00122nd at 6 04 p.m are there any motions to approve the agenda for this evening question to approve the agenda okay now i have a second okay all right all in favor of approving the agenda for this evening please say aye okay the agenda for this meeting is approved and i will turn it over to dr furman thank you madam chair and this evening we have two topics on the agenda um one is relating to budget and it is a presentation prepared in collaboration between the high school and the finance office about the fees that the district has encumbered for paying for ap and id testing um ms los strand is going to be the main facilitator of this presentation so i'm going to pass it up there welcome thank you thanks for having me
002here guys um let's see so right now we have the district pays for our ib and ap tests for all of our students i'll go into more specifics but this is the goal of what we're asking for and the rationale so ib exam fees are 119 per exam or assessment iv diploma these are students who take seven exams their senior year they also have the six courses that have an extended essay or a reflective project for our career academy students the career academy students which are cc students they take two exams their senior year and their reflective projects and ap exam fees are 96 per exam so um right now we are the only high school that i know of that pays for all of these exams for all of their students um i worked
003at north springs high school in fulton county we paid for the first ap test for students and then families had to pay for the rest this has been our current practice here for a very long time since ivy started the diploma program students their senior year we're looking at 882 for those students who take all of those exams for a career program student that would be approximately 378 dollars this is what the district has spent on these tests just over the past four years as you can see there are significantly more students in our ib program our diploma program taking those exams which is absolutely fantastic at the same time it is also increasing our costs so you'll see for ap tests there were fewer um you'll see that uh fy22 it was a little
004bit less last year the ap the college board had different rules for ap tests because they were only given virtually so students didn't have to take them that is changing this year so this is our current process any student that is in an ap or an ib course we automatically enroll them for their exams we pay the registration fees in full for 2020 the total cost that we're looking at is about 250 000 for these students and i put how many students right now this year we're looking at about 250 diploma and career program students and about 620 students who take an ipa exam an ap exam ap exam excuse me um the student doesn't take the test we don't get refunded that amount for that test for ap depending on when they pull out
005we might not get charged for that the point is right now all kids take the test because we pay for it and this story so these are some proposed changes that we would like to present to the board for this year absolutely no changes we have that money budgeted we continue to move forward with our plan for next year's senior class because these students have already completed one year of the ib flow program and presenting this cost to families we feel would be an undue burden we would like to offer the opportunity just for students to choose if they do or don't want to take the test if they choose they want if they say they want to take the test you will register them pay for it everything okay so it's an off out
006option which we don't currently have because we pay for everyone and so there's no choice for class of 2024 and beyond families would incur the cost of these tests with financial support available it is absolutely essential that our families know that these fees should not dissuade them by parts to participate in our program at all we know that this is going to take a lot of um education for our families a lot of notice a lot of just making sure they understand the steps for um for financial assistance which i'll show you in a second and we believe that this will take at least two years to be able to get that out to the community in order to plan accordingly the group that worked on this many of whom are at the back table
007were it was really important to us that we have an easy way for families to apply for assistance um it would be a um we would start sharing that with families um immediately letting them know that there will be support for them and we will cover the cost or part of the cost depending on what the family's needs are we do not have an application for assistance to present with you tonight to you tonight because this is we wouldn't need it for two years so we want to do a lot of research on what other school systems do we want to make sure that we are aligned with our equity pillar we want to make sure that we are presenting this to families in a fair and equitable way as well budget every year approximately
00850 000 in order to support our families who might need this financial assistance so some financial implications no change to this year's budget there will be some cost savings next year if we do the opt-out options we don't think it will be hugely significant maybe around fifteen thousand dollars but maybe not even that much and then the following year we would just ask for 50 000 to be in the budget to cover the financial assistance any questions um so for next year oh thank you first for this sure i appreciate you all um for next year for 2023 when you ask the parents and or kids if they would like to opt in to take the test at that point will there be maybe an option for them to pay as well at that point
009to help this cause so we did not feel we can add that if that is something that the board thinks we can't add we just didn't feel it was fair to put the burden of some of these things on parents with a very short notice for some families it could be like i said almost a thousand dollars for the senior year so anytime i ask the community for money be it donations for something everyone always gets above and beyond and i'm always able to cover whatever someone in the community needs so if we put it out there for families like we're rolling this out over the next two years is there some options for next year i anticipate that there will be families who will say absolutely you know i'll go ahead and pay for
010my exam even though the majority of these are senior year sophomore year kids they take a lot of kids take ap us history and then there's ap statistics and ap calculus those are the other ap classes that we have that a lot of students take that aren't necessarily their senior year i actually heard from a friend in another district who a parent who texted me today and said fyi my son just came home and asked me for a hundred dollars for their ap exam and i'm like oh really it's february okay um so we're really hoping that if we we get the okay and we move forward with this but we know the importance of making sure families understand that yeah so would you have the opt-out for the opt-in however you want to look
011at it option for every class going forward i know that for some colleges there's caps on credit they can you know they can take these only hl's or something like that so starting next year moving forward yeah so every class would have the option to just take three assistants right and there are some students who might have we also have um if they decide not to take the exam they would have to reimburse us so for example i got onto georgia tech i'm georgia tech will only accept this certain grade on the exam i'm 90 sure i'm not going to get that i'm going to go ahead and opt out of that i'm going to pay 119 and i just don't even want to sit for the test um that's also an option other schools
012that have an id diploma like this are getting kind of you know kind of how they structure their their spring semester and i know a lot of their prep work is pretty easy my team and i talk about that in some classes already preparing for the exam is part of the instruction that happens for some classes it's more preparing for an exam and less about what's going on in the classroom so that will be the work that me and my instructional team will have to do to make sure that that work is meaningful and instructional aligned with the course so that if the kids decide not to take the test they're not sitting there for three weeks fiddling in their classrooms i'll ask that question about that so let's say you're teaching us one of
013these detail ib classes and about 50 of the kids decide in that class they're not going to take the test is there another final exam that these students would take because they're not taking the ib exam so that would be something that the team and i would work on i also realized though for some of these kids they can't get the diploma if they're not sitting for the exam right so for a lot of the majority of students in the diploma program it's not an option not to take the test because they want the diploma this is more for those students who um the opt-out are more for the ap kids or for the kids who are not going for the full diploma they're sitting in the class for the content of the class and
014for the class credit more questions do we currently and i should notice i know for end of course exams we take those grades and they calculate into the students final grades exams and the iv diplomas grades do those calculate into the students overall grades nope in fact we don't even get them until later in the summer so for the ivy kids we don't know how they do on their exams until july july august for ap if they take a move their sophomore year we get the scores back but they're already out of the class so those exams don't factor in to the grade they get in the class it also does not factor in whether the class is weighted ap and ib classes they have an additional weight to them and the student's gpa because
015they are higher level courses the exam doesn't is irrelevant to them getting the credit for the class and getting the extra bump on their feet so um i want to resist or i want to have a conversation quickly about not doing this within this budget right because uh as long as we can be very comfortable that any family that needs the financial assistance has it right so that's that's the baseline as long as anybody that needs it has it what we're talking about then is the families that don't need the financial assistance still getting the benefit from the school and i know with where we are in the budget this year that two hundred thousand dollars we're talking about two hundred thousand dollars right that's tenth of a that impact on taxes is a couple
016hundred bucks for everybody within the community uh it's two teacher positions so i'm kind of uncomfortable with that i mean we're in a situation where we are talking about that kind of severity of cuts and that kind of severity of tax implications for us to say that it's not time to talk to the parents now so that we're ready within this budget right to actually make these changes i just i i would encourage us to revisit that again and that that is completely predicated upon the assumption that we are providing the resources for the families that need it we are really only talking about the families that don't 100 percent the problem is this bill has already been paid i'm talking about 23 the budget yeah fiscal year 23's budget is being built now and
017i would prefer us to have an option to view billing it with this included as opposed to not having it included and i fully understand that in saying that there's more work that's going on so i mean forgive me but it's not that the ivy's diploma program is a two-year program so for 22-23 these families and students have committed to this program and we felt like asking them out of the gate like hey you're already in the program if you want the diploma this is what you're going to have to say we didn't feel like that was the best thing for our families i understand that you guys have a different lens that you're looking at this so we can definitely word things give people the option to pay we can do that kind of
018advertising um next year i just don't know what that would look like financially and how many people would have that would choose that option i mean they still have the option to not pay for it if they choose correct right so i guess what we're not telling them is they must pay for it we are simply saying that if they are going to go through with the degree program we've had to make some changes just given the nature of where we are again two teacher positions a tenth of a mill tax increase to offset that for a benefit that they would get nowhere else anywhere so far as you know in the entire state of georgia i just i i i'm going to strongly encourage that we look at what it would take to put
019it on the table for this budget that we're building now understand on fiscal year 22 no issue with that but for 23 i'm uncomfortable pushing it out of here we have an issue right now with this budget and again you're we're basically saying is it worth asking parents who can afford it is it worth having to say goodbye to two teacher positions or put a ten percent tax increase or ten per mil increase on people in order to cover it i just i'm not sure that's the trade-off yeah we could absolutely do that i think we were looking more conservatively at the plan out of the gate because we were looking at it from a family point of view but i think those are excellent points and we can definitely put that into the information
020that we share with families for next year i i personally feel there's some willingness for the community if i'm a parent at this i am a parent although [Laughter] but that messaging i would respond to right that is something that i would i would take into consideration i i would agree with that too and i really appreciate you and the team that worked on this considering you know being fair to the parents that did not anticipate having to incur this cost uh when there's some children starting the program um but i think it will be like on some field trips where you know parents you know contribute even though that they don't have to and um so many families are very fortunate in the district to be able to do that um i think wording
021it in a way we strongly encourage folks who are able to do that um because we're having to make some um you know tough budget decisions um i think you know it's pretty valid i also think that that people if they know what we're asking money for they're more likely to say yes right like if we say it's for this thing they're like okay you know i'll go ahead and move forward and we can have different payment plans for folks so there are a lot of options that we can put on the table for next year to offer family from a parent who has a child in this exact situation here i would definitely we will take that into consideration as we plan the budget for that white one here thank you thank you thank
022you everybody appreciate that okay welcome to introduce our next team are you gonna go first stephanie yes so dr beam and dr huddleston's team have collaborated to give the board a media update on kind of where we are with all of our district improvement plan work and it's embedded in this will be an update on we are in progression with reviewing our social studies curriculum as well as what supports are in place for mental health and trusted districts so even though it is a general update we have specifically pulled out and identified those two areas because we do those work into the course so i'm going to pass it over to dr beam um just get us started yes well thank you all right so as you you are definitely familiar with our framework for
