Board Meeting - September 11, 2023

001[Music] thanks for being here tonight if you're able please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance [Music] to the flag of the United States of America under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and if I may if we could have just a moment of silence for this somber day of our history please what um thank you hi going right along item four is adoption of our agenda if we can have a motion to adopt tonight's agenda as presented I'll make a motion to adopt tonight your name is spelled wrong is that that's just uh that doesn't have to be redone right no I'm sorry if your name spelled wrong on the agenda on the on the agenda sorry I'm not with it today so okay all right so any

002other errors or actions okay a second please I was second thank you all in favor aye next is item five call to the public do we have any cards I don't know seeing none we're just gonna keep on moving on item number six our first item is item number six a superintendent's report and Cindy Daniels do you do not look like John Schultz nope here you go I can do this all right so first up we want to talk a little bit about Staffing in the superintendent's report that's in your packet the first item I'm happy to report is that the employee changed her mind and stayed with us so the position that we um when this Report was generated that we anticipated having open um is no longer open it's you know a new

003Young teacher and her parents told her to suck it up and the life is hard and so she decided okay so I was like whoever those parents are they're my new Heroes um and then in your package you also have enrollment from day 18 um and right now if the numbers hold we're down about 38 80 M and if you would note I wanted to point out on that paper that you have there's a chart on the top and a chart a little bit um like past the center line and at Heritage we're down um 30 80 am from last year and really this is attributable to we lost a large class to the high school and we gained a small class incoming classroom Del Rio ESO that's really the when you look at it

004district-wide that accounts for almost all all of the fluctuations just a quick question last spring we were thinking that the enrollment would Hold Steady any reason why we've actually lost some ABM as well so one of the things that's always since we um it was a small class you know big class going on a small class coming in in order to regain like senior numbers that are leaving or things like that we would have to see a slight uptick all the rest of around the district and there are a few factors that I can speak to for why we may not have rebounded from just some of the normal fluctuation um one of the probably the biggest reasons Statewide are empowerment scholarship accounts and we did a quick call to the county school office to

005see how many people from inside our district were registered as homeschoolers because even though people are supposed to register with the county school office they don't always register and um around 400 students in Chino Valley and paulden who are actually registered that doesn't mean that they're all taking empowerment scholarship accounts but we do know that it is being encouraged our state superintendent of Public Instruction has television ads that are encouraging people to take the esa and so we do know that that accounts for some it's hard to know what those numbers look like because if people move into our community and they're taking an Esa for their child then we wouldn't ever necessarily know that um in our community we have a faith-based organization that had only a preschool last year and they've added um

006through grade three I believe this year and they have a small enrollment but most of the students are receiving an empowerment scholarship account to pay for their tuition so that accounts for a little bit of it so those are some of the things that were seen and to that end I know that we had talked about in board meetings in the past families can up the amount of their empowerment scholarship dollars if their child has an identified disability and we have been flooded through child find with not only young students who we would normally be screening for potential special education services but also older parents of older students are requesting screenings as well so Mr Scholl dug into it we said hey we really need you to dig into this and find out um are

007we compelled to do the screaming if people are doing it basically and they're telling us so they can bump up the amount of their empowerment scholarship account and federal law compels us from Age 3 to 22 to screen anybody on their first screen at a charge to us so it costs us if they have been identified and they're asking to be re-screened we do not have to do only the first screening so we're getting a little bit of a feel for if there are some pediatricians in the area who are recommending to people that they you know call us to get the kids screened because we know that that is happening we don't see them at all but we're seeing some and so we know that the easy accessibility of empowerment scholarship accounts also is

008accounting for um fluctuating numbers in traditional Public Schools not just here but in our area those are the big reasons unfortunately a lot of very violence sounding reasons it is and you know no opinions about that that's you know different conversation right but those are just the reasons so so Cindy uh how does that 400 registered homeschoolers compared to previous years you know Chino has always Yavapai County is probably the single largest homeschooling county in the state it's one of the largest homeschooling counties per student capital in the nation and has historically been that way and we are within about a hundred students of where we typically are with homeschooling the esa has made homeschooling um a little bit more lucrative for people who would like to collect money to do that so that's changed

