October 11, 2022, Board of Education Meeting

001thank you [Music] thank you good evening and welcome the board concluded our executive session at 6 27 pm and there was no action taken during the executive session I would like to call to order the regular CSD board meeting for October 11 2022 at 6 34 p.m thank you for joining us this evening at this time I asked everyone to join me in a moment of Silent reflection at this time all who are able please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance pledge allegiance board members are there any revisions to the agenda for this evening okay is there a motion to approve the agenda for tonight's meeting option to approve the agenda for tonight's meeting thank you may have a second okay thank you all in favor of approving the agenda for this evening please say

002aye aye thank you dear Jenna for this evening is approved our next agenda item is the approval of the minutes from the previous board meeting and work session I have a motion to approve the minutes from the September board meeting and work session motion to approve the minutes from the September board meeting and work session thank you may have a second second all in favor of approving the minutes from the September board meeting and work session please say aye aye thank you this minutes for the September board meeting and work session are approved we have two spotlights tonight our first Spotlight is from Fifth Avenue Upper Elementary School welcome the team from phase no [Applause] good evening um my name is Shannon Stewart and I'm the IB coordinator at Fifth Avenue babe is a great

003community and a building filled with strong leaders dedicated and thoughtful teachers but most importantly curious and amazing students it is one of our main goals to create opportunities for high academic achievement and an environment where students feel connected to one another babe offers many experiences outside of the classroom for students to engage engaged and feel connected to their peers this evening I along with Karen Newton Scott Lynn Hanson into Travian Lockwood are proud to have our students share their experiences above and beyond the classroom level to engage and connect with their interests and what it means to them in addition we will also hear from an SLT member about how the team supports the work to amplify a positive culture and climate essay experience I'm going to record from up here too so we'll get

004that for you hi my name is Lydia robillard and I'm a representative for young boys of Excellence young employees of Excellence to the after-school program at state and fourth and fifth grade we meet every other Thursday this program this program is about how you can be more confident in ourselves and learn about each other and being engaged with each other I participate in this program because I can learn how to use my voice and develop encouraging myself I'm extremely grateful I've gotten chosen I love this program because I get to find people that I can connect with on various topics for instance at the end of each class everyone stands in a circle and we populate each other after a compliment please say thank you and pick another person I also love that I get

005to learn about me before others but on an airplane through the Space instructions it says to put your likeness on yourself then you can help others get to learn my history and then I can learn about others in my homework the people in this program are all very different we talk about our similarities and differences when I say that I mean we're all young black girls but we're all different ways some of us speak other languages play different sports or are in the band the only ways of Excellence is a safe space for young black girls like me to express ourselves about being hungry judged thank you [Applause] my name is salarino hi my name is Mallory North and I'm in court I was dealing with being around others that Advocate thank you for and

006of course we learn how to build our food so it's used for books in our peers we won't leave here like we came I am excited to become a strong singer this year I'm looking forward to singing at different places and showing off the Improvement of our singing skills throughout the year I can't wait for the adventures ahead with my course assembly you might be wondering what got me into singing when I was younger I got turning on the radio and singing I was recommended to course when I heard when I hold when I heard our skills started was starting I wanted to be in it I can't wait for our first trip and again I'm now leaving Norman's in court [Applause] my name is hello my name is joining us to sing girls and

007around after school program Monday June I joined Joseph I wanted to bed much better myself through understanding what I love most about close to one as I get the exercise with my friends and my mom I like yeah lessons look at something kind to each other and believing in ourselves this is Lisa love secret I will carry throughout my life just like participating grows hello my name is Jen stands for gentleman selling with the needed tools for Success Jessica's awesome is an after-school program for young black men like you need to help with Calculus masculinity and stress is messed up we do this by doing exercises like um working on how we communicate with others and playing sports like baseball football Etc I enjoy participating in gents because I'm making a lot of new friends

008and it's nice to see people that look like me because it's not that many people in favor African-American also it's great to have a mentor that you can ask questions and help us but I will help with personal friends I joined your Orchestra because it's something I've never tried before and my background's playing piano your Orchestra we play a lot of music so we can get better and learn new enough I've only played for two years but I'm glad that they have brought Orchestra to take some workers to have many opportunities to become be a part of a musical group in our video we learned new about new notes and how to read music this company to a lifetime career in Orchestra we have practice we have to practice really hard to continue to get

009better in order to show we also left the opportunity to ask prayers for assistance and how to read the notes this interaction encourages us to engage with our peers that we learn from one another participating in Orchestra providing in the office today that extend myself outside of school in sports this makes me a more well-rounded person and could possibly provide opportunities for a future music hi my name is Lainey Collins and I'm part of the reading wool group at Fifth Avenue I also participate in the monthly book club in the monthly book club I joined the reading role in book clubs because I like being able to meet up and discuss books and compete with other book nerds even if it is just once a month or every week if you don't like him competition

010and I wouldn't suggest doing the reading goals but if you like to read and try new titles then I would do either one I personally like reading more the most because I love competition I'm a competitor thank you [Applause] [Laughter] my name is Naomi Orkin and I'm a member of the save SLT I have a third grader at fave and a sixth grader um our role as an SLT is to really see the liaison with between the administration You're Something the community is concerned about we bring that back to the administration and problem solve as a group one of the things that we really realized this past year when we were interviewing for some of the new assistant principles for the new assistant principal but there's a lot of magic within the walls of fave

011and how can we bring that to the community and showcase our magic and so that's what we've all sort of challenged ourselves to do this year is to make sure everybody knows what an amazing Place fave is um clearly so thank you thank you thank you all so much for joining us a wonderful job Lydia Mallory Madeline Zaire Stephen Stefan oh okay I heard it right and I've got Collins Laney Laney you all were phenomenal thank you for sharing your experiences with your different um clubs and organizations um at fave I'm so glad that y'all are having a great experience and um you all for in addition to being you know um great students and um you all a wonderful public speaker so thank you all for being here tonight I'm a champion and she

012can distribute thank you our um next Spotlight we will have a presentation from the counseling department um about the ramp certification um please welcome Miss Andre good evening I am playing Andre Student Success director and I'm so happy to be here today with our counselors um so not fair to go after the kids um but we are really here to tell you a little bit about what's been going on in school counseling um so back in the spring of 2020 Yes you heard that correctly at the beginning of the pandemic the amazing counselors in CSC entered a journey with our National Organization which is the American School Counselors Association to bring comprehensive comprehensive counseling to all students in CSD K-12 we partnered with the American School Counselors Association with Dr huddleston's support thank you Dr

013hugleston and we began this journey at a really difficult time but we really knew that this was the right thing to do for our students because we had an opportunity through comprehensive data-driven programs to impact student achievement attendance and discipline so they ask a model again we look at data we look at lots of data and I could not continue without Anthony Colbert who was an incredible partner Dr Jones who is here with us tonight our lead counselor has worked with him so many times in order to be able to get our school counselors the data that they need not only to look at um you know the discipline data that that we all are looking at and but really to look at outcome data and to really help us to dive deep into it

014to see where we could make an impact on students tonight our schools are going to be showing you how they systemically have attacked some of the concerns that they had for their students and their individual schools um and the great thing about this is it made us as a district um it was Dr Jones's um she really did take the lead to help us to look developmentally K through 12 were we delivering a program that was going to help get our students College and Career ready um and so we are working together as a group just like our teachers to really make sure in their time that we are purdueing programming that will have resulted in improvements in student achievement attendance and discipline the ramps means it's a recognized Assa which is our the American

015school counselor Association a recognized asset model program and while a ramp was not the actual gold comprehensive counseling is the goal for every student in CSD ramp is optional but ramp when you go for this award everything that we have been doing to improve our programming to this point really led us to be in a prime position to go ahead and do this and what does it say it says you're the best of the best only 1200 schools in the nation have been given a ramp designation and as a brand-free viewer I can tell you that over 3 000 have applied it is a rigorous process by a very defined rubric and so our counselors are coming up so they can share with you what they have been doing particularly in the areas of intervention

016in order to make an impact what we look for is Improvement and what we look for is to see is the interventions that we're making are making a difference in students so first it's a wonderful precious McGee from Oakhurst Elementary good evening good evening again my name is precious counselor at Oakhurst this is my second year in CSD and my 19th year as a counselor um so while I am super comfortable in my role I'm not super comfortable presenting to adults kids walked out I was like wait a minute [Music] [Laughter] so here we go I'm just going to jump right in so at Oakhurst the goal was by the end of the 2021 2022 school year second grade students who identify the black and scored below average on the fall map assessment will decrease

017by the number of students who scored below average on the spring map assessment by 43 so that's from nine students below average to two reasons being this aligns with the district and school goals and the history of black students underperforming in math so those are one of my two main reasons for kind of targeting this goal the strategies that I used and implemented were classroom lessons on coping skills slash helpful thinking to the entire second grade and then I did a small group sessions on coping skills helpful thinking with nine underperforming second grade black students it ended up actually being eight in one booth um parent newsletter about math anxiety and ways to help their child reduce anxiety counselor teacher administrator TED Talk regarding addressing student needs and refer students to in-school and or Community

018Resources so those are my strategies to kind of Target that goal here are the results for from my classroom mindset and behaviors assessment data on coping skills one of the interventions I did the assessment data question the students was I can identify helpful versus unhelpful thinking and what I did was a was something called ethereum so written assessments are very hard you did something called a fifth to four so they would show me you know but this is not at all one is sometimes two is often three all the time and four I could teach it to someone else and so you see that the average um during the pre-assessment was 2.4 which is going to be between Austin and all the time and the post-test was in between three and four with a 3.4

019which was interesting all the time that I could teach to someone else so there was growth in that mindset now the closing the Gap mindsets and behaviors this is a small group that I did with the eight students and the statements where I am capable of doing well at math that's huge to believe that you are capable um I can describe the connection between my thoughts feelings and factions which is rude in cognitive behavioral therapy I can scale the intensity of my emotions how intense are my emotions I can think of helpful ways to cope with negative feelings and you can see the Korean post test these are the um the way that they answered somehow on the I can think of helpful ways I did damage they learned less now it you know it

020was K through two sometimes they think they know a lot in the beginning and then when they actually learn the skills they realize that oh okay I did learn something it was true that they did really really well in the group and the answers were not true a little true and very true in the outcomes data for the results report graph so big data on discipline 83 odrs office discipline referrals down to 22 post intervention now obviously I would love to claim all of that on my own but we have a whole school of people working on this but it shows that it created the atmosphere for that for the small group um the number of students scoring below average on Mad Max went from nine to seven so it did not go from nine

021to two um but you can see that there were big games in um the anxiety and the thought feelings and actions part of my intervention all right Huntington from Winona Park Elementary hi everybody um been there since 2014 and the counselor since 2000. [Music] um put on this right after a global pandemic was really interesting but I think the timing was actually perfect because our kids came back um all right hi um I'm Alan pendrick as you can see from my shirt I don't work at Westchester but my wife does she's a school counselor there on that alley I'll be back with my partner to present about that but I will do my best to um represent some of the work that my wife Rebecca peacock did over at Westchester she targeted a math readings

022course for first graders and she wanted to work with students that were scoring below the median level and take them up above that medium median level um on their year-end spring match scores she did this uh she had like a wide array of interventions from classroom lessons to small groups she was Consulting with teachers and parents she created a peer helper system where older students would come down and read with younger students um and she was targeting um reading skills mostly through the peer helper program and coping skills through her lessons and small group intervention let's see how she did what hey all right um we'll start off with the uh the classroom lessons um she was measuring some attitude's Knowledge and Skills she was measuring I know I had my body responds when I

023feel overwhelmed I expressed my emotions in ways that other people understand and I can name at least three strategies to help myself feel calm those are all helpful I'm feeling overwhelmed and I can distract from our studies or our performance and she felt growth across all those measures and those were delivered over the course of three lessons a lesson unit as we say um so that's great and then for her more targeted small group intervention and this was working with oh man the numbers Escape in my head maybe 31 uh first graders that were reading below the median level um she uh pulled four of those that felt like it sits for this group intervention and she worked with them on coping skills and she measured their attitudes how often do you want to read

