Norwalk Board of Education Special Meeting - Mid-Year Review

001good evening everyone welcome to the Board of Education board Workshop meeting today is Tuesday February 27th the official time of this meeting is 5:54 again public comment uh sign up sheets are to my right at the table You' like to sign up to speak for this evening and I am transferring the uh meeting to Dr sta for the midyear updates by department and strategic plan priority thank you chairperson good evening everyone and thank you for joining us as we Embark in this conversation that will provide some insight um regarding the great work that has happened thus far in meeting our strategic um goals for this Academic School year 2324 in alignment to our strategic plan and the work that we had set forward approximately close to 3 years ago I always like to start off

002by um oh wait I always like to start off by R the clicker is not what device is it yeah it's over there but oh we just got there we go I always like to start off by um highlighting our vision that is focused in making sure that we service all students and that we make sure that all of our students are prepared for the future ahead as you will engage in conversations today with the different stations you will learn about our future ready Focus that emphasizes the work that we're doing across all schools in making sure that our kids are well prepared for the unknowns that the future lie particularly with AI and many modalities of technology that are advancing every second that we sit in this room and um every week we learn

003that things are advancing more and more yielding different work opportunities that we are yet to imagine and we have a responsibility to prepare our Scholars for I always also like to take go back to our vision which is focused around making sure that our Scholars are prepared for all aspects of life and most importantly that they are citizens of the world our world is becoming smaller and smaller as advancements in technology and other forms of communication continue to expand and grow and for that reason it is very important for us to continue to think about what we do in schools to to educate and develop our students to be prepared for that ever evolving change as we continue to immerse ourselves in the work we always ground ourselves in our values and making sure that

004we put Equity diversity and inclusion at the Forefront of everything we do to ensure that all students across our organization within gifted and talented receiving specialized Services receiving language Services as well as um receiving differentiated learning opportunities to make sure that all of their diverse needs are being met we put Excellence always at the Forefront of what we do um even when we need to modify what we do to make sure that the needs of all students are met and as you look at our values there are a number of things particularly those focused around continuous Improvement that we put at the center of what we do and today is an opportunity for us to look at the work that we're doing reflect and if need be make adjustments so that we continue to be

005on the right path to servicing our students well I'd like to remind people of our five um strategic priority Excellence engagement future Readiness equity and a focus on instruction and um and support that really drive the work that we do to ensure that the needs not only of our Scholars but those serving our Scholars are being met either to professional learning opportunities or an array of resources um that we make available to them to be able to do their job well this board has tasked us to look at our work within six um critical goals those goals are one in strengthening Student Success by look by looking at how we inform instructional practices two looking at our business operation structures to make sure that not only we have adequate facilities to support our students that

006but but but that we're also maintaining and thinking ahead in how we are um looking at capital projects to ensure that we are thinking five 25 years ahead of the game so that we have plans in place that will effectively support the needs of our buildings to better Aid and support our students in their development and in doing so this is work that doesn't happen in isolation it happens in collaboration with our city and our city Partners our third um goal emphasizes human resource finance and um operations working collaboratively one of the things that we really focused on as um as a Cabinet is making sure that we don't have silos that we uh cross-pollinate our works so that everything we do is interconnected and well aligned for our goal of cultivating instructional leadership across

007the district really supporting our leaders and becoming instructional leaders that sounded a little bit redundant um but making sure that our leaders have the tools that they need not only to effectively manage the day-to-day operations of the building but to effectively inform the work that needs to happen in the classroom so that that they can better support our teachers and our teachers in turn can better support our Scholars five um MPS um has a goal in developing and increasing opportunities for students based on instructional programs and servicing them in the highest possible way by designing high quality um instructional programs and as we speak we continue to look at our instructional programs think about how we are redesigning and building um uh these programs to most effectively serve the needs of our diverse student body

008and I I highlight diverse student body just in November alone we have 300 additional students from diverse background coming into our district and um yes just today we were looking at our enrollment numbers we were projected next year to be at 11,400 and actually as of today we have 11,800 students in our district our numbers continue to grow our needs continue to to grow and the diversity in which we have to educate our students continue to grow something to keep in mind as we move our work forward six the importance of engaging our families through this process and providing opportunities and resources so that they in turn can better understand our system and effectively support the needs of their children the family center is a perfect example of how we've been doing that work so

009that we ensure that our Scholars have what they need to to move the the work forward I want to pause a minute to talk a little bit um big picture about uh around some of the accomplishments that we've had across uh the work we've done at this point in the year and as you engage today in the different stations um that you see across the room you will have a a an indepth conversation with me MERS of the team and the work that's happening within their departments and align to the goals and the Strategic plan that that the board has tasked us to move forward I want to start talking about the facilities department and some of the amazing accomplishments that we're really proud of and I think are important to highlight I think first

010I want to talk about the school-based health centers we have placed an enormous emphasis in making sure that our students are not only taking care of um social OT Al and academically but also that their health is also something that we prioritize we partnered with a number of organizations one primarily the Norwalk Community Health Center and with the hopes that we can open um Health Facilities that will not only service our student students but also their families as a whole and I'm very proud to announce that um at some point before the end of this year we will be opening the first um Health Center at the at the family center that will not only service our children but also their families as well in these conversations we're talking about um expanding resources not only

011for genal physical health care but also thinking about dental and vision care as well as you know all of these um elements of a person's Wellness are critical to maintaining a a productive and healthy life and I and I'm a firm believer that the better care we take of not only our children but their families the better able they are to living a better and more productive life so I'm really proud of the work that um Sandra FES and her team has have done in putting this Vision forward it is a dream of mine as someone who came from very limited means and understands what it is not to have Healthcare the importance of putting this in place so that our families can and um live productive lives I think the family center has spoken

012for itself in terms of the integral role that it plays in servicing the needs of our families and um welcoming our families as they enter the system but also as they continue to be in the system and I'll speak more to some of those highlights in a minute I also want to highlight um the focus that our school leaders throughout this year have had an improving School culture and providing the social emotional support through our guided team to our Scholars and the significant impact that is had in in leading um a significant reduction in incidents across the district I'm we're really proud to see um this um phenomena for lack of a better word occur where we've reduced incidents approximately by 45% across the district which is quite significant it's so significant that you know

013we are part of the alliance um district and we receive Alliance grant funding and Iris Wright from the state who will be conducting an evaluation during her initial review highlighted the fact that we have um achieved such an incredible made such incredible strides and reducing student incidents across our district um as a point to know norwak High I also want to highlight the norwak high school PCH groundbreaking that will occur in March and the sonal groundbreaking that is scheduled to occur in April I want to emphasize the son Sono groundbreaking in April because I think it's an enormous milestone for this board for the city given some of the the challenges that the so-called District 99 students have faced over the course of many years maybe decades at this point where they didn't have a

014school in their community that they can walk to that they can call home and for the first time in a very long time you in less than three years I hope we will have a school in um Soo that the community can call home that the community can serve as a have as a place of coming together because as you know schools bring people together and and I am so proud that under our Administration we have been able to accomplish this I want to talk a little bit also about some of the academic accomplishments um we've had an enormous focus on reading as you know we had the right to read event which was quite successful and it highlights the importance of of being focused on having a a process in which we support students

015in Reading development um that is grounded on science and looking at the science of reading we are in the process of professionally developing all of our elementary school Educators to know how to apply the science of reading in the day-to-day instructional practices in their buildings and that's something that will yield really positive outcomes for our Scholars because our goal is that our col our schols are they know how to read by third grade so that they can use reading as a tool to learn from third grade and Beyond we place an an emphasis on instruction walks across the district so that we can cross-pollinate practices but also establish common language and systems across the organization and provide opportunities where people can talk about practice and share best practices across the organization and that has been

016moving along quite successfully and the teams will speak more about this we have an enormous investment in people and in having an enormous investment or commitment to developing people we have um provided an array of professional learning opportunities not only in curricular implementation and development but also in looking at how to utilize assessments to inform instructional practices across the district and as you um learned last month we saw some of those gains in our NOA data and how our Scholars have been demonstrating growth um through through the scope of time and a lot of it is du to um these teacher team conversations um teachers Pro receiving professional development and how to most effectively Implement some of these practices the National Association for bilingual education is the largest organization that provides professional learning but also

017highlights best practices and research around how to best serve our multilingual Learners this year we have one of our young scholars which will be coming um next month to present to the board W the sa contest um at a national level and that's a huge accomplishment it's the first one in our district to achieve this we also have a number of staff that submitted proposals for for to present at this National Conference their proposals were accepted and they will be presenting nationally to um Educators across the country on their best practices in bilingual education so we're really proud about that as you know we've been working on developing the portrait of a graduate and have made significant strides thus far we've engaged a n a number of community stakeholders from families Educators School leaders Community

018leaders community members and we're really looking forward to developing a really Road plus process that will inform not only our Educators but the community at large of what are the the key elements that we're looking for um that our scholarship possess upon graduating more public schools that will make sure that their future ready and prepared for the ever changing and evolving future that they they will live in as I stressed before the family center has become c a central point of our community and it's uh in it's it's a place where not only we provide professional growth for our families um by providing them workshops support giving them resources and information connecting them to City agencies and community-based organizations but tonight we also started our first ESL class at the center we had 36 families

019participate we actually had I want to make sure Francis that I don't miss we had 266 families pre-register we only had 35 seats we had all 35 participants who um said that they were going to attend attend and um we're looking forward to hopefully opening up more sessions because there is a big ask and need in our community to provide these Services we're hoping to further expand um the courses and classes that we offer our families so that they have the tools they need to better support their families and if their families are better supported then our children are better off in the digital learning world we continue to partner with digital promise and Verizon and it's been a significant partner in helping us close the digital divide but also a tool in which we

020have been able to further develop the capacity of our our teachers or of our leaders in implementing um digital to learning experiences in the classroom while also infusing AI Believe It or Not AI is here and it's part of everything the ever evolving work that we do and we want to make sure that our staff are also equipped in knowing how to use these tools in the classroom we uh were also um instrumental thanks to the leadership of Ral valeni we had the first a yai conference that was led by by our team and um it was instrumental with bringing people across the state together to talk about Ai and how we can most effectively utilize it to inform our practices as Educators throughout the state as you know we've made significant strides with our

021future ready program one big stride H has been um particularly when students were suspended or they would not go to school they would stay at home we um change that we if a child is suspended they continue to be educated um through our sites because they come to we they're required to come to school to a different location to continue their learning experience and to me that that was um a game Cher particularly because sometimes the kids that wind up being suspended are the kids that need to be in school the most and keeping them in school is is critical we also have our um Future Ready program which provides an alternative programming model for um students that have to work or have different life challenges and we are very proud to announce that just

022a few days ago we graduated 15 students that otherwise would have not had the opportunity to acquire their high school diploma and we have 30 more students on track to graduate in June and um I'm I'm so excited about this because because we are opening doors to students that otherwise would not have had the opportunity to acquire their high school diploma also this has had significant a significant impact in our graduation rates across our four high schools because it has positively elevated our graduation rates because these students are that wouldn't have are now graduating we apply to the league of innovative schools districts and leaders and in March we will know whether we will be part of this national team that will help us continue to be at The Cutting Edge of what's happening around