009it a little bit so that's the information about enrollment and right now and and then Mr Livingston will speak later during the board meeting about the construction projects but right now we have a lot going on and under construction is the teacherage which we are on track right now still for occupancy on October 1. that's our goal and we're going to have like a little rubbing cutting and tours of the we tried to figure out what we should call them should we call them like the cottages at Del Rio should we call them like the Casitas day whatever them but anyway so we'll have some kind of a little ribbon cutting and tours there and Heidi took everybody who had expressed an interest in them she took them on a tour so they could see

010and feel the size to see if they were had decided that you know a fancy walk-in closet might be too small for them or whatever but nobody weeded themselves out from her list so they all thought it was okey-dokey how many do we have on the way of us now we had 10 certified staff and 10 certified I meant 10 homes so it worked out 10 Cottages yes that's great yes so and then um we have the gas line project which you may have seen Thursday afternoons they come roaring into the high school and you know rip it up like a bunch of gophers and then by Monday it all is padded back down and looks like it's ready for students again with some you know yellow tape and and barricades we have the fire

011reconstruction in the building the the eight Plex the fancy Tin Shed and the gym lights I understand are all up and I did you check to see if there were cages on them I didn't I didn't walk in there today over the lights no I forgot to do we forgot we were going to look to see ghosts like if the balls like so ball doesn't hit them and like knock him off so hopefully we'll be able to start practicing volleyball again in there we have a game going I I know but I just want to make sure that because they're practicing at Heritage has been around pain well and it's it is just super crazy anyway too plus we've had lots and lots we've had PE in here yeah like most days and I love

012having kids here but it's also like if they're playing badminton it's a very silent sport but not everything is um Del Rio we are in the process of um Lake Del Rio removal and pave in the parking lot there and of course you can see if you've been over at Del Rio Heritage some modulars are dropped the paving's done around them and the HVAC project is like amazingly underway so other things that cbhs HVAC and Jim and drs's fire alarm plant now the strategic planning meeting the next one is a week from Thursday here at three with the Community Coalition that core team our October board meeting just a reminder is out in paulden at the community center on Wednesday the 4th so not our normal day of the week it's Wednesday the 4th at

013five and then just a reminder that fall break will be occurring October 9-12 and that not all of the buildings have people in them to help with questions or things like that is there any other questions three to seven a parent who has new student in our district long time Community member who asked today if they could just come and sit on it and see what it's about so I had tried um accessing our strategic plan online found out that the link isn't valid as the plan is being revised so that was so I thought that was pretty neat [Music] anything else before October 1st or yep it'll be before October 1st because we don't want to be going intern and after they've moved in okay that's true okay nice update thank you item 6v1

014Financial reports for activity for August 31st 2023 Mr Livingston great thank you president members of the board Administrations look at the financial situation of the district at the end of the end of August it's month two out of 12 months in the fiscal year 2324 we're on course for expenditures we're doing the best we can to to limit or make expenditures for those critical projects we know we've got some folks coming back into the district from some covet funds next year everything we do we're tripled between superintendent Cindy and myself are triple scrutinizing and just really trying to make that a nice transition I don't have a lot of information on our Capital funds or our operating fund but I'd like to call out two funds in particular if you go to it's about the

015fourth page in my report you'll see cash balances and there's two in particular that I'd like to discuss ones and I'm not here to put Randy Cox on the spot I'm just here to say what a tremendous job she's been doing she's got this Des Grant in the past two and a half years we spent 490 000 on that bringing extra services to her preschool students that is competitive in nature that very few districts have a five-star rating for the preschool that we have the three star right now three star but it's it's still really in my book we have been a four-star but we're getting assessed again right now right now we're in the window is open so very high ranking from the state to look at everything from the size and and composition

016of the wood chips on the playground everything you could think of in the teacher quality so that 490 000 has been tracked to the penny to the person I think at one time you had between addendums and salary almost 16 people in there so it's almost like another building and she's doing such a tremendous job so if you look at fund 322 you see from my cash report uh we ended last year with 27 267.74 almost like 27 300 and she spent on herself because she's so careful with her money uh exactly that last Thursday so now there's not one penny left in that account and like 490 000 Sarah to not be a penny office just tremendous that was just tremendous a good job there and the other one in fund 691 that's the

017school facilities Board of which now we've got 26 million still encumbered and the way we run that is on page two of my cash for the current year the 23-24 Year you see 700 000 cash there at the end the way we got this this company I kind of joke with our maintenance director Chris Sheriff uh it's almost like he had the Australian bolo in his hand where you've got the 20-foot long rope with the little rocks on the end and you toss it at someone's ankles and then it wraps around so quick they can't really move that's really kind of what he did to Millennium gas they were up here doing an inspection report July 17th he was able to keep them here with whatever persuasion school facility support funded that project the very