024out loud to somebody else how confident do you feel in your ability to read and how capable do you feel taking tests and again was able to see growth from the pre-test to post-intervention tests which is great and like a typical husband Knight a.m I know that she has talked to me about her overall outcome they've never heard the math test performance and that ran right out of my head so we don't know she's sorry I have questions [Applause] so Another Thing Once the kiddos came back we saw this we had kind of forgotten to be really didn't know how um and so the goal based on the data was to reduce the behaviors growth we found that the majority of the behavior referrals were not we're not very serious they were mostly just destruction

025and destruction defiant um teachers were frequently often almost always having to stop teaching to get people back on track and books who knows all the reasons why they hit school they had leftover anxiety but we focused on that and my goal was by April 2022 all second grade students list five or more Behavior referrals between August 21 to December 21 has decreased the number of referrals by 50 percent Behavior approach showed that the classroom disruption provides the majority of the referrals so um this was aligned with our school Improvement plan to become ethical to people administrate and increase so the rationale um behind that was if kids can see how they are affecting their classrooms might make better choices as I focused on second graders seven-year-olds aren't really Adept at empathy yet they're still learning

026that they function in a whole universe of people not just themselves so we focused on that and hope that the ripple effect could be they make better choices uh the first question was I know the difference between empathy and compassion empathy being you understand the feeling compassion being you act on it you've helped um they went from a two two or three one was no who was the kind disorder three pretty much and four absolutely and it was almost the exact same um next one is I know some things I can do to show compassion so they as they were asked to generate what can you do to help them and that went up a lot um the next one I appreciate okay my friends they are good at that they love their friends they

027were so happy to be happy with their friends they were reveling in all this friendship the last one there was a lot of growth because they didn't know anything about it I know what it means to be an upstander which if they see someone getting teased or picked on at school to step in whether it's kind of passively and inviting them to come play at their group or actually going and talking to a teacher so they did gain some knowledge after the lessons and that was all second grade classes and then in my groups I had these nine kids who had received five or more referrals you could see that several of them three went down to no more referrals um a few of them went down to one but they definitely reduced um a

028difference there on the end that went from 23 to 8 or 27 to nine they have other things going on besides just yeah um and the empathy groups they learned a lot of ways to put themselves and other kids shoes and to see the effect I also have that is nice thank you thank you so I didn't want to leave Jonathan Blaze out so one of the reasons we're presenting is that in order to put in our applications to ramp which are due um this Saturday by 11 59. um we have to have um presented to the board and or One board member's signature and thankfully Mr Herndon is on his advisory Council so um Glenwood so it we gave him a pass for tonight he needed to hit in that child care so um

029so anyway but he also did a great job and he targeted specifically some black students in math math looking at that as a benchmark with the goal of reducing it the number of students who were below Benchmark he did see improvements and one thing if you know Jonathan blaze it off he is a very reflective practitioner um and so he has gone back and has even looked further into how he can make an impact with these students um we also had discussion um he he's really looking at even how we ask questions at the K2 two levels because as I said you know a lot of times they think they know something or they want to please and then they're like oh I really learned something but it doesn't always look that way in the

030data Sally you're back for you all right so um our goal was third grade we worked with both third grade and fifth grade but for the purposes of ram we submitted our third grade data because at the last minute fifth grade did not participate in the end of the year math testing um and so there went my data um so this goal was informed district and school informants Improvement plans it was designed to support csc's goal of advancing racial equity and accelerating student learning and so we targeted math math scores um for the purposes of decreasing tier three performance and moving to tier two or above we wanted to increase or decrease the number of students from nine to five so we weren't quite a bit vicious of some of our other counterparts um just

031because there's a lot of a lot of different reasons uh we just we're looking for some improvements um but we decided to use a resiliency skills um small group lessons um because when you think about resiliency skills it targets so many different underlying things that support students um overall well-being about things like goal setting and um self-efficacy you talk about what are some of the other topics problem solving there's even a was even a lesson on sense of humor safe adult Safety and Security so just so many things about resiliency that can lend itself to other aspects of of academics so um here were our third grade pre and post tests scores so we use the same type of likert scale that everyone else did it was a one to four um our um questions

032were across the bottom that have gold from working towards I believe I can do or try or do hard things I can bounce back from problems roadblocks and challenges which was one of our main focuses with resiliency I am comfortable asking for what I need in a kind way I reach out to supportive people in my life when I need help so those were all built-in things for this lesson and things that we want them to be able to do with you know especially uh constructive ways we want them to be able to use constructive ways for asking for help and realize when you need to be able to not handle something yourself that asks for support okay yes okay uh so as far as our long-term outcome data you have our pre-intervention results uh

033on the left-hand side those are the winter map scores for the nine group participants and when we said tier three and we're trying to move people up in tier two that's targeting students that we're scoring below the 25th percentile in math on that winter map test and while we did not get as much growth as maybe we had hoped and we didn't move uh four students like we had hoped I think to tier two or above we did move two and we did see growth in these map scores across um many of our participants I believe six or seven at least and so we're hopeful that some of that was due to some of the resiliency skills that they learned and of course also to the hardware to their teachers better thank you um good

034evening my name is Kate Pacman I am one of the four school counselors at Beacon Hill Middle I'm representing the whole team tonight um they're all working very hard on their ramp application right now as you see actually um okay so for our goal we had many goals across the grade levels ramp is this one that targets sixth grade African-American children or students who scored below the 25th percentile on their fall Mass breathing assessment um and the reason that we hope to reduce it from by 30 seconds okay so excuse me the reason that we chose this goal is that our data showed an opportunity to gap between African-American suits and their white counterparts and math sports but also in the gmask scores and in discipline referrals it aligns with the district data across the

035board um it also aligns with our school Improvement goals and the district school and we chose several strategies for hoping to achieve this goal we had small group lessons with those targeted students we did individual counseling lessons with each of those students we did classroom lessons across six seven eighth grade actually um targeting test anxiety um and test taking skills and we work indirectly with the parents the teachers processors um with our mindset and behavior data like everyone else who's life group scale and the good news is these students can name the components of a smartphone um that's the one that they really raised in smart being specific measurable a typical relevant And Timely um and you know a lot of research shows that if it's cathetical achievements and it looks like on the other

036ones that they did go down this was taken so maybe the last couple weeks of school that they took system those tests and they're you know sixth graders um but even though they say they showed I can I like their knowledge went down and being able to create personal academic goals the counselors saw that they could do it they say okay maybe they can't but they did do it and they were able to reflect upon it um um they we found that there was not the 30 goal but a 12.5 decrease in the number of students who were falling below that 12 25 fifth percentile so um three of the eight of the students performed better overall on their spring assessment the reading maths assessment but we just checked it out of this year which

037is really cool is six of the eight assisted students have done better this year in the fall than they did left um and we're continuing this group this year we are looking at those same students working with them across the grade levels who can stay at it so the great thing is that as I said we're continuing to look at this data we're getting better we're looking at the quality of our interventions and we're really trying to see how we can make an impact um so just to tell you a little bit about the road to ramp I mentioned it's do this uh Saturday and one of our six schools has it in we won't find out until late January early February whether or not they receive ramp or if they have an opportunity to

038make some adjustments and resubmit the great news is that when our schools get ramped the conference next year is right here in Atlanta so um we invite you all to join us at the dad's fabulous uh Black Tie reception um and we are really excited um and I want to just say uh thank you to Dr Huddleston for her incredible support thank you to Dr Jones for her incredible leadership and thank you to you guys for hanging in there during the pandemic they looked at me a little sideways a couple times but you know they know it is the right work to be doing and so we are really um proud of them so thank you for your time tonight thank you to ask Dr Herman if I could just have one more minute of

039the board's time because Dr Jones and I have some very exciting news to share yes so um you may or may not know that the Georgia school Counselors Association every year holds an annual conference in addition to incredible opportunity for counselors across the state to come together and learn we also recognize outstanding counselors and outstanding leaders so unbeknownst to her she doesn't know Dr Jones and I nominated Dr Lily Huddleston for administrator and we are proud to say that she has been um she has been awarded the she will be recognized in November [Laughter] [Music] thank you foreign thank you Miss Andre and all of our counselors for all of your hard work we are confident that you all are going to get the ramp um recognition that that our schools deserve congratulations Dr Huddleston

040uh on your well-deserved recognition I have to wear that all night right thank you all right well we will move along have anyone signed up for public time yes we have one person signed up for public comments okay so as a reminder for all speakers and members of the audience the public comment portion of the meetings is a time for public but for the public to address the board and it is limited to District parents students residents employees businesses and organizations the time limit for all speakers will be three minutes person speaking during public comment will not be permitted to yield the floor or transfer unused time to other speakers promised during public comments should be addressed to the board as Abiding and not the individual members speaker the chair May terminate public comments that

041are profane vulgar defamatory or disruptive speakers may not address confidential student or Personnel matters but may submit such concerns to the superintendent in writing members of the board will not address persons presenting public comment or speak to the substance of any comments made during public comments however a member of the administrative team will follow up with a person speaking at the board meeting Dr firm will you please call a first Speaker yes our speaker is John Ridley thought on the agenda if y'all were going to talk about the senior tax exemption we are supposed to speak before yes my name is John Ridley I live at 205 Adams Street each one of you have all received emails from me in the past I'd like to thank the two members of the board responded to my

042emails they were very kind and truly appreciate it um the two who have responded um I'm here because uh you're out of your jurisdiction to be involved in the conversation about the school tax exemption means that you're involved in the conversation about General governance and you are not a general you were a special purpose the vision of a municipal government you're not an independent school system you do not own the Digest that no day sure taxing Authority therefore the relevance in your conversation or inquiries are into that element of the digest is no more valid than if you were on it trajectory to do for example to propose a moratorium on apartment buildings indicator which also affects the schools and enrollment I can have a little more sympathy with that um your involvement but quite

043frankly you're you're you were empowered by the Georgia Constitution and by Statute to be involved in School Educational related activities the digest is not within your jurisdiction you don't issue tax bills you don't assess property you have no land use or planning sex story Authority do I think that the senior tax eviction had something to do with money that available schools of course I do but then there are a lot of other things that impact it as well so I've had a conversation multiple conversations with our state legislators most recently met with both members of the legislature whose name wrong senior tax exemption I'm telling you now you're going to get a very different Road next time and as it relates to dealing with this exemption out of your jurisdiction spending money on activities that

044you're not authorized to do I asked them to open records requests for a copy of the contract with the Georgia State University that for the senior exemption study and it's never been provided so telling you where I'm coming from I am writing a series of articles about how we got here I want to share with the community to cater's wonderful Ray naked moment during the middle of the pandemic so that's what I have to say thank you very much and I would appreciate some way that the community could participate in the conversation as opposed to just a random three minutes thank you thank you more people are signed up for public comment this evening okay thank you I sent an email and I tried to sign up but something so I don't know if that

045came with the public comment please my name is Catherine Carter uh was born here in Decatur lived here on my life uh lived in the same house for years raised her kids in school and so on and I went to school here um of course I'm on a fixed income uh teachers retirement social security but I'm speaking more for my neighbor who can't be here who is 90 years old and has lived in the same oldest house on Candler Street for probably a hundred years um she has minimal Social Security I don't know why but she does and for some reason her 25 30 years teaching for the Atlanta school system they didn't take out money for teachers retirement so she has the barest minimum of income I'm mentioning her because I want you to

046understand that there are some people who absolutely will not be able to stay if the um senior exemption is taken away thank you so much thank you thank you all right at this time I will turn the agenda over to Dr Furman to share superintendent's comments hey thank you madam chair um okay uh that's several comments tonight um so bear with me um I've got a quite a bit of information to share with the board this evening about our just like where we are in the process where we've come in the process and some of the data that we've collected as we've gone through we need to update the board on the teacher burnout task force um we have launched the survey we collected about 300 responses from teachers around the district um tomorrow evening

