001All right, it is uh good timing. It is 6:30. Let's uh get ready for meeting, I guess. Let's do our pledge and then moment of [Music] silence. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. A moment of [Music] Amen. All right. Well, we know Mindy has a steak ready. So, I don't think it was. All right, Mr. Martin. All right. Well, thank you. Welcome to the November board meeting and we hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving next week. Absolutely. Um first up we have our consent agenda from the October meeting. Are there any questions? No. Okay. With that, I'd like to make the recommendation that the consent agenda finance reports and board
002minutes of the regular board meeting held on October 14, 2024 be approved as a All right. We have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion. Motion by Mindy. I'll second. Second by Jessica. All in favor? None opposed. All right. On our student achievement and success, our students are not here. So, we're going to skip over item A and we're going to go to innovation grant and that's Miss Lori Jim. Hello. Um, so this is a different grant from the last one I talked about that was modernization. This is innovation. Um, so this is a different grant from the state that we were awarded for our medical pathways around $10,000. So, we're getting some new equipment for them. So, um, a a blood pressure training system, vital signs monitor package, and a
003CPR infant training management package for them. So, some great equipment. So, they'll be able to do what they need to do. Supposed to help with HOSA and their competitions and stuff as well. So, update the equipment to work with. Can't wait to walk into one of those trainings again. That's awesome. Congratulations. Thank you. All right. Up next we have uh Miss Martel and she's going to share on our Walton grant. Yes, we are excited to receive on Friday another $480,000 grant from the Walton Family Foundation. So we're excited that's the third or fourth one. Yeah, I think you're on for a million. So I'm excited about that. Um, team ROA is going to be a focused on middle level into junior high career, early career exploration, externships, and um, opportunities for students and families. So,
004it has a big family focus to it, helping to get our families more engaged in that readiness and career exploration while they're still engaged maybe with their students a little bit more. So, um, I'm excited with that. Um there is written in the grant as of today um a position to manage the grant in addition to some side and some things for teachers to earn as well as paid externship opportunities in industry and education throughout the summer for teachers and then hopefully to replicate that for our students and families during the school year. So we're excited about what all that means. Um there'll probably be some trickle up into the high school as well as the purchase of um a career exploration system that will uh trend with our kids um from 5th through 12th
005grade um called youth science. It's one we're exploring as recommended by the Walton Family Foundation. So um we're looking into some opportunities. That uh first award will be in December 2024 and then it's a it's 480,000 over two years. Our first one was 800,000 and it went to do the medical clinic and some things when the high school was being built, some of that facility and structure. Then we wrote um I think a couple other around $480,000 Blackhawk pantry and things like that, career exploration, the rec configuration of the quad and some things that came out of that. And then this one will be focused on some middle level and junior high exploration. Great. Exciting amazing stuff. Yeah. Excited. We're thankful for the partnership. Great. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Um up next we have
006our action items and our first item is out of state trip request. I know last month y'all approved winter guard but when I put the cities down I mixed all the dates up. So we need to redo it to get the um city with the correct date matched up. It's still three trips. still Ozark, Springfield, Nixon, Missouri, but Bates are on here now. I had a little bit of an issue, I think. And then our intermediate and middle school are going to their annual shop with the cop trip to the to Walmart, but it is still over the state line. And then our our biggest trip is our DECA couple of DECA students and our advisor. I'm traveling to Orlando, Florida on January 29th through um February 2nd of next year. Are there any questions?
007No. Okay. With that, I'd like to make the recommendation that we approve the state as presented. Okay. We have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? A motion. Motion by Eric. I'll second. Second by Ryan. All in favor? None opposed. We did it. We're good. All right, thank you. Um, next is four transfers. We have um six students um six families requesting transfer for six students. Um into the district um no one's request requesting transfer out. We have space in all all the grade levels. So with that, I'd like to make the recommendation that we approve the board for transfers as presented. Okay, any questions? All right, we have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? Oh, Jessica's going to make it. I'll motion. There you go. Second. I'll second. All in favor? None opposed.
008Okay. Up next is our enrollment analysis. And I'll shar some information on that earlier with y'all. But um what we're running into is in November of 2025 years from now, our master facilities plan is is due to the state for the 26 27 funding cycles um with them. And right now they use the same metrics across all the state for every school district and for the next 10 years they are showing us growing about 400 students over the next 10 years. We feel that's a little low. Um over the past um four years we've had a little over 1,400 new residences you know whether it's R1, R2 or R3 um come online. And we've grown about 400 students. You'll see that in our report to the public in a bit over the past four years.
009Um I've talked with Mayor C and Mr. Fi. He does a lot of the data at the city. Um right now we have approximately 1,600 new residencies whether it's R1, R2 or R3 and what they call the Q um that have been approved for building and we have multiple new developments coming online as well. So we feel that number may be a little low for for Pidge school district. So what we're needing to do is a deeper dive into our demographics that will provide us um you know population trends, socioeconomic factors and just a lot of other metrics that we're able to use. I cannot present what I think our growth will be to the um uh facilities department. They need a third party. So is the city is the city the third party? No
010sir. Um RSP and associate. Oh, they actually have contracted out. Will be our um will be our demographer. Um you know, RSP and Associates are very familiar with Northwest Arkansas. They just finished up um their demographic study for Bentville. Bentville's going to go through the same the same things we are with growth at at a larger scale. Sure, of course. And I know the agreement's only for $13,000, but and that's way below the bid the threshold, the microurchase threshold, but seeing this is a professional service agreement, I need to have it board through so that we can go ahead and do the do the study. The study will take place after Christmas and finish up after spring break. So, we'll have plenty of time to have information and make some decisions on how our district
011moves forward with the facilities in the future. Okay. So the question about that so is this taking the place of like well could we we used to use like Dr. Stein or this in conjunction with Dr. Okay. Yes sir. So it's just a supplement. It's a third party. They're going to do analysis then they're going to give us some output some model data on projections in a future meeting. Right. Okay. Right. And the whole thing comes down to what does what does each type of residency bring? each unit bring per student. How many students are there? Is it point? It used to be, you know, seven, eight years. 10 years ago was about eight kids per new house. To be honest with you, thank goodness it's not8 kids anymore with um 1,400 new residencies in
012the past um yeah, in the past four years, thank goodness it's not. So, we need to know what, to be honest with you, what an apartment brings, what a town home brings, a single family home brings um per unit so that we can project out what it's going to be. They will give us a 10ear projection. So, that's the that's what the state requires projection. Okay. Did that answer your question? Yep. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. How long will it take? Um, we'll start right after Christmas and they'll be done Aprilish. It takes about 3 or 4 months. They um, one of the reasons why I'm recommending them is they already have a lot of the data because they just completed this study with Bonville. So, they have a lot of the Bon County
013data, okay, and the number of kids that we we have going back and forth through school choice through all those things. So great. It's a it it's a good compliment for us. Okay. Any other questions? Okay. That I'd like to make the recommendation that we approve the professional service agreement with RSP Associates. Okay. We have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion as presented. Nice. Ryan, I'll second. Second, Mindy. All in favor? None opposed. All right. Thank you. Up next is an academic affiliation agreement with Mercy Health. Um what this is, it's an agreement so that we can send our kids into the Mercy's building so that they can have practical experience um while they're here with us. It runs through Mr. involved in this class, his healthcare program, and it
014just allows our students to have that that level of involvement and experience outside of the classroom. Um, Mr. N, our council, has reviewed it and Mercy is currently reviewing it as well to make sure it meets everyone's needs. So, we feel pretty we feel pretty good about it. Any questions? Okay. With that, I'd like to make the recommendation to approve the academic affiliation agreement with health. Have a recommendation to be on a motion. Got a motion. Motion by Eric. Second. I'll second. Second by Jessica. All in favor? None opposed. Up next we have educational student service items. And first up is was pretty obvious on the update on the football field tracking. Uh, no. On the the football field track, we started uh a week ago uh with getting geoservice and their team on site.
