001recall the february 9th school board member discussion session to order it is 12 o'clock noon and just as a reminder there are several items to review and as we discussed in the past we would not put a time limit on discussion items at the workshops only in the business meeting so i just asked those who have submitted items for discussion to be mindful of time but not to the extent where you don't get to say what you would like to say we can have hopefully a robust discussion so out of the shoot dr jones yes ma'am i have an item i'd like to add i was you can i was going to give you that opportunity after dr jones but you can add it now okay i just wanted to add stem and science fair
002programs okay okay so dr jones uh you're up thank you mr barefoot some of these might be answered when we talk about some of our goals and targets but one thing on discussion is uh when i heard when we first came here with our board members that this is the only time we can talk and i was only going to put the information on so maybe we could talk about that at the master board training later and how we combine this and maybe some will come up more during the year first one was just summer school k through 12. i know with the summer slide and the pandemic side that we've probably got some work to do and last year for summer school because it was came on so quickly it was mostly online i
003think it was edge annuity for 612 and then the elementary had a program so just basically wanted to see what we were doing for summer school this year and if it was going to be direct instruction and you know look at the i-ready data and so forth obviously we always have room to improve but just to have a discussion on what kind of instruction will happen during summer school dr moore absolutely um our intention is to bring a full presentation to the board in march which is going to be our kick off for our summer programming um i've asked mr meyer just to kind of tease some of that information we will be presenting uh to be speak directly to the point it will be a data-driven approach more data than we've ever really used
004before and in some cases especially at the elementary level we'll be tripling the number or of students in which we're going to be able to serve so very excited about the expansion because as you said dr jones the slide uh continues and the impact of covet is significant and will continue to be significant for the next few years so to think oh you know we got through 19 2020 cobit is over uh is a tremendous uh undersell uh so with that i'll give it to mr meyer for just a a brief overview as to what we plan to bring in march thank you dr martin through the chair uh yeah i think the big question on everybody's mind is will it be face to face and yes there will be face-to-face learning for our students
005uh k-12 actually pre-k uh we are excited that we will be able to renew the partnership with some of our community foundations and have the step in decay program so we're full speed ahead planning that as well as dr moore said for our elementary school students right now we know that in order to have them ready by third grade we need to support them in grades k through two so there'll be additional um camps for students who are uh rising second graders for instance rising third graders where traditionally maybe we've only served the students that got the level one on the third grade fsa so the hope is to expand that um also one of the pieces of data that we'll see later are middle grades it's been a challenge especially in math and so
006we're developing plans around what we can do to support middle grades math and of course our students who need to do credit recovery that will still be there we understand that some of our families you know can't predict the future we've all given up trying to predict covet right but the reality is is there will still be families that will be learning remotely so we're wanting to have a hybrid option for our families that want to continue um doing some of these things both online so we'll have the full presentation all the locations all the numbers of students that we think we can target all the different community partners that we've been working collaboratively with to plan that in march but very excited i think it's going to be what our kids need right in
007time thank you that's that's sort of hey what else to add did anybody want to add anything on that yeah go ahead yeah um you made a comment at the beginning about what items you know board members bring for this discussion versus others just so you know i um usually in our meetings with dr moore if you have something that you have a concern about like summer school one that i brought up to him this week or last week was pre-k if you'll notice our numbers coming into kindergarten of children that aren't prepared for kindergarten what are we doing about that and what can we do about that and so instead of bringing up as a discussion for a board member discussion he's actually going to do a presentation for for us in his discussion
008so sometimes it's something that we bring here like your other two items probably are really good things for us to discuss here summer school might have been one that you might want to say okay are you going to bring that up soon if not i'm going to bring that up soon so thank you for bringing it up thank you and i want to just oh i'm sorry go ahead i want to skip to see the strategic plan goals and targets everything we do is basically aligned to our strategic plan evaluations where we want to go and so forth and when you look at the targets the baseline and the targets for 21 and 2025 especially with the academic success um dr moore are we still hitting those goals or what are we going to do
009to get there especially with everything we've gone through with covid through the chairs we created our strategic plan i think we took a very innovative approach and we want to hold ourselves to the highest standard i think the presentation that we give today will reinforce that standard that we've set for ourselves uh collectively as a board and senior staff ultimately as a district as we move through covet hitting those targets are a challenge and is it a challenge that we fully embrace and accept so when i move to this presentation today you're going to see our ability to adapt to a very complex reality in order to ensure the 2025 targets we do hit we have set annual targets that we're providing a update today uh when i make this presentation you're going to see
010a great deal of overlap between the strategic plan which does in fact drive all of our work uh as a strategic plan is my evaluation as well as the african-american achievement plan very very focused driven approach in order to ensure that we hit our targets to speak very directly we're in a good place and hitting our targets where we stand today and we're taking the appropriate steps necessary to offset where covet has been an impact and i think at the end of the day our targets are aligned to what the other 67 districts other 66 districts are doing our goal is to be in the top 10. graduation we are in the top 10. when you look at student acceleration we've made significant improvement we'll cover that in the presentation i'm just very encouraged about
011the the level of foundational work that has taken place uh we have not taken our foot off the pedal uh because of covet and we've done some very very deep systematic foundational work to ensure that we continue to accelerate in the coming years and my last one was equity committee liaison and maybe this will be solved if we um look at those new positions but one of the things when you look at the equity committee the naacp and so forth is making sure that the equity committee will receive the data they request and so i didn't know before those positions or do you have someone assigned to make sure that the equity committee has what they need through the chair as we let me start with the positions uh as shared with board members i
012will be bringing a number of positions to the board for approval these are job descriptions not previously established within the school district of indian river county to speak explicitly i'll speak to two explicitly today first and foremost chief equity officer this is a cabinet level position that ensures that the level of attention uh around our collective priority equity continues to have that focus from a cabinet perspective this is an intentional position the time is right to fill it uh the volume of work that needs to be done not only in this year but in the coming years is going to remain a priority and remain significant in terms of the volume of work and we need individuals freed up to continue to take our collective expectation and belief to bring it to life both within
013the school system and throughout the community so i see this equity officer not as a internal resource but a community resource uh ensuring that we're doing everything we need to do as a community to fully embrace and understand the richness of diversity and how it it includes or improves a community experience the second position is a community liaison specialist this reinforces what i just said an individual to be in the community understanding the resources that the school system of indian river county provides connecting and making partnerships we have a number of resources that are available to us as a community we have a community that wants to support that wants to help wants to uh bridge the gap uh and we need to align all of those resources while the same time uh be in
014all places at all times and that's saying a lot but the truth of the reality is we can't move this work in a the way in which we need to move it and the pace in which we need to move it um unless we've designated the resources and the human capital to do so so this individual will have the opportunity to go and tell the story inform the community and create relationships to maximize our collective efforts across the community on how we really bring equity to the forefront not only within our school system but within the um community as well and as it relates to the equity committee we have create a opportunity to provide information to the equity committee as it's being requested and then have that information to them in enough time so
015when they have meetings they're having fully evaluated the documentation that's being provided one of the things that we did earlier this year upon my arrival that information literally was not being kept anywhere we did create libraries so as principals create as an example there were no african-american achievement plans for school sites every school has their own plan that information is available we submit the documentation and how is it in the library so it's easy to resource and have that information available so it's not completely about the collection of paper uh it's about the alignment of purpose and in doing the work and around equity to improve it while the same time fulfilling the requirements within the joint order and we're fully committed to doing that so i think with this additional human capital it it
016leverages us in a a position uh to be more flexible and able to accommodate the needs as they're as they're being requested additionally just in case the question is asked these positions will not be an additional cost to the district with positions that have been unfilled we have more than enough money within our salary line to fund these positions for the remainder of the school year my intent is to have these positions filled as early as march that that's an aspirational goal because we have to go through an interview process and i can't do so until the board approves the job descriptions but my commitment is not to spend any additional money and then when we go into the new school year through their realignment and shuffling or reorganization of positions that salary position from
017district staff will once again be reduced which will include these positions but the elimination of positions that are redundant or not necessarily effective towards our vision and mission i think two very important things you just said creating relationships which is key and also using our community resources because they are out there in the partnership and i'm glad to see that those positions will be sent to the board for approval thank you uh mrs schiff a doctor shift sorry about that a couple of things um my overall statement is i employ i applaud the inclusion of this in the cabinet i think it's long overdue and much needed and i completely support it if as the board has to approve the job the job description before you can go out and look one of the things
018that is occurring to me as i listen to this is that we tend to use the word equity as a catch-all for this but what we're really looking at is diversity equity inclusion and belonging right in our schools and the term that i hear most kind of on the street if you will is dei or diversity um diversity equity and inclusion or sometimes i hear jedi justice equity include diversity and inclusion um i'm a fan of the term belonging as well which comes long story where that comes from but i'm wondering if what my fellow board members and you think about taking a sort of simultaneously broader and narrower approach to to what this is i don't think it changes the substance necessarily of the work but i think it's about more than it it
019could be about more than just equity in the ways that we've been using that in the district thus far and i'm wondering what your thought is or anybody's thought is about broadening that to actually be uh and and had i thought of this sooner i would have mentioned it to you before we got here um but about a a diversity equity and inclusion officer or or something that in includes but but also widens the lens of what we're thinking about i can't agree anymore and as i enter year year two with year one with an asterisk on it because of covid um that was the intent that equity is not the responsibility of one person or one office um but to lead from the front and establishing a priority across the entire system and i
020think that work has really propelled us in terms of setting equity diversity and inclusion as a priority as our system and the next step is to continue as we continue to move the entire system forward that we have the designated resources available where a high level capable individual who has a the same expectation that we have around these priorities is 100 dedicated to doing that particular work it is a purpose and priority of mine um but as the superintendent i have five different areas within the strategic plan in which i need to drive and i need to drive them in a parallel approach in order to ensure we hit everything we collectively know we need to hit in order to ensure i hit that second area focus area 2 which includes the equity work culture
021and climate uh we need to designate additional resources to continue the thrust that we've uh begun in year one so absolutely so so if i could follow up um a how difficult and then i have a follow-up after my follow-up but um how difficult is it or appropriate might it be to change the title of this position and what do my fellow board members think about that to really put the emphasis on everything that you just said at i know that it's included in other areas um of of cabinet and of the work that we do but i'm wondering if with the advent of this position if it makes sense to be really explicit about that and i don't want to delay the process i like you would love to see it done by march
022so if we're going to delay that's a a drawback but so typically and i think you know how i work we we share we discuss it is a collaborative effort i think it's that information as we go through the next two weeks you probably will see an evolution as i receive feedback and begin to share so in terms of equity culture and climate lines 100 to the strategic plan diversity inclusion it could be captured or reinforced whether it be through the title or through the the description or both or both right and and i don't know if my fellow board members support that as a direction but i certainly would i would love to see us be as acknowledging of all of of many of the populations who have traditionally been either marginalized or underserved
023that we really want to elevate i agree wholeheartedly um anyone else care to comment i just have one question both positions both the community relations position and the chief equity officer or whatever that position ends up being called both cabinet level both direct reports no the the intention is the chief equity officer would be the um the cabinet member right the community liaison report would report directly to the chief equity officer oh community relations report directly to the chief equity officer keeping that focus just not on community but on equity diversity and inclusion as as uh like any hiring if it probably makes sense not that i need to tell you this you get to if the if the community liaison is going to report to the chief equity officer it would be good to
024fill that position first and then have that person involved in whoever is hired for the other and that that's the intent the the chief equity officer would be the march the aspirational goal uh once that individual is in place you know empower him to go through the same process with the the staff that would report to him or her whatever it may be and one one more i guess question comment and all of the discussions that i've had with representatives of the naacp it seems like there's almost a day goes by when i'm not speaking with somebody um all of this well everybody in in in the district is involved in this and you know providing reports and data is that would this chief equity officer be viewed as maybe other than you who's ultimately
025a primary liaison specifically in the interaction between the district and the naacp or more directly obviously directly with the equity committee but the way things seem to have evolved is there's a lot of information there's there's a lot of people not a lot but a few people on the outside trying to collect it and there's a lot going on and i guess my question is we'll simplify the delivery of content of information if this chief equity individual has almost line responsibility for bringing a lot of information together and presented to either party either the equity committee us or naacp thank you through the relationship i think the answer is is yes in terms of reporting lines this would be an individual employed for by the district uh reports directly to me in order to ensure
026that we're creating those relationships and defining the systems that need to be established and the priorities that need to be reinforced across the entire system and community to move the work forward i i think that's important i think it'll tighten everything up perhaps from what it's been thus far in an unusual year having that accountability makes it i think easier for all of us and it certainly uh i think will make it easier for you amen to empower this individual to i agree dr jones just one thing i wanted to reiterate what dr schiff said i was reading the mission statement of the naacp the other day and one very simple line really got to me it said they want to make sure that they belong in america african americans and when dr schiff started
027talking about belonging you know chief equity officer is great for doing the job we need to do but i think it's more than just data and more than alignment and more than progress monitoring it's it's relationships and connections that we establish dr chef um uh there's a guy named john powell who does a lot of work on inclusion and belonging and who is is brilliant i'm happy to forward some of that information and some of the work that he's done um where he discusses why diversity and equity and inclusion is limited but belonging is actually what we're aiming at um and it's not the way most people talk about it i'm happy to forward that information both to you and to fellow board members and if we were to be bold i would argue that
028that's what we're aiming at and that as dr jones said that if we want to lead differently than other districts do or think in transformative ways that that's the direction in which to go and there is evidence for why that languaging is different than diversity equity inclusion languaging um can i can i throw out something else while i'm here sure you're on a roll you on a roll um and this is going to take us in a slightly different direction so if there's more to say on this we can back up and come back to it when i first saw that dr jones had put equity committee liaison on the discussion agenda perhaps because i'd been here for a couple of years and know that there are liaisons within the district i thought what you
029were talking about was an equity committee liaison on the board and i thought that what we were aiming at was a way for the equity committee to communicate directly with abort the board or have a person who is the the uh what's the word i want liaison pinpoint liaison pinpoint target whatever that is um because we've talked about that and they've talked about that they've talked about the difficulty in in how to communicate and with whom and not ha and and reaching out to the board and not knowing who to reach on the board and i actually thought that that's what you were aiming at so i'm wondering if that's the conversation we want to have um because it's come up a number of times about difficulties in when how and to whom the equity
030committee communicates when they they write to all of us all the time of course um or have in the past but if there were a specific person who who was the one and and it doesn't it what's come up also in the past is that it shouldn't be a specific person and that we should all be attentive and we should all attend meetings and i don't mean to preclude that or presuppose that but i want to bring up the idea of whether or not it might be valuable to have a more direct and clear line of communication and maybe that person is just the chair and that's how it will evolve that it should be the chair but that's what i thought you were raising and i also think it is is an important conversation