047I'll meet with our teacher advisory Council we'll review those responses that have come in and we'll select at least two areas for the tag team to facilitate looking into researching and coming up with some recommendations to present to the board to our selt into the strategic planning committee on how we can prevent teacher burnout in the long term ncsd um I also wanted to update the board that I did approve two additional school-based staff positions one is a behavior intervention care pro uh what we've noticed is this year we are dealing with more significant student behaviors and we need more hands um at our schools more people in the buildings to help support the teachers as they're managing and learning how to appropriately respond to those behaviors and then we've also added another special education

048teacher at College Heights also wanted to update the board on Wilson Center Staffing two of the positions that were approved to hire in July we filled those positions one is our Equity coordinator Anthony Downer um nope he's not here tonight and our other one is our communication coordinator Paris Hartnett and you will meet Harris next at the meeting in November when she will help facilitate the teacher of the year recognition for the board we did also have two vacant positions that have been filled on our behavior intervention interventionist jarine Francis is coming to us from Atlanta Public Schools and I have to tell you she has just hit the ground running has done a phenomenal job supporting our teachers with some several High needs students that we've been trying to find a solution for and

049then our assessment and accountability director position that was vacated when Heidi Whatley transitioned to work with the dictator Virtual Academy has been filled by Alexis Glenn and she also has come in to do a great job and if you don't know Alexa Glenn she's been serving as the 8th grade administrator assistant principal at Beacon Hill so she's also been doing a great job oh there you are Alexa I also wanted to update the board one of the board priorities that was identified for my evaluation was to create and Implement an effective management structure and the supporting goal was that by November 1st we'd have a reorganization of central office positions to align people and processes and that this would be completed to ensure that there's accountability and responsibility in each division and that each executive

050has a manageable number of direct reports including the superintendent and as I shared last year at the end of the school year during my final evaluation I had I currently still have 20 direct reports and that is untenable for me to make sure I can do all the work of the superintendent plus manage and support this principles so we are we've made some progress in several areas here one of the major things we've done is we've shipped nursing and covid management to our operations team previously that was under Dr huddleston's supervision that has really freed her up to lean in and focus on equity and counselors and student support the other update is we have been working for coaching and training for several of our departments to make sure that they have high highly effective

051practices and procedures in place our finance and our HR teams have done some significant collaboration to make sure that our Personnel are what you call position control and that our payroll is working accurately and they reported great success on that because at our last our last payroll it went very smoothly so I want to thank them for their hard work on that a new position that we are really just bringing back to the district this is the position that I was initially hired into we renamed it I was hired as the executive director of schools we've renamed it because we've transitioned all of our executive director to Chief names so we wanted to keep with that theme and we will be hiring a chief of school Improvement and this person will take over supervision and

052support of school principals our CSD Leadership Academy and other duties as assigned I do want to note that the FTE for this position was repurposed from um also our departments have identified their key performance indicators whether they are specific to their department or help to support the district Improvement plan um I'll be reviewing those continuing continuously with the team over the whole year and we are also taking a look at their budgets they've just got some budget comparison reports um and they are looking at what are the areas that they may have some opportunities for Effectiveness to find in their budgets um this is going to be a bulk of the presentation is I wanted to walk the board through and any members of the public that are listening an overview of our dyslexia pilot

053so this has been a journey that started way back in May 2019. um back in 2019 the governor signed Senate Bill 48 which put this dyslexia um some requirements on schools to implement by 2024-25 and then we entered into a pilot so we had our free pilot year which is our planning year in 2019-20 and then we had years one two and three of pilot from 19 2020 all the way to this year being our third year next year is kind of an implementation and prep year and then our fully launched year would be 2024-25 so first I want to make sure that everyone understands and particularly the board that this all started with Senate Bill 48 and it was signed into law as I mentioned in May 2019 and this is a bill that

054the governor signed and these this the information on this slide is strictly pertaining to what was in the bill that the governor signed to put into place by 2024-25 so the governor said that school districts that school districts in the state must develop policies that will refer certain elementary students for just for dyslexia screening it says that we the state must create dyslexia information handbooks that would be supporting our school system make sure that there's professional development opportunities on dyslexia for teachers creating a dyslexia endorsement program for teachers also adding instruction on how to teach students with dyslexia and interventions at the college prep level as well as making sure that schools are providing interventions for students with dyslexia in the classroom also screening all kindergarten students that was the initial part of the bill

055to screen kindergarten students to begin in 2024-25 but then the last thing this bill called for was the creation of a pilot asking districts to apply to be part of this pilot to implement these things and to see how it works so that by 2024-25 other all the rest of the districts in the state will have some recommendations and some tools to help them effectively Implement these recommendations so at the end of uh May at the end of that 2018-19 school year CSD decided that they wanted to apply to be a part of this pilot this is a screenshot from an informational meeting that the district attended just to get the understanding and to help clarify what the responsibilities of a pilot District would be and those is very similar to what you saw on

056the previous slide which is what was in the bill is that we as a pilot District would have to screen kindergarten and third grade students all of our kindergartner third graders for the schools that we selected so Insidious tools of Decatur as you'll as you know we are part of this pilot we decided to do this district-wide we could have said hey we are only going to do this at one school but we felt that it would be beneficial for all students so we went ahead and did this District slide also it said that we would have to provide appropriate reading interventions for students we would have to comply with all federal laws and to get permission to screen the students if they are showing indicators of characteristics of Dyslexia provide the parents information and

057then we'd have to report our findings and data to the state as well as attend all the meetings for pilot District so that's what we we went to and we decided let's go ahead and apply we did a survey just to see if we basically had the good building blocks to build on to be a good pilot district and we submitted our application to be a pilot since 2019 in December we were notified that we were accepted to be a pilot district and very soon after we decided to request from the board about just over a half a million dollars to staff at to staff some positions that will help support the implementation of the pilot as well as purchase programming staff development and materials so that we could implement the pilot effectively um so

058let me see where so we started attending all of the pilot meetings with the doe then in March we all probably remember we had the covid pandemic so in the midst of just gearing up and getting things ready for this pilot a massive worldwide pandemic comes in but this team that was working on the pilot kept focusing on making sure we would hit the deadline to get things in place for the following pool year they were researching screeners determining what the next steps were the board did approve the increase to the budget so that we could hire that additional Personnel in may we started Gathering quotes we started putting out options for professional development for our teachers we had about 81 teachers sign up for that professional development the inventoried our materials ordered what we

059needed started providing professional learning and at this time also our previous executive director of teaching and learning Daryl Campbell decided to take a career opportunity in Washington DC so he left the district and he had been the leader of this pilot and organized organizer of it and this is when we hired Dr beam to come in and take his place and then not surprisingly of that 81 teachers that initially signed up for that Letter's training whittled down to about 12 which I completely understand it was a pandemic they were relearning how to teach how to provide instruction virtually it was a lot on everyone's plate so I can imagine if it was like Hey I gotta take something off my plate that definitely was one thing that they could push off to a little bit

060later and then we also participated in an interview with the research team that was that is going to that is monitoring the data for the pilots so that brings us to Pilot year one which is 2020 2021 and if you remember how that year started it we pushed back coming back in person for a long time I don't think all of our students were back fully in person until either the end of the first semester or the beginning of the second semester and we were still doing those alternate days of students coming in on one day staying home the next day so there was a lot of turmoil in that school year to get things up and going in a consistent way another area that in July is our reading coaches were hired they started

061troubleshooting screeners because we realized the screeners we initially had selected wouldn't be able to be used because they couldn't be given virtually so that threw another wrench into our plans and then also we had to develop plans for the students that once they were flags of characteristics of Dyslexia they would have to be in person to screen for that next level screen or the kte A3 um so we kept chugging away at things we put Wilson foundations in place that's the phonics instruction program for tier one and tier two and all of our K3 classrooms we did Implement a universal screener in Graves K3 um and then we started reviewing in September the universal screener data started getting consent for the additional screener um October we were still trying to troubleshoot how we would do

062social distancing while we do the ktea um but we made a goal to complete the all the secondary screeners in November we met that goal notified parents of the results and then we have to get permission to start doing the next steps of the program um so then actually we do two sets of screeners to catch any students mid-year who maybe had flips or students that came new to our buildings so we do a winter screening and go through that same process of notification consent and the additional screeners this is also the year in April where we have the superintendent transition and then following that our literary coordinator who had kind of picked up the lead of this once our previous executive director left she also transitioned to work for a for a private um

063so then that brings us to year two which is Believe It or Not Just last year so last year starting in July we started getting our teachers signed up for Orton Gillingham trainings we started several cohorts we also started our foundations leadership and intervention training to get our teachers really highly skilled in providing the foundation's instruction and supporting our leaders as they observe what's happening in the classrooms in September we reviewed our Universal screener data which for this year was map and acadiance and K not reading and K3 and then acadians in K2 and I ready and Ames web thank you age 11 in third grade but at this time we also had some more teams uh team members coach left us to go work for a private school a private company our other mtss

064coordinator retired we decided not to see if we could create some budget savings at the time um so that again cost us to do some reorganization and shifting of responsibilities and really keeping this train moving in a productive way but we did complete the ktea screening we notified parents um and it in October's also I think Dr beam and her team presented at the international with the international dyslexia foundation on how we were progressing with our pilot program and I want to make sure just a report on how we're progressing with the pilot program November December we were implementing tier two and three interventions and making sure that the students were who were qualified into this screening process we were progress monitoring those students we did another round of universal screeners in the winter in

065January and again another round of that for the consent do the ktes and then provide additional supports for those students Dr beam she wrote a grant and receives an additional sixty thousand dollars to provide some additional literacy Readiness training for our staff which they are working on this year and then we hosted a dyslexia awareness presentation with Ellen Hill from the skank school and this is finally when Dr zuza transitioned to come in and help support as the second Reading Coach so all of that most of the time last year are Gail Hardwick Dr Gayle Hardwick was doing all of this work independently so this is still where we are so up to this point um now we're in year three of the pilot program we're continuing with Orton Gillingham training for our teachers we've

066purchased a really great set of decodables that are aligned um with the phonics lessons that we have in our K5 schools we've done our Universal screeners for this year we've implemented uh second cohorts of Orton Gillingham as well as implementing a fundations demonstration school which will be Glenwood Elementary which means that will be a school that people from around the nation can come and see how we Implement that phonics curriculum at our school um in September last month we started reviewing the map in a cadient screener data and home those consents and go through that whole process of getting consent running evaluating the students with kta starting to provide the increased interventions for those students that gives us to October we're funding our dyslexia task force we're hosting um skank School dyslexia awareness communicate we

067hosted this game dyslexia Community presentation we've also got another event coming up later this month with Dr Lindstrom she is the head of the dyslexia intervention programming at the state level and we're also conducting those kteas for students so a couple things that I also wanted to make sure that we had the board was aware of the universal screeners we've had questions about what are good Universal screeners what are not appropriate Universal screeners and so the law says that the universal screener should test these six six things not all of those six things are found in one single assessment um and that's what was shared with me and Dr Lindstrom Christy is that correct not one single test does all six of these okay that's what I thought um so you can't just do one

068if you're going to test all six so we have two Universal screeners which is why we use map Reading and the Acadian screener I like the note up here because it says a screener alone cannot identify dyslexia so what it does is it indicates whether further assessment is needed and that's why the students who throw the flags of showing characteristics of Dyslexia are invited to continue and take the ktea screener because that really can identify those Key signs of dyslexia in a student so I wanted to share with the board this is an example score report from Matt um several times we've had some questions is this a good screener so this is the report that teachers get and thanks to a parent I signed up for a very interesting and informative course on early

069literacy and phonics and have learned a lot about how students learn how to read how phonics instruction works and as I'm reading through learning all of that and then looking at this report this is giving our teachers exactly what they need when they are deciding okay is this student ready to move on with certain parts of phonics instruction is it making sure our student is it helping us see do these students show signs of dyslexia with the map Universal screener and you can see via this report that it is giving them that information and this is just a little more detail on further information so it's that first page and this is all part of the report that the teachers have access to after students have finished their map assessment this is an example this