015They started uh taking turf uh out on on Tuesday. And so at this point, we have completely removed all of the turf. Um they didn't do anything today uh with with the weather, but um uh we're really really pleased with u you know the progress and where we're at uh at this time. Uh we'll start uh our inside curving next. It will separate the track surface from the football field. Uh it's what we'll use to uh attach the turf to. Uh the the turf is based on tension across the the surface. And so they'll uh they'll they'll dig the trench and start going the turret next uh and then bringing in more rock to lay on top and compact the subsurface uh and then go from there. And so we've been in in uh close
016connection with those guys and and back and forth that feel good about what's happening and where we're at. I'd say we're ahead of schedule right now. It's not to say that the weather won't put us behind 11, but right now we're probably ahead of schedule. Good. Good. And our community took a lot of turf off. I was going to ask we're going to sell one by one squares for the fundraiser. Nostalgia there. You have to cut it with a skill saw. is not cutting it with the box cutter. I mean, that stuff's like that thick. Yeah. I was I would say half of the field went out on individual trailers. Wow. So, it's really heavy. I don't think I find that's funny to use. Um, up next we have our facilities use agreement. You know,
017that's something that, um, Mr. Ramy and Mr. Hand have been working on quite a bit. Um, you know, as our district continues to grow and as we add more programs, the the use of our facilities becomes tighter and tighter. And what our goal with this is to get it to where we basically have it a facilities fee um arranged or put out there that where we have group A, group B, group C, and we're group A. It's no charge. And that's our local our local groups, you know, pee football, pee-wee baseball, pee basketball, pee year, all those groups. Of course, that's no charge. Um to our student groups, our community partners and districtwide community nonprofit groups like a church or anything like that in order to come in and use it. But group B has
018a smaller fee schedule. And they are community for-profit groups. you know, that's if a I don't know, a for-profit group in town that would want to use the use one of our facilities or now district nonprofit group. And then there's also group C where the price is a little different, but that's out of district nonprofit for someone to come and rent our rent our facilities. And we need this to our our community's been very um very generous on our on approving facilities and I feel that they um they want it to be used for the PR community. Sure. and um you know with a no charge for local groups, local nonprofit groups, community groups within teams, I feel this is a pretty good agreement to where we have some structure to um be able to
019set, you know, give some parameters and to recoup some of our cost and expense because while we love partnering with our local local little league and is great because those are our kids and everything, there is cost to it and there's sometimes It's great for the school to absorb the cost when it's an outside organization. It's not okay for us to absorb the cost and that needs to be passed on to me. Sure. Y makes sense. So any questions? No. How many Yeah. How many conflicts like so for for like group all the groups and so group A is no charge. Yes sir. So, I was wondering like if you pick something like the pack or the middle school gym, how many conflicts typically are there and how do we resolve for conflict? Let's pick
020the indoor indoor. So, like how do we resolve like if you're saying Chick-fil-A can come in and take the indoor for I don't know what it is $150 per hour. We would it it goes by this group. this group in group A has first rights, group B has second, group C has perfect has third, but school has first. Okay, so school and then group A B C. And so if you have Sorry, just playing it out. If you have multiple group A requests, the school doesn't have a need. How do we resolve conflicts between group just group A? We we try our best to work it out. Our groups have been very good with that. Let's say it's batting cages and both teams need two batting cages and there's four. We may have two groups
021going in there at once. So, we really try to work with the groups to get everybody what they need. It just may not be the perfect time that they want, if that makes sense. It does because I feel like for no charge there's invariably conflicts. So, we had some some challenges when we first started. We had some groups that would reserve the space for an entire year and they do it as a placeholder because we didn't have anyers in our in our facilities. Yeah. So they do it as a placeholder. Baseball softball group, you know, hey, if it rains, I'll go inside. If it doesn't, we'll just go outside and practice. But then we had groups that needed the facility. It was already, you know, booked up or such. And so we we felt like
022we needed something to provide us some clarity. provide people that are looking to use the facilities some clarity and give us some parameters to work around so that we were all on the same page. So, this is really more of a communication piece to be able to go back and forth and go here's what we're doing. So, speaking of parameters, do we have like have we quantified how many peri um athletes or how many page students have to be on a team for it to be considered group A versus group B? Yes, we need we have that written down. Okay. So with this group A is what we call community partners. We have an internal sheet that we're working off of your county criteria. Okay. That makes a community that works through office. The second
023question I had was the pricing. Does is the personnel cost in addition to the pricing? Okay. Yes, ma'am. You're basically paying rental fee for the space and then you're going to have to pay for services. Um, if it's the pack, that's your most expensive thing to rent that that are the arena because we have to have someone who came to run the lights, run the audio, do all those things. And we need to make sure that it if it's not school related that we're pass through for the funds and it's not taking school resources perfect. Sure. Sounds good to me. Thank you. Anything else? No. Okay. Good policy. Thank you, Mr. Rainey. And Mr. Bernell and Mr. N worked really hard on that. I just get to talk about it. So, I'd love to make
024the recommendation to approve the facilities use agreement as there. All right. We have a recommendation. Do we have a motion? Motion. Motion by Eric. Second. Second. Second by Ryan. All in favor? None opposed. Okay. Up next is the first reading of our school our school choice policy. um new state laws and rags. They're changing some of the definitions in there and they're they're substantial changes to us. Um specifically on the capacity issue, current definition is 90% of a grade level. So kindergarten. Oh, sorry about that. Good. Um, kindergarten has um currently has um 10 teachers with a capacity of 200. 90% is 190. Um, can somebody look up there and see if there's a man or something capacity is um listed as 90% which would be 180. The new law requires to go to um
025capacity is when you meet state standards which would mean 200. So, what that means is um right now we have the option to tell the parent or the family we're not accepting school choice based on capacity of 90% or greater. The new laws require us to change that to what capacity means is 100%. So, as long as we have space from January 1 to May 1, um we have to allow those children to it. Is follow required to allow those students in? Is it is it still based literally on timing? So we're at 100. So is it still literally based on timing? So we're at 199 students and a school choice kid comes in, that's 200, but then a kid moves in a week later. Yes, sir. That's the predicament that we and then that
026that can trigger us into another classroom, right? Yes, sir. find another or I'll be the first ones to admit. He school district is we're a growing school district. There's a lot of school districts in the state that that aren't. Yeah. And so it doesn't affect them the way that it could affect us. But when you look at the second piece, the application process for the past 10 years or so, school choice has been we approved school choice in May or June and they started the next August. The new new rules and rags state that between May one and I'm sorry, January one and May one, if a if someone applies, I have 15 calendar days. I have two weeks to tell them yes or no on the on the ability to transfer in. And then
027they have 10 days to enroll or 10 days to inform us that they're going to enroll in the fall. So that means we'll have to have they will come in immediately instead of waiting until the next school year. Right. So those are two major changes. Yeah. That are that aren't optional for instance. So it's going to be very rare we're able to hit capacity and say yes sir. No. Yes sir. I mean it just is. And procedurally this is like this would be approved here. No. No. This is not okay. Updating the policy in the past. Um, school choice was approved through superintendent recommendations. Okay. This has it with the time frames. You can't meet that require our time frame doesn't support you in that time, right? Because I will move into the practice of
028every Monday morning. I will we'll go through numbers. Yeah. And everything. So, we'll do it on a weekly basis instead of waiting for two weeks. And so that's it will the policy will change towards the superintendent acting under the policy um guidance. So will you will there be this this thought that um how do I say this like the the the approval process or say disapproval. Hey we're just we're at capacity. Do you have to go prove that out then? Yes sir. Um when you look through the policies and you read them because this is just first reading tonight there's policy point F2 F34 and F5 and there is a denial there's a denial based on and we'll put you on the waiting list and as soon as there's an opening which let's say we're
029at capacity and you're at that 200 mark we have a student move out I have to notify them almost immediately that there's the opportunity for them to to come in, right? Okay. And we can't take potential or future growth with what we have now as consideration more now. Okay. It's more it's more point in time. Yeah. Right now the application your numbers and where you at 15day window. Okay. Hey Keith, as as you look at this policy change or this law, um have we gotten Marshall's interpretation of um the first paragraph like in a program, class, grade level, or school building. Have we thought about what I know typically we think about it like a building or a grade level. It says program, class, grade level, or school building, right? Have we thought about how
030that how we could potentially use class? At the end of the day, it's going to come down to student teacher student teacher ratios. Sure. Cuz that's what a program is, is student teacher ratios. Um that's what the state will look at is if you're if as long as you're not over capacity in that that class, the child can enroll. Now the kicker is let's say you have one program that's under capacity you know that there's room but the core subjects may may it may push you over there that's that's what I'm kind of getting at because otherwise we're going to be right we are going to be a fine line or flirting between max student teacher ratio and perpetual hiring. Yes sir. That's those are the two logical outcomes. Yes sir. So I think that
031too when you're thinking about programming here, they're thinking of like special education programming. Okay. 504, not necessarily programming we offer for course selection. It's like two different things. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. So wouldn't be we won't deny you if you want to be a medical profession student cuz we can we have other options for you, but we cannot turn away someone that has a language um or anything about anybody with an individualized education plan, special education, 504 language or anything like that. So that's what that program used to be. Thank you. So no action right now is first reading, right? Yes, sir. Um on the other end, if we were a district declining enrollment, this would be a different story. Sure. Yeah. And and everything, but for us at this point in
032P Ridge P's history and time, right? Yes, sir. It's it's it's a little worrisome for Yeah. Yeah. The the biggest change in years past we collect all those applications from January to May approve all of them in mass meeting if we had studies now it's 15 days and almost immediate enrollment. Oh yeah. Next school year. So those two changes cause us you know break. Oh yeah sure. Absolutely. Wow. So if y'all have any more questions, please feel free to send them. This will be on the agenda for December 14th for approval because we have to have this in place before January 1. Um we're going to bounce back and um do a tax overview. Okay. No. Um, so we were invited by the Bville Chamber. This is the greater area chamber kind of formed a
033relationship with one of the ladies that works there. So she asked our media interns um if they could go and film and record the NWA tech summit that went on. So um it was a full two days. There were people from all over the world there. Um so it was a really cool experience for our kids. I think there were four of them that got to go both days. um really got to watch them kind of grow in what they were doing. So in the beginning they were a little nervous. It was all just adults there. Um but by the second day they were like can we interview this person? Can we do this? So um so it was really neat but they got to be in all those sessions and hear from all those
034speakers at the same time um while also getting to film and photograph and and help put together some promotional materials. Tell us can you tell them about coach coach role with that team? Um, so yes, I mean he's he's has been like that. When they asked us if we could do this, I said, "You better let me find out because I have no idea if we have the capacity to do this or not." Um, so I was like, "Chris, quick, can we do this? Is this a huge job?" Like, it was a it was a a big deal. It was, you know, like five different breakout rooms going on these two full days. I was like, "Do we have equipment? Do we have all the things?" Um, but yes, he led that up. I mean,
035he made sure they had everything. They were ready to go. They were there bright and early in the morning. um and had them all assigned to different roles and different jobs and what they were going to do and it went really well. Great. What did they think? Did they enjoy it or did it stress them out? They really did at first. Well, they were exhausted. Sure. Day one. That was their feedback. They didn't realize how much like work they felt like it was going to be, but they did. They really enjoyed it. Yeah. What a great experience. Can we recognize those students? Like what are their names and grades? Do we have that information tonight? If not, that's okay. No, there's Yeah. Yeah, they were they were the group that were supposed to be. Gotcha.