031uh mr zara you had your your thank you thank you very much um although that sounds um to be a good idea in in theory i suppose but in practice we got to think about how that would work so if we have one person who is the liaison with a board member other than the chair in conversations that might lead to how agendas may work or relating information then that person has to wait until a board meeting to share it with us in in you know all because of sunshine um i think it might delay some of the process so if it were to remain with the chair then i think it might actually help us to get the work accomplished because the chair and the superintendent you know could then make those decisions faster
032than if anyone else did who is not a part of the planning process with the agenda the immediate part of it i mean um creating it and kind of setting the tone for what what we're going to discuss and how that's going to look moving forward i just think that that might delay it a little bit so i'm okay with the chair being the um the liaison if that's what we're looking for just as it's been i don't know if we need to give someone that title well let me just respond quickly and then follow up first of all i personally having been i would say very involved i don't know how much progress has been made but certainly very involved it's all about relationships and trust and not in that order by the way
033it starts with trust and if there's trust you will develop a relationship and for a variety of reasons we all know that there's been a lack of trust not intentionally necessarily but it is what it is and i would encourage everybody to whether it's members of the equity committee or the executive committee the naacp or dr warrior i would invite any of you to have you know conversations with any of those individuals at any point in time i think the more involvement this board has with the individuals the better the more progress we're going to make and and we will make it faster and and my senses and this is not a crisis criticism and i could be wrong it's more of an observation in the past maybe before dr moore too much was put
034on the superintendent to be that person and i've been reminded that the litigation is between the nacp and the school board not the superintendent and obviously we're all dependent upon the superintendent for information and data and all the things that are part of measuring progress but at the end of the day i think it's incumbent of all of us to try and develop those relationships have those conversations provided to provide the information to dr moore when we're together in this we could we could have a 5 10 15 minute discussion every workshop is sort of an update we talk about we all go to these various committee meetings but over the course of two weeks or a month if you've had conversations that you think would inform the group as a whole or you have
035suggestions i think we ought to be transparent and i would encourage i mean i'm happy to be in the position i'm in and i've actually most of the time enjoyed the discussions with the folks i sometimes get frustrated as we all do that more progress hasn't been made but i think i think we're getting there sort of uh we'll see mrs spernberg you wanted to add something and as did dr schiff yeah i think i don't have it in front of me but i think it's important that we go back to um the joint order and look exactly because i think sometimes there's a gray area about the naacp wants to communicate directly with the board yet the judges put in um the fact that we need to have this equity committee and so we
036haven't had the equity committee active in the last couple months so that's where it's kind of gotten gray i think that we need to look back at the order and say what is the equity committee's job to do as far as communication are they supposed to communicate with just the superintendent with the with the whole board with the um chair i'm not quite sure i don't remember what it is in the lawsuit it's in my office but i don't have it right in front of me does anybody know what it was i think that's one of the purposes of the discussion tonight with the naacp is the roles and responsibilities of the district the nacp because there is some confusion i can tell you in the part of the nac i don't know whether it's
037confusion but they view their role as more evaluative than i thought it was i thought that was the role of the the equity committee and this is where the confusion gets and dr moore sends out a lot of information and then you know either it's not validated or there's something i mean it just it need we need clarification so i think you're correct in in uh suggesting we follow and uh dr moore or mrs esplin is going to be sure that they have copies tonight of that so that we can reference uh that court mandate if you will uh and so we don't get off track yeah i think i think that's the focus is that we need to stick to the wording of the document that came from the court and we need to
038say specifically if we're going to outline what everybody's roles are we don't need to start making up stuff we need to go back to the document that's legal that says this is how you all should proceed mr rosario thank you i think you're right mrs berenborg and one of the things that i have recently actually saved on my computer and i keep going to are the legal documents it's interesting if you all have not had a chance to read the court order from 1964. i encourage you all to do that because it's so interesting some of the information that's in there we talked about how we're going to make changes to meet the requirements that are uh will bring us to completion in total with the with the joint order although the work will never
039finish it's just an ongoing work uh to be completed but with regard to the responsibility of the equity committee all equity committee members and i'm reading directly from the joint plan shall serve in a voluntary capacity and shall be residents of indian river county and i'm just going to skip because i know that dr moore is going to bring this up later on but the committee has the authority to recommend goals and benchmarks to the school board for progress so that it appears to me that the progress monitoring uh remains um on the school board which you are our ceo um of instruction you know and and and all the like so the committee shall has the authority to recommend goals and benchmarks to the school board for progress all recommendations provided by the equity
040committee shall be made in an advisory capacity at all times ultimate authority remains with the school board and the equity committee has no authority to direct the day-to-day operations of the school district the school board may delegate and of course here we get into how we might opt we as a board may opt to put forth the notices to the court so i'm not going to read that the school board shall provide adequate support to the equity committee to execute and discharge its responsibilities and shall ensure that the equity committee has timely access in a manner and through channels to be determined in the school board's direction and there is more to follow with regard to what the meetings look like we've been doing i think we have since dr moore has come on made
041incredible strides to provide the support that the equity committee needs i think from based on what it was before dr moore to to what it is now it really is night and day so the support accessing the public records accessing the data with our district staff being able to provide for them a location whatever else they may need we are totally on board with that but with regard to responsibilities that's it that's it there's not very much else there with regard to that committee there isn't more this is under responsibility so the i think the impression that the committee should do more than what is read here what is indicated in the court order i think we uh are going to tread very thin lines if we allow the crossing of that line so mrs
042berenborg you're right on target with stick with what is in the plan [Music] and allow us to do our job dr jones when i put the liaison on our discussion item it was basically after referring to the joint plan where the board gives support and i think a liaison would be someone that could help now if we do get through the three new positions not sure we would need this i was again i was just trying to help that person so they would receive the information that they did have and after reading the dseg orders many times the one from 65 and the one from 94. it's it's i think what brian bear i'm sorry mr barefoot said about relationships and connections and and data and everything that we do it's all in the relationship
043that we establish so if we have the new compliance officer or whatever we just decide to call him or her i think we've we've gained a step on that dr schiff yeah um i don't disagree with anything anybody said i have mixed feelings about some of it um just because of having watched how this has gone for the last two years while on school board and some years before that just to be clear there is no violation of sunshine for one-way communication so for mr barefoot to and and we can double check this is as i understand it from ms degresta for mr barefoot to communicate to the board through email about a conversation he had so long as we do not reply and it is not a two-way communication there is no violation of
044sunshine so there is communication that can happen outside of a board meeting it just can't be a two-way discussion so if mr barefoot or any liaison were to speak with the naacp and wanted to inform the board of that communication as i understand it correct me if i'm wrong that a one-way communication is not a violation right that's correct um of course there's provides us to that that we always want to include on there please do not reply all and the temptation is there for somebody to just have a mental lapse in reply and that's why the attorney general says they discourage that but it's certainly not a violation of law yeah so i just wanna my my you're right and those are important safeguards um but there are ways to make us all aware
045of communication outside of board meetings so long as we are responsible um in in not responding and certainly you know not responding either directly to the sender of the email or replying all to everybody which is why we typically have our conversations with the superintendent um because we are not under that same legal restriction um the joint plan i i don't disagree with what my fellow board members have said about following the requirements of the joint plan but what continues to come up is that the joint plan is insufficient it's inadequate in a lot of ways and so we go back and forth often in our disagreement either about what it exactly says or its sufficiency for example to put this amount of work on the equity committee who is only charged with meeting once
046a quarter for the amount of work and that it's a volunteer position and the frustrations that arise around the amount of work required of community volunteers four times a year is insufficient frankly um and that's come up a lot and it's part of the reason that we keep finding ourselves in this position of not having enough data not having the right data not having adequate data um that the the liaison who was assigned to the equity committee was ms davis out of the superintendent's office so there was a liaison assigned and it can be an overwhelming amount of work not just for that liaison for the district and for the equity committee so we've gone back and forth about how to work within the confines of of the joint plan but also to be able
047to expand it in support of the work that needs to get done and i think that's one of the issues that will come up tonight is how we work around that because i can't speak for any other board member but i know i i can speak for myself and and being blunt it's incredibly frustrating these last two years that i've been on the board and i can't speak to the years before that are just incredibly frustrating we go in so many circles um and part of that may be the insufficiency of the joint plan i don't know that and that's not for me to decide but to your points it's not that we don't follow it but it leaves tremendous holes in how we can approach actually getting this work done so uh miss vapor
048yeah i i understand that my point was to not step outside the legalese the other issue i'm going to say is i agree with you that there are some holes but i think we're working in the right step by adding these positions that i think are going to help support the equity committee's work and hopefully make it a little bit easier and streamlined hopefully i don't disagree at all i i'm in in support with the exception of of expanding it rather than limiting it but i don't think that's all of it yeah it's just it's it's been a frustrating couple of years you know i could just add uh to this conversation this was a i've had several conversations over the last couple of weeks with dr warrior and one of the things and i
049have to be careful one i'm not as familiar with all of the history as three of you are and dr jones has lived in the community been involved so i'm really at a disadvantage in terms of history and i keep talking about you know the the achievement gap for example the achievement gap affects all kids not just african-american kids but i'm reminded when i when i say that i have to be careful how i say it the singular focus of the naacp lawsuit is on african-american kids so i think when we talk about inclusion and belonging and all the words around this topic um if we want to move forward uh and get out from under and reach unitary status front and center has to be the progress we're making toward african americans even though
050everybody will benefit without necessarily having to say it and i'm constant i'm not constantly but i've been reminded that that i need to really when speaking with them be laser focused on their community as opposed to the broader community that also needs to up their game if you will so i think i think we're on the right track and it'll be interesting tonight on this discussion i do think that there is some confusion and i would hope that uh whoever ends up being chair will have the opportunity perhaps to have a discussion with that individual you know in a workshop let's say as opposed to a business meeting and he or she can they'll have opportunity to offer their point of view i suspect i i i don't know any of the three although i've
051talked to two of the three candidates i think there's a fair degree of knowledge there or understanding so but leadership is going to be key and you know we say this all the time you take leadership for granted until you don't have it and then you realize how important it is and i think that getting the right person in the chair maybe all three of them would do an equally good job is going to be really critical and how that person leads that group interacts with these two positions that dr moore references and then all of us went appropriate if i could to your earlier point um i too have spent hours on the phone with dr warrier and mr brown and ms green and um i agree with you in in that it is
052a shared responsibility for how we communicate with those entities i spent over two and a half hours on the phone with dr warrier two days ago um it was actually a very productive conversation which i look forward to at some future point bringing more back about i'm doing some exploring of some of the things we talked about so yeah we do all need to have those conversations but what we also want to be cautious about um is is how multiple conversations can sometimes uh interfere with you know and kind of get in the way of straight communication or may sound like there are multiple and competing interests i think we all agree that we all have the same primary interest um but but it's tricky right five people communicating with three or four people however
053many that may be is a lot of lines of communication i i want to be um conscious and conscientious about that as well well there's no question that dr warrior is the go-to person uh for the executive committee uh tony brown is uh always cordial and uh i have good conversations but it's the end of the day talk to dr warrior and uh so she is the content person and uh and she's excellent she's she's been around a long time she gets it and i would hate to think if you talked to her for two and a half hours it was the same day that i talked to her for an hour and a half um it was a long day for dr warrior i don't know about us at any rate anybody else want
054to add to the conversation all right yes ma'am dr moore do you recall i mean i know you weren't here but do you recall in the information that was given to you when this plan was signed in august of 2018 do you recall if this plan went immediately into effect in terms of the districts putting together the committee immediately that august or september of or did it take some time do you know the chair that i i can't say a hundred percent so may lead on ms damp year i think the first equity committee so in august established and signed off began implementation of january of 2019 did that work during the year 2019 and gave its first report to the board at the end of 2019 correct but they also had a meeting with
055the school board all of us was so u-shaped i think sometime in november and went over the update as to whether or not they thought we met the the expectations or did not and they gave us feedback and then that information was supposed to be sent to uh for in december to the courts and nothing was sent dr moore came on board it was like a transition with dr motsley and dr moore so this was the january 2019 full school year till december 2019. i'm just trying to part of the confusion is we have a school year that we're all conditioned to talk about which is august to june and then we have results not how the joint plan is written joint plan kind of is in the middle of a school year runs a
056calendar year so as you do reporting you're basically reporting on the end of the previous year in the first half of the current school year which is not typically how we do it um but that's that's how it was so uh 2019 there wasn't much done um if you recall we went through trying to create the plan and dr motsley was here and we needed to make updates updates updates and only when dr moore came on board in january of last year did we create a plan so the reason why i'm asking that which is what i i kind of knew the reason why i'm asking that is for the timeline right so if we think about this if it started in 2019 even though it didn't start well if it started in january of
0572019 right 2019 2020 2021 this would technically officially be our third year of implementation of the plan according to the joint plan whether executed well or not that's not what i'm what i'm mentioning here because you were talking about timeline mr barefoot so according to the joint plan we have three years of implementation and then after the third year the committee would um in its monitoring of the school district's work towards equity if we met the areas that we are trying to implement then the courts would give us then we would be released from this court order essentially however the committee can still continue its work moving forward if at the end of the three years which technically will be this the third year we did not complete all of the things that we were
058supposed to complete then the committee again would remain for another i think it's two years two or three years even if at the end of the three year period the parties agree that the school district is entitled to a declaration of unitary status in some or all remaining areas the equity committee will continue to exist and monitor equity issues so there's still an opportunity even if we reach that 30-year mark for the committee to continue its work i mentioned this because part of the frustration is the first year of implementation really was an implementation the second year of implementation covet hit if i got that right and this is the third year of implementation so i think in a way we have to give ourselves some grace here we obviously the first year there was
059a superintendent that was not a superintendent who was not no longer here okay for reasons that may or may not have to do with part who knows okay he's not here but that first year of implementation was very frustrating for everybody involved we were not on the board um and so there really wasn't much work to be done okay hence i can understand the naacp's frustration and not getting the work done a new board uh myself dr schiff mrs behrenborg joins there were two remaining board members that second year we have dr moxley um that superintendent leaves we get dr moxley then we get dr moore so we have three superintendents in one year finally dr moore comes on board and then covet hits we're ready to implement the right way and get the committee
060everything that they need time that they need an office that they need the data that they need everything that they would need the committee even agreed that they would meet more than the quarterly recommended time that the court order indicates because the court order indicates that they would meet quarterly the committee themselves said this is too much work at some point they said we should meet more than quarterly and we should meet with the dish the school board more than once a year everybody agreed to that but with kovid none of that happened so we've kind of got a wash of a year last year unfortunately and now we're entering into our third year and we keep having these same conversations and i get it i get it we need to get and my frustration
061is we're here now we're ready to get the work let's move forward let's let's let's acknowledge the frustrations and the the terrible opportunities that had been have been given to the committee to the equity committee from its onset unfortunately we had nothing to do with the beginnings of this but we are here now let's move forward let's move forward let's get the work done we have a committee now a new committee getting ready to begin they're going to have new members they're going to have a new chair let's give them an opportunity to do the work that they have to do the committee will not sunset at the end of this year regardless because their work will still continue after the three years the court will have the final decision to say to see how
