her so i hope she has a wonderful time in her retirement and just want to say thank you for the years of dedication you have put forth for the children of arkansas thanks so much yes miss mcvetrich congratulations yes absolutely madam chair i don't want the moment i mean i love celebrating uh great moments and miss osteen's retirement is is definitely a great moment in her life um but i just want to say something about the schools you know we didn't get to have the celebration that that they deserve yeah because of the pandemic situation and wish that we could go back and have those celebrations uh later maybe we will i don't know but i just think about the list of

043of the schools and the leaders that we heard about okay so um you know dr gotcher uh you know i've talked to him a number of times about the work that's going on there in that school he's just so proud all the other schools jefferson elementary um you know bernice young it's just when you think about those schools and then you think about places like eudora okay how many how many times does eudora come across our mind or come across our news feed or come across our our emails but knowing that mr adams down there and that team are in the extreme southeast part of the state they are working very hard to meet the needs of the kids down there and recognize today so just all of these schools i want to say congratulations

044uh to to all of you to all of the leaders of these schools in these districts you're you are a you're an example of what we hope other schools could go and see how did y'all do this yeah what is it that's happening in nashville primary school that makes you so special that it gets you so much success for your students so we we hope that we get the opportunity to maybe we can do something at uh in our conference that that we have coming up in the summer should uh the circumstances allow us to continue that that may highlight some of these schools a little bit better than what we could today but we certainly didn't want to let the day pass without having that this opportunity to honor you and the great work

045that the teachers are doing there and just you know can't say enough how much we have we have great examples of education in the state of arkansas and our our mission is to make sure that all students have the opportunity for those in those educational settings so great work thanks for what you do and keep up the good work yes i'm glad you said that because that was one thing that i was thinking about that's one of the things i really look forward to is getting to meet all of these great leaders from across the state and that's one thing that i miss about these types of presentations is not being able to see their smiling faces and shake their hands and tell them congratulations face to face but hopefully as you said before we'll

046get an opportunity to do that in the future but in the meantime we do want to honor you and we do want to say thank you for your service and that we appreciate your excellence and leadership so thank you miss dean yes sorry yes mrs woods is there any way that we could get a list of those award recipients and their emails just to speak in a note yes we'll make that available for you thank you all right anything else before we move on okay so we are down to the concentogen if i'm not mistaken do we have any questions or items on the consent agenda that want to be pulled or that you want to discuss miss newton i will just have some comments okay okay i i do think i want to discuss

047four and six and just see okay anyone else okay miss newton go ahead my as i read through these i had concerns on sticks as well but i think something that helped me greatly was what miss cerisini and ms douglas did last week as far as the training to help me understand what goes on through the process and the investigations and the the um light that that's put on each one of these cases and so you know i i i would have probably in the past pulled number six in thinking that maybe it wasn't severe enough but in in a lot of the training and i want to publicly thank uh mr ceni and miss douglas and their team in in the subcommittee for all of their hard work and what they do it really

048opened my eyes uh to the detail that goes into to these and it not only on the front end but then also on the back end as some of these trainings are done and the written reflections are done it just made me feel more comfortable accepting some of the um the consequences that i think in the past i probably would have sent back to to have for them to have another look so that was just my comments on six okay miss uh dr moore i echo those same thoughts and certainly that um the training last week was very helpful um i i i talked this morning with miss douglas and i i think i'm in a different place than i was prior to this with four and six um but particularly looking first at four

049um a one-year probation just it felt very light to me in light of the circumstances and i know and i know it went through it already went through the subcommittee so we can't kick it back and so i don't i want to hear thoughts i don't know if we should bring it to us for a hearing or if we think that those two processes are sufficient um but i do want us and you know the precedent that is set in these cases um you know you know there certainly are like we talked about mitigating factors that we don't even see i think it's hard for me when i i don't see that and i just see the paper but at the end of the day i also want to make sure that we're making decisions

050and that you know are protecting students in the future let me make sure i understand four also did the subcommittee and the ethics hearing also so it's been through an additional stage so i think that was the reason that i felt comfortable yeah and i think if we had come with their original recommendation i would it'd be more comfortable but then it was bumped down mm-hmm and and i think my concern is amelia to some extent with the fact that that that committee will go back and look at those written reflections but i think we've seen before where an incident occurs and that person just simply moves on to another district or another state or another area and that behavior is not corrected and might occur again i don't i just want to open up

051a little bit of discussion and see if anyone else felt pulled to do a hearing or if we feel comfortable with that recommend final recommendation um i i would say looking at the [Music] circumstances around the incident and the fact that it's gone through this process it's gone through two different processes i feel comfortable with the decision that was made once once again it goes back to what we've said so many times before is that we have to look at each case case by case in the circumstances around what happened in those particular cases and i think in this particular case it was extremely extenuating circumstances and um didn't leave a lot of options for the educator and so i think that's probably why when it was gone through again it was actually bumped down

052because of because of getting a deeper look at what actually happened there in the situation so i think what i mean and i think four and six being the same i do have a higher bar for a principal and that they have received the additional trainings and things um in both of those cases kind of set me off again um you know if we're looking at a mitigating factor of a first year teacher versus a veteran principal in both of these cases um i don't know miss newton i think that but if i had not have had the training i probably would have pulled but because of the training and realizing the what they've already gone through and and how deeply they look at it i i'm i'm comfortable with both four and six as

053they're presenting i am as well do we have any further discussion or questions or comments miss chambers i'd say something very similar to what it said i i appreciate what dr moore is raising because some of this was shocking at least there's the material that we could read but as ms newton said the the training was incredibly valuable the rigor that they go through and that that fact that they made a decision and then actually changed the decision said quite a bit to me about they learned something else because they don't strike me as a as a group that would make a change uh superficially so i would i'm i'm comfortable supporting the rendered opinions as given thank you miss chambers any other comments okay well if there's no more questions or comments then i

054look for a motion to accept the consent agenda as a whole to approve the consent agenda we have a motion to approve the consent agenda by ms newton second seconded by miss chambers all in favor say aye aye any opposed seeing none motion passes right now we are down to our action agenda this first one is um ethics hearing committee recommendation for tiffany gantt and the presenter is miss amy douglas good morning educator gantt is here let me go get her from her attorney is not here but she is present okay seems like she stepped out if you guys want to go to the next thing and come back and see if we can find her let's do that next on the agenda it's the consideration of charter authorizing panel decision for lisa academy and

055that's miss tracy webb i don't know if she's out in the hallway there she is good morning miss webb welcome good morning tracy webb from the charter office and today we have a consideration of a charter authorizing panel decision for lisa academy they have requested to add a new campus for a hybrid school additional waivers for the new campus and to increase the enrollment cap lisa's charter was originally approved in 2004 and served students in grades k-12 the enrollment cap for this year i'm sorry for this year is 3 432 students so the decision for the board today is to review or not review the cap decision i also want to clarify on the list of waivers that are attached those are new waivers for lisa in addition to what is already approved for the

056whole school so the waivers that are attached are just for the hybrid school okay and today we do have dr beaubrick is on soon if you have any questions welcome dr berkick thank you you're welcome great attention all right i'll start here with miss newton do we have any questions or comments for lisa academy i just had two clarifying questions the increase in the cap of 1050 that was strictly for the hybrid yes just for the hybrid school okay and then the hybrid is going to be k12 instead of canine next year yes okay that was that was all i had thank you good luck okay um and dr moore i do i i don't plan to review so i do have a few questions if that's okay for you all um when you're planning

057this school are your teachers going to be solely with this school or are they going to be some of the teachers at your existing school and what will that relationship teaching online and in person look like so mr and i answered this question this is shaheen i'm the assistant at this academy so yes we are going to have dedicated staff for hybrid on for the hybrid school okay i think this is a a unique situation that probably was born out of this past year and i think it's a great opportunity that parents would be able to take advantage of that primarily online but also having the site visits if a parent was far enough in the state that they couldn't reach a site would could they still enroll in the program they're in the school

058so yes so yes they will still they are going to be able to apply for our school but one of our requirements to give a sense of belonging to our parents and to the students is to come on site so we are going to ask our parents and students to come to our either the satellite learning services or campus learning services twice a week um i'm sorry you know once a twice a month or once a week so they will be able to enroll but um they will need to come to the to the learning center okay i think i thought i think it's great that you would provide lunches to those families i think you're you're ameliorating some of the concerns that we've had this year and then my last question is will technology

059be provided by you all for families that lack and internet services so we are going to provide chromebooks to all of our students also if the parents have don't have the you know internet service we are going to provide hot spots okay thank you all right thank you dr moore um ms chambers no no questions thank you okay miss woods okay miss mcphetridge can you help me understand what your satellite learning centers will be are they outside of your regular buildings that you now have yes uh so um what we're going to do is the first year we are going to start um this is going to be a combination of virtual school and traditional learning so we would like to uh reach out to as many families as we can in the state of

060arkansas so um we are going to start with campus learning centers so we are going to ask our students and students to come to onsite and when we have enough application or interest in the other regions of arkansas then we are going to open satellite learning centers these satellite centers are going to give services like for example enrichment services support services intervention services or some of the services that cannot be given virtually like occupational therapy or dyslexia some portions of dyslexia so we are going to uh these learning centers satellite centers are going to be separate buildings uh they're going to be usually office buildings maybe churches or hotels but a safe place for our students and for our teachers i i'm sorry miss mark petrich i i cannot hear you i think you are

061needed so you haven't identified the uh satellites buildings as yet is that correct not not for the first year no if i may i'm luanne baroni i'm the assistant superintendent for lisa academy um just to clarify that for the first year we plan to use campus campuses that already exist for our learning centers so in central arkansas we'll be using uh our building at 21 corporate hill drive which is where our sixth grade academy middle school is currently we have additional space in that building that will be dedicated to the hybrid school administration we'll also be using our springdale campus on holcomb street street in springdale the first year so the first year we plan to operate out of those two locations as our learning centers and then as we determine demand across the state