036Okay. All right. I'm with you now. Sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. M just just curious. That's fantastic. We'll definitely have that for you next. Okay. Thank you, M. Jennings. All right. Up next, we have our annual report to the public. I know this page here is really small. That is what goes into the newspaper every year. And so we're going to go what through that page in the in the upcoming slide. Um you know every year we have to do our accreditation status with Betsy with standards and accreditation for the 23 24 school year. We were fully accredited. Um and like always and everything. And so we were able to do that with uh not only our academics but student support, human capital operations, the fiscal government, um community engagement
037and facilities and transportation. Earlier in when we're talking about the enrollment analysis, um talking about our district enrollment in October 2020, we were 2216. Um today we pulled that we're in 2016 I believe we're 2615 or 2616 today. So we're right at 400 students over four over four years growth. So that's um that's why I think we may be a little short on what they're projecting this out as. And we're averaging about 4% growth a year, give or take a little bit, but we are consistently growing around 100 students a year. And we've done that. When you take that one year out for co that was just wonky. Um we've been averaging that four 4 and a half% growth every year, day in day out. So year in year out. Um, from our demographic standpoint,
038I know when we did our reszoning and everything, our our demographics have changed and our our our student demographics are starting to show that um we're 85% Caucasian or white and about 15 16% um um other races such as, you know, Asian.8, but our Hispanic Latino population continues to grow. Yes, we have added our ESL services and everything. Um, Pacific um, Hawaiian Pacific Islander African-Amean um, is continuing to grow and so is our community and so our community is becoming more diverse which is which is a good thing. Our um, when we look at our demographics, you know, from our per people expenditures, they definitely increased. Um, one other thing that's not reported yet what it what it was, but we've increased about $1,400 per student of expenditures from 2020 to 2023 and it'll be
039more next year. Um, the big the big change was with the Learns Act with the changing in salary. Our school choice enrollment has stayed relatively the same. Um, to be honest with you, one thing that one of the things that is helping our school choice enrollment is traffic. Um, it's kind of helping us stay in about that 10% range on that or not because what used to take 20 minutes to bring your child to P Ridge and go back, it's not 20 minutes to go back anymore traffic. So, that's actually where traffic has benefited us a little bit. and our enroll their graduation rate has um has stayed around that 91 92%. So we're continuing to do that. Um our English language learners is continuing to grow along along with our our population becoming more
040um diver um diversified and our special education population staying around that 12 13%. Gifted and talented population is has gone from 6.68% 68% up to about 7.1%. So it's staying about the same. How do we define that? Gifted and talented student go ahead. Okay. Students who are receiving services through there K through two is what I consider post whole class enrichment with it. When they hit third grade, it's the kids who have been identified as as gifted in the gifted intell program. Mr. with Miss Harrison, Mr. Dawson. Got it. How are kids identified? Do we give every single second grader an exam, a test or what? Every every single third grader. Third grade that gives the test that we give um throughout the state like we distribute the test here. We do this cut scores
041are on the range. There's other factors too and things like that. Okay. Your services move from pull out services to I'm enrolled in advance and honor classes. It looks different at each grade level. Gotcha. And on our free reduced launch rear, our pre- reduced launch percentage is is ticking down. And you can see that in our demographics, even when you look at staff and everything, our our our median household income is is increasing. Our average home price is increasing. Y So, Mr. We'll we'll still be north of 30 this year, I believe, but we'll never I don't feel we'll ever start creeping back up. So, um what we're seeing is we have we have the same number of students qualifying for free lunches four or five years ago. It's just as we've grown that their
042percentage has less. So, Miss Taber has worked diligently to maximize those funds and get to those ESA dollars. And that is why we communicate so hard well at the beginning of the school year, you know, fill out those free reduced lunch forms cuz it's not it's about free lunch, but it's also about categorical funding that our district kids to to help all kids. Oh, absolutely. Up next, Miss Taber and our principles are going to talk about at staff and please remember that ACT Aspire is what we what our state had used for the past I think seven eight years and we've went to a new testing system. So the two sets of data cannot be compared. So M sure and I'm sorry I did not bring things just like it's okay. Um like Mr. All
043right. So, we have a new assessment. Uh, we took that test in April, May of last school year. Um, and because it is a new assessment and it was develop developed by the state, so it was first time taken. Um, it took us a while to get the data. We downloaded just after our last board meeting in October. Um, so we took it in April, May, um, and received the results mid October. So, we're still learning a lot about those results and and kind of digesting the data and what we can do uh with the information. But one of the major changes um is how we describe student scores or categorize them. There are four reporting categories that was the same in ACS Fire, but what they are called and what they mean is different.