023digital learning and um AI advancements in the finance and HR world for the second year no Ro we received the meritorious budget award we were um we went through a reorganization of the HR department um one of the members that you saw today is going to be playing a pivotal role in the work that we do around HR to provide better services for our staff um and for for our community of the uh Norwalk I'm going to call us our norwak family um through that reorganization and um continuous collaboration with the finance department we have developed better processes that have streamlined the process by which somebody enters our district and continues to receive Services well in our district which are to to us are critical points of of work the work that we do and

024in closing I want to um highlight that uh over the course of this year we've been doing a midpoint strategic plan review um this review has uh allowed us to engage all constituents within our organization from our faculty our students our families our board members Community leaders and um community at large to really inform Us in uh the work that we have done thus far around the Strategic plan but also to highlight areas that we can continue to um improve modify to better serve the needs of um of our of our Scholars the insights gain from the midpoint strategic plan review will be invaluable in shaping the um trajectory of of our district these findings will serve as the compass guiding us toward our Collective Vision Illuminating areas of strength and highlighting opportunities for growth

025by harnessing this knowledge we will be empowered to refine our uh strategies fortify our resolve and Propel ourselves steady fastly into the future I think it's going to be a great opportunity to inform our work for moving forward and we're going to be really excited in the month of March to present this information to the board that will help us shape the goals for 2425 for today um this just kind of gives you an overview you will have greater details in the different stations around the room I just want to talk about um the structure for for this evening when you transition into the stations so in station one we have Mr Robert Pennington Francis S Stacy Bergen Bridget Adams Dr um de Deborah Perry and Carol Willa I can I don't want to butcher

026your last name thank you for helping me out um they will be talking about a series of goals particularly focused around um instruction curricula and um for that station um uh Sher Samantha marielen will start there station two we have um Sandra FIS and lunda asmani and um Cara Howard Janine will start in station two station three encompasses of Ral aleny Maryann Shepard Allison uh bready Johnson and um board members Diana Colin and Ashley will start in station three the stations are set up where um the team will be presenting for 25 minutes then there will be an opportunity for the board to have a 15minute Q&A session what I'm going to ask the board to do um you have a tool that was uh that is in your in your table it's called review

027booklet at the at the beginning of the booklet you have all of the goals in chronological order um last year the feedback that we received was that it would have been helpful to have the goals in the OR in station order in the order in which they would be presented so the tabs represent each station and the bowls are in the order in which the teams will be presenting with copies of the actual slides and space for notes for you to take this will give you an opportunity to jot down your questions and notes as the presentation is happening and then at the when you have the 15minute presentation point you have not presentation Q&A point then you have the opportunity to ask the questions that um you collected throughout the presentation we ask that

028um the board sticks through the protocols because it will help us easily transition through the different stations we have set up for those um members of the public that are joining us seats um at every station for you to um sit and listen in the Q&A section is um strictly only for the board members not for the public um so just something to keep in mind and we will keep time just to keep um to allow for the easy transition amongst uh the station does anyone in the board have a question in terms of the structure for tonight and the document so at this point I guess um we will transition to the first [Music] station okay Rob let's go hi good evening so the schools team has a lot of different departments and so

029I'm just going to do a quick introduction Rob Pennington assistant super attend Stacy Bergen Ed admin for curricula and professional development Adams executive director for specialized Carol um education administrator for Workforce Development School counsel Francis SC Education administrator for multi and super Dr de Perry education administrator for srbi scientific research based intervention so in station one the two main goals that we are going to be looking at are goal number one and goal number six goal number one really talks about the academic components of the district and goal number six really talks about family engagement so the first goal is really around the curricula team uh rewriting curriculum and looking at business and social studies as our two major Focus areas and I'm going to turn it over to Stacy berin hi so the state

030this year has Rel has not yet released to the public a new social studies framework um but internally to school systems they have we will be expected to rewrite our social City's curricula based upon that new framework and that work has sort of we begun the beginning stages of thinking about what that work will look like and unfold um over the summer so we're really excited about this Rob is super excited as a social studies person that this is happening now um especially the focus on inquiry because I really think that that is going we want our students to be self-directed Learners as we talk about the proportion of The Graduate and that idea of transitioning social studies instruction to an inquiry based model does get me very excited yeah and our business department at

031the high school level is continuing to think about what our schools need what our students need in order to be the best version of themselves in terms of financial literacy Career Development um and aspects um of really just sort of self-development so we're rewriting a lot of those units and adding courses to our course handbook um at Middle School level we have Rewritten two units of study one that involves a thematic novel um across the uh the grade 6 through eight so we're really excited about that and just today I was meeting with um our K to5 literacy team rewriting some of the units of study based upon feedback from teachers the second uh one goal 1.12 is really around providing professional development to our Educators and so we're having teachers participate but then also

032getting feedback from our Educators so this year in October we were really excited to offer um an a opportunity for teachers called Ed camp where it was professional development by teachers for teachers so teachers applied to be providers of that professional development teacher self- selected um courses that they would be interested in attending and they had a great time we 9 over 95% of the teachers that took the survey rated the experience I four or five we also um make sure that our power Educators also have um experiences throughout the course of the year um for professional learning and I and I think the one of the key components of that Ed Camp is all of the presentations were tied to our strategic plan so it wasn't any of those um just you can select

033different topics it really was geared they put in the proposals we um selected them and and it was an amazing day of learning for our teachers I mean it was the highest rate of PD that we've received as a district so as we continue to think about how we can best support our teachers um with the teaching of reading we have taken a multi-tiered approach to supporting professional learning in and around the science of reading last year we started um training our teachers in letters this year we are on our third cohort of uh four 40 more additional um teachers in letters which looks at how to teach reading with understanding of Neuroscience behind how students learn best to read but we knew that that wasn't enough we couldn't train 40 people at a time

034so we were able to partner with the hill for literacy and work on creating opportunities for all teachers within the district so whether you a Genna teacher specialized learning multilingual learner teacher doesn't matter you all receive science of reading training through with our partners at the hill which also comes with some embedded professional coaching that happens on site at the school level we have a science of reading task force which is made up of um School administrators District administrators and teachers and finally we are members we have been we have accepted the role of being part of the state's initiative in the science of reading and so we are part of cohort number five that is being also receiving training from The Hil literacy and uh that is made up of um District administrators and

035teachers as well so as we transition to 1.3.1 it's tied to srbi which is our scientific research-based intervention and really this goal around building collaboration between srbi and gifted and talented to develop um enrichment programs for our students and I'm going to turn it over to Dr so scientific research based intervention is to support all students um in our what I need um block which is intervention on grade level and extension based this enrichment website that we've been able to build out is providing support for all students that want um enrichment extension opportunities and all grades K to six currently and we're building out s and eight and we started that this summer and we've been able to provide those opportunities during the school day we were also able to build out the win what

036I need block for more students um in the elementary area of math and a literacy B both separate we've also as Dr australa was mentioning before we were able to reduce our numbers in the well below in The Benchmark area which reduces our numbers for Summer Academy For Middle of the Year we're already down by 9% and we look at our end of the year numbers for um Summer Academy so we'll go down even further hopefully um we continue to do our walkthroughs for um srbi so for consistency and efficiency um and we are also doing our district walkthroughs to calibrate for the consistency with instruction um the state has created a new multi-tiered system support which is through the CT set system so we're able to have the same system that we use for

037iots for general education students now and being able to look at that and being able to make sure that we're using the same referral worksheets and streamlining the process to support all students of need we've provided professional development opportunities also for improvement teachers some iners such as um some reading support for intervention and then we've also provided bonly trainings for improvement teachers just to support them with the new system data and um all different initiatives that they're working on wonderful we are now going to transition to specialized learning and we have a lot of high quality information here the first goal is really tied to Quality IEP and I'm going to turn it over to Bridget Adams thank you so our first sub goal speaks to the work that we are doing to transition the

038full District to the CT platform originally the school was written with the intent of training all general education teachers in the development and implementation of a quality I the state had intended for this training to take place led by them this year but they adjusted and postponed till next year and so we pivoted with them adjusted our goal and we were able to take advantage of the opportunity opportunity to be one of the first pilot administrative coworks so the state came and delivered quality IEP training to all principles assistant principles and District level staff so we're really excited to have the opportunity to use CT sets as the platform so they could familiarize themselves further with while learning the skills and the intricacies of developing an IEP and so we're really happy with the satisfaction

039rate additionally with our U training around CP set we have had the opportunity to train all new teachers and those with durational area short cence which is new this year and we're really excited to celebrate excellent just keep going very good okay our second sub goal encompasses the third Year's implementation of the work that came from the audit that occurred those three years ago and we focus on four areas the first being coherence we continue to build coherent systems year after year to better Implement all of the work of specialized burning this year specifically we celebrate of course the work with CT sets and all of the work that we're doing toward compliance we initiated a new teacher training sequence which will become a complete robust new teacher Academy next year with manual that is

040in draft form this is being co-created alongside our new teachers so they have say and voice and feedback in the sessions and the work that we do throughout the course of the Year also in the area of coherence we are doing work toward Public Act 23137 which is the act that extends service to students through June after their 22nd birthday we are very happy to be recipients of the bridge CT Grant which will not only help us provide those transition services to those individuals but also extend transition planning down to and through fifth grade and we seek to go as far as prek in future years we've also increased our work in collaboration with families and through the use of a parent survey we are asking parents to provide their satisfaction report of their PBT

041experience and so this is a way in which we gather information that informs our practice we're thrilled with the output with the 98% satisfaction rate and as a tool for our improved use we have connected families with CT sets in such a way that they can better access their students records we continue to increase our work in Miss services to ensure that families are notified when we have a vacancy or a Le and the method in which we intend to make up those mandated services or offer ways in which to do this this is an incredibly critical component of our work because of the dollar sign that can be attached to miss service we are very motivated to increase retention and celebrate our teachers passions so that they'll stay with us longer next slide as

042we always say in Norwalk in all spaces special education is not a place is a service and we seek to increase our inclusion rate you see that we have increased from 73.2 to 73.9 it doesn't feel like a large jump but every part of that percentage means that one more student is receiving new services in general education setting and we only expect that number to grow with all of our increased co-taught and integrated classroom opportunities an aspect of inclusion that isn't always accounted for in that number is the fact that our special ized programs are also continued in our schools allowing the opportunity for students to attend home school or School of Choice and we seek to expand those programs with the least amount of cost inferred but to the greatest benefit of the student

043we are working to draft our um multi-year framework for a Continuum of services at each building to further increase that inclusion and always all of this work is ground in the mindset shift that every student has a place within our school system the mindset of the staff that all students belong and are part of the Norwalk Community and the mindset of the collaboration that comes from parents not only of children with IEPs but also those who don't have IEPs and so we do that through some of the opportunities that you see with outlines here thank you we're going to transition to goal 1.51 which is focused on 100% of schools will have counseling support and we'll Implement counseling guidelines tied to the ASA model and I'm going to have Carol Take the Lead thank you

044so our school counselors kada 12 work with our Scholars all scholars in a multitude of ways and one of the ways I wanted to First highlight was that of our career Pathways so we've introduced last year our career Pathways and what is a career pathway it is simply a um path that a scholar will select such as entrepreneurship or healthc care or Wellness or global citizenship for example that are tied to our 16 National career clusters we know that when Scholars choose a pathway no matter whatever pathway they choose we know what affords them engagement in the classroom we know it affords them um other experiences they get to have with Scholars across different grade levels so for example being able to tie in experience and taking your scholars in the art pathway and bringing