062much work we have actually accomplished mr barefoot that was just a little bit to answer the question that you had with regard to history and the workings of the committee and why it has not progressed um unfortunately you know to to too satisfactory of many people but i know that we're all committed to this and i know we have a superintendent who is committed to this and i know we have staff who are fully committed to raising achievement and closing the gap for african-american students and all students of color in this district and i and i constantly remind dr warrior in particular that just what you said that really um we for the first time now have the really opportunity to get this thing up and running it's sort of a fresh start but but
063on the other hand there's a lot of information that has been collected the question is how can we organize it and present it in a way that that we we probably have more information and we've made more progress or identified areas that we need to focus on more than what necessarily has been presented and that's one of the things we've got to figure out um anybody else okay moving on mrs barenborg you've sure added an item yeah i had an item this came up because of watching the science fair awards yesterday so we have several schools that want to progress with stem and have promoted stem in their schools and we have had a science fair going on since i remember getting first involved in it back in the early 90s and it has really
064progressed into something really great for kids lots of scholarships lots of opportunities i know that sometimes it's a headache for parents because you know trying to do a science fair project at home when you've never done that before is kind of interesting but i will say it's an opportunity though for us to really have those kids shine we talk about athletics all the time we talk about band programs we talk about our programs why aren't we talking about academic programs and letting those kids shine yeah they shine for top 10 percent but when else do they get to shine so science fair is one of those times where they get to shine and i don't know if you caught the awards yesterday and see the state bids but just so you know what state bid
065is and international because i've been to both and it's very very exciting i will say as an adult i was really into it and yeah i'm into science but i think even if you weren't in science and you went you'd be impressed it's an opportunity for those kids that don't get the chance to shine otherwise get an opportunity to get a college scholarship and i mean a big college scholarship or money towards college or an opportunity to put something on a resume for college so the reason why i say that is because i was a little disheartened with our placing from our schools and if you look at the awards and where they went it's because those those schools that have really really great stem programs and really great educators in those programs taking that
066time to really prepare those kids and work with and it takes other individuals for those kids to work with i know because i've placed them with with people you have to get scientists in the area to work with these kids because you know they're beyond i couldn't even communicate with this one kid in st lucie county i worked with i mean it was a different language he was speaking so i had to find somebody to help him that spoke the same language he did because i didn't understand his language so those people are out there and they're willing to help our kids the problem is what i'm seeing happening is we're saying we want to do great things with stem but we need to show that progress we need to show those opportunities where kids
067shine in our schools and so i i first of all applaud pat heiser he did a great job yesterday with the awards ceremony and with organizing and thank you to the ed foundation i am not taking away anything from what they do believe me i know for years how how hard that is but what i'm saying is if we're going to sit here and say that we want to focus on stem what are we doing to support our teachers to help with these types of things what are we doing to support our kids to help with these types of things will it take perhaps stipends to get the best and the brightest teachers out there would it take an opportunity to give them extra time maybe an 11-month program instead of a 10-month program for
068our teacher that does that sort of thing i don't know but i'm throwing it out there today and i have discussed this with mr meyer and with dr moore um because i really feel that if we're going to start saying stuff like that we need to put our money where the mouth is thoughts yeah i um 100 agree with what you're saying stem is not my area it's yours so if you don't understand the language well you know this kid was studying skin cancer um but but i want to actually expand on that a little bit and i don't want to take away from what you're saying um and i've mentioned this also to dr moore and others i went to the um college and career readiness night at sebastian high school the other night
069and and and while i'm really glad that we're doing that we did it so late in the year that so many opportunities were missed um and i'm disheartened by that and i've spoken with dr moore about this particular issue in different forms in a lot of it many times since he got here but the idea that we my concern and and this is this is um not negating it's actually building on what you're saying is i don't think that we are adequately in many ways preparing our students for life after high school academically for example most parents and i will say this again tonight at our business meeting i don't know that parents in our high schools are aware that we're offering the s.a.t in three weeks on march 3rd for free for our students
070which means that we have missed months of time when kids could could have been preparing for their sats that's such a disservice and i'm i'm i'm upset about that to be honest um there are other things there were scholarship opportunities that were missed because nobody knew about them so in addition to we're not paying enough attention to stem we're not paying in in what i am increasingly recognizing yet and i believe that we will do this moving forward with dr moore i'm i'm very optimistic about that but i don't think we're doing enough in the culture of education here to expand horizons for what happens after high school and the possibilities that kids can achieve academically and giving them every possible opportunity to do that um and so i don't know if you guys went
071to the college and career readiness nights yeah there was one at gifford there was one at vero beach am and i went to the one at sebastian um but like you're saying with stem there are a variety of areas where i don't think we're stepping up enough to support these kids in every way we can for their academic achievement and highlighting that can i follow up on that yeah my focus was at this particular point to stick to stem i i know i took since you did open that pandora's box i will say um i don't think parents realize that you should be attending that when they're in ninth grade and tenth grade not when they're a junior or senior they should be looking at career readiness actually you know when i coached i would
072say to kids you need to start developing a and people don't realize this but a sports resume when you're in eighth grade and you know because that's what this is happening now is you have to get that going early so so for that reason i think it needs to be promoted earlier in the earlier grades that being said but if we could stick to this conversation for stem because we've we heard all those presentations from all those schools you know uh we want to do stem programs we want to do stem programs we want to do the arts that's great well we put money towards the arts we do what money were you putting towards stem i'm just curious what are we doing good mr rosario thank you um i have a follow-up for um
073your comment dr schiff but i'm going to hold on to my comments until we get there i think that dr moore i don't know if you were aware because i know that you've just completed your first full year and with kovid the steam fest that occurs once a year in our county that is not part of the public school program it is put on by vero beach academy it is an opportunity that has attracted tens of thousands of people too and i'm going to likely say hundreds of vendors astronauts from nasa show up scientists from science organization mad science which they're located in jupiter and in melbourne they come they present there are vip people in engineering and math in all these kinds of areas they come for presentations for kids there are teachers in
074our district and board members if you were here the last few years you know that i've talked about this and staff knows that i have talked about this multiple occasions which ties into your steam support there have been teachers in your district who have volunteered for this event to teach kids how to dissect squid my son has done it i think every year since they've opened i'm excited about it i'm like move over i want to dissect the squid it's incredible it is absolutely incredible the hands-on opportunities that these kids have first year that they put this on the district did not participate in it i believe the second year we joined and the push to participate in it really on the superintendent was not great the second year our schools participated and it was
075incredible to see our schools have their own booth and our children showcasing the stem projects that either they created for this event or they had created throughout the year and now they're showcasing what they've created prior to incredible and we didn't have every school we only had some schools but i believe then the next year the support from the district now was um was greater than it was in previous years and so with with regard to what are we doing to support teachers in this area or schools in this area or students in this area this is one opportunity to do it is to once again encourage them to participate in the stem fair because this is a county-wide opportunity and um fun i think um resources and funds from the district would support the
076schools if they were going to showcase in this in the arena which in this case it's going to still be um at the ig center just it's not going to look the same because they're trying to be covered ready outdoors separated you know that sort of thing but it is going it's coming up in april so i'm hoping that we're still that our stem coordinator is our steam coordinator stem coordinator is encouraging the schools to still participate and to still do this because it's it we cannot lose an opportunity to put children our children in an in an arena such as this stem fest um and really really broadcast what they love to do they love to tell you come and see what we did come and they want to explain it they want to
077express it they want you to see their car racing against someone else's car on a truck that they've created on their own or in vbe they were go carts they had go-kart races they actually brought all of their go-karts to you know the outdoors so it's it's something that um these kinds of concerns that we have if we're not seeing it to fruition or as best as it could it's our responsibility to bring it to our superintendents attention and the superintendent has to you know get with his team and make sure that the principals are saying hey we want to take our choice whatever our choice is at our school whatever our choice option is and we need support from you to do this how can this district support us in this so i think
078that raising it is step number one which is what we're doing and then dr moore what are your thoughts so i'm gonna answer in not a roundabout way but a very direct way and the truth of the reality is the the expectation on teaching and learning in the impact a school system has on children hasn't been the priority all kinds of other things have been the priority keeping adults happy is more important than shifting or changing or modifying programming in order to improve the quality of instruction for kids so when you look at whether it be college and career ready is or or or stem we have to a systems perspective taking an aggressive approach around the expectation if you heard me once over the course of the first year you've probably heard me a
079thousand times talk about the rate of proficiency in indy river county compared to my previous county six percentage points difference you can't go to mcdonald's and order in english but a six percent proficiency different 97 percent minority rate but here six percentage points lower it's unacceptable and it may hurt to hear but the truth is who it really hurts is children i said it to district staff and i've said it to senior staff my daughters would not have been able to take the courses that they took if they lived here they would have aged out they would have had nothing to take during their senior year a gpa in miami is four to five tenths higher than here i've lived in both i've lived here for a year and you're not going to be able
080to tell me why that's setting an expectation and saying we're just not going to take a passive approach and hope that our teachers who give so much and do so much uh take it above and beyond for themselves why are there not enough science projects because it's not the expectation in what we're asking teachers to do this year is a lot but doing a project-based approach uh is a priority looking at stipends to compensate for those who go above and beyond man we need to do that thank you one of the things the foundation absolutely yeah well i found it but we can pay for that because yeah that's what we get money for uh another thing and mr maya can probably take us in a little bit of a deeper dive because him and
081his team have already said you know what we have all these steam academies um but what's the criteria and what's the credentialing that we as the system are saying yeah you're just not calling your self-esteem but how are you being credentialed so mr meyer has been working for the last three or four months can you take us a little bit deeper on what we're doing to ensure when we say steam we mean steam absolutely and i mean i think you already touched on it right i mean there needs to be a designation developed so that everyone knows where we're at right with clear criteria of how we move from one level to the next and then to the point where we're providing the resources and assistance to support schools and them moving from if we
082go with a bronze silver gold right there's lots of different ways we can do the designation but but where is the intentional plan of watching the schools grow and move up and improve and so that's what we've developed uh the schools will be showcasing where they're at i believe on may 20th is that correct miss maddox and so we're excited to roll that out this year and watch them continue this process and grow another opportunity that we're looking at for a secondary school is to increase the availability of our students to do well in things like the science fair we're moving into an eight period day next year there'll be more room for electives there's no reason that we can't add if we're going to be able to be supportive through certain stipends to give
083our best and brightest teachers in the stem fields the opportunity to teach those certain electives where the kids will have time during the day to work on this because that's one of the things we see from some of uh our students in different demographics is that they don't always get the support they need at home and there of course there's a lot of curricular demands right when we need to cover all the the core that we need to do but why not create an elective class to support those students and if we can get you know whether it be the district or foundation to support the provision of whatever materials are needed to see a more diverse participation in the science fair so very excited where we're going with this i couldn't agree with dr
084moore more about you know the data that we've seen in the past but it certainly will not be reflected in our success in the future yeah um and i bring up science fair as one just because it was yesterday that i saw that but you know when you're looking at outcomes you're looking at for example ap scores you know our ap scores if we're looking at our science ap scores and our math ap scores you know that's that's going to be a an outcome of how our stem programs are doing and the other thing to look at is you know where are kids going to college you know are they going into these elite programs are they going into ivy league are they going to mit are they going to programs where they can really
085excel in stem because if we're saying to parents when they're five years old sign them up for this this school because they're going to get a stem education and the parents said all right that's what i want for my child child goes through and then all of a sudden you know that doesn't keep happening so that's my concern is is it breaking down in middle school is it breaking down in high school are we not getting that support what's happening i think it's a first and foremost it's an expectation that we have to deliver and there has to be a boldness and willingness to move the adult people's cheese and saying just providing the service is okay but there's an expectation on the outcome so i went to an ap night and the information being
086shared with adults is not it's okay if you don't pass well the answer that question is no no no it's not you need to pass yes and if you can't move them to pass we need to find someone else to teach the course um and what we do for for dual enrollment um and i have a daughter who graduated with her aaa um we need to expand that uh the fact that we don't have a fafsa night and we're not helping parents go through what is the most complex yes arduous process to fill out the the fafsa uh and in some cases very very scary to fill out because you know it's there's a lot to ask for a lot of very very private information those are things that we identified as concern last year
087directly provided a a office for someone in student services to look at this work that's foundational right a lot of what i'm about to present is foundational and setting the foundation to move the work forward one of the things we're going to roll out next year is going to be a college assistance program that's going to be individuals not a new allocation but a redistribution of allocations someone at the high school who's fully dedicated to understanding and educating and informing families and parents as to what needs to be done and going into 9th 10th 11th and 12th how you create your portfolio and that's your job that's your job no one's going to take you off that task because if you're not in the right course in eighth grade and you hear me talk about
088this all the time your projector is off right it can't be fixed so it's creating the systems to uphold the expectation that we have and it is fundamentally reorganizing and recreating uh the district and i'm confident we're we'll get this work done dr jones a special thank you special thank you to pat becky teske and mr meyer because my husband judged elementary this year and it was a whole new venue with the videotapes and everything but i know that took a lot of work i was a principal 10 years ago but in those 11 years i was a principal sebastian river high school in vero beach high school had many state bids and a few international bits and we were always so proud it got competitive it really did but also um when i was
089looking over supplements is there still one for science fair coordinator i thought there was i'm not sure but anyway um we put a value on this and by the value i mean is the science fair coordinator would have a period to meet with those students because if you were really really developing uh the kind of projects that you thought could go farther you you needed some time and each year i saw it dwindle a little bit i can't really pinpoint it but they'd say the kids are doing this or they're doing this and maybe not as much emphasis was put on it i don't know but i certainly like to get back to that get back on track on that but valuing the people with a stipend a lot of extra work if you're doing
090it right this lady would know and also with the um the period it is believe me it's it's not a planning period it's meeting with the students on a regular basis but that's what got our kids to state an international bid and and they had a lot of fun doing it anyone else can you um yeah you alluded to that next year we'll have a fafsa night and support are you yet at a point where you can talk more about the support because i'm i'm increasingly concerned about what's been missed for the kids so this this will be great for the kids coming up 9th and 10th but you know our do we have a structure where our current guidance counselors are working with the kids who want to aim for college so that they're
091getting all the resources that they need can you say more about that yeah absolutely so it's creating the what i would call buy now you should by now you should already have taken your s.a.t by now you've already should have uh applied to universities you by now you should have your essays written it's creating a timeline over the course of four years the design now has been left to the goodwill of the guidance departments at each of the individual schools but from a systems perspective it's designating individuals to help them in the creation of what those benchmarks would be and being more intentional of informing the community uh it's putting together these things need to be done by these particular timelines in order to ensure a the information is being disseminated and being disseminated with
092enough time for parents to ask questions for parents to go and share what was heard at these particular meetings to get it back to a reality i think one of the things that we we do now uh both last year even in the midst of covet and moving into next year is master schedule reviews and looking at which children are in which clashes classes based on the the data and are we providing each and every single opportunity that's available to them going into master schedule reviews will be ap scores yeah they come out relatively late but we need to ensure that we have teachers in classrooms that are moving students to passing scores maximizing dual enrollment looking at when we're offering ap courses to students and not waiting to 10th grade when we don't have