044So, um you're going to see a series of slides as we go through tonight to look at our data. Um and all of them have the same colors except for our primary. We'll talk about that in a second. Uh but students took the Atlas assessment in grades 3 through 8 and then we took some end of course exams in 9th and 10th grade depending on the course you're in and we'll look at that. But the data is reported in four areas. So level four means you have an advanced understanding of grade level content. Level three is proficient understanding. A level two is a basic understanding of grade level content and level one is limited. So what we're looking at now um with ACS ASPIR was exceeding ready close and in need of support but this
045assessment was based on grade level standards um and it was adaptive. So if all of us in this room took the third grade reading test uh the first few sets of questions would be the same but as we answered that set of questions that I received would be different than what um what Jessica received. So the the idea is that it's able to say I have a limited understanding of grade level standards but you might have a advanced understanding um which is a little different than what we were used to with ACS fire was fixed format um and all students received that same set of questions. So, our district achievement, and this is for math, looking at grades 3 through eight math plus every student who took algebra 1 geometry. Um, and we can compare
046ourselves in this assessment to the co-op. So, our 16 schools in the co-op, that's the Northwest Arkansas number. um and then to the state and the percentages you see above each bar are the percent of level three and level four so proficient and advanced in math uh we're seeing that what we saw in ACS fire is is holding true uh we're exceeding the state and the the regional average of students scoring at proficient or above um and we really see that K sorry regrade three uh third grade up to about seventh grade and we're working through those upper grades in math but but we hold pretty steady. Um in science we are seeing that similar to what we saw with ACS fire um we're scoring above the state average in science across the district um
047but slightly below the uh the co-op's average and then in reading and the ELA score English language arts that includes reading and writing um with ACT Aspire we have five exams with Atlas we have four they combine the English and the reading into one test but our ELA score represents that reading and the writing combined. Um we're about at the state average with 34% across the district there. Um it's slightly below the uh co-op average of 36%. Um overall what we've noticed is in science and reading or science and ELA um is that we get kids off to a pretty good start um compared to the state in the region at our early grades and we're working to keep up that level of riicker as they increase in grade level. Um, so we're we're working
048to support our teachers in that. Uh, we've also noticed that in in all of our grade or all of our content areas, that level two um is where we really want to focus because that means our students are performing at a basic level of grade level standards and we want to get beyond that. That's our group of students. They're showing us that they're ready. They're coming in ready to work. Um, and we really need to work on our instruction being more rigorous um, and align to that upper level of the the state standards. And we're doing that by focusing on our our instructional materials that we've implemented in the last few years. Those science scores um, and I almost still miss uh, but look really well really good where we've started implementing our science instructional
049resource. Um, the intermediate had it first and then we've rolled it up and so we're hoping to see continued success there. Um and then we also have focused really um this school year K12 on developing proficiency standards outlining exactly what the standard means, what it looks like when students should be uh learning at each level, making sure that our our teachers are able to align their instruction to that level of of proficiency on the standards. So, we've been working on that across the district. um also aligning our instructional facilitator role to instructional specialists in the content areas. We're already seeing some um really important changes that they're able to identify working across the district uh by specializing and working with those teachers. Um and then we've also implemented uh district to campus learning walks to
050help um our our campus principles and our instructional leaders identify areas that hey, we want to replicate this kind of instruction that we're seeing here in this grade level, in this classroom. we want to share it across the district so we can learn from each other. Uh so we're going to do a a campus by campus look and dive down to each grade level. We're going to start at the intermediate and we'll go up to the high school. Their data is represented in the same way with these four levels and then we'll look at the primary u the primary atlas assessment is a screener and it's instead of at the end of the year was given at the beginning of the year really like late September. uh it's the first year also uh and so
051that data instead of having four reporting levels has two um are they at risk or are they ready um and so that data looks a little different and so we'll come back to primary at the end um but do you guys have any overall questions before we go to the campus level yeah so for the primary the screener that was this year are they going to do an end of the year assessment then to see how they grew yes so for the the K2 assessment there was we did a pilot last year with the state to kind of learn more about the assessment but there was no end of year assessment last year for K2 that screener was given um we'll give a an interim for K2 at around January and then we'll give another
052end of year to watch the growth and so it's still the focus there is still growth like it was prior to our um to this assessment for K2 um but yes so that data is a little different and it was looking at standards the kids should come in with instead of what we finished with so it's a a little different look but I think that's great to be able to understand where each student came in and then be able to do the midyear and the end of the year. I think that's fantastic to be able to look and see each individual growth. The positive thing about this new assessment is it is directly aligned to our state standards. And so we're giving data back on the standard level, we can look to see exactly where
053we are having some gaps. Um and so as we're learning more about it and diving into that data with teachers and we're we're able to make those connections. That's awesome. This may be a dumb question. I apologize for it. What are we doing in math? I mean, both in the ACT and the Atlas, what are we doing in math that we're not doing in science or ELA or that we that we are, but we we we're earlier in the journey. Help me understand we're we're we're 10 percentage points higher than the state average in math and kind of on par in ELA and somewhere between a science. So, there's this there's this step function. What's happening in math? That's amazing. Math uh that area was the first area that we identified and adopted a high
054quality instructional material. Got it. Um, and it was in the middle grade band instead of at the beginning or the upper. So, it it was able to kind of spread. Um, and we did that in 2018 2019, so it's been a while. Um, and those teachers have really, um, we had a core group that adopted it and they helped spread it throughout the district. Um, and I'll say our vertical alignment there is much stronger. Okay. Uh, because of that use of the resource. It was supported by our co-op very early and so we had extra instructional support. Um and and we see the benefits of that and that's one reason uh when we looked at science um at the intermediate prior to uh the Atlas assessment uh teachers t they all taught science and they
055they really saw this assessment coming in aligned to standards as a need for that resource. Um and so science like I said just rolled it out this last school year and it was the intermediate started in August. Uh but I think the junior high came in like late spring and so we've just kind of been learning with that one. I love that. Yes. Okay. So, similar journey as with math, we're just earlier in the journey. So, give us 5 years and we'll be That's pretty. Okay. Thank you for the answer. The first year of this and so we're we're kind of we're trying to figure this out. It's obviously we have comparative scores. Do we have a what's our goal? Like obviously our goal is 100% right. But what what are we shooting for? Are
056we shooting for 60 70? Yeah, that's that's a a difficult question to answer because you definitely want to say 100%, right? Um, and this is pure student achievement. There is no growth that we can look at here. Uh, because we don't have the another assessment year with this data. Um, but really we want to see growth from year to year. Uh, you know, so all of our students are growing eventually as we grow into achievement. Uh, right? So we want to see growth every single year. Uh, what I would really like to see is that level two cut in half. it needs to go up to level three. Uh because if we're instructing at grade level expectations every single day, then our kids will get there. And so ideally that number, we can knock that
057out really fast. Oh, we've established a new baseline with this new test. And so look at it from Yeah. Yes, sir. And we really didn't know what to expect. We do what we looked like with ACT Aspire, but um you know, and and the numbers don't translate very easily. They will they will establish a growth measure. So they'll do the statistics to get a growth measure of a student that took aspire in 23 to what atlas what growth was in 24 um at the state level and provide that to us. We'll see their calculated growth but growth from atlas to atlas we'll take it and we we're going to have a student dashboard. It's going to be by student growth, right? Yes. You guys I I don't want to see that but you guys will
058have that data. Yeah, we'll have student by student growth data. Perfect. Two periods from other districts will no doubt we'll period with them. Perfect. And so when it comes to I mean not to downplay the great growth that's on the far right scale is great but we've got about 25% of these students that are below. Yes. What are we doing? um in our campuses are working right now on intervention plans um at at every content area and identifying where the gaps are for those students. Um we're also working with our um our programs to better understand how to support students in the classroom to make sure our accommodations are aligned. Um, you know, part of it too is the um complexity of the assessment and making sure that we're assessing in class like they're going
059to experience on that atlas test. Um, I was at the junior high one day during the science assessment and a kid walked out and said, "That was the most fun I've ever had taking a test." Uh, because it's very uh engaging. You know, they have to do experiments in the science test uh by dragging and dropping and doing different calculations with the beers and so it's a very different test and and part of it is just making sure our kids are are comfortable with that. Okay. So, is there going to be samples throughout the year? Not that not actually going to be counted towards what we're going to be focusing on, but something that helps them become more focused and more comfortable with this. And that's that's one reason we chose the science resource that
060we did is because the online platform for that science resource kind of mimics the types of questions and the functionality of the test. Um and then we also have access to from the state um a series of interim assessments. Uh there's a window in the spring where we'll do um kind of a practice run uh just for kids to be able to really get used to that assessment. Our third graders took a screener that was required from the state um in in September as well and that was kind of their first introduction to the platform and so we'll do some practice with that. Our teachers also have access to the platform to create their own assessments um and so we'll be working with them on that. All right, we're going to start with intermediate and