018next day so and it was three hundred thousand dollars and then it was done we needed to be open for a session wasn't it Wednesday August 3rd when we opened so it was done I think Monday like the 31st of July something like that so so the day before Tuesday the second so they did it knocked it out in about eight business days but they did weekend and work it's a way to go Millennium well then we had another gas pressure test at the high school and some problems there so we got out another bolo on the other hand and kept him here to do that and the way that one started was 1.3 million then they had to increase the percentage of the four inch line because of these new high efficiency gas packing

019as we're putting on so that project went from 1.3 to 1.6 million twenty thousand one million six twenty and what you see here is well they had payroll costs so what we did is we borrowed some money from another fund pushed it into 691 paid the bill there so you see that seven hundred thousand so for just a minute and we got this cleared with our Auditors we can borrow to pay because we want to have that come from the right fund then as soon as the sfb comes along and pays us that then the expense moves where it belongs and we're back to zero and now they're down to I think they're projected date at the high school maybe someone could directly I think is fall break about October 8th 9th in there so

020another month in the high school is about 11 times harder than Del Rio yeah longer longer lines and everything so that's why you see that expense there and I've cleared this with our Auditors it's not necessarily a cash fund so we can move expense and cash in and out of there and keep them happy so they they finished Del Rio and got paid the next Wednesday but they finished I think on a Tuesday and got paid for Wednesday that might have even been Wednesday the third when I opened school because they had all these extra costs Hotel extra people and they had to actually trench through through cement and all these things so they stayed so great great job for our maintenance director and then now they're they've been paid 400 000 on the high

021school that's why you see the 700 almost 1 million to go for the high school and they were considerably more economical than the other two bids that we got on these products and they're doing great work any questions on the financial report for the month of August thank you moving right along Student Activity fund report an activity things have been look at the page the page the clear winner and activity and encumbrances is the high school student council 8 300 worth of activity plan and this is really common we've got six thousand ninety dollars in revenue and commerce is about 17 000 and they've had their meetings they're compliant with policy they're compliant with the raising funds and then spending those funds the next one I guess is probably High School boys soccer at almost

022four thousand so we've got a really good procedure and tremendous support from the community my understanding is just about every one of these is based on fundraisers every one of these students they're doing things so it Compares I guess you could say 134 000 is about half of what we have in our front 526 tax credit which is over 250 000 so the community gets the tax credit break and it's it's tremendous to me that they also support things because they don't get the tax credit that's all I have any other questions all right item seven eight through eight I'm sorry a through e is tonight's consent agenda if we can get a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda I will make a motion for the approval of tonight's consent agenda in a second please

023and all in favor all right number eight a our Personnel report Miss Wilson is Daniels so with our Personnel report and supplement we have two new certified staff members one new classified a new classified sub three resignations one termination one certified change nine classified changes three coaches 18 extra Duty and 152 timesheets [Music] um [Laughter] I have a question um and I don't know if you'll be able to answer this but um 13 and 14 it says the replacing of that teacher is she's still going to be with us she's just not going to be doing that position anymore that's the Middle School correct that's correct yes you still yeah they're just taking the um and then I have another question on 15 um at the high school um why are we approving an assistant

024coach right now because they've always had an assistant coach I know but we've approved all of the coaches already like prior to this yeah it was dismissed yeah okay sorry the other questions or concerns all right seeing none if we can have a motion to approve tonight's Personnel report and supplement I will make a motion to approve tonight [Music] a second please thank you Peter all in favor um I thank you thank you item 8B extra Duty stipend for construction project manager Ms Daniels great um over the course of the last six months as we have consistently increased projects and what's our total of SNB projects we're up to right now just Paul Park number 30 31 30 million in projects so typically even with one project um especially at the size of our HVAC

025for example a school district would hire PM just for the project and Peter's very familiar with that from his line of work because it is just so much extra work above and beyond to supervise that and not only that because our projects our school facilities boards you heard a little bit just in the financial report trying to figure out how to keep paying the bills while waiting on us at the reimbursements and the phenomenal load of paperwork that goes with this stuff if you want to talk about death by paperwork this is definitely one of those situations so um at my request Mr Shull and I met to talk about compensating the employee because this is really above and beyond and outside the normal contract work for this employee to compensate this employee for taking

