Board of Education Meeting with Breakout Sessions | February 7, 2023

001good evening everyone apologies for the technical difficulties um welcome to the Board of Education Workshop meeting today is Tuesday February 7th with me this evening I have um in-house with us Janine Randolph Erin Nelson bakey Jerry McCready Brown Godfrey azima and Mary Ellen Flaherty Ludwig and if we can um please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance foreign devote to move them forward I don't know if the public can hear us school trips Janine seconded by Cara all in favor unanimous hope thank you so this evening our topic today is the district strategic plan goals maybe your updates we have a lot to discuss this evening we'll have to go over I'm sure there's going to be lots of questions this evening and I am going to transfer the meeting now to Dr Alexandra Estrella thank

002you Church person Fabio good evening everyone thank you for joining us as um we talk are at the midpoint of this Academic School year and we take this opportunity to highlight the great work that has happened throughout our district most importantly work that is driven by a strategic plan and our goals that have been prioritized for this year by our board today we are going to engage in a discussion that's going to be formulated in a fish gallery fish ball structure we will be live streaming the event but we will also be recording every Fishbowl individually and up uploading those fish bowls for further Clarity and visibility for the public tomorrow before we immerse into the Fishbowl Gallery I want to just preface um what our work is grounded around um which is our mission

003where we go so like I was saying um just starting off with highlighting where work is grounded around our mission Focus around all students graduating um future ready and also civically uh having a clear what how what it is to be civically responsible and globally aware of the ever-changing um society and and world that we live in also um I wanna highlight our vision which is focused around making sure that all students across Norwalk are prepared for the world and the life that they aspire to be but most importantly that they are Bid that their learning experiences build is building a more Equitable and just World um for for them and the people that they are they will be serving in the future want to highlight also our values um prefacing the importance of maximizing

004every child's potential putting excellence in everything that we do making sure that we engage in Equitable processes that highlight our diversity of an inclusive learning environments making sure that as we engage in the work we are focused around our our people those individuals that are helping educate our students whether they are our teachers our Educators School leaders our custodian and other Personnel that continuously make sure that our buildings are up to par to welcome our students making sure that we keep creativity and Innovation at the Forefront of the work that we do day in and day out and that we're constantly thinking about how we are continuously improving and modifying practice so that we ensure not only that we are up to date and looking at the best most practical practical ways of supporting our

005Scholars but also that we are constantly refining our craft to ensure that all students succeed and if my clicker behaves thank you and for the public to come Colin Houston has joined us grounded in our strategic plan our five strategic priorities one which I mentioned earlier are focused on future Readiness Equity Excellence high quality instruction and support as well as engagement we look at these five priorities not in isolation but in in connection to one another they're hype they're hyper-linked and interconnected in everything that we do and they themselves are also immersed in an interconnected way as we think about our work and moving us through our Scholars and staff forward there are six goals that are driving our efforts this year these six something these these six goals are um derived from a strategic

006plan and further emphasize the work that we're doing amongst all the Departments across the district um the first is around strengthening individual student access our second goal is focus about around our business and operations Department as well as integrating our finance department and making sure that we follow our three to five year facilities plan also making sure that we're looking at our facilities on an annual basis to ensure that they are suitable learning environments for all of our students across the districts and most importantly continuing to update and refine and collaboration with with the city a five-year Capital plan as well as thinking about ways in which we can further extend that plan and looking at a scope within the next 25 years and how we can continue to rehabilitate our facilities our third goal

007is um focus around our human resource department and finance as well as business and operations and it's tailored around really refining what we are doing as a system want to increase diversity within the organization find the most effective ways of minimizing costs but Inc increasing the the capability of our organization and servicing our students well our fourth goal is focused on instructional leadership development it is critical for us to do in order for us to do our work well that our school leaders as well as other Personnel are equipped with the tools that they need to successfully move um in the path forward our fifth goal is around the development and refinement of instructional programs across the organization ensuring that every child has an opportunity to have access to a high quality education and making

008sure that we establish professional learning supports and structures to enable that to happen our sixth goal is focus around ensuring that families are provided Equitable opportunities and access to resources across the organization examples of that you will hear today as the team presents but most importantly making sure that we Bridge any Gap that might exist in providing to our families with access to programs and resources to ensure that their children have access to all the learning models that our district have has and most importantly to make sure that we are in constant in communication and constantly engaging with our parents to learn about their needs and then in turn continue to modify our system to ensure that we're providing them access by enabling or finding resources to meet their needs so those are the six

009goals that we will be engaging in deep in a deeper conversation this evening the way in which we will engage in this discussion if my clicker allows it'd be a hand barefoot is through a um Gallery Fishbowl protocol we have three stations in each station um you will have members of the cabinet presenting on one two in some cases three goals or one goal um and they will go in depth um in uh discussing where we are at this point of the in the year uh meeting or exceeding these goals where there might be potential pitfalls that we are looking to further address and then most importantly what is the work forward between this point and to the end of the year to ensure that the goals that the board has set forward for us

010to meet are met or seated so we have um three stations in station one we're going to focus in goal one and six in station two we will focus in goals two three and four and in station three we're going to focus on in goal five we're going to ask at this point for the board members to go to the stations where they're going to start um the gallery Fishbowl um in station one we have um Diana coppio Mary Ellen Flaherty Ludwig and Colin hosson and station two we have guy free azima Cara Becky and Erica De Palma and in station three we have sherry mccrady Bridget Cheryl Harris and Janine are Randall if the board members can please move to their assigned stations we are organizing these um fishbowls where the first 15 minutes

011the team will be presenting the and then 15 minutes for Q a and discussion in this state ment sorry we're going to be really focusing on goal one and goal six goal one is really around strengthening our individual success plans for students and there's a lot in that goal around curriculum professional development SEL and counseling supports specialized learning and then we're going to talk about goal six and goal six is really the work that we are doing around the family center and so we have members of the schools team here and you think you've had a chance to meet each of them but I'll just do quick introductions if everyone can just want to start bridging Bridget Adams executive director of specialized learning Stacy Bergen educational administrator for curriculum professional learning Francis ice educational administrator

012for multilingual Learners and Family Center supervised sex and so this is the school's team station because we have a big portion of the work and we will go through each different layer and we have some artifacts that we've provided to just support what we're going to talk about in the presentation so our first we're going to start with curriculum professional development we'll then go to developing teacher capacity for teaching reading we'll talk about srbi SEL and counseling and specialized learning okay so one of the things that we've been concentrating on this year was the idea of getting better at getting better and so it's really important to look at the pedagogy that's going on in classrooms in order to isolate areas of need to coach into those with at the at the school level and

013then across schools and then across the district and so we've taken sort of a bird's eye view and we um created in your folders if you want to open those up there is an artifact regarding the professional learning that takes place across the district and the beautiful thing about a professional learning plan is that we start at looking at sort of the Big Ideas so the beginning of the school year and then we boil it down to then gradually releasing control to the schools so that schools then can address the need that they have on a sort of day-to-day basis okay we were able to this year thus far provide three professional learning experiences for teachers across the district in very various areas of need so there were options for special education there were options

014for in the art of teaching readings in curriculum writing in looking at discourse in classrooms there's sort of like a choose your own sort of want or need right and so with that we have some data regarding professional development feedback we have a 79 satisfaction rate and I think it's important to also say that within that 79 there's an additional 13 which really brings us to like an 84 satisfaction rate of people who were sort of like on the cusp they had some suggestions for us that we took and we implemented it and um for the ongoing professional learning so if we're looking at this data we're looking at levels numbers fours and number five oh I see sort of like good and very good got it so the totality of those uh reach 79

015and then there are people who scored us at a level three which is about 13 yeah and those are like the people that are Midway they're sort of like beige and so we we look at that we add it together and so we looked at really on a scale of three to five as being like you know good and very good we're really more at like an 84 satisfaction rate which is pretty good I think that is pretty good okay um while we're helping the teachers getting better at getting better we're also getting better ourselves and so we partnered with Unbound education this year and one of the things across the district we have educational administrators School administrators and teacher leaders engaging in professional learning um with Unbound education to really take a deep look

016into what is standard based um curriculum what does that look like in in print and then in our classrooms and this directly supports the work that's being done with our curriculum writing so one of our goals or a big goal that we have this year is really looking at the writing of the curriculum and so this document tells the story of what our proposed plan is for the remainder of the year so we were very ambitious in the beginning of the spring and summer last year to really think about rewriting our mlml foundations course at the high school level we wrote units one and two we rewrote units one and two for MLL development and the transition English curricula it was the first time any modifications to those documents had been done in quite some

017time we created opportunities for kids to really for our MLL students to really engage with on level classroom appropriate texts and strategies in the classroom then we move into the work that needs to be done for the remainder of the year we're going to write the remainder of the units and the corresponding assessments in the world of our Ela electives at the 12th grade level we are beginning that work this spring we are currently surveying the courses right now seeing what's being offered what that enrollment is looking like what is the scope and sequence look like in order once we conclude that audit we then we will establish a committee and move into the rewriting of the units of study World Language we took a deep dive into that last year and be and realized

018that that curriculum also needed a rebirth and so we established a committee last year they met about four or five times and we were able to revamp a majority of the Spanish courses and then our goal is to weave in the other courses over the next sort of 18 months for business in the world of business one of the things that we were looking at within the the business department was really how are we ready for the 21st century what are the courses that we're teaching and one of the things that we realized that there was a lot of double courses that were kind of very similar and so we trimmed that down really to streamline offerings for students so that they would get the best bang for our buck and we also came up

019with a five-year plan so and the teachers really did the bulk of that work to think about what is what are our kids looking forward really going to need and how do we plan backwards for that unfortunately we did not get to social studies this year and no fault of our own the state has delayed the approval of the new framework so in consultation with the state it's going to a consultancy group for June maybe and so they're talking about maybe next January so we're looking at a whole additional year where we have to sort of put a pause on the social studies curricula until next spring and so we can begin to look at what we do always begin to look at what's not working in the classrooms within the units of study based

020upon teachers feedback and we do make adjustments along the way but the total overhaul of that curricula won't come down until the state says we can move forward that was a lot the only other piece that I just want to add is that one of our goals was centered around writing 2K curriculum oh yes I provided it we provided a sample in the document right now there would be 10 units throughout this year we are through four of them at the Midway point and we're currently writing units five and six and that will be something that will be completed by the end of the year but this was not something that we had and so we really wanted to be able to create a framework and one of the things that's really nice is it