062we will then look at facilities for those and they will most likely likely be least uh portions of buildings as mr scheiden said in churches community centers other safe locations where we can release the space that we need to provide those services in those satellite areas thank you very much i appreciate that mr lookadoo no okay well if we have no further questions or comments then i'll look for a motion okay we have a motion to not review by ms mcphetrich seconded by dr moore all in favor say aye aye any opposed seeing none motion passes okay do we did we find miss grant okay thank thanks so much you don't appreciate oh yes thank you i'm sorry thank you thank you all for joining us today congratulations good morning amy douglas with plsb today

063we are here for a hearing a state board review of an evidentiary hearing regarding educator tiffany gantt i have passed out to those that are present i'm not sure if the email was forwarded by mrs williams this morning but her attorney mr valley is in court in hernando mississippi and is asking for a one-month continuance on this case i have not spoken to mrs gant this morning but he did send that email um this morning and i spoke to him yesterday so whatever pleases the board okay do we have any questions or comments i know this is like the third or fourth of time we've continued this is there any issue on the part of miss gantt is she currently teaching or to my knowledge she is not teaching correct she is not currently teaching

064okay so what's the pleasure of the board it seems like we've continued it several times i'm okay with continuing it one more but i i think this would pull leaving the last time that i would be willing to do that okay any other comments questions i do think since she's hired an attorney we need to let him be here for this yeah i would agree so with that do we have a motion i'll move to continue we have a motion by miss woods to continue secondly i'm sorry miss chambers does that motion include this is the last time we would continue don't think you can do that i wouldn't advise doing that anyway let me i'll just say i mean that that could be in the opinion and and that may be what y'all end

065up doing but um i would just this action i would suggest just be a continuance i think our our folks at plsb can contact mr valley and make sure he understands the uh the opinion or the the sense of the board is that this has been extended several times and it needs to be brought to a conclusion absolutely thank you thank you so we have a motion on the floor by miss woods do i have a second seconded by ms newton uh all in favor say aye aye any opposed seeing none motion passes i will um send him notice for the april 8th state for me okay thank you thank you miss gantt for joining us today okay you're welcome okay next we have consideration of approval to allow ade developed computer science and computing

066year one courses to be caught to be taught to eighth graders by any arkansas public school district all right and then we have mr anthony owens presenting good morning welcome good morning anthony owen arkansas department of education office of computer science i'd like to start just first by saying congrats again superintendent poor well-deserved honor and it's been a pleasure for our office to work with him on various projects over the past few years by the way i do like cracker barrel if anybody wants to take me there that said i also want to quickly just let everybody know that we did announce our results of our all region coding competition last friday so if you have not seen those please go out and look at those but i want to draw attention to one specific

067team while i want to give accolades to all the students this was the first year that we had a team of one student who made it into the top 17 teams across the state so we were very impressed by this student braden pierce from bryant high school uh who is also an eagle scout at troop 17 boy scouts uh so uh i didn't realize that uh until my wife pointed out to me a couple days later she's like you know braden i'm like oh okay so by the way i was not in the scoring another group does that i just verify it so but congrats to all those teams and they will progress to the state competition on may 1st of this year so good luck to each of them that said uh the motion

068before you that we're requesting today is that uh this is not without precedence uh let me start by saying that i brought to this board not this particular board but to the state board of education the first time that we considered algebra 1 for a blanket approval to be taught at 8th grade across the state without additional requirements placed on the school of filling out paperwork we do have a process for this where schools can already apply for each of these and basically they submit the information through our course approval system and we look at it and pretty much as long as they have a teacher that they've indicated that is going to be a proper license it's approved there's no real in-depth look at what curriculum they're using or anything of that nature because

069we don't have regulatory authority to do that they have to teach the standards so what we are asking is that all of our year one courses that you all approved in december and january that come into effect this fall would be automatically approved for any school district to offer to to eighth grade students without going to that course approval process to be completely transparent this is getting out in front of senate bill 107 a little bit senate bill 107 language within that bill says that the ad will identify at minimum four courses that will that we will basically do this for that we will say that can be taught to eighth graders without additional approval we just went ahead and selected all nine of our first year courses because as you recall our nine first

070year courses that we developed all have the same set of standards they're just taught through various lenses for that for that first year course so it really wouldn't make sense to adopt four and not the other five and i'm happy to answer any questions we'll start with mr lookadoo i don't have any questions but i think this is good and i'm excited to to give those eighth graders that chance to earn that credit i think that's uh that's wonderful so thank you for your work thank you we're we're excited for this because one it will give schools additional flexibility in determining where if senate bill 107 passes and signed into law where they establish that high school credit that will be required under that bill but also you know eighth graders at early and earlier

071ages our students are starting to determine their pathways in life and i you know the office of computer science believes that we should be allowing these students to start determining those high school credits when they when they're ready for that and when they have enough knowledge to start making those decisions where they want to go and this provides them additional opportunities for those upper level courses for those students who want to go beyond just that first year yeah all right um ms mcfedrich thank you happy to do it blessed to do it miss woods i don't have any questions i just wanted to tell you i love every time i see you on our agenda i think everything that you bring to us is very very neat and i'm i'm thrilled to be a part

072of it thank you again i'm very blessed to be where i am and happy to do it miss chambers i love to see a technical person celebrate it this way it's awesome uh i do love this i'm dating myself but they put something like this in place when i was a kid and you could take math and science in eighth grade you could start just what you said and it accelerates the past and actually i think supports all the good further supports all the good that we're trying to do in the state so thanks for what you're doing thank you dr moore yes thank you um so do you know how many do you think there are many middle schools that were prepared to teach these courses what does that look like so you know

073the licensure will not change the licensure requirements will still remain that they have the teacher has to have the 528 computer science licensure which is actually a licensure range we call it a high school licensure but we put it that 412 that way any any teacher could test into it if they can meet that content knowledge practices so they either have to have the 528 or 5016 approval code or 5014 technical permit that has been around for you know four or five years now we just launched a 5013 technical permit which is open to classified staff members that have at least one year of experience directly with students and they meet certain certification or training requirements they can get a technical permit to teach the first year courses only so what we see is the

074potential of this is that a school that might have a technology resource teacher or an i.t person who has has a background in technology but they're at that middle school they um they could go out and apply for this technical this 5013 technical permit and potentially be allowed to teach that at the middle school level but the the licensure doesn't change for these the licensure remains the same to your question directly because i know i didn't answer exactly what you asked i think that this will not be extremely widely used initially but i think as our schools start developing more and more pathways and options for students and we start seeing an increase in interest by our communities and need by our industries we're going to see schools starting fitting um the needs of what

075our students have to what they're actually doing within the school also just it should be known that if a middle school does take this option at the eight school eighth grade for a student that does replace that student's coding block requirement it also re replaces those embedded standard cs embedded standards requirement because all those standards are already part of those year one standards so it's not like we're just adding something to them they're also able to take something off those students that was actually my next question are there prerequisites like you know could a student with no prior coding class enter these as a year one course they should be able to yes okay and i think i mean i think it's a fantastic opportunity there are sometimes concerns that students enroll in an 8th

076grade course that will go on their transcript for college without realizing the gravity of that do you think this will be communicated well with counselors and those teachers so students understand that going in you know obviously schools that elect to use this option they're going to have to communicate to their schools the repercussions of this you know and we had one superintendent that was really stressing for this being an option for his school which is part of the reason this legislation was was was revised to include this but he's looking at the putting every eighth grade student to meet that graduation requirement but he said we're going to make sure my eighth grade students know if you don't pass in eighth grade you're going to be taking another course in high school which i hope

077they take more courses in high school anyway but i just don't hope that they're repeat courses i think our office and ade can help especially in our communication when we put this out over commissioner's memo or whatever communication we have that we stress the importance of reminding students that if they're utilizing this option that it does have um high school transcript repercussions right and do you foresee a large number of different placing this on eighth grade for that i would want that to be a student choice at that point in time but it's on a transcript we as an office aren't recommending it being mandatory for eighth graders we are giving options for to schools and i don't know every school district's situation or superintendent situation of how they're going to manipulate their schedule there

078may there may are manipulates not the best word but finagle their schedule for students um but um we we believe that that one yes we believe every student should have at least one computer science credit before they graduate as the senate bill 107 outlines but we also believe that students should have some flexibility and schools have flexibility of how they implement that graduation requirement which is part part of this request okay thank you and dr moore um this gives me an opportunity to plug what we've been plugging for several years now is our student success plans yeah these are decisions that should be made especially for eighth graders in conjunction with that development of the student success plan that we expect every student to have by eighth grade so you know those are the conversations

079that you're talking about that they would need to be made to understand and the parents or or guardians that uh hey this is it's this is it gets real here because you're talking about high school credit and transcripts i'll just point out uh miss chambers you you made a comment about technical and it's it's very true but many of you may not know anthony is a good example mr owens a good example of somebody who has a great passion and expertise in computer science and obviously pushing this initiative to levels that i don't think anyone really expected in 2015 when we started this but he's also an attorney you know he's uh he's been to law school he's uh he's been a teacher you know so the point is uh the and i've tried to

080explain this to some um school leaders that may not understand why we're wanting a required graduation credit for computer science um it's because in the world we're in now we want students to be prepared for what they're going into it doesn't mean we want them all to be computer you know app developers game developers game designers programmers it's you know when when you when you have a house built now and everything in that house can be controlled through an app from your phone you need to understand a basic level how some of those things work especially when it comes to your finances and cyber security and all those things i mean the it's like we want we don't expect all of our students to be experts in math when they graduate but we do expect