023equitable outcomes which includes our three pillars of advancing racial equity accelerating student learning and building and sustaining a positive culture and climate and so we will be reporting out on that tonight we have shared with you some guiding questions and a no catcher if you would like to jot some this down during the presentation about what do you notice what do you wonder what surprises you and as we look at our data our major data what does the data suggest so and what you have are uh we didn't give you copies of the actual presentation but you have their reports um and their presentations are just going to be a highlight of what's in the report as well as the data so you'll have two reports and then some attached data for that one and
024then the notepad repeatedly as you go do they have electronic copy of the reports as well uh not yet okay let's share those with you but i did include links in the report okay so for my pillar that my my department not my pillar but they're just that my respon my uh department is responsible for accelerating student learning we did you may remember have created some district priority initiatives that we hope that we plan to achieve in the next five years and that is that we are committed to accelerating student learning by focusing on effective teaching and learning practices that align with our instructional framework five years our five-year long-term goals are that by 2026 we will eliminate the disproportionate outcomes that are predicted by race we will all of our students will meet or
025exceed their growth scores and then our students will exemplify the graduate profile so the instructional core of our instructional framework is our students our standards and our teachers and we know looking at our data that we have got to focus on our standards by focusing on our standards we know that we can identify that we purposely and relentlessly focus on that instructional poor that we can change the predictive power thank you the predictive power of the demographics in regards to student achievement we need to focus purposely on our state standards through the lens of our ib and our el framework and provide our students with those tools of power so that they can be academically successful and ready for college and career when they leave csu so this is our major achievement data and what
026we are seeing here is the percent of students at or above grade level in mathematics broken out by race from kindergarten through eighth grade this is our map data uh based on growth from i'm sorry this is their major achievement that was taken in december so these are students that are at our above proficiency clear this is what you're saying these bars are going to equal one another by 20.6 yep so it would be great to know what they're going to do next year the year after and the year after that as well so we can track it as we go along and and the five-year plan is that is in the framework for equitable outcomes so our district improvement plan is divided and so we have been working on the major review to see
027where we are with everything what we need to adjust as we go into planning for as we are planning for next year now when did we start this process when we put this in place um this is 2021 this is our five-year plan so this is a year or so in so far i guess that's my question we're half a year so but wait the 21 or 22 years so it's kind of so there's like covey kind of interrupted our progress on this sure so we have launched our framework for everything for students the year has started so with that fall it could delay them basically those kind of costing so this framework was launched so then what we've been doing over the summer is because they looked at their five-year plan made adjustments so
028now we're really back on track with collecting data we didn't have good administration of that last year either because some kids were virtual some are in school so we really took this summer to do a deep dive into what our current plan is what the five-year goals and what the five-year activities were and then we're you know halfway through the first year so reporting out on where we are data-wise and steps within them you can kind of think of this as a baseline and so here is the same or here's the data in reading broken out in the same fashion so where we have some areas to celebrate is in our growth data so when we look at our student growth you can see that about 50 percent of our students district wise are meeting
029or exceeding their gross targets you can see that there was an increase in 2021 and nwea does say that that is the baseline if you are meeting the 50 then you are doing well um i don't feel that way so um there is really our our growth target the student's first target is based on a comparison of like students every student with intentional instruction based on standards can meet that growth target and we currently um like i said do have reason to celebrate we have classrooms throughout the district that are 80 90 and we have one teacher one 100 of her students are meeting their growth target so it is achievable um it's not easy it takes intentional you know examination of the data intentional teaching of the standards using high quality resources but we
030can do it we just you know with us all working together but it's also worth pointing out on this slide just so it's not missed is that even it looks like actually being able to so that i would call that good news yes yes and so um the one thing i do want to point out about the growth when we talk about accelerating student learning when we look at the growth compared to our achievement we know that we can see that the what is happening as our black students are with us that the that is that achievement is declining and even if they you know if a student starts out below grade level and don't meet that doesn't meet that growth target then they are going to have a bigger gap the following year so
031the only way we can close that gap is to increase that growth so these students the students that are below grade level need to achieve more than a year's growth so we talk about accelerating that student learning we have really got to intervene to ensure that they are really getting up to grade level because and that's why we are focused so diligently on the k2s to make sure that those gaps don't get bigger and so that we are setting students up with a strong foundation especially in reading and the conceptual understanding of mathematics so this is our math growth for this year and this is our reading growth for this year now i would like to point out something we saw that in achievement we did see a higher level of achievement so if we
032look at for example our kindergartners come in coming in at 75 readiness this one is not as good news right this is we're looking at right what we saw when we looked at the quadrant it was interesting that the majority of our black students were in the high achievement slow growth in reading which was the opposite than it was in math where it was low achievement high growth and so where we want all of our students is to be high achievement high growth and so that's what we're working on with the quadrant um again it's not a a huge discrepancy as far as the growth but what we need to see is that red line above the green line so we can close this those gaps that we're seeing in achievement okay so in order
033to meet our goals we have focused on five priority initiatives to achieve this vision of the high quality rigorous education for all of our students at the core of the initiative our standards align grade appropriate culturally relevant collection of curricular materials at that csb um will provide educators at all grade levels and subjects to be able to utilize to ensure that our students meet their goals when teachers lack resources that they need they head online to supplement and piece together curriculum but the uneven quality of online resources and the disconnect between online resources and the educational standards can contribute to the inequities and inequities and access and performance that we see across the district and so studies have shown that improving the quality of curriculum is about 40 times more cost effective than class size
034reductions so additionally without accepting without the access to high quality curriculum teachers end up spending about 7 to 12 hours a week searching for teaching materials and that takes time away from the time they're spending on how they're going to deliver that instruction to differentiate for their this is also confirmed by our by our teacher exit interviews here in csd and thus that's a factor that both contributes to student achievement and teacher retention so reducing the variability reducing the variability of these resources means that students in every classroom across the district will have access to high-level vetted research-based materials and resources and while the school that educators will will of course have the autonomy to implement their own lessons this initiative will ensure that our schools are guaranteeing access to the high quality culturally responsive
035curriculum that's the basis of instruction how do we measure that how do we determine that we are actually successful at doing that uh so we measured obviously by student achievement by student growth and then also which we have broken down by classroom so that our principals have that data so they can um you know what we want to do one of our goals in the district improvement plan is identifying teachers that are successful with all of our students these teachers that are really making these high gains and so we want to see what are they doing that may be different from other classrooms so that we can build on those skills and build on our strengths so we measure it through achievement and growth we also measure it through walk-through data we have a csv
036walkthrough tool and then of course the state of georgia teacher you know evaluation system and so through that we can see if these highly effective these high leverage practices are being implemented in the classroom so our students goal setting are the learning targets accessible to the students do the students understand um what they are supposed to be learning is it being measured are the teachers assessing and adjusting instruction based on um what you know what what their interactions with the teachers and the walkthrough tool also presumably were it's a sort of like a mini audit i guess of the classroom or where you're actually looking at materials that are in the classroom making sure that the teacher isn't bringing in unapproved curriculum is that what you're just trying to understand exactly what you mean when
037you when you're when you're talking about measuring that the teacher is teaching according to the curriculum that we're putting in um so yes the walkthrough tool does look at you know what is being taught the lesson plans are where i think where you would see what the materials are and now we don't i mean that just we don't tell teachers they can't bring in supplemental materials um what what the goal of my department is is to provide them with those high high quality materials so they don't have to go out and find supplemental materials of course they are welcome to you know bring in relevant things but you know that's where is the lesson standards aligned and that's going to come in you know if we're providing them with good quality materials they're not going
038to have to go out and find them okay okay actually what are some examples of some high quality curriculum or resources that you all have this school year yeah so this school year so you know historically or at least over the last few years decatur has had a very school school specific model so schools and teachers have had the autonomy to select what materials they want which sounds lovely except for as we're talking about that can lead to inequities that can lead to teachers having to spend all of their time looking for things so we have um adopted this year we have started implementing the american reading company core curriculum at k5 and that is in all of our k5 classrooms and that is a complete package that has um all of our classroom libraries
039have been replaced and we have gotten some good feedback on that we are one of the reasons that american reading company was selected was through the nyu um culturally responsive scorecard is one of the tools that we use to select our curriculum through that process and what it asks is things such as who are you seeing in the literature are we seeing students of color are we seeing women um in non-stereotypical roles are we seeing um you know who who is the author are we only seeing authors that are white men or are we seeing different perspectives so that was that was a tool that was used so one of the reasons that they were selected or one of the primary reasons they were selected is they have a strong equity statement that matches our
040goals and values another reason is the level of rigor that they introduce in the classroom and so that's very important so also it aligns with our ib and el framework because it is an inquiry-based unit of study so we adopted two units this year and next year we will add the other two units so every k5 classroom we are supporting implementation of the american reading company curriculum in addition to that it has an assessment that goes along with it called the erla it's the independent reading level assessment and that is an ongoing assessment teachers are required to report it out three times a year but we can go in and we have a database where teachers are conferencing the expectation for most students is every two weeks so in their small group reading instruction they
041are constantly doing formative assessments with students the really nice thing about the erla as opposed to other assessments that we have used previously is it also gives teachers the next steps and the next move that they can make with those students based on the um test results so in their small group they might be working on blends whereas this group might need to be working on phonemic awareness or you know what have you and so there's different steps that might need to be taken with different students so it provides those teachers with the resources with the staff so again it's very strategic and intentional with how they're working with the students another resource that we've provided to all teachers is fun in k through 3 is fundation which is a structured phonics that's based on
042orton gillingham multi-sensory instruction and so every classroom in k grades k through 3 is implementing 30 minutes a day of structured phonics and so the way that those two fit together is we have the whole group structure phonics and then the erla gives teachers the next steps to work with you know differentiate for students in small groups so those are two of them um also going into well this year we have provided all teachers with training on georgia numeracy project which isn't it's not necessarily a resource but it provides the resources and it's also an assessment that tells you the level but it's a it's very different than most most math assessments because it's it's a conversation with the child so you understand you get a glimpse into the child's conceptual understanding and then again
043it kind of tells you the next move to make to allow for differentiation we're tracking the teachers that are actually implementing or using these is there a way to get some sort of percentage readout on how many are or i mean presumably we want to get to a point where everybody is doing that right yeah so we track the um we can see when a teacher enters erla data into the system so we know how often they have met with the students and so we can see the students growth on a ongoing basis and so we are working on that i know some schools not all teachers are used to having it on the computer we i don't know elementary teachers but the old running record you usually keep them in your so getting it