021is it's called the world of Wonders and it is tied to our resource that we use in K5 so it's really preparing our preschoolers for the transition together all right we're gonna move on so the second part of this goal is our developing teacher professional capacity and one of the things that we started last year was the letters training and that just is the language Essentials of teachers of reading and spelling and we have a cohort we will have 68 Educators that will graduate this two-year program and then our next steps right now like they did four units last year they do four units this year and then they graduate and then our focus is to have these experts be our Trainers for building capacity across schools because a lot of the people that are

022in this are our coaches are Improvement teachers our teacher leaders and they can continue that work with our with our teachers in the building and I just I think that that we're really excited about this and it's it's a long it's a long process but it is really helping to prepare teachers to be in the science of reading the other another goal that we had was around dyslexia and this year we partnered with Cirque in our November 8th PD every certified staff member in the district participated in this training and I think for me one of the nicest feedback that we received was from a teacher and I quoted the teacher because she her child has dyslexia and so her response was the dyslexia PD was like reliving my child's Journey I'm so happy MPS

023is finally moving in this direction there's we're hoping that there will be more training for regular Ed teachers and so I just think that that was a really positive impact even high school teachers found a lot of value in the resources that were provided and I actually provided a copy of that presentation to you and I also provided one of the letters handouts as well so this circle that is that's the presentation from surf that was provided the next level of our work around teaching reading it really comes down to our literacy it used to be our literacy Clinic that we had but we still have the team and that team is building capacity across the district and so they have provided training on Wilson reader which we got 25 free seats it's a multi-sensory

024approach and we've been able to work that in to help support our teachers we also have had Linda mood bell training and writing Revolution for our Middle School social studies teachers this is training they've been able to then transfer into their classroom the Middle School teachers social studies in particular they're using it during wind time to support writing and to support the work that's happening during when and so that team it's a team of two but their real mission is to support teachers with the instruction around reading and writing and so they go off into schools and they work with maybe one teacher they meet work with a team of teachers and I provided a copy of some of the work that they've done throughout this year so that you have evidence of that work

025but because one of the pla one of the pieces we've talked about is that The Literacy Center or dyslexia Center used to be a place it's not a place the mission is really about building teacher capacity it doesn't matter where they are and it's that they are going out and supporting teachers and working with our staff so we've seen a lot of positive outcomes from this work we're going to transition to srbi and this year a couple of the pieces that we've really worked on and I want to I'm very excited about our Wind Block and the interventions that have happened in our next curriculum meeting is going to be really focused on this work because we're at the Midway point right now but we've been able to utilize teacher professional development days in grades

026k through eight to train our teachers in research-based programs and so part of the work has been a team went into schools and we did walk through so we walked through look with the focus centered around when and how are we supporting this block of time and we worked with the leaders in the building and we've provided feedback and we've really seen this idea of this time we come such a valuable use of time in supporting our teachers and supporting our leaders in providing research-based programs the other piece that Dr Perry did this year is she created plcs and so so we have interventionists across the district but providing them time to come together and work collaboratively on professional development they also created a problem of practice on something they're going to work on and

027they've been able to bounce it off of other people's ideas which has been really beneficial we've gotten a lot of positive feedback from these plcs from our Improvement teachers because if they're not just on their own because in every building we may have one reading Improvement teacher one math Improvement feature now they get to come together and learn from each other I talked about the walkthroughs one of the other components this year is the reading buddies program and that we've partnered with nef and they've there's a focus on third graders but really the focus is bringing in retired teachers bringing in someone who wants to support and we've been able to roll this out already in two schools and we're expanding to another three schools it really depended on getting volunteers so what does this

028all mean at this point in the middle of the year in looking at grades four to eight we've seen a five percent decrease in students required for summer school which is a our goal was to really Reduce by 10 percent and we haven't even looked at K3 yet they finished their middle of the Year testing tomorrow and then we'll have that data and that's 15 minutes I know we're not there so but it is um we are really excited and I want I provided a couple other pieces of data for you one of them is the number of students middle of the year that's five percent last year we had 881 students that were required for summer this year right now we're at 8 37 so we still have work to do but it's a

029five percent decrease the other goal that we're looking at is the number of students below the 40th percentile last year at this time it was 3 800 students for math we're at 3053 we've had a 753 increase in the number of students below the 40th percentile which is huge now for reading we went from we went from 3039 down to two thousand we had a thousand percent decrease um this year and that means that students are going above the 40th percentile which means our interventions are really having a positive impact on student learning the third Town we're looking for yes that is all right SEL in counseling we're going to move over to the fourth now and in SEL and counseling all of our schools have counseling support we have um Elementary School really the

030focus is on SEL lessons in the classroom and more whole group they still work with students one-on-one and then in the secondary schools a couple of things I want to highlight are we've been able through a partnership to bring in a drug and alcohol counselor into our high school and an lgbtq plus counselor and that's a partnership that we have had with the triangle community we are also developing our health curricula so there's a lot of curricular work happening the state rewrote the um they they rewrote they made a framework and so our health teachers have been engaging throughout this year in rewriting the curriculum we've created scope and sequence already and now they're coming together next week and they're going to continue that work and I provided a timeline for you of the health

031curriculum the work that's been happening throughout this year and we have a partner that is supporting us in that work as we develop this new curriculum the other layer that I want to highlight is the Dessa survey which which is new so we've done a lot of work around srvi academic interventions and this that's a survey I provided you with a copy of where we were in the fall it shows us that 10 of our students needed more supports this is going to give us the data to support SEL interventions or behavior interventions and it shows across the grade the different students that are needing support so we've been able now to transition not just to academic interventions but also the SEL Behavior interventions as well and we use that data to support that work

032another layer is the wingman Foundation peer leadership program and this program has really been able to for building student leaders we have it in one of our elementary schools at Fox Run and I provided some pictures for you about the work they're doing at Fox Run it's so funny because when I was talking with Fox Run they're like make sure you show them the win-man cards no they they actually they're laminated cards that they use and what they do is they have older students come together with younger students and they have to find each other and have a conversation and so it's really about building um insert like positive relationships they pair them correctly so if I have the ace I have to find another Ace in the room and then they have a comp

033there's prompts that they follow but it's really about building up student leadership peer leadership and then our triangle Community Center we have been able to provide the training to eight of our 12 elementary schools we have two that are happening this month and then we have two that will be happening in March that will hit all 12 schools and then as I mentioned already we have a counselor that supports our Secondary Schools they're at both they support both high schools and right now two middle schools and they've been able to like pull the lunch groups at different schools and really supporting students we've had a lot of positive feedback about this work and this really was the partnership with the city so Triangle Center with Norwalk public schools and Noah as well so really great

034work happening and then specialized learning we have a focus on two goals the first being that 100 of all of our students will transition from iup direct to our new system and the second goal being that we'll be implementing year two of our 2020 audit that I've referenced in a few of our conversations previously and in the interest of time since you've heard me speak quite a bit to both of these goals I'll just briefly try to tie some of the strings together with our ultimate goal in specialized learning to be that the mindset shift to this understanding that specialized learning is not a place anymore ever again but rather a service that occurs within all of this work that is outlined through the goal as I listen to the presentations just at the table

035as I'm embedded in this work I'm excited to talk about service not a place mindset as I listen to the pieces about the literacy Clinic no longer just being a specialized learning service but a general education service we see devro and all of the work around mental health that used to live in just special ed no longer does because we are truly working toward the goal of coherence in that special education is in fact that service and potentially in terms of CT sets we've talked a bit about this more toward the beginning of the year we've worked in professional development opportunities for staff for families for administrators and in some cases even with students looking at their own IEPs to shift to this system as we're sitting here looking at each other today 98 of

036the students who shifted to CT saids either through an annual review or a reevaluation to date have started they're either finalized completed or started this system is not without its problems and as a state and certainly here in Norwalk we are working through all of what we're lovingly calling glitches to be able to finalize and bring everything through into compliance and that parent engagement carries forth not just with helping folks understand this new system but also all of this work that we're doing in Shifting the mindset I could certainly go on for quite some time about our systems and some of the updates that we've made new systems we've drafted and the work in our future but in the interest of time I'll leave you with the artifacts that are here there are several examples

037of the work that's being done in the department and throughout the district and I'm always happy to have conversations to talk through any of it you want to highlight them specifically no the one thing that I really want to talk about though is because it's it's really exciting for me is a really the focus around co-teaching because this is really a huge focus of the department and not just the specialized learning department but also the MLL department and so between the two departments we've really made a huge focus on supporting co-teaching and I think of one of our special administrators who's working with two of her schools and actually is pulling the code teaching teams together created a Google Classroom where they're providing resources they're coming together they've been and the teachers that have been

038involved in that have really provided positive feedback to be able to step out of the school to be able to work together and to really be able to build their practice of co-teaching so I think that there is a lot of work happening in that regard and I think that it's important to highlight that where we were last year where co-teaching was in very few places it happened but we've seen a huge increase because we've worked on professional development with our principals around co-teaching the MLL team has been going into schools around co-teaching the modeling co-teaching and then our specialized learning team has also been focused because we know that that is a best practice for instruction the last piece that we're going to discuss and I have the goal six and the science has

039her a folder to give you yes because when we get to goal six it really is talking a lot about the Family Center get there and then we'll have time for questions so that's Communications Okay so so in your packet on the right side the one of our goals is really to increase parent traffic and engagement and the family center is the center of it all the families the children our Scholars are the ones that really really are we are here to service and the family center has been a hub for all those resources and all services one of the important data that I want to share with you about how we met or go exceeded our goal is that drawing covet and the returning families from last year really was really difficult to bring

040him back in and really engage them so we've done a lot of research with through a consulting company that did a lot of research about what is it that we want for the families at the family center and through that survey and that research we develop professional development for families workshops events and you're going to see a mass amount of number and we are really engaging our families one of the most important parts of of them coming into the family centers is creating a place where families feel comfortable nurture welcome that we that they have access to someone to support them invitation Creole or Spanish and that there's a seamless registration process that they don't have to go like the ml's families used to go City Hall and other families used to go to schools

041they needed to go to other places for different Services it's a centralized Hub where they receive for all those services so if you look at on your right hand side on the page those are all the services that we provide at the Family Center besides the Workshops the training for staff for Partnerships and one of the things that came out of the survey is a list of needs that family had and thanks to to um Diane that went blank and our in different Partnerships one of the things that we noticed when families were coming in was the need for nutrition for food for clothing and we recently in November opened a pantry and providing that service and we have that data for that one of the most important things that I think that the community