045them to a spef specific assembly grades 9 to 12 for example or grades 6 to 8 and so creating those opportunities for our Scholars to thrive in that pathway our school counselors work closely with our scholars in our career Pathways and our career Pathways right now live um since last year in our middle schools and our high schools so we're very excited about that uh the next thing that I wanted to highlight and share is that this year for the first time we introduced a junior survey to our Juniors now historically we've always given a senior survey but we wanted to introduce a junior survey to really um hear our Scholars voice in terms of their postsecondary planning what their ideas are what they're thinking of doing um not only does it afford scholar voice

046but it also allows our school counselors to better meet the scholars needs by looking at their planning for example that you'll see here and seeing how to best meet those needs for their future plans so this is very exciting for us um and information that's updated continuously next we also work with a firm called edol and edol is a firm that works with a 10 of our schools elementary and middle schools and what they do is they provide monthly coaching and it's really a holistic program um that comes into our schools we do walkthroughs uh we M coaching as I mentioned and it's really The Rock in the pond so they come into the schools and they are the rock the Ripple that goes in to provide that holistic SE to not only building leadership

047but also to all of our staff and the schools as well um the next thing I wanted to speak about is our developmental guidance um this is an opportunity for our school counselors um to do two things number one our school counselors who have been interested in doing so have written the curriculum for kindergarten first grade and sixth grade and I'm very very proud of the work that they've done because the state has given us a comprehensive guide kada 12 and said these are the standards from a counseling perspective that our Scholars should be following and know and have learned um so they have written this curriculum so in our kindergarten and first grade classrooms districtwide our Scholars are receiving Workforce Development um pushin lessons where the counselor will go in starting in September all

048the way to August um on a continual basis and work with classroom teachers to provide those lessons we're also doing the same in sixth grade as well but we're doing that for social emotional learning learning um so that's really exciting and we're looking forward to expanding upon that um as we move forward um throughout the year as we go to the next goal it's 1 uh 52 it's really focusing on expanding oural initiatives our school counselors work with our High School Scholars and we'll meet with them for example and I'm just F focusing on high school for the moment um they will meet with their Scholars many times throughout the year but what we've asked of the school counselors is to share with us what those meetings are about um and so you'll see here

049the different meetings that have occurred we would call our first meetings and what the um kind of a topic of that meeting has been about the reason that we've asked for that information is because we want to better serve our Scholars and how better to serve them then for us to know exactly what their needs are we can apply that to programming throughout um and also help individual students as well wanted to move on to what is called our shap assessment so we have had the shape assessment has been afforded to us through a grant it has allowed us to work with 22 schools and the district to um really take the social emotional health and temperature of our schools of our families of our staff and really see what um resources are available to

050them and how we are doing so we are act actually in the throws of that now in terms of taking the diagnostic Health um and we're going to be doing what's called resource mapping which simply means which resources are available at the schools at central office at the district level to be provided and so we're doing that work currently um lastly we have been able to use grant funding to bring in a drug and alcohol counselor at our um Comprehensive High Schools based on the data that we've received um in many different areas our scholar data and also shape assessment as well so as we transition to the next goal it's really about reviewing and revising the health and PE curriculum as a district so it really touches to counseling but also curriculum uh last

051year as an organization we rewrote all of our Middle School to health 2 which is high school health curricula and this year we've implemented and now this year we're rewriting our K5 Health curricula all tied to the healthy balanced living framework which is the state framework that came out uh 2 years ago we also realized that an area that hasn't been looked at was physical education I think the last PE curriculum was written in 2002 so this year we have really took time to dive into the PE curricula we've had professional development at the beginning of the year and we have our draft units that are being developed and at the end of this year Year we will have those ready for implementation next year so we will have all of our health curricula K12

052written and all of our PE curricula written tied to the um health and balanced living framework so that's everything from goal one and we're going to transition to goal six which is really tied to ensuring our families are provided with Equitable opportunities and I'm going to to transition to Francis SAS thank you no problem last but not least the family center serves as a comprehensive Hub to engage families in the child's education and to provide families with access to resources and services not only to districtwide resources and services but also Community the mission of the of the of the family center is to provide families with the opportunity to impart knowledge through all our departments so they could be empowered to um self- advocate for themselves for their children um academic needs and social emotional

053needs most importantly what has become of the family center has been an amazing vision of Dr estrea where we started out with you know centralized registration making sure that it's a seamless registration for All Families um previously the registration used to be separated the MLS used to go into City Hall while other families were allowed to go into the school building but now everyone service um equally so it's Equitable access I like to to share this slide where um just a year ago we had a total of 4,261 visits and as of January of this year we were at 4,493 three but when I looked at my numbers earlier today we're close to 5,000 so the family center has become not only the the hub for resources and learning opportunities for families but is the

054goto right now of the entire Community we just had a member of the community come in to see if we could get him a a tire for his car that had a blowout so it's become a h for for everything but we had some a gentleman there that did did help them anyway and more importantly it's really become a wraparound service that's created an inclusive and welcome environment to service All Families um many of the services that we provide there at the family center is registration of food service Transportation there's an issue with Transportation assessment we have an audiologist on on board also supporting kids there transportation and medical Services one of the bonus is that we have a the next steps um next steps 18 to 21 Community phase um transition program located at

055the family center they're allowed to work at the family center so they're completing their internships we're developing young people to have independent vocational and functional academic at the center so it's really a nice um place to be and families are very happy with it the many things that has supported the family is our team um or the educational administrators from um central office have provided professional learning opportunities to the family for example gifted and talented uh srbi um Stacy has done a PD on uh the science of reading um we have monthly arts and craft where we integrate literacy and social studies into the arts and craft s um you've joined those those sessions we've also of grown so much where there is a pantry at the family center and and just recently we service

056over 200 and something families are visiting the pantry um it's become a a special place for the community and I'm proud to to state that with in collaboration with the communication Department p square and a website for The Family Center has opened up a gate of information for families where we sent out a surveys to see what courses are they're looking for what type of learning opportunities would they like to take place at the family center and we got an overwhelming response for an ESL course and we just had 266 families pre-registered for ESL course and it started today and we had 35 families at the family center today for a three-hour session it's 3 three times a week um so three hours three times a week yes yes um but we have a waiting

057list of something fames and we have to do the research to be able to really refer them to other places to take these courses and the last one this what I just want to let them know that this was tied to sub go 6.12 which is really increasing our opportunities for workshops and events and then the last section Dr austa talked a lot about was this idea of a community health center and that Community Health Center has already been mapped out the space is allocated and it will be up and running by June so they're looking to come in by June at the family center so we've had health centers in our some of our schools but we're also going to have one at our family center and I think the one of the key

058important pieces of this uh Health Center it is it's not just for students it's for students and their families which I think is important yeah it's going to be open during school hours and after school hours and we're in the process of trying to get vision service at the family center as well all right so we're going to transition to questions and all I would ask is that if you have a page number that we can turn to and so that we can stay focused and I can pull up the slides well another great job of the time uh sck to [Music] it I have this is kind of a data question and this is on page um with regard to the IEPs um when we talked about some of the feedback we got uh

059we had 150 families respond 98% uh satisfaction rate uh how out of how many pbts is that what the response 150 so each response was so it's a response per P got it yes okay so there wasn't like a segment of non- responsives so yes there are okay um so the it's not I just get S what the response rate is that I I will get you a number because as I said here I think I don't and that's a great take point but I can find out and really interested to know because we do want to increase the participation you know I think sometimes folks their names aren't linked to it it's not an anonymous survey but we do want to because it helps really truly informs our work course we've gotten I don't

060know if I put the number here but I think it was over 20 families indicated that they couldn't access CT sets and it truly is as simple as us clicking another button guing them to email and we were able to successfully get so it's a working tool I don't have a question but I've been hearing a lot of positive um special at the the the changes and everything that's um moving forward in a positive way you know it it makes a big difference was for a long time it such a Negative topic but now it's growing and it's going in a very positive direction thank you for that feedback that this team is working incredibly hard and it isn't just special education it's the collaboration with the schools to and the fact that we aren't

061siloed and I think that really does make an impct I've said how much I've enjoyed the two special ed sub commmittee meeetings we've had because you what the work you're doing is excellent and it's you're also enthusiastic about it which is like is really wonderful here it's pretty good day when you love your job it is um I had one question about it would be paid 26 with the um health and PE revising the curriculum I know we were primarily talking about theal component which is hugely important um and I wanted to ask if our health curriculum is lgbtq plus inclusive yes 100% is and one of the other pieces that um last year like we used our data to say we needed an lgbtq counselor support boarding students so we partnered with the triangle

062community and the city and we have that in place in our schools and then this year the data is also telling us we need a drug and alcohol counselor and so we we're constantly looking at data and I mean the amount of training and support that we've provided and Partnerships with um the Norwalk partnership and uh I'm on their head team and and so is Cadence who works for trying so we're constantly having these conversations about how are we supporting all students because I think that is the most important so even thinking about not like the health curricular piece of it but thinking about how we become more inclusive in what kids read right and so about two years ago we we we looked at the high school options for novels that kids were engag

063enging with in other text and said like well it's a kind of a lot of dead white people here and so we needed to begin to think about how do we mirror our community and we look at various different subgroups not just based upon like race and gender but looking at lbtq looking at uh people who uh have are physically differently abled right and so how we expose kids to literature in that way so that if kids are empathetic in the early years right that carries on with them through middle school and high school and adulthood to reemphasize for the camera this was about adding books not taking away no adding adding people get a little touchy adding adding books adding books lots of books option Cho lots of options lots of choices inclusive options

064I love to can still resign back yeah yeah there's nothing wrong with my it's a good book still but there's other pieces we can enjoy absolutely well as a team you also put um professional development for us with the lgbtq um Community we had a training um which is also needed you know we need to understand what's going on in the district we've shifted in the PD process when students are attending we ask name and prefer pronouns always we often say not about me without me we can't make assumptions about every individual comes through based on a file the work is working so page 27 Family Center okay I think for me just seeing the growth of it is unbelievable because we've been able to reach the district at Large it started very small but

065it has grown between the Workshops the events the number of families coming in you know so it's a definite positive in the community and for me and I put the plug in there for um it was a conversation that was just a fly by night type of thing somebody mentioned but we should have a pantry and me being on the board of no Mutual Aid helping the community I was like let's partner and do that together so to see it and the number of family I would have never thought the number of families that you have helped with that pantry like for me you know I'm thinking under 100 but you're a way about that and then to see the increase of the holiday um giveaway too between meals and the gifts and these families

066that can't afford certain things know I think people forget that it's the pandemic affected lots of people but there's lots of families that even after the pandemic still can't afford a lot of things so for me being able to be a part of all those events and I've told um other board members to you know make sure to go it it's huge but my question is how do we get more people to know what the family center is about I mean I think that's where we're a little stuck because we stay within the Nook Public Schools website you know communication does the best but how can we grow in the community so a couple things first the other piece about the pantry I just need to add because I think it's really powerful is we