044into the computer as has been a report or something that the schools have reported that they're like we swear we're doing it but it's not always getting in there so we're really working with the schools that it's really important that we keep this data in here and that it's current and updated so and this is an implementation here for that like that we're only doing half of the units that they've provided so that our teachers can learn the process understand what the materials are and this is part of the outcome of our program evaluation so they did the program evaluation last year they adopted a curriculum they've highlighted it in some schools this year is half like the beginning implementation next year's full of implementation and then as we go through the program evaluation process
045we adopt new curriculum and resources to support what the needs are identified from the program evaluation process and i just my the source of my question is i'm not an expert on the curriculum so i'm not going to be able to get the weeds on that but from a just an accountability standpoint as we're talking about implementation and rolling something out it would be good to know how successful have we been is it at thirty percent of the classrooms or is it fifty percent are we we wanted to be in eighty percent but we only got the 65 like i mean that's where i'm talking about like how do we look and are we successful as we're doing it yeah so it is being implemented in every classroom it's the level of fidelity which is
046being implemented that we're working on so the way that we measure that is one which teachers do we see that the students have the data and so we um check that regularly and we let the schools know like hey you know your teachers 80 of your teachers have inner data in the last two weeks or what have you and so we send those reports out we also work with the american reading company consultants who come in once a month and they do job embedded in the classroom training with our teachers so we are always visiting the classrooms and we have a little walkthrough tool and we say what do we see do we see it i just go in and i'm like check check check no i'm not seeing it you know what we need
047to do do a better job of supporting with implementation of this or or whatever we see so i see teachers saying like i said um you know what i'm doing it but i just don't have time to enter in the computer well there's ways you can do it at the same time but maybe they're not comfortable with that so that's something we are working on and supporting with um from the implementation we know that we need to um increase them the coaches that's what they're called the consultants the coaches being in the building and in the classroom let me know if i could ask it this way because i appreciate the level of detail that you're going into and the level of work and i think that it's it's not really our job to get
048into that level of detail right with you like that's not we're not trying to day-to-day check it i guess i would ask the answer doesn't have to come here but if you guys were to step back and say what is the right thing for the board to look at on a monthly basis tracking this what is the right level of information for them to get to be able to say we're on track we're not on track we need to pay attention whatever that may be i'm just looking for what that may be again i you know i don't want to put anybody on the spot try to answer that right now but i would be interested in understanding what you guys think that should be so that we can begin tracking i would actually say
049like a quarterly update would probably be a little bit better update but yeah that is something as her department is implementing and taking this um initial pilot off the ground and something that they're gathering the data on they i don't know that they put it in a formal presentation for us but it is something so the company has actually started providing us with they're called insight reports and so they break them down by demographics on a monthly basis and send them to us as far as the student growth in reading on the erla again if the data is not input we're not getting accurate data so we're working on making sure the data is input and they're providing those reports so i can certainly provide those to you as well as so we believe in
050a collaborative model and so as such we've enlisted teacher leaders and coaches and school leaders to work with us on developing common pacing units and assessments across the district the math the district math team continues to meet once a month as we've done two years now and we are moving forward with recommendations on the csv math action plan this year we've reviewed the k5 curriculum materials examined data and policies around math acceleration and we're working on professional learning plan that focuses on differentiation additionally we've worked with coaches and teacher leaders to create common pacing guides for k-5 and parallel to the math work we are working diligently with the schools on implementation of our common pacing guides in ela in conjunction with the implementation of arkham foundations that i've already mentioned in world languages we
051are in a review cycle as well and so 612 have worked together for several years to create consistency across the program so that spanish one whether it's at renfro or spanish one at vhs is a consistent course um we only offer obviously spanish k-12 so we are really focused in on that more mature program of the spanish evaluation this year rather than our french and german and latin programs that we also have but we are doing that review that deep dive into k-12 spanish this year we have also started working with our pe music and media specialists and those teachers are working collaboratively for the first time and in recent memory they are having k-12 uh alignment meetings and we've created time and space for them to create grade level expectations benchmarks at each grade
052level review common resources for each school and create a more cohesive program for our students across the district okay so these are some of the things that we have implemented this year our math and ela teachers are collaborating consistently throughout the year creating common pacing guides our k2 i have just been it's been such a great experience to work with them um and bring those coaches together and bring those leaders together and see the collaborative work that's coming out of that and this year we've worked on again the standards-based tasks as resources providing those for our schools as a secondary level teachers continue to use collaborative planning time to create common pacing guides and identify common standards of aligned resources and i think i've already mentioned the instructional resources but the art curriculum the foundations
053the district math and and reading paper guides the units of inquiry of course with rib and our expedition in the 2-2 and tier 3 monitoring i remember that from the rit teachers the platform for progress monitoring and uh schools being created in addition to infinite campus and things like that and so what if you are considering um as a common platform that that could be a source of frustration sometimes absolutely and we it has been um definitely a challenge for us on the district level to monitor that because schools are using different tools and not all of the tools even have a consistent digital platform so um we have found that really in order to deeply monitor that um we have to go into each to independent campus into each student's plan pull up the
054plan and look at the data within the plan so you're talking about hundreds of students and having to go into pbs and that is just not um at all efficient or effective and so we definitely want to have that common platform many of our schools are now using aims web at renfrow they're using read 180 and star as our progress monitoring tools and so what we are looking at now we've been exploring we've been meeting as a collaborative team up here with dr huddleston's team and miss holstein and there's a new platform out through this by the state that we're looking at they've had go iot for a while with our students with um individual education plans but now we are looking at they have a go mtss and so we are about to review
055that platform and so it may be that one but we will have a decision uh the plan is by april 1st you know we've been getting feedback from our eip and our rit teachers this year you know what's working and what's not and what is the best tool to use so that next year we will have a common online platform so that we can help you know monitor and see the student growth as well and then the important piece of that is students that aren't seeing the growth that we would expect to see in those interventions how can we help to um shorten it up or do we need to provide more support so that we don't have students going you know 12 weeks six months without seeing the growth that we would anticipate but
056this year we did provide all the schools with a simplified assessment plan because we that universal screening is very important so that we are identifying students that need additional support or enrichment right away to maximize interventions we added 11 new intervention teachers across the district and that's to address any gaps that we are seeing and allow for more consistent ratios across the district math testing is being consistently implemented and it was it was well overnight i was over 95 percent of students at k-8 did take the fall and winter map and so we also purchased some special reports um which the coaches and principals reported were very beneficial i found them very beneficial time to give that better analysis and be able to use that data because that's the important part is to be able
057to adjust our instruction based on what we're seeing the mtss team has reviewed as i mentioned and audited all of the academic intervention plans and determined that progress tournament determined the student progress towards grade level performance they hold regular meetings with the mtss leads at each school to review school data determine next steps and problem solve areas of improvement we've implemented extended day tutoring intervention saturday school program and established or expanded k-12 extended day tutoring to support all of our students to reach grade level proficiency and we continue to take part as one of six districts throughout the state of georgia that is coming out of senate bill 48 that will go into effect in 2024 and requiring that all districts assess the and identify characteristics of dyslexia by those interventions in the work we've
058accomplished so far we have created a systematic plan for screening all students in grades k through three to identify characteristics of dyslexia the pilot requires that we provide interventions for students and that are identified with those characteristics one of our district priorities is to create that guaranteed and viable curriculum for all students so we've already gone beyond the requirements of 2024 we are in our second year of implementing the requirements and we have made the conscious decision to screen all students so the law only requires the screen students that may have care you know that that we've identified as a need for intervention but we have taken the next step to screen all of our students that provides us with the explicit instruction or we can provide all of our students with the explicit instruction
059of structured phonics we have trained um all of our k-3 teachers in wilson's foundation and in addition to that we have had a number of teachers that have gone through this 70 hour og certification they have taken two weeks of their summer full-time we have a cohort of teachers that are now coming on saturdays to do that training so that has just been awesome and so you know there's not a one-size-fits-all approach for students and so we want to be sure that we have that strong tier one approach but that we're also layering on those interventions um we also have a group of teachers that are doing the science of reading through letters program including myself all right and so then to embed the practices in every classroom as i mentioned that nyu culturally responsive
060curriculum scorecard is definitely one of the foundations that we use and that really did once we narrowed the curriculum down to uh that really made the difference because when we looked at the you could two see um american reading companies expected we could see on those non-stereotypical depictions of um people and just you know the things that we wanted to see also things the way that they approach things as far as the um for example teaching setting it's not just about time and place they talked in first grade about social setting and cultural settings so we're just you know trying to um embed those values in all of our classrooms and then in collaboration with dr banks and our equity department we have done an informal review of our social studies resources and we are
061providing students or our teachers with an accurate and appropriate list of resources to be used as well as deeper training we worked with our eighth grade teachers last year and we are going to do some more work with our seventh grade teachers this summer is there a particular program or some rubric that we're following to to sort that piece out so we developed an internal plan we're not in a program review for social studies but because there was a need based on some some things that we have seen and heard that we developed an informal process and what we did was we collected we asked the tools for what are your primary resources what are you using to teach social studies and then we have put them together in a list and we're kind of
062in the final stages right now where we're going to ask our we've done an internal review and we're going to ask our we're going to put it back to our slts and ask them to provide us some um people to take a uh more of an outside non-educational lens and see if they see um things that are problematic or is um what would it take to put social studies into a program review um we would need to prioritize that or have more people to do that i mean it's quite time consuming you know to dig through the um curriculum and to vet the curriculum and to create the pacing guide and that's not a criticism of the work that's been done i think it's obviously a reasonable first step to do an informal review but
063i would be i mean i'm one person on the board right but i would be interested in understanding the budget impact for doing a formal a proper program review such as and have that as an option for us to trade off on other budget the priorities does the formal review come when it's up for evaluation yeah and so and that uh happens when consoles say um i believe it's you're not just coming up school year but the next year is the collective study year and then the following year the three year cycle i think it is it's here is our cycle that we use i think what would be helpful too to hear from on instagram since you've raised this question a couple times is what are your specific concerns about our current social studies
064content resources we have to follow the state curriculum that's some non-negotiable um so it's with the resources that we're using to teach that and i think you know the informal process has really helped us identify what resources we're using has given us some supportive resources and i think debunking the process would create a pretty big disruption to what we currently have in the works for our math review which is in process right now so it would either put the breaks on that and stop that process or we'd have to hire additional staff to move forward on that process my my suggestion is not to blow up what we're already doing right so i want to be clear on that this is this is something that that i think is probably incremental if we were to