042needs to realize is that is that the interactions that we have at the family center it's not just registration it's not just providing Services it's also we're a partner with the city Hub community Hub where we do referrals to families and they are an extension of what their needs are if you look briefly at the data we've had since um July to January a total of 2119 families visit but that's not the only thing that we do those 2119 is basically registrations but if you look at the other data we have Partnerships workshops that happening at the family centers we provide professional development workshops for families the numbers are high and you can see that we now opened up the pantry we have 114 families from the time that we opened it up in November

043to have access to it that are signed up and go we have kids that are come in and say we just direct them to the pantry so for me I'm very passionate about the family center because I it's rewarding like I'm getting paid for a rewarding experience because I see the services how our reaching families directly and that they're very supportive of the family center we we've done a survey and our survey is phenomenal for the for numbers we we have if you look at um we had a response of 191 families who scored us their family center experience exceptional and most surveys we have a nine percent return we have 2119 families but it's optional to to complete the survey normally in terms of research we try to get between a five and a

04430 percent response rate because not everybody wants that do the survey we have we are at a nine percent right now and our goal is by the end of the year to be out of 20 but it's phenomenal results we're uh exceptional 174 families have the way the service and what we provided for them there in addition to that um we refer them to the social worker that's at the family center we support them with documentations one of the surveys indicated that they needed services for notary so we we had someone certified at the Family Center a pastor came in yesterday I heard you do notary can I and they come in and we're providing that service one of the things that our goal is we're really trying to get a clinic at at the

045family center because some of the families struggle with getting the vaccine and immunization but we partner with the health center Department with Fairfield University who's supporting us with the mental health filling the black and Norwalk neutral a is supporting us with the pantry it's an amazing place if you look to the left of your packing I'm trying to keep to my time we I shared all the workshops that we've provided through our since August to the present time it's over 27 three major events and we in the survey from the survey response we ask families what else do you want us to provide with some some things that you need and one of the things that they definitely share was the fact that um they wanted the the clinic they want um ESL course in

046the Family Center because it's so centralized we offer it a Norwalk High but it's easier easier for them to reach it there um so we have a tremendous feedback about the family center and one of the things that the curriculum team is doing now we're going to start rolling out weekly family workshops around the district priorities around the curriculum informing them providing them with the knowledge that they need to make an educational decision about the academics of the job some things we are on track with our goals some things are we're still working towards or are delayed and I.E social studies but what questions do you have that we can answer in any of the domains well I have a question about sobis and how you're documenting now the co-teaching is kind of up and

047running the effect of co-teaching on more certified kids in swbis is that happening so more eyes looking at for srbi we are tracking uh uh like match cohorts of students so we're looking at students how they number of students that were in srbi because part of srbi is really attractive we want to make sure that the students may need tier two interventions or two or three interventions and if that's not working then we are then the team would then recommend the child to go to a PPT process and the PPT would then have a meeting and they would make it a decision happening are you seeing more kids identify because more eyes are we are one of the things foreign class but not necessarily like because srbi can either be an intervention and then you

048go back into tier one or you can go to tier three or you may need to then go through the PPT process and so if that's the case then a child may be identified and what we are seeing is that we are able to identify students earlier who may need it but we're also able to close gaps based on the data some children who may be in the 20th percentile but then through a tier two intervention make the growth and then they they're out and then they're out some students may need to go into a tier three intervention but then with that tier three intervention then they start to make the growth and so it's really about checking the student tracking the data and then making informed decisions that's why we go through Cycles with

049srbi we're currently in our stuck we're currently in our third cycle and the teams come together and if you are in the srbi process there's a team that will come together and have an instructional conversation about the student to make this yeah I mean I I I I could see why half an hour is not enough this is I know right this is a very significant work I mean it's really just um cool to hear it all spelled out like that and you know part of what I'm curious about and we may not have the data right now where something's I'm sure we're still looking through is um you know a lot of the uh uh the the progress we're doing we're making in curriculum um and um you know looking at revamping some of

050our reading and math skills and so on I'm curious about the social studies I wonder if that's politicized but anyway you know uh or dealing with things now that in what we what I would call regular times were issues that we were dealing with at NPS and across the state in the Twilight of covid you know where some of those things have been exacerbated or highlighted or made worse I want you know I'm curious to know um if some of those trainings and PD opportunities have been uh shaped specifically around what we call a learning loss of that we have experienced in covet and two if we're seeing an effect on the professionals themselves who are also dealing with the you know the aftermath of a pretty traumatic time that's data that we're capturing and

051um putting into a narrative in some way so so I'm going to like address parts of that question right so I think that um one thing we've always tried to keep our sort of eye on right in the ball is thinking about what instructional changes are we going to make that are going to have the greatest impact and so last year when we sort of moved into really more kids being in school we realized we needed to establish those smaller class experiences so that kids could have more one-to-one right at the same time we're strengthening the core instruction in the larger class if you will right so when we have the whole class versus like the parts of the class and so I think that by doing that we've been able to close some of

052the Gap but as I said last year right when we had our curriculum meeting was any type of loss right or change really takes three to five years and I know that that often sounds like that's like big right but but that's what it takes and so we have to can sort of continue on that trajectory and we're seeing it we're seeing the return on our investment through the decline in or sort of the the decline in the kids below the 40th percentile and that's a really important number and so we are seeing that the small changes that we've made are having a big impact on kids learning and it's also beginning and we're so I collected just just this week samples of kids writing across the districts and I know what kids writing was

053like uh well almost two years ago and there has been growth in that now how do you quantify like writing you know we can use a rubric and a like scale and do all that but really the fact was that kids were writing they were writing very little and now they're writing and and then we're going to see them even get better at sort of like the actual structure of the writing so that's one way like it's not like a scientifically based you know if it's below this or above that but like just writing wasn't happening in a way that it could across the district and now it is even with our you know with our inclusive of our specialized learning students who receive those Services inclusive of our multilingual Learners they're not sort of

054kept at a distance from that it's like you're going to right whether you're writing in your native language whether you're drawing what you have to say so so in those ways we've addressed those gaps I think and then we're hitting the other things because of it you know we're hitting those SEL pieces that need to be addressed because we're giving kids access to a voice and lots of choice so we're also like in the units of study we've adapted like there's lots of choice for kids and for teachers to say you know what I'm going to go this way with it instead of this way because this is what my class is interested in and we're like good go right like the destination is what is important how you get there for us isn't as

055important does that make sense I also think our initial PD this year in August was really focused on research-based interventions like we know that yes we want to accelerate our learning but we also want to make sure that we are able to use research-based programs to help make the instructional decisions and so that we worked with our principals and that was really our first BD was focused on building that capacity across the organization what's important is all these changes and everything you've implemented is creating a positive effect right you're not status quo you're not going in a negative Direction and it's well we're using data to make decisions we're looking at srbi through a data lens and if if we're seeing this Positive Growth then what we're doing is having a positive thing if it

056wasn't well then we would need to adjust and change Force that's really important for us like prior to us having srbi one of the things Dr Australia heard all the time was the only way to get a child identified was through a parent request this year alone we've had 26 students that have gone through srbi and have been able to receive Services some for mathematics some for literacy but we've had 26 that what did not go through a parent request went through our formal process which it's we're able to use the data to support the work that's happening which I think is really important could I just go back to your interventions are you are those from regular teachers or so it's a combination and part of we have interventionalists we do how do so

057we have interventions that run the win time long but we've also trained our Jenna core teachers in intervention so that we can have a broader Revenue because we only have in many of our schools one reading Improvement teacher and one math Improvement teacher do we call those interventionalists they are we call them Improvement teachers okay but they are approving someone else they are in prevention that is correct and so there's only one of each they can't hit every kid in the school so we that's why we worked on the win block and supporting all training teachers so one fourth grade teacher might be using spire and be and working on a tier two intervention where they're pulling a small group of six I guess she's telling us to move [Laughter] I think we need another

058meeting so everybody so oh sort of our goal really um is focused around our instructional programming how we're having to increase opportunities for all students making sure that they have access to learning as well as other resources that they need and um we if you look at our girls some of our metrics that we're looking at this year um one was around steam learning and we talked earlier about the idea of like integrating units of study for all of our teachers and this is science technology engineering arts and math and so what we've been doing this year is um the digital learning coaches as well as the certified library media Specialists and some other coaches as well have been working with the Connecticut Science Center and we've been developing different grade levels units of study

059for for our students that integrate and augment the use of technology in these in science so that's actually what our Focus has been um you know I've got an example here if you guys want one this is uh where they're at at the moment we'll talk about how we got there we started off the year with training all of our teachers those coaches and Next Generation science standards what they look like in a classroom we then took time to actually talk about how do you coach into this so we did some training with the Connecticut Science Center and now the Connecticut Science Center is actually going to be doing a push-in model which each with each one of these cohorts of teachers that are now smaller cohorts and this is an example of one of

060the instructional plans that's being developed at now the Connecticut Science Center is working on with our teachers to be able to implement so that's where that's where we're at at the moment but by the end of the year the the goal is to have actually new integrated units and continually grow that so we're not we're not changing the whole curriculum in one year we're just making sure that we're getting those opportunities and building on it so I'm clear we're the what's being implemented is being developed with the science center and being implemented yes it doesn't exist already so we have the science curriculum but what we're doing now is we're taking our how we teach science and we're augmenting it with the use of technology and actually bringing it to a different level which is

061also what we're doing with our coaches this kind of gives example of I will talk about a little bit later we don't use this Matrix per se with those teachers but we use it with our Verizon teachers but it's the same concept where we actually look at where do teachers stand and how are they actually implementing technology into the lessons are we seeing authentic use of technology and is it helping the learning that's going on in the classroom and we help coach them through that how to use it better so that's really what our coaches are doing so that's one of our one of our projects around steam learning it's moving along um I want to talk a little bit about our future ready programs so if you're not familiar at all with the Epic

062I think talking about it we have three programs that work in conjunction with each other two that opt into which are the virtual and Twilight but a program that we we haven't talked a lot about but we actually have included in this because they received Services now from this is our expulsion program and uh you know some of the things we've been very very proud of this year one of our metrics is that we want to make sure that our students in Virtual and Twilight are actually earning credits and earning quality credits and we're actually seeing that right now an example of what they've been doing that we've been really proud of is um this is uh it's been redacted but it's a it's a portfolio it's a midterm portfolio from one of our students