067don't just have food we have book bags and we have coats as well for the winter say do we have have we done any clothing stuff so I think that that is a whole other piece that you wouldn't think of unless it was explicitly said and I do think that because registration is at the family center we're seeing more and more over the last 3 years families do know about it because they're going there as part of registration I think if um a family has been in the system for many years they may not have that same connection but I see as the years go on we're getting more and more families who come in at for registration and they see other they see see everything that's happening and they see flyers and they see

068the pantry and they they meet the team and the team is always marketing we have this opportunity and we have this opportunity and they they are also um Avid users of parent Square which I think is another way that we are constantly communicating about different events and all the workshops and all the different opportun get all of them even even when we're trying to stock the pantry because it really takes a community effort it's not something that is done in isolation so when we have our stock the pantry that's something that we're sharing with the community to get donations and and so that helps with getting the word out as well I think the the parents cor has helped a lot getting the word out and also um in collaboration with the community the communication

069department they created a family cental web website right on the uh NPS website so we have we're on the top of the menu and people are starting to use it Communications Department making sure that they're monitoring the um the number of people going into ourside so it's really growing um how they come for any type of support and we do it for the famili I can speak to the ease of res registration registering my kiddo for kindergarten last year it yeah there's some behind scen work too that occurs the Family Center also serves the departments in the district because registration has improved so greatly it's improved our work and on boarding students and getting their programs in place sometimes even before they arrive which has not ever been my experience here in the past or

070in other districts so there's a lot of quiet work that happens and we celebrate that in conversations with families as soon as we find out there is a a child that needs services even before they make it to the school we contact the specialized Department we let them know so that they're ready and preparing themselves to provide the service and have their the ppts so the kids could receive the services as soon as they sit in that classroom we give or before before because we're already planed that job and I just want to say cuz I just need to say it it's that Francis does an amazing job running the family center but that is not the only work that she's doing and she's also the education administrator for multilangual Learners and so she's providing

071professional development constantly and she's working in schools constantly so the fact that we have such an amazing system is a compliment to her and her team thank you I've heard she's gone out and knocked on doors to get students back she her and her team has gone and knock we get kids back in school whatever it takes uh just to follow up to that question so the numbers on this slide when we look at the uh the number of visits is based on how that counted is based on registrations just registration okay and so some families come back multiple times because you have to have like unique visits correct yeah yeah it's based on like people coming to register for school or any visit they come to register for school they might come to bring

072a document that's missing cuz you can sign in every time well we actually we have it on our pod and it's automatically sign in and that data is gathered for us it used to be sign in but now we we're doing a little bit electronic Hightech but we also have the numers I did karten look how much change there was you was sign in when you first I think so like last winter I think so and then we also have all of our family events which I mean some are at the family center some are at schools because they're bigger performances and and that's another way we a performing um where 400 families show up other 250 it it depends um the gifted and talented um Workshop we had over 40 families there so based

073on the interest we really get any final questions because we're getting to the time of questions here so I'll give you the chance for one final question I have it's not really based on any one specific slide just kind of like thinking at this midyear juncture where we have an opportunity to kind of take stock are have you are you able to identify any um opportunities for adjustments improvements slash you know like this is going well but this could be doing better like what what have you noticed so far so one of the things that I will say is based on our midyear data we're really like over the moon with our math results and with our literacy results we haven't seen the same um tremendous progress and so one of the areas like we

074have a principal meeting next week and we're really diving into unit four of our literacy unit I mean we've seen growth but it just hasn't been the same level and it goes back to like we're doing the work on the science of reading because we know that that's crucial if we're going to improve we have to improve tier one instruction to improve our results and so next week in our principales meeting Stacy's going to be leading a session with principles and literacy coaches on Tuesday and then with assistant principles on Wednesday that really dives into our our new unit four which is our next unit and really building out our strong practices around literacy instruction so that is an adjustment that we have looked at based on our Moi data we're seeing really great progress

075in our lower tiers like our students who are getting intervention but really honing in on students to push them above the 60th percentile because the 60th percentile on nwaa it um translates to a level three on and I would push that to focus on the comprehension where fic awareness we stronger and so we really want to take it to that next level thank you guys thank you to see you okay thank you so much um during this session I'm I'm not going to read all of them because it took up some precious time the last time but we're going to be going over goals 2 three so essentially uh facilities HR Finance goals five and six will um cover some of our Equity work and our goals around um Communications and data I'm going to

076begin with our facilities goal the first goal I'll let you Orient yourself thank you the first goal is that the the facilities department will be working with the finance department and with that we're going to be building um annual building based facilities plans so this was something that we started 3 years ago and what this does for us is it's a a very large file it's not an attractive thing to look at but it gives you the the fiscal health of each facility in terms of Maintenance and upkeep and then it also um we've included our safety infrastructure upgrades now what you see here is a combination you could click here at a different time to do the various things but what you see here is a scorec card that's for the district and this

077scorecard actually captures bullet number two which is a third party does come in to each one of our facility and every year we get a third- party assessment or audit that tells us the cleanliness of our facility and then each school gets their own report card and that school gets uh commendations and then also some recommendations for improvement overall as a district we got a level two level too actually means like new dirt and new dirt is good dirt because it means that things are just getting left behind and sitting there um so this annual building facilities plan encompasses our maintenance of facilities and also the fiscal health of our facilities and how it is that we're working to improve our facilities um in addition to that we've added the Safety and Security infrastructure updates

078that we've been doing the last 2 years so under under your leadership and under the approval of the capital budget by the mayor to actually add these things we've been able to go from 100 we've been able to add an additional 150 cameras across the district that has given us an additional 296 views in those views we've now have like 98 different views of our facilities these are for our administrators for our first responders is so overall we just have a better monitoring of Student Activity and activities of people coming in and out of of the facilities we also have been able to add 691 door alarms uh prior none of the elementary schools had door alarms in their exterior doors only in their main door and so now if you open an exterior door

079in our elementary schools or middle schools and some of our high schools an alarm will sound and it will trigger to somebody that a door has been put a jar or somebody has left that door so these security improvements all um are are part of the plan that we started 3 years ago three years ago so so now three 3 to 5 years yeah 3 to five years and now um it's captured in this very large audit in this very large comprehensive work that we have with our facilities in addition to this um we started the 25e building facility plan work with the city and Senator Duff um two years ago this was after Senator Duff was able to get us a 60% reimbursement rate from the state for any new school construction or renovate

080us to no no 80 is for just for nor Ro high 60 amazing 20s cor it used to be in the 20s correct and so that with that we then set in motion um a plan to identify which schools need to be rebuilt or need to be remodeled and which sites are we going to do first and second so that work started last year this year because this new HVAC Grant came out and this was another opportunity for us to actually get a 60% reimbursement the city and the Board of Ed and Senator Duff's office have actually turned their attention to making sure that we're applying for this grant because this is not a grant that comes around that often it's actually something that was unique to us it started last summer and I think

081there'll be another round this summer but we don't know how long this will be available to us can I just ask when what we though I think March or April but I think that the we did apply for six different grants it totals $35 million the city had to commit 40% of that $35 million so once we hear from this Grant and what those funds are going to be committed for this work I think then we'll pick up the work with the 25e plan the way that we had um last year so there's just a shift in what our attention is right now because this grant has become open to us but we will be um we will be revisiting this 25 year plan I'm sure before the end of the year as soon as

082we hear back from this grant I'm going to turn it over to lunda to the next one so um goal three covers HR and and finance um as you know we went through a reorganization where we put merg HR and finance under um One Umbrella because there's a lot of collaboration that works between those those two units so obviously HR and finance exist to support the work that has been done in support of our children uh within the district and so one of our goals is one to enhance that collaboration because there is a lot of cross pollination um but what we also wanted to do was to also improve our Hiring Our hiring practices and hiring process so what used to happen is you know you have a vacancy at a school uh principal

083wants to fill that position they go out they recruit they find a candidate they recommend and that name is brought forward to HR and finance and then they have to wait they have to go through the recruiting process getting the information getting fingerprinted and all of that and in the meantime the principal is calling and asking you know I need this person here I've selected somebody when can they start and so that process took longer and so what we looked at was how can we be more efficient using the tools that we have and so one of those tools is we use Frontline software the software is called Frontline which is our recruiting software but it's using that same software to continue to manage the process so we capture the individual's name social and all

084of that but not having to recreate that information multiple times in the process until that person gets hired so that was one of the things that that we did the other thing that we wanted to do also is to provide support to our principles by having dedicated individuals within the HR department that support them so we have HR generalists that are associate with specific schools so the principl have a go-to person that generalist understands the schools understands the needs um at any given time um and so that has really worked well with our principles knowing that they have somebody that they can call at any given time and that knows um what their issues are within within the building the other thing that HR seeks to also to do is to also provide our principles

085just in the day-to-day management of the building um what supports do they need because they they're a supervisor so they have in addition to the education piece uh but they have to also be able to effectively support the people that work in the building supporting the teachers the custodians um understanding how to deal with issues of FMLA uh employees getting sick um Grievances and all of those things that everything dayto day that deals with supervision so HR has worked really hard in providing that information to our principles understanding the rules equal employment collective bargaining so those are the some of the things and so we put together an employee handbook no you're fine you can St um an employee handbook to help support the the the principles um and then the other element of that

086is obviously making sure that we're effectively recruiting to fill some of these positions uh there is obviously a nation a nationwide challenge now with recruiting of Educators but one of the things that HR has set out to do was to be more proactive uh we are going to colleges we're going to college fairs uh we are going to um events like the superintendent mentioned the National Association of bilingual Educators that is an event where bilingual educators are which is a shortage area so we go to those conferences also we send our HR teams to those conferences is they set up a booth and they also recruit nationally and try to get people to come to work um to work in Norwalk and we've had some success with that as well um and so just broadening

087our reach you've seen our Billboards on buses and along the highway and those types of things so that's our recruitment effort the train stations exactly um and then the other uh I think the last thing on the HR side is obviously taking care of the employees that we have them understanding their needs so we collect data for example when our employees exit when they the organization we asked them you know you've worked here 30 years um what kept you here for 30 years what is it about Norwalk that you that you stay so we get that information so we get um data that helps us analyze that uh we also ask people when they leave why are you leaving if you haven't been for year you only leaving after two or three and what are

088some of the things that are causing you to leave the organization our exit surveys have actually told us that most people leave this organization for issues unrelated to the work itself it's either family they're relocating their husband or their wife is moving or their spouse is moving to another job or their kids have graduate and they're downsizing and they're moving to another state uh those types of things and so there are a lot of reasons that people exit the organization and so our exit data has allowed us to capture why people are leaving and it's not the things that you typically hear for the most part there are a lot of reasons uh why people are leaving but the we also find out the job is also stressful as well it has become more stressful

089to be a teacher recent years and in the past and so we're capturing that and so we're using that information to inform the types of training um that we provide to our um to our schools um on the finance side uh one of the things that we strive to do is obviously uh we support the schools and support the students and so build budgets that are student based um and so we started doing that a couple of years ago um and so what we've also I'm I'm trying to follow you I've lost what page we're on third slide 13 the SL number it's going to be the next one oh no it's the next one yeah there you are I see slid very tiny okay yeah sorry see it over there see you wish you