065do both and not either or uh i mean i i think it's probably best said by what dr beam just said that we've obviously noticed enough of an issue that we actually began our own informal review and if that is the case why would we not i mean it is um again not speaking as someone that's an expert on curriculum but it it feels to me fairly straightforward that that decolonizing something like math is a little bit more straightforward than grappling with the ramifications of how history has historically been fought especially in light of all the builds that we see going forward right and so i would want very much to be in front of that rather than behind that and prevent it from doing something like that in three years as opposed to having
066a free reign to do it next year uh i'd rather us accelerate the social studies and that's what i'm asking is what would that take now if it's 42 million dollars and you know obviously that's gonna be great but but i would i personally would like to be able to vet that against other budget priorities let's take a different fastest one just after being has um found where we would when we would be reevaluating the social studies yeah so we we are on so we have a three year or three to five year cycle where we collect and study we plan then we implement and we're an implement and monitor for three years so right now we are we've wrapped up the k5 pla and we are in the implement and monitor for k-5 ela
067this year we are in the collect and study process for k-12 world language and the ela 612 and then the plan for math and the next year is supposed to be science um career tech and instructional frameworks and you know that's we've started that a little bit with the presentation that you just saw and so then the following year 2324 is where social he started this this presentation out looking specifically at the metric of phrase and how there's a huge a huge performance gap between a black child and their wife's counterpart and by the time they get to renpro that gap is huge and when we get those school principal reports you can see that it's across every school so every school every elementary school and i think these are all great ideas what i
068that it sounds like the variable or the factor we're looking at is how does how does the element of race disparity which has been an issue for a decatur for years decades so if we don't quite know what the problem is and we can't quite figure out what the variable is that we want to correct for then we're not going it's going to continue to persist and i find that every time i see that data i get a little nauseated and i i what i don't understand is how these practices are going to look at that factor specifically and maybe it's not because again i'm not a person but i think all of these things will will raise the bar for the entire district every child will benefit from culturally responsive curricula books that don't
069have stereotypes books by black authors but how is that how did how what is your theory or your hypothesis about why this continues especially in math by the time kids get to upper elementary and middle school those that math data is just striking and if we don't know we need to say we don't know because that's where we need to go back and start is why does this persist um because all of these things seem like they would benefit every child black white asian multi-racial but we've got a problem here with our black children underperforming their white counterparts whether they are no matter where they go to school no matter where they live no matter what their social economic status is there's that to me is the most striking and that's where i'm getting lost
070here so i personally i believe it's because we have lost our intentional focus on teaching state standards um i think we focus in very high level practices of related to our frameworks but we need to get back to teaching focusing intentionally on our standards and what our data is telling us and so if you think about the students that are going to um not who are going to be most impacted by a lack of intentional standards being taught in the classroom it's going to be students that might be from immigrant families or students that may not learn those standards at home if you are traveling if you are you know providing rich experiences for your students in the home as many of our affluent families as black and white do then our students are going
071to achieve at higher levels but if not then that is where our classroom instruction must serve and that's why she started with talking about the instructional core and really leaning in to focus on our instructional score as dr beam just shared there is no alignment of teaching the standards of consistently and pervasively across the district some teachers do some teachers don't some teachers pull in a live material some teachers don't some teachers assess regularly and give feedback and some teachers don't so creating this intentional really aligned focus on making sure our teachers are teaching the standards assessing the standard reporting out on the standards is not happening on a consistent basis across the school district and until we can get a hundred percent of our teachers being able to say this assessment test is showing
072progress on this standard and i've given the students feedback and now i've provided this intervention or provided this extension based on where the student's performing we're never going to see the needle move so we've really got to take this step to focus in on the intentionality of our teachers focusing on the core content that is provided to us from the state whether it's great content or not that's what students are being measured on and that's what's getting them accepted or not accepted into colleges so we've got to use what we have so that we can give every student an equal footing and until we've brought it back to that basic piece and i can say being in classrooms and studying in classrooms and giving you know having substitute lessons where i'm like i know this
073is not part of the content why am i wasting a day of instruction with kids on something that's not even part of the content that they're going to get assessed on i mean i've spent days covering classes and i'm like this is not possible this is this is a fun activity this is great but this is not teaching the students the content that they need to master to show success so we've got to focus in on that core and that's why she has spent so much time really drilling into what are these calendars how are we assessing the standards and the other huge component with this is grading we're going to get into that a little bit more once mary comes up and i think we've got some information on that as well if we
074grade on these iv rubrics at the middle school and high school level that's where we're seeing this huge discrepancy as well on how students are progressing on the standards because we're no longer assessing the state standards we're assessing ib standards until we pull back and assess on the actual standards that the students are supposed to be responsible for we're totally missing the target we closed our eyes we tied our hands behind our back and we are trying to hit a target that we have no and we've got fun around we have no idea where we're headed so that's that core piece that we've got to focus on that's good i think the question though is that does a good job of improving the curriculum for the business but when we go back and it is
075a discrepancy and it does have an indicator but it is happening lots of places we're in charging state when i look at this graph six and seven i'm an educator and i see there are 16 [Music] american second graders who are beginning predicted to be beginning on the end of the year right and six like 22. what are we doing because you said something i find very non-controversial as educators that it is much harder to catch up it is like that kindergarten and you and i have had the conversation years ago so the most frustrating thing about decatur is little susie shows up and she's reading on a fifth grade level and now you're teaching a kindergarten class you got the fifth grade students like anyone have a question about that she's like yes that's
076an automobile and you're like holy crap this kid doesn't know what the letter a is right and and so the court does that doesn't do anything for those 22 because if the teacher that they're not teaching the court those students are outside getting totally worried information and all the standards and they've got access to steering from their expert you know people that they're paying so much per hour those other students aren't getting it so school and intercession resources but they're trying to make up in four days what this child has missed over nine years exactly it's nearly impossible because it's just seconds and i think you saw charles beginning this day and one is just as bad i think the important piece of the tour is right here that's awesome with that discrepancy it is
077something we are doing in the classroom and let me be clear it is not our teacher they are doing a great job and they are trying really hard but what are the expectations what have we provided them as a district and i i haven't been here long enough to say when did we move away from providing you know standardized curriculum to our teachers when did we when did we stop providing all those things i don't know but i just know we need to get back to providing that and if we look at other districts um in georgia yes disproportionate outcomes exist in in many places it is a national problem but not to the extent that it exists here and the other piece is continuously monitoring progress over time and that is a huge area
078of deficiency in this district just asking principals for a monthly report on achievement was like asking people to to raise the titanic out of the bottom of the ocean there was so there was a lot of pushback not just from principles more so from teachers on why are we doing this why is some culture here that we've got to change and until we can regularly monitor student progress over time based on the standard we are able to get grab those 25 percent of those black students in kindergarten and say two weeks into school you need additional interventions because we don't report progress until six weeks most of the time that first week six report progress is are you coming to school prepared right i think to um i mean you know i don't want to
079keep it to the test um right um but i think cannot overlook the need for culturally competent teaching um and because you can have a teacher who she's teaching those core things and if she's not connecting with that student then it's not gonna it's not gonna mean anything and so um we do have the benefit of having some wonderful teachers here at csd but i think that they're definitely opportunities because that's the pattern that i see and that i saw when i was at the middle school is that you know when you come there you're right now has been there some the expectations can sometimes drop no um in those the conversations sometimes happen in those matriculation meetings um and so um you know i don't think there's like one thing like that you know
080that's gonna split this um but then there has to be a multitasking approach to trying to um close achieve that gap and um so you know teaching to the core probably a part of it but you know i think we still have to um you know bring our teachers to being at a point where they are as culturally competent and you know you don't have to know like everything about every culture but just be willing to say hey you know how was the game last night you know things like that that make all the difference well and let me clear that ib and el offer you know our frameworks offer us the opportunity to teach those standards from that lens of being of multiple perspectives of being international minded and being caring and compassionate and
081persevering and all of those things so so those those are super important the way that we teach because we don't want to teach you know eurocentric standards from just a eurocentric perspective we want to provide all of those lenses but we do have to get back to um you know the the core business of our our of teaching and learning and we also like you said we have to do it from we have to incorporate all the things our students have to feel safe in the classroom we have to incorporate um social emotional learning we have to incorporate culturally responsive teaching practices we have to help our our teachers recognize their own biases and things like that so all of these things are important um but but there also is initiative fatigue so we have
082to get back to like we have to reduce the initiative we have to work together we we in this building have been trying our best because they're not all different things they're all one thing of increasing student achievement achievement and success and so how do we do that together so it's not ourselves like multiples i think like james said this is not a problem that's isolated to decatur a it's a national issue and i think you know although like i said our numbers are fairly striking um but you know we also have to go back and kind of like instead of look at biases and grading uh biases and or subjective things like separate grades and then priorities in these tests you know like some of them is it is just as simple as a
083test they're putting in front of the child and while that's not something you can change it is something like i said that we can focus in on because if we don't know what the problem is here we're gonna like if we're gonna keep spinning our wheels and the issue is because we're trying to correct one thing and that's one variable only and so i think i mentioned this earlier but what we're putting when we're talking about the results with the students that is a lagging indicator that's happening well after the changes that you've made i i would like to know what the leading indicator is that we need to be holding specifically you accountable for on that right and so you think whether it's 100 of the teachers are compliant with the standards that we
084put out or what like whatever you tell us the right leading indicator is of that i think we need to be able to see something yeah on that i know we try to cover so much tonight i'm only the first party [Music] thursday and talk about strategic plans um it will help a lot guide us a lot in terms of how we prioritize things um and just from our pre-planning yesterday that became very clear commitment so i think that um your questions are very valid and we will be able to address that because these things should line up with our strategics yep well i can't and i may have misunderstood what you said but you know typically in a school level it changed real sustained six three to five years and so i could you
085know hopefully we can not hopefully but we're gonna do that on a district level in five years so you know we are in really the beginning implementation stages of trying to i guess my response to that though is that this is hardly the first five year window of time where we said we're going to impact this right and so what i definitely don't want is five years from now and the numbers look the same for us to be saying so that's where yeah yeah so last is looking at these policies programs and procedures that we have in place and one of those that we have been diligently working on this year is that grading team how are we assessing our students and so we do have an equity and grading task force that has been