026on many many hours every week of extra PM duties and so we had had some conversations about that when we finally had an HR person we looped her in and then we asked him to go ahead and find out how tell us what all you're doing and find out how much that costs everywhere else so what we have decided was after John and Heidi and I Joshua and Heidi and I had a chance to beat we would like to recommend an extra extra Duty stipend for the employee who's overseen all of these things as PM because 30 million dollars and then a PM cost of 20 000 is a drop in the bucket compared to what we're paying out so respectfully we're asking for that one time and I talked about it at the airport

027I'll tell you if anybody's working a private and public sector the paperwork or public sector projects is 10 times what it is for private sector projects and so what Cindy is saying is absolutely true it's a huge amount of construction that's going on right now I'm a major being able to survive this long without having the this extra Duty it's going to pay well well needed all right yeah make a motion to offers an extra Duty segment for John Livingston to be paid during the school year 2020 produce related to management or construction projects the second place last second thank you Marsha all in favor [Applause] item 8C approval of position and business office for a secretary to Mr Livingston so this this position came up from a review and I and I have to

028just just describe I don't know if there's a word to describe what city does in the district but it's it's she sees everything and she saw gaps in our office where there were things that were needing to be done that people were doing I guess you just kind of heard about one of them but it was kind of the first person Opera the last person to leave that was doing them so what I see and and I have to say I didn't see it quite the same way I'm one of these that finds a hat and puts it on and goes but when you get down to it it comes down to there's a few of the folks in the office were talking about that consistently or just going over time with their hours consistently

029going over time with their duties and some of these things were looking up for this position to do would be an assistant to float between positions would really nicely fit in the what you mentioned earlier the overload of paperwork or compliance because I hate to say it quite the simply but the truth is Mesa Unified District 59 000 students in our district with 2300 students a lot of the paperwork has the same burden I hate to say it that way because you you think once report is done it's done at least four times bigger well it's not necessarily the case a tremendous load of paperwork I think would be I don't think you'd see this person once this person's in position uh telling anyone that there's not much want to do I don't think you'd

030see that it's just uh we we have a tremendous I think group of dedicated people in our business office that work till the job is done and I think this would be a great time to bring in someone else to share some of that way something important that I wanted to share is we have one payroll Clerk she can't ever get sick it's hard to take time off and it payroll is one of the most crucial things that we do in the district right because about 85 percent of our budget is spent on people and to not have somebody who is a hundred percent cross-trained in the ability to do payroll is not sparred on our part and so that was one of the things that we had talked about is we really really need

031somebody who is also cross-trained and completely and picks up some of the payroll for them do you guys have somebody in mind no no okay has it been opened no yeah okay I mean I'm up or things that make our district run smoother you know and definitely if you guys think that it's a needed position then I definitely aim for it all right I'll make a motion for the approval of the secretary to in the business office in the second case thank you thank you Peter all in favor hi thank you thank you all right item 9A there's nothing in your music library music [Laughter] so I'm here to tell um we are at the end of our grant we've had it since whenever 2020 it ended actually June of 2023. we're just here to

032ask for approval of closing off the Grant and spinning it down to the last it was a total of I John kind of did the whole spill already um it was a DES Child Care stabilization Grant which was really to stabilize our preschool to um to pay employees to give them buffers and so all of it 90 of it went to pay wages and give bonuses for different things that they were doing in the previous is going away um but we spend it and they got their bonuses what are we gonna do with the last bit of it we're gonna bonus it out and give it to the teachers so all all not just the teacher all staff working in preschool so everybody got a portion of it so is there any possibility of a

033few not right now um the state said not right now they're closing it all out and I think once everything's closed out they'll see if there's any money left because if we didn't spin it down to the penny um we had to Res we had to send that back or Payback s good at spending money asking for approval of spending it and closing it out as this is an action item go through are there any questions with it or anything I guess I trust you with the money yeah I'll make a motion for the approval of proposed spending of the DES Child Care stabilization Grant at territorial early childhood entered to close out the Grant and the second house second thank you all in favor all right item a at om an academic impacts Ms

034Daniels so I'm going to talk about something that I wish we didn't have to talk about um it's actually pretty sad when you think about it and one of the things I wanted to draw your attention to is in your packet there is an article from District administration which is a national publication and starting on page two of that article it has comparisons of chronic absenteeism which are described of missing defined by missing 10 percent or more of days is considered chronic absenteeism according to this report and it has rates from the year that the school year that was in my word BC so before covered right and then it has raisin 2122 which I would tell you we saw [Music] um exact Trend through 22-23 school year as well so that's nothing different some