093to wait for 10th grade an example in here is you looked at middle school acceleration two years ago before i got here the number was extremely low 57th out of 67 districts 57 out of 67 districts where miami was seventh and the only reason that variance because we weren't giving students the opportunity we weren't giving them the opportunity to sit in the class we just said no you're not ready well the data says you you are ready let's set an expectation so now there's a a system of accountability in place even in the midst of coving so when you look at our outcome this year 95 current today students who are eligible based on a sixth grade score where the data says you can do it and the research says if you give them the
094opportunity at about what is it around 87 percent are are 80 are going to pass why not give 80 that that's pretty good odds let's put you on a trajectory there's accountability and no discredit or talking down anybody those systems weren't in place so it's creating a data set so we're fluid in talking about where kids are in the impacts that we're having on them uh each and every single day getting that information two principles giving them the skill sets uh really to understand what good instruction looks like while the same time from a system perspective looking across the entire state and in the nation about how our education is setting kids up to go into the next level we don't have enough kids going to ivy league schools i went to florida state love
095me some seminoles um no offense to anybody but the reality is um if i even if i was pushed maybe i could have gone out of state maybe i could have you know i was i believe but that's pushing it that's stretching it but we have to know that those opportunities are being afforded to our children and it's creating and i think you see this being established as well that foundation through the credentialing of this is now your bronze stem program this is not a participation everyone gets to be gold this is the criteria this is the impact um so it's creating that condition within our system and and there's a lot of work to be done but we have the right people uh in our classrooms leading our schools to get it done so
096to follow up you mentioned master's scheduling and i'll follow up with about this offline more too but um will there be opportunities say for 11th and 12th graders either inside their school day or in an after school to make sure that they're getting you know they're late in the game will they be able to get access will they get some support in writing their essays and identifying colleges can they have a free period during the day where they have a counselor who works with them or after school so one of the things that mr meyer you know we've announced some very big things that we're doing whether it be the college assistance program uh the new job positions um another big thing to mr meyer is we're moving to an eight period day and here's
097an opportunity for all of our secondary schools teachers already teach seven classes one day they don't get a planning period they work from the beginning bell to the end of the bill by offering one additional class and going from 100 minutes to 90 minutes what did he do we're giving up 10 minutes per class but picking up a whole other class for students it does for the students it does two things i can take that remediation course without having to give up the enrichment course an adult doesn't have to say well [Music] you can't graduate unless you pass this test and you probably won't come to school unless we're going to make it fun and exciting for you we now can do both on the flip side we're doubling the amount of time teachers will
098have to plan to provide meaningful innovative rich instruction you can't ask teachers to produce the adults we all collectively want for our kids unless you give them the time to work with one another to figure out how on god's green earth do i engage and excite today's child we're giving him that time we're giving him that support and with those courses now principals have the opportunity to go back and say you know what i want to do a class like you just mentioned and those classes exist they're called seminars we're going to sit and for the first semester and when do you have them your 11th grade second semester we're going to work on your essays we're going to understand everything that needs to be done so when i walk into my senior year that
099level of anxiety that's created for a senior during the first semester can be absolutely eliminated and that's my oldest daughter like worrying about everything a thousand times more i want my wife that she needs to but we can eliminate that by planning and giving designating the time to do that so the answer to that question is is yes and because it's a priority and because we want to be successful in doing so we're shifting and redistributing how we're playing the game at the secondary level to maximize the experience and setting ourselves up for success through a a meaningful master schedule i love hearing i'm going to follow up a lot with you about this offline there's a lot of things that um that board members don't we don't get all of the little details all
100the time and um we meet with you and occasionally we may get some of these bits and pieces but there's a lot that goes on during the day that we are not involved in um and there's a lot that we don't know this is the first i'm hearing about the extra class that we are moving towards in the secondary i could not support that anymore but there's another part of of the work that happens that others community are not aware of um part of what you do as superintendent is you're not pushing papers you're out in the schools you're visiting you're meeting with principals and you bring your entire entourage with you so when you do this i did not know right when you do this and a principal says just throwing it out there
101that they didn't have support or they didn't have whatever you look to your team like let's do this right let's get the support that the principal needs to get this done i trust that some of the gaps that we are noticing in our first year with you as superintendent are going to be addressed in the way that you supervise and manage the schools and obviously our curriculum and our instruction and everything else that goes along with that because i know that your heart is for [Music] for children i know that your heart is for children that said all of these initiatives that we put forth whether it's to support the steam initiative or whether it's to support the initiative from the academics side the schools with increasing capacity of of creating an extra class and
102then what you're going to do within that extra class um if it's for the fafsa you know workshops or um really helping support the guidance work that needs to go into and the pd that needs to go into how you're going to manage your school day to get that up and running and so on and so forth all of that takes time including the work of the equity committee everything takes time we have to understand sometimes it feels like you've been here for a long time you've only been here for a year and 10 months out of that year we've been dealing with covet maybe a little less but um it's important for us to understand that we will reach that mountaintop experience we're going to look down we're going to look back and we're
103going to say check out where we were on february 9th 2021 and look at where we are now because all these things are going to happen but they take time turn around schools and turn around districts don't happen overnight turn around schools and turn around districts take three to five years all of the research points to a lengthy process there's change in personnel there's change in curriculum there's change in processes there's change in policies all of that takes time so we have to we lo all these initiatives i get so excited over because i just want to say well what are we waiting for let's just go ahead and do it like what i'll get my hands dirty to make sure that i help and do whatever i can but other than supporting the work
104of you know that happens on the ground level um i think that it's important for us to understand that we we have to give time to do it um some of the stuff that you are doing you're way ahead of where i would think i'm like you know let's do 10 things at once and you're like no we're going to do 40 things at once and we're all going to do it simultaneously and then we're all going to get together i mean it's it's just your brain i don't know how you sleep at night i don't but um i'm excited to hear all of these so i'm going to throw out one more thing for you with regard to when you said the fafsa something that i have been mentioning because i know that last
105year and i'm going to pivot back around to the college and career fair that we had last year when you came on and i shared with you that we have not had a college and career fair county-wide for all of our schools that you know my vision was for it to be this grand thing that you go and there are what attrition a traditional college and career fair right you have 20 colleges uh there present with your brochures and there you know um they're standing flags and giving out stuff and then you have about 500 different careers uh people representing their careers everything from you know astronauts to nurses nurses and doctors and you know everybody in between um all of that also takes time i was pretty disappointed when i went to giffords because
106i thought there were too few people here i only saw one college i think maybe two careers but it was the only time it was the first of its kind of the three this was the first year and then you meet again and then you say did it work what do we need to tweak for next year how can we make it better how can we service the community better what can we can we do it earlier in the year how can we make this really really strong so we know and get the word out so everybody knows that this is where you go to get college and career information so my hope is that that's going to happen because i too was a little disappointed in the amount of people on the on the
107tail end of it when i went i thought well maybe everybody got the information that they needed and they didn't need to come but um i know that that would have been a pretty good stretch too however something that you and i and i'm going to end with this something that you and i have talked about often is getting information out to parents and clearly there seems to be a gap in that maybe from the school level obviously to the parents getting information about sats or acts or the fafsa like you were just mentioning and that now i'm going to come back to when i first joined i had this and i have shared it on several occasions a vision of something of parent seminars right servicing the community and providing parent and community seminars
108kind of like a tedx right where you go to tedx you you hear speakers up there speak for five to you know eight minutes or whatever it is ten minutes eighteen eighteen minutes um i even brought a book to kind of study the the the process of how that works um so that we could kind of emulate that in a way and on various occasions provide parent seminar saturdays for parents to go and receive information that they have not yet received or learn about things that will pique their interest and we say okay now you have to follow up with your guidance counselor now you have to follow up with whomever and sometimes that's all that is needed is that push that interest that that light bulb to go off in a parent for that
109parent to say i didn't know that and they'll take it to the next level so that's something to think about because i think that we would um only benefit you know our children will benefit our parents would benefit i even thought of doing in my crazy head my visionary head you know having kids seminars where kids get up and they present right they do the research and they get up on the stage and they're five minutes talking you know 18 minutes presenting on a project that they did in school or a science you know thing they may not have won the science fair but now they've learned so much they still want to be able to share it with the community i mean good stuff you know in this brain of mine thinking globally um
110how do we get there you know and so i'm going to make it official now i'm throwing the ball in your court because i think that this is a wonderful opportunity to maybe fill in some of the gaps before we get to that systems or while since you like doing things parallel maybe we can do it simultaneously but i love the idea and i know that we can talk about that i don't know how board members feel about you know seminars for parents and kids love to hear your feedback as well we're going to present on something very similar okay and last if i may we received an email from the i think it was the central districts coalition yesterday i'm thinking everybody was in did you see that email from marion county yes it's
111a it's a wonderful attachment okay career planning guide for middle school activities from seventh and eighth grade i think it aligns with what we were just talking about what you just mentioned has nine through twelfth grade in there and an eighth grade checklist of all of the buy nows i think right if yep get your parents you know permission to do parent accounts smart goals all these things here ninth grade checklist i love this so i'm glad you saw it yeah you know pam has it dr jones i think dr schiff was in on that presentation yesterday i was on it with the coalition they talked about that from alachua marion county it was career planning guide it was good mr meyer when we go to that a period day for example let's say one
112school really has a lot of students that now needs to pass the algebra eoc because i think this is last year for pert am i correct so will they be able to design that schedule on the needs of the students and will that also be in middle school the eighth period so mr meyer is more than capable of answering the question but let me be clear a master's schedule is built on the needs of children not the courses teachers have always taught and the course code director can be your friend course court directory can be your friend if you need like a socratic seminar or whatever we need to do or a science fair person or what they need for graduation requirements so so we were already doing some of that this year uh we're
113just going to be able to do it better next year so we've learned some lessons of of the block schedule i don't know the black schedule was using this district many years ago so some people were familiar with it some people weren't um but moving to a four by four instead of what we're doing now is going to enable the classes to be more aligned uh we were able to do things in some spaces with algebra 1a 1b this year already in the 9th grade level where say students would have the same block each morning so they're getting math every day which is important for those students that are struggling same thing for ela we'd want to take that and to plan ahead of time instead of you know right at the end of the
114summer like we were this year to survive cove it was a lot of the impetus behind it but we realized that there's a lot of instructional value to it so as dr moore said planning for students and being best by kids you can align those sections so they match up with the right teachers that are being impactful so i'm very excited as to what that schedule will look like it's not completely um designed yet right so we're having those conversations as to what the student needs are and getting buy-in from different groups as far as their ideas because you know once you start talking about things people have great ideas of other things we can add just like the seminar classes i'm very excited for that and for the science fair electives i think that
115there's going to be many many opportunities that this schedule is going to afford our students thank you quick follow-up on that do we have any indication yet if we're going to stick with uh block scheduling or go back to the single yeah we're going to go with block with secondary yep it's there's there's so many courses that really are benefiting from it of course we do see some um individual instances where it's a struggle right now to implement what to do but we're providing the professional development uh within those spaces just the opportunity to differentiate and to break it out and to do small groups i mean the labs you think about you know your your pe classes where they're having to dress out your cte classes and things like that where you want to
116be hands-on it really is a great opportunity to move to a block the idea is to you know right now shorten it a little bit do four 90 minute blocks instead of 100 we're doing 100 minute blocks now um so that's going to be where we save those minutes to ensure that we can have the 4x4 so and we're going to stick to the a day b day schedule that's correct thank you well with certain things for certain students being daily right so the students that would need then a double block of ela or double block of math to ensure that they're meeting their graduation requirements the hope would be that they see those courses daily and not half of an a day right i mean that's going to be overload if we were to
117say half of your a day is all mouth or half of your a day is all you la no that's not as effective as ensuring the students get an opportunity to participate in that daily which is why honestly i believe that our in the state of florida why you see such great success in elementary school is that there's 90 minutes of reading daily right and so ensuring that our students get 90 minutes for those students that are still uh at that level of need when they get to ninth and tenth grade i think that's going to be a true benefit to them thank you yeah for the most part i agree i think it's it's been successful well it's to dr moore's point they don't lose out on the enrichment right now you're not losing
118out on your electives you're not losing out on band you're not losing on course you're not losing out on being part of these other things just because you need a little bit extra time good conversation well my stem items certainly got expanded bringing it back to stem first of all they do and i'm looking at pam because i know she knows about this they do middle school career nights in and we do them during the day actually for students in st lucie and we do get the colleges to come i think that i say we because i was involved with that but just like when i was sent to michigan to recruit teachers there was a day that we went to east michigan central michigan and so on michigan state not all around and they
119coordinated that for us why can't we coordinate that with our districts why can't we say okay what are you doing your career day okay we'll do ours the next day that inc that really encourages other colleges to participate because they can hit lots of kids and lots of so just respond directly to that question i see multiple opportunities for us on the treasure coast to pull our resources together to provide opportunities so good so next week talk to other superintendents next week friday i'm meeting with the new superintendent and martin and gent as well so we're sitting down to be open that conversation great all right where are we we we are committee reports board committee reports any presentation no we have the superintendent's presentation well his yeah board committee reports is number four sorry
120i'm ahead of myself yeah it's on one i try to keep us in on the train i don't have anything someone have a committee report i do i have one um i was on a call for the fsba policy committee and interestingly you may not think this really concerns us but it does because they're looking at lots of different things but one thing they're looking at is redistricting the leadership within fsba so for example remember at the end of that um a couple of days that we went to you kind of get these little huddles of groups you know and according to your districts and then you vote for somebody to represent you and and what does that person do so i learned what that person does and i learned who we're represented by as
121far as um how many counties right now we're represented uh it's indian river martin st lucie and okeechobee and highlands county that's all one area and it's done on number of students so they're looking at that and saying why are we doing that why are we looking at number of students why aren't we looking at it another way so there are lots of different ways that we're kind of re looking at this and i guess for the last i don't know how many years they've been doing it the same old way and the reason why is because every time they try to change it everybody gets in an uproar about it so there is going to be an upper about it this year i think that that change is coming and you know some people
122mentioned census some people mentioned but i my point was they talk about the needs of big districts and the needs of small districts but i brought up the need of what happens to our district which is one of the things that's going out for tan and i explained why that was a problem and other districts said we didn't realize that was a problem for you and i said so we should have been bringing that up to our leadership then in other words we have somebody that represents us an fsba that could have brought that up and as boards they have that opportunity to bring that to the legislature and say you know we think on behalf of all school districts that the money should come down to help cover their expenses they shouldn't have to
123be in trouble covering expenses just because their money is going to the state to help others and when i said that the panhandle counties all went oh we didn't even know that that was happening to you so you know i think it was a really good eye-opener for other counties to hear that when i brought it up so that's kind of what's happening with the policy committee and i think you'll you're going to see a different way that they're going to do leadership in the future and that's all i have okay um i want to just briefly and it's not directly relevant but it is interesting i went to the metropolitan planning organization meeting in the number for the county and the number two person from the state transportation department was there and he talked