086meeting twice a month that is a group of primarily teachers and some um people that are meeting we incorporate our principles through admin counsel and we incorporate our coaches feedback in those in our coaches meetings as well so we have been reading the book um equity or grading for equity by joe feldman and looking kind of analyzing that in comparison to our um current practices and so we formed in the fall we have 17 teachers representing all grade bands over demographics and experiences task force does meet twice a month and has to date we've read and discussed the book and we have surveyed rating practices and systems from other georgia districts we've reviewed the georgia rules and requirements and the ib requirements for grading we have reviewed student feedback from listening sessions of upgrading from
087the superintendent's student advisory committee from renfrow and decatur high school we have held focus groups for feedback with additional teachers at each grade band and drafted an initial big picture recommendation in regards to the grading system and platform gaining feedback on these recommendations from teachers administrators instructional coaches and now we are currently drafting the recommendation for policy practices and procedures that will be finalized and shared in march for one final round of feedback from all of our teenagers and administrators to finalize the recommendations for the superintendent and the board in april so we have also expanded our opportunities for our students often our um students and with specialized programming as we've discussed before in indicator or virtual academy we have seen some dramatic improvements in second semester that we have been very pleased with we've
088been able to serve um even though it is a small group of students there are a variety of reasons that they cannot intend for one person we currently have 66 students enrolled these students are a wide range of learning needs special education gifted limited english proficiency we have students that can we'll do to physical or mental health reasons pregnancy family crisis disciplinary issues and a wide range of other individual needs it is a very tailored program for some you know students that need that have some needs outside of the school building so i'll just end with the fact that there was a recent study it was called breaking down barriers to social mobility and it was conducted by the organization for economic cooperation and development and it states that the most impressive outcomes of world-class
089school systems is that they deliver high quality education across the entire system so that every student benefits from excellent teaching achieving greater equity in education is not only a social justice imperative but it's also a way to use resources more efficiently and effectively and increase the supply of knowledge and skills that fuel economic growth and promote promote social cohesion so not not least how we treat our most vulnerable students shows who we are as a society so given the right resources and tools i do firmly believe that each and every student indicator can achieve as long as all of our stakeholders are moving in all of the same direction so that is um thank you so much good evening everyone um we're going to move into discussion of the other two pillars starting with advancing
090racial equity so in terms of advancing racial equity our overarching goal is to eliminate racial inequities across all indicators so the things that you've already seen in terms of the academic data as well as other things that you'll see in other reports like course completion you can get that at the end of the year and things of that nature so when equity you're going to see it see it in activity be it in graduation rates program participation and post-secondary outcomes um so tonight we will review some of the work that the equity department has initiated to facilitate or to influence the outcomes that we want to see so as dr banks so eloquently described at the beginning of the year report we are focusing on three areas we're looking at being able to normalize conversations
091about race organize our work and operationalize our policies so there you see advancing racial equity and the equity action plan there together and that's just to emphasize the fact that the equity action plan is actually embedded in this pillar of the district improvement plan for those of you who were on the board before you know we had a separate equity action plan and report and we still have that information to give us the subsequent years but um the current year is integrated so that we are tracking that one document so we'll start out with normalized and efforts in the normalized component of our work are focused on activities that emphasize cultural humility which i'm sure you're familiar with by now we've talked about it quite a bit but it's the lifelong process of self-reflection and
092self-critique whereby an individual learns about one's own culture the culture of others and really examines their own beliefs and it's really an ongoing process it's not something that we check off and say we're culturally competent and it's done it's an ongoing thing that you're working on so as we reported earlier this year over of our certified staff have completed beyond diversity um over this past year past couple of years beyond diversity hasn't been offered we've had another program offered by the same organization courageous conversation but it is a virtual courageous experience it's somewhat different from what you experienced for those of you who that who were at the tuesday training but we've offered that two times this year and we've had 78 staff members complete it and we have we're constantly offering it because we
093have new people coming in so we're getting those certified numbers up and we're now working through our classified staff so in terms of our district-wide district-wide racial affinity group we have monthly meetings that are um racial affinity groups we have white racial infiniti groups and african american or black racial affinity groups and some of the things that these groups are working on in addition to our wilson center equity team and our district estimating team we're working on building the use of protocol so we started off the first few years making sure we all had a common language well now we are actually practicing how do i implement this in my setting how do i implement this with my teachers how do i implement this with my parents my students whoever your stakeholders are it's also
094a place where we're able to provide resources for the team's professional development and share successes and lessons learned so you have the benefit of seeing the monthly equity reports from all of the schools this gives us an opportunity to come together as a group and really discuss what has worked you know learning from one another and being able to make sure that we are able to institutionalize some of those things that have been very positive over the years um also these teams submit a monthly check-in form to dr banks and this form allows our department to be able to know when additional assistance is needed and um to be able to provide updates as we go along so um in terms of student anti-racism groups um we have proposed in the past that we would
095do for the soar and that was through courageous conversation um so that is actually on pause at the moment there are a few things that we mentioned at the beginning of the year that we needed to pause to be able to address some of the other gaps and and initiatives that we were doing with um due to coping so but we do have some groups that are moving forward and even expanding so the asian american pacific islander sidekick program is a mentorship program where students from the high school married yep the high school go over and they work with students at glenwood and so they have that connection and then we have young ladies of excellence and jess and we are expanding those programs working to expand those throughout the district so you will remember
096from a couple of years ago on the board we had a proposal to have groups well they're wonderful groups already started and some of those leaders have stepped up and said hey we will help pull in other people and expand the programs that are already there so we're using that funding to be able to support these groups and expansions so as far as the equity the training was completed in early july for the people who would be instructors for that facilitating the equity and right now um teachers have started to roll out those lessons during five minutes so next we'll jump into organize and so here a couple of those critical initiatives really talking about relevant teaching and the importance of that all we've i've talked with my team and with everybody on cabinet about
097how these are three pillars that we're presenting but all of these things were candid we have to have the standards and you know have the right content and then the way that it's being taught is crucial and that's the work of the do for culturally responsive education framework so we have had an opportunity to have the framework introduced to district leaders through the superintendent staff meeting school-based administrators have taken a deep dive into this framework and we've had selected schools who've said hey i know that we said we were going to pause on this but we need it now please give us some information and so we have started to to work with other individuals to make sure that they have the information they need to begin the work with culturally responsive education um i
098also wanted to talk a little bit about the suspension prevention task force um it's listed here because they're our department it also has a big influence on the culture as well so the suspension prevention committee was organized this year and it basically brings together administrators from each school from the district level and the purpose of this group is to really learn about and to begin to implement develop some alternatives to suspension um so here so this group meets um the whole group meets monthly but then there are also subgroups for the schools that are working on the plant as well and they have a charge to really look at our code of conduct and come up with smart goals about how we will reduce disproportionate outcomes based on discipline by school by really looking at
099some of those alternatives to suspension so instead of that being sort of the go-to having practices in place and resources ready so that you can give an instructive alternative something that's reflective and something that's restorative and one of the things we've come up with is we know that administrators are very much supportive of restorative practices and they've had the training it's important to have tools at the ready so that when things happen you don't have to start researching and looking for communities department organizations to partner with to be able to have that alternative to suspension so this this is a committee that i'm really excited about because it gives our administrators and our teachers tools that they can have um already ready to address any concerns that maybe one of the major differences is that
100um with pbis we focus a lot on prevention and a lot of the structure and you know 80 of the focus is on making sure you have those foundational practices in the classroom and with this committee we're really charged with looking at what happens when you are faced with looking at the code of conduct because something has actually taken place and you want to be able to address whatever the issue is in a more restorative way so it's it's really about finding some some ways and having those tools and resources ready for when we get to that point um and it does work hand in hand with pbis they're it's interesting when you talk about all of these different task forces you know in many cases the same people were focused on different goals but
101some of the people who are on this team are also a part of pbis that bring in the pbis team to be able to give input and to tell us what the needs are as well so if there's something that needs to be changed in terms of a school-wide rule and it comes out you know over the course of this there's constant communication so it's nothing to to replace pbis it works and and they are using restorative practices so um one of the ways to try to sort of practice are embedded into the suspension prevention that's right that's right um so we have a couple of texts that dr banks shared with the whole committee and in one of those we focus on you know exactly what should that alternative to suspension look like and
102research suggests that if you make sure that you have at least two of two of these three components you have something that is reflective so the student might have to write a letter or might have to you know learn you know reflect on how this hurts somebody else and really bring in those social emotional learning skills the student would need to do something that's restorative so if something is broken they can repair it you know whatever their sort of thing is or it may be that their restorative action is bringing together a circle bringing together the people who are involved um so let's see it is reflective constructive what's the last one mary did i think i missed one oh okay reflective instructive and just restorative that's it so we've got to bring them back
103together so all of those things go together and so it's deeply embedded in it but i think one of the things we found when i started working here one of the first things i made sure we did was to have all of the counselors and administrators go through a two-day restorative practices training and so it's great to get that first level of training but then you need to figure out how to put this into practice and so the work of this committee helps to put these things into practice and into context so that people are able to readily use these alternatives as quickly as they could use suspension in school or out i'll talk a little bit about the critical initiative it's under operationalize you've been introduced to the racial equity tool in the past
104and the equitable hiring tool so all of our leaders and hiring managers have been trained on these and we have an annual refresher on these tools every year and the next one the website and the equity concerns you can access all of that information on our website it has been completely redone it's filled with resources constantly updated with events related to equity and it is the place that one of the places that parents can go and students can go and access the form to share any concerns that they may have related to equity and one of the things that's outlined in our plan is to look at today we've had 10 reported and when these are reported those are investigated within 48 hours there's contact made and the investigation begins and it may be something
105that is handled at school level based on what is coming up or it may be something that we handle because parents or students could directly contact us and maybe they haven't contacted the school yet so when appropriate the school would handle those and then if we need to manage that process here that's something that we can do in our office let me ask really quickly um how do the students know how to report that the number 10 feels awfully low but i mean so i'm just curious like how do they know how to report that when it happens and how do they feel empowered to do so so there have been more reports than 10 in general and that's specifically about microaggressions and it's this link to be able to report this is on every
106school website it's something that school equity team members are familiar with and they're able to share that with students as well we get a lot of reports from staff members and from parents more reports i would say from staff members here and students so it may be an area that we can look at you know how can we amplify that so that's something that i'll take back to my team to look at making sure that that students are familiar just based on the number of reports we get all right we've already talked a bit tonight about decolonizing and what that process looks like a lot of the work that is being done around that in terms of the curriculum you know is being led by teaching and learning at this point and so part of