070is one tools map data um because map the way you pull data through the map interface it's hard to get some District level data so I just did a snapshot of one tool and this school I think has 54 kindergarten students and what you'll see here is when we look at this data number one we look at the overall data but we really want to focus in on those foundational skills because that's the phonemic awareness those are those core skills that will show us is the student throwing flags that they have some characteristics of dyslexia as I mentioned we also give the Acadian screener and this is a list of what it um share it what what it tests um in our students and then I wanted to share with the board a snapshot of

071our initial Acadian screener data so all the students the universally every kindergartener every first second and third grader third grade certificating no they took aims lab first I could kindergarten first and second to acadians and this is their score report so if it's green it means the students are performing at or above the Benchmark if it is yellow they're below the Benchmark but you'll see that it says they're going to need strategic support and then if it's well below the Benchmark that's the red and that shows us those kids that are going to need that intensive support um so if you you'll see our kids come in and I think we're getting the results that you would anticipate Nationwide like the percent of students showing some signs of dyslexia I would say is representative of

072what we would expect and but you can see that they come in we come in pretty pretty strong to begin with first grade is always our lowest and we're not really sure why that is but that this is one of the first grade is really where we see some big changes in our data and then this is our second great data the other thing I wanted to share is now that we've completed I don't have year three screener data yet but for year one of the pilot we did use star early literacy and remember this is we were very best tool to use because we were virtual so we used star early literacy and Dibbles K2 third grade start reading and I ready and the blue bar shows us how many students were flagged at

073each school is showing signs for dyslexia that would be referred for additional assessments and of those and let's just look at Claremont of those 15 students that showed characteristics of Dyslexia all but three of them were already receiving some kind of an additional support whether it be through EIP the mtss program esol support or special education services so the screener is doing its job it's so it's helping us find those students who were not getting the support that they needed which is great but you would see we're still missing some students so how do we make sure we fix that is through continuing with universal screeners providing interventions and tracking that data and this is year two of the pilot you can see we caught more students in the screener but most of those students

074overall were already receiving support so those students that pop and I haven't we haven't finished collecting our longitudinal data yet which we will collect and share we'll um you'll see like did those students Master what they needed to were able to move on their own without additional supports or were those students still throwing showing characteristics of Dyslexia through the screeners and just to clarify the second year we did change our Universal screeners to map readings they're in third grade with the Kate and K2 acadians and map Reading and then third grade is map Reading and I ready so all that to say where are we going we've got this data we've got really good information to look at we know our students are showing characteristics of Dyslexia but we've got interventions in place so now

075it's time to say are those interventions working let's look at the data so we're going to continue with implementation of the pilot we're going to collect and analyze that data longitudinally we'll have a good two and a half years of data to look at we've also initiated the tax task force which will help us look at that data and make some decisions on what to do going forward so the task force is parents and staff members as well as Dr Lindstrom from the state is agreed to participate on this task force with us so they're going to look at the expectations from the state what was asked of us for the pilot did we implement the pilot well and then what improvements would they recommend to improve our program to help students with dyslexia also

076identifying what information do our parents need what training and resources do our teachers need as well as developing recommendations to share with the strategic planning and the board for what we can do long term to make sure that we're continuously supporting students with dyslexia with what they need and then finally later this year we'll be developing that implementation plan for what we will do going forward and make sure that is all into place for that full launch in 2024-25. um so that's a dyslexia update board did you want to have any questions on that before I move on to the last couple things uh so I just wanted to confirm all K to three students are being screened yeah right yes which is great when when excuse me sorry about that when uh when will

077all I guess K3 or K5 teachers have received all of the OT trainings we have if that this year is that so all day training is I don't I mean first of all K5 is um we're only screening K3 um K5 teachers yes OG training could be helpful for fourth and fifth grade teachers I don't know that I would say that full or Orton Gillingham training is needed for teachers in that I would say your intervention teachers definitely need that intense training in Orton Gillingham I would say all of our teachers will be have are taking this year a 10-hour course on the science of reading so they know what effective um what science of reading is all about how to approach teaching students phonics how to approach understanding of phonemic awareness and once they've

078had that course they will continue training through foundations and the Wilsons foundations program so that they will be able to provide excellent phonics instruction for every student I don't know that I would say every teacher needs Orton Gillingham training um and then could we take a look at the few slides on the universal results Oh wrong way yes those two so I did I I wanted to take a look at this for just a second I mean as I'm as I'm reading this is year one right so Year One this data to me gives Credence to what we've heard some of the parents come here and say that that kids were being missed you know in in some of the schools up to 30 percent of the kids that probably needed an intervention where we're

079being missed presumably prior to us doing all of this work right which I which I think gives Credence to some of the frustration that we've heard with some of the parents but if you take a look at year two after we we did this I mean this is this is great news it appears that we are in fact accurately identifying the kids that really need that and so so while while I want to make sure we give Credence to the parents that have felt this frustration I also want to give credit to the administration for the results that we're we're seeing here it does appear that we are actually identifying the kids correctly that need this uh heightened level of innovation interventions obviously you know let's hope those interventions work I'll be paying attention very

080closely to those results but I view this slide in particularly as extremely good news so so thanks to everybody for for making that happen um one quick question I I agree it shows that the the screening process does work how do we account for the kids who can't have private testing so we have some kids that have intervention that come into the system that have bypassed this because they're the parents are suspicious or the pediatrician was suspicious or something like that so they're not they're just not in that cohort so we're but they may jump into the pool of kids that are getting intervention so how do we how do we account for them in America because they're they're going to be in this measure of how the program is performing but they're not in

081this initial because these students this is universal screening k-3 okay um K3 note K3 K2 at the lower but they also do the universal screening for dyslexia students at third grade so if they're in kindergarten first grade second grade or third grade within the last two years they will have been screened even if their parent agents have them take a private evaluation so the follow-up question to that is do we have or are we keeping track of kids that we may have missed but then the parents were like well I don't know if I believe that and then they go get a private evaluation and the private evaluation confirms it is there any way to because then then the update will also fall out of that group you see what I'm saying they may well

082they'll get screened every time so they get screened twice a year so even if they whether they're getting intervention whether they're been screened or not as long as they're a student in our building they're getting screens twice a year even if they have a private evaluation that they'll get universities Universal screening we screen every student twice a year even if they have a confirmed diagnosis again yes because many of these students are already receiving special education so part of our pilot is a whole additional layer to how we provide the interventions for students that already have special education any other questions maybe the different version of that which is there we hear my child isn't going to show up in the screener because a great personal calls and effort we are giving them out of

083the screen because we're training them and I've hired a tutor and I'm spending so much money to do that um or I'm leaving and I'm going to private school because you know it did it and my pediatrician says that they have dyslexia but the screener says they don't or the screener says they don't fail is that is a task force job to kind of discuss that are we already discussing that I mean that's the question that we hear I think that will come under the role of the task force and looking at what are recommendations going forward and that's definitely a question they could bring up and say hey if we've been implementing with Fidelity the pilot now we've got to take it from Pilot to full implementation what are some of those changes that

084they may recommend we put in and then my ears perked up at the state level educator vehicle because a lot of times I've taken some slack and some conversation about this it requires a child to you know have academic consequences from the set of abilities to fall into this as opposed to others where it doesn't require that you do it blindness is always the example they used when I went through training or if you're blind you get intervention no matter what and then there's a whole another classification of abilities that okay you have it but you're also sort of failing or it's starting to impact your grades is there any discussion of the way we could impact the way that that's defined or the way I know this is going to follow the state and

085federal regulations when it comes to evaluating and finding students eligible for special education services as well as the mtss process but part of the universal screening process is catching those students in different areas whether it be math or reading or you know lots of different areas we've just started a behavior intervention screener as well um so I mean the parents can get a private evaluation anytime a parent gets a private evaluation I would encourage them to bring it to the school to review it with the staff and to say hey here's what is coming up in the private about what are you seeing how can we work together to support the learning needs that I'm seeing at home I'm providing all these additional Services how can we work together to see what else can happen

086at the school building I'd be interested you know is the task force does look at students who are identified um through you know a private evaluation what is the differences between the private evaluations and the the screen is that we are giving like I'd be interested interested in learning the screeners we give are really short assessments they're meant to be quick short assessments so you can give them to every kid and not lose a lot of instructional time that's why they're they you look for indicators you set some thresholds that students aren't Meeting those benchmarks that you want them to meet then they get referred for additional testing additional support so that you can assess are we getting all that you know are we getting all the information we need about this student's performance profile

087um so yeah Universal screener is not going to give you the in-depth it's just that quick screener to help show if stuff if you're throwing up signs or I shouldn't say throw up signs but if you're demonstrating characteristics of certain disabilities that would help you determine that but also academic performance if a student is not doing well in class provides support and intervention you're going to monitor that student's progress if that student's not making progress over time they're going to increase more interventions provide more support continue that progress and to a point where now sometimes it can take a couple you know 12 to 16 weeks but it's always about supporting the child with what they need and trying to provide them that support in the least restrictive environment and those rules are in place

088for a reason so that we don't over identify students of certain student groups all right I wanted to give the board a brief update on strategic planning um as I shared in the follow-up we've completed our community engagement input session we've reviewed the data from that we're finalizing the members of our planning team half of which have to be school day staff CSD staff the other half will be students and Community leaders the planning team is going to meet October 25th they'll set the really big goals that will drive the Strategic plan for the next five years and then on top of that I've added three town hall meetings I haven't put them yet up on the graphic but we'll be sharing more information about those dates we're going to put signs throughout the community

089to make sure everyone is aware we're building our strategic plan we want their input we welcome their input on helping inform what happens next in city schools of Decatur at those Town Halls I'll review the whole process where we've been what we're doing where we are and get some of their input as well on what they think needs to happen as we look at setting these goals then in November we'll take all all of that information review it with our action only people that work for the system because they take what's happening and build a plan to implement so that we can meet those goals and then for about throughout this we'll be providing updates to our community and to the board in March and April and February March the action team will be sharing

090their final plans with the board getting final rounds of feedback and hopefully we'll get board approval as designated on March 14th you'll notice strategic planning is highlighted in TBD dates as we were planning out our timeline at the end of last year we looked at the website for the doe and it said that you have to put your stuff in for approval 60 days prior to the expiration of your Charter since then we got clarification from the state Charter Foundation that recommends because our Charter is due to expire at the end of June we need to get our Charter renewal application submitted to the state by no later than the end of January so we're working on an updated time line we still should be able to get everything approved and all the rounds of

091input that we would want because we're building it off of what the input we're getting on October 25th so I don't anticipate any issues on getting it ready by the end of January but it is something we do need to adjust the timeline on that I want to make sure the board was aware of that policy revision the other huge initiative we've been working on I'm happy to say we're making great progress on that as we've been reworking this model we've already done some batch adoption of some operational policies we have more on the agenda for this evening and we'll the board will keep seeing some big batches of policies to be approved up through January but very excited that at our last work session we made some really good groundwork on our theory of

092action that we'll look at again tonight and that the board selected to draft some reform policies that I think are going to really impact what will happen in city schools of Decatur in the to the Future so the board is selected to draft an equity policy and a teaching of controversial topics that will support the work of our Equity initiatives not just for today and tomorrow but for years to come so I think we're really setting the stage as a school system on what it means to do work the right way and putting students in equity first and foremost in our all of our decisions um I wanted to start doing this I'm going to quickly go through this um the staff that worked at Wilson Center have amazing skills and do great work so

093I want to highlight the work that they are doing with the board um so it'll get shorter because I haven't done this but every month I want to update the board and give you some highlights on the hard work and the things that this group is accomplishing as a team so equity and student services they bit the bullet and they implemented bark and that was huge it was a big process it is a way to support our students and to early identify any students that may be having suicidal thoughts talking about doing things that are not appropriate it picks up those sends an indicator um sends the flag up to say hey this student may be in need of an intervention um and that has been working really well and I want to commend Dr

094hedelson and her team and the schools for implementing that that was a lot of work um Dr huddleston's team also led a comprehensive School threat assessment guidelines training which is also really helping our schools be very very safe I was in an interview with an admin team and a student and to hear the administrator lead the threat assessment was so powerful to make sure the student was safe to make sure that his friends were safe to make sure that he was not going to be a threat to anyone in the future it was really powerful to hear that process we also have trained all of our assistant principals on good procedures to use when they are thinking about is this the student that we may have to take to a hearing to make sure that