081them to have a basic level of understanding in those math concepts that we've outlined as a state same and that's the concept here the governor's idea on computer science it's giving them that that basic ground level understanding and it is flexibility so providing this for eighth graders is flexibility that is as anthony said not without precedent but we see it as opportunity though too with 400 to 800 million jobs that will be going away due to automation over the next decade or so according to mckenzie you know what are the how are those those jobs are going away but they will be replaced what will they be replaced with and who will the workers be and what skills will they need to replace uh the workers that are you know are moving out and it's

082this type of thing it's you know you look at this list and data science cyber security networking robotics mobile app development you know those are the things that our young people need to have that understanding of and then maybe generate the interest in moving on uh into the the deeper learnings in those fields thank you secretary well said congratulations thank you i know it's been a lot of work on your part and it's exciting for for our state um one of the things that that i've thought about all through this is the demand for computer science teachers is probably through the roof in districts you know there's just not enough people to go around and so one of the things that that you said just a few minutes ago that is one of my husband's

083favorite sayings first ever heard of that is that 5013 technical permit uh and that's exciting to me because i think that most districts have an i.t person you know there's very few districts that don't have somebody on staff and so that's kind of exciting that that would open that door for for a district to be able to you know have someone on staff to be able to to get these classes taught talk my question though is are you seeing much because the the teachers are in such high demand and no it's not until next year so you may not even know yet is there much sharing between districts of a teacher you know there's one teacher and they're in such high demand maybe two or three districts might go together and share that that teacher

084are you seeing any of that so we have not seen empirical evidence of that yet we have had discussions with various schools that have inquired if that's an option of course that remains an option for them the legislation does require the school district to employ a teacher as a district employee a certified teacher but that doesn't have to be their only duty that doesn't have to be their only certification and it doesn't also say they have to be only an employee of that district but they have to employ a certified cs teacher i think those are things that as um ms freno's team and our office and the secretary's office works through rural promulgation once this legislation if it's passed those are types of questions that we're going to need to clearly outline what that

085means what and of course those rules i'm pretty sure have to come back to you for consideration at some point but those are things that we're already talking about internally considering what this looks like within a school we don't want this to be an extreme burden on any school this needs to be looked at as an opportunity for our for all of our students in all of our schools and there was one senator and i apologize for not remembering his name but i was watching the senate bill 107 vote and i think secretary may referenced this here in a second but he held this booklet up and he turned to the page in it that shows a discrepancy between male and female enrollment where we're at 28 percent and he asked senator english he said

086center english i'm looking at this and this is saying that only 28 of our enrollment at a high school levels is female is that not a perfect reason of why we should pass this bill and i thought that was the best question that was asked all day because it once again demonstrates that cs is an equalizer for our students but we have the responsibility of making sure that they have equal access to it across the board and on the communication front or what kind of communication are you doing to districts and and teachers and and getting it down to their level on the different avenues for certification and and i'm sure they're supported at the state level for them first sometimes there's financial barriers and different things what kind of communications are you doing on

087that level so our team you know we have the team of 9 cs specialists that i can't brag on them enough because without them this initiative you know it's it's not me it's you know it's it's really the team that has got out there and moved us from around about 50 certified teachers in 2015 to over 550 now certified teachers across arkansas and it's that team that continues to build those numbers we're looking at our summer training this summer which we provide free of charge to teachers uh we don't charge anything for any of the training if the educational consortium has a fee we reimburse that educational consortium so the school's not even having to pay them for that uh we have three of those high school trainings and i'm pretty sure i can go

088and speak to this a little bit because i think the secretary has mentioned it previously uh the secretary is authorized uh funding uh sr2 funding to establish a computer science educator academy uh we're preparing we're finalizing the rfp and communications that will go out about that within the next couple weeks we are we will be looking for a post-secondary partner to award uh post-secondary graduate credit for teachers that go through that that will be a free resource now we're looking at whether we can pay travel and things of that nature but the training itself is going to be free the other thing that my team did we were the first unit that i'm aware of last year that shifted all of our trainings to an online model and so we were able to reach teachers

089across the state where they were this summer we are switching back to some face-to-face but instead of going to every single co-op across the state and providing every training face-to-face and everyone we're picking different areas and then we're making hybrid instructional models so we'll have face-to-face with a group that is appropriate under covert guidelines whatever they may be at that point and then we will we will provide that training with support staff on the zoom platform for people who can't be there face-to-face maybe because they have um health issues or just travel or whatever so our office has is really responsive to trying to meet teachers where they are and not let finance be a barrier to teachers in any form or fashion that's great thank you thank you just i just want to echo

090everybody else and just let you know anything that we can do to help in the digital divide and underserved community through the churches or whatever please feel free to call on our support i do recognize uh that is an issue as we're out in what i do daily in the in underserved communities that it's just not putting the just not getting deliverables there but having support to execute deliverables you know with the technology so anything that i can do to assist anywhere in state please feel free to call on thank you sir and i will mention on that thread because i didn't mention it earlier about the teacher academy we are part of that and all the details haven't been finalized but we are allowing prior to priority application status to areas with the most

091needs uh and also both in and needing an individual or individuals to teach in that area but also the most need socioeconomically i want to echo what what secretary mentioned because oftentimes even the communities don't understand the strategic plan as he mentioned the importance and that's why sometimes going through the churches and other educational entities that's there every every week you know rather than just once a semester to make those announcements to reinforce to re-emphasize the goals and objectives of what this technology enhancement is going to do for their children long-term i think that creates a sustainability model to support your goals through those underserved communities so i appreciate that anything that that we can do uh please let us know thank you dr hill and i would love to have a follow-up conversation with

092you because we're always looking at ways to reach our parents and students more directly one more thing before whatever happens i want to give a special thanks to miss laurie fino there were a lot of people that worked on the computer science advancement act legislation the secretary mentioned that i am a lawyer but they call it practicing law for a reason and i don't get to practice a whole lot but miss freno has been a great resource and and honestly a a great colleague in a lot of this work that we do because i'm ignorant on a lot of stuff i'm a bar certified uh attorney i'm a member of the arkansas bar have been for five years but because i'm not in a position that practices on a regular basis there's a lot of

093it that i'm ignorant about so i just want to say thank you miss frino for her support and her helping guide me through some of this we are definitely fortunate to have miss frino part of the team here we appreciate her expertise and her keen eye so it's definitely good to have her on that project as well and i just want to say i just think this is this is awesome that we are as you said before meeting people where they are as we talked about meeting the teachers where they are this is an opportunity to meet students where they are as a parent of four you realize that your students your kids they all have um different levels of where they are and different talents and skills and um things that they gravitate more

094to so i think this is just an opportunity for students to succeed it's just another opportunity to meet children where they are for those that are ready to jump in at eighth grade and get those courses out of the way because that's just something that they can do rather than holding them back and making them wait as other students would we are giving them the opportunity to succeed at an earlier age and an earlier grade so i appreciate all the work that has gone into it and looking forward to the dividends and the um the um the benefits that our state will will get from this so thank you so much to the team and and to you as well and with that if we don't have any other questions or comments then i will

095look for a motion i would move to approve the computing year one course is to be taught to eighth graders and anthony you'll always be technical to me thank you happy to be so i don't care what you call me as long as you call me all right so we have a motion by miss chambers uh seconded by uh miss mcfetchus a motion to approve so um all in favor say aye aye any opposed seeing none motion passes congratulations and thank you thank you all so much you too okay well with that um lunch is ready so what we'll do is we'll stop take a break and we will meet back here at one o'clock and move on to our second part of our action agenda so we'll convene until one o'clock all right welcome

096back we're going to call this meeting back to order for our one o'clock section of our action agenda i think we've got everybody back on online and everybody's back in the room uh glad to see some new faces ms mcadoo good to see you again and uh i see we have some more guests on so i'm sure they'll be introduced later but welcome and we're glad to see y'all glad to have you today okay so we are at um at new business is there any new business okay seeing none then we will move on to the next session at reports and that's mr joel look lookadoo with our arkansas teacher of the year report mr lookadoo all right well um excited to get this afternoon started and i do have some awesome people with me

097today so i will actually be letting them kind of introduce themselves as they go through our report together and so in the agenda you'll you'll see and i've talked with some here about it but you'll see our report that we have been working on as a group and that is uh who is here with us today we've been meeting um and kind of over the course of this year and so i'm gonna let them uh start us off and and christian savedra who is a a teacher and the uh head men's soccer coach at uh rogers heritage high school uh is going to kick us off here um talking a little bit about our report so christian i'll uh i'll hand it off to you and let you go thank you hey good afternoon my

098name is christian salvedra and i'm a spanish one teacher as well as the head coach for the boys soccer program at rogers heritage high school in the same district where i graduated high school before you is our teach plus arkansas advisory board we are a diverse group of educators who teach in central arkansas the arkansas delta region and northwest arkansas students in our classrooms come from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds go to school in many educational settings including school districts and charters and live in urban and rural communities we're passionate about ensuring that all students are taught by diverse educators a diversified staff is important because research shows that all children benefit from having educators in school who represent their communities racial cultural and linguistic diversity we believe that recruiting and retaining educators of color

099should be a priority for districts across arkansas particularly those districts whose workforce has remained largely white despite shifts in student diversity this is why we wanted to learn from teachers of color across the state to better understand what is happening and provide recommendations to districts today we want to share what we heard with you based on our focus groups with teachers of color from across the state there's clear work that districts and leaders can do to improve their focus on recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce you see my story is very similar to my students i grew up in el salvador and arrived in the us at 13 years old and my success is a product of the support that rogers public school educators provided for me and as i think of my journey i

100can't help to feel grateful for the teachers that went above and beyond to ensure that i properly adapted to my new environment having a teacher of color as a role model empowered me to imagine a world in which i was enough and i was capable of achieving my dreams i once read that you can't accomplish what you can't imagine and my wish is that most students come into my classroom will have the right guidance and motivators to continue to imagine a better future for themselves like i did my colleagues today will share a bit more about teach plus the organization that helped us think about teacher diversity our work this past year listening to educators of color our findings and why we think the state board of education should continue to seek out ways to