090could zoom in on right um that was not a question so I didn't no you're fine so so our student-based budgets what we've tried to do is obviously we've talked about the increasing needs of specialized Learners and so what we try to incorporate into our budgets now is the component of specialized learning needs that exist at each school and so we've worked hard to make sure that that's um part of that process and then within the the finance office we've actually designated a person that just focuses on student based budget support for the principles so that's their go-to person in addition similar to what I said about HR having a go-to but the schools now have a go-to person in finance that can help them uh with their budget um and then obviously what we've

091worked hard to do is enhance our financial reporting making sure that people understand our finances uh believe beginning last year working with Communications team we put together a dedicated budget website where all of information is shared uh for those of you that on the finance committee you know that we revamped our financial reports to you to provide more uh more analysis uh for you and then obviously the budget book that we put together uh that has that has won awards for a presentation but our goal is just to be as transparent about our finances um as as we can be um and then final slide here is just making sure that we are providing resources equitably to all schools and so identifying X number of social workers per student X number of custodians and all

092of those things that the schools need but making sure that it ties there's math associated with it so that we're not over resourcing a school or under resourcing a school so we we have this as a model to make sure that each school is resourc is um we're uniform in in how we fund we fund schools obviously the student population being a big factor of that so we're going to Pivot now to some of the work that we're doing with Equity if you want to find your page I'm going to skip over some of these goals we've seen them it's going to be 19 right okay and so then some of the work that we uh have continued that Dr McBride had started is the work that we're doing with the equity Institute um the

093work with the equity Institute actually involves um Equity ambassadors these are staff people that um from each school that represent um the school the work is very personal work because some of the topics have some of the topics include like um workshop on microaggression or workshop on implicit bias so a lot of the work is personal work that these folks have engaged in they're now in year two in year two if you get a chance the topics are in that little you know if you ever scan it the topics are in there for you to see just the topics that they're exploring but they do a lot of work and some of the survey data that you see here are the the respondents feel that these sessions have taught them something about themselves that they

094could apply to their work in their life so this is personal work and if you build people's personal capacity to have conversations around Equity then they can lead some of this work at the building and at the school to to then um move some of this work at the school this pairs with some of the work that Dr Fergus is doing and you'll hear about that at the next station as to how that work with Dr Fergus is is going at the at the schools okay the other piece is that we um we Dr estrea actually brought um My Brother's Keeper My Sister's Keeper to the district this is a program that is research based and has demonstrated um significant impacts on students across the nation the My Brother's Keeper and My Sister's Keeper actually

095has nearly 300 students in it now there's about 10 um actually a little bit less than that about 130 Boys in about 120 girls and there's over 50 mentors and what they do is they peer students students that are black and brown students with a mentor and then that Mentor checks in with them um checks in with them weekly and then we uh convene them as a group monthly and they explore a variety of topics the topics are usually uh school specific so everybody hosts and then those topics could be um anything from you know what are we doing about college or what where do you see yourselves to things that are more personal to to these um students we also do outings a lot of outings that students don't typically go to like um

096I think they just went skiing so things like that that that um helps them feel more engaged in the community and then offers them another adult this is a is a data Gathering so we're level setting for this year so every student we monitor their attendance and then we monitor their grades to see next year if we've actually had an impact on um how they are fairing in school through these various um various touch points that we have with the young men and the young ladies I'm going to turn it over to Kristen who is going to talk to us about the data work that we're doing hi so um as a member of the research and analytics team um representing the work that we've um done and um the team is only formed about

0972 years ago so everything that you're hearing about is is really recent um the approach has been both about making sure we have the appropriate tools like identifying where there were gaps in data tools and then also making sure that um schools have the supports and the structures to be able to use those tools um at the high school level we've relied a lot on our partnership with the Connecticut rise Network um in terms of use of data tools and while last year that focused on grade nine on track te um this year the the new work is around um post secondary and ensuring that every student graduates with the plan um plan with a plan yep whatever that plan might be so that kicked off with a junior survey where students are you know

098anticipating what they think that they would like to do and then support can be tailored um to ensure they're hitting Milestones like completing the F right if they are College Bound um at the elementary and middle school levels one of the structures we have is data lead structure where every Elementary Middle School has identify the staff member who comes quarterly to uh Community Practice session to share best practices be trained further in the tools and then they receive support um throughout the time in between um we've also uh used a common assessment platform um across our schools and this year while it was launch last year this year we're really seeing much more uniform use of that which really allows um for our schools um to identify how students are doing in relation to standards

099classroom level grade bands um schoolwide um the other piece of this and is the tools and so this year we um launched a brand new data dashboard um these were built inhouse and so they are uh fully customizable and have already been iterated on um based on need and what they do is provide our uh principles and assistant principles data leads realtime access to data that can help them see which students are on track which students need additional support um how are we progressing in relation to our school Improvement goals um how are we how what is the impact of any additional support that we've given or any initiatives that we began to and see you know kind of moment to moment um the impact of those decisions so um this was just launched in

100December and we've already seen over 2,000 um in terms of the these dashboards we any Improvement because I couldn't really see it to see it's like I know you can't blow that up right can't see yeah we could send you we can send you Snippets okay so this is like chronic absenteeism student suspension rate so it's just the various things but yes we could definitely send it to you and we want to actually the goal is actually to in um now start to gather um College persistence data okay that's the next next step like share this um some of the work around the portrait of The Graduate Dr esta highlighted and so then one of the things that we wanted to tell you is that there we do have it on our website so if

101people wanted to go to our website you can point them to that um we have gathered over 470 Community feedback survey responses the students uh did tell us that they wanted more real life skills um and there were various questions all of them did sort of land us with the families the staff and the community members kind of agreeing around the same area so critical thinking communication um and problem solving you will see came up in several places so as a community we are coming to some consensus around like the things that really are important to us this will Pro provide us with the Northstar and it's timely because we're actually doing um we're looking our strategic plan right now and that work with the Strategic plan married with this portrait of The Graduate will

102actually um give us some good goals for next year or the next you know several years the other pieces that we always still have the data from our school quality reviews and the testing data this was a goal that was put in place a few years ago at the start because we needed to find ways in which we do some progress monitoring before we get to something like an sback or smarter Balan data so we wanted to make sure that we knew how students were doing throughout the school year and we do gather some of this data through the school quality reviews and various um testing data the other piece which is kind of our final piece is around our Communications goals so you know that the communications teams does a lot of just um

103profiling the the different uh people that we have in District and also like the events that we do but one of the goals that we want to have is not just inviting the community into us but how is it that we are impacting the fabric of the community so us going also out to the various community events and us also being a participant in in the city is a goal that that we have and then we launched our parents Square so our messages have shown a 55 to 60% open rate this is just ways in which schools can shoot out messages directly to parents this is like if this we use this if buses are late also it's an app right it's an app to they it up it's an app okay so so it's

104just something that we've launched to just creating greater access um for for our families start to q and we are done right on time so I know that you have some questions we'll let you gather your thoughts first well I have a question uh just you know moving backwards uh it's totally up to you however you want to go um about one of your goals is to go out of the school system and into the community community and just this week we got uh board members got an email from Johan Lopez about Earth about our how do I know that because you are connecting with him I want you to I wrote to him I said oh I no I've already connected with Johan thank you so much well I'm going to show up too

105show up no but I'm actually helping him connect to the school that's that's great so I sent him back yes Emily and I have and so has so we've actually connected to Johan and um I sent him a series of questions that he's going to go back to the committee to get me so for instance they want to do like a poetry contest and I was like okay great we'll do it but who are we submitting the poems to when is the D date so those type of L logistical things but yes we are very much the teacher right there and I love Earth day did you bring up cranberry cuz he wanted to coordinate that he was very excited so for the um the facilities plan like for the Safety and Security does that

106impove SRO the no SRO are through the NPD so that nothing so that has nothing to do with us well they do so they're they're connected to us but this plan is really like our investment in school safety so our investment in the actual infrastructure um preparedness right so practicing their drills and then how we're communicating with one another so mutual links radios um line wise Anonymous alerts and I'm I'm not saying I'm saying that just because I want to know I'm really interested in how like that works with SRO because I don't think there should be like so much like police presence in schools that's just you know my personal opinion so I was just always curious about that and then um for the uh equity and inclusion part how are we like making

107sure that I'm really obviously like I'm in school for history um that we're teaching like the the real history and like I know that there's I know cuz I GRE up a Daran but there was like an issue with the parents not liking um you know uh critical race theory yes so how are we like integrating that into this school like is that of importance because these events are great but like making sure that we're talking about what the real history and the truth is important so yes so and I will I will say that there there is a an equity piece to everything that we do in terms of our curriculum I would defer to the curriculum team to actually tell you all the details of how that's embedded but yeah but equity and

108making sure that that uh we're representing not just historical right because equity and culturally responsive curriculum MH like for instance investing in books that show students in normal everyday things that look like the students there so it's not just showing students the history of things that have happened but all actually having just main characters that are black characters or Hispanic characters that are going out for ice cream not just no exactly so those types of those types of Investments have actually been made where we actually provided all School libraries with culturally responsive materials so that's like one of the first layers great the second layer is actually to teach the the teachers actually not teach support teachers in being culturally responsive so making sure that in the things that we do and the decisions that

109we're making that would be culturally responsive now people have to understand what is culturally responsive culturally responsive is not just teaching black history Or Hispanic History it's making sure that you're teaching to the audience that you have in front of you and making sure that students see themselves in their curriculum so that's part of the the equity work also but it it has a lot to do with the curriculum work that's great and I and I did notice honestly when I left wolfpit that in the library they were putting a lot of books that like just new it was great and it wasn't like even like obvious I don't know if that makes sense you know what I mean it was like this is just it well they shouldn't be it shouldn't be that we're

110like making this huge announcement because we've gotten books about black and children like it's a novel idea it really should just be the way that we represent ourselves as a community is we're a diverse community so that's definitely part of it but but we do have like an emphasis on making sure that we're being culturally responsive but often times culturally responsive is misunderstood right just like just like critical race the just like critical race the exactly absolutely awesome okay I'm just I'm glad that thank you for raising that wanted us to expand further I can ask somebody from the team okay yeah thank you so much of course aesome question for you uh you were talking about the junior survey and then there's a senior survey about what are you going to do next um

111my question is the timing of it I'm very happy to hear about the junior survey because we want to have time that we are influencing them before they graduate and then they're just sitting on the couch with you know not not having anything to do so my question is about uh talked to some people in noral a that are also concerned with this I mean it is an Community issue Workforce our kids um positively Eng work they can support themselves um there there came a question of the timing of the senior survey that if it could be earlier say in April as opposed to the end of June then you we could provide those uh 10 15 20% of the kids that maybe don't have a plan to have at least a few uh so

112I think there's a couple things one is through our partnership with rise there's the junior survey which is an initial kind of load of the data but then um the plat their platform allows for that plan to be updated between now and then so it's not just a static data set the idea is that you would pull the list students that say I don't have a plan on Shore right and then in conversation if they um have change their mind you can change that um status or plan within the system so that it doesn't have to just be collect the of here right um the the senior survey there's a there's a couple elements to it I mean one is the very like uh practical kind of where do I need to send my final