107that is really encompassing the grading and the um equity and education task force and there's um the social studies studies uh curriculum review task force that you also already heard about so dr banks you know and other members from enss have been involved at various levels and we support that we work collaboratively on that i'm going to ask actually as we're going through this on the how it's going how are we i know that we get each month in our packet we get for example uh some metrics around suspensions right kind of broken i think it would be interesting to see you know similar things around retention higher end percentages other you know other ways of actually measuring how we're doing on these particular metrics and i would put this dr permanent same button as
108my last set of questions what is the right sort of like overall set of things that we should be looking at to kind of track how we're doing that annually to the board in the um human resources annual report okay if you um i guess that makes sense to do it right yeah okay do we do i mean are we collecting things like exit interview data feedback and things like that and that all comes out of that report as well okay when does that come up uh we did it last year in just some this current school year in december um the hr team um has requested to move the month when they do their handling report because that's a really busy month for them um so i think with the board we set the
109calendar for when things fall on the agenda um she had some recommendations on which she wanted to present her annual report is there value in having something on that monthly basis just says currently how we're doing right like the percent of teachers of color in the class or whatever i mean it changes very little because of contracts so because we have people contracted for a whole year that's very little change over the school year which makes sense trying to think of ways to make it more top of mind than just a report once a year it's all interesting so i mean i don't want to take a ton of time up but that's kind of a top of mind so a lot of information from staff members about you know any of concerns even before
110an equity before an exit interview you know often we have a chance to get that information and intervene so that's a part of the equity concerns that we'll be able to work with that and if you look in your report on page five and stages five and six there are some of the other trainings that have been conducted and the last one listed there is really looking at racial trauma within the district for administrators so that as we received information about people's experiences in real time we were able to discuss those and so that administrators could address those i'll just through that to you too just to add to that really um it's been in our district equity teams um we can bring stuff like if we're hearing about an equity issue we could bring
111it up in a timely manner on our monthly meetings now we're going to jump into building and sustaining a positive culture and climate we'll have our goals here by 2026 we'll eliminate disproportionate discipline based on race students will have a positive trusting relationship with at least one adult in their school and we are looking to see increased engagement and belonging on our surveys and improve mental health and well-being that's the work that we're doing and you're going to hear some of the initiatives that we have put in place to influence these help quick question uh the top and the bottom i can see exactly how we're measuring it how do we do the second one how do we report out that we're successful that every student in our district has a trusted adult so on
112that one we have some information from the student health survey that gets them that question so it's right now it's once a year that we'll be able to capture that and we'll be looking at ways and every student takes that or that's a sampling of students every student grades three twelve three twelve and they answer this question okay great there actually is a specific question okay we have two measures how are we right now we didn't give the health survey last year so this is the first year we'll be giving the health survey um and i've got to look at what we did tripod last year but not district wide and i don't have that number of the time ahead it wasn't bad happy with what it was and the tripod survey will be administered
113next week so we will soon have it so these are the the areas that we'll be talking about in terms of looking at our multi-layered social emotional and behavioral support and i wanted to start off with this framework because all of our mental are implemented multi-tiered systems of support so you hear that a lot you hear about what we do at tier one for all students and what we do for students who need a little more intense intervention for tier two and then those who really may need some individualized attention and intervention at tier three that applies to all of the work that we do under this pillar through our mental health services and so forth so all right so in terms of the district improvement plan um this year we are collecting baseline data
114so we talked a little bit about the tripod administration that'll happen a week and it's grades three through twelve we'll do the student and teacher version this year there's a parent version um survey so that's how we will get that information this year um in terms of restorative practices training we've completed one restorative practice training this fall and we have multiple trainers in the district now so one of the first goals was to get our own people trained so that they could provide this and so they're available on time request any school can reach out and say hey can you work with my third grade team and we can have the trainer go out and do that and we also have been called to to do some restorative practices circles for different staff members or
115in certain circumstances at school so there are school-based people who are trained and then if there's a case where it would be helpful to have an outside person come in then and we can do that as well he said one sort of practice training is that the only one that's required there there's a two day which is like the training that most people um who are going to actually working with students need to attend and that two-day training covers you know just how circles work we have done this training for the last for the past three years but because of attrition you know sometimes we need to offer that again so we want to make sure that at all times every administrator and counselor has had that training so we offer one in the fall
116and we're preparing to offer at least one more this year at the district level but refreshers are needed and the great thing about having internal people trained is that they can actually do a 30 minute or 40 minute refresher at a staff meeting and so at decatur high school there they have their own plan of how they're working with teachers right now because they have a trained trainer there so more trainings are definitely needed one and done won't do at all with restorative practices so we have that formal aspect of it the tuesday but then there are many other ways that people can access in addition to some of the information that's coming through the suspension prevention course as well step back to this one for a minute so when i was talking about years
117two and three i wanted to highlight a few things that we've done that are different because of covet 19. so because of cobit we've talked a lot about the increased need for mental health support so in addition to you know all of the things that you see here and other things that you'll hear that talk about this evening we have contracted some additional therapists when the needs arise and we see that you know more students need support so we're not just seeing a referral and saying oh we're at capacity or we have a waiting list we've actively sought to make sure that we're doing that we have an additional social worker who's providing tier 2 and tier 3 support due to sort of that increased demand that we're seeing as well we have contract psychologists
118that work with us because due to kovitz we had a time period where we couldn't conduct assessments and do some of the work that we typically do at tier three and so we have been addressing that through through um having contract psychologists we are evaluating this year you know what support is needed we were sort of looking at well this first year and then okay now we have a second year in dakota and we're trying to see where those supports and needs actually are as we move through the phase of the candidate let me say what csfh was we did behind the slides okay so in terms of social skills instruction if you have a group of students that maybe have one area that they need to work on in terms of their um i
119don't know whether it's in 15 whether it's whatever specific area is coming up if you have a small group then we could pull out a small group of three or four students and have lessons that are you know that either the counselor or another individual would provide so in tier one it might be all in their morning meeting that you're addressing you know the different areas of character development and things that we want students to focus on but if you see you've got this one little group and the same behaviors are coming up then it's time to pull those those kids together and have something that's focused for them to talk through and practice and you know that's more time with that skill okay so then it takes something that might be on the sel
120curriculum and then at a level two a strategic someone is building or a counselor or whatever see you're welcome i'll talk a little bit about pbis so um we were talking at the beginning of the year about how this is a little bit of a reboot because we've been implementing the pdis matrices virtually but it's a different story when you come back into the building so i'm excited to say that all of the schools have been able to relaunch their pbis work successfully we had tfi walkthroughs tier fidelity inventories walkthroughs where you're looking at hey do i see the expected behaviors posted do we have positive acknowledgements or happening you know and how are people using data and so we had our state school climate representative and our behavior specialist go to all the schools
121and walk through and interview and see whether or not see how we are progressing and so we had some really positive feedback with that and we had people who are our schools are implementing these components there are maybe one or two areas where you know we can put the rules up in the cafeteria a few other little things that feedback that we receive from the state on that but we are moving in the right direction with pdis and we're operational before emerging or operational i can't remember i should know that in order yeah they have a new status that they came up with this year because of kovis like even before these two okay because everybody's sort of backing up a little bit and you know re-teaching pre-teaching all of them behavioral expectations so i
122talked about mtss being our overall framework we also have some specific goals related to the mtss process when it comes to behavior in the past you know there's been some elements that we needed to include and some of those are things like having a behavioral screener for students we talked about the dyslexia screener well we need the the component that would address social emotional and behavioral sort of mental health for all students so we have had we formed another task force and with the same people [Music] and so what we have done this year is really look at you know where are those missing pieces that we need to plug in to really shore up our behavioral support and one of those was the screener we have vetted a number of screeners and selected one
123and we are planning to implement that next year so we're in that phase of getting everything ready to launch that for next year it's also a time to come together and to talk about what's going on with students and to consult across groups so we have members from teachers teaching and learning state and federal programs and equity and student support and we meet twice a month to to go through all of those cases that are coming up that we want to make sure that we're all consulting because behavior and academics can go close you know hand in hand we have to make sure that we're addressing all of those needs um we're also looking at needs assessment and resource mapping so those are two of the things that the committee is doing as well and
124that's really just looking at not only what we have in the school district or need in the school district but what's going on in the community what other resources do we need to pull together to support our students so the next time we meet we'll be able to show you hey this is the plan that we have to fill in gaps this is what we already have so that's in progress um so see learning i think you've heard quite a bit about that over the last couple of years see learning has continued and we are doing implementation in k5 right now all the k5 instructional staff were trained um administrators um all of our counselors have been trained and so we are moving forward they have aligned some of the work of sea learning with
125what takes place in the morning meetings and we're integrating that right now and for 612 we're looking at how to embed those elements of the learning into the curriculum in order to really have a robust social emotional learning program we have to continue to find ways to embed it in the other work that's happening so that we don't have yet another initiative that we're asking teachers to implement so we're collecting data as we go through with the help of emory university and so by the next meeting we should have a uml we are with c-learn so now we'll jump into comprehensive school mental health outcomes and now i've got my two experts in the room here so if i get off track let me know there to be here for the discussion if you have
126any questions at all but just in terms of a high level overview i'm just really excited about the work that our counselors have been doing our counselors have really been working very hard on really getting this model and the standards from the american school counseling association um if you look in your report you will see a list this long of the different aspects that they've already been trained on all these things really help us with those outcomes like attendance you know course completion they influence behavior they influence all of those indicators that will let us know if we are having those equitable outcomes for all students diana dr jones as well really working with them and so again part of that process is looking at what we have already and what we need and so
127that's what what we mean by the needs assessment and really being able to set program goals based on the data that we're seeing so what are the student needs and then being able to to plan around that so um also another thing that i want to just make sure i highlight is that just want to give kudos to dr fuhrman and for for our team really looking at moving forward with getting that ask a ratio of one to 250 in terms of counselors and it it may be a large number you know seem like a large number but there are very few places in the state where you see that and it's we're doing some great work around that as well as with the decatur student center and right now if you look at our