124about all the the projects on the state roads and the uh in i-95 et cetera and the good news is that the everything that is underway or planned for indian river county will continue uh in particular down off of oslo road which i've not been on so i'm not sure all the time yet what it is but uh but the most interesting thing was the projections uh over between now and 2025 as there will be a shortfall in what was anticipated from a planning standpoint in revenue from the gas tax of four and a half to five billion dollars and and if you looked at and he had a graph and he talked about the the amount of car volume on the interstates in particular i-95 it basically came it was very flat and not
125much going on from march until december in december last part from thanksgiving let's say through the end of the year it ramped up significantly but not much of a difference in collection of tax revenue because the length of that the people were not driving very far there are a lot of cars on the road but they're not going anywhere i mean they're going from here to there as opposed to in the past they may have taken a trip to miami or they may have gone up to jacksonville or up into georgia who knows so i think that one of the things he was talking the good news for us in indian river county is that we seem to be in decent shape for major projects but it's clear that the state is going to suffer
126a severe decline in tax and gas tax revenue over the next two three four years unless something unforeseen happens which i found it interesting uh i don't know that it's relevant necessary to hear but it's just more information um actually mr barefoot i thought of something else um as legislative liaison i'm still kind of in tune with what's going on in tallahassee seeing that i talked to somebody every night about it i will say that an interesting thing happened this week um you know they meet at the beginning just to talk about legislative priorities and also budget priorities and a lot of the stuff that's happening right now is what does leadership want to see happening and um you know not just the individual bills although they are going through committee but the leadership and
127the governors are kind of the priority bills that's always the case of what goes through but um interestingly enough they recognize the pinch that the schools are in this year and that was a priority item that was discussed this week about budgeting with schools so i was really happy to hear that that is a priority item that's being discussed for the budget this year so keep your eyes on that because i think in the past i haven't heard that at the beginning of the legislature and this year they're recognizing that what's happening with the schools and with you know the way that we've had a function in the last 10 months or so has really affected schools okay no more committee reports we now go to yeah actually um to quickly say as dr jones
128mentioned i think she and i both participate in the central florida school board coalition zoom meeting yesterday yesterday i no longer can keep track of days um which was interesting but what what is most valuable about those is an opportunity to hear from other districts and other board members what's going on and i i have found often that board members have contacted me after those or like it's been a nice way to also start making other connections which i found at fsba too so that i have insights into what's happening in other districts and although i'll report on this for next time just in in keeping with what mrs barrenborg said about the fsba policy committee on friday i will be at my second fsba equity committee meeting and i'll report back on that when
129we come back um and we already talked ad nauseum about the college and career night so i won't belabor that but that's it okay next item is dr moore all right so as they bring up the the presentation this is an opportunity to provide an update to the board not necessarily a a a state of the schools but uh an update regarding our district's strategic plan african-american achievement plan and ultimately superintendent evaluation which as i continue to say ultimately is the strategic plan so as i move through the presentation you're going to hear some alignment which is extremely intentional in terms of the services start the presentation exactly where we should start the presentation covet although we had a very tough time returning from the holiday break as you can see in the bottom corner
130of the slide over the course of the first month back staff cases and 152 student cases covid continues to be a struggle that is going to have a significant impact on outcomes in the lives of children we continue to mitigate the impacts of covet but have no mistakes about it when a teacher or a student wakes up with symptoms we encourage them not to come to school we pay our teachers not to come to school in order to ensure we're doing our part not to have a spread we have done a significantly better job with quarantines over the course of the school year some flexibility given from from cdc uh so the amount of time students out of school not nearly as much but absolutely that's going to have an impact so covid continues to
131have an impact on the quality of education throughout our nation next slide really looks at where we started and as you look at it you think hey this is something we should be celebrating and and truth be told starting at 67 percent and moving to 84 percent of our students in brick and mortar is a success our targeted approach to bring back the students who we knew we needed to have back in place our minority students yielded the result so we were able to bring back from 56 percent of our african-american students to 80 percent 64 hispanic to 85 percent very targeted and strategic approaches uh almost doubling other uh ethnicities in terms of that returning back but at the same time instruction in time and interaction with teachers has been lost and also this
132unlike any other year the variance of where students are is more now than ever you had students who came back in at the end of the first nine weeks that was intentional we went and we were aggressive in in doing that we had students that came back at the end of the second semester that was intentional we wanted to do that because we knew brick and mortar was the same was the safest learning space but you have students now in classrooms that are entered in three different points which makes it very complex for our teachers so we need to be aware of the complexity of a classroom in this current school year next slide i put up there there's a lot of information but i really wanted to highlight that covet has an impact on
133all students this is a slide that reflects our highest achieving students if you look at the 6.9 percent fall 2021 that is students if they took on the day they took that test at the beginning of the school year would have scored a four or five highest achieving students and then you look at the winter you see the percentage uh increase for winter so if you look at kindergarten 6.9 percent of our students on the first 10 days of kindergarten were able to score what would be a proficient four or five and let me correct myself proficient in terms of state rankings was four and five level three as you know is average so there's a big disparity between level three and above which is state accountability and being proficient which is four and five
134my expectation is level four and five it's not a low expectation so we're we're shooting for the highest mark and that's why we continue to put this at the forefront of our conversation also put in here in the in the small little blue that's where we started beginning of last year when we didn't know what covet or coronavirus was and what you see here and it's very reflective across the state and nation we're starting at a lower point than we had in any other year about two to three percentage point percentage point lower as a result of that coveted slide but what you also notice here is the compounded loss starting a little bit lower that number grows over time so you see there and the the growth is very typical in previous years but
135it is typically less gross for our highest achieving students then when you look at the the smaller graph that is broken down by ethnicity and it's just the percentage point increase so if you were to look at kindergarten black students 15.9 percent more students scored proficient in the fall compared to the winter so it's growth over that time so covet has had an impact on even our highest achieving students so you know a lot of times whether these kids are going to be okay the fact of the reality is they're slide across all students and that's the intent of this particular side as it relates to reading i also wanted to provide a metrics around overall growth so this is the scale score we're getting in the granular uh kind of approach here looking at
136where students uh their average growth over the course from fall to winter once again this is iready so it's important to note before i dig into this data set we started 10 days later and we assessed during a december so there's between 15 and 25 less days of instruction in this data set intentionally because we want the data the data informs instruction so considering 15 to 25 less days of instruction depending upon your grade level so kindergarten third grade assess earlier those are the ones at the 15 and 20 all other grades at 25. the variance of only being four scale score points is something we think is very encouraging what we're seeing in our classroom is is producing growth only four percentage points less than students who had 15 to 25 more days of
137instruction so overall you're seeing once again we're starting at a little bit of a lower point but the rate of growth is um is we're satisfied with the rate of growth considering the number of less days of instruction now when you break it down once again by ethnicity some would look at this slide and say we're all learning at equal paces that's not what we want we want to close the gap for students are minority students at a faster pace so when you were to look at our black students in the 1920s school year you see their scale score change was 20 versus 19 for white this year they are the equivalent score we're aiming to have that 16 be at a higher clip students being out of school pays a significant impact having them
138back is success number one now we deal with the the bigger harder obstacle of differentiating and closing a gap that is wider so encouraging in terms of growth for students who are in schools but be we need to continue to be more strategic and differentiating instruction for our students as we move throughout the year math tells a very similar story the research and you've heard mr meyer myself talk about this in math is going to be where the big hit has been especially in our middle school level and the best way to tell that in that or to bring an analogy to light is in math it is a scaffold approach you know there's rungs on the ladder and if those rungs aren't there you can't grasp on them math builds on itself missing those
139rungs on the ladder at the end of the last school year and covering it in this virtual environment means we started as you can see in a lower place and because we had to remediate those skills we can't just continue to move on without them we have to reteach them uh you you see the impacts of cobit so once again very very similar you're seeing rates of growth in elementary be our largest and this again is our highest achieving students fours and fives and the impact that it has on them growth very similar a little bit less growth because more time reteaching and going back both last year compares to this year it's actually 13 percentage scale score points last year 12 this year we're looking to significantly improve that but i'll give you the
140caveat as well 15 to 25 less days of instruction i ready and speaking to them just like last night that's significant that is a 25 to 45 of a nine weeks so that is significant and needs to play into consideration and the same exact story we see here in terms of variation or the level of rate of learning for for scale score pro progress we need to be more differentiated and specific uh with our students of uh minority students what i did here is really look at where we currently are as of today why am i comparing to 1819 because 1920 wasn't a concluded school year so this doesn't include the interventions that are in place this doesn't include the data chats that principals have had with their teachers the regrouping of students the before
141school the after school the during lunch interventions that are taking place the enrichments that we're taking place throughout the confines of the year and you see a variance an estimated score because when students aren't in school they can't take the assessment so there's a rate of unknown and we're actually excited that our rate of unknown is significantly less than other systems across the state but at the same time we want to begin to narrow that rate of unknown or unclarity and provide very very specific instruction to mitigate the impact of covet i do want to point some things out when you look at our lowest 25 percent uh in 1819 it was 45 percent our where we currently are today ranges between 42 and 49. that's actually a very very good sign that the differentiation
142the data-driven process paying attention to our lowest 25 subgroups uh is paying off even in the midst of covet and you see that number to be true and math as well as reading middle school acceleration as i referenced earlier it was at 56 in 1819 the range is 75 to 83 now so just by giving students the at-bat you see significant improvement then you look at graduation rate because there was no 1920 school grade we never had the impact of that drop in graduation rate to 88. so as you know our graduation rate increased from 88 to 93 then you look at college career readiness um it was 16 in 1920 and then once again for this the estimated for this year is uh also 60 so that is also a good sign of the
143things that we were doing that again is providing students the opportunity uh to have the at-bat or the opportunity to participate you're going to see that number soar uh as we move into the the coming years you'll see graduation rate maintaining uh and you're going to see going into next year uh what we're doing with the eocs significant improvement those scores are low and once we have students back for the entire year the systems and the foundation that you keep hearing me talking about is really going to ensure that we're providing interventions on day one on day one not halfway through the year not when students return but really creating a culture of driving data each and every single day some other highlights as it relates to our our strategic plan uh ese these are
144just some highlights significant progress in students spending 80 percent or more of their time with their non-disabled peers uh 1920 it was 79 percent we've been able to improve that to 82. that is setting expectation that is training with resource specialists that is reevaluating ieps that small improvement of three percentage points is a huge lift and tren and providing students every opportunity so we're very proud of that particular number um when you look at suspensions the suspensions is probably upon my arrival one of the most disheartening numbers i had ever seen um and the lack of oversight on this particular area was glaring and as i set this number up you can see the baseline was 1461. that's through the first three nine weeks obviously students weren't in school for the fourth nine weeks so
145you really can't be suspended our 2025 target is zero we're moving to a system uh where we're not removing students from instruction but we're providing them meaningful interventions on the front side of any behavior that would lead to a possible suspension so these numbers are impacted by the number 67 percent of our students started the school year uh not in brick and mortar that has an impact but there has been training that has been taken place there is a protocol that has been established where outdoor suspensions require approval no approval to suspend absolutely but it is a regression study in terms of what services are being provided to students what could have what what should we have done what could have we done prior to leading to us the adults removing a student from instruction
146and that has paid dividends as well and i have some data a little bit later that that aligns to this around the problem solving that we're doing from a cabinet level down to a school site leadership level to say we have a problem with bass who teaches uh seventh grade she's written 47 referrals this year i need to know what is leadership doing about those 47 referrals what support are the instructional coaches that's the intelligence that we're creating to solve problems before those problems impact children and i'll talk about that a little bit later now i want to go through some highlights here for quarter two um one of the things that we have been able to do all lined to the strategic plan these are things that were identified within their strategic plan that
147have been uh accomplished really building sustainable funding sources for our step into kindergarten program as ms berenborg mentioned we're bringing a presentation to the board uh around how we're evaluating pre-k programs the impact pre-k programs have uh in order and being very transparent on the impact of those particular programs at the same time providing support across the entire county to ensure our students start kindergarten ready this is an opportunity for securing funding when students leave a kindergarten a pre-k program and they're not ready to enter our schools we provide that additional uh opportunity or that additional intervention for them so when they enter kindergarten they are in fact ready so we're excited about that we have created our own micro credentialing system to build and celebrate uh unity so our schools have the opportunity uh
148to participate in five different modules of um work around uh unity so those models are courageous conversations equity of effort culturally relevant teaching practices implicit bias and then participating in what is a three-hour practicum uh and they earn this badge of honor so as a group of adults they have put equity at the forefront and we as a system are providing that credentialing at the 24 hour completion the 48 hour and 60 hour completion so we're excited to already have provide that to a set of our district administrators and our principals and assistant principals so we're excited to really push that out one of the things that we've done prior and kind of walking into the district the baker acts was a concern this is pre-covent now this is pre-coping and looking at the services
149that we have to provide for our students in this county um currently are not at the level which we should be acceptable with and problem solving we're able to work uh reach out to the hospital district uh they're stepped up with some seed funding to push out an rfp uh to local organizations cleveland clinic was the one who's already gone through the rfp process to to build in what we'd call uh build up and then scale down services so a student who is in crisis leading to a baker act we have services available here at a local leverage level through our partnership with the hospital district to provide those services for kids so we're excited that we could lead that way summer brigal i'll call you back next is impact rev impact reviews and i've
150mentioned it before what we've done in the ability to bring data from a stagnant point to a live uh interactive point our dashboards is something we all should celebrate we have the ability to disaggregate data by teacher by school by grade by a topic assessment or unit assessment as we call them really inform the conversation at the teacher level at the administrator school site level as well as the district level around the impact that we're having on instruction and then using that information to go and walk and see what's taking place in classrooms impact reviews allow us to step into classrooms evaluate instruction look at the data in real time in order to determine what systems of support do we need to continue to provide for our teachers we are setting the foundation to be
151a data-driven culture in our community very proud of what the work we've done around integrating to the peer iep system as most of you or been administrators on the board know pierre is the system used by most districts in the state of florida we were using a self-created iep system in focus which did not align to the resources and wasn't built in a way that allowed us to maximize the services so we have fully integrated to the peer system already we've trained our resource specialist and it is in full implementation above and beyond that we also created a partnership with the esc student advisory parent advisory council a system on or a check imbalance on how to conduct ieps to ensure parents feel safe and feel comfortable not only has this professional development been organized
152created and implemented it's being facilitated in support with the parents our parents are logging on to focus coming into our schools and providing this development so we all on the same page on how we're providing and facilitating an iep and the impact that it has uh we did on december 10th mr rosario pushed out our first professional development for parents and this is a parent academy it was virtual because of the reality of the pandemic this work really looked at connecting our parents to the social emotional support and services uh that parents need to know about as a result of covet it looked at navigating our web page and using parental resources such as our parent notebook so this is in fact bringing to life this seminar session for parents to ensure they have the
153skills and they have the abilities and the awareness of those resources to maximize their time with children at the same time we saw a need and are feeling that need around ensuring our teachers have the skills to connect and grow strong student or parent child and parent relationships and this is once again providing resources to our teachers to inform and support parents so this has already been rolled out rolled out uh towards the end of november teachers have the opportunity to log on self-paced course on canvas looking at tech tips at home tips for home and school communication home learning resources giving that information to our teachers to so they have it to pass along to their um parents also um as you know we pushed out early last year um last year being my