061then we'll go up like I said up to the high school and come back to the primary. Okay. Um so some of the strengths like Miss Taylor said um are our kids are a lot of green um and a lot of blue as you can tell. So the big thing that we took away from that is kind of what she was talking about that rigor level. So we have a basic understanding just not a deep understanding that we can transfer across the board. So um first and foremost I want to say I'm extremely proud of how the intermediate scored. um they the teachers have worked very very hard to get the scores um out of our kids that we got. So I'm extremely proud of just the work and effort they've put in um because
062you'll see in ELA, math, and science um they work extremely well in our co-op and state. So um first and foremost, they do the work. I just kind of like Mr. Martin said earlier, they do all the work. I just get to report to you. So I want to take time to acknowledge that. So our strengths really come from the implementation of the science curriculum um like this paper said and along with that um our ELA teachers were very intentional with non-fiction passages. So um really how to deduct information from a text which was extremely helpful in the science area as well as in our ELA scores. Um, also just the analysis of the curriculum and the standards, like knowing what we're teaching so that we're teaching it at the correct level. So, we did
063okay at that. We're getting better at that this year. We're working more intentionally on that. So, our focus are gaps in tier one instruction and the planning that comes with that. So really just knowing where our curriculum because no curriculum is completely like accurate and complete for um the rigor level that we need. So us knowing the standards well enough to know like if our curriculum's not meeting it, what do we need to add in to push our kids to the next level. Um so that's one really big intentional practice that we have right now is looking at our 15-day plans for that. Um the other thing is the proficiency scale. So there's been a lot of I would say hot conversations over proficiency scales at the intermediate school. Um down to reading independently versus
064run to them. Um writing a summary versus being able to tell you a summary. So lots of really deep dives into conversations about what does that mean to be proficient or on grade level? And then in the back of your mind knowing like the basic is not enough to be able to get our kids where we want them. So our action is analysis of 15-day plans. Um so our guiding coalition which is made up of our team leads that you guys have approved for that we get to pull them a little extra. Um they were kind of our guinea pigs for that. So they pulled together looked at each other's 15-day plans vertically third grade and kind of shot holes in it to see where were we missing things where were we assuming things and
065where were we like being very intentional with the planning. Um, and then turning that going and doing a learning walk. So going to their teammate vertically. Um, so like a math fourth grade teacher went and watched the math third grade teacher and then they flipped. And so what does that look like? How are we being intentional with that rigor level in our lessons dayto day? And then looking at the proficiency scale, does that match what you're saying you planned, what you've taught, and now how you're assessing it. So, we've been doing those cycles um at the intermediate school over the past couple months. Um they've gotten extremely comfortable with people coming in. So, come in anytime you would like to. Um and then a really big piece that we were missing before in our learning
066loss was a debrief with the teacher that they watch. So, being able to come in and just ask like, "Hey, why did you only do three questions in this math lesson?" And the other teacher ran will say, "Because that's all that was in the curriculum. So the here's how I'm supplementing and here's how I'm supporting. So then just kind of knowing what's happening in each classroom. Um and then we are working super super hard and intentionally to bring parents in on those academic discussions. So we were um part of the learner collective last year and we applied for a $50,000 grant and received that for more community and parent engagement. So, we have our first parent meeting tomorrow night to find out like how can we engage you differently with your kid at this grade
067level on the academic. We're really good on the parties and the fun and all that stuff, but when it comes to like hard conversations about proficiency scales, like how do we bring parents in and how do we have that? So, we have a group coming tomorrow night from 5 to 6 to have those just open conversations with us. I just want to call it an observation for the the vertical alignment. So, I know I was part of the training that we did with like the PLC's and um got to have a little bit more in-depth conversations around that, but if you take a look at every single one of your fourth grade percentages, your third and fourth grade teams must be working very well together because 48% in your fourth grade um in ELA, 56
068in science, and 63 in math. So, there's got to be those conversations happening. It doesn't just start at fourth grade. It starts at third and then continues in fourth grade. So, well done. Thank you. Thank you. And we are very thankful for our K2 partners that send us those kids more prepared for those harder lessons and harder conversations. Yes. I was going to Yeah. No, it is like it's definitely if they weren't feeding us the way that they're feeding us, it would be a lot more difficult to pick up the ball and run. So, um so we really appreciate that. I think Miss Taber came by right after we got K3 screener results and we got um Atlas results like the next day and I was like I'm going to need a minute. We're being
069inundated between the K3 screener and Atlas and just deciphering like how can we use those different data points cuz um you'll see whenever Miss Bennett talks like the things that we got from the K3 screener and just how do we kind of help with that and align that to our atlas scores. Um, so our third grade team has been working very hard third grade literacy team on taking the screener data, taking their atlas information, putting it together and coming up with a good plan on how to grow them in both ways. So awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Really impressive. Are we looking for sale? Okay. Um, so kind of like Miss Tambers already talked about, um, our math teams started out, sixth grade was one of the teams that started out with
070for the beginning. So they've had it for a few years. You can see if you go over to our math data, that's one of our high points that we um are very proud of. Our sixth grade math team is um very high over even our Northwest Arkansas on that. They have helped um fifth grade um over the last few years. They've only had um fifth grade I am for four years, fifth year. This is our fifth year. Um and they our fifth grade team made some huge growth this year with um that. So we were very proud of our math. they had one way when looking at it that they made the growth is really being able to dig in to their curriculum, see where those essential standards are, see where they can um use
071that um HQIL to really um tie into their um interventions and their needs for their students. So you can see in math we have been able to really make that growth and understand those things even better at a higher level. And so that is one thing we're very proud of that they've been able to work together for vertical alignment really well for that. Um, another thing is I am very proud of all of our teams. Our PLC process, as Mindy mentioned, um, she's been through some of that training with us. They have really increased that PLC process, having those really hard conversations on data and things. We're still growing in that. But one thing we're proud of is you can look and see that in those hard conversations, we have, even though it's light green,
072we're still at twos. There is less in the yellow and the ones, and we are moving to the twos. And you'll see in our action plan, that's one thing that we are focusing on are those twos and how do we get them to threes. So that is something that we're proud of that we are moving up the scale, right? Um and some of our focus areas, our proficiency skills, all of our content areas are working on the proficiency scales. um literacy and science really have already started this year digging in having those um what we call them spirited conversations on proficiency skills and calibrating their grading. That is one thing we're really working on is calibrating our grading. Making sure that every class that we are giving the same assign assessments. We've been doing that
073but making sure we're looking at those same learning targets in the same ways and um grading them in the same way. So when we're looking at their data that it is consistent through that and we're asking for the same rigor for every student. Um also for um especially literacy and science, science is a newer curriculum. Literacy is a very complex curriculum. Um we are really digging in to see how are those standards throughout our modules. Even if the focus um essential standard is on our module 2, where does it come up again in our in our curriculum? where can we continue to deepen that understanding as we see in our level twos? They need a deeper understanding of that content or that essential standard. So, how can we make sure that we are hitting it
074as we teach it again? We're reassessing it to see do they still have that deeper understanding of it. So, that's one of our focus areas is to make sure that we're digging into that those HQM to make sure we're having it at the same rigor and we know where all those essential standards are throughout all of them. Um so our action steps um our team lead spent a whole day digging into our atlas data um their content um data. They compared it with their CFA data from last year. So I really wanted them to look and see did your CFA data that we showed that our students performed at did that show on every standard on Atlas the same? Because we could dig into every standard on the Atlas data that they gave us to
075see where they performed. and they made spreadsheets and charts of where it did, where it didn't, where they taught it, where they think they could have intervened more. Um, if it didn't match, if it did match, we knew our calibration was probably pretty good on our grading. If it didn't, then we need to look at that rigger more. So they made action plans for each of their contents um on how can we use our curriculum better or how can we use our intervention better and what steps do student and resources and help that they need it to try to move forward on those standards that they didn't meet. Um also our district learning walks. We've been very intentional about bringing data back to all of our faculty on our district learning walks and they're tied
076into our instructional model and also having our teachers going to other classes and having those same learning walks. We took our fifth grade literacy already over to fourth grade and did some learning walks over there and some debriefing with them. So, we're using that in in our action steps. Um, also we're partnering with our instructional specialists. they're coming in to help us dig into those curriculum more and seeing how they tie in throughout the whole year. Um, and we are also um we're privileged, we got a grant through the Bailey group to use that we have a coach coming in for next 17 days to come in and support our literacy teams and Miss Shelton and I on how can we use that to fill some of our gaps or where can we use that
077HBIM and our intervention in that. So that's a lot to say and a little bit of time. What questions you have? Great. Good job. I was going to say I think you called it out when you said that there's less in the in the orange or the yellow and then just focusing on those level twos and and making sure that we're teaching to the rigger to get them to the spreadsheets and the action plans. They all took their level twos. They ranked them by like we had so many that were within like three points of getting to the threes and so they have rated ranked them. They have put them in where are they in my classes, where do I need to check on them on their CFAs and they have taken those level twos
078in early now have an idea of where they were and where they should look at them through the year. It's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Just while you're sitting down love the use of the grant to get a coach to come in and look at the gaps and just the the complete like what's how to say this being allergic to complacency. I I just I just love the like the assertiveness and the it's fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, good evening. So, one thing that we noticed in our data when we drilled down to data that was student by student, which you mentioned earlier, Mindy, then also class by class, we noticed that the great majority of our advanced students, our advanced classes did very very well on this test. So what we took from that is