128allocation for counselors we get funding from the state for 9.67 and with moving to this one to 250 will be over 20 mental health professionals across the dis very exciting i could ask a couple questions here because i think this gets to a bunch of the questions that i had um i think the first one is just how do we is the one to 250 we just arrived at that ratio because it was the recommended ratio from the american association of sort of i forget exactly what it is [Music] you'd like to make the one to fifty you go because i'll be this is my precise question i guess i guess it seems reasonable to ask that coming out of the pandemic i think this was uh one of the questions that came up in
129the in the last meeting a parent had called in about this but coming out of the pandemic where so we have historically been what one to 500 i think students so there's probably an overhang or a backlog it was probably higher than that and so there's that and historically there's been a little bit of a backlog and then coming out of the pandemic where presumably there's a much greater demand for some of these services how do we know 250 is enough um is there is there an assessment to decide whether actually we have a backlog and we have a little bit of time that we might need one i mean one decision feels pretty aggressive but i mean right i mean i guess i just want to make sure that we're methodical and thoughtful about
130it but if the kids need it and i think we heard pretty clearly in that last presentation that the kids feel that they do need it uh what what is the right number right beyond just the thing about um the work that we're doing with that is that it is in itself is multi-tiered right so and the reality is we need to work aggressively to get into a prevention mode so that our students have the resilience and their self-regulation skills to be able to match because we do know as adults that means we're going to hit conflict in life so by doing this this data-driven program that we're doing we are making sure that all students get this tier one those are our classroom lessons that we're doing um and uh then we go into
131those tier two those are the skill based groups that we're talking about where they're learning expected self-regulation and resilience and then we do have our school counselors doing individual counseling with students as well where we are where we're really fortunate we have this other layer of educator student center and i'm thankful you know when i when i came here it really was a high school initiative but as a district we saw that we really needed to get on the permission and we'll always need intervention you'll never get to a point where we don't need intervention we're getting more on the prevention part by making it an appreciative result so i feel like we can meet the needs particularly if we get those ratios lower at every single school and not only that but if we
132do it with the fidelity that we should and really using the counselor keys evaluation and counselor's help to that and administrators help to utilize the counselors in a way that we are uniquely trained in the building um and so you know and that's some of the discussion that we're having as well i i really think it's more about making counselors giving counselors the ability to do that you need work rather than the number itself sure um we have these other resources and and other things and therapists on that nobody else yep and and so i guess that that if if we are fully comfortable that 250 is the right number then i'm you know i'm not i'm not going to go out of myself or anything i just i do want to put it out
133there to say that that if there is a short-term surge or a need for temporary additional staff or a need to help us get over the hump that we've been dealing with in covid i think now is the time to be talking about it and making the app right here because i think that that is something that we we would look at evaluating as a priority uh one of the things that you brought up that i did want to ask when you said that the counselors kind of are uniquely skilled within the school how does that are they is this is it like the nursing program or is it like the principal overseas the council how does that work exactly how does that rubric work in terms of who the counselors are responsible for right
134the principles evaluation i think almost too i guess we've done some training i specifically brought people in to do training with our principals around this uh because the evaluation tool um that we use is the one that is recommended now by the doa to be honest that was a long time coming it only got revamped i think three or four years ago and that was the first time since the 90s which we did our work completely differently and to be honest with the georgia school counselor association did a survey and we found out there was there were counselors in other parts of the state that were being evaluated on the same tool as the bus drivers and the construction so we at least have a tool that represents and reflects the specific work that we
135can do we're training to do we should be doing but it is all based on the standards put out by our national association which are heavily heavily emphasized okay that's the key to is moving forward with this um database or data decision model that diane is implementing across the district is huge i remember when i was a principal and she started training the counselors in clinette on this i saw just a huge improvement in my whole counseling program just based on the work that they were doing and as they were implementing and then the training for the evaluation gave me the skills as this principle to say hey you're you know doing this i'm looking at your data that you're presenting i see you're meeting with this many students you're spending this much time on
136this i'm able to see that growth with the counselors on an individual basis okay um then just a couple other questions and i had a whole several paragraph so i'm sorry i'm just gonna stick on it for a second i think the other one uh we talked about expanding um the high school student center which is now really k-12 still physically located at the high school uh where are we i just wanted to talk a little bit about ensuring that that was there was a plan or that we were how that was going to happen at the at the middle school as well i mean i i hear about counselors having to walk around the building to have private space with the students that they need to talk to and things of that nature i
137just want to make sure that that isn't something that we that is something that we intend to address and make sure that we're we're we're going to have results all the people i mean all of the counselors have an office yes right but it was a conversation about the student center the location of the students their space i guess there's not much privacy having to walk down all the way is that what that um i think it was more about students not the younger students not feeling comfortable having to get into the eighth grade hallway more so than it was about them having to be seen going to and from the student center that was my understanding and that would also be though like if there are students that are in there right because they're
138welcome to go in there as they should be if there are already students that are in there and i'm a student that's in crisis that walks in i see eight of my peers in there probably not going to stay to have a conversation with the counselor that's in there you know what i'm saying and so there's i think the need to be able to get separate safe makes an awful lot of intuitive sentiment yeah and we've identified a classroom that's um that's going to be the the student center for next year diane and i have kind of talked about what needs to be in that classroom so that we can move forward on the planning for that okay and we'll see that as a part of this budget obviously if we're having to authorize funding
139for that actually we should we can use funding i just wanted to clarify let's say a student was not comfortable going to the student center they could still go to their grade level count correct because the student center is just an additional layer of support outside of the grade level counselor right and there's one referral i'm sorry i'm just going to say that there's one referral form and you know the counselors are able to have access to that and decide based on the student's need who would be the the best person to address it so they can go to their counselor you know but they're working hand in hand the main difference is the level of service because even if a school counselor and we do have several school counselors that are are licensed professional
140counselors that's not their role so they can do some counseling but if someone needs true therapeutic trauma type work then that's more of the student center so the next level and that's where most places they don't they don't have anything i was wondering under what circumstances would a student go to the sports center versus sarah yeah and even if they're seeing a student-centered therapist they can still go to their school counselors right does the uh did the i forget the acronym but i had to pull up here the publications they ask uh standards does that deal with that trauma-related counseling as well or is it more like career path counseling and then there's a handoff too right no it's actually um we have all of the active stuff is common informed and really we're more
141into the common healing focus of it um and the three main areas is school counselors look for social emotional academic development as well as post-secondary planning um and whatever that is whatever that looks like and then of course you know therapists are working more on so i'll start with will it see here crisis prevention and intervention programming so we talked a little bit at the beginning of the year about how we are expanding our training on applied suicide intervention skills training or assists we have our own local trainers who are now doing this work and i had a chance to participate in the training the last training that took place two-day training and i'm a licensed psychologist but i got more in that two days than you know a whole semester of classes because there
142was so much usable information that that you can take and immediately be ready to implement and i think the vision that was shared with you a little earlier is just about making sure that we have multiple community members yes the school but also local therapists um first responders you know moving into making sure that everyone is able to to do this work because it is the work of the community and i would like to extend an invitation to all of you we only have one more schedule this year and i feel like it's probably short notice but we will let you know when the next dates are um for next school year we would love to invite you to come and participate as willie to tell you extremely intensive training but it is probably one
143of the practices so that i mean actually it does raise the point always um not that i'm trying to suggest particular frameworks but the way that we hand off to the community or the community hands off right because it is we aren't at the end of the day the schools aren't say you know meant to be able to provide full-scale services across the board right at some point we do have to hand off to community professionals and it is how do we engage there like what is that do we have specific folks in the community that we do work with and how does that mechanism work um you know helping the child through whatever crisis they have um right so if you go through a tip the goal of assist is to help you to
144identify the students in crisis and then also to help them to decide to be safe be safe or now and that is not that particular program is not meant in 10 different clinicians it is actually intended to raise awareness to create a suicide safer community and so we have invited community members we've worked with cef we actually put it out on our social medias inviting people many of the local therapy groups that our students see most often and uh and we're doing this in no charge thanks to um that we've done and so um we are really trying to increase that level of even reaching out to cpas reaching out to local community civic organizations and going and doing this like overview that you can do um but then having a solid like referral process
145and one of the really as dr kelson said one of the really important pieces of stuff that we include our fire and police because a lot of times they're the ones showing up and the student may or any member of the community may appear to be having one type of crisis when this is really the type of threat they might have a gun in their hand or a knife in their hand it's really about hurting themselves not other people and so having having these other skills instead of shocking somebody having skills to say you know let's talk about why we want that's what we look for there's very specific training we were looking for turning points and things like that and recently i had to add that one of the things that we were doing
146with the slide about resource mapping was to make sure that we keep a valid list of our community providers for referral and things of that nature so we have people obviously we have like the mobile crisis unit we have you know multiple other groups that help in situations that are beyond the scope of the work of the school district and so part of the work that the social workers counselors all these folks are doing is to make sure that we are able to make contact with these agencies so when we need them we know where they are and we can refer people and we have multiple sources because with mental health supports you need to be able to consider you know are people able to put that on their insurance you know who's able to
147help people who need to use medicaid all of these kinds of things so that's part of the work that the team is doing this year is collecting those resources and those things have to be constantly updated for us to be that resource to families to have all of these great resources within the district but knowing that we couldn't possibly address everything you guys are evaluating or using so i think at the beginning of the year we talked to you a little bit about our national safe supportive school coalition work that we've been doing it's a two-year program where we are able to access some of the leaders in the work of school mental health and they have a framework that they've provided and so we've been working through elements of that and getting information from
148from them on on some key things that we want to consider and have in every element of our our resources our assessments and things of that nature so that that is really the framework that we are working with multi-tier so the same quantity all right so black bullet um so in terms of prevention we talked a little bit about assists also when i talk about sexual harassment prevention there are uh there's a curriculum that counselors have been implementing calls first they say and this is where we're focusing on preventing children basically being exploited or lured you know things of that nature into all kinds of unsafe situations and so that has been has been implemented moving forward it's been implemented in the elementary schools middle schools are working on it now and also the dictator
149student center has two groups that are taking place at renfrew that i wanted to highlight and they're highlighted in your packet really excited about this work one of them is empower empower and the purpose of this group is to bring together female identified students so that they can have some of that trauma-informed healing-centered treatment related to experiences of sexual harassment really focusing on self-advocacy and focusing on giving them skills related to communication and boundary setting and things of that nature and similar topics are being addressed with with male students as well so there's a new group forming and fanta high has just done some amazing work around this and it gives students a chance to be able to talk about these things and from that you know we're able to glean like what are the