101encourage districts to focus on diversifying the teacher workforce my colleague pamela chris will speak a little more about teachplus thank you christian good afternoon my name is pamela chris i'm a teach plus arkansas advisory board member i'm also a district literacy coach with look at the little rock school district and i'm also an adjunct and an appalled instructor at valencia smith college with the teacher education i'm going to tell you more about the teach plus arkansas as christian mentioned the group of educators before you came together to be an educator advisory board for teach plus arkansas teach plus is a national non-profit focused on empowering excellent experienced and diverse teachers to take leadership over key policy and practice issues that advance equity opportunity and student success teach plus grows teachers as leaders and we have

102worked this past year to better understand policy in arkansas currently teach plus is in 12 states and arkansas being the newest this past year we met twice a month to learn about arkansas policy met with education and legislative leaders and we learned how to use our voice to influence decision makers through storytelling research and providing concrete policy recommendations teach us believe that when we invest in developing our most talented teachers and to teach your leaders who are well informed they're persuasive and they are prepared to leave they have that deep leverage in advancing equity for students especially students of color low-income students and those students from underserved communities this program has absolutely empowered us to encourage change at the state and district level and we hope to be a part of better solutions moving forward

103so now i would like to introduce stacey mcadoo hello everyone it is good to see you guys again i am stacy mcadoo your forever 2019 arkansas teacher of the year christian started off by talking a little bit about the need for diversity in our state and how the population is changing and growing well each day the student population in arkansas schools grow more racially and linguistically diverse according to the most recent published data youth of color in our school districts make up about 40 percent of the stu public school student population but only about 12 percent of our teachers identify as a teacher of color and as recently as earlier this school year only 68 districts in the state well 68 districts in the state do not have one single teacher of color employed as

104a teacher of record so armed with that data and our lived experiences we conducted focus groups with teachers of color from around the state to solicit their thoughts about their experiences and ideas on ways to improve diversity as it relates to recruitment and retention of teachers of color our findings were pretty consistent with what we already knew and what we have heard from teachers of color across the united states first of all they feel like their talents and their voices are underutilized and they would they want to be listened to and to have their expertise expertise valued they also also feel like they have there's been a lot of superficial diversity work being done in education and they would like to have more meaningful professional development for school leaders and teachers about diversity and not

105just a one-time one-shot here's what it is type of learning environment they are also a lot of them felt like they were stuck or boxed into certain roles and responsibilities and they would like to have access to support and resources that will help them to become teacher leaders or assume leadership roles and finally they want to see the needle move a little bit more not a little bit a lot more in terms of representation they want more successful efforts with recruiting and interviewing and the hiring practices in the process to get more educators of color not just in the school buildings but at all levels within the education system taking is going to talk to you a little bit next about some specific recommendations thank you stacy um good afternoon everyone my name is tykina

106watson i am a member of the teach plus advisory board here in arkansas i'm a noise education fellow and i'm a first year teacher at kipp delta i teach 8th grade math so as stacy was saying there was a lot of findings and we found out a lot of information about what educators and what teachers actually in the field want they want explicit commitment so it's one thing for us to continue to have these conversations about diversity but it's another thing for diversity to be implemented in the goals implemented in like public propaganda statements that the schools say so teachers want actions behind these statements we continue to make are that districts continue to make another thing as states were saying educators want to be listened to empowered and valued by their school they want

107opportunities to move up the ladder within education they want opportunity to lead their school opportunities to receive feedback informal and formally one of the best practices i'll say a quote from our paper one of the best practices for creating a supporting and affirming school culture for teachers of color is giving teachers an open space to be heard so within the space of being heard you're able to create those policy changes that teachers need to be more successful in their classroom so another recommendation from us is to prioritize fine funding for this development for this equity training for this implicit bias training for this anti-racist training at all levels so teachers shouldn't should not be the only people who are having anti-racist training it should be the entire school district going through anti-racist training and we

108need to allocate the funds for that to happen so our fourth recommendation will go into developing pathways for teachers of colors color to become leaders in those spaces so again what students see they begin to do and so when we put teachers of color in those spaces we're opening those doors for our students and again furthering them to believe it's possible in-house membership i mean mentorship funding and incentives and partnering with other high quality programs so maybe the school may not have the resources for those teachers but partnering with other high quality programs and our last recommendation was for districts to actually design and implement protocols for better hiring in hr and engage in diverse practices that rely on research and campus committees and so this leads me into us talking about the importance of

109valuing teacher voices and talking a little bit about schools who have actively made changes rogers school district has already committed to addressing their practices and making them more diverse and being active participants in this change that we want to make and so then we'll shift and so why is why is it even important that we listen to teacher voices imagine being a parent and you have a child and someone keeps trying to tell you what your child's favorite food is but you spend the most time with that child you feed that child you clothe that child long story short you're with that child most of the day and so you get the needs of that child first hand and so as teachers we're with students about at least 40 hours a week off and on

110and so teachers should be heard and the needs of students should be heard they spend about more time at the school than they may at home and so with that we'll transition into the next part of our paper so first off i want to say thank you to each of you um being being a little bit flexible with our our time and holding off so that we can get everybody on here but as we kind of bring this to a close i wanted to to share a quick personal story to explain why we believe this is such an important topic you know the research is out there and it's clear of on the importance of diversity and representation in the teaching profession and we know that but it's still so easy to become comfortable with

111uh you know the way things are the way things have been or even just to get in that bubble with the people that we know and we regularly interact with and uh as you you all know last fall i started a podcast and i was about six episodes in and i was really proud of the work we were doing it was it was going well i thought we had great guests on from you know not only in arkansas but across the nation i was excited and put a little graphic together of all the the different guests we had had on uh in those first six episodes and uh looking at that picture my wife was the first to point this out she looked at it looked at me and was like this is awfully white

112and she was right right like she was 100 right and the next day i actually got a phone call from stacy stacy mcadoo and she said hey are you going to have any any black people on your podcast and i needed that i needed to hear that from her and in that moment it really hit me of how important it is to remain intentional about our commitment to diversity equity and inclusion because here i am i'm a person who deeply believes in the importance of diversity and inclusion i believe i'm an advocate for my students who have who are mostly students of color i'm in an educational policy group with with uh you know teach plus focusing on teacher diversity yet how easy it is for us to you know remain in that bubble and

113uh you know i had these these great guests on and they were all fantastic but they were all of my same race and you know i think my own example of that is really it's kind of it's gut-wrenching for me uh to to point that out but it goes to show how we must remain vigilant uh in supporting teachers of color and and this is why we as a group uh you know we ask districts and employ districts in the department and the board that we do listen to our educators of color and you know much like we've seen the importance of parent engagement and listening to to our parents our communities we've got to do the same and engage our teachers of color and and know that we've got to be purposeful with those

114commitments uh to diversifying the teacher workforce and so we know there is there's good work being done on this front and we hope to see it continued and growing commitment and intentionality there and because there's there's so much value in listening to one another so that we can act and respond to create a better place together so thank you all for for listening um and we are happy to answer any questions uh about our work uh with the the report or uh with teach plus in general too and we have on with us uh who did not speak there but dr kerry mull who has been kind of our our fearless leader in organizing everything as we've been all virtual meetings this year working with this group but it's been great and a big thank

115you to all of them but i'll open it up if there's any questions or anything joel the the link it looks like a link there at the bottom of the last slide is that can that be made available and we can get it all okay joel could you take the slideshow down please i just want to thank you i think this presentation is excellent and timely and encouraging um in terms of where change comes from and it starts with all of us individually without question but where we're looking to put emphasis for change and you talked about rogers and i'm so proud of what you're doing there it does it start within the district is that where it's coming and how does how does your um your organization how do your leaders how are you

116helping bring that about that intentionality and do you have any call outs for the board specifically cannot let i'll let anyone jump in uh group anyone who wants to to go on this i'll go ahead and jump in on that yeah so you know i think as i was preparing for this presentation i wanted to make sure that i was honest and i was critical at the same time because i think i needed to look back and make sure that i wasn't just repeating what has been told to me for years and if you can tell by my accent i'm literally a product of what happens when people tell you that you can be something that you can ever dream of and if you ever have some free time i would challenge you to google

117some of the obstacles that kids have grown up in a third world country and somehow through the mentorship through the programs through the sports involvement i was able to get here at a 13 years old and still believe in myself enough and change some of the things that i had learned growing up and i'm able to sit in this meeting today and feel privileged to be now giving the voice to the students that are coming behind me and some of those examples that i can give you where rogers has empowered me to be a leader uh has been any time uh you know we say all the time about having an open door policy right and i think uh me as a head coach of a program i want to say that that that's always

118true but realistically speaking we all have our agendas that we go with and and i what i can vouch for for rogers is that they genuinely do they genuinely listen to their teachers and and i can exp i can talk about my experience whether is you know i hear of a teacher in dallas that i know is from the area and i know we need a third grade teacher to hire and i just pick up the phone and call downtown and say hey i have a diverse teacher that it's maybe worth considering if i can get her to apply would you would you listen to her interview and you know to your point earlier susan i think it's it does start within us right and so that's the power and empowering more people of diverse

119backgrounds is that we know how people get jobs we know how people get in those positions that we all have and so how i feel like our district is doing a good job is when we do bring solutions to the table one they listen but two they genuinely have a passion our leaders that i've encountered in my district have a passion for meeting the kids needs the other example i'll give you is as i started this project i was i'm very careful with what i do with in my position where i am now because i want to make sure that i don't miss the opportunity to make a higher platform for the future generations and so i make sure that to call downtown and dr hill and and make sure that he knew i'm diving