079that the strategies and the rigor in those classes are something that we need to try to replicate in our onle classes as well. So we're excited to think that through and determine the best way to do that to do that for all of our students. Um so what does that mean for us as teachers? would want to implement. We have already been working on having more rigorous data tops within our PLTS, really intentionally pulling students into our intervention sessions based on individual data by using our student data trackers that we put in this year and also relied on the instructional resources that we've heard um already from the other buildings, our new amplify science curriculum which we implemented last year, our English curriculum, our math curriculum. really making sure that we're drilling deeply into that
080curriculum, not supplementing it with other things. We need to rely solely on that curriculum and that will help us then increase that academic rigor that we're expecting for all of our students and then also increase the expectations for the quality of work with them then receiving back from our students. Mr. smart or whoever was using this live. If we go to our science data next, we as a building really celebrated. That's okay. Sorry. That's biology data that you're seeing there at the bottom. Heck yeah. Those are our ninth graders from last year. That's a preap um biology that advanced biology classroom that we saw 81% proficiency for those students. That was a huge celebration for us um to see the success of those students and that teacher who worked so hard. And again, we think
081it was that that um higher level of rigor that we expected for those students and they met that rigor. Um so we were excited to see that. Um also another thing that our science team has realized again learning this new curriculum is they need to add more regular and frequent checkpoints with their students before they end up with that summitive assessment at the end of the unit just to check and make sure their students are along and on track with them. That's something they realized early on in the school year. and have already implemented um with their kiddos. Um if you'll move on to math then please we're excited about our seventh grade level um data with with and again our advanced students led the charge there. Um we also have our math teachers have
082recruited some of our electives teachers to help do interventions during our encore time and we're targeting those students that were on a level one for the Atlas assessment last year. Um, we're also going to continue to use our new seventh grade prepare course that every seventh grade student takes and really use that course to help prepare our seventh graders, help them transition and then it help them accelerate toward proficiency as well. Um, also one thing that we've realized is that we need to work harder at aligning our essential standards with Atlas. For example, our science team realized that one of the standards they pre previously taught the end of the year was 33% of the questions on this last year. So now that we know these things, we're we have restructured our pacing guides for
083science and now math and English are following suit to make sure that we are teaching those standards in a more timely fashion to give our students the opportunity to learn that content. I love that in time for the assessment. That's great. Um we as well are using our learning blocks in our BLC. She's um conducting a model classroom where the other teachers come and watch her teach. Then she meets with them afterwards to give them to give them feedback. Then she goes and watches them try to replicate it. And then tomorrow we actually learning walk day. Every teacher in our building is going to go and watch two other teachers teach. And so that's a really valuable part of our experience. I know you just heard that with the other other buildings as well. And
084finally, we have a lot of new teachers on our campus this year. And so one thing that we have done is pull in some representatives from the co-op to come and work with our new teachers really intensively to help give them um a higher level of support that than what Mr. Trabs and I can give them to really help them integrate into the building and help them with classroom management, help them with that curriculum. So we can see more gains there. Any questions? Very good. I was going to ask about the science, but you kind of answered that. James, by the way, you cracked the code on that some I would like to double click on that one. So, great, you know, great scores on biology, a little bit below state, but great proficiency overall.
085What happened? So, like when I turn over to biology in high school, like the state is still 60%, which is a record for I don't see a higher state proficiency than 60% for anything. That was a typo. and P Ridge is 22. So is there a is that like an outlier? Like we do really good in biology, ninth grade, and then 10th grade something happens or is it a I know it's year one, but you're sayingology scores are all those are all advanced kids that are falling on our building. Those are geometry falling on those. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Um, I first off like to kind of say I know we've heard um a little bit about curriculum up here. Uh, I I think the curriculum has definitely played a large role in in
086some of the growth that we've seen in our kids. Uh, but I will go a step further and say I think uh the teachers us growing some of our teachers and their teaching practices. Um, based on my experience, I think kids perform better when they know how much you care. Um, and I think we've done a really good job within the PLC process of, uh, creating better teachers, better practices, uh, the ability to create relationships, uh, ability to create relevancy within the curriculum. So, I'd like to give, you know, our teachers a big shout out. I think they have a large, uh, a large role in some of the growth that we've seen. Um along with that uh you've heard from multiple other leaders that our our data that we're getting now is broken down
087by standard which is is definitely more helpful. Um so some of the things that we're doing at the high school is uh we have targeted time with our team. So we have targeted time with our geometry team, targeted time with our biology team um for us to actually go back and say okay how did we do on this standard last year? What did we what do we what do we need to do different? What are like some of our highly reflective practices are coming into play and that is what resources did we use? What activities did we use? Uh if the teacher's the same, we can go back and talk to them and and see, you know, um what exactly they were doing that led up to that unit that may have led to some
088bad scores with that standard. Um so it's we're we have the ability to get super specific. Um so those are some really cool things that I think we're going to move forward with. Obviously, getting this data uh at the beginning of the year would have been better than getting it now. Uh but we're we're taking it and running with it and and doing what we can for the remainder of this school year to continue to grow kids uh to get them in a better place for uh assessments when we get to the end of the year. Any talk amongst the co-ops about the geome I mean the geometry 11% Arkansas like it seems like something and I hear what you're saying about the transition from standard to AP or whatever but it seems like across
089the board geometry we're we're struggling uh state co-op I mean I'll say this like coming from the math world I taught I taught algebra geometry algebra 2 calculus all the things um it's probably my least favorite to teach as a math teacher. Um, and I I would echo that from some of the other math teachers that I've that I've taught with is it's it's different. It's it's just a different form of math. It's uh there's a reason you don't see geometry 1 and geometry 2. Um, it it doesn't build on a lot of other future concepts. Algebra 1 builds on to algebra 2, onto algebra 3, so on and so forth. So one thing sorry I was going to say one thing uh that they've noted multiple times from the state um in regards to
090geometry and algebra one in some sense um is that that was probably the biggest shift from the ACT Aspire to this assessment. Um prior to that with ACT Aspire our students in 9th and 10th grade took the exact same ACT Aspire assessment. and it was early high school math and that included it was more like the ACT. So it included alpha 1 up to alpha 2 uh skills and so this shift to an end of course assessment is is different for us. Um it goes back to prior to ACS fire 8 years ago what we did in Arkansas. Um and so geometry teachers have traditionally been used to or at least the last 8 to 10 years teaching towards that early high school assessment which was more like the ACT. Um and this assessment was
091purely on geometry seniors. And so taking that adjustment also from algebra one to geometry and that different mindset. So across the state that's kind of some of what they've seen. I think I think too I think some of the things with the learns act I think merit pay uh put a little more teeth on on data and teachers reviewing data and changing practices from one year to the next. Um so I'm hoping that will help some things as well. Um, you know, you Jessica, I think you mentioned something about are we exposing these kids to the type of format they're going to see like whenever they're whenever they're testing at the end of the year. Um, and and the answer is yes. Like we're there's uh like a sandbox I think kids can go play
092in. And it's basically gives them an idea of what kind of format of drop and drag or whatever it may look like whenever they get to that test at the end of the year. So, just a couple little things that we're doing along the way to try to get better. Um, again, I think uh I'm hoping next year we'll get this in a more timely manner and we can we can hit the ground running in August with with some of these ideas. You know, one of the things I've seen um in all our buildings from win time at the primary intermediate time still, okay, and it changes over to encore time at the junior high and high school is the ability to go in and give point time intervention to kids when we when we
093see a skill gap and everything. Mr. talk and shared um I believe last mid last week the scheduleuler that y'all are using um going in and actually instead of not only seeing that the the student is is lacking in that area but doing a pre and post and assessment piece to make sure that they have that have that skill set ready. So what I'm most excited about throughout our district is the that disagregation that we're doing to see down to the individual student what they need and what they don't need to help make them more successful and improve our student outcomes all together. That is the that's probably what I'm most proud of to see our to see our faculty and staff doing for our students. I do feel like we need to I I
094know we want to be college ready with not even just career ready but with but these numbers like how do you want to how are you going to implement this now that we have these I know we want to get them ready and push for more training more ideas on our test taking but how's this going to get us college ready and school ready yeah great question I think I mean I think some of the things that we're doing outside of what is reflected here on this data like our our Uh our college and career readiness team is like phenomenal. Like they are doing great things for our kids. Uh you know on top of all the other events that we're doing, the CCR fair that Miss Markfeld um has definitely been a big part
095of putting together. Um, I think all of the celebrations that lead up to I mean these kids have four years of a mentor of of someone their ninth grade year, their 10th grade year, their 11th grade year, their 12th grade year uh to start pushing them in the direction of, okay, what am I going to do after high school? Okay, have you taken these steps? Have you filled out the college college application? Have you gone and done a job interview? um like all the things that go along with some of the things uh that I I feel like parents just aren't super aware of, especially if they don't know what what their kids want to do sometimes, especially if their kid doesn't know what they want to do sometimes. Um but so it's it's helping