095we are following due process and doing what's right for the student at the start our information systems eston and his team have also done loads and loads of work so what's the fa ith they did a refresh of all the student devices at Fifth Avenue and they've done some simplification and consolidation of student life cycle so making sure that we're replacing devices as needed they've got 24-hour online learning tools that have been set up to make sure that everything was ready that day before school started for our students and staff um amazing to me how much easier it is for me to send stuff to The copier so really Kudos it's except the pin the pin I always have to look up before I run to make a paper copy but it has been really

096helpful to monitor all of our copying and printing it's been much more streamlined and much appreciated there some backup power supplies have been provided the Gradebook has launched yep we know we've got some hiccups and some potholes with that but we have a Gradebook that every parent has access to to see grades all the time is it where we want it to be yet no but we're working on it and we've taken a big First Leap Esten also completed his courageous conversations about race affiliate practitioner programs they'll give huge kudos to estin for completing that and implementing lots of new cyber security tools to make sure that we are monitoring outside threats and making sure we're working on anti-fishing I don't know the board you will see emails that are like board phishing alerts do

097you see those they come in it means we've prevented fishing from coming to the board inbox uh yeah Human Resources they have placed over 25 student teachers in our schools um this first semester which is huge um they've done their first 30-day check-in uh Gina has started a 30 60 90 day check-in with new staff and is getting lots of attention from other HR Chiefs across the state on how she's doing that so really good there way to support our new staff and make sure that they feel supported in our school system and also this year started an HR pop-up at all the schools just to be on site and help answer questions that the staff have at the building and then just for onboarding numbers 30 new substitutes were onboarded and a hundred new

098staff or transfers people that moved from location to location Finance Miss Broome has worked really hard it's a huge effort and I didn't realize how hard it was to close a budget and get everything submitted to the state but she got all that in on time so thank you for that and is hard at work on getting all the books closed out for an audits operation Sergio is not here tonight he's coming back from a conference but we got our lead certification for Cali which is huge and he also got a 61 000 Grant to help support additional safety initiatives in our schools and he got the final check from the doe on what they owed us for tally street so I don't have the number in front of me but it was a pretty

099goes to Sergio on that on that um last group here state and federal programs this is a huge accomplishment for Francis and her team the state approved our Moe which is maintenance of effort so if you decrease spending in your special education programs too significantly for one year to one year Francis helped me I'll get this wrong you basically have to pay the state back so she was able to concrete all the documentation make the correct justifications for that um and saved expected savings for the district on that is over two hundred thousand dollars so thank you Francis great work there um the idea and the Esau Federal programming held their first parent engagement meeting it was here the other night they did s'mores it was really cute and very very well attended so I

100thought that was a great event um and we've got our ethol endorsement program up and going and our teachers are learning how to help support our students that are coming in as second language Learners and believe it or not we have a lot more ESL students coming in particularly students that have no English proficiency speak zero English at all so we've seen those numbers increase um Courtney's Department communication and government relations she's been implementing new websites and has got that up for the district site as well as half of the schools have implemented their new design um Courtney's also been working with three Career Academy interns um so you'll start seeing some really great graphics and information coming that are designed by students and I think that's been really really cool to see and also

101a culturally responsive Book Project um and then Courtney's also been working with her department on making sure all of our leases are up to date and doing residency verification teaching and learning you're going to hear a lot more from this department when they come and talk about the quarter one dip but a huge huge thing here they did their first fall intercession kudos to Erica for leading that and getting those kids in over fall breaks that needed additional patient of our art Core Curriculum which is our reading curriculum that science of reading that's the Sor 10 hour course and then our Universal screeners have been given for all students in kindergarten through 12th grade and that concludes my comments for this evening thank you Dr Furman I just wanted to clarify for anyone that might

102be listening when you said the first quarter tip it is not a decline in the first quarter in any way it means District Improvement plan thank you I appreciate that hon I had a question that's yeah the uh doe payment for talent yes what what is that for so when you build a school they there's some there's monies that the state will pay you back for and then you have to submit all the paperwork to get the refund from the state well there was some back and forth and back and forth I'll get the final number I tried to look through it in my notes that my meetings with Sergio but I couldn't find it but um that was finally able to get some back and forth but um he got everything submitted and we

103got refunded every penny oh good okay what'd you say Lenny 2.4 million oh that's significant yes thank you thank you he's probably texting Juanita oh yes okay thank you well then other questions I'll move on to the chairs comments um I want to thank all of the community stakeholders who participated in the community engagement session for the superintendent search that was held on September 28th um the Georgia School Board Association will conduct a virtual community input meeting via zoom on October 24th from 6 to 7 30. so please be on the lookout for Zoom link on which will be shared with the community soon on September 29th I had the pleasure of participating in the uh that it was an awesome and inspiring experience is an understatement Beacon Hills Orchestra was outstanding Harley Davis and

104Syed abdika dear were MC's extraordinaire whose warmth and humor set the stage for the entire program and then there was Mercy host's eloquent delivery of the poem Beacon Hill written by my former co-teacher Beacon Hill's very talented Miss Susie pliska doing the ribbon cutting I shared how the event was a full circle moment for me as a former Renfro teacher who along with my former colleagues in 2015 produced the first production of renfro's Black History Month play titled we remember Beacon Hill stories of History hope and the legacy of Elizabeth Wilson which was written by my husband attorney Miley Davis but it filled me with great pride to be able to tell that day mayor and Meredith Elizabeth Wilson that now every student who walks through the doors of Beacon Hill Middle School will not

105only remember the Beacon Hill Community but they were also uphold its Rich Legacy of hard work and Excellence um thank you to principal Derek Thomas for organizing such a memorable event the board participated in a productive and informative board Norms training on September 30th we still have a few tweaks to make to our board norms and once those are finished the board Norms will be shared with the community on csc's website later that evening on the 30th I attended Decatur um Decatur High's homecoming game congratulations to the Bulldogs on the exciting win and congratulations to Decatur's 2022 homecoming Court October is National principles month and I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for csd's outstanding principles these individuals do a tremendous job of supporting their staff and have a significant impact

106on the success and well-being of their students thank you principals for all that you do this week is national school lunch week and I would like to give a shout out to the CSC nutrition staff these individuals work very hard to ensure that our students are offered offered healthy and delicious meals our schools would not be as successful without these caring employees also congratulations to school nutrition director Tiffany Lawrence and the entire School nutrition team for winning the golden radish award this award from the Georgia Department of Education School Nutrition department recognizes excellence in farm to school way to go CSD nutrition team relations to our staff on achieving an outstanding graduation rate of 96.6 the class of 2022 was among the largest graduate graduating classes in Decatur High School history the Georgia Department of

107Education announced graduation rates last week and the state's rates for 2022 is 84.1 works yes congratulations to our DHS students for once again helping CSD to lead the state and SAT scores overall CSV ranked number one as a district on the SAT and out of 490 schools DHS ranked number 13 with a score of 1196. congratulations students on all of your hard work and then finally congratulations to our operations and Facilities facilities team and the tally team for receiving the lead certification that Dr Furman just mentioned for tally Street Upper Elementary the lead building certification program is an initiative of the U.S Green Building Council or usgbc Lee stands for leadership and energy and environmental design and it encourages a more sustainable approach to how buildings are designed constructed and operated so way to go

108to our operations and Facilities team that concludes my chairs Thomas for this evening ask what what was it a silver gold what level did we get somebody's certification for Kelly he just said leads I was like I didn't know there was a difference all right any other questions okay we will now move on to our consent agenda items which include Personnel reports School nutrition and monthly Financial course is there a motion to approve the consent items one through three motion to approve consent items one through three thank you may I have a second second thank you all in favor please say aye aye thank you the consent agenda items one to three are approved the board has several discussion and action items on the agenda for this evening Dr Furman would you please present the

109agenda items for action and or discussion at this time um okay so we are going to share a presentation for the board and update them on the first quarter of our district Improvement plan implementation um this plan has been a collaborative effort between many individuals here at Wilson Center I want to thank Dr Huddleston Dr Banks Dr beam Simon's Miss Godfrey Miss Gibbons and Miss Dunn I think I got everyone and Miss Glenn for all their work I'm putting this presentation together we have several of them will be helping present this tonight so if you want to come up to the front row we'll go ahead and get the presentation up and get started oh thank you okay so will they transition I'll go through just some initial information here um so last spring go

110ahead to the next slide um eston I shared the this graphic with the board um and this graphic is an envisioning of a re-envisioning of how we will achieve Equitable outcomes for students um and in this graphic we've placed our framework or our why at the center of what we do and it's surrounded by four strategic initiatives which all Inc which Encompass our work through our do-4 framework also known as culturally relevant practice or culturally responsive practice and we believe that these four strategic initiatives will help City schools of Decatur make our create reach our goal of Equitable outcomes for students these four areas are the core of what we do as a school system it's what we teach it's how we teach it it's what supports are in place for our staff and students

111so that they can achieve Equitable outcomes for students and later in this presentation you'll hear more details from the team on what work has been done in these areas the hi Dustin so as we update the board each quarter we'll be reviewing our phases of implementation so we'll talk through the research that we've done to select what are these specific things we're going to do in these four core strategic initiative areas how we're going to move the work forward uh we'll design the process we'll design what the implementation looks like how we're going to roll out the strategy what are the solutions what are the options um to make sure that we've got something that meets the needs of city schools of Decatur we'll also be investing and that's when we determine how much time

112do we need to make this implementation how much planning does there need to be how much funding additional Personnel so once we get through the investor then we'll decide on implementation and sometimes it may be a small group of implementation something at one school doing a pilot and other times it may be something we roll out district-wide and then once we get through implementation we kind of Mark it off complete but it's not really Complete because as we continue to monitor the outcomes of these initiatives that we have going on across the district so at every quarter we will give a highlight of where we are with the Strategic initiatives and in relation to what phases of implementation we are with these different um as it relates to the phases of implementation and then highlighting

113specifically what are some of those big things that are happening in the district thing big things that we've completed that we want to celebrate things that we're getting ready to roll out of the district and things that we've got in the hopper to still look and research and figure out is this something that's going to work for CSD okay go ahead um so the board had set the goals for the superintendent um through my evaluation tool but also included in this our goals for the district Improvement plan and these goals can be divided up into four areas um first of all some overall academic achievement goals and these goals are about increasing um the percent of students in grades K-8 that reach their predicted growth score on that want to see that increase by 10

114in all student groups so not just overall but for our students our black students our females our males our Hispanic students we want to see that increase and then we also want to see the percent of students graduating in four years increasing by one percent that might sound like a small number but when we're already up at 96 point something we can only really make some small incremental changes but we want to get to a hundred percent um the other three areas are more specific and catered really to our work that as it pertains to equity and building a positive culture and climate in our buildings so one of our goal areas is eliminating disproportionate academic and discipline outcomes for students so the goals in this area pertain to decreasing the number of black students

115scoring in the lowest level of achievement but also off the percentage and number of student of black students performing in the highest levels of achievement on the GMAT on their math scores but then we also want to for discipline decrease the number of black students that are suspended from schools by 10 percent our second area is related to improvements in student mental health well-being and engagement and here we're looking to do a 10 decrease of the number of students that are missing 10 or more days and all of our student groups and then we also on our Georgia Health survey we want to make sure that we have a 10 increase on the following constructs or areas overall mental health school connectedness and then there's two specific questions that help identify do students have a

116positive relationship with at least one adult in a building and we want to see the response on that improve as well and then our last category is really highlights our work on Equity again and it's about maintaining a positive culture and climate that is inclusive and does not reinforce or increase marginalization of any group and here we use to measure that our Dei survey that we administer once a year and we want to see a 0.15 increase in this it's called from the group of educational elements their Dei survey in the following categories and Dr hedelson will talk more through those as she shares some of the data and then we also want to see 10 more of our staff and students will report an overall positive experience on these climate surveys so those are