063in our future ready programs so what we're doing instead of just having standardized midterms they actually develop a portfolio that focuses on specific standards in each one of their classes and they have to show evidence of how they learn that so once again it's it's uh it's more it's leading them towards their Capstone requirements it's actually looking at truly authentic learning students students are thriving in this and they have to present it so they're learning their portrait of a graduate skills which is something we'll talk about in a moment too as well which are communication collaboration critical thinking and we're starting to tag those pieces of learning with our students so we've been really really excited about this some highlights if you're not familiar with the virtual program in Twilight we've got students that have

064had medical issues that have been homebound that are enrolling we uh the enrollment is growing you know we we started with only 30 students total at the beginning of the year we're now at 60 I think as the other day um it's 66 and that number continues to grow we've uh we've had teachers that actually can actually work together now around cross-curricular planning so that if they're teaching a social studies lesson these teachers have time to be able to work with each other and collaborate with the math teacher and looking at how they get those cohorts to work on something like this portfolio which actually is truly cross-disciplinary as well students can be enrolled in either virtual what data are teachers referencing planning so like am I looking at nwea results uh uh to like

065help plan for across curriculum or am I looking at areas that you know we haven't touched on so they're they're looking at content and standards and then so but then there's actually the assessments that they're using traditional NWA and so forth yeah [Music] um but they uh we are looking at competency-based learning too as well instead of just seat time you know do the kids actually understand the material and I think that's really something um but once again just a couple of highlights there you can have students enrolled in Virtual or Twilight or in some cases we have students that are enroll both in Virtual and tomorrow and they've been working together so does that also mean they're improving dual credits so they may need they could be but um right now for the most

066part let's say you take it there may be a student that's taking science as a virtual student you know is working or is taking care of their child and then comes in for a couple of hours but I'm able to customize back and forth and we share staff the nice thing about as well in those programs and but this is where the difference is with Naya with our expansion program we've been able to use our social worker and guidance counselor to be able to kind of push in as well as these teachers to tutor at the nail program so as they're working on their work they're getting those additional supports we've uh we've been lucky to have things like our workforce and development person uh come in Carol uh who knew about a little bit

067later to work with our students they've had community service opportunities that students have been working on so you know we've had a couple of toy drives where the kids have actually been part of and really working within the community so we're starting to actually see a little bit we're trying to develop a restorative model we're trying to and we're trying to make sure that next is getting transitioned back into a regular learning environment for some of our kids like I said we've been really really excited about that one of the other things on the slide too that's one of our goals we wanted to implement the digital citizenship so our library media Specialists as well as our digital coaches have been working on developing a digital citizenship curriculum it's a series of four to seven

068lessons per grade level they teach them in library usually at the time that they're in in library we also have research skills that's being taught and then we will be adding in over the next year Computer Applications so basically you know teaching a second grader how to copy and paste the skills that they would need to be able to do the the bearable minimum things but this will make a big difference when they're testing when they're doing you know when they're trying to do other things because everything is computer-based at this point so so let's move forward if you'd like to see one one piece of evidence we can show you the curriculum and then share some data on the pre and post test on how kids are doing on them so throughout the district

069um and then finally one of the other things we're also doing with this is we're trying to make sure oh here it is Nick I just found it so I think we just we just shortened up a piece of one of my slides to make it a little nicer looking um so we're actually also implementing what we call a portrait of a graduate and there's certain skills that Workforce developer looks for communication critical thinking creativity these are really what employers look for we've actually started developing what that looks like and trying to look at these portfolios and tagging them so are we seeing that students are being creative and so forth from our descriptions so it's a work in progress but it's something that we want to move for that make sure that we educate

070the whole child not just look at the academics but making sure that they're really prepared to be able to go into the workforce because we know that that's really what employers are looking for and how do we how do we start assessing them and we've got kids self once you see these portfolios they're self-reflecting on those skills too so we're really excited this is actually something we're doing in conjunction with them building their Capstone projects High School High School yes yeah yeah at the moment um we also uh one of our one of our goals uh as well as what was notated yes uh graduate is the plan to tear down the application of kind of this portion of a graduate and how we start putting in Magic like to tear it down to Middle

071Elementary or is it just kind of become realized in high school and more it's the holistic approach that we're thinking about like so the end it's like backwards planning and here's the ultimate student ready to enter College and Career so what does that look like to get what's the path or trajectory to give them there and one of the things we have to have in place so they can you know incrementally get to that space yeah but we do have to start somewhere we know that those those older students are the ones that need it immediately so we're backwards planning in this country so where are you in the like if you had to say what grade level are you at obviously high school but are you so we're developing this yeah right now right

072yes definitely yes and and the tagging of it's really only in the future ready program at the moment because it's such a small cohort we're able to kind of see how do we build a tool that actually will help us do that right not that those skills are not being taught in other places yeah yeah we're actually trying to look at how do you actually measure them and it's it's yeah so so that's a lot of the work this year one of the other things too that we talked about from an operational standpoint is building a strategic plan this was notated as one of the recommendations in the efficiency study that we did with the city a statistic plan for like the phasing of this for for you know for digital learning in general and

073technology so it actually in that plan it includes a section on technology infrastructure data coaching and library media services and the plan itself is organized here's a draft of where we're at right now with this um and it really is a draft there's a lot of holes in it so but you can just kind of see the draft of the plant that's a draft of the plan yes um it it's broken enough into understanding what our current state is what are going to be our goals over the next couple of years a gap analysis of what we're what we're missing and how we're going to get there and then finally metrics to be able to do that so um we've been planning that out on our infrastructure side on a variety of different areas um

074I mean the infrastructure is one of those areas and then finally yes we do also I didn't list it up there but we are developing uh what the budget actually looks like so what does the money look like that we're spending on this in comparison so um and it's not your traditional budget it's it's lumping in all the money we spend on technology so that's why when you see those numbers we're still trying to gather that stuff in a way that makes sense um companies like Gartner actually do this type of work so that's really if you if you want to think of it this is almost basically like looking at a Gartner audit for us and how do we kind of move things forward and build out a plan foreign and if you're not

075familiar with the Verizon schools which I'm sure you guys all are we uh um we're continuing to do our work we actually have our Innovation Labs that are now complete they uh they completed them over the winter break um so they're in place we've got a ribbon cutting official room cutting next Monday um so we're excited about that teachers will be starting to be trained in the use of the labs and and the curriculum will kick in as of September but um but it really is exciting to kind of see these spaces and if you get a chance even if you can't come to the ribbon cutting just let us know when you'd want to come in and see what's going on where are they again which campus at West Rocks Nathan Hale and ponus

076and they're beautiful wow they are beautiful yeah I was in there playing with the VR glasses the other day it was fun yeah and but it's but it's also very enlightening and how we're going to be able to use the work um in conjunction with Arizona State University [Laughter] yes yes I do but um but yeah so ASU has actually been meeting now with the technology department trying to build out the servers trying to do everything else that needs to happen and but they'll be doing the training with the teachers over the spring and then the curriculum actually kicks in in September where does their financial support stop for like maintaining the lab uh like it's just they don't Verizon yeah it's kind of so it's it's kind of like it's already trickling off now

077um so really we're going to be responsible for now for the laptops they're still paying for all the 5G portion of the uh um those pieces they're they're actually they paid for a portion of our coaches which you're not doing anymore I mean it's only the first two years of a phase-in and um there's other types of supports that they give us but the monetary support um will be dropping down but the but the Innova the the other end of that though is we seem to get more opportunities because we are a variety of school like these Innovation Labs wouldn't have been even an opportunity for us and each one of them I mean there are hundreds of thousands of dollars to build each one of these Labs of the amount of money that they

078were spent to be able to kind of put them into place I know Verizon does not want us to kind of put a number on that but they I mean when you really look at the equipment and look at every else that they did in the because they paid for all the construction of the lab as well too I think the only thing we had to pay for was a specific statement basically yeah so yeah and typically they I don't know if you mentioned this they only do one for a district one school one school no one School per day yes and we got three yeah which is unheard yeah and that was because of the way in which the um we formed the partnership was yeah yeah they were very happy with the way

079that's great yeah I have a question in those labs is there Verizon branding yes yes there is yes there is getting that really accustomed so I'll be sharing uh specifically around the equity and inclusion and excellent structures and professional development as well as all of the Departments like all the my sphere of portfolio that include Workforce Development research and analytics Communications as well so the goal specifically are to develop specific concrete structures and one of the ones that we began this year or last year was the grading Equity committee that you know all about that I'll do that yes we do so we had uh as you may as you know quite a variety actually all stakeholders involved in a book study to identify specific gaps in grading and create recommendations to submit to the

080policy committee for consideration which um we are looking to have happened this time sometime this year which is pretty exciting um Doctor Strange I visit every individual school to meet with the leaders to specifically uh have conversations around how they are providing supports to mlls swds boys of color we're mutable teachers to meet with individual students to kind of assess their their Viewpoint about the quality of instruction we're looking at planning to see how teachers are thinking about providing specific supports and targeted supports and scaffolds for a variety of Learners how they are using data to drive the planning as well as be able to identify where the gaps are for students as well as the growth over time so we visit every school at least twice after those events will be degree for the

081principals provide them glows and Roads and specific concrete next steps that speak specifically to those targeted groups from our conversations and give them the feedback from student groups specifically the high schools more so than elementary and middle around their experience whether it be even having access to counselors whether it be how they are how the their instructions of math so all of those are pretty critical for us to be able to have a ear to the ground as to what we need to do at the district levels to ensure that all students have access next we have my brothers and sisters keeper which is the rights of passive programs designed to facade to provide specific SEL support as well as academic support we currently have about a hundred to 120 in each of the groups

082and we are engaging in our very first cycle of surveys for our Scholars specifically to kind of gauge the impact of the programs the next phase will be around the academic component where we're going to be looking at their uh into the end of the semester grades in term assessment data as a Baseline and have a conversation with them around goal setting to see if we're able to support them and transitioning or moving their academic progress and I think that's pretty exciting to have that that level of data to be able to speak to impact um and people say watch you start already well because if I can get the kind of form relationships with students first and so this is the early instruction of both of them so that we're excited about that we

083are kicking off our Affinity groups for our lgbtqia Plus group uh starting this month uh Black and Hispanic and feminist groups will be happening this year as well that will all be student-led with an advisor luckily we had opportunity to work with uh Jim Martinez and Jim Martinez has specific groups who are willing and all at school based and outside organizations who are really excited about providing their support as facilities excuse me as what we're looking for sponsors that facilitated the students will be student-led and we're excited about the fact that we've actually initiated our very first district-wide community events we get our first one Hispanic heritage we're going to have our black history we're going to have our women history in March and lgbtqia plus in June with the idea of bringing Community to