154first year a resource to build the bench for assistant principals and principals we've had the opportunity to evaluate our assistant principal pool and we've doubled the number of participants in that pool so we have now have 24 we had 14 at the beginning of the year we saw the opportunity to re-advertise and post and recruit even more so we have 24 teachers who are aspiring assistant principals have the opportunity uh to attend professional development so when they have when their name is called and they go through the interview process they'll be ready to step in and serve in a very very complex role looking at one of the items uh that will be approved tonight is the uh out of field waiver and for the third time the second time in a row we're seeing
155a reduction of that number of teachers on that report that is work that's being led by mr meyer and his team really being flexible and providing a blended format data-driven approach looking to say what teachers need this remaining course and reaching out to them and not just being dependent upon them to to know it for themselves it's a hard year so we want to push that information to them and you're seeing significant reduction reduction in the number of teachers who are out of field at the same time uh increasing the number of teachers who've completed their reading endorsement we think that out of field waiver is going to be cut in half next semester mr meyer no pressure sir we have six schools who are maximizing funding provided through the gears grant this is above
156and beyond enrichment and remediation taking place at these six schools very focused our educators using this funding to provide meaningful enriching interventions to students so this is one of the strategies that we've implored employed to ensure that we're eliminating that coveted slide and finding students where they are and providing meaningful instruction to them so we're proud of that particular leadership we move to a brand new system for enrollment into our choice programs so uh prior to this year it was a paper pencil process uh very convoluted uh and ineffective we've also spent the year advertising and marketing this process so with this tool parents could watch our videos watch our um our booklet that we created around choice and make their selections from the comfort of their home and not only just make one selection
157but have the opportunity through this new system to give a first second or third choice and the numbers are are just in so we've been able to last year using the choice impacted because of covid but at one choice we are only to provide a choice option to 73 percent of those who applied for choice this year we were able to meet 99 percent of those who applied for choice so that is a big number another thing that we're seeing which is very encouraging is the number of individuals requesting choice has reduced now you think oh that's that's a bad thing what this board did a year ago is say we're going to put magnet schools and choice schools uh that window at the same time and it created the opportunity for competition and for
158our traditional schools to say you don't have to go to a choice or a magnet school to get a quality education let me have a fair share of selling my program your home school for you so it is a good sign that that information is keeping students in their traditional schools and that's really going to enhance the next item we have completed um which is a significant amount of work but this board is going to be bold and courageous as we take on the master plan and the master plan work is comprehensive in looking at uh where students currently reside and where they currently attend and as mr fagan has set this up there are schools in this district where there are a thousand students who are assigned to go to one particular school but
159they wake up every single morning and 700 of them go to a different school we have students who grow who wake up and are on a bus for a significant number of time we do not have a k-8 school we have middles we have high schools uh are at 92 92 mr feig 92 you want them to be significantly under our middle schools are under enrolled so it is bringing this information demographics and really exploring how do we as a boarding community look at creating a master plan over the course of a number of years to meet the needs significant work to set up significant work has been accomplished and we're excited to bring that to the board now you're going to start to see some repetitive remarks but they're aligned remarks once again middle
160school acceleration we spoke about prior to this this assessment right now uh we have 95 percent of our students who are enrolled in that course who are eligible as defined by the state you're seeing the reduction in suspension with the acknowledgement we're still going to continue to monitor that and do that professional development our risk ratio for um classroom removals 1920 was 4.0 our target is 2.5 currently we're at 2.39 um although that seems encouraging i'll be much more satisfied when we have all students in school with that um in terms of um being able to really evaluate that there are a number of opportunities for us to provide development over the summer on how we manage classrooms to keep kids engaged make no mistakes about it instruction drives discipline and the more meaningful the
161instructional environment is the more relevant is for the students the less disruptions we're going to have and the confines of the the school day uh community engagement you're seeing significant improvements we contribute a lot of that improvement to the use of technology and the flexibility and the willingness of parents to participate in virtual uh engagement opportunities as tasks by this board are being creative and looking at funding resources you're seeing a a target for 2021 of 2.5 currently we're at 1.9 so we continue to explore all opportunities to enhance uh learning resources both from the confines of the day as well at the as the end of the school year opportunities for improvement when you're looking at the strategic plan uh and these are things that we're currently doing that we have learned through implementation
162so we're engaging our district leaders and really being public with our practice so if you walk um our buildings our district office you see outside of each district office things that are going to be accomplished by district staff each office over the course of a particular month so we come together in a seminar once a month it is building leaders it's investing in those who are leading uh this system and their areas of responsibilities and supporting one another in their individual goals that ultimately support the overall goals of the school so we're we're continuing to push and be public with our practice we've pushed the the data com process into our school so as we see individual issues at schools and we'll talk about some issues a little bit later i'll give you an um
163example you know actually i already gave an example and looking at teachers who are removing students or administrators who are writing referrals we're seeing things that allow us to say let's push ourselves into schools let's work with principals and look at the systems that are currently in place to bring this to their to their level of awareness we're also looking to engage students in in our focus uh parent portal so we're using the data to drive that so citrus elementary dodger town the data is relatively clear that we need to provide additional support in order to build that communication to our parents so they have the opportunity to engage in that we're creating an onboarding package for our new teachers this is work being done by hr and recruitment so we're taking that um to
164the our recruitment support group who is providing us feedback on is it the right information this is information regarding the community coupons that are being provided by by local sponsors where to live uh really just something to meet and greet and address that social emotional uh need for even for adults uh we have spent mr mr fagan's leadership a good two or three months looking at our school allocation model we created the school allocation model last year and now there are opportunities for principals to give input they have additional insight because they're the ones doing this work each and every single day so over the next several weeks and and month mr fagan will have the opportunity to incorporate some of that uh shifting allocation and resources keeping them at schools but giving principals more
165of what they need and less of what they don't think that they need they'd be more appreciative for more intervention funds an additional allocation for support staff uh those that's the feedback we're receiving from principals in order to move that work forward now looking at our um african-american achievement plan high level of alignment with our strategic plan uh that unity through micro credential unity the unity through equity micro credentialing uh also is a goal within our african-american achievement plan provided that update our school choice fairs provide that information very very intentional strategic pushing out of choice we're actually opening up seats this year once again using early warning data systems this is the opportunity for us to engage professional development using a trainer train the trainer model to ensure that at vero beach senior high
166school already done at sebastian river that those se sel practices are able to be uh continue to grow within all staff over the course of the year uh and the time is absolutely right to continue to do that and looking at our mentors those who are supporting our new teachers uh really providing additional support to them around cultural competencies giving them that professional development so as they invest and grow our new educators uh that skill is already there and being supportive we've done a lot of work in in terms of uh identification of esc students and not over identifying within our minority students so we've created and implemented a rule out factors for our school psychologist making sure everything has been considered and implemented before you move to assessing a child and ultimately labeling a
167child fully implemented we've also created with our resource specialist uh a pre-referral checklist looking at culturally responsive strategies were they used prior to the or within the esc identification process so this is information where there were gaps uh that were leading to the over-identification of esc students filling those gaps allow us really to be in a better place to move that work forward we've also overhauled our recruitment team to ensure that it is reflective of those that we want to entice to come to the school district of indian river county right 60 percent african-american 7 hispanic and 27 percent white so that has been done the workforce housing committee they met um early early early january but they have very very focused uh they continue to have conversations um on online and email you should
168expect some some good information to be coming back to the board on the work that they're doing they're very very very active other areas to look at once again this is information that i've covered but there is alignment this is african-american white risk ratio uh quarter three was 2.8 2.13 now still continuing to monitor improve to improve that number uh disparity in classroom removals this is you know us getting to the level of the classroom and making sure we're improving the quality of instruction to keep students in classroom slightly down so there's continued opportunities to to do that work more effectively and looking at recruitment and retention you can see last year we were able to this is the teacher mentoring program we were able to retain 18 of the 19 this year through december
169we're able to keep all 27 that we've hired which is an improvement it's just one more improvement so let's call it what it is but it's a six percentage improvement uh the the breakdown of the recruitment team i've already discussed um opportunities for for growth as it relates to our the implementation of our african-american uh achievement plan this is work that we're doing for work things that we have learned really pushed out information to all of our principals around our choice options uh so conducted a survey of parents who are participating in choice programs push that information to principles to lead them through conversations around shifts or modifications to their choice programs as they continue to plan and modify though really have done some bold and courageous work in working with the state and looking
170at our plan b gifted criteria and there'll be modifications being made to that criteria in order to maximize the number of students who are african-american to participate in our gifted program so we're proud of us taking those particular steps we continue to make professional development a and equity almost one and the same the course offerings continue to grow um for all all of us both at the sec um the school level as well as the the district level continue to give students voice and um through my superintendent student advisory council taking on hard and difficult issues so we're looking at student participation in extracurricular activities they're putting they have put together a presentation and received feedback on where we need to shift and modify our resources as an example if you don't have the uh
171materials and i know what you would call them to play lacrosse you're automatically eliminated in middle school that's unacceptable and we're going to fix that and then getting feedback from our our mentor our mentorship programs and those who are providing feedback to our african-american new teachers making sure we're listening to those particular needs so as i kind of bring it home some accomplishments that were all above and beyond the strategic plan and where we are we're happy that we brought back we went from 67 to 84. that percent is extremely high for districts of our size that is an accomplishment that created a lot more complexity for us at school sites but we take on that complexity with uh with honor um our our stars structured approach moving from 57 56 percent of our african-american
172students to 80 percent uh we're glad to see that but still acknowledge of that 20 percent um as well as the other students who are not back there's additional work that we need to do and concern that we have for students who are not yet back in school um we could work with the the the county to mitigate learning loss due to government associated with instructional uh disruptions uh and we continue to provide feedback to schools as it relates to what we're seeing out of school suspensions will be overhauled we've done a number of visits to all toss looking at them as well as our program our alternative school you're going to see shifts in modifications on how we're being intentional of getting resources and support and providing mentors and follow-up support for students before
173they get to the alternative school so there's a big program aim is going to be its name but it's coming to you really to ensure students never end up at the alternative school and we're flipping uh the the service model to provide that support on the front end versus the the back end we've modified how we're collecting information so during mid-year reviews with principals being more intentional about focusing our energy on the actions that provide an impact versus the collection and documentation still maintaining their requirements but ultimately shifting roles and responsibilities to capture that information while the same time maximize our efforts to improve the outcome for children by honoring everyone's time and we have facilitated one but but two opportunities to connect and engage our community and looking at where we are and re-envisioning
174equity within our community and we continue to do that work this is focus area too so we recognized and had a great time under miss maddox's leadership our star patrol hitting all schools along with our gala of the year very very exciting time looking at focus area 3 which is communication and engagement continue to to work with our students student voice is a priority of mine listening to our students receiving first-hand information as to the how they feel about the things that we're doing create opportunities to sit with city managers on a monthly basis talk about things that are impacting them things that are impacting me to ensure that we're coordinated in a line continue to provide facebook updates uh to our community that has been one very successful mode of communication uh talent support
175and development i've had the opportunity uh in working with uh impact florida to to sit and provide information on how we're disaggregating data as well as learn from other superintendents on the work that they are doing um ongoing professional development to senior leaderships really looking at how we grow leaders in our system um and then continue to grow our data com process not only at a district level but push that process into school site levels to continue to to grow that work uh and then finishing up key accomplishments in district five um implemented action steps to explore the possibility of establishing a district foundation we are in process and continue to do that work you're going to be excited about what we bring to the board in march regarding the establishment of our foundation uh
176we were able to secure an additional million dollars of funding through the ed foundation i'm sorry and work in partnership with the county um and we continue to work with schools that need additional funding for a2 initiatives which is additional intervention services so when you look at the the sum of where we are i think if you were to you know fast forward where would we be because of of of covid no one really would have known and the truth of the reality is the effort given by all to provide education for our community has been significant has it been complex absolutely are we in involved in a reality that had not previou previously existed the answer to that question is yes but what you see from a systems perspective is staff who's dedicated to
177doing this work uh the strength of what has gotten us through over the course of this year has been culture it has been relationships there have been systems that have completely crumbled but the school district of indian river county amongst all the pressure that we're putting on ourselves isn't crumbling it is thriving it is working together it is continuing to push the needle it is identifying all kinds of problems that need to be solved and from a system perspective from a school site perspective very very happy with the communication the openness uh to explore how we collectively create a new reality to move this system forward so that is my presentation i understand it is a great deal of information um but there's a great deal of work being done uh because that's what we've
178been called to do thank you mrs barron yes could we go back to slide 10 please areas of growth you mentioned the ones that i kind of picked out which were the ones that um you've seen gains this you say estimate how how are you predicting these okay so that this is using our our mid-year data using iready and topic assessment so it is a regression study so based on where students are and looking at what they've accomplished to this particular point in comparison to previous years you're able to to create this score will produce a proficient score on the end of year you have the variance because there are students who had not taken the assessment but will count now what the state's going to do we don't know we still don't know so
179we have to make the assumption of what we call from a systems perspective the gray students because on dr mcmahon's chart they were they were identified as being gray some of them we know are going to be proficient because they're level fours and fives so there's an assumption that we can make based on historical data that they will be other students we didn't have data because they didn't take the initial assessment but now they're back and we can't make a prediction because we don't have enough data points in which to make to make but the that is where we're currently at and that doesn't include the work that we're doing to move forward thank you for that clarification on slide 15 um you mentioned esau courses blended not quite sure what that means but um
180i'm glad to see we're offering more my question is you know obviously this comes up all the time about how many out of fields we have right and that percentage and i appreciate the fact that you're really working on that do we have enough opportunities though where a teacher doesn't have that excuse that says i didn't there wasn't anything for me to take because that's what we've heard before so i i think we've provided a higher level of flexibility to offset that statement we've also been very intentional of notifying the individuals that they are in fact out of field and here is the services so i'm saying that we're being data driven just not saying well let's just hope that you know it goes down being intentional of making sure teachers are aware that they
181are in fact out of field and these are the services that are being provided blended means that you eat some of the courses you can take online you can take at your school site uh and in order to be as flexible as possible mr meyer is there anything you want to add uh the chair yes we are uh reaching out and making sure they have those opportunities i think one of the other things is just the the awareness right the awareness that this is no longer acceptable so when you look at some of what what principles can do to solve their own problems there are numerous teachers that are endorsed and either reading or esol they just need to be scheduled appropriately so that students aren't in the wrong classes and so that's a lot