117our Big Goal areas go ahead to the next slide Austin so we've um for the sake of time I'm just going to we'll share all of this information the board has we're not going to talk through each of these bar graphs Dr Huddleston is going to talk through some of the newer data that we've shared and what that data looks like but so the boards you know that you've got the Baseline data we'll be posting this online and I know that the board really is concerned about accuracy and transparency so as we post this information online we will link the databases and the sources where this as well as explanations on how this data was calculated particularly for the areas that Dr Huddleston is going to share because it's a heart it's you've got to

118transition it from words to numbers which is sometimes a little more difficult um so go to the next slide Essen and Dr Huddleston good evening everyone good evening I'm going to present without material so as you're aware um you have been doing such a wonderful job supporting our mental health work and you've heard some of the information that the counselors presented so we want to be able to look at how we are doing and how we're progressing with our work with regards to Mental Health so um we'll take a look at a couple of different parts of the Georgia school health survey so there are there's the mental health composite score the school connectedness score as well and so this shows our scores the baseline from 2022 and our goal in these areas um is

119to see an increase in these for by 10 percent in these composite here and then there are two items that we also had on our district Improvement plan last year which was to make sure that each student has an adult that they're connecting with at school so that item is is in the surveys for elementary and secondary and so we'll continue to follow that specific item and we'll also be looking to see at the next time it's given that that goes up by 10 we're going to be able to defegregate that data based on race and gender and to see if there are any differences or any specific Outreach that we need to do with respect to that so at the bottom you'll see the school climate composite scores and these are scores that we

120have that we gleaned from our internal survey on school school climate and that goes with students and staff members and so here so they find information from 2022 and so we are looking to see that those scores increase by 10 as well so next I'll share a little bit of the data from our diversity equity and inclusion survey and as Dr Furman mentioned this is a part of the tripod surveys that we administer to students and staff members as well as families so here we have the data into segregated from last year and our goal is to see the diversity Equity inclusion composite increase by 0.15 and then the last two we're looking for a decrease by 0.15 and that will be in the frequency of everyday discrimination by students and the frequency of everyday

121discrimination by teacher so these are some numbers that we'll be watching and we'll be looking at the impact of our our racial Equity work thank you Dr Edelson I think Dr Banks questions on the school climate that uh I know you mentioned you can disaggregate the student theater can we also disaggregate the teacher of data by race and we'll be tracking that as well obviously because um yeah I mean obviously we want to ensure that we support our teachers of color as as well not not just the equity obviously so great the first of the four strategic initiatives we will discuss this evening's professional growth this area is all about providing high quality differentiated training for every staff member in CSD in this area we engage in learning action and growth related to personal racial

122identity anti-racism and bias we establish relationships and collaborate with families caretakers and local communities we identify how personal cultural lenses influence perceptions of students and eliminate deficit perspectives and we work to develop cultural humility the items listed in the first red research and design area are there not because we have we have targets them but instead because they are in a cycle of continuing I will briefly discuss some of them instead in the invest and Implement section in the middle there in the green some activities I'd like to highlight there we have a research employee research groups I'm sorry employee resource groups teach employees employees they keep them with the district they keep them having a place to express the things that they're going through and the experiences that they're having and I'm happy to

123report we have an Asian ERG uh black ERG and a white ERG that are working right now I'm not as pleased with our white ERG but we're working on we're working on we're getting them together also uh the equity newsletter we have initiated an equity newsletter in order to give information to the entire District both about Equity but also about what's happening in equity and what um just some valuable resources that people can access and this is for everyone in CSD not just teachers Equity teams which we call 18s these teams are made up of awesome administrators teachers and staff who have volunteered to help CSD pay our education debt there's an activity team at each School in the CSV systems and one at the district office division of e-teams is to pay the education

124debt and CSD through umoja which is unity and Eugene which is collective work and responsibility the e-team's mission is across District implementation of the equity action plan which asks to normalize organize our organized and operationalize Equity thus creating the environment for Equitable students and staff outcomes district-wide all schools are doing targeted work to meet e-team goals and responsibilities and their goals and responsibilities are to engage in self-development develop their leadership competencies but also coach CSD stakeholders which mean their peers and parents and students around issues related to equity anti-racism and inclusion they use data to review discuss and strategize actions to eliminate inequitable student staff outcomes and they serve as role model Equity leaders across the district is the complete area you will see several items but the one I'd like to highlight and take

125a moment to do a happy dance over is the hiring of Anthony downers our Equity coordinator one of the major roles that he plays is guiding the Intensive work with each school's e-team throughout the year that's what we really brought him here for to do that really on the ground work with the e-teams making sure that they are about the work proceeds it's consistent across all schools the final strategic oh no that's it thank you all right thank you next slide Austin and next up Applebee is designer good evening boys okay the initiative that I will address is the standards plus portion of the city schools of Decatur framework of Equitable outcomes that ensures we teach our students greater Wisconsin that elevates marginalized voices CSC provides an academically challenging environment that aligns with and enhances

126the Georgia standards of excellence through all of the standards and content areas we Implement anti-racist assessment practices we draw on the culture to shape the curriculum we use real world issues as the key focus of curricular content through the connection to the CSD instructional framework based on the research and design phase toward the Strategic initiatives we are continuously designing culturally responsive Administration and instructional coach professional development based on the due for framework topics South the students instruction and curriculum and assessment currently instructional leaders are conducting research and designing a social studies and science K2 curriculum review District reading coaches a built-in instructional coach and the master education intervention practitioner are being mentored by a Wilson language training literacy specialist in partnership with Glenwood Elementary as they develop a foundation demonstration site school for our district

127structures are also being created for secondary English vertical alignment based on the investment in the implementation phase toward the Strategic initiative we are in the midst of a recalibration of the IB Middle years program for Fidelity of implementation there is ongoing support for the IB career program and diploma programs and preparation for the ib-2023-24 evaluation year this is a daily there's pardon me there is a daily implementation of the new math Pathways and standards this Academic Year CSD introduced standard-based grading and a grade book District y all reading teachers and administrators are currently participating in the science of reading training we launched the second cohort of letters training and CSD is hosting its fourth cohort of Orton Gillingham training for our teachers lastly based on the completion phase for the Strategic initiative the K-5 American

128reading company are literacy program program has been adopted fundations is being implemented with fidelity common pacing guide for our K-5 literacy and math are completed the reading and math teacher and District websites have been updated there is a common grade book and an equity coordinator as well it has been hired to assist in the implementation of our anti-racist assessment practices as we continue to draw on student culture to shape our curriculum thank you thank you Miss Godfrey welcome I'm Erica Godfrey I am the district ncss coordinator and a district and District intervention specialist I'm going to highlight a few of the systems of support um and give some updates this is a support play a critical role in csd's efforts to support all students learning and eliminate disproportionate outcomes in addition to supporting behavioral social

129and emotional well-being from our research and design phase um last year the district ncss team started a collaboration with the Department of equity and student support to identify a behavior screening system that will help to connect students with elevated risk levels to appropriate interventions this year we are developing the protocol for implementation from building administrators assessment plans through designing and providing interventions at all tiers the K-12 district-wide interventions were introduced or expanded in 2021 as a mean to extend learning opportunities beyond the standard school year they include extended day tutoring Saturday schools summer schools and intercessions we are collecting data from stakeholders and revising the designs to offer the highest quality of support We are continuing our work with the state dyslexia pilot to create and Implement dyslexia training and intervention process in accordance to

130Senate Bill 48 that will be able to effect for the next phase of investment and implementation to support this work CSD has invested and implemented the following a major barrier in District oversight was was the inability to monitor students progress in a timely manner the lasting to one consistent tool at the primary and secondary grade bands allows sufficient monitoring the purchase of the best three behavior and emotional screening system Orbits for grades three six and nine to serve as our Universal Behavior screener providing coaching support to embed the first two components of the due Force framework and amplifier so the Amplified criteria has been revised to further expand opportunities for historically marginalized students to access to access gifted and talented programming the new criteria have been published on the CSD gifted and talented website Chris

131and Givens our director of instructional programs we'll be sharing the impacts of this program of this change later this year after implementation use the employees the collaborative gifted service models or academic Services K9 the teaching and learning department is currently completing the walkthroughs and the director of instructional programs is revealing state required documentation to identify areas of strengths as well as areas of growth the final bulleted list shows the items that are complete or in place for the 22-23 school year Norm Universal screening K-12 where map case and star for grid 9 12. again streamline progress monitoring tools at the primary and secondary levels district and school level leaders have conducted book studies for culturally responsive teaching and restorative practices all intervention programs remain in Place student data will continue to shape the design of

132each program suspension prevention is one of the tools you've utilize to help eliminate disproportionality each building has develops suspension prevention goals the goals will be Revisited and revised as indicated by student data amplify which originated as an elementary program then expanded to the middle schools has now been scaled up to grade 12. thereby making it a K-12 initiative all K2 students receive weekly critical and creative thinking lesson plans designed by the gifted specialist and recently feeling the behavior intervention intervention we will measure our systems of support by reviewing the student outcome data presented at the beginning of the presentation addition additionally we know and understand that each of these phases listed are fluids and not completely linear which is evidenced by the duplicates in the multiple phases thank you all right we've got one last

133um uh strategic initiatives to go over and welcome back Dr Green I love you so much the final strategic initiative we'll discuss with this community is high leverage practices this area is all about how about making sure that we use scientifically based best instructional practices across all classrooms in the district in this area we consistently communicate High academic expectations for every student and Empower students to achieve those expectations interrupting instructional practices that produce dependent Learners we engage current events and challenges of society through a social justice lens and use that as a key focus of instruction we communicate in linguistically and culturally responsive ways and we initiate warm demand or caring and culturally mediated instruction We are continuing to follow through and build on the core practices for Equity that were identified several years ago

134we continue to deepen that understanding through professional development and our commitment to the IB and El Frameworks both the work in this initiative relates directly regarding the due for CRA framework much of the work in this area is still in the research and design phase we are currently doing professional development with administrators and professional development work with teachers is in the planning process to be rolled out next year in the invest and Implement phase you will see just a smattering of the due four topics that we have already covered with administrators and coaches and we'll cover with teachers such as dependent versus independent Learners metacognition warm demanding and high expectations finally in the completed phase I'd like to highlight the collaboration between the teaching and learning department and equity and student support service between standards

135plus and the do four framework closely to teaks and Elites that are currently being used to provide real-time feedback on teacher outcomes and we are able to do this easily thanks to the phenomenal work by Jennifer Dunn who created an app and a dashboard that supports the walkthrough tool considering this initiative area I am ecstatic to see the extended tv time that this board put in next year's schedule and I'd like to imbue you with the impetus to ensure even more time for Teacher professional development going forward with more PD time teachers can become deep Learners of the do-4 content and thereby Elevate the phenomenal work they're already doing I'm sure you're familiar with the term you get what you pay for if CSD wants excellent teachers we must be intentional about providing consistent and

136frequent professional development time to help them be so research shows us that an increase in quality teacher professional development pays off in student academic achievement thank you for allowing the time to share the transformative work we're doing in the district I'll turn it back over this afternoon I mean I don't want to give this group a round of applause [Applause] she this is her team and Lily's team and they just do a great job so supporting the work so thank you both for all you do so this is opportunity for the board to have a discussion ask some questions we may not be able to answer questions you have tonight but if we can't get the answers tonight we will get those to you as soon as we can I have a question I know

137that we have been talking about decolonizing the curriculum and so where would that it feels like under high leverage practices maybe that that would where that will fall but where would where can we look to see us starting that process um [Music] together as districts social studies uh committee and we met actually last Friday it consists of teachers and department heads from the secondary schools the middle school and the high school they're still trying to recruit Elementary however some of the teachers do have Elementary backgrounds we've also recruited uh Miss Leon Leon TNC I hope I'm pronouncing her name correctly she is a town in the community the district but she does a lot of I think she has another degree but she's part of a organization where they conduct social studies Multicultural research from