096them explore some of these pathways and see what they're going to be good at, see what E they're eventually going to go into whenever they leave us. I think too that what you're going to see is like the reason the last grant that I wrote for that we wrote to Walton was on a middle level focus. It's exactly what you're saying. Do they understand the need of geometry for what they want to accomplish? I know what you're saying is that we're asking those questions because I think there's a disconnect between I students seeing in the chair don't understand my performance in geometry and what it means for me long term. So there's a lot of learning into while we're increasing the work of the teacher in the classroom, we also need to be increasing and
097starting earlier with the work and the knowledge of the parents and students so that they understand their performance in all of their academic classes, but these three in particular and then you know as 11 grade how you perform ACT is life-changing. So how do we make sure you understand the academic rigor as a student and that you are maybe performing grade level? I don't think it's something that we're newly exposing our students to using the student success plan and other things to say, yes, you didn't maybe perform where you needed to be. You were a two or a one, but now what we're going to do get you to a three and a four by the time you're in geometry, algebra one. Like that piece is what you're thank. So, I think that's a big
098shift and we talked about that last week. How do you get student and parent understanding so that they understand that how you're performing in class affects grade forever? Yeah, cuz as a parent Yes. Not as you Yeah. We you can't you can't make it. But when you're seeing this, it's just it it does seem a little bit of alarming. It is. Absolutely. Well, not a little. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's very alarming. Now tie it to like you're saying the whole part of readiness and there's no connection because a point in time test to how I'm going to be ready forever. We got to make sure that students and parents understand that. Thank you. You see it we we get it and then we dip and then we get it again. Yes. For
099sure. You have a question. Well, this doesn't really I I don't know that it's necessarily a question. We all know I'm blunt. So, I'm just going to go ahead and just put it out there. So, this is not meant to offend anybody. This is not meant to be. So I see a correlation because our PLC process works very very well at the primary and at the intermediate school and I've seen it work very very well at those two schools through our walkthroughs that that we've done and we see that the numbers work. I just want to make sure that we're putting the same kind of stress at the junior high and the high school because we're seeing the effectiveness and I can't help but tie the numbers to that. So, I just want to make
100sure we're putting the same kind of stress on junior high and high school so we can start and I know we started with the youngers. Again, it's not to be disrespectful or not to be a negative comment. It's just I want to make sure that we're also putting the same kind of stress with those focuses at the middle school and the or the junior high and the high school so we can see those numbers and and continue to have the same growth and not lose ground. I think Mr. Abdin really spoke about the shift in the way they're even scheduling. So he has a in addition to to speak exactly to that the urgency for which and the junior high is too doing a little different but the high school explicitly they are having their
101teachers not only meet in their math PLTs they're also meeting additionally each week correct in geometry biology so he's not only tweaking speak to your urgency we're double down they're double downing and the teachers are on board they're buying into the process and they're all Yeah, it's just I to speak it looks so different from those buildings to ours and to even try to compare I I would say it's super difficult as far as the stress level I think being put on both buildings and all the buildings in the district I think we're pretty equal as far as what we're getting from our from our leaders. That would be pretty exciting. But I think that you you're going to see those tweaks along the way and they spoke to it too and what um Miss
102talking about with our building learning coordinator and teams like the model classroom and things like they're doubling down. It's going to look different and feel different but the intentionality to which they're using their things their tools is very explicit and something we're going to talk about in just a minute too is going to help with some of the things they're seeing at those older grades that you don't see. Perfect. And again I mean no disrespect. I understand you can't if they're apples and oranges, but just making sure that the focus is there. But to speak to geometry as you taking it high school, that's not something that's a fun teach. So trying to make that fun is is difficult in your black and white concrete, which is what most math looks like. Well, great comments.
103I appreciate y'all being reactionary. I I do want to remind us like this is the first like this is the first year data and so let's let's look I mean and so let's be reactionary but let's look for a trend. Let's look at the second year. Let's look at the third year. Um it it's the very first year for it. Great baseline baseline. My only comment is this and you while you're sitting down like I just want to thank you guys for taking this as seriously as you do. I mean, absolutely. Not just as a school board member, as a parent of, you know, about a thousand kids. Like, uh, like I seriously do appreciate it. You said that, not us. That's right. All right. Um, you got a hard job and and and to
104take it the way you are, this is good. My question is this. Are you are y'all confident that the the measures we're putting in place, the tweaks to the process, like do you feel conf like forget about us, are you confident that like you can't wait to see next year's scores cuz it's just going to be a step function better or are you still kind of figuring out the the code? I'm confident because I've seen it work in other in other districts, other buildings that I've been. Okay. Right. Um so to say it's not applicable here in P Ridge, I think would be ridiculous. But um I I just I think sometimes the traction looks different. How fast it happens on a secondary level looks different. Yeah. Um I think we're going to continue to
105push and push and I think we'll continue to look for some of the reasons of why we're not on par with everyone else. I'm okay with that. And you see the work that our teachers are doing on a week weekly basis, the work of Miss Saber, um Miss Miss Moon, Mr. fair for two instructional specialists that we brought in. Um, yes, sir. I think we will see a return on investment probably. Great. Well, I feel like with this being the baseline and with the tackle that we're all going to take on to this and hitting it hard, I think I I feel like there's going to be a lot of growth. Yeah. Y so I'll just give you a quick little overview of what our data looks like. So in the spring we did map
106data and this year we will take an atlas 7 in the spring. So in September it was to be I think within the first 30 days of school we had to get the screener the K3 screener and so I think I gave it the third week of school. um a lot of our kids are still trying to figure out life at that point. So I think we gave over I don't know we gave a lot of tests and so um our scores these this is first grade and these are you know September scores the state has even come out and said there were some functionality issues with the K3 screener so they threw out the letters and sounds questions which were questions like six and seven and so I don't make excuses but I think
107it could have had some bearing on our how they did the rest of the test because the way they had it set up is they had one question and then they said find the letter B and they had to find it and push the arrow but the screen never changed. So they asked them 26 upper, 26 lower and then 26 down. And so a lot of our kids were they wanted to see something different. So they acknowledged that that was an issue and they're changing it. They actually threw those those questions out so they didn't count it to our scores. Um and so what we did with this data is the screener is different from anything else. So we've taken the screener, we're kind of done with that. We'll switch to the interim in January
108which will switch to grade level skills. The screener tested the year prior skills. So first graders were tested on kindergarten skills. Kinder was tested on kindergarten skills and then second grade was tested on first grade skills. And so now we've added that in. And so we have been working really hard on creating IRBs for all our kids who flagged in certain areas on the screener. So um at my building we've given a lot of test lists. And so these test lists are just additional tests that we give to drill down to see where exactly is the breakdown. So is it a decoding problem? There were eight tests in first grade decoding. And so we gave eight different tests. And it was either can they did they fail at decoding a CBC word all the way
109up to triraphs and diagraphs and multisell words. And so it really gave us some really good data that we can really drill down and see exactly where the kiddos were falling out. Where do we need to start working? So, a lot of our teachers as we were writing IRPS this last week and last week they were saying, "Oh my gosh, this is great because now I know how to work my small groups. I know in my small groups I can pull this group of kids because they couldn't pass this specific, you know, um Tesla test." So, you can see um we did pretty well in first grade. We stood right there the at the state average in pretty much everything and we're above in coding. And with these numbers too, we also had 17% of
110our kids who took this were new to the primary. So that probably did have some effect on it, good or bad, but it did affect the scores I would think somewhat because some of these kids didn't get our instruction last year that our teachers are doing such a fantastic job on. Um for second grade, if you want to click yeah, second grade, we did great. Um we can really see the progression. We had fewer students that were new to the primary and second grade. we only had 12% of kids that were new. So, I think you can really kind of see the difference in those the kiddos that have been at the primary um and really gotten that outstanding, you know, instruction from our teachers. Um, our scores performed better in second grade. And so,
111like I said, we're doing the same thing with the data. We're looking at the screeners. We're looking at the Tesla data and we're really working on instruction from that point. Um, in math on the next screen, it didn't give us a lot of breakdown on the data. it was just were you ready or at risk. Um and our kids performed really well. So, we were really happy with that. Um like I said, we're still working on proficiency skills as well, just like you've heard from all the other buildings. Um it ties in really well with our visible learning and our learning intentions and success criteria. So, that all works really well together with our building initiatives. and we um are working in our wing groups with pre-est and post test to make sure our kiddos
112have mastered or proficient at the skill before we move them on to a next group. Oh, good job. Thank you. No, Miss Roland stole my thunder when I was going to thank you for the the second graders going into third with those with those numbers because it is I mean it is complete team effort. So, thank you guys very much and thank you all for taking the time to review this. You know, at the end of the day, teaching and learning is the heart of what we do. Um, it is the work of our staff and and our building principles. You know, our principles are so good to say, you know, my teachers are doing a phenomenal job, but it also rests on their shoulders as well. And the work that they do every day,
113day in day out, everyone in our building is critical. So, and that I mean it takes all of us to make this work from our bus drivers bringing them to school, our cafeteria people um making sure that they have good meals. A lot of our kids their best meals are here and everything and to make sure our kids needs are met and to make sure we're certain outcomes is hard work and meaningful work, but it's also commendable for what we're doing. Well, thank you guys. Make sure you guys pass that on to the teachers. Thank them very much for taking it and taking this new assessment, doing all their hard work and getting a a good baseline to start with so that way we can have, you know, more data and and improve every year.