120into this project it might be a critical piece that we put together i want to make sure you're aware before you read it uh that i'm gonna do this and i'm not you know i wasn't really calling to ask for permission because that's just not the human that i am i do things that i'm passionate about however i wanted him to know before anything came out that this was a project that i wasn't about to start and within seconds you know i left the voicemail and within seconds i got a phone call back christian i'm so happy to hear that you're doing that you're seeing your voice um whatever you do as soon as soon as it gets published send it to me we'll have a conversation let's schedule a meeting let's talk about it

121and then and i asked him on that because i'm ambitious i said man can you make a commitment now like today i don't want to wait until tomorrow until the research comes out to do something about it because you know it's true and you know you're saying to me that that we do need it and he said man what ideas do you have and he shared with me a video idea on using and highlighting teachers of color in the district to use that to recruit more teachers and so about a month and a half ago the videographer for the school was in my classroom recording a promotional video to recruit more teachers of color and that's just a couple simple examples that i can give you on how i feel confident to come into this

122meeting and know that where i am i'm valued and i do have a voice and i'm making a change and i do believe that it starts within ourselves but then within our districts i just want to thank each presenter um it's so important that you're here with your your voice and your stories um and i mean secretary key i i can't think of anything that we've talked about in my six years on the board that that i am more passionate about and wanting to be supportive of and i know it's so important that we go about this in a way where it's happening locally within communities but fully understanding how can the board help how do we how i think i read somewhere is it 40 of our students our students of color so we're

123talking about every community in the state and how can we how can we allow our best selves to come to bear on this and what is the role of the board and i know we're probably not prepared to speak to that today but we'd love to hear how we can help lift and support what these communities and these individuals with teach plus are doing miss chambers i think maybe it was february or maybe it was j i think it was january we started that conversation if y'all recall the presentation and uh carly saraceni talked about our recruitment and retention plan and you know right now under state law uh districts have a responsibility for a minority recruitment plan which is if you read it it's very much older thinking you know it's not modern thinking

124as far as what we need to do and it was also limited uh that uh to to districts that uh had a certain percentage of minorities uh enrollment and um you know really there was only one district or two a very few number of districts left that that uh didn't meet that threshold so we are working right now with senator james sturch from a educator himself uh on uh drafting and filing an update to that plan i i think joel you all may have had some input uh in that or at least some conversations so just to your point miss chambers there yeah there is some work being done now on that topic and it that district developing those plans and the idea is under the old methodology it was a year to year to

125year situation you don't plan from year to year i mean you have a plan for the year but if you really want to have a robust plan you have to look out at trends you have to look out at the realities of of your student populations and how those things are changing and so now we're looking at more of a three-year i believe it well carly will be here later she can correct me but i think it's a three-year approach where it's not a compliance issue as it had been in the past it's more of a true plan of how how are we going to do this and what are we going to and there she is she appears so i would be happy for for her to weigh in on this but we're talking

126about recruitment and retention okay good good but yeah there is work that's happening now and and certainly what i think this presentation today there are many of these elements that i think you will see in that updated legislation joel if i may thank you i did have the pleasure of guiding and mentoring these amazing educators i think we we all understand that our our policy um recommendations are solely district-based but the ability to elevate you know the district advocacy that each of these teachers are going to be doing in their own district um they each have a plan to go back and engage with their leadership and have specific ideas based on their specific context of what they would like to encourage each of their districts to be able to do um we knew that

127having an ability um with with joel's time here to elevate the conversation here at the state board level and make the commitment that we're wholly supportive of the state board continuing to focus on this and hopefully in the future be able to bring additional state level policy recommendations to you did you want to do something it is three years and uh you know we have a home recruitment and retention unit now and we are trying to get out there and really work with the individual districts and we are calling it operation lee county right now but we are physically going out there and working with with the district and uh we're looking at you know a short-term goal would be to really recruit diversity but at the same time you're going to have to do

128the grow your own so you have to do that short in that long term and that's what we're trying to do and uh on the 30th actually uh the leicester licensure unit and myself we're going back from four to six to open it up to the community to advise them what routes could be for them so we are making those strides and we hope that we can take that to scale after we see success thank you appreciate it okay well and i guess the last thing that i would like to add is that as you are going about and revising the policy at the state level consider us think about us if you are in need of any type of assistance we've been doing the research we've been talking with teachers we've done focus groups

129we would love to continue this work at a larger level with you all so we are here and we are are and can be and are willing to be resources for you all as well thank you miss mcadoo do you have any more um this is a great report and i really appreciate all of your work on this i could see where it would be beneficial to make a presentation to the arkansas school board association and really help educate those school board members out there on this reading through the report i love the idea of setting those goals on on hiring and really working with the leadership i could really see the need for this and again i really appreciate all your work and it's good to see you again miss mcadoo thank you mrs

130woods did you have anything to say i do not know okay dr moore miss newton i just wanted to thank everyone for their hard work on this and and i i kind of want to echo what ms smith veterans just said uh you know i i hate to see it stop here and so i would love to see your work continue on and there are lots of groups out there that that need to hear this and and it become more than just a report and be an avenue for conversations all across the state and so i know that we're coming up on um symposium sessions and pd sessions and all sorts of opportunities so i hope that different groups are listening in joel you'll be a great uh person that maybe can do some scheduling

131for for the group to get this message out because you know communication you know i think mr key said well when i go we don't want to shut down communication we've got to keep those keep talking and moving and because communication will lead to action and so so i again i want to say my thanks and and i think i think that one of the things that struck me not just the data but it was something that um mr savage said while ago is you can't become what you can't imagine you know and that's a sad state for our kids across the state we can't let that continue so so thank you for your work and i i i anything i could do to help but i hope that you will you won't stop here

132with us that you'll continue and getting this message out dr hill i just want to echo the board and let you know your intentionality is so critical as you've mentioned and uh in recognizing that it was just an article i read the other um yesterday and it said diverse teams feel that's comfortable and that's why they perform better and it's amazing when you know when as a team it's that friction that you know that drives you and you never grow in your comfort zone and sometimes you have to make yourself become uncomfortable to advance the agenda holistically and so i appreciate that is what you mentioned the intentionality because those are specific things and you know having goals to be inclusive you know inclusivity is just so incredibly important for for identifiable role models as

133we look at a diverse population that we're serving for young people to be able to look up and and see themselves i mean i i can't imagine i mean i knew when i wanted the you know head football coach that tony dungy was somebody that that i aspired to be like and because i saw myself and him when i was in the military colin powell was somebody that i aspired to because you know i said i can get there you know and so that intentionality is just so important and i appreciate you doing that and the work you're doing anything and i can assist in that in your endeavor please feel free to help i echo everything that my colleagues have said and and we appreciate all the work and in brain power that goes

134into being intentional as we as we're talking about and and searching out those different ways that we can help our students to be as successful as possible and a huge part of that is having as he said dr hill said identifiable role models someone that looks and sounds like me is so important for a child's psyche and for their for their growth and it goes back to what we talked about before as as far as education is not just academic it should hit so many different um avenues of a child and it should be holistic in its approach and it's so important for that for a child to be able to identify and not just identify at um more basic levels but as christian said before on on those higher levels and and give children

135something to aspire to and to look up to so i appreciate all of the work that you all are doing and i think it's so important for us to look into and consider the teachers perspectives and as ms saracen has said it's going to be that dual role of some what we can do right now and then also thinking long term for the future and i think that grow your own role is is that model is going to be so important to reach people in your community and to elevate the the profession of of education to where the people that are in our communities aspire to be educators in their in their communities and stay in their communities and partner with all of the stakeholders that are involved the business leaders i think it's going

136to be really important for business leaders and community leaders to listen to future teachers about what they would like to see in their communities what's going to make me stay here because we know that's a large part of that teacher turnover is that you know it's just there's not really much to do in this town so so a lot of times we lose teachers because there's just not what what they need to live their lives and for their families in that community so once again it goes back to that that um community engagement piece where all of the stakeholders in the in in the area are working together so that we can grow our own teachers and retain them and give them a fruitful and enjoyable life where they are so that we can multiply

137that and keep it going in that community so once again thank you so much for your help and and and the research that you're doing and the work that you're doing where you are and um anything that we can do to help and perpetuate that we we're definitely willing to do that so thank you all right so if not that's it we appreciate mr lookadoo and we appreciate all of you thank you all for joining us today it was great to meet you great to see you so we'll move on to our next part of the agenda which is state board of education members reports so i'll start with ms chambers do you have anything to report okay miss woods miss mcfettrich dr moore miss newton and dr hill stepped away for a moment okay

138i don't have anything new right now so we'll just move on to our commissioner's report so secretary key okay uh thank you madam chair we are going to start the commissioner's report today with carly sarraceni and dr pride they have been doing some work that i think you're going to find very exciting it's a task force that they're working through with on a truly on a national level but the work that it's that they're doing is going to have a big impact on our state and support for teachers so i'll just let them take it away good afternoon welcome afternoon pride assistant commissioner of learning services and of course as secretary keith said carlos arsenio and i are going to be presenting today and so we are delighted to share desi's participation in the council

139of chief state school officers which we will reference at ccso instructional materials and professional development network and you know bessie we understand that high quality instructional materials are an important lever and that it provides our students with great appropriate assignments it influences teachers instruction sets the bar for expectations and it's important and most of all it supports student engagement and we also know that schools are unable to increase access to these resources at scale if the use of high quality instructional materials are not coupled with a clear vision um that includes professional development and training that is grounded in those resources and so we are here to share uh the work that we're doing in this network all right and we have here our vision and mission and i'm sure you know this very well

140let me put this here because the work that we're doing with in partnership with ccsso in the impd network it helps us to further our vision and mission this work is student focused and it provides us with you know strategic plans to got to better guide and support our schools in selecting high quality instructional materials and so today what we want to do and we've kind of already started that is to explain the purpose of the impd network identify our theory of action establish connections that already exist to our state supports and so we know we don't want this work to seem like another thing but something that's already integrated into school improvement processes we'll explain why impd matters identify some outcomes targets and key priorities and next steps and so carly and i will