138different lenses throughout the state of Georgia and so um and then we invited Anthony who as we mentioned earlier our Equity coordinated to be on this committee and we've already mapped out the steps for evaluating K-12 um social studies curriculum it's divided by different teams based on elementary middle and high school Anthony's um doing a presentation on what decolonization is since historically you had a committee before us we I arrived I think in the early 2000 maybe 2010 2011 who started this Equity work as it pertains to decolonizing curriculum so he'll be leading that work um we're already looking at standards the standards that we have the standards that have been addressed standards that have not been addressed what does it look like we're tapping into professors at local universities who Bishop already had relationships

139with and we're expanding that with the assistance of leonie so they can give us additional resources we're really focusing on collecting high quality primary resources to lead this conversation and we have the flexibility and the race to do that because we Implement an IB curriculum which is phenomenal that's where we are our next meeting is November 4th so the area This falls into our standards plus um strategic initiative um and we will make sure in the January second quarter update that we provide a good overview for the board on where we are with that process as we go through that yeah thank you thank you that's an exciting and encouraging is for the children it's a possibility I also want to highlight that even though that's an intentional one focused on the social studies content

140throughout the do-4 framework we're intentionally looking at standards talking through our planning meetings looking at our resources so even though that one's really focused on just social studies we're decolonizing the curriculum every day as we work through planning reviewing our standards and how we approach and teach those things I was curious when I mean I'm realizing it's a continuous process but when will some of the things that we're doing now the beginning phase of some of what we're doing with social studies when would we expect that to be in the classroom well ideally because we want to use wisdom and be strategic and maybe ideally see it actually in the classroom being implemented in August because we have to create the pacing guide when you're doing alignment it takes a minute standards you need to

141find valid primary resources and other supports and so you don't want to rush through the process it cannot be done in isolation we're looking forward to conferring with you and your colleagues in the January and then April if we need to tweak it over the summer and be prepared to roll it out full of 23 so I I incredibly appreciate the answer I was thinking August was actually pretty aggressive so that's fantastic they were looking at moving it and getting it out that quickly about selection of resources you can save resources in once they're vetted um well thank you then um I appreciate Dr Banks advocating for more teacher training and time I I would be interested in what if there are any benchmarks what do the best systems that provide the best opportunities for

142teachers what what do they do are we and I don't just necessarily mean Georgia I mean truly who does it best and are we there'd be percent below them are we at Mark now like what what should we what specifically should we be thinking about from the budgetary standpoint uh so that we kind of understand what what Best in Class looks like I'll be able to give you details now off the top of my head the best professional development is actually not happening it's happening in Japan another area I'm forgetting right now but what they are literally doing is setting with your days for teachers to ask students at that time that they're setting aside every week and results right but thank you um again team for all your hard work on this um the

143last slide in this just shows an overview of when the next updates will be Ascend you want to hit the last slide um so January we'll do a Quarter Two update April quarter three and in July we will do the quarter four update so you can anticipate data coming up as we collected and are ready to report on it but we will continue with a similar format of um showing kind of our progress through these phases of implementation so Ford if you have any feedback for the presentation and style or format I'd love to hear what some of that feedback is not tonight but it's at some point so right our next topic of discussion is theory of action so um at our work session uh we looked at this theory of action um tweaked

144it a little bit I took the feedback from the board um so would love to get if this is a theory of action that the board is ready to kind of tentatively approve love to recommend that we put it into a policy which I provided the board a draft of this policy um and the reason why it's important to move this forward even with a tentative approval um from the board tonight is that we can really use this information to move forward with our strategic planning process so agreeing to the standards that we believe in the district will help move us forward kind of what is our our Baseline how we are going to hold the teachers accountable and what kind of autonomy are we do we want to provide our teachers as well as

145on the bottom kind of those the overall how all of those things connect so any updates on the board from the additions or changes from um what we talked about just a couple weeks ago when you when you said that it is one of the policies that we're viewing it is in the document here or it's going to be this it's in your packet um it is raft policy bab School governance page 115. and that policy really gives an expanded context to the theory of action so this is like a one-pager quick look but the actual policy gives to explaining the rationale that's behind it why we would put this into place um what are some more specifics behind some of these things expanding on what does empowerment look like um explaining why we have

146these standards what they look like in our instructional framework particularly the core practices for Equity why we put student standards and teachers at the very center to just really expands on it this is kind of a one-pager View I don't have any additional feedback yeah yeah I added some of the things in the bottom about Equitable inclusion and then the resources so try to just really scratch clarify what the board sentiment was so if there are thumbs up on this we'll put it forth for file approval at the next meeting vote at this point no I think I've got agreement that we're moving forward on it so that's that's what we need right now thanks all right next agenda item AP and ID and AP testing fees uh just wanted to have a quick conversation

147with the board I know we had some parents talking um came to public comment last meeting brought up some questions about the information that was initially shared with the board last year about testing fees we did some additional research and found that there are some districts around that do pay for percentages of IB testing um but I my recommendation for the board at this point is that we keep with what we decided that's what we planned our budget on it would require a budget amendment to make any changes for this year but that we look at next year possibly saying you know paying for one ID test or one eight and or One AP test per student um just so we want to encourage students to take those tests they are meaningful for the students

148but I do want to also say you know for the number of students that go through the program in CSD it is extraordinarily does become a pretty big financial burden for our school system so I do think we need to balance that approach a little bit and look at ways to pay a little bit for some of the students but not still paying for like seven or eight assessments every single year for these students so I think we can find a middle ground going forward but I know we did have parents asking us to change what we were doing this year and I'm I would not recommend that we make any changes this year so any questions or comments from the board my only question was I think some of the in some of the

149districts we were looking at where they were they were paying for AP and IB test there was a there was a huge huge spread of sizes so some of them were very small districts some were very were large compared to like EPs and then within that there was a large spread of how many were AP how many were IB and an AP test does not cost the same as an IB test so I don't know if there's I don't know if it influenced this decision making at all if there's a way to just compare an apple to an apple and an orange to an orange so that we can see because I think it's hard to say yes some districts pay and then some districts don't but it's a different budgetary impact if you're talking

150about you know if we if we were to say yes well APS pays well you know if APF 100 of their teenagers are taking IB tests then that would be a very different monetary Factor but it was it was varied when I was looking at it was very different so I think it was very hard to say if the question on the table was how this impacts sales budget it was I couldn't draw a conclusion yeah I think yeah and that's the additional data we can pull and look at but we also need to take into context Decatur Decatur is a much different system than APS it's a much different system than DeKalb County still make sense for Decatur I think needs to be at the Forefront of the discussion what is the amount that

151we anticipate saving this year by not paying those fees I can't remember that I was over 200 000 it was at least two and a half gapping points um to a couple of the things that I liked about some of the policies around this even the ones that did pay for all of the fees were that um if a student signs up for the test and then does not take the test the student then becomes 100 responsible the parents yeah become 100 responsible for the test there's a way to ensure the students are taking the the tests that they actually sign up for I think it would be helpful to understand how many has to fell into that bucket how many tests did we pay for that weren't taken uh because it's a different policy

152if it's half if it is 0.1 right um and I am it's just honestly a little bit uncomfortable if we're gonna say we're going to revisit it next year because then it means that we have a year now of seniors that we're sort of just not allowing to benefit from whatever our potential long-term program so I I would like to encourage us if we're going to think about revisiting this and have some kind of long-term policy that we adopt or you know the foreseeable future if we try to see if we can't get something like that in place for the kids this year it just doesn't seem fair that we had a one year of kids that are left out of it and you know it's different going forward whatever that policy may be I'm

153not suggesting a specific policy here because it doesn't sit well with me that we would have one class of kids that don't get any benefit from whatever our overall policy might be um yeah I hear you and I think that's a good thing for discussion but I don't I don't know that we could teachers the board may decide no we don't want to pay for any of it so why I don't know that we would say hey we're going to backpedal and to find a middle ground this year and then next year we decide no we don't want to do that anyway but our decision doesn't have to be made this month like we could be having this conversation in the next couple of months and have a decision in place before this budget is

154out that would help the seniors this year that could align with what we want to do long term uh we won't work on the final budgets until probably March April then there already have taken most of them will have paid and signed up for their test I don't know that we could Implement something a change this year that's what I'm saying I guess my big takeaway then if if we think as a board or as a group that we are likely going to revisit this and potentially suggest changes we should figure out how to do it as quickly as we possibly can to the existing seniors also give benefit from it it does not sit well with me if we're going to make a long-term policy that we have excluded one specific Year from that

155just doesn't I'm not comfortable with that um so because we need to take a vote on what we want to do for this current year not at this I would not recommend taking a vote at this time but if the board would like us to look into like trying to foresee in the future what this would look like we can try to put some numbers together I just don't know that we're at a place in our current budget to really determine the overall Financial impact this change has made to make an educated assumption for next year you did in the fact that it was a deduction from the budget yeah so we would be voting on a budget amendment so I think that I think that what we first need to do is understand the

156the facts or the numbers that we're dealing exactly so what would be if if we did decide we were gonna if we were gonna pay for the seniors for this year how much would the budget be adjusted I think is what we're looking for but I think the the first thing is maybe truly understanding kind of what the initial question was because initially we thought that maybe we were an outlier in that we were paying but nobody else was paying and then we realized that maybe that wasn't entirely true but even like I said initially looking there's a little bit of a mixed bag so some districts pay a portion some districts make you pay like a down payment so if you're gonna if you you pay and then agree to take the test and

157if you don't take the test and they keep the money or some flare on that but then like I said there's some of these are small districts where you're talking about a cohort of yeah so maybe we need some clarification on that as well but our decision wasn't based we didn't make the decision we made the decision based on the financial impact to CSD not because we wanted to be in line with everybody else but that was but yeah some of it was that we were like well maybe we're doing maybe we're out we're out of alignment with what other districts are doing that was an argument on the table if I remember correct me if I'm wrong that's one point that is correct that has certainly influenced my decision making I think that there

158are good policy reasons to question whether we would take tax dollars from people on fixed income to pay for tests for relatively affluent families I think there is a policy reason to take a look at drawing back a little bit of what we were spending on but part of that was influenced by we were informed that we were an outlet and it turns out we weren't an outlier in fact by now not paying for any of it it looks like and so it does influence my decision making particularly if there is potentially a future policy that we're going to evaluate that would change how we do it and we just leave one cohort of kids in the merch that's what I'm not comfortable I guess my my only thing is is that are we basing

159our decisions on being outliers I mean because we're we are outlier on a lot of like we you know number one in the ca Decatur High is number one in the state and SAT score like so like the whole outlier language you know doesn't do anything for me I guess the bottom line is you know what's best for CSD financially and it just you know like we're going to be making decisions that future Generations will benefit that from that I mean like all this Equity work these past Generations haven't benefited from right I mean so things are constantly changing and so it just kind of seems awkward for us to make a decision now because in the future we may change the decision and you know we don't even know which way we're going to

160go with that decision I would agree with you on that and I also um if Carmen's point that is there's so many variations to the size of the school to how they do it so I don't even really know if looking at that information will inform us any better on whether or not we should pay or not pay I think it's more again to Jane at Dana's point we need to just look at what's best for this for our school district what we think makes sense um for our school district and for our size and then we decide based on that and then sometimes again you may make we may make a decision and then we look through two years and we re-look at everything we re-look at the data and maybe we make another

161decision based on what we're looking at two years later so then it may be like you said two years school students May pay and then there might be a year where they pay half or we do a new program but we can you know information that we gather I don't think we can compare it to to an APS or Gwinnett or anywhere else for that matter because I'm just trying to figure out what we're trying to decide right now if we're going to get you know either we're going to keep keep it like it is for the rest of the school year but we're going to have to make an amendment to the budget so I guess the question is how many board members want us to look at a possible Amendment or if the

162majority of the board does not interested in that then we say sorry we're not going to do that we'll look at it for next year right that's that's kind of what I was trying to ask earlier so so it sounds like you and Tasha feel like we don't need to be looking at an amendment kind of keep things as is cons and Carmen sounds like you're more interested in that James I haven't heard from you but if I'm wrong let me know it is unfortunate we make decisions with past or incorrect information it's a great example of it but I we've made a decision I don't think that I ever considered what other schools did or what they're doing at Druid Hills for their IB students I'm comfortable with our decision as is that doesn't