113transcript don't a phone number um the timing will somewhat be because this is in partnership with Rise um The Rise network has a uh survey that they give to their core network of schools and Brian McMahon is one of the core Network schools and has been a part of that corn Network for a number of years um so once that corn Network survey is ready then we can roll that out to all of our students and we anticipate we're going to use the same uh instrument and and we may add you know a couple question questions so is there a potential of having it a little earlier than at the very end yeah and usually it is earlier it is just get started earlier so I know like last year CGS gave their survey in

114April and they were they were like entirely done in in April that would be helpful and perhaps you went to it I I think we many of us attended I'm not sure what you call it but a gathering of uh trade people for the kids and really wonderful but um more of that thatal certainly through the work like that the rise work and that these prary teams are going to be meeting uh we pull them together uh every other month across all four high schools to begin to look at this so we don't want to get to to do we don't even want to get to April and find out a student doesn't have a plan we want to start now and continue to support students all the very happy to hear this and one

115of the things I I think just to connect um what what's being talked about here um Carol and I had a conversation about this very point and we were talking about um starting as early as nth grade and having these conversations so we we have a plan that we are developing to start as early as freshman year and engaging in these conversations with students and even if it's not rise looking for tools that we could potentially use to start those initial conversations and those children that are undecided as early as ninth grade really have them have more intensive support with the counselors around identifying what their interests are whether it's College uh career right out of um their high school or like they need to like engage in some self-discovery to identify what path they

116want to forward but starting it as early as 9th grade um to support particularly those undecided students and figuring out what next and did you mention something about a plan you know graduate with a plan is that is that a catch that's the goal where we want with with a plan right absolutely whatever the plan is and to have completed the Milestones towards that plan right we know that if a student says they want to enter the military but they haven't taken the exam that's unlikely that they're going to fulfill that that path right so and another example like we've been talking like right now looking at industry within Norwalk HVAC is a perfect example there's a school in Norwalk right now that provides HVAC certification so Carol and I had a conversation about reaching

117out to the college to to the trade schools and figuring out a way in which we could potentially partner with different trade schools so and and unions and providing kind of like a dual program where part of it is academic part of it is um training to a particular certification so by the time they graduate they graduate with the trade it's something that we're looking into and looking at the finances around it this is important work so mentioned that there was a decreasing incidences as so is that related to suspension suspension so suspensions it's in school suspensions out of school suspensions and expulsions so when it comes to black and brown there's a lot to unwind in terms of how we got there correct I know you're working on the buas training with Dr Ferguson

118some other things does that number reflect a decrease in the black and brown kids in terms of incidents no it does I mean in short I'm going to say no because they're still over represented right so I think that an understanding that the numbers overall have decreased across all subgroups right but in terms of representation how you're showing up you're still overes they're still over represented it's black students and students with um um IEPs so there is still an over representation of those groups which then leads us to like how are we as a as a district and how are we as a community um engaging our black students our boys it tends to be boys and then and it's not a when you get to high school right it's as a system how do

119how are we engaging with our our black boys and the community do you think nbk and that it's having an impact but I guess it's hard we Gathering that data right now know yet we're Gathering that data so for the students that are part of the MBK that have had incidences right it's all about like do they do we see a reduction in it you know so not all the students obviously that are in MBK or Ms have incidences cuz it's a so it's for the ones that do but then how do you measure other things that measure engagement like attendance right or just survey data to just say that you know do they feel connected to an adult do they do they have a plan so it's more having like a a more holistic

120approach at looking at these students but I would imagine that that's just one strategy that we would utilize overall we have to as a system look at um how are we impacting um our black boys we are not unique right it is a nationwide problem but I don't want us to accept the fact that it's a nationwide problem as just what normal is and to be fair it's something that's going to take time toase and like everything and that we have to be patient but it's like we want a fast track and part of it is being honest about your data right and actually having access to data so part of the systems that we set in place with the data and with our safety infrastructure is actually just collecting data and being accurate in

121our data and so then when you have the data you could say well these are our numbers now what is it that we're doing and we can actually have those honest conversations about um who are we as a system just technically uh un back a little bit when where is that where's the student when the student answers the questionnaire a student in an English class which questionnaire any any of the surveys or or any of the data well depends yeah it depends on the questionnaire and it depends on the survey for the MBK they're in one of the MBK events right yeah but for the junior for like the junior survey um most schools identified in an advisory period that's what that makes sense okay yeah um although some schools did more like a a

122junior assembly of some kind so that people have tackled it yeah they do have but they try to make sure that it's during the school day so that they can actually gather that data I think one point that I want to make cuz we have for a seconds one of the interesting correlations that we find is that a lot of the kids that are being suspended in special education or usually black boys and there's a direct correlation with that one of the things that Rob and I have been talking about looking at is the process by which a child is suspended that has an IP because sometimes it's a manifestation of the disability and it doesn't like come to play until like several days after so we're trying to revise the way in which that

123happens to make sure that that that that doesn't occur that apart I think the the the challenge is because everybody's going down right we're still not addressing the the issue of the proportionality so and the challenge is how the counselor or whoever is working with the student sees the student there was something on social media the other day and he was I think he was a psychologist and he was talking about how I have a student who comes to me you know with an issue um Behavior issue and the white Council Chiefs in certain way and then when black kid comes with the same issue he or she is treated totally different maybe let's call the police I've seen this in like real time like I'm like no I know and that's a that's a

124deeper that's a deep issue that we yeah that we're taking good steps like I nice to see [Music] you yeah so thanks for joining us tonight too so we're we're going to be talking to you a little bit about um three different goals in the station um one is some elements that fall under goal three some elements that fall under goal four and some elements that fall under goal five and as I'm waiting for this to open um actually one of the things we'll be talking about infrastructure is the fact that we're putting in a lot more security systems which is like this which is taking yeah exactly taking forever so um [Music] this is [Music] right I told you the pressure so yeah so um in Gold three you you'll hear a little bit

125more about this you're probably already from from Linda and so forth about operations finance and so forth some of the other things that fall on the need here are also um things like policies for the district um our digital learning strategic plan because this is actually part of our infrastructure on how we operate which includes it as well as how we teach and then um our infrastructure as well so that is truly like the backbone of uh goes along with construction um one of our projects that we were working on in goals this year was our model policy implementation so a year and a half ago if you remember we actually decided to move to a different model with our policies we got rid of all of our old outdated policies in order to get

126clients who put in all these new model policies last year we spent most of the year really looking at how to update that and how do we kind of go through a process of keeping them updated this year we've been able to refine that a little bit more so we've got a calendar that we've actually been able to follow um we've updated over 14 policies already this year in our policy meetings um but we've been able to implement three additional policies that will come into play for this year um the first is our grading for Equity policy okay so we presented it it'll be back on the docket in April so that we talk about the implementation of it um we just um you'll get you'll be voting on an AI policy um in the

127next business meeting so that was just presented a policy and then we're also looking at how do we align um our practices internally with our policies so this is a partnership between Sandra and I been rot working on an operations manual um and you'll hear more about a principles manual too so we're trying to actually make sure that we we document uh what we need to people to understand but an operations manual that's tied to our policies and how they relate back and forth so this is a bit in progress and we're moving along um our digital learning strategic plans so um I know Carri you were here but Howard originally when we started um we we going through our strategic plan in general one of the things we wanted to do align and make

128sure there's cohesiveness with digital learning so we actually have a digital learning strategic plan that that ties right back to our overarching strategic plan goals so there's a digital Equity goal in comparison to the equity goal you can see how those all fit um at the same time we did a project with the city an efficiency study and the one recommendation that came out of that was having a strategic plan for digital learning or for for technology so we actually turned that into a digital learning strategic plan we built it last year um we got it approved by the board at the end of the year and now we're in the process of implementing it so um we use it right now some of the things that are going on currently just a couple of

129highlights um we have a dashboard now for principles that they can actually see what software is being used by what students so sooner or later we'll be able to look at an Roi meaning like kind of saying it's like all right so you're paying this much money for software is it is it actually being used by any students and does it make sense and how are we using that um we're also implementing a data governance group and that is actually a team focused way of looking at how do we manage data and so there are five different elements to that it talks about things like compliance are we making sure that the data is clean are we making sure that you know we're doing what we need to do with it ethically there's a number

130of different areas but we go through a protocol with that and that governance group is now in the progress of being put in place there'll be members from each department in that data governance group so that then if there's a project going on in HR and finance which is one that's happening right now curriculum may have some good ideas and they'll be sitting at the table to talking about how to we and map this out but it does as Dr St it focuses more around a team effort not just one person doing things in silence and then finally um our infrastructure really we've been focused on um you'll hear more about the digital promise piece and us moving towards um Chromebooks in the next uh in a little bit but uh we we've been using

131our Capital funds to be able to make sure that our infrastructure is actually in place um as you know we have 12,000 students we need to replace probably on the average of for a 4year cycle 3,000 computers a year um uh the digital promises kind of gave us a a little bit of a repri for this current year so we were able to kind of cut down on our Capital costs um but we do still need to make sure that we upgrade everything else in our infrastructure which means the back end everything in the walls that you see so just like we upgrade computers we have to upgrade access points now for Wi-Fi on a regular basis so ideally every four to 5 years all of the access points in the district get replaced so

132that they don't get into a cycle that they're not actually moving at the speed that they need to um and then we've also been really working very closely with um my whole team I'm building a new incident recovery uh manual and this is basically so if we have a dis faster of some sort like data recovery making sure that there's systems in place and we know exactly what to do and as systems change that has to be a living doc because there's a you know like I said as we if a server crashes we need to know what to do but if we had another server that's a little different we need to make sure that we know how to address that too as well so the team's been working on that as well um

133we will be doing more of the next steps with this is that we're going to be doing more with dig with digital promise once we get a little more information from digital promise when those machines are going to be arriving I'll leave it at that okay so goal four that we've been tested with is all about cultivating instructional leadership across our schools and so we have our four sub goals but I'm going to just Dive Right In and talk about them one at a time without reading them to you so if we can thank you so our first one is how are we supporting our school leaders to really Drive School improvement work at their schools and this is all grounded in the fact that we think very carefully thoughtfully strategically around how are we

134investing in our current leaders as well as our future School leaders here in Norwalk and one of the ways that we do that is by convening the professional learning community of principles APS and coaches on a monthly basis and when we come together we focus on high quality instruction and support School Improvement and Leadership leading for Equity with our partner Dr Eddie Fergus from ru University and during that time they engage in professional learning they engage in Collaborative Learning experiences with their colleagues all about learning with and from each other uh and they also have time to really think about what is it that we've learned here today and think about what are their next steps because we know the the life of a school leader once they get back into the school building is

135a busy one and we want to make sure they think they can walk out of those meetings with concrete next steps we give a feedback survey at the end of every session and the first question we always ask is overall how helpful was this session for you and your leadership and on a scale of 1 to five if you average the ratings from the beginning of the year to now we're at an average of 4.54 so that tells us like we're meeting their needs and they're finding the experience to be meaningful but they're still always giving us feedback of what adjustments that we could make for the next upcoming meeting or future meetings another way that we have worked to really focus our work with our school leaders is with the learning walks that you

136heard Dr austa reference earlier so this year we really focused in on two instructional priorities standard spased planning because we know students need consistent access to grade level text and tasks and student engagement because the planning can be really strong but if the student engagement isn't High then we're not going to meet the you know the accomplishments that we want and so what we do is we have district and school leaders come together engage in these District learning walks we did one in October one in December and we'll do another one in April and the beauty of this is It's because all of our work if we're not seeing the impact on the classroom then what's the work that we're doing and so by bringing all these people to together to get into classrooms and