141kind of switch in and out on different pieces in your thinking learning services and educator effectiveness well we want this to be a seamless where it's k through 12 and also all of our education prep programs so that our candidates will lead those programs with those skills for high quality instructional materials to be able to have the knowledge and tools to select those so we have been doing this with some other groups and and uh going around and we're not going to do this little activity but this is just an activity that we do to kind of give us what do you think high quality instructional materials what do they mean to you and so we have gotten a lot of feedback and we're keeping the feedback so that we can go back and look

142at where we were when we first presented to to the very end of our timeline of where we want to be and where we're going and so our vision is to make sure and ensure that all students across the state have that equitable access to those highly qualified quality materials that are grade level appropriate for instruction and and include those responsive practices that are just so important to give those opportunities to our students to reach those college and career life goals and then we want to make sure that our arkansas educators have that strong foundation and that pedagogical content knowledge and readiness to identify what is uh hqim and you'll hear us say that that's that high quality instructional materials and how to implement it so we want to make sure that our teachers and

143our future teachers have those tools and resources to not only identify them but also implement them into their practices so here is how we as arkansas have defined hqim it's those curriculum materials that are aligned of course to our state academic standards that include those evidence-based strategies those inclusive practices and we want to ensure that it's embedded in our teacher support systems we want that high quality instructional materials to take in account the need and the diversity that we just spoke about for our students that we meet our students where they need to be met and be that culturally responsiveness lends when we choose the materials we choose in order to teach and so that's why it's so important and of course we want to set make sure that we have expectations that meet as

144they look at curriculum and materials that we all have high quality and what does that mean expectations look like and that's where we will help them have the criteria to look at to choose the right materials to utilize in their classroom and so we are going to use those ed reports which is just one thing that we will base it on but we will have other criteria as we bring in stakeholders and those voices and i know t lag is coming up at the end of this month i know you've got your invitation so we do want to bring in those teacher voices and we have heard that they want to be part of it and so that's why it's across the agency too different so that we are getting that voice then again our

145theory of action is if we establish this across the state and and support this model then we can accelerate that teaching and learning by leveraging these high quality instructional materials and then that's how we can incentivize those lease to adopt it and want to adopt it and make sure those teachers are supported with training and coaching so they can not only skillfully select but also implement and use and if our epps which are those educator prep programs which is higher ed and some of our routes we want to make sure that this is aligned to their competency so that they can leave those programs well grounded in what is a high quality instructional material and then that will cause all students in arkansas to have teachers who are prepared to engage them in learning with

146these high quality instructional materials and i think it goes back to dr pride so thank you carly so the next piece of this is that we know that what we teach it matters and as desi joined the impd network the research really began to lift those important things that are necessary for this work it's evident in the research that what we teach matters and this quote here from john hopkins institute i think says it very clearly that you know the quality that quality curriculum matters to student achievement what's more there is emerging evidence to suggest that quality curriculum has a larger cumulative impact on student achievement than more common school improvement interventions and at a lower cost and so you know as we look at research we see even more how this is very applicable

147to the work that we're doing here in the state of arkansas and if there's something we know that is critical and key to student achievement then we want we want to do that for our schools also as we have been strategic in this work we've seen lots of connections to our arkansas state supports and i know you guys probably remember really well the work we've done with high reliability schools especially the work that our state did at level one would save supportive and collaborative cultures the statewide book study and that was a great study and then the work that we've continued through our teaching and learning collaborative four levels two around effective teaching in every classroom and a guaranteed and viable curriculum so this work with the instructional materials and professional development network fits right

148into our already existing state supports and it won't seem to be something different rather than it's just scaling the work so that we're ensuring that all of our students finish strong to um actualize their goals after high school and um right smack in the center is our vision for teaching and learning and i know you've heard lots about that piece in the middle around god for life but if you look at the outer pieces these are the lenses of learning and i think carly mentioned earlier that you know one of our focuses in this work is to ensure that all of our students are actively literate and you've seen a lot of that work move forward through rise and through other initiatives that are focused on foundational skills whether that's in literacy math or other

149content areas and also the other lens is that they will be critical thinkers and and then finally community engaged and so those lenses of learning as we think about high quality instructional materials are very important and so this work it just it just naturally fits with what we're trying to do and of course you know those are academic courses and standards are measures by which we know if students are on track at each grade level and so that's there in our vision for teaching and learning and then at the very center are those personal competencies which are lifted through our guide for life work and you guys saw susan jobe earlier today highlighting the guide for life work and so um all of that folds into this work and fits very nicely with high quality

150instructional materials and through this work that we're doing ccc with ccsso and then finally our probably newest support and initiative around um digital learning our guidebook we see so many connections to this work and we know that many of our teachers have been out there adjusting to remote and blended instruction some on-site some off-site and that you know schools are out there searching for resources that are going to give them a great start with digital learning so this fits in very nicely okay maybe the operator did well i'm stuck yeah i might need a nudge i'm not hey okay thank you oh it looks like our graphics a little distorted here i'm not sure why but as we think about our work with the impd network our strategy we have five key priorities and as

151you see the first priority is communication which we are starting now talking with you and other stakeholder groups signaling quality professional learning educator preparation again carly talked about our focus from all the way from pre-k to 20 in epp programs and then of course data and analysis and as you see those prongs there for each of those five key priorities those are things that were we know that are essential to this work and so this is our first sort of round in our state right information build awareness to the priorities in this in the work that we're doing and again carly mentioned that we're engaging educators the first thing we'd like to do the very next step is to organize a working group comprised of arkansas educators and leaders to advise on how we determine

152our arkansas high quality instructional materials guidance or lists for math and ela materials and carly will talk about how we will kind of move into some other subject areas later and then we want to launch a professional development cohort that will support the successful adoption and skillful use of high quality instruction materials in math and ela and again just to connect to our current reality again we know that what we teach matters now more than ever teachers deserve great instructional materials so they can focus on what they do best and that's getting students excited to learn and i know you know when i spend 11 years in the classroom i'm most excited when my students are excited and so if i can get a strong great start to do that that is probably more more

153valuable than money and how does this really connect to what we're doing now again i've already mentioned that teachers are spreading their wings to teach virtually as well as in person hqim ensures that our teachers have a strong start a starting place you don't spend hours upon hours looking for something to teach a particular concept you'd have a great place to start and then it just it just allows them to focus more time on on the learning instead of just creating sitting trying to think of of what to write and we know this is all about um really scaling the word continuing to evolve and we see digital learning is important in that and we have a recent survey from our lea insights that reveals that 85 of our teachers said that they create their

154own digital content or use a mixture of digital content they create or their district creates or that's created by a content provider so again i think this work and in our vision vision and mission to lead and support this work is going to be critical and important and we're excited about that so carly's going to come she's going to wrap up and she's going to share some outcomes and targets that we have thank you for your time today when dr pride was talking about that survey over 10 000 took that survey across the state and we had input in the survey with t lag so that's what we we're not just giving surveys and not doing anything with the data a lot of times they say that we do not do that we're making sure

155we connect with what they said that's going on in their classroom and trying to meet those needs so what are our outcomes and targets starting in 2021 our main target is going to try to make sure that we hit all those stakeholder groups and hear all those voices and communicate out from those early adopter groups that have engaged in development of state hqim those high quality instructional material list and adoption guidance resources we've already gone through that with ela with the rise of the reading and now we're focusing going right on into the math and we want to make sure that our higher ed and epps are engaged in the process because as we learn we want them coming along right with us so that it's not we hear from higher ed that our educator

156prep programs that we have an initiative and they're never in the ground floor with us so we're making a concerted effort to get them in on the ground floor next week we will be speaking to the deans the council of deans for uh higher ed across the state and so we want to make sure they feel that they're in on the ground floor we want we would like 80 percent of our lea adoptions in ela and math are those high quality instructional materials and and articulate those plans to connect the use between state endorsed high quality instructional materials and some of your micro credentialing so that our teachers can grow from that and maybe even become those master teachers designation or lead teachers in identifying high quality instructional materials and we would like to have

157that hundred percent of leas have the long term plan to make sure their their professional development is aligned but also that support and so we will pilot this year for districts that have historically had the least access or availability of high quality instructional materials and put those focuses on the adoption and implementation of hqin and then again we're going to focus on that data collection and uh not only will we choose four districts but at the same time we're looking at districts we're going to pay our higher ed and those epp programs so that we support from the ground up and also make sure our mentoring program also meets that needs of supporting the teachers by the end of 2023 we hope that we have a strategy to address the challenges and gaps coming from

158the adoptions of both ela and the math for year one and year two and that we can really look at the data collection that not only includes classroom observation data but student and parent surveys we want to hear from all those voices and then also at student achievement measures from our state diagnostic and formative and assessment summative assessments to indicate that we're growing in the from the use of quality instructional materials and so we want to increase the number of the hqim and we want to go from not only ela and math but eventually fold in science by the end of 2023 and then by 2025 we hope that we have 80 percent of adoption for both ela and math in the state and that 80 percent of our teachers agree that these are high

159quality instructional materials and they have the professional learning and support to be able to provide that in their classrooms and again we want to offer a robust professional development centered around skillful use of the high quality instructional materials and of course we want that 80 percent of students are proficient into the in those fundamental skills in literature literacy we want those students meeting those grade level expectations in speaking and reading and writing skills and in math we want to make sure they have those fundamental concepts and problem solving and so we thank you for letting us present to you today about the initiative that we're working with ccsso on the impd and we will hopefully start rolling out some pd in june at our summit and we're not we're providing sessions not only for teachers