163mean that as you ultimately said next school year if we decide that we can expand what it means to be need to based to get it but I'm fine with that is it unfortunate for the class of 2023 yes it is sounds like we've got three that are comfortable with the decision made hold tight and then but we'll continue to look at stuff going forward to make recommendations for future years what I heard so I heard different let me know all right uh next topic on the list is the senior tax exemption um so in your packets you have a table of data um so just first want to kind of walk through that in that first section there is a summary titled in exemptions um the list and the exemption to the left and

164the total asset total assessed value of the exemptions under the appropriate fiscal year the second section of the type um of the summary titled local impact lists the exemptions and the fiscal impact or loss of revenue for the Board of Education and then the third section titled number of exempts exemptions list the numbers of residents that were exempt for each of the exemptions so under the first title section titled exemption the one million under the 2020 digest for FY 21 means that there were 20 residents as listed under the third section number of exemptions that qualify for the fifty thousand dollar exemption for the Board of Education education the local fiscal impact or loss of Revenue is listed under the local impact section under the annual revenue in the amount of two twenty thousand two

165hundred and fifty dollars and this amount was derived by multiplying one million of the assessed value by the FY 20 millage rate of 20.25 and this amount equates to .0099 million equivalent on the approximate 6.6 million dollars and 6.9 million dollars loss of revenue from the expired S4 exemption is shown under the local impact in the 21 digest for FY 22 under the actual Revenue this exemption gave home owners at the age of 65 and older 100 exemption on their school exemption for school property under the section titled number of exemptions this provides the number of seniors that qualified for each exemption for each fiscal year there is a column with projected amounts but that was just an initial projection based on a number uh understand that there are some board members who have some

166alternate opinions on how we could calculate the projection so I'm willing to entertain how we could possibly look at those in a different way so I think tonight focusing on the exemptions and the actual digests that we've had and then also reviewing the timeline that's proposed to move this work forward so it can get to the legislator on time and that we can partner with our delegates to make sure that we've got everyone on the same page when it gets to be time to put the exemption to the there any what are questions um concerns I think I want to pull up my timeline I don't know if the board reviewed the timeline that I proposed discussion really wait without jumping into details on that last projected column I do want to make sure we

167take the time to get it to get it right there are I do have some concerns about it and it has a budgetary impact obviously the amount that doesn't show up in revenue is something that we have to cover um and so let's make sure we take the time to do that to get it right um in that First Column and I think it's actually in a couple of the columns I was a little bit confused so that wedding exemptions taken of fifty thousand dollars amounted to the one million dollars to set the top correct that is yes and that was calculated so that's a million dollars of exemptions that uh the max exemption amount so that is the value of the home that was Exempted from the millage rate that is the and then

168so what that means is the one million dollars of Exempted home value resulted in a twenty thousand dollar reduction in tax due to the exemptions that were taken on those 28 points I lost what you were saying just gonna be honest thank you I just I wanted to make sure okay I I believe that is correct and so that's where all right that helps me understand exactly um where the calculations are coming from in each um each chart what is interesting and what I would like to see included as a part of this if we can for the actual is what was the projected change based upon the reports that were done or originally when the exemption was set up so there were some estimates of what this exemption would cost and it would be

169helpful to understand it it looks to me like it this had a much smaller impact I think than was assumed under some of those reports if my memory serves um I'm trying to remember but I but I believe if if we're talking about the aggregate of these exemptions being 6.2 million I think that's much higher than we had estimated um the starting work for the committee was that we should pass and use the existing ones to create a six million dollar exemption for the seniors um so so we got close that is what you're saying well I I am shocked that it's that close looking at it given the increase in property value the increase in numbers and that sort of stuff um not to change subject but the numbers that stand out the most

170to me and the one thing that I would like to add to our agenda as a board is communication about the other exemptions that exist um the woman presented for instance that said that her neighbor only has Social Security and it's very meager um she should have none I mean s S1 says if you're only living on a pension and or Social Security you have a massive School exemption that still exists indicator that didn't go anywhere in fact the the second number that sends turns out is in in 2021 am I correct 1 562 senior homes received an exemption and in 2022 is 1875. yes well so let me let me jump on that as well is that it's not that is not the number of homes that is a number of exemptions and homes

171are taking multiple exemptions that's their exact point I would actually look at the bigger telling numbers you look at the 25 people in 2021 that took gs1 versus the 284 people in this year that took gs1 it does actually appear that we're gonna help and that people maximize their opportunities to take exemptions and the proof is in the pudding I think and how you know there's but well that 100 000 difference between 2021 versus this year probably the bulk of that is within the 65 to 69 income range above 53 000 a year but the gs1 wasn't even necessary if you were over the age of 65 prior to last year precisely but the point being that the people that then lost that S4 went and took every one of the other exemptions that they

172could qualify for yeah as I should including the veterans the number also stood out that we added 37 uh veterans that received and applied for that tax extension and I doubt very seriously that was new 37 fully disabled veterans moving into the city of Decatur and buying a house it's far more likely that it was people taking advantage of it and I to my initial point I think as a school board we need to do a better job of letting people know that some of these exemptions that you have to apply for including the income on which is not fully being taken advantage of are out there okay what was the I thought that we had I mean maybe it was 32 homes that we thought was going to qualify but that's I feel like

173we're actually not that far off limited building but again that should have been in the report so I I will work on the to ensure that we see what our projections were versus what the outcomes were um I think an important piece to look at too is the and the middle one the local impact the numbers of the millage rate so for last year if we didn't have any of these senior tax exemptions um it would have we would have had to raise our millage rate by 2.5 so like I I think that's an important piece to talk but of exemptions and how it impacts everyone so exempting a few for the overall budget impact I think is another thing just for the board to consider as we move forward the other thing I think

174is probably worthwhile talking publicly about the community is aware is I don't correct me if I'm wrong there isn't any conversation or appetite to eliminate senior homestead exemption so it isn't this isn't a conversation to get rid of any of this we may tweak things like I for one would particularly Little Women 53 is low but obviously that has to be balanced against the impact that it would have elsewhere um which just kind of brings me back to the points around that last column This is complicated math it isn't a straight growth rate you have Actuarial tables that play into this you have uh we want to increments above what the exemption is they'd have to be accounted for there's a whole host of things in here that are kind of non-linear and complicated and

175so we needed to have support to run some of that analysis do we have a plan to do that again and are we going to be like what is the plan to have that kind of support and to this is the initial conversation no plans have been made for anything I think setting the timeline looking at what exemptions were taken is the first step um that's as far as we have gotten in this process can I recommend that we have a committee similar to what we did before and seek that kind of help because I think that that would be something that we would want to consider and then that committee could also make the recommendations in terms of the kind of support that they would need running this analysis I think it's a little

176unfair to ask the finance department to run it it is complicated yeah that's a board decision so I mean I would agree with that I think the committee that worked on this before was was extremely helpful yeah but and I was wondering um I was talking to James earlier um just picking his brain about this and thinking like how will we will we will we see out Georgia State again to help us figure these numbers out like um I think they did a good job yeah I was right in the next track so yeah the onto the first Point's a good one like what there was a projection of the numbers we should pick those up and then see what the first year impact was that'll tell you how close will be two is a

177question that I don't know of any committee that will be capable of answering it but which is how much can we afford to not tax you know into our budget without without adjusting the millage rate and having to you know their senior means six million is the first year is it going to go up it's going to go down I don't know that we have the capability of answering that and the like I'm fine with six million that's great we kind of had back conversation George they came back with that gave that assessment if 10 years from now it's going to say it's in six million great is it going to balloon to 30 is it gonna take away four you know a whole bunch of teachers that's a problem um the other thing is

178the income part of it the the committee and everyone was very excited about you know kind of targeting the income particularly between 65 and 70 and that sort of stuff there's a big discrepancy in that income level when you look at Atlanta so for instance the cabs is like 30 000 and John's Creek is 80 000. you know that that is a giant giant Gap and I don't know how to do that but we did get a presentation there was Data provided to us by Georgia State previously about as you move that income chart back and forth how many extra households and then one city and what the impact on the budget was which was quite quite nice it was it basically said it'll cost the school two hundred thousand dollars but you're going to

179positively impact 20 extra senior homes that was worth it but then if it you hit 50 interesting homes and you call School District eight million dollars we can't do that we can't run a school system that way so it definitely requires a deep dive I think on those three things and we're talking about a short timeline because the legislature has only gave us a short senior tax exemption that we need to get working well so it sounds like sounds like like to put a committee together um did the board have an opportunity to look at the suggested timeline to try to get this um moving forward so basically taking time between now and April of 2023 to study the current exemption answer some of the questions about what may need to change what should stay

180the same drafting um a new exemption or whatever tweaks need to be made sometime between May 2023 and August 2023 for the board to be able to vote by October 2023 on any revision so that we can start meeting with our delegates and obviously working with them all the way up through this we don't want to just dump this on them at that point but really focusing on those efforts of you know sharing the sharing what's out there how it would impact um from January through December so that they can take it to um the legislator and that in that session which is January through April 2024 this has got to be on the ballot in November 2024. and the board it has that listed as means with delegates well I was saying but we've

181got to get them on board now we've got to start this conversation now particularly around the timing of the like they gave us two years I think we should ask for more and not settle for less than five so if we push I think James was saying like act for seven and they'll push back and maybe say five so I think we need to start working those relationships now agreed and I also think it helps to clearly articulate the reason why we're doing this right so the original objectives of the senior homestead exemption was very specific Ally it was very specifically targeted to be able to aging places and if we weren't forcing seniors out due to to escalating tax rates on people that had six in common so that to the extent that we're

182capable of articulating that as a policy that we are wanting to uphold uh I think that that's helpful in in those conversations with the delegation in the community and with directing the committee in any of the paths they receive and also letting the community know that we did um request a five-year on this last one um and so the reason why we're speaking about it again now isn't necessarily because we wanted to but we have to um so requesting seven years and seeing what we get um and also starting those conversations now uh versus yeah but I would say the benefit of a shorter window of time is it allows us to revisit the income thing at a faster rate particularly with inflation rate now right so it does allow us to revisit that if

183we aren't doing it on a routine basis we ought to be thinking about some kind of inflation that allowed for those changes that didn't come to be a company go ahead and start finding people that want to serve on the committee um and then start digging into the digging into the numbers and identifying if we want to hire GSU like we did last time and we're gonna how we're going to move that word forward all right um last thing for a discussion is the initial policies that are for initial review um in your packets you have um a list of lots of policies related to Human Resources um so were there any questions on those legal is also taking a look at these currently to give us any input on recommended changes we went through

184and made the changes that kind of matched our current policies to align them together they're not a lot of changes from the recommended policies given to us by GSA okay so then the final thing for actual this would be for approval is to approve the um agenda items that we put forth to the board um last month we did not receive any public feedback from those as they have been on the website for a month um I know Hans had a question about kind of making sure we get the money out of different buckets in a in a sequential way um did we get an answer on that so the answer and lanita did you have a the clarification on like that requests for paying for things and a sequential order with different funds great

185great and I and I do I yeah I very much support of in parentheses or whatever so long as it's applicable but if it is applicable yes I think it should come out of the squash okay okay we'll add that in there I asked that question three years ago and it was they looked for it Sergio did a presentation that was like oh yeah I'm looking for a spot yeah yeah okay you wanna if those were good then if you want to do a motion we can okay and so we're gonna make a motion to approve the I would say that to approve the policies listed on the agenda okay all right may I have a motion to approve the board policies listed in the agenda for approval I moved to approve the board policies

186uh listed on the agenda thank you thank you all in favor please say aye aye thank you so the board policy is looking for approval has been approved all right moving on this month the board was provided copies of school Improvement plans as information only um we have future dates listed on the agenda for upcoming meetings trainings and Retreats board members are there any questions about the future dates for the work of the board all right well thank you everyone who attended and listening in uh virtually we will adjourn tonight's meeting at 9 17.