084create the inclusivity that we want to support this idea of acceptance love and appreciation for all diverse groups next professional learning we have we are utilizing so last year we engaged in conversations and support from the equity institute around identity racism and some of the feedback was around what are we doing about implicit bias so this year's professional development has solely been about it it's bias as you can see one of the topics has been mitigating bias through an intersectional lens and supporting teachers with facilitating conversation with their peers belief surveys student and teacher relationships around identifying those at those areas so that we can create a more inclusive culture at the school level so we currently have about again 100 staff members throughout the district who are our Equity ambassadors who are the carriers

085of the trainings who should be turnkeying the work to their staff I know I'm going tomorrow to meet Chipotles because they're going to be going over their professional development agenda doing a run through that they're going to present at their staff meeting on the Monday after so pretty excited about that the second Eric professional development specifically deals with instruction so last year we realized a lot of our teachers and staff members didn't know how to unpack standards what that means is do you really know what teachings of that standard action what means so just because you have a standard about theme or fractions do you know what if what reaching the standard looks like and how you support students getting there and so that was the first component but even inside of that we realized

086that oftentimes our teachers didn't incorporate specific strategies to meet at that first group of students so Unbound Ed did that level of work for us last year and this year's the extension of the work to a new philosophy that we are adopted as a district is called glean we want to make sure that construction is grade level is engaging it's affirming and it's meaningful So currently we have a pilot of about 35 coaches teachers who are who being supported in this work of how to plan purposefully with those specific areas in mind as models to create lab sites at schools uh where others teachers can laugh sites so they should be the experts so if you need some support with how to plan purposefully or engage students or teach grade level content come to my

087class because I am the person um fighting my colleagues across the district across schools it could be across districts because the coaches who also meet monthly they are sharing best practices and say Hey you know at my schools you know Cameron's doing an amazing job with so-and-so and to create intervisitations across the district to really kind of spread that level of learning so they're actually going to be coming for a whole week the company Unbound Ed to do a uh it's almost like a walk through and they're doing a full study they're gonna give us the feedback you'll have a report in June from where we where we are currently so the goal because we communicated by our goal this year is really making sure that we're supporting planning for diverse Learners and so they

088want to seize you know how they've been how we've been implementing these strategies in doing just that so the schools are choosing to walk through is it ones that this is part of the cohort that's trying it out or is it just a Randomness so the court is everybody so every school may have well some schools may have two one may have one um there are four schools that we're going to be visiting and they've been identified by Sandy and uh Marianne based upon date because you know some people are away but there's going to be one high school one middle school and one Elementary sometimes maybe two of each of one of them that I asked because you were mindful of the culture you know it's different uh more intense different buildings and the

089feedback from them you know in terms of how we will inherit you know is it for all high schools or just one high school or just you know something about it for all you know in terms of how we're taking it right and uh in the absence of any like level setting you know it's our first dab at it you know just in terms of keeping it rich and making I don't know how we will take it move forward I I think the our uh or the conversation that we all had was that we wanted to be we didn't want to Cherry fit because that we want you to this what do we think may give the best representation we want a a full spectrum yeah so it's going to help us in an easy

090way so we want them to send them wherever so we can get the best most impactful feedback and then lastly we know the equity teams these are all the goals for the equity teams you can't really see it um and they're working with for the specific steps give me a click around is something we want to adopt we really haven't identified the observables for what it looks like when we're pulling it in so they provided us what it should look like in practice across but on TV in schools and what are specific strategies and tools that individuals can utilize to make sure that it's grade level for example in order for the grade level you know teachers need to understand the complexity of a standard and how it even escalates from the fourth grade fifth

091grade the same standard you know how it changes the complexity from each grade level right that's unpacking the standard and knowing what instruction to that looks like so that's the philosophy we haven't adopted here yet but it's good practice it's everywhere because you want to teach the standards another one is the farming this is a new one so how do we make sure that in our curriculum everyone feels that they are a part of it so that they see themselves whether you are a young girl whether you are a transgender child whether you are a boy of color whatever how do we make sure that everyone feels that they are a part of this this story that we're talking about education so we're not there but the goal is to you know get us there

092so we haven't adopted it no but that's why we're engaging in the learning to see how we could adopt practices and pieces over time next we have the Workforce Development led by Carol Wilson who's on my team and so one of her goals is specifically to increase the at the expansion of our career Pathways and currently she's already done an amazing job Outreach she's had 21 meetings with various sponsors to develop these career Pathways one of the things we're really excited about is the 10 students that we currently have placed in an apprenticeship uh specifically in education because we're building our education pipeline looking to expand that next year she developed a kindergarten developmental guidance lessons almost a curriculum specifically that's been implemented in September which was unheard of and brand new um we're going

093to have our very first Workforce Development Career Fair in partnership with a variety of vendors to offer opportunities jobs apprenticeships and on the spot hiring for our Scholars which is also pretty exciting encourage students and graduates yes and just the fact that she developed this website with a plethora of information resources that she's driven people to that has a significant amount of this attraction because of all of the richness of information being provided through this office so we are pretty excited about what this happened about Workforce Development piece and is this you know which what Carol is doing is only available to Norwalk students yes so how is that being managed like you know like because that's 30 you know that increase in traffic coming from outside the district too do we know I don't

094think we have we have the information about where who where people are coming from I think it's also that um it's the fact that our students are hitting it that much because yeah yeah but we don't know for sure it's kids were not a district maybe yeah it's possible because again it's public information so people are but the opportunities are specifically could be provided to our Scholars and we can track we can go into our network if it's our kids or something yeah we should be able to see like some at least some basic metrics around that is that what you think what comes to these opportunities you have to be well even if someone else is looking at it it's only available it's only available and so as you all know prior to my

095coming Eddie Fergus engaged in some work around this proportionality they've been sparked this Focus around data being utilized to make informed decisions to kind of close the achievement gaps to eliminate some of the inequities that have been existed and so now we've extended extended it to creating a data-driven culture knowing that there are a variety of different Learners that that information is pivotal in being able to know how to support them accurately so whereas the four teachers in schools that engage in data conversations or identifying what supports me are needed for Godfrey or Ralph or Thomas now we have a variety of tools that teachers have access information principles at their fingertips that should impact how they are thinking about supporting students as well as Drive practices to support a variety of Learners and so

096we are building our first common common assessment so we're able to see as a holistic District like how all third graders performing how are all boys of color performing what are chronic absenteeism look like across the district how many suspensions are happening who's performing well on our Benchmark interim exams so we have a storehouse of information now the work is how do we get people to actually effectively utilize it and so currently we have about um so this has led to my director of school Miss Christian Smiths and so we have this platform called Otis that literally all of our interim assessment data into the unit assessments are being greatest and stored on this website on this platform and then their teacher teams are using the data to say oh my third grade class to

097the assessment last week and only 25 of them mastered this specific standard so now we have to go back and re-teach I have to do small group instruction because Dean's five scored this here These Guys these students Excel so they need something different for them and that's the way it's intended to work we've had more than 90 training sessions uh on this new platform from Kristen she's the whole group session she's did one-on-ones teacher teams iot's to provide to build people's capacity as to how to utilize the actual platform we also work with Verizon you know occur that's for our contract data for our high schools and each school has a data lead now which is something new they have one person who should be the data expert at the building who should know how

098to access the information who should be supporting the leading team meetings data meetings who should be the ear of the principal so that they are aware of where the students stand at all times whether it be nwea data whether it be inter-assessment data all of those and they're being trained by Kristen from my team and uh you know in terms of leveraging PowerSchool and Otis is the lead in each building supposed to be the the go-to for that as well for those systems they should be and so that I know they've had four training so far their leads on Otis but the second piece is we are also even though one of my one of our slides that eliminated um we have a partnership with Harvard or strategic data project and so we have a

099member of our team who is building a comprehensive and I can say the One-Stop shop Walmart of all data Storehouse So currently we have data everywhere we got NWA date over here we got attendance date over here you got powers due date over here you got grades over here and so this school classroom platform will have everything one space that should be accessible to all stakeholders so parents can access their child solely their their child's portfolio from now until whenever we're just starting in fourth grade we should have their fourth sixth fourth fifth sixth seven hours fourth grade and so that's going to be taking place in the next two years the development of this platform and we know it's going to look different per group so the information at the district sees sort of

100different than the students and the parent but you will have access to a plethora of data sets for students which is pretty uh pretty uh revolutionary yeah because it hasn't been used before and you know in terms of access to the data that is driving action so we take NWA assessment how soon after the assessment is it ready in review currently right now um so most schools get the interview data most of them should be within the first week or two having those conversations in their teacher teams broken down but it's already broken down because it goes into a system that does analyzation it's already broken down down what conversations look like from school to school look different so Dr straight and I went to um Concord for example and they had just gotten the

101nwea so we have they had all grade level teachers leads uh looking at patterns and trends that they saw identifying highlights uh from their specific schools or students and then thinking about all right so why do we think that things for this on this particular question oh because we haven't gone haven't gotten a job in Geometry yet right and so those are conversations that are happening as a result of the theater conversation so these these just the the ones about you know Diane providing supports and principles around the data she shared with you all around that's that one next all the same these are all the tests that we take up throughout the district which she communicate to you as well multiple times throughout this year and that's yeah definitely I think and the communication

102communication is one thing that yeah so um you started last time beautifully so um so uh Nick and Emily are our communication team under Dr McBride have been really working a number of different metrics of cleaning up how we do Communications they've been looking at our social media presence they've also been looking at our website and as you can see here from the work that they've done here are some examples of like the increase in posts and people actually being driven to our media and actually looking at the media that's available so really positive uh you know really positive data here on things how they're moving forward one of the other things that I think is um been really uh you know Nick Nick just deserves a lot of credit for this he's he's moving

103forward with a whole new website and so we've contracted with a company called final site as a host but building out really much more of a streamlined modern easily accessible navigate mobile friendly so that's I think just the data itself at the bottom you can see the comparison between 22 21 22 and 22 23 there's an increase of 101 percent posts 111 percent of views 23 of likes 127 of shares are 29 increase in clicks and that's just between the time he's come on until now um and so we have a variety of new initiatives whether it be these schools have their own individual videos being posted uh chronicling the various uh events that are happening uh the young men and young women being uh memorialized and posted in various spaces so we are significantly