160but for higher ed as well and our epp programs and this would be where we would have you fill out a survey that we want to we want to collect that data from the very beginning so that we can see that when we go out we speak and then the professional development will follow that it all seems seamless and that it's a smooth rollout so thank you for letting us talk today to you about our next initiative dr pride she's really just letting me come along for the ride we have some great teams and that we do we have a really great team between the two of us yeah yeah stay close to the mic uh yeah and that we you all may have some questions and and we certainly want to uh take those

161but i just i want to say you know just a a story that um to me stresses the importance of this work uh and and carly you may not even remember this conversation but uh you know when miss saracini was at a district and was trying to understand why that district was you know losing teachers those teachers were leaving and she was the one responsible for conducting uh the exit interviews and she told me the story of this one teacher that said you know i have a family i have kids and i'm spending all of my weekends and all of my evenings looking for material to bring to my classroom i can't do that anymore i have to have a life and you know that it really made me think okay what what is it

162that you know what's the state's role i mean we all believe in local control we all believe curriculum adoption and all it's statutorily and rightfully in the elected boards purview but without the right support from the state to one understand what high quality instructional materials are and the professional development that's why you're seeing the two these two units the leaders of these two units working together and their teams working together on this and extending it to the ed prep programs and i will brag on on both of them the ed prep programs i think we by their own admission for the leaders of those programs we're at the best place we've been as far as relationship between the department and the the programs and the deans uh in well in recent memory uh maybe ever

163i don't know it's a great partnership but it's because we're looking for these solutions so that individual teachers or even teams of teachers aren't the ones out there having to find it all and they're spending so much time looking for the material as i mentioned in the presentation they're not having time to focus on what it is i actually want my kids to to learn how do i get them to that place how do i get them excited and engaged in the learning so they have very uh they have some very uh aggressive goals uh they are very aggressive goals but i think uh those aggres the aggressiveness and the goals underscores the importance of this uh of this work so we will be happy to take any questions that y'all might have but i

164do love i just love like the combination of the work together um i think that's fantastic and i think that just elevates how that's going to play out so i i thank you for that and to secretary key your your story um i think that that's a huge huge piece of this for teachers of how do you um we know there's going to be time where you've got a plan and you've got a great and that that's part of it but it can't be constant outside of that time and so that's i appreciate y'all's input on that and your priority okay miss chambers miss woods ms mcpetrich i just like to say i enjoyed your presentation i would like to get a copy of it just so i can look at it and read through

165it a little bit more and absorb some of it so thank you very much though it is linked on the on the agenda now it wasn't earlier but it is now so you might just need to refresh that page but it should be there dr moore yes thank you all for sharing so much i i think i still have just some more things to learn but what is is the role still that instructional materials are a local district choice well ultimately they're the classroom teacher you know in in at the building level but the curriculum itself you know the curriculum and that's where we there's an ongoing process of educating the public on what are standards right which that's our responsibility your responsibility we we develop those you all adopt those then there's curriculum and

166then there's a components that within that curriculum and which constitute the high quality instructional materials so it's kind of a layered situation that's the best way i would describe it but i'm talking and my experts are standing right there secretary key this process would be about really signaling what is high quality and providing a process by which districts would go through their adoption process but oftentimes you know there are pieces that you know may not have been lifted before and we want to provide that leadership and guidance and so that piece is really important but as commissioner key said that alignment to our standards is critical so some of those pieces you know we put forward if you remember our vision for teaching and learning but this is still a process by which you know

167districts do adopt their own materials are districts required to select certain curriculums and report that to you all like do you all have a do you all know what curriculums and instructional materials they're using or is that so currently right now we don't know what everyone's using um but you know that's some information that would be great to know because in terms of us collecting data at some point we don't the only reason we would know all the way we would know reaching some of these milestones and metrics would be to know but currently we don't have a formal way by which we say report what you have now we do have an expectation in terms of our rise initiative you know in our right to read law that the expectation is that there would

168be resources that are aligned to the signs of freedom so in that regard if there's not a choice from the list they could submit a rationale for a different program but there is an expectation by 2021 i think that you would have if you purchase that you can purchase a resource that is aligned and that's the only area in which we have issued or are responsible for issuing a list okay i i think i um i started my career in the wild west with the common core i like to say when it was right when it came first year or maybe the year before and then the first year and so like there was nothing it per se um so is a district required to have a curriculum for every subject they understand under the

169standards for accreditation yes they are my um and i don't want to be critical or push back too hard but i almost want to say could why isn't the goal not 100 of is it because that's not within your control um or is it that there are so many not effective instructional curriculums or what all the components that go into that eighty percent versus pushing that to a hundred so i think um are you talking about the foundational piece or eighty percent of new adoption eighty percent of new adoptions would be high quality um yeah so you know we would in some instances there are already districts who have some high quality resources and you know may not need to adopt new uh resources but they may add professional development but we're hoping that's sort

170of a great number to know that you've pretty much saturated the state yeah we would hope that 100 of our districts have high quality construction materials but in terms of a metric we just know by 2025 80 is probably especially safe it's a little understanding but we feel like that's a great a good number especially when you think about just sort of reaching the masses 80 is it is a great is the barrier to that that districts don't have the capacity to select the high quality or is it such that the market is so i guess i'm having a hard time understanding why aren't all districts going with high quality instructional materials to begin with and if they don't have them scrapping them and changing well i would say that i think that's why we're

171so excited about this work is that we get to then provide some help in this area because you know how do you signal it what are all of the pieces that are really important to me the needs of all students so we're bringing forth that body of research and signaling here are the things you would want to look for like we know we want to align to our standards right but there are other pieces like inclusive practices like high leverage practices like teacher embedded support so the teacher isn't wondering what piece of this comes first in the progression of learning yeah and other pieces you know like digital components and so and those points that help us to differentiate or to tear supports and so there are other pieces that i think think signal quality

172and i think too as the body of research has shifted in terms of from think about the balance literacy to the signs of reading it's important for us to continue to signal that so i think districts would be excited to have those signals and they will use the resources and if you've got it i think it's just a process and so we're hoping for 100 um but i think we just said by 2025 a measurable goal of 80 percent of new adoptions with that with the expectation that we have lots of districts out there who do have high quality um stacy smith and i were talking about this and i kind of asked her the same question and she said it was a common core back to that that process of adoption when so much

173of of that of that effort with common core was you know finding those open source materials that fit in and the time that was spent so what we saw was the stories of the teacher that carly had had interviewed in the exit interview is because the focus had been on adopting this those standards and then finding those materials out there and curating yeah every teacher was having it was curated in a lot of cases curating their own i think that's also when you saw the increase of curriculum coordinators around the state but if you don't know what's out there that's high quality it's really hard to curate something that may or may not exist and this process is going to to help them had we had this i would say and just taking a wild

174risky statement here but that if this type of process had been in place when common core standards had been adopted the the pushback would not have been as great on the standards because there would have been something to accompany and complement that that actually made sense in the classroom that's what created a lot of the pushback with parents is because what they were hearing and seeing in the classroom didn't make sense to them and and so you know it ended up becoming a very controversial situation but you know with our standards we have now our arkansas standards uh this work is going to be a tremendous resource for our teachers that's exciting thank you mr newton i want to say thank you thank you thank you thank you i wish you'd been here 40 years

175ago but i can remember as a teacher you know the first time that i had to choose instructional materials nobody had given me any training at all and i had to you know whatever i picked i knew i had lived with for five years and in if you picked the wrong thing then it by experience i can tell you i sit in the floor for hours and hours and hours looking for something that would fit my kids that would teach this standard and it could be a nightmare and at times it was and you know you think about vendors when common core came out every vendor has a shining sticker on their materials whether it was that or not and not just common core whatever was the math curriculum at the particular time they all

176had that sticker didn't matter what it was you know they all have that sticker and and i'm sure it's still the same today you know and and vendors can make things sound good look good but you have to have the the training to sit down and know your students and know what know your standards and and know does this fit and does this reach the need and this has been needed for so many years you know just to have uh just to even have a list to choose from is a giant step forward for for teachers and the people that are that are working so hard for schools and and so you know because nobody's saying the big word that's in the in the room right now is funding uh you know if you pick

177a material and you make a wrong choice you don't somebody said well you scrap it pick another one you can't do that because there's there you know my administrators would tell me well you picked one this year i'm sorry there's not any more money you know and you'll just have to wait because we have all these other needs and so so you know this has been needed for a long long time and i'm i am this is the best news i've heard all day and so so i am thrilled with this you know i can't i cannot tell you how thrilled i am because i've been in the position that that so many of these teachers are trying you know i'm sure joel is from a larger district and is not as as needed but

178in some of our smaller districts this bro and i i'm going to call it a burden this burden falls on the classroom teacher to say you know what are we going to do and how are we going to and we're going to live with this and does it fit my kids needs to well does it teach the standards well is it going to meet the needs of the the testing that they're going to have within the year and nobody ever told me how to do this and with all the other things on their plate this is just one more thing that's piled on there and so this has been needed for a long time and i am so appreciative of this that and i think this is this is going to be very well received

179in the state by teachers so one question with that is funding if we're going to have a list of high quality instructional materials are there going to be any funds available for districts to say my my curriculum right now that my instructional materials do not meet that and we need to have high quality because our kids need it now we don't need to wait five years or whatever so what help are you going to give me well i'll tackle that one this has become a focus area of the it's not walton family founder walton philanthropic group i think so so they are very engaged in this bigger conversation about high quality instructional materials so we've had conversations with them but here's where i think uh every district has an opportunity with their esther funds and

180i was going to talk about this later but i'll go ahead and talk about it now so you have esther one that was uh to helps you know with the immediate need of relief for covid esther ii uh was an extension of that you know but also what is in esther 2 is well let me get to ester 3. esther 3 which is i don't know if that's what that's what we've been calling it esther 3 esther 2 was 500 million dollars distributed to districts around the state what we're hearing is that esther 3 will be double that wow and districts will have the responsibility 20 of that if if at all if it all comes out the way we're hearing that it's going to come out i think the president signed it today the