035of the things and so this is listed out by state in the article Arizona had one of the most significant gains Nationwide in chronic absenteeism so not only is it just here with us it's here with us in Arizona and it's here with us Nationwide and it's not just affecting students it's affecting staff so on the back side of your agenda item is a chart like a sideways chart and the sideways chart has The Chronic percents it has The Chronic persons by school year and by campus so one of the things that I would like to point out is for example at territorial last year and remember this the article was from 2122 school year so like I you know two schools years ago at Tech that during that 21-22 school year 50 57 percent

036of the students Miss 10 or more days last year 44 missed so it was moving in the right direction at Del Rio 2122 44 were chronically absent last year 36 percent moving in the right direction at HMS 47 to 44. however at cvhs from 2021 from 20 that 2122 school year to the 22-23 school year we increased from 50 50 of the students being chronically absent to 60 two percent can you define chronically absent they missed 10 percent or more of a school year so in our case that would be 14 and a half days or more okay yeah but Cindy I had a similar question does that mean unexcused absences as absences you're not learning okay so if your parents said the kid was sick makes no difference if they were simply not there

037it's in these numbers gone is gone so the child's out with having to have surgery or something or playing basketball yeah but I mean your benign class you're not in class so but if you think about that 62 of the student body was chronically absent would it be any surprise That We're Not Making academic gains [Music] people that own businesses well don't show up to work anymore either amen sister because that's on the next page for some reason and it's it was interesting because the you know there was sort of that Collective grumbling about it across the United States right like nobody shows up for anything anymore you can't get anybody do anything social organizations or Civic clubs and groups nobody wants to be members anymore people just all kind of did the big shrug

038right you know and now they don't want to be involved well we did we ran the same data but we didn't run percents we just ran hard numbers so you can see um where we were so across the top of the chart this is teacher only so teacher quarterly vacant stated from last school year this is just from last year so cvhs has 39 teachers Heritage is 26 Del Rio is 26 and Tech has 30. so we have 121 certified teachers who did include counselors or anything like that just classroom classroom New Jersey um and in here you can see how many vacancies there were by quarter and then you can see the total by by building for throughout the course of the school year uh-huh that's almost each teacher teacher they should take the

039time off but like a lot of time well I guess most of us would argue that's what we have Fridays for right you know people can't help getting sick or if you know having surgeries or death in the family or things like that but we had 1038 vacancies in the district which you're on 140 . so but a couple things I want to point out the camp the campus with the most the two most vacancies of course also have Athletics so teachers are gone because then also field trips or things like that other reasons that somebody may be gone or a professional day or something but high school has by far the most athletic events and you can note on there that the quarter with the lowest number of vacancies is the quarter in which

040we have the fewest Sports so that makes sense right and so and then we also have um you know vacancies at the middle school and remember some of the vacancies aren't whole day they're partial days because that doesn't mean that we had 1038 whole days but these were vacancies for at least half a day so some of those are for coaching um but like in third quarter there's only wrestling in basketball so also if that accounts for a much a dip but the dip also was it was interesting to me that um like I think we ought to give like the big Collective Round of Applause for Del Rio where apparently people don't miss much school but um you also can kind of do the that campus if you compare it to the one next

041to it on your list they have the same amount of teachers and the vacancy discrepancy is astronomical [Music] so I think I wanted to share the data with you and share the article with you because not only is it indicative of what we're stationwide every employer I've ever known complains that people just don't buy their shop to work anymore because it's like that's you know why and um everywhere you go there are signs hanging up like you know we're sorry if it's slow because we didn't have X Y and Z show up to work today or we closed early that's my favorite we closed early because we didn't have enough people to cover whatever shift and so you could see that everywhere you go in the broader Community but I wanted to share it with

042you for a big reason was because the next thing I'm going to share with you is our academic data and there is no way I mean we can talk A Million Ways to Sunday about um the number of teachers we have who are currently in the process of obtaining their certification we can talk every which way to Sunday about the experience level of our teachers but the fact of the matter is if if kids aren't coming to school we could have the world's best teachers and if kids aren't coming to school they're not going to learn stuff that's just the way it is and one of the things that I have really really struggled with and have talked with Employers in every kind of field is because everybody's talking about it right is how do