137to kind of collect data around what are the patterns and trends that we're seeing that tells us if our professional learning is working and what are the future needs for professional learning so the graph that you see over on the right planning was our first priority and our October learning walk we saw the presence of the planning look force that we have the practices at 58% by December we saw that number rise to 75% in December for engagement this is when we collected some baseline data around student engagement we were at 48% we've been now working on student engagement for the last couple months Allison and I are already seeing in our school visits Improvement in this area um but we're really excited to kind of codify it with the April learning walk that's coming

138up and so that's been a way for us to kind of quantify what are the patterns and trends that we're seeing across the classrooms the third bullet is around the school Improvement plan so each year schools identify five goals there's a math goal an Ela goal a equity disproportionality goal a supportive environment goal which is really around like culture and then a teacher team goal and so we've just finished conducting our midyear conferences with all of the principles and looking at all the data where are you are you on track and you know I highlighted here the math and reading goals because you know in math with you heard from Diane Fardo at the board meeting um a couple weeks ago that we've seen extraordinary progress and growth um in that and we one of

139the points that we look at is how many of the students are at are above the 61st percentile and why is that an important data point for us because we see a correlation between students who score at or above that point with predicted proficiency on the sbac assessment so in Reading we did not see we saw a third of our schools are on track to meeting or exceeded their Ela goals we've seen a lot of growth in some of the students in the lower percental for example the number of students that are projected for summer school has decreased from last year to this year so we're seeing growth in certain areas but we know we want to see greater growth in this 61% piece and so some of the next steps you see is we're

140Based on data fig identifying targeted supports for schools a school might have seen great growth in grades three four but five wasn't so like what is it that we need to dig into grade five and be very like systematic and targeted with the support that we provide we're working with tntp with three of our middle schools and three of our high schools to help in this area the last bullet is the one you know that uh they're all exciting but it's really exciting to me and this is a new initiative that we started this year and this is all about how can we tap the potential and the capacity of who we have in the district for our future leadership positions and so we have 19 teacher teacher leaders in this cohort this year that

141we work with on a monthly basis engaging in you know professional learning around the priorities of instruction leadership and they're actually leading an action project in their school community so they can apply what they're learning with us and it gives them an opportunity to lead some work in their school but also gives us an opportunity to see how they're applying that leadership and be able to coach into that work so some of the big kind of buckets and then Alex is going to Alison's going to talk about two other areas so the um next bucket that I'm going to talk a little bit about is teacher feedback um so I'm thinking about all of what near shared around the professional learning that we're providing to principles and APS and coaches that then their turnam to

142their teachers in their buildings um how do we know that this professional learning is actually taking hold in the classroom and that it's being implemented with Fidelity and so one of the ways in which um we're able to continue to support teachers in their development is by giving them feedback on their practices and so one of the things that we've been doing is really supporting School Leaders with giving strong actionable feedback that connects to the professional learning that connects to the work that we're doing around standards based instruction and student engagement um so that we can improve teacher practice in the classroom that will then result in improved performance by students right because again if all of what we're doing is not improving the learning for students as evidenced by their performance then we have

143to go back to the drawing board and reink what we're doing but we have to have a system in place to ensure that teachers are continuously developing and getting that feedback the feedback is part of the process you can't just have like a a you know a workshop or a session and expect that it's going to take hold there has to be continuous support So as we continue to continuously support School leaders Maran and I um we're teaching school leaders how to support their teachers in this work and so some of the ways that we do it is through learning walks that Maran spoke of um we also uh look at uh videos during professional learning and sort of develop a Common Language around what strong instruction looks like and the kind of feedback that

144we would give to teachers um so that they can improve their performance in the classroom um and as a result of that um some of the things that you'll notice is our subgroups are multilingual Learners as well as our uh specialized learning students are showing significant growth as a result of this work and again another thing that Maran and I do is when we visit schools and we visit classrooms we ask the leaders to share with us the feedback that they're giving teachers for the classrooms that we're visiting so we also can observe the continuous growth and it also allows us to see what additional learning school leaders need um in this bucket of work so that we can continue to support them as well and then our next bucket of work is cycles of

145improvement so cycles of of improvement um they're research based it's a research based process um that lasts about 10 weeks and the process begins with looking at student data to identify where there is a me um based on student performance another um beauty of this process is we've Incorporated student shadowing so administrators Will Shadow a student for a class period to really get behind the lens of a student a particular student um to see how they're experiencing the class and do they have access and where are they not engaged in the lesson and thinking about what is needed for that student to actually engage so it's not you know as Maran talked about before you can do all of this planning but if students are not engaged um then it's really not having any the

146planning is not having any impact and so part of getting to the RO cause of understanding Why students are not engaging is through the student shadowing to see where the breakdown is occurr and it's been a very powerful tool for our administrators um and So based on the data the student shadowing um The Learning walks that are conducted to assess teacher practice um what the team then does is create a teacher goal um that is designed to improve teacher practice as well as identifying a student performance goal in relation to a particular standard and there's a focus on a targeted group of students typically students who were not engaged um and so there's a whole action plan that's put into place with professional learning uh the literacy and the math coaches they go in they

147coach teachers um they give feedback they model practices uh School leaders give feedback to the teachers as well and then what they do is they come back and look at students um student work to measure the impact of everything that they have done and make adjustments along the way and the great thing about this process is this is a process for a central office staff of working on the ground closely with schools uring this so we have education administrators who work directly with the coaches and school leaders and then mianne and I are there at the beginning of the cycle launch and then we come in for a midcycle check-in where the school presents us with the data of the impact of of the work that they've been doing based on the plan we visit

148classrooms to see the progress that teachers are making as well and then we're able to give the school leaders feedback as well and support on how either great the process is during or if the process is not working suggestions on how they can improve the process to have impact and then we have an end of cycle meeting where we're able to sort of close it out look at what the impact of the 10 week cycle has been on student achievement and teacher practice um and then the school comes up with next steps of how they will continue this work and again this is a very detailed research-based approach to improving schools and ultimately what the goal is is that this practice just naturally becomes embedded in what schools do right so you see that a

149group of students are not performing that you begin to look at the data shatter the students right come up with a plan of action on how to either improve teacher practice around this problem or support the learning of students in the classroom and then measure the impact of that this way no child gets left behind um and so as you can see here uh so far this school year 48% of our schools have engaged in a cycle of improvement and there are some schools who have engaged in multiple Cycles because they have continued this work after they gone through the first cycle because they see the value in that work um 90% have met or partially met their teacher practice go um and 70% have medical partially met their student outcomes so and so you

150know again as I shared previously um you know we really want to scale this practice so that it's not just focused on like that particular grade or content area but it becomes a schoolwide process and the last part of goal four we focus mostly on instructional leadership up to this point but we know our school leaders have multiple responsibilities and so this sub goal is really around how are we supporting them with support and guidance from our HR and legal uh partnering divisions and so we work with them sometimes we're noticing a pattern and we need to make you know provide some targeted training to school leaders this could be anything from like changes in FMLA guidance to teach to evaluation plans to time and attendance a new Finance protocol and so we embed that

151learning into our monthly meetings or into our weekly Communications and we're working on building a principal's handbook where we're centralizing everything from all departments what are the protocols protocols processes and resources that school leaders needed their fingertips in a centralized location uh and we know that this is not only going to help our current School leaders but it's also going to support us with onboarding of new future School leaders and by having this kind of organized in a very accessible way so I'll hand it over to Ralph for go five thanks yeah so so goal five really this is a our goal that really focuses a lot around access around high quality instruction and when I think of those two things I really think of innovative practice so this a lot of that lives here

152even though it lives throughout the whole P but this is where we kind of identify a lot of things that we're doing and and I have four that I'm going to be focused four sub goals that I'll go through real quickly um our first is our regular uh we we've had pass around steam learning um this year that Focus has really been around helping to implement our digital promise practice so um if you're not I mean I know that we've talked about the digital promise program um every student grade 6 through 12 will have a Chromebook that's actually from Verizon um with 5G access so every kid grade 6 through 12 will have home internet access through this um so it's it's it's a huge area of equity that we really wanted to make sure

153that we covered it's not only having the device not only having access and now we need to make sure they understand how to use it effectively so you need to have coaches so we're also implementing we currently have seven coaches in the district we're we're expanding that to 12 coaches um that's being done also in part by ver Rising helping to fund those coaches for the next couple of years so they're not paying the full salary but they're paying a good portion of it um and we're also looking at embedded professional development throughout the year for all of our staff um just a couple of other things with this if you if you weren't aware we're actually going to I believe be the largest school district nationally that has a full implementation of this sort

154meaning that you'll go into Chicago public schools and you'll have more kids that are involved with promise MP schools but and you go to a smaller District than us of 2000 that every kid grade 6 through 12 has it because there's only one school that has that has a program we're actually going to be the largest implementation they're looking at us how do we scale this so that they can use us with as a model as they move forward digital learning I this is really at the heart of a lot of the work that I do with our coaches um you know we've been talking a lot about our coaching models in general um our digital learning coaches work in conjunction with our other coaches with administrators and with teachers one of the things we've

155been really focused on this year is looking at their impact so we've been we've been having them actually track the time that they're spending in classrooms working with teachers on specific software areas are they actually helping them the pre- plan are they co- teing with the teachers are they meeting with them afterwards so this graph kind of gives a little bit of a representation of time that's being spent there two of the larger ones that you're seeing there are in class the red and the green are big are are actually classroom practices so that's actually them spending time in the classroom or pre-planning with a teacher to make sure that they have lessons um one of the things that we wanted to focus on our our goal this year was to have these coaches deliver

156100 workshops and touch at least 250 teachers in this process they exceeded that in the first semester so it was a very low goal spe to set we'll have to kind of adjust that for next year so but we were really excited about that um and our I probably should also mention too with this that our media Specialists work in conjunction with the coaches as well too and ideally they can actually offer as kind of a pseudo coach a certain time in basically embedding those skills they actually deliver our digital citizenship curriculum but there's a lot more that they can do actually integrating specifically with their teachers to be able to help them help them support the integration technology in the classroom um Dr Str mentioned our future ready programs earlier um So currently we

157have 102 students enrolled um last year we had 9 students that graduated a couple of weeks ago we had 15 students that graduated midy year um we have at least 30 that are going to graduate I think over the summer between June and August um probably little more um so we're really really excited about that the the program is working well um we've got a ton of kids that are actually interested um we're actually at full of task for what we have right now and um one of the other things to date um is that I think is pretty impressive is these were students that were conically not only absent but failing in school um for this first semester 74% of the classes attempted were all passed so I mean it's like we're seeing a

158big big Improvement in their in their um work and then finally Partnerships this doesn't kind of fall under any specific bucket but it's so critical that we understand how we work with our Community Partners our philanthropic Partners as well to be able to help on these initiatives so uh our goal this year was to be able to develop better Communications and we've developed an impact an annual impact report that'll be going out talking about how philanthropy through their funding has actually impacted certain programs within our within our schools um we had an investors convening um just recently and at that investors convening we were able to bring in some additional investors potentially and we talked about our strategic plan we got feedback from them and we looked at how that kind of align with the