182of work that the principals have done to correct some of this and quite honestly you know we were all doing our best to meet the needs of the diverse uh requests from parents and families for the three different instructional models um the list would be even shorter right i mean people were covering down on classes to do best by kids they were out of field because of that but that's why i feel confident when dr moore challenged me to reduce it even more next time i think we can get that done because there's a tremendous amount of work and understanding that no student should be in a class that's got an out of field teacher and we're we're we're going to see that number continue to drop great i'm glad to hear it i have
183another one on slide 11 um you talked about the status of exceptional student education um and you're you specifically put in here least restrictive environment by service delivery model so we're looking at 79 80 82 and we want to get to that um top 10 state ranking right how are you determining what that one number would be so that that's up to the state to rank them so moving to 82 is favorable in terms of the that rate of improvement so at the end of this year we'll be able to look and see where the other 67 districts right i still think there's there's significant opportunities for us to improve how we're providing or how we're maximizing that particular number okay so have you looked at last year's like how how everybody else did as
184far as percentages yeah so last year as i said 79 uh other districts are doing significantly better than than us so it is we we don't favor as well as we would like okay so we we have room for improvement there yes oh absolutely and then can i ask on slide 17 you talk about in a african-american focus group for recruitment who who's on that focus group i'm just curious you want to give through the chair that is the group that is being led by ms hofer mr seymour and uh two members i know they're on there is uh mr stewart and mr thornton right now and i believe they have met two different times mr browning okay mr brown and kevin brown kevin browning also okay and their focus is to they're they're working
185to try to provide feedback of things that would draw in to help with your recruitment record with recruitment yes ma'am okay great and then talk about all the community members yeah and all the app you know the aspects that go along with it housing um just everything right i have a couple more but go ahead mrs rosario um in that thank you for dr moore thank you for the presentation by the way um uh there's quite a bit of work that i know we have been doing that you have been doing that is not included in these slides and i just want to draw the attention of the public or listening to the additional attachment which is the actual narrative report on this presentation for more details by all means the public can read that
186um mr bass with regard to the recruitment um are we reaching out to the historically black colleges and universities that's something that and is the reaching out part of virtual recruitment fairs through the chair since covet is hit everything pretty much is virtual and we are participating in virtual recruitment fairs seems like weekly and yes some of those have been the hbcs so one of the things that has come up in the past with regard to our recruitment and this happened i'm going to say it's also before dr moore joined when we had our last recruitment at some point the someone did not record those people who came in as being their name whether they were black white hispanic who they were where they came from like there wasn't an actual record that we could
187um that we could um use for our data purposes that yes we have recruited five new you know um african-american teachers versus two you know or whatever it was who were given the letters of interest at the fair again i i think this was before you if i remember and then there was a huge discussion about why that happened why wasn't the the the information of those who were interested um collected the data collected for those recruitment fairs are we making an effort in these recruitment fairs to collect that data are we making a conscious effort to do that so that we can add that to the efforts that we are making for um the joint plan through the chair yes ma'am we're ensuring that we're keeping accurate data yes i think because there's a
188there's a part in here on recruitment and the mentorship and if we can tie those together and keep accurate records i'm glad that we are doing that so thank you for that um i want to make sure that even though we may be participating in virtual affairs on a whole um i'd really like us to look at make sure that the historically black colleges and universities are you know top of the list in there in on the on those efforts um i have a question i want to go back to this the choice slides if we can go to the choice slides where there were the numbers of um let me pull my thing up it's 20 i think let me pull it up nope not 20. no not 20. um as i pull it
189up more there was a number that you mentioned you said that we have 90 percent i think you said that we have been able to honor 90 percent 99.99 99. can you uh re-iterate those numbers the percentages so let's compare those to last year last year there were 854 requests where they had one choice of that 854 657 receive the opportunity to participate in that choice which is about a 73 percent uh acceptance rate this year you had 624. um you had 620 i'm sorry you had 650 648 request oh so i said that backwards i'm sorry you had 757 applicants and 648 uh found locations from their choices so that's chart goes down and the number of however you said that the number of students or the school numbers did not increase or they
190decreased the number of applications decreased the variance is and it's a little complex is last year of the 854 you had just one choice this year 657 you had three choices so you had to go through my free the first round and then the second round last year and remember it was the way that it was it was i get to do magnet first and then follow up and redo it with what would be um choice which would be your neighborhood school so by aligning the two um magnet and choice side by side and having the one deadline we're able to a do it once and b fill seats more efficiently and providing additional opportunities so if you don't get into a you get to go to b or this is my first choice and
191this is my second choice we've been able to at a earlier rate provide access to those choice magnet programs so there's not very many students who were not placed who were not accepted uh i think it was it's less than 10. right now whether they they accept that that information is being sent home now so that's the process that we're in so the next number that i'll be able to deliver to the board is you know we accepted or offered you know that 648 and of that 648 x percent uh actually attended accepted the excitement yeah the acceptance right we offered them now they need to actually physically say yes i'm going to go to this particular school but we've actually ex what have we offered have we offered everyone their choice well no we've
192offered 100 percent and only 657 648 have responded with we accepted them into one of their choices that's where we're at okay um and then my last question on this topic is if a parent missed the window at this point or we have a new transplant into the vero beach indian river county do those parents have an opportunity still um and if so what could we uh announce to the parents if they're listening if they've missed that so our magnet schools are filled we're offering an additional uh class uh at beachland so it would be filled the rest of the schools would still have seats which would require a second round so there will be a a second round that we push out you know here's you know the students that have accepted there's going
193to be movement more movement than there's ever been in the past which you know and as go students ghost teachers so that may require additional advocating and selling and marketing of the school for for principals not to lose a a teaching allocation because they've lost students so so it's creating that level of urgency um in competition which is exactly what we wanted to do so if parents are listening and that should they um go ahead and um contact student services regardless or should they wait until now they should wait because we we've just finished um early last week we finished the the process the lottery process now they're being informed uh come march we'll push out a round number two in which they can go and apply specifically to those particular schools where space is
194available so round number two is going to be much much smaller limited schools uh limited seats available because all the other ones have been taken up thank you very much i have many other questions but i'm going to let other board members dr jones yes thank you very much for the presentation i really like pd when i see it in action in schools and i had the opportunity to see an impact review with the district staff at an elementary school very very engaging and then an action plan for impact review at another elementary school so that work is really hidden in the classrooms which i appreciate dr when we have suspension we want to go down to zero what now counts as an out of school suspension in school suspension out of school suspension all
195toss which ones count as they're out of school an out of school suspension meaning i i am home removed from teaching and learning so altos is an alternative to suspension uh that is students going to the gifford youth achievement center they're provided instruction we have staff there um who who works with students instructions being provided counseling being provided to ensure when they return hopefully we we've mitigated or empowered the student uh with whatever skills are needed not to repeat the offense that had them suspicious so altas if they're there that's not a suspension correct no it doesn't count as an outdoor suspension because we're still providing instruction got it i think it's wonderful that we have 24 teachers aspiring to be ap it will lay the foundation i think for us um mr fagan on
196the new student allocation model we talked about principals meeting with you on what they would need above and beyond is that above and beyond the fte that the school is generating do we have extra funding for that or how does that work through the chair um yes ma'am we will base their allocation based on their fte also through the school choice program if another class opened up we'll make sure we allocate another teacher there to fill that we'll also we'll like this year we put some funds away held him in reserve because it was the first year of sam staff allocation so some growing pains there so we budgeted some additional positions and i think we put out about five or six where the schools came and said i need another position we will budget
197that again for next year probably not as many right because we're getting better at this but we will always hold some in reserve right i also like the fact when we talked about extracurricular activities because i witnessed that at the high school and at the state level competitive cheer is very very expensive and if you're not in gymnastics you may not make the team so we really really need to look at that and mr bass would know that a lot of our athletes much to my chagrin are becoming one sport athletes year round i think it takes away sometimes from the high school experience but i always just want to look at the cost factor one last one on the equity action committee what is the follow-up i attended the last one in gifford at
198gyec before christmas where do we go with the follow-up on all of the uh information that we received so mr meyer we'll give feedback on that as well but i'll start with one of the things that we did at that particular development is we took all the information that the community shared and as you recall they were led through a protocol and where we things we needed to be doing around recruitment uh and other areas so the community problem solved in teams and they posted their information and one of the things that i thought was very very powerful and i shared at the end of that um professional development is a lot of the things that were shared were doing um but it goes back to the communication uh that leaders in our community and
199that was the target group uh aren't aware of it so i took it back to to staff in this room senior staffing cabinet and we just went through the exercise in a way that says find your areas and let's explore if we're doing these things mentorship programs um and community leaders aren't aware of it where do we need to shift and we really kind of engaged in a conversation around how we're communicating so as communication keeps coming up uh we've identified it as a big opportunity for improvement the effort and communication is there the all the impact of communication and how we're doing is where we need to explore to say are there different modes in which we need to be communicating uh is there different you know deliver deliver models of of delivery in
200order to be more effective and and mr mike would you add on is exactly right and one of the reasons i think we saw success for that was dr long was using active communication where she was calling people directly to find out if they were coming versus just putting it out there and seeing who may show up so that's what we've learned from that is the the intent is to have an additional event in march so that we can showcase directly and have that active sharing of the information from the people on our teams to those community members where they had questions so very much look forward to that i think it'll be a larger audience hopefully i know that you know it's december at the peak of cove we're hoping that we can utilize
201the school building we're looking for a day where maybe there's a the kids aren't um in school so we could do more of a seminar type thing rotate around to uh classrooms and give many presentations about the great things that district staff is doing thank you i really enjoyed that meeting good good leaders in that meeting thank you yeah not a lot because um i think we've talked about this three or four times already and gone back and forth a lot one thing um the first slides you put up about our covid rates and we had talked previously about getting information out to parents and students about their access to doh method testing and how we're going to do that i just want to know if that's in the works and what's happening with that
202through the chair so in terms of communicating with our faculty and staff mr bassett has sent that information to staff i'm correct no i'm talking about parents and students oh parents and students that's at the other end of the table miss maddox yes actually um the day after you mentioned that i believe we had it up on the website so if you go into the gallery on our website and click the slide it takes you directly to the press releases that are specific to covid as well as links to the testing sites on that the department of health offers and a little bit about the procedures for what to do if you wake up not feeling well just as a reminder for families and staff so is there any i don't know who to direct
203this to or just into the into the ethos um is there a plan because not everybody regularly looks at the website nor navigates the website well and i know that parents have at times reached out or or commented on on forums that i see about not knowing where or how to get the tasks the test or who to call or not even actually knowing that they're eligible as a if they have a student in the district to get a rapid test like that um well what we've been doing is pushing out the information regarding that page on social media as well as encouraging parents to download our app so that they get notifications on their phone so that they can learn how to navigate the website a little bit better and get to that page
204but i know that our health assistants and our health aides um they're providing that information at our schools as well and we received it from vicki bernie so you know if you have any other ideas as far as how to share it i do actually um because as a as a parent um i have obviously a lot of access and and skill at negotiating some of the district stuff but not everybody does could that go out in a robo call or or a text that says everybody has access to this here's how you get it and here's the either the number to call or the process to do that yes yeah that i didn't do that recently mr we we did push that out and some of it is pushed out by school site as
205as well i think miss maddox hit on a a key point so in problem solving the communication a lot of principals send out the weekly information that i don't think parents are necessarily listening to because there's so much information being shared so sebastian river as an example and speaking that principle it's a you know he gives a a weekly call it's five minutes long i don't you know so maybe at the end of that you know that's there what miss maddox really hit on is the access and it's one of her key performance indicators is is really connecting parents to the portal connecting parents to focus where we can push out that information through alerts uh and that is the the shift and then when i say about the effort versus uh the ultimate result
206that is the shift in which we need to take place and it's just not a responsibility from the system's perspective where we have the access it's training principles on how to use that same uh push out in order to get that information because right now um you can't fault the effort you have to change the process to be more effective and that and that's the work that we're doing yeah because when i'm i 100 agree with you i get those calls and by the fourth piece of information um i'm getting a little glassy-eyed yeah um not that you know props to you mr cummings glad you send it um and don't don't mean that to be dis and mr cummings he's doing a great job yes um but i but but also and and i
207know you all are working on this parents access information in different ways some go to focus some go to the website some go to social media some read text messages some listen to their voicemails so the more we can do to get that out um as as a parent who pays attention to this and as a school district person i know i i and maybe i've missed it it's possible but as using myself as an example of somebody who would be fairly attentive i haven't seen it so i want to be sensitive to those who don't necessarily have the access that i might and i think a big part of the fix is being outcome orientated oriented versus being well i i did it i i pushed it out here and i think some of
208the lack of participation is let me just put a check in the box versus stepping back and evaluate the overall impact so if only 15 parents come uh to an event who failed yeah uh and what do we do differently to get a hundred parents to come and it really is that problem solving after every event and i think the um the college and career is a good sign so we started at vero beach and i was super excited you know minutes from my house um thinking hundreds of people are going to be there and it was extremely underattended uh slightly more at gifford and then we should have been in a bigger room at um sebastian river so kind of evaluating saying what do we got to do to get more where we got
209to get into more just just having it isn't the the the outcome it's being effective and maximizing the opportunity so i think some of that expectation which is relatively new uh is going to continue to pay dividends thank you um just a couple of things i'm glad you spoke to and pointed out the disparity issue on the outcome measures because as we've talked about sometimes those are confusing to read because as you explained when we talk about how the measurement is students coming in whether they're on on reading or doing math on grade level when they come in when is the do when is the next test or the end-of-year test so we can see the difference from where the the increase in percentage from when the number of students who were at a four
210or five when they came in to the mid-year till the end of the year so though that assessment data was captured in december and it was captured in december intentionally so we had the time to disaggregate the data evaluate what we're currently doing and then spend enough time shifting or modifying where we needed to for which groups of students when we came back from the school year mr meyer and his team immediately dispersed two schools with the mid-year review of the school improvement plan in hand to meet with schools and talk about where were the shifts where were the modifications uh then they came to datacom uh the the district staff along with principals to evaluate do you have what you need what do you need from mr fagan what do you need from mr
211bass what do you need from mr meyer what do you need for miss dampier in order to make that particular plan so we're working the plan now just this morning we we started at gifford middle school ms stampier mr kelly pasura mr meyer dr mcmahon really exploring and taking that school on a deeper dive around those systems of support so it's working the plan that principals have developed in order to ensure when they take the assessment uh which is calendar to take place and and we know the assessments will take place whether there's outcome is another conversation whether schools are great another conversation so long answer to that is a mid-year data we've disaggregated it uh we've created action plans we're implementing the plan the next uh assessment really um is the the eoc or
212the fsa but we're progress monitoring in terms of the the impact over the course of time yeah well and the fsa so so for this year that's not a good indicator because they took it for the previous year a quarter of the way through this year um and and i don't know and clarify the if what we're looking at there is i ready tests and you referred to fours and fives and i ready tests how those translate then to fsas because fsa not only is three uh an adequate and passing score but the um the instrument isn't the same so there's a measurement by us because we're looking from i ready to fsa and saying that's our next indicator can you clarify that yeah so the correlation between irate and fsa is extremely high that's