114So, we do appreciate them. Thank you. Okay. Anything else? Okay. Our next item is something that is really exciting. All right. Um, Mr. Han's been working Miss Bernell on this. Um, currently we p outright purchase a copier and then sign a maintenance agreement. And what that runs into is some of our machines, they get a little bit of a gone to the point where they're almost hard to maintain. So, what we would like to do is to move to a lease a lease agreement with TDS. They're a local company. Right now, we're purchasing Xerox um machines. And Mr. H, please correct me if I need to. We're also um struggling with sometimes this the the level of service that we're getting from our current one because they're not local and everything and so it's more
115difficult. TDX we've used them in the past. Um currently we're spending right at $6,000 a month on coffee toner, you know, all those things. release the maintenance agreement um to we have 20 stations that have outers now. Three of them would stay on site cuz we've already bought extra machines. Um but this would replace 17 of the machines and it would come in right at 37 34.72 a month. And when you look at the maintenance agreement, it gives you so many copies a month. And then if you go over I think it's either 240 or 250,000 black and white copies across I know that sounds like a lot we like copy machines here but um you go over that and it's a it's a certain charge rate and of course color copier sounds like my
116phone plan. It sounds like my phone plan. That's a plan. Yes. Same thing except we have instead of one phone we have 20 phones copers and everything. uh copier is a vital piece of of each building and everything. Um my goal is to make sure we have quality copers in every building. Instead of us outright purchasing three copers for about 30 grand, um we can go ahead and um upgrade all of our copers. Um go from a I believe it's called a toner based. We all know what toner is. It gets everywhere to ink ink based product. so that it's faster, more efficient for for our um for our teachers and to provide a better product for our students in the classroom. Um the total price um for the lease agreement and the maintenance agreement
117will be right at $44,816 a year. Um we feel that if we can manage our color copers cop color copies um we can actually save some money with within our district and provide everybody with with new copters which I know that sounds like a small thing but coming from another elementary teacher where the copier's not working today is not good. And um when the copier works, the day is always better. So um I think it's important for us to make sure that we have the proper machines in our buildings first. Mr. Han, you want to add anything? Pretty much sums it up. Okay. Better service now at all. Okay. So we might we might I think in the past we went with this company. They're out of Xerox corporate which is out of Texas. We
118got a really good deal on black and white copies um per copy rate and over the years service has went through cracks. We'll go 3 or 4 days before anyone shows up on site. That's horrible. Um this new company this this new company new type of copers less moving parts in the machines the end of the 5 years we'll turn these in and get five new ones 20 new ones after 5 years so I think it's I think it's the way we need to move what's the plan for the old ones well they're not worth much so I believe we will either sell them to this company or sell them to another school district or something. I mean, they some of them still have some life in them, but it's very important for us to
119be on the same network so that we can run our it's called paper cut system. So, we can keep that, you know, counts and everything and so that they're all the same within our network. So, once a copy gets to about 1.5 million copies, it's pretty much time over and get rid of it. I would say 3/4 of a copy almost Okay. I mean, I personally with all of our old school bus don't really know if you want that. You're selling them. Don't say that. Yes. So, um, and everything. So, any other questions? No. No. All right. With that, I'd like to make a recommendation to approve the lease and maintenance agreement as presented. All right. Second. Second, Ryan, Mindy, all in favor, none opposed. Um, up next is kind of what we were talking
120about doing annual report to the public is providing quality professional development to our staff. Um, the statement department has moved away from solution tree and there was I can't remember whatever the amount was, but what they did is they allocated they're allocating it out this year on a per student count to each district. So each district is getting more money. A smaller district gets a lot less than Springdale School District, our largest one, but um we were allocated $87,700. I know there's some change in there um as part of the professional learning grant. And what we are wanting to do is to focus on two areas. Strengthening instructional quality and pro provide a multi-tiered system of support for behavioral and mental health services that are grades 7 through 12. y'all heard a little bit about
121what our K through6 has has going to them with grants and um and everything and with the dollar and our goal is to provide it um through safe civil schools. It's called GMS training for grades I believe seven and eight and secondary and disciplining secondary classroom training and support for our junior high school staff. So I'd like to turn it over to Miss Taylor for a minute for her to talk about that. Um we were able to work with St. Middle Schools to get um a plan for professional learning rolled out in on January 6th. Um so we we were really excited about being able to move quickly to support our junior high school. Um Sen Civil Schools has worked through our cooperative before. We've had some teachers attend training. Casey Conor, our novice coordinator,
122attended that training with the teachers. Um, and what what our goal is is really to establish a buildingwide classroom management strategy for all teachers. Buildingwide expectations of what learning looks like in the classroom um to provide that structure. Um, and it it it's really it's proactive and it's positive. So, setting up your classroom for success um and supporting our teachers. Our work this spring semester will be four days of learning um two for all staff. We have about 125 who will attend uh those two days of how to implement it in your classroom. And then we have two days of professional learning that's focused on um the the people the leaders and the instructional support that will coach the teachers and be in classrooms to to provide support. We have about 30 people who will
123attend those two days to support our teachers and that continued use. Um and we have enough funds to roll over to year two to continue our work. That was really uh while the state gave us these funds, we were only allowed to use them. They only released them once we submitted our plan. Um and so they've approved our plan for a 2-year um work with state principal schools. We um what you see in the packet is right now we know that the 4 days professional learning the total cost is $32,000 for the professional learning consultant fees. uh we'll have some additional fees that come with it. Uh but that's for the basic professional learning experience. Those four days uh will be built separately for the travel for the consultant as well as our materials. Um
124and we're still working on what those details are once they have all of that information for us. So we're really tonight we're looking at that $32,000 for the 4 days of professional learning. Again, 125,000. They're 32 grand above the threshold and it requires approval. Yeah. Okay. Only question I have is it says the proposal expiration dates today and so does that matter if we don't get them a PO or whatever till tomorrow or No, we have already um because we got state approval, we let them know and so they're holding it. Okay. It was to secure the consultant coordinating four days with the same person. And I think one of the most valuable pieces of this is this is us going to the co-op and with 16 other school districts. They are here on site
125focused on Peter school district focused on our um on our grades 7 through 12 so that it can be dialed in specifically for them and not 16 different scenarios. Good rather group it's all about That's right. That's right. That's right. Any other questions? Um, with that, I'd like to make the recommendation to approve the safety civil schools training proposal as presented. All right. Recommendation. Do we have a motion? I'll make a motion. Motion, Mindy. Second. I'll second. Second, Eric. All in favor? None opposed. We're good. Okay. With that, I'd like to make the recommendation that we accept the resations of John Robert, Terry Young, Casey Bry, Tandel, Renee Van Ho, Rhonda Baker, and Robert Bellong with regret as presented. All right, we have recommendation. Do we have a motion? A motion. Motion. Uh, do we
126have a second? Second with regret. All right, Jessica and Ryan. All in favor? opposed. Up next, we have hiring. And I would like to make the recommendation that we hire um Carrie alum, Shara Meisner, Kaylee Cranfield, Ronald Turner, Randy Easterling, who's coming back to us. Um Justin Darnell, Carissa Doris, and Jason Coats. Okay. A recommendation of a motion. I'll make the motion. Second. Second. Second by Eric. All in [Music] favor recommendation to to adjourn to this second. Jessica, all favor go check on my Yeah, I forgot that I did too.