181big law but 20 percent of of that has to be for learning loss and so we're looking to see okay is is a purchase of high quality instructional materials is that something that falls under that we need to do this to recover learning loss those are the types of conversations that we'll be having with districts and the money will be there i mean it's this is more money than uh aura back in 2008 2009 or i guess 2009 by several factors i mean it's a huge amount of money we want to help districts spend it in the wisest possible way that's going to get them the biggest bang for the buck and the impact on their students so if the timing for this work is um couldn't be better okay because uh this will help

182them spend that money on those things that you just described great that's that's that's super nice so thank you thank you thank you i think dr moore touched on a question that i had and a concern that i had as far as um we know that it's you know it's a district we love that local control as far as districts being able to choose what curriculum is is good for their community and what they may be even possibly working with the co-op in that area however this has been a concern of mine i know some districts do it there's no requirement but there's some districts that will make available to the public what their curricula is on their website and that's something that i think is so important especially with this sr3 uh funding coming

183through there's i think it's important for there to be some sort of accountability on that district level as far as where that money is being spent and what that curricula looks like from a community and family engagement perspective as a parent i want to see what curricula is is is being used for my child's education i want to be able to look through it i want to be able to ask questions so i think that's something that we really need to look at in the future i know it's not mandated now but that i think is something that maybe we should do as far as mandating that that is made available maybe on the district website where that curricula is is made available to to look at and for parents not just parents but other

184stakeholders in the community their partners our business leaders our clergy people who have a stake in our students education and making it making it available for all of the partners to be engaged in in another aspect of our children's education so i love the work that you all have done i think this is so vital and so needed and as uh secretary key said it's so timely so thank you very much for what you all are doing and i look forward to seeing what comes of this in the future okay next i'd like to give you a brief update on some of the legislation that is part of the department's package and the governor's package but the two big ones for the governor the teacher's salary increase we have had great progress over the last

185couple of weeks and conversations with the aaea and with the bill the legislative leadership on that and so now we have a bill house bill and senate bill 504 they're identical bills but the the chairs of both education committees representative cozart and senator irvin have filed those bills and we expect that those will start going through committee next week this is a 25 million dollar increase to the budget to help improve the average teacher salaries through a mechanism whereby we create a categorical fund as i described to you a couple of months ago similar to the esa or alternative learning and the other funds that are out there but not all districts would get it districts would get it based on their eligibility and we have had a lot of conversations about it and we

186are getting a lot of support for that so that's next week i think our computer science legislation it has passed the senate and i believe that the house sponsor plans to run that in the house next week anthony is on if he wants to add any comment to that or give me a nod that that's the schedule that we're yep okay thumbs up there our school's our revision of our school safety law that has passed the house and we'll be going over to the senate some of the big package bills you know that we still have a number of bills that are haven't really gotten started yet because it's sometimes as the sponsors have so many things going it's hard to get them pinned down to say okay can you run this bill but next

187week we'll start making that a little bit some progress there but career coaches i mean there's no we have found no opposition to that so that bill is going to get going but the bills that we have actually made it to law our esa bill and i want to complement the work of dr pfeffer on that from the concept through the presentation of the bill and committee to helping the sponsors with the talking points on the floor and getting that through that that has passed and has been signed by the governor a pause to adaf school accountability obviously that was one of the first bills that passed during the session and then our plsp updates that has passed as well so and then as typically happens in a session things come up that we don't

188expect and we respond to those things and you all will remember the the conversations about uh house bill 1218 and house bill 1231 uh regarding the uh mainly regarding the issues surrounding the 1619 project well um and and dr moore you you know in our previous topic talking about the issue of local control you know the department felt like and i testified against the bill on 1619 because one we felt like that that was a usurpation of the local control there are laws in place already that where districts are required to do certain things and local boards required to adopt those types of curricula but what was missing was a opportunity for parental involvement in that process um and uh again bragging on dr pfeffer she um she remembered you know from a conversation she'd

189had with one of her parents a former uh a parent of a former student i believe it was um and and that triggered something to think well i think we had a policy that allowed parents to to know what was or to inspect what was being taught and we did some digging and we found that there was there was a not a bill there was a model policy from school boards association that probably every school is adopted that uses the asba model policies that allowed parents the opportunity to inspect instructional materials so as a compromise we approached the governor saying governor we know this is an issue this these bills aren't the right way to approach it in our opinion we would offer this let's codify this model policy and then extend it to deal

190with the situations that the representative lowery had spoken of where there were events or activities that created uh that were found to be objectionable by by some of the parents and give the parents the opportunity to know what's going on with those prior to the you know prior to those things happening and students being put in a very bad place like give parents the opportunity to see those and talk about those and challenge those at the various levels locally the teacher the principal and then the administration school board so those are that bill has passed and was adopted with overwhelming support so we are very very happy that we could help find a reasonable solution to that topic yes ma'am what's that the bill number on that one i was afraid you were going to

191ask me that um i think that uh no i think i have it it's uh house bill 1464. okay and i can look real quickly to see if it's actually made it through all the all right it is it's past the house so it's still going to be acted need to be acted on in the senate um but at this point we we're not aware of any significant opposition at all to that thank you and then again esther 3 i was going to mention that also in addition to the issue with the material instructional materials we are always working to get clarification from the u.s department of education on exactly what does this mean so one of the issues that superintendents have been asking us about is because of the loss of enrollment in this

192year obviously that affects the way we fund schools that affects their funding for next year so there is a bill by senator ingram that is a mechanism to hold districts harmless for that student loss by making an adjustment for one year to the declining enrollment uh formula but what we're learning is that with estre2 there is considerable flexibility and we anticipate the same level of flexibility in esther 3 that districts will be able to use their money their federal money to fill holes in the budget for things for budget impacts that are due to covet i think it's not i mean it's very reasonable to say your loss of students this year was a result of covin because parents you know either either went to a virtual academy they went to some other option anyway

193for whatever reason you have a lower budget this year than or next year than you did this year because of your student enrollment loss and rather than changing the formula on the state level for for one year if this is something that is available to them and the feds are okay with them using it this way then we want to make that available to them so that's some clarification in our communication to the districts that as again as we have learned and more about uh this administration's uh goals and and the new secretary of education um and and what that message is going to be to states then we are modifying our message to the districts on what how they can use those funds so that's a that's a pretty significant issue um and that's

194but we are i think we all agree on on the leadership team we feel better about that today than we did last week and ms kaufman and her team did a fantastic job not only are they trying to work with the federal cohorts to understand what it is that we have to do and what we can do and all those things but they're also fielding questions and calls daily from school folks federal program coordinators and all saying you know what is it that we can do with these funds we're seeing more federal dollars in a concentrated period of time than we've ever seen before and as i said earlier spending those funds wisely is something that we have a responsibility to assist and provide support as it relates to because i know you all are

195definitely involved in state takeover schools i mean you know you as as a state board you all have made decisions on so you've got lee county palm bluff dollar way and earl and in those situations we are working diligently to make sure that those dollars that are coming into those districts are being spent that in the way that will have the greatest impact on those students so as we get more and as stacy develops the reports uh coming up on the quarterly reports for those districts we'll have more information for you on what we're looking at there too so i'm happy to take any questions about anything i'd covered and anything that i didn't cover that you're wanting to ask me about last month you gave us a sheet i believe it was last month

196on the esser 2 funding and in the breakdown it was really helpful as you get into esther 3 can you do the same for us as well we we will when we get that information absolutely because the uh the state set aside okay so so that uh paper that that one pager we gave on esther two uh was about you know how we plan to spend the money uh to support pre-k to support mental health to support learning loss all those things well the our understanding for sr3 is that the states will be responsible for spending a certain percentage of our set aside on learning loss since that was kind of a focus of our esther ii plan we may have to make some adjustments to that uh and the extra three dollars to be

197used in accordance with whatever the federal government says we we must do so uh there there's going to be a i i suspect that we will be making some uh plan changes and we'll keep you updated on what those look like and and re-prioritizations uh as we move forward we don't have enough information right now in esther three to really say uh but i'd say in the next uh over the coming weeks ccsso um and the other organizations that we work with and are members of will be providing us information on details and obviously what we get from the us department of education will be very helpful to inform you on what our plans will be also um i noticed you've got your ade summit dates is this going to be in person do you

198know yet to the extent we can we are hoping for that to be in person but obviously the mod it won't be like the first summit which was all in person but we anticipate there will be uh a blended approach to that uh observing all of the appropriate safety precautions that would be in place at that time but we didn't want to we didn't want to miss an opportunity and have two years in a row that we didn't have something that we just got started and had so much uh positive feedback on so we're definitely going to be mindful of the safety of the participants and so there'll be a i think a good balance of in person versus online with the proper precautions in place do you have a location yet it'll be hot

199springs it's going to be the hot springs convention center unless somebody texts me that tells me otherwise that may be listening to me but i think we've been working with them on the contracts and and all those things so yeah and obviously state board members will be more than welcome to attend any portion of those sessions virtually or in person as as you feel led okay no uh don benton it's not in hawaii okay so he just texted me so i'm gonna call him out miss chambers did you have any questions good thank you okay miss woods all right mr lookadoo all right well with that are you are you finished secretary key okay well thank you so much for that report in that update i know y'all are so busy over there with this

200legislative package but um this is going to help our students in the in the near future and for years to come hopefully to change some policy in in a the most effective way so we appreciate that uh miss purino did we have any public comment okay thank you all right well with that if we have no further business then i'll take a motion to adjourn so moved by dr moore do i have a second miss mcphetrich all in favor say aye all right we are adjourned thank you so much for your time today y'all have a great weekend and we'll see you soon bye