213one of the things that curriculum associate hangs their hats on um so when they're looking their end-of-year view and which was captured those students would be the equivalent of a four or five not a predicted score which means if this contin if student right now continues along the path well score a level three or above typically what most districts do is they kind of dilute the expectation and only look at who's going to be a three four five because that's your proficiency measure on the state assessment really wanted to capture in that slide the impact that covett is having on all students even high achieving students because there's a perception out there that covet has an impact at all and that's just simply not true sort of got that [Music] well two quick questions and
214one might take you a minute but um workforce housing committee you mentioned that um we're gonna hear an update about when and when is your next meeting i believe the next meeting is and she's not in here i believe it's um probably in in march so what we did during the last meeting is we tasked out certain responsibilities in looking at what other districts are doing what other organizations are doing how it's being funded there's a email exchange going back and forth regarding that research being shared so when we come to the next meeting it's just not sharing out the information it's already been shared and then kind of getting into the working components of what the plan will be and what we're doing locally or what the plan is locally to bring it to
215a reality okay and so march is the next meeting great and then you mentioned uh african-american mentors that's on slide 21. those are are they administrators are they teachers that are mentoring our first year teachers those are those who have completed the clinical supervision they are teachers okay so it's a clinical educator yes okay so it's somebody that and every single one has one yes uh 100 of our new teachers including and all of them if you're a new teacher you're a new teacher regardless of ethnicity has a mentor assignment yes but the african-american teachers have an african-american mentor let me check on that i i i want to say i believe the answer is is yes but that may not necessarily be 100 accurate that african-american mentors you know mentor the african-american teachers i
216know it used to be last year not sure about this year i don't know we can check i think that we did not have enough african-american mentors so we we placed we paired up as many as that were possible from the eligible african-american teachers that would were willing to serve as mentors well the only reason why i asked that is because i know that one of the feedback pieces i'm not sure where i saw it but i remember seeing that that um they really wish they had had an african-american mentor and i know that's the priority but like mr myers said sure i know they really pushed last year to to make that happen but of course if you run out and you know you only have a certain number and i think that you
217know through the chair there's depending on the individual they may find more value in having a mentor of the same grade level or content level and not just an african-american teacher right so if i'm a science teacher i might want more of a science mentor right not just an african-american mentor a kindergarten teacher right yeah absolutely i think that the barrier this year was the availability but we can check to i can get a line by line yeah i think it's important that we ask the teacher what's your request i know that was in the past as part of pd they did ask that question and some did say i i don't really care about the color i'd rather have someone that set my dream same thing yes because they felt comfortable with the person
218at the grade level so i know that they do get feedback on that yeah i just i don't want that to be a barrier that's why i'm asking um and then the last question is about the gear grant um you mentioned that certain schools were getting this money i i thought for some reason i had read the gear grant was about carrot funding so i was a little confused about that one so they they want to answer that mr meyer joe the um summer recovery was targeted towards some specific elementary schools so the lowest 300 got priority so there we have three schools on that list and so they were given a higher level of priority of what they could uh expend that for and there were so there's just it's not at every school
219per se okay so it's to bring up lowest achieving okay uh mr zaria um gosh i just got thrown off of my um uh dr moore the form the format in in the presentation there was a uh the presentation on the i ready data the gap differences within i-ready reading and math data my question there the question was raised before about that difference but my question is with regard to the joint plan the understanding is that the well previous joint previous court orders were very specific to the difference between the gap difference between african-american students and white students this first this last court order it's not that clear that they ask for the closing of the gap specifically between black and white students so my question is when we're looking at the i mean the
220understanding is that's what historically i i'm assuming that that's where we're supposed to be comparing our data in terms of the gap but now because our culture is so diverse is it possible and this might be a message for the legal team is it possible that we should be looking that we could be looking at the gap between black students african-american students and other meaning including hispanic white asian everyone else or is it still just african-american and white so right now across the nation it's still african-american and in white and the goal really is to for any student uh who is below we want to accelerate their leaning they're learning to ultimately achieve to minimize the gap and you minimize the gap by continuing to grow proficiency for white students while the same time being
221drastically more effective of closing that gap so it's not closing the gap by decreasing proficiency for white students or maintaining proficiency for white students it is ultimately accelerating and moving students to proficiency at a faster rate than you are white students so uh being as proficient as you are in data my question is this the group that would be within the multi-racial component of our students our student population that are multiracial could indeed be we can have students who are black and white right they're mixed race we have them listed under a separate category but with the where would i mean we could potentially have closed the gap if we include multi-racial students either in the african-american sub-category or not how do we address that how do we do we keep them separate can we
222the easiest way to keep the the information normed is to keep it in a reality so you you do and once we have a full data set and we provide a outcome presentation um you'll be able to see the variance by subgroup by grade level are we closing the gap at a faster rate so the end of the year it's going to be very very interesting to bring a presentation that incorporates what is the true impact of covid uh the mitigation strategies that we've put into place which have been a very very aggressive uh how have we fared in districts who had similar percents back uh there's so much to evaluate and there's so much influx in terms of different things that have taken place this year as a result of covid as a result
223of learning models how you were responding to the amount of time we've been away so this is by no means a typical year what you probably would see across the state in indian river county is a widening of the gap and it's sad and it's hurtful to say um but we're probably going to see a widening of the gap in which we're going to have to be very aggressive in the coming years to close that gap thank you all right um i just have one question just for you mr bass on recruitment um this is a challenge for every educational institution it was a certainly at the college university level very competitive when we keep track of of how many people we quote unquote interview we keep track of how many of those people we
224make offers to we obviously know who accepts it who doesn't do we follow up with the ones who declined to find out why mr chair would be totally transparent i'm not sure if that's been a past practice but it will be moving forward um you know follow-up is to you know why did you not select us and usually through the process of talking to the individual and seeing if this is a good fit for them we would identify that but as far as keeping that data we will begin keeping it i i think sometimes that's more important than why they accept it because you can tweak your presentation or it puts a spotlight on some controllable factors that perhaps we we have that otherwise we've not thought of and of course this is one of
225the discussions we've had in the past about the foundation one of the things this new foundation besides capital projects which will be you know initially the primary focus is to come up with you know raise some endowment money specifically that would be focused toward funding advanced degrees you know supplement to professional training but i'm thinking more more of an advanced degree perspective i'm sure there's a lot of things we can do this is a topic that uh dr warren i've had two or three different conversations about and everybody has a little bit of different take on what it takes to attract uh african-american teachers uh certainly the historical black colleges universities is prime it's prime real estate when it comes to recruiting and we have we have four or four or five of them the
226state of florida yes sir i went back in after mr rosario had asked that and we did uh florida a m i believe last week and we have howard university coming up this this month also so that's just two just in february well even there's like spelman spelman in atlanta have to know the president pretty well she was a provost at mount holyoke when i was up in massachusetts um they have some fantastic women there primarily you know a woman's college although they're a few males running around it's the males that are there like the odds but you know broaden the broaden your scope morehouse we go on and on there's there's many of these schools but spelman i think would be an interesting place and once we contri it's in atlanta once you can
227travel a bit i don't know what kind of uh of uh recruitment capability they have but i'm sure you can plug into that to that school yes sir uh dr schiff yeah finish with a couple more questions that i had from before all right um you've mentioned a couple of times comparison to other districts both not in this conversation but you mentioned um comparison on some of our equity data to other districts do you have that in a way that you could provide to the board yeah i i mean we have it i think those are conversations in terms of of looking at the the gap in indian river in comparison to other that's just state data that that's available but yeah yeah if that's inside if you can either send us or send whatever
228you've compiled um similarly with return to school data from nearby or comparable districts what are our rates compared to either comparably sized or we yeah i would love to see that lastly um on one slide you mentioned both the foundation and cares and you said we got an extra million dollars were you referring to characters from it from the county from the county for cares money not money um that was okay i was confused and heard that that might be money for the foundation which no we don't even have the so i was convinced do you know somebody dude yeah no i think that's mr barefoot's department okay um yeah that's it for now thank you thank you okay any anything oh i'm sorry it's not it for now uh it's quick though sorry almost
229it for now um in light of what mr barefoot was saying about uh keeping data on people we interview who don't choose indian river county but also um about our college rates and our college acceptance rates i've asked for this a couple of times but can we get lists from the high schools that show us where our students are going after so there's a clearinghouse that it's lagged by a year but that that's public information that we could say so the students who graduated in 2019 um how successful are they at the end of their first year so that that's information we should have readily readily available i i don't mean how successful are they i mean how many are going to college how many are choosing um work options and among those going to
230college where are they going that's that's what i want to find out the college at the high school level so when they can provide that information but in in doing this work it's not as reliable because it's being self-reported versus the clearinghouse which is hey this student grad came to this university from this particular county through the transcripts and this was his particular outcome and then the adverse would be that they didn't go to um so it's the most reliable data would be the clearinghouse data in comparison to a exit interview from a student however we get it i just want to i just want to know where they're going like you said um had you known there was an option other than florida state you might have gone out of state or gone to
231an ivy league it was it was florida [Laughter] you never would have chosen otherwise but you might have had the option but i just want to know sort of what options are out there where our students are going i i know it anecdotally but not empirically right thank you before dr jones just to follow up specifically i not only want to know where they're going i want to know where they were accepted and didn't go i mean this most schools track this i you know and that's what that should be i have a daughter that's a guidance counselor at a high school outside of boston and they track it if somebody applies to five colleges and accepted to three it's all it's all available because what that shows is the people that are out telling
232the story for vero beach high school to the college admissions folks and the way college admissions folks certainly the ivs the nes cats some of the i don't want to use the word elite but you know the canyons i mean i can go around the country there these admissions people as i'm sure you know are assigned regions and specific high schools and once you get a relationship with a high school it becomes a pretty good pipeline and knowing what colleges are accepting your students tells you a lot about even if they choose not to go there there may be economic reasons why someone stays in the state of florida when i was on the board of st eds for seven eight years i mean this this was really we really kept track of this and
233i know i got involved in a couple of situations it's very helpful and it also provides your students and their parents for sort of an aspirational look at what can my son or daughter accomplish if they apply themselves look at all the students before them that apply to these schools and they may not have gone but they were accepted we used to keep track at sebastian for high school with our seniors and again that was the counselor who worked with that senior and where they were going but there wasn't follow-up so whether they went and so forth so but at least you could see that they had that and what you just said mr barefoot is so important had several kids from sebastian river high school go to ivy league schools but in the last
234few years there a lot of the parents were choosing the state school because they got financial help and they went there basically tuition free so a lot of that has to do with the economy especially now well and and what we can't target from that is we know a lot of kids go to irsc with the full intention of going to a four year after they do two years at irsc and we can't capture that data so it's it's a little bit artificial what we capture it's true with any community college i mean it cuts the cost of of it you get the you get your terminal degree from a quote-unquote higher profile school but if colleges will work with community i can tell you it's true in massachusetts and you you can take courses
235that when you go into a four-year college in a traditional sense now you're pretty well prepared you don't find yourself behind it's all amazing that that's true having been at a university in florida for almost 30 years florida universities do that as well yeah i mean it's yeah uh mrs rosario yeah the relationship between colleges and um school districts their teacher uh departments and school districts is super critical one of the things when i became a teacher one of the things that i remember most is the relationship between the college that i went to my first one at the time suny stoneybrook and it is through the student teacher relationship and the placement of their student teachers so the teacher programs at the colleges and universities you know will will very easily tell their student
236teachers xyz district here or there are we have a relationship with them let's go ahead and place you within that district and then obviously there are perks for the student teachers i don't know where we are in terms of recruiting even the student teachers as they're studying because everyone has to do their practicum they all have to do the practice within the classrooms and then work on actually keeping them once you get certified and finish your practicum we can keep you here in our district i don't know where we are it's it's something for us to consider from the human resources standpoint and not only re building the relationships with certified teachers or those who are ready to graduate but come down a little bit more you know a semester or two and recruit our
237student those student teachers and we're at a disadvantage because they're not a local four-year university um that has an education program so it really is creating well nbc has one now not for no i've i've met with them irsc has a teacher program but it i don't know if we should worry about the location because there's a lot of people who are student teachers or who are teachers in teacher programs who are doing it virtually so they could go anywhere i mean you could be you could be in a teacher program in in georgia but you have to do the practicum in your lo where you live they're not going to commute to georgia you know if they're in a georgia university they're not going to commute to georgia to do the practicum they have
238to connect with a district where they live or you know in the vicinity of where they can commute so there are certainly options and opportunities for us um apart from you know not thinking that we have to have a physical university or college or you know so there there's well and can i i was gonna say can i add to what she just said if you don't mind um i did hire a teacher one time from fau had a program that was very interesting they worked with irsc and this was a teacher who was doing her practicum but i actually paid her so she got paid to be a student teacher and instead of having a teacher in her classroom she had someone from fau that came twice a week for like two hours just
239to work with her and to see her and practice and then of course i had supports in the school wound up being one of the best teachers i ever hired so um i don't know if that program's still in place but it was a great way to be able to pay somebody to come and do their practicum at least give them a travel stipend yeah and also though i mean fau and ucf are equidistant fau has a campus as far north as jupiter so students may live in i have had students who live as far as st lucie and vero beach come down to the boca campus i don't know what education offerings are on the jupiter campus but i know that students do live as far north you know on the southern end of
240indian river county or on the northern end of st lucie county and take courses at fau but that puts them accessible to us as well likewise on the northern end of the county towards brevard um accessible towards ucf so so i think there is some flexibility there there are probably more students than we know of and i want to say lakeland as well southeastern university is in lakeland um and they have a teacher program there likewise they're only about an hour so the commuting we might find some people locally who go there so there are there are definitely opportunities mr mr through the chair um in glades we had a partnership with florida southwestern and fgcu and like you did we would actually bring in those student teachers and we would have them you know
241optimally we want them to come in the fall and do their student teaching there was individuals out in our community who was affiliated with the university they were their supervisors we would pay them but then also we provided incentives if they remained there the rest of the year i believe it was three years out they would get incentives so if you know use ucf fau whomever if they had someone who was qualified to be that university supervisor in our area that could really make that you know something that would be feasible for us to have fau had one in vero beach she's a former assistant principal here i'm not sure if she's still doing it then then who's there that's who was mine she was a supervisor for paula van hooser yeah she was the
242supervisor for the teacher i hired okay it seems like we've reached the end of the the meeting so um we we uh readjourn at 501 and the joint meeting will begin at six so if we are not finished with the business meeting we will recess we will then do the joint meeting and they will all be via zoom dr moore has asked that they all receive copies of what you quoted mrs rosario in terms of the role and responsibilities let's say of the equity committee this meeting uh while there is an agenda and uh the first part of it is pretty clear in conversations with uh dr warrior we will be very flexible and sort of what the conversation is constructive and positive go in a direction um we'll just uh it should be it
243should be interesting hopefully we come out of this with a with a positive positive vibes and we also want to reach consensus that the equity committee meeting will be a week from today the 16th i believe miss espen six o'clock is that 5 30. so that's one of the goals is make sure that everyone's on board with that we have invited the all of the two representatives from the excuse me district and the naacp as well as the three candidates that we have to view it on youtube or come here and so that'll be an interesting session later today so with at 3 30 meeting is adjourned you