104increasing the visibility of the positive things that are happening within the district the content for what's going on the news site what is driving how that decision is made is it like I'm going to provide more of what people are accessing or am I going to provide something that I don't see am I coupling it with the feedback from the communications audit I'm sorry what was the question the what drives a decision of content that will be placed on the change website has said before it has to be starting with analytics so we we measured the top six sections that that has been you know uh frequently uh visited on our site and we want to make sure that that is front and center and this idea of you know get to what you're looking

105for in two clicks as much as possible is is really is sort of how we are looking at on how to design the site uh so that it's it's you know first of all it's um appropriate to what we're trying to do uh and it's addressing sort of the need based on analytics um and also you know and then layer on top of the design itself is mobile friendly not just website that can that adjusts on the side but it's a really specifically programming it for mobile and then and then the decisions on those things on the content really is about the programs that's happening timely events that we're having and then addressing you know um initiatives like like the budget and Middle School of Choice we want to make sure that we're ahead of

106that curve and really um anticipating a lot of these things as we move along as well that's the word is streamlined because some of the feedback that we've had is that is that what we have on the website is very valuable for the most part like the components are what most people would have but they're cumbersome they're um they're overwhelming and outdated so is there a plan and we really want to do it as front and center and it really is about and then you know what we're really pushing to is more Google analytics to really measure how long are you spending on these things you know on each page and really the length of the content that that is appropriate to the you know sort of the attention that we're getting it's not like

107we're cutting down but they'll be essentially a read more if they really want more of the you know dot divorce.com how much of it is tailored for youth when I think of the number of kids who were translating for their parents a number of kids who are you know driving where they choose to go and being mindful of who serves the website uh the majority of people here in the district like how much of of it if any is for kids like uh if I need to know where outside of my school building I can go to get my laptop like that I gotta call the principal or like in terms of things like that you know uh because so there's there's definitely a sort of a delineation of what the district inside would would

108cover and also sort of the school-based content as far as that's concerned so I think there's on the district side from what we've seen up to this point a good portion of sort of traffic is is you know um on the parent side of what they're looking for at least it's the bus schedule the you know you know it's at least it informs us that it might be sort of the parents as far as all the top sections that being visited yeah so one of the things for example uh my sister's in Hampton and you know uh Virginia to graduate and so it's when you go to the website and you look at the variety of spaces that are on there there isn't like there's a student site there's a student tailored section you click

109on students and everything that a student related and so those will be in consideration when you think about like so what are the things specifically as one of the things that you can click on to get access for information that specifically targeted towards students right yeah but I also think you've done a really good job of actually targeting push out with social media and so forth to kind of bring in adults bringing students to be able to start viewing what events are going on and using the tools that they can actually see that too as well so it's a little mixture of both when is the new site supposed to go live so by the end of the school year being any like usability testing or the group you're working whether they put in yeah

110or anything like that well a lot of the the philosophy that they're put in you know because they they specialize in school districts yes I think so so there's they're bringing in you know uh sort of a huge amount of experience already on sort of accessibility and sort of best practice Yeah Etc too so you know I think we're planning to put out some some surveys also just to make sure that we cover that side yeah to the community yeah some some school systems that actually host with vinyl cider Greenwich Public Schools um I think they're yeah there's a number of districts in Fairfield County actually that too okay but they're that they are National they are nationally known it's like one of the leading website hosting companies for K-12 education now [Music] all right

111thank you so much we will begin with gold too and go to is a facilities focused goal one of the goals is actually that we um that we develop a building specific action plan but I did just want to highlight that we have spent over 3.35 million dollars just this summer on improving some of our facilities so a lot of the repairs and the disrepair that our buildings were in we have been trying to just chip away with that there's a very comprehensive workbook that actually has it by school it's too big for me to actually upload it it lives in the cloud but these are some of those projects that have taken place this summer and we have been very proud of the work that we've been able to actually do we've had two

112staff trainings that were conducted those staff trainings were ahead of the the school year and then one recently we have gone over some of our mid-year assessments with them the media assessment was from last year we just conducted the visit again and this year I don't have those results but as soon as I do I will Issa is actually a national company that comes in and does an assessment of all our facilities and it's for visual maintenance and also for sanitation so they actually swab things and take it to a lab and tell us how clean things are and they give us a report back and we get a score as the district then we also get a score per school so it allows us some very comprehensive actually data to actually be able to

113put into a plan for each school so let me ask you a question yeah are these all City funded things no because this is all our money this is all I understand because I know they do some of it this is even the mid-year assessment we're paying for yes and okay I budgeted for it for every year because it's important for me to have an outside company come in and give us an objective assessment right okay and it's a national it's a national company so we're we're actually being compared to schools nationally what we also have been able to do as a result of the efficiency study is have a better division of labor between ourselves and the city so the the efficiency study had highlighted for us where there was some redundancies and the

114works that that we were performing versus the city and then they were just some things that didn't make sense there were setbacks and rules around the parameter of facilities that really just were Antiquated and no one had really looked at it but since then we've actually sat down with DPW and Parks and Rec and we have actually outlined what work parks and uh it's actually Recreation and park that's changed what I'm so used to saying Parks and Rec so Recreation and park actually sat down with our team and we went over the maps of each campus to look at what it is that we're going to be doing in terms of the Landscaping versus them and some of the snow removal I was telling Linda that I don't have the projected savings for that but

115I think this year because there's been no snow oh it would be an unfair assessment of what the savings have been but we've been able to actually work with them also on a joint usage agreement that we hope to get finalized so just a lot of those agreements that had been suggested to us through the efficiency study we've been really actually putting them into play and it's been a great team Vanessa is great Robert Cyrus is great Hughes and Sandy and everybody and we work very well together the other thing that we have been able to do is actually the efficiency study demonstrated that there were gaps in our maintenance and our preventative maintenance but we've been actually able to contract subcontractors based on so for instance mechanical work or buildings carpentry so we have

116a list of vendors a lot of those are local vendors they're vendors that the city also uses and been able to actually have that be contracted to those areas and have the people that do it have a specialty in that area so rather than one huge company that would be subcontracting everything sometimes we actually like to work with the local vendors and there's a better relationship in that way and we hope to actually see some of the savings the other part is there's been there was a lot of excitement because we have a different reimbursement rate now we were approved along with Stanford's I have an 80 reimbursement rate for new school projects and renovate as new school projects we've been working with the mayor's office alongside Senator Duff's office to come up with a

11725-year plan we had all agreed on what the tr1 schools were and that was based on the Newman DLR study we presented that to you some time ago but we've actually been able to have a very comprehensive study conducted on the feasibility of those tier one schools and now what is left is for the city to really design the financial plan that goes with it and then the timeline so as you know we're in the middle of three school projects great doing cranberry right now we are very well into the Norwalk High School project and we're starting the Sono project so that timeline is critical because we also want to make sure that the city is able to invest in a way that doesn't impact our bond rating and different things so we're working with

118our city and hopefully we'll come up with the 25-year plan and be able to share with you soon so goal three is one that's shared between the HR department finance and then Sandra's business and operations operations team so one of the things what I like to do here is kind of go over the HR goals and the finance goals and as I talk about these goals I'll talk about some of the accomplishments uh towards those goals one of the things that the superintendent did this year was to reorganize and restructure HR and finance to kind of be under one to be one team that has greatly improved our efficiencies and how we operate because there are a lot of synergies uh between between the two departments so as far as the first goal we have

119here is obviously reduce processing and transaction times to enhance staff experience we have a system and what we're talking about here is just the entire recruitment process from advertising a position interviewing hiring onboarding getting that person started is using leveraging the system that we have so that it is efficient reducing those processing time we used to have situations where you know a school would want to hire a teacher they would go through the process of interviewing for that person recommendation to higher to HR and then it would linger in HR while they need that person in the classroom or that person would show up in the classroom but they don't have email or things like that that require it to be set up so one of the things that we've looked at is improving is

120those efficiencies between those the other goal that we've set out to do this year is obviously within the HR department to just have regular communication with stakeholders or our parents our teachers our staff members in terms of laws and legal updates interpretation making sure that especially the supervisors that supervised staff are current with laws rules regulation if a staff member comes and they want to take FMLA if a staff person comes and there's some sexual harassment issues or training that they need but it's just to make sure that all of our supervisors have the tools and the knowledge and so through the work of Barbara nemani she's been able to build up that program and to get people in place and trainings in place in-house and outside outside the district just to provide that level

121of training and support to our supervisors obviously like many districts we have been challenged with recruitment this past couple of years so one of the things that HR has been working on is to increase Recruitment and to to go out and to raise the new applicants by at least by 10 one of the things that we've been doing is I'm looking at what our needs are obviously special education is a high need I'm trying to get more bilingual teachers and bilingual staff people and so that is where we're going for recruitment so we go to associations whether we think we know they're going to be bilingual Educators there going to schools that provide instructions or teachers that are equipped to provide special education so we've been targeting our recruitment efforts towards those specifics so that

122we can get those types of individuals within within our Workforce and that's beginning to show some results over time we're beginning to see that our Workforce is diversifying we are starting if you compare this here under number of Vegas so this year I think last week we looked at I think we only had like 13 15 certified vacancies which is amazing we've never been that low but that is through all these intentional efforts that the department has been doing um and along the line of recruitment is also retaining retention so one of the things that we're trying to do also is to reduce turnover by five percent over time and the one way to do that is obviously understanding the reasons for turnover some of some of it is paid some of it is family

123issues but how can we as as an organization support and retain our staff what can we do to keep people here what are some of the issues challenges that they're facing and how can we work to overcome those challenges so that we do keep keep these people here we have this called meat and meet and greet meetings with school staff which is basically just an opportunity to hear the superintendent and these two ladies are doing round tables just to kind of get a better understanding of what are some of the challenges um at the school level and this is also helping out and then we redid our orientation what we're called the new beginnings for new administrators specifically as people that are becoming supervisors for the first time how can they be effective in their

124role how can they you know things to look out for when you're managing um individuals so these are some of the goals that we've set out in HR and we're well along the process of of doing this we have really improved some of these um these sisters and then as far as Finance what we've set out to do this year is one is to incorporate specialized learning into the student-based budget as you know right now specialized learning sits with a curriculum team and the Budget Suits with a curriculum team and so what we wanted to do is to make sure that the dollars follow the students and when we look at a school budget beginning school we totally account for all the resources needed for that school including special education and so this actually this