150things that on a district level we need to be thinking about in terms of our practices and policies and any additional training that students quick questions thank you any of your wraparound services include as counselors or social workers who are skilled in substance abuse um so here with that i i agree with what she was saying that you know the physical space and the number of counselors so just getting the right the right person with the right skill set in front of the right child so um but that's something that sometimes forget about this [Music] and she has been doing a lot of work around that and in fact in terms of an alternative to punitive discipline been offering her groups or her support for counseling for students who have issues she need a team
151i realized i just had a conversation about reducing the budget earlier that over the course of this year we've been monitoring what that looks like if there gets to be a waiting list you know we have been adding services and supports and you know we've been trying to steal a little bit more fun this time she's half time but she's been willing to work some additional hours for us in this area so i am constantly monitoring you know the referrals and to see when we need more so i uh i guess the the one takeaway that i would want to try to convey again as one of one of the board members but i am willing and open to a conversation about more investment here if you decide that's what's necessary um i think this
152is an area where uh and that's where you know as lily's talked about some more time resource mapping and needs assessment so that we can say as we move forward what are the needs do we need to bring fonda on full time do we need to add another social worker so those are the things that she's been looking at and kind of gauging this year so we've been contracting with some additional services is that sufficient or do we need to bring on people and will that'll be a part of this budget conversation and come okay all right what question a couple of points first off i really appreciate the bump that occurred you know it's leading into focus end of the conversation last week in the box report being kind of busted for the last
153people it's actually shocking the state level the number of counselors that are represented and looked at a similar box report that means they're not paid enough or not you know the correct answer on han's question of like what's the proper ratio more that's one big caveat second is i was actually shocked by the report that we got that there wasn't actually much like there's no one available to meet with me it was very content driven from the middle it was a lot of like they only want to talk to me about time management or there's a the teachers don't recognize that mental health was part of my day only the counselors do you know there was little stuff like that and it got me to thinking like how do two parts one how do we
154like add to the curriculum as it arises um like something that we would have never talked about when our age group is like cyberbullying and that's like all over the news it's all part of decatur it's all a part of what we do and then being proper online and being a part of yourself and that's why i kind of asked my question about like targeted social interaction is the way that it's phrasing like how do we do that and i would love to see sort of the lower elementary counselors as part of your projection it was like than our stay through to stuff i would love to have more people i really do but i think we actually have a content based feedback that's been provided for us it's like teachers need to incorporate some
155of our mental health stuff and there's some subjects that we're not getting yeah that's part of the word oh sorry go ahead lily i was just gonna say that some of the topics that you brought up are part of the curriculum so it's embedded in that and that's what the counselors are doing another component for the teachers um will be through the safe supportive schools grant that we've had you know going this year and will continue next year so we'll be able to provide some of that trauma healing center yeah machine healing center training for teachers so that they can recognize you know when when a child lives coming um and that's also a part of the siege of learning and the fact that we wanted to make sure we're expanding that to all of
156the teachers we're putting a lot in the teacher wheel house but the teachers are also the ones that are with the kids all day so we want them to have as many tools as they can to be able to say hey this is going on and be able to point them in the right direction so how would a question how do we add to that curriculum to make sure that we're hitting stuff and how do we give students a space to add to that curriculum from a policy perspective and then two how do we make sure resources are going in the right place so far more than like let's hire a bunch more counselors uh which may be obviously that's what the solution like there was one down for sitting in every classroom done like
157great but that's probably not feasible like how do we make sure the resources the problem here to here so identify the problem how are we assessing guys we're making so again there's two pieces one is to meet with the um the data driven comprehensive program our school counselors more so than they ever have before are looking at data and that is not only their own um uh we're looking obviously in outcome data we're always looking at how are we going to improve attendance or behavior or academics right that's the outcome and then we work back from there so even things like dependence right um it was the idea that if i could if i could work as a social worker and we improved attendance except actually improve more access to the curriculum and the skills
158teacher and therefore we will have better outcomes um and then they track it and we're as part of our programming we actually um are required um to do a classroom unit and also to do a small group and you know we're always accepting pieces of the program um and then seeing is that effective like so if i have a six group of kids i'm looking for i do a free and a post event and then i actually am looking to see how can i improve not not oh well this didn't i didn't get 100 of the kids it's not about 100 it's about improving it and moving the needle okay so you list a couple of those right um so um so for example think for a state state actually this year rms um they
159were doing something before and it was not as i felt like it was really important again i'm very big on building common language um and so we've been doing uh first day of days now for three or four years in our k-5 and so now we're expanding it and what happens is it builds on the previous language and concepts but in more developmentally appropriate way so they're actually looking at um also the learning previously what do they retain from elementary school and then they're going into specific topics cyber bullying being one of them um and so they as many and then as we get up into high school we even go into dating relationships and boundary setting and sexual harassment sexual assaults and things that are appropriate and eventually we'll expand it to twelfth grade
160so that's an example of the unit um it could also be executive functioning i know jackson is doing a targeted classroom lessons a series of three that is looking at stress anxiety test taking skills time management skills organizational skills that he's doing so he's doing a grand post on that um to see you know where he might be working with individuals through the units you're assessing math and then [Music] that have worked on reaching out specifically to students of color to make sure that they are entering advanced different classes and then with that making sure that they give them the extra support that they need to have you know like do you know where to go for tutoring do you know you know um have a big splash card how to do whatever it is
161that the kids are identifying as a barrier to them and then um you know they're looking to see how many of them take the spam what score do they make on that um and they're using tools like uh sap has a um success predictor um for kids and and but making sure we take that list and operationalize it and get out there and have those conversations thanks to me that we're talking about an entire sort of cultural fluency about this topic that has to be driven out of just it's not just your organization that should be fluent at this every principal every teacher you know everyone across the system and i i i do think that some of the work that we've done around equity is a good model right where you you raise it
162you're going to get resistance from people but you have to hammer it and then provide the training and resources for everyone to understand what we're talking about not just a couple of proselytizers that feel like they're you know out there trying to do the job without support um and and so that i mean that james what you raised where the students are not necessarily access sometimes it's all of the other it doesn't get prioritized by a teacher they don't feel like it's value to prioritize within their peer groups for example that it's important for us to try to resource again i'm curious just along the lines of what you're both saying um and going back to the content comment what type of conversations we're having or the teachers are having for their mental health um
163i think if we're looking at it from a standpoint of we have the teacher in the classroom and we're looking for kind of strong mental health proponents for the classroom you know so so then back to the kid that says all they want to just talk about time management but if the teacher knows this is actually for all of us to take a moment and you know not just one student that may need it but the whole class needs it so do we have things in place that are also specific to teachers being able to implement those kind of things for their entire class because you know we've learned also from a couple meetings ago that our teachers are overwhelmed they've also been through closer just like our students have and so what type of
164things are we doing to to maybe make it feel more inclusive that we're talking to everybody about their moment we absolutely have tiered supports that work with teachers and teachers as models so when we look at the see learning work all of those resourcing techniques all of those things teachers are learning those and they're modeling those and they're using them and they're normalizing conversations about your feelings and what's coming up building those skills around resiliency so that would be like the tier one level so all of our k5 teachers have been putting that in place um this this semester um then if you think about the next level we've had a number of principals reach out and say oh it's my staff struggling we need some additional help here and diane has sent some folks
165over you know to do some then sometimes we've had people say hey can you give me a referral for an individual step and that's where our eap our employee assistance program comes in and we can give people specific resources within the community of folks they can reach out to to be able to get support and i think it just helps that we're talking about this just across the board and making it where people feel comfortable with even at learning training and it was just started recognizing some of like anxiety interesting things in my own and i would be like okay i've got a resource some resources here okay it's been really helpful um do counselors meet together district live the way like math curriculum instruction [Music] hey this might be something we'd like to bring
166to the epa's available i know that we've engaged with ppas but as i've fit so much in the mental health support but i do think that as we look moving forward on how do we enhance mental health support for our students that we've got to start making some expansions to how are we engaging parents so they know at home how do i help support my child or how do i as a parent need as your parent or i'm not going to buy them alcohol for their weekend party so those are kind of the things that i think are the next steps for us as a school district taking and approaching it as a community but involving the parents the parents that will be providing an environment in their halls and supportive for mental health research
167in some of the other elements of our third pillar like pbis we have plans for work that we can do with parents around cbis the previous position i used to to do trainings for parents bring that to the district as well and we are already providing some individualized support because sometimes parents say hey i don't know how to manage this behavior at home our behavior specialist has gone out and worked with parents and provided individual consultation sessions on various things that are coming up with behavioral health social emotional development and that kind of all across this year we have started that work and there's definitely some ways that we can but it's definitely front of mind because students need to have that consistency if you're thinking about really improving behavior and social emotional development they
168need to have that i think they use the analogy of being a hard ship you're trying to turn quickly you can't you can't do it really really quickly but this is an issue where the pandemic has put this in front of mine of all of our kids and all of the parents and so anything that you can do to get that into the community and to bring some of those forward and if you need to make requests for resources i think this is something that i'd be willing to prioritize without without question i just want to thank dr huddleston and dr beam and their team for this presentation um and i just want to you know help the board see that we have been doing a lot of work um as a school system that
169the pieces are moving it does take time to shift the big ship um we are making moves that are cultural shifts for our staff for our school system and it takes time to put those things into place um and not only have they been doing this and going above and working extended hours but they've been doing this in the midst of a pandemic um so they have been working above and beyond the call of duty doing all of this and providing the additional supports that our staff have needed during this pandemic so i just want to really um give a huge shout out to um they're both of their teams they've been going above and beyond just amazing work um and you know as we talk about going forward in the budget and when we
170present the budget knowing that if we want to see these things strategically moving forward it takes people at central office to move them forward or it has to fall on teachers in the schools principles of the schools so there is a need for people at central office to do this work to move these things forward and i think it's also really had this kind of massive overview of our main three pillars as we move into the strategic planning process on thursday and start talking about what that looks like for the board because i know that we are all hungry as an admin to have some really solid strategic direction foundational pieces from the board so that we can take this and move it to the next level so i thank you all for for your
171time tonight and your active engagement and your questions and overcome recession on thursday first the meeting with the germans you