043you get people to show up to work how do you get people to show up to school and you know in the olden days we would say well your paycheck is a great carrot right you know shop to work so you get a paycheck but we have employees who are like eh you can dock me for the day I don't care or we have kids who don't see a reason to be in school and parents who don't see a reason to make their kids come to school so like I guess if I was sitting in your chair the thing I'd be asking is so what are people going to do about this and you know one of the things that we are doing about is stepping up our involvement with juvenile probation and truancy but

044because we have State security officers on all our campuses now we have a way to make some home visits so we have two uniformed officers who will be picking that up here pretty quick with our chronic absentees because we can run chronic absentee just from first quarter right how many kids missed 10 percent of first quarter or how many kids are in danger of a 10-day drop at the high school for example and those bowls are the very first people our safety and Personnel will be visiting at home starting in October these are absences of any kind of anything so we will go through and run an audit like if a kid was sick or in the hospital or something like that you know we're gonna give the parent a call and I know that

045our schools are already calling those parents and chatting with them and we have parents who argue that if their kid if they don't if their kid doesn't feel like coming they shouldn't have to parents have the same attitude towards their jobs they do so so I mean if we decide whatever we know the magic wand is I'm sure we could bend that to like every employer in the nation you know to get people to show up to work but this is something in the past like offering incentives like um the foundation there's a group of retired pilots in the community that refurbishes bicycles and they look like brand new and they deliver them to us and we give them to the schools to use for attendance drawings um Chino Valley Education Foundation supports attendance incentives

046for students honor and every campus but it's interesting because we are not in an era where a carrot or a stick make the difference so punitive measures aren't helping positive measures aren't helping so what helps one of the things we've talked with our campus security folk about our kids with chronic absenteeism at the high school level or for discipline things like demerits or absenteeism that our sros or other school Personnel will use some of the our Friday school time for kids to be able to come in make up their attendance make up some demerits so now I don't know most kids don't want to come to school on Friday and so we're going to try another tactic right that's going to be one of our tactics like hey if you want to knock this down

047then we'll see on Friday so we're we're trying to come up with stuff but I wanted to talk about it with you I wanted to talk about it um on camera I wanted to talk about it you know with people in the room who report to broader audiences that this is something we are standing in front of you and saying it's a problem and we need help because I know that we have Collective brain power not only in our room and our district in our community but somebody's going it's something we need to all as a community join together and decide it's something that we want to create a level of importance and and that school is an important thing and it's an important place to be but we talked earlier about the like the

048bump in homeschooling the bump and empowerment scholarship accounts there's also a bit of a pervasive attitude cultural wide that maybe other people know just as much about how to do a teacher's job as a teacher and so those are things that are hard to combat in a society but I wanted you to be aware I wanted you to understand because honestly every administrator in this room is going to stand up and talk about goals is embarrassed by the academic results on their campus but I'm also not going to let them put their neck in the news right when it's like if the problem belongs to all of us I would like to tell you about I'm really not by these unfortunately like I said it just seems to be a thing in our society right

049now whether it's people you know employees or employers are seeing employees not show up I mean I'm not really surprised Cindy if a child nurses so many days in the school year are they on the verge of not going to the next grade are you graduating it can be yeah definitely not graduating because almost 10th days they are in danger being dropped and losing their credit so we have a lot of attendance appeals and processes for students to do credit recovery to make up those you know absences and things like that but it's it still isn't enough for incentive for for some parents even especially is there any correlation between the absenteeism rate and the kids performance levels High versus low oh absolutely 100 100 correlation like I was guessing that but I wanted to

050if you're not in school How You Gonna Learn that was information but certainly we are open to ideas a few years back there was a group that came in and I can't remember if it was the health department uh State education someone came in and talked about the importance of being in school reaching out to parents and do you remember who that was I don't but one of the things that so juvenile probation we work consistently with but the other thing is to on Thursday morning um Julie Bryce and I are um there's been something that I've been sitting on for about 10 years that I've really wanted to roll out in the district and just just timings everything and there's a national organization called Katka but it's really focused on school safety and healthy

051communities and so because we have campus security officer I mean campus now it's a it's a better time for us to start pursuing things that require more Personnel but we're going to have an initial meeting with um cadka to learn about establishing Community coalitions for safe and healthy schools and safe and healthy communities and a tennis is certainly part of one of that so I've just been sitting on it and waiting