125past year and the budget that we're in we actually Incorporated specialized learning into the student-based budget so now we're accounting for those expenses at the school level um another goal that we set out this year working with our fabulous Communications team is to basically redo our budget book to make it a way that friendly but also provides information as meaningful charts Trend um Trend information [Laughter] we've done that and the goal is to you know we can always improve it right so we're getting feedback um part of the process of getting that award you get peer review and there are things that you can still improve upon so we're always going to make that book even better um also immune see the financial reports I've also been modeling along along those areas and so that's

126kind of our goal as well and then one of the things that we also noticed is that supporting our school Leaders with their student-based budget is something that we had not been doing as well and you were a school leader um so so you know you know we hire these people in these roles because they're great school leaders not because they're necessarily their great Finance folks and so one of the goals that we've done is the finance is to provide that designated support for our school leaders and so we actually promoted an individual within the team to just be that go-to person for school-based budget so he needs uh monthly with the principals and with the staff people that are responsible for paying fields to make sure that they understand their budget that the budget

127is is trending as it should if there are any issues with the budgets we know ahead of time we do budget transfers and all of those things but the goal of that is just to make sure that we feel like we're supporting um the school leaders I'm in that way and then finally what we want to do this year is develop a resource allocation plan what that does is just ensure that each school is resourced equitably and proportionately with others so for example one school shouldn't have two nurses whereas one doesn't have any nurse and those types of things so what we've begun to do is to look at our existing resources what is the ratio for school and then looking at those ratios consistent across all schools in areas where it's not we're adjusting

128that and then when those particular resources are being requested at that school we have an objective way of saying that you know I think based on the plan you're adequately resourced you don't need another EX at this school but perhaps you need another why because based on what we're seeing at the other schools this is probably an area where you're deficient and not here and so the resource allocation plan that we started to develop this year I think is going to be a really good tool for us to allow us to just have informed decisions in where we where we allocate resources because obviously we know the resources are scarce and so we want to be as effective on in doing that and I know for a while we were sharing do we still we

129have a nurse in every building we have a nursery every building we only share if if there's a coverage issue okay and um and sometimes there's there's a coverage issue if the person called out that one yeah right you know then then we do some switching up um we try to rotate the sharing so that it's not always the same person who is leaving their building to go cover another building but yeah but we do have a nurse in every building we have a couple of vacancies but those vacancies are covered by Subs especially learning I'm going to skip through some of lunda slides because she's up there oh stop here the fabulous budget award I kind of went through it real quick last night you can keep going yeah you have anything else you

130want to comment on no while we're on the slide look at these lovely cats yeah so that's our budget book and one of the things we wanted to show was this is Walford Elementary you have the budget the details of the school and just you know to tell a story and that's really what we wanted to do with the book this year we're all very impressed another goal that we had was really for us to be able to Monitor and track our incident reporting and we were actually able to expand our PowerSchool which is our current um student information system to actually be able to run reports and those reports can tell you like how many students are caught vaping or how many students were were using foul language and and got a disciplinary incident

131because of that so we were able actually to keep this all within PowerSchool which is positive because you don't want to keep introducing new tracking and monitoring systems to teachers you want to fully utilize the system that you have but we have been able to identify that there's some data entry things that we have to now clean up and I'm leaning on Sandy and Marianne to help me actually make sure that schools are providing clean data actionable data when it happens another goal under school safety was for us to collaborate with Jim Martinez's Department to provide some of the the resources to schools where we did see high level of incidences happening and so do some of that school culture building and partner with mid Fairfield and other and Sandy Hook promise to deliver training

132not just for teachers but also to provide support for students and we have a calendar that we've been able to maintain and you guys heard a lot about this in Margaret during the last presentation that they did with SEL as to how many resources are actually poured into the different schools and those actually have been largely funded by grants and we're in the middle of pursuing more grants to make sure that we can that we're able to keep that going finally another school safety goal that you guys heard about in the fall was our goal to increase school safety infrastructure last year we had requested 1.3 million dollars in capital funds we were given six hundred thousand dollars that allows us to actually complete phase one so because of that we had to actually have

133the work done over three different phases we call it phases because we don't this is these are hopeful years but so phase one is for five elementary schools to receive these door alarms and cameras for the high schools and we do have the the vendors already done we are basically all ready to go when we've started the process of actually requesting to draw down the money we have to go before land use because of capital funding to actually go before land use and ask permission to to use the monies that were allocated what we asked for this year was phase two for next year and this is what we are hoping get to put back into the capital budget and these are the door alarms for the remaining elementary schools additional cameras for the middle

134schools and mutual link which is a communication tool that allows us to have communication with our city and state emergency responders so we want to be all um they already have it we just want to join them so yeah that's that's what we were requesting the money from um the capital for this year and then as you can see here phase three would be a future ask and this would be the remaining door alarms for all of the middle schools and then the cameras for the elementary schools so there's there's some thinking as to why we would want door alarms at the elementary schools because we we have students that that could potentially flee they do they're Runners and then uh cameras for the older kids because we just want to keep an eye on

135them and then the phase as you go further it flips where we're doing the cameras for the younger years and the door alarms for the older years with that I'm going to turn it over okay to Sandy and Marianne okay thank you so go for can you go to the next one sure yeah so we Marianne and I uh our jobs are to really work to support the principles and the assistant principles in our district to help to provide them with the again the training and the support to make them the best education leaders that they can be and so that they can help their teachers in their schools to be able to support student achievement and with an emphasis on the what we call the suburbs the students who have been underrepresented before you

136know in Prior years I think the state the district focused on students overall and now that we have a growing subgroup population especially Latino Hispanic population it really moves us to make sure that those students are are achieving at the same level and the same rate as everybody else and of course students who are receiving specialized services and special education they have they need to be learning in the same way that everybody else is as well you know so Mary that's Marianne that's what we do when we work with them I'm not going to go over each one of these goals because they appear on the other pages so I'll turn it over to marination so our first goal really focuses on our two instructional priorities one data-driven instruction and planning for diverse learners and

137so and last spring we had schools look at their data to develop their school Improvement plans with their teams where they really identified what is going to be our action plan and what are going to be your goals they set five goals math Ela teacher teams supportive environment and an equity disproportionality goal and in fact today the principal's meeting focused on principles looking at a variety of data sources to think about where are you on track to meeting new goals where are you not and if you're not what adjustments do you need to make to your action plan what's working well what's not working well and so a lot of this work lives in the teacher team years so our teachers meet and teacher team meetings on a weekly basis elementary schools by grade secondary

138Levels by Department you know ninth grade math and so on and this is where they really look at the curriculum-based assessments that our curriculum colleagues have really set us up to do great work with because in previous previous years there was an end of unit assessment but we don't want to wait for the end of unit to know if things are working if students are developing understanding of the standards so we now have both Baseline assessments and then also kind of check-in assessments throughout the unit that kind of gives gives us the information we need to know where do we need to reteach who might need an extra support for upcoming lesson and so a lot of our professional learning at the district level and at the school level has been around these areas and

139so you see you know the impact is we want to resulting in improved outcomes and so I'm happy to share that on the NWA mid-year data that we just just got back in the last week and a half or so we are seeing those games and I think it's important to point out that the way we're looking at data has shifted this year as compared to last year's so previously years NWA really focuses on how many students are at or above the 50th percentiles but there's been linking studies that if we want to see how many students are being predicted to demonstrate proficiency on espouse we really need to focus on the 61st percentile and so that's been driving our goal setting with schools this year is focusing on the 61st president and I'm happy

140to say in math we've seen that number of students from last winter to this winter Increase five percent uh in El in math and then in reading about the point and a half and so we want to see more growth there but we're happy to see if the growth is happening um and you know when we think about our subgroups we if you remember from our data last year we saw Improvement but it was everybody was kind of improving at the same rate which if the average student is improving in the MLL groups are all at the same rate we're not going to close any of those achievement gaps so what we really need to see is accelerated growth and so we've set targets around mlls exceeding their growth Target by 20 or more and

141I'm happy to share that about 40 percent of our mlls on reading a map demonstrated that accelerated growth and 45 of our students with IEPs so we're proud of the work that you know a lot of these systems and structures are still building and refining but really our school you know School leaders and our math and literacy coaches are really instrumental in this work because they're the ones who are usually facilitating the teacher impedance with support from the building leaders two things that are not directly tied to instructional leadership that I think it's important to point out is the superintendent starting in July launched our first central office retreat and so this was everybody at central office coming together to both reflect on as a department team how are you serving the schools how are

142you serving the Strategic plan are you on track to meeting your priorities but also there's a lot of you've probably heard a lot of cross-functional work that happens so it gave us an opportunity to come together in those groups to reflect on how well are we working together in service as well and so we had the second one in November and we actually just had the third one last week the other thing lunda mentioned the round tables so we we know it's important that we're hearing from our stakeholders to get feedback and inform our learning so last year we launched a principles advisory Council and an assistant principal's advisory Council and that is continued but we also launched Monday afternoon round tables with teachers and para Educators and so we've had seven of those over

143the during the fall and this is where we have teachers and parators coming in meeting with the superintendent Dr McBride Rob myself Sandy and you know my favorite anecdote from those experiences that the teachers I said I waited 26 years for somebody to ask me for my thoughts and for my feedback and so and what's great is like we met with them twice because we wanted to show that we acted on the feedback that you shared with us that first time and so that we could share that that second time please so one of the things that is really important is uh for Teacher growth is the feedback that the principles and the assistant principals give to the teachers in order to use as part of the evaluation system they must go in to observe

144their practice we're providing an awful lot of professional development between us and the curriculum department on providing the kinds of supports and scaffolds that I referred to before in order to help these students who are struggling to really access the curriculum at a rigorous grade level place in order to find out whether or not those professional development opportunities are really kicking in and whether the teachers are using what they have been trained and whether or not they have been there being effective you know for the students that are uh that we need to have them be effective for the principles and assistant principles must go in and conduct these observations when they go in the re the uh what the I guess the primary tool for helping the teachers to grow and to help the

145teachers really develop is the quality of the feedback so when they go in and they see the teachers doing you know really practicing some of the things that they have been taught and really helping the students they're able to tell them that they're on the right track but if they have going into the classrooms and seeing that some of the things that need to be done aren't being implemented in the classroom they're able to tell them that as well we are very it's very important that in the school where there is an assistant principal and a principal going into Civic the same classes that the feedback is aligned so that uh at least the teachers are getting the same message if I go into a classroom and I observe a teacher and I provide feedback