159work that they do and we actually put our asks in a sense into three buckets one around digital um uh excuse me one around future Readiness one specifically around data and continuous Improvement and then also around Workforce Development and those are really areas that we could use some additional support in so we're really excited to kind of get that moving and kind of grow that we're also trying to put a better structure in place which means we need a good backbone we need a good 501c3 so we're working with nef on helping to expand their capacity to be able to support us all right questions well so that investor meeting I heard about that and it sounds like it was a huge success is that the first time that we've done something like a that

160scale andity or yeah it's actually and you know what we found out it's like Richard was really helpful in that too um investors normally don't get together like that number of them to actually come to a room and join and knowing that others were being there that means that there's an interest but there's something to be said about the fact that you know as a district in the last couple years you look at our trajectory we're starting to receive more Federal funding in Grants we're getting things like our our Magnet School Grant this digital promise Grant which is millions um all of that success starts to drive people to say there's something going on here and we want to be part of that and we want to join in that investment as long as and

161so we're trying to figure out how that aligns and and how do we bring more people on board great yeah very cool yes um the and 3.4 you talked about the uh plan strategic plan and this was the first year that you guys started it is this a threee four year oh the digital learning strategic plan so the digital learning strategic plan is a foure P okay um but I mean we're going to be revising it definitely before the before year four so um once again it aligns so it focuses on what the library media special there's an instructional component to it it talks about what coaching and library media Specialists do it also focuses around our data um like how do we manage our data and what does that look like how do we

162manage our infrastructure as well so all of those are different core components within there um but it did come out of one of the other are was the efficiency study that we did in jointly with the city it was one recommendation that I was happy to receive because these are things that we really need to have in place so it's helped drive like the work that we're doing also is a concern that I have cuz you mentioned it before and I'm hoping that that does improve as far as your data Department your numbers are very low you know so when you're doing all these great things you know and you're doing it with short period of Staff what are we doing about that so so part of it when you really look at it from

163a I'll put a corporate hat on this is why that data governance is so important because there are other people that can actually do that work with you that already exists in the system there are great people that we had in finance HR curriculum everywhere that understand data they just need to be brought together so that we can start to develop protocols and make sure that they start working in conjunction with each other whatever the project is yeah so that's the way to scale it and make it really sustainable M tie people together in a team but also keep us to a point where it's actually it's it's efficient too you know drya talked a little bit about ai ai is going to have a huge huge effect on how we manage data and so

164other people that may understand a bit about it will be able to kind of jump into this a little bit more knowing that they got support from others to be able to kind of build so yeah we've got to rely on that technology to help build our own capacity I didn't know like the Chromebooks here they really not adapted so you guys are really doing it because I know in Stanford they've been functioning with Chromebooks for a while now we had we had PCS at the high schools I was going to ask about that to be honest St wait why I thought migrate to Chromebooks because I thought during the pandemic we got we got PC so did so got um aook a device a device it was either a PC or a Chromebook so

165okay get away from the PCS we want everybody on Chromebook yeah we're looking really at truly just a cloud-based model that's a little bit easier to manage it's good yeah all right um I had a question on gold 4.1 page 52 um and I know that we did talk about in our last Workshop meeting with Diane but the the 30 33% reading number of percentages of students at or above the 61st percentile that's a little bit alarm am I not reading that right or interpreting it correctly yes so that is so schools set different goals so and we do it based on where were you end of year last year to where you want to be end of year this year and so what we do is if your school let's say 50% of your

166students were at are about the 61st percentile then we would set a goal for where you're going to be you know because everybody's starting point is different so everybody's ending point is going to be different okay um and so that is saying the schools that right now are on track to meeting their goal so it's not saying 33% of students it's saying 33% of schools are on track to meeting their school specific goal but that's still not corre great correct but this is what we've identified is because like I I mentioned we're seeing growth in like some of the students who are below the 20th percentile and the 20th to the 40th percentile but it's for seeing that in that middle to get to that jump to that 61st percentile is like is the area

167of concern based on looking at this data that we're really focusing on right so that's why the science of reading yeah I was going to say like we have a new curriculum coming in right well so it's not a new curriculum but it's helping teachers to understand like the the science of reading so when they're implementing the curriculum they there's a deeper understanding of like why do I need to teach use this read aloud in this particular way because that's how reading is developed and so and then in the middle schools and the high schools we've identified um you know we have the middle schools and high schools working with a group called tntp which is very well known for their Improvement that they can um cultivate in schools around standards based instruction right and

168so we see the science of reading PD is where we're providing the target support with Elementary and then tntp is working with us with the secondary schools so like in every you know when we meet with the principles we're look the data looks very different from school to school you know in some cases it's it's really we're seeing a particular subgroup that we need to focus on in some cases we're seeing a particular grade level that we need to focus on so like it becomes like a it's very differentiated and so that we can makeo within each grade within each us um I hope that we're really paying attention to that and focusing on it because anybody who saw right to read that documentary I mean that was like kind of terrifying um and we

169have to make sure that our students can read absolutely and we've also pivoted in terms of our professional learning so a lot of you know what we had been focusing on uh last month um and the month before was around student engagement um but this month actually next week we have a principal M coaches meeting we really focusing around Ela planning um and supporting teachers and administrators with that and I mean is it safe to say that because we have such a big MLL population that that's also maybe why our reading numbers are it's one component it's what one component yeah right because English is a second language for a lot of our kids so yeah you know it's yeah it it you know it comes back like there's no one single variable right contributing

170to this really hard to diagn but we need to focus on it well and there's been kind of you know a circling of the wagons you know over the last couple of weeks of different people from different departments you know multiple people planning this professional learning for principles APS and coaches next week thinking around then what's the implementation plan after that professional learning what data are we looking at because we don't want to wait until the end of year to see how we're doing what's the the more frequent progress monitoring [Music] so 4.2 uh teachers feedback how are they handling negative Fe feedbacks come across and I know you say there's like 19 teachers that volunteered for that program um yeah I think that that's a different program um but in terms of teacher feedback

171I mean teachers are given feedback as part of like the teacher evaluation um principles through droppings and things like that um you know what I would say is like how the feedback is received really depends on um you know the relationship that school leaders have with their teachers um you know and how they're creating that culture of you know Improvement um so that teachers are receptive to it I mean for the most part feedback is directly align to the look The look for document that Maria referred to to the professional learning um you know many teachers have been receptive because it doesn't feel like an I got you right because totally aligns with the work that we've been doing as a district right and it's [Music] consistent I I was similarly thinking like okay are

172these like surprise dropin like I mean I'm in a corporate position like if my boss just like dropped in on a meeting an announced like I would be what's going on here I mean are these like unannounced you know principes dropping in and sitting in on your class for half a day I would say some are announced and some are not announced um but that's very typical in the education field just in general um not not even specific to no um yeah it's a common practice one last thing for me I'm 4.4 Maran listen I think this is a great idea to have a principal handbook so hopefully that can happen oh it's already in the work really cuz I think that's a excellent idea you know because excuse there's no excuses you know sometimes

173you get busy you know I know how it is in my profession so I forget and you know and there's some things that I know I got to go and even on my 20 plus years I'm like oh let me gra this book you know and I just think but for the new staff and even the older staff the newer staff going to be on top of this day but from the older staff it's easier to have a handb workk and it's easier to have that and to have that and be able to go to it to have a go-to like that I think that's excellent excellent idea there's a lot asked of our school leaders right and you know to think that you're going to have every single thing you know memorize but also

174just we really want it to be centralized and very accessible so that you know you can look at it and then if you have questions reach out to the appropriate person but like you have a starting place right you know that's sure and sometimes you're not even aware of you know a policy that you know a policy even exists or anything cuz you haven't confronted that problem [Music] they'll [Music] okay I hope that the different stations that talked about the all of our six goals provided the board some in depth Insight in terms of the work that has happened thus far the work that the team is thinking about when working towards so that we can meet the targets set by the board um last year and that it can help also shape the work

175that we need to do for the 2425 Academic School year I'm going to turn it over to the chair so that we can go into executive session before we go into executive session we have public comments do we have a list public comments I think did I turn it off I think I turned it off I'm sorry to turn it on sorry I don't want to destroy it okay good evening for the record my name is Diane laella I live at 21 Little Fox Lane and I've been a member of Norwalk for 40 years I cannot believe it um but I'm still here and I'm sorry that there are not more residents here because this was an really an extraordinary way to get to know all the things that are being planned um I wanted

176to tell you for briefly on background I know have three minutes I'm currently a member of the Connecticut wide Connecticut school indoor air quality Coalition made up of people many of us are in in the business of some of environmental health and we have been helping the legislative special um they have a special committee that's been studying uh the issue of indoor air quality and have been making sure that Das makes the HVAC application process a lot more user friendly because it wasn't for the schools and for our building management people so we're we're checking it out and you according to what's the plan is there'll be a one-year and a 5-year inspection where you'll utilize Consultants to make sure that whatever equipment you put in that it's working properly that it's balanced and and

177so uh I think um I'm pleased that finally the governor did allow for some money reimbursement for HVAC which wasn't the case up until recently up until covid really um I love this lovely new renovation um M but life is short and several of you have heard me opportunities exist and I'm talk speaking to goal number two about facilities uh and Consultation business operations and facilities and I do think there is still money to be saved and money to be added into your programs by taking a look in your business plans that you have um not only the indoor air quality enhanc ments it'd be great to do all the schools but the way the state is doing it it's impossible however if you also think of including Energy Efficiency and adding Renewables while you're

178doing indoor air quality and HVAC that will help you save money in the short and long run um it can be a curriculum enhancement and I know that we have a curriculum committee we I was just speaking at a State Legislative discussion about solar and schools there is and I will send all of you there is going to be a public hearing they're working out a new bill on solar in schools and so I hope that I can encourage some of you to help me encourage the city who is your partner to Pivot their current policy which is I feel as a professional wrongheaded in that the policy has been to only put solar on schools that are either new construction like cranberry or additions like narch ponus and then gut Renovations like Jefferson but

179not enough solar so that you can realize the cost savings it's more than just climate change change and achieving our climate footprint carbon footprint it's about saving money for the taxpayers saving money for all of your budgets so that you can use that money and savings for programs and things that I heard about today and I was really impressed by all the things going on lastly as far as facilities um I do feel that we can and must enhance how we collect waste and I think DPW should take it out of your hands so that you can do the recycling that is a state law that's not consistent and the reason why it fits in goal number two and your curriculum goals is that you could have children who will become our future Engineers will

180help plan and reduce the waste that's permeating our whole society and adding to the cost of environmental destruction so with that I'll I'll leave it I'm going to be speaking with some of you individually on offline and some of the staff which I've tried to do in the past and I'm I'm going to give it one more College try so uh thank you for having this meeting tonight I really appreciate it and I do think we have to do better in Saving energy costs for the district and the taxpayers thank you thank you okay so next item the agenda is going into executive session for strategic plan discussion motion to go into executive session seconded by Colin will return thank you good evening everyone we are back from our executive session we had um good

181conversations and a lot of information to discuss and it's been a long night and I wanted to thank my colleagues and everybody here for this evening and I would like the motion to adjourn motion to adjourn asley thank you everybody good night