146and I give suggestions for improvement and then Marianne goes in the next week it's important that she is checking to see whether or not the improvements that I suggested are being implemented you know and what we've done is help these schools Implement these observation trackers so not only do they tell each other when they're going in and they have a schedule for these observations but they also list the feedback they they enter the feedback on these tractors so that if I'm going if I've gone into a classroom of day one and Marianne is going in day five she can look at them to see what kinds of feedback I've given so that she can check to see whether or not the teacher is making all the movements and it's kind of a uh you know

147an all hands on deck approach to really helping teachers so that happens in all of our schools we also have a system in the district for monitoring the completion of the observations there is excuse me last year some of the observations were not done in the most timely manner and it's important to do that because the teachers need time to take the feedback and grow so we can actually go into the systems we can actually look to see what the quality of the feedback is whether or not it's actionable whether or not it's really designed to support future growth excuse me on whether or not it's happening at the proper you know time over the course of the school year I think that uh you know basically we focused on the calibration between the assistant

148principles and the principles and what we've done is during our monthly professional learning sessions like the one that Marion referenced today as you know we have been twice a month one for the principals he goes for these system principles we've given them real opportunities to practice calibrating their feedback and we are seeing great progress in terms of what these principals are doing the assistant principles are doing and we're seeing of course progress in the classrooms okay so our um after schools undergo the school quality review there's a team of folks that go and visit the school to kind of debrief the findings of the school quality review and to also look at the student data to identify a very very narrow focus of how we're going to work with the schools and the cycle of

149support is all about us working collaboratively to build the school's capacity to engage in this work and when I say engage in this work I'm talking about improving the leadership practice the teacher practice and of course ultimately the student outcomes and so you see here this is kind of a gradual release because in the beginning members of the team are working very closely with the hand in hand with school leaders but again we want to be building their capacity to be able to lead their work at their school so by the end of the year 90 of schools that's our goal we'll have engaged in a cycle of support so we're currently at 55 and of those 11 schools six have gotten to the place where they are leading and driving their work that doesn't

150mean that we're not there monitoring and they're not reaching out with questions or support but we want them to you know to be taking the driver's seat with us just kind of lifting up and monitoring through like a mid-cycle visit and cycle visit um I think two things that we have instituted this year is just kind of really tightening up some of the data systems around how do we measure Improvement to teacher practice and then of course our data snapshots and Improvement to student data one of the the other thing that we've added is a student shadowing experience so the quantitative data gives you you know a lot of information but it doesn't give you all of the information and so the student shadowing we're focused on mlls everybody on the team is actually doing

151a shadow and MLL student for that day for a full-lug period where you put yourselves in the shoes of the student and really look at like what how is this kid experiencing school and it's an eye-opening experience for many when they see what the actual lived experience is for a child and why they might not be progressing in the matter that we would want to and it really has resulted in often either a new sense of urgency or a renewed sense of urgency around we need to make some big changes so that we are doing right by these students and so I'm happy to share that more than 70 of the schools are showing that the grade or Department team that we're focusing on is demonstrating much more growth than the other grades so that

152tells us the cycle is working but it also tells us that we need to help the schools to take the work to scale across but it's like we start with kind of a pilot to build their own to their understanding your capacity and then help them with taking it to scale across the school and the last piece forgive my voice excuse me but the last piece is very simple when we have our principles meetings and our assistant principles meetings we share the stage in a sense with some of our partners including Human Resources so they have a number of things that they need to professionally develop the administrators around and what we do rather than having separate meetings we invite them to join us and we provide time during the other kinds of professional development

153for human resources and other departments as well to you know share their professional learning with the administrators yeah do you guys want to revisit any of the questions and questions so you have any questions before no I appreciate it I mean we're I appreciate the whole evening I wanted to say because we're getting some valuable information I think that um you know it's great the way it's being brought to our our Focus so I really appreciate the evening in the way that it's been set up in these small groups it's been a very um informative but interesting meeting as well keeps it nice enough you know yeah I just feel like it's been a very good format um I don't have as many questions I know my Miss over here has some questions for us

154but um I did want to say that I do appreciate also the way that you two are working off each other the way that program goes and that you have that set up with you know going back into the checking the system so that it's not just one person who's like going and seeing that and it's two people or you know another set of eyes it seem as well it seems really valuable to that that whole process and frankly now we're conducting as part of the required evaluation process we're conducting mid-year conferences with the teachers with the principals and Marianne and I doing them together you know so that we can speak to them both we both can add some value you know to the conversation and we'll both hear what's happening um what I

155was going to say so when you guys go out to the school it really is to ensure that the execution of the program is happening and that it's happening properly right correct so um do you get any pushback from anybody mm-hmm well yes you know in some ways we see we let's let's from my point of view let Marianne before you enter that so what I guess what I should ask too so this is the new friends District right we haven't had folks in the buildings to assess and to make sure that the curriculum was being executed properly it's always been a supervision the principles but the degree of supervision you know I think has increased this year right so I would want to say that right the other thing I want to say is

156that we are and we as a result of the uh you know the vision of the superintendent we are working with our administrators to provide them with the latest research-based you know processes procedures to really help kids okay and that is new and many of our principles and administrators it's very new for them and when things are new they're not always easily implemented right so our job is to really support them we do evaluate them but also but ours but our job is really I believe to support them because if we can support them I look at them as performance assessment if this is successful I've been successful I'm sure Marianne feels exactly the same way so if they can Implement these new strategies that and they're not new in many other places but they're

157new to many of our administrators here and we want them to learn we want them to be able to support their teachers to be able to deliver the highest quality uh you know instruction and education that will help that will help our students so push back I'm not nobody's actually said no I'm not going to do it but what they do sometimes is not people progress at different stages at different levels well why I say that as you know we've had people some staff talk about you know um lots of accountability pressures pressures doing too much and so I'm saying that because there seems to be a Nexus there where perhaps maybe that's coming from more veterans staff not necessarily I mean it's just that it it's just something that is intense and it's new

158that's right and so it may feel that way even though it's all good work it's all good yeah sure I think it depends in terms of who you speak to in the field and what they think one of the things for me that was critical was that the people that were in central office were in the field right that includes even our CFO our CFO has had one-on-one conversations with principals and staff members from facilities to funding to find better ways in which we could support them in managing our assets which are the resources that we have to support children right I think that that's one element that's very unique to to our Administration that was not happening right and all of of central office during school hours is expected particularly those that are providing

159services to schools to be in schools right that includes myself as a superintendent and the deputy we're visiting schools we're assessing practices determining whether the implementation of the work is being implemented in the way that we envision and also then to come back to the cabinet and talk about these are some of the things that we notice and these are some of the shifts that need to happen to to strengthen the workforce I think that's very different than what people have been accustomed um so so it's it's a I think I think the other component in in terms of accountability right because we are engaging in these cycles of improvement there is always a circling back to seeing how practice is being implemented which is not something that people might be accustomed to and is

160something that not only the principals are learning to adjust and and change the frame of thinking around the world but also the staff as well right I think um you mentioned about our monthly meetings with teachers para Educators principals and assistant principles during those conversations we use those as opportunities to feed us information of what are the stressors in the field and what are the things that we need to modify to improve practice and sometimes what what you might be hearing is not necessarily what we hear in those conversations because when we engage in those conversations we're focused on on solution based situations a perfect example of that um at one of our sessions one of the teachers expressed there was a challenge when where parent teacher conference were being calendared because they wanted them

161to be aligned to the assessment calendar so that they can really have conversations with parents about that process and we immediately made that adjustment because we felt that it was important feedback and it made it made sense right so we're constantly using the feedback that we're getting from the field right to improve our practice what we don't what we don't compromise is making shifts that are not good for children that's right right because sometimes some of the feedback that we get of every Adult Center and although we are focused in providing adults what they need are our our work is making sure that we're in the service of children which is a conversation also that is very that that is different than what people have been accustomed right because I think it may have been

162happening historically is that folks were getting the PD and learning how to do something and then it was like go in your building and do it and it was really there was minimal follow-up it was like you learn it you do it how you want to do it that's not happening right right so now it's a different uh model of how we're gonna exactly get students to achieve and it ties back to right you expect us to come back with results the only way that we can quantify results is by making sure that that cycle of of support is being implemented and that we're progress monitoring the effectiveness of the work I think the team can tell you that even as we were talking about what we were presenting to the board our constant conversation

163was okay so we have this program we bought this research what is that what was it meant for what has been the impact and what is the quantifiable evidence that demonstrates that because at the end of the day you're going to be asking us that question and we have a responsibility to our families our students and and our taxpayers to make sure that we're effectively using our resources the way that we we got approval from the board to do and we were intending to do or Jerry was there anything else thank you is that we differentiate our support right so not everybody needs support for that same thing and not everybody right so you know it's been as we've gotten to know this is better like we're able to differentiate it I mean I think

164there's a sense in the past when the central office came out it had a punitive sense right historical you're right and I think there may still be some thoughts right as I said we do evaluate right so in the end we do a value of course but we provide we provide coaching cycles for them we provide coaching Cycles so that and and we tell them we want them to succeed there are performance assessments right if they succeed we've succeeded so um yeah so I'm sure there is still some yeah you know the trepidation one would argue fast enough and so now you have things in place to try to be more on top of things I have to say that somebody said to me well we'll get to it yeah and my response to that

165person was we don't have time to get to it course these children will never have this particular opportunity again they're here now by the time we get to it that opportunity will have been lost so we call it the sense of urgency and we're hoping that uh and I think that we have a number of our administrators who we feel that sense of urgency right and we're excited about that right we just need to give them the support that they need in order to do the best that they can do in the schools for the kids you know and that's where we are thank you thank you thank you we're at the part of the meeting of public comments I didn't see anybody signed up for positive comments I don't see anyone online am I

166correct that's correct thank you pass it on to you to close us up for this evening so um this hopefully these Triad helped the board acquire a deeper understanding of where we are at the midpoint of the year around our goals and what we hope to accomplish I hope it gave an opportunity for Q a about any questions or pieces of the work that you felt you needed more further clarification um we will be posting uh videos of the different um Triads tomorrow um we'll be available as part of our YouTube channel for public access and um we're looking forward in June to engage in further discussion around the goals and um meeting or exceeding all of the all of the goals that the board set forward for us to I'll move forward as part

167of our strategic plan so thank you for your time tonight I hope this was um very informative I know that we learned a lot we had a lot of questions and thank you to everyone so it's been a long day long night motion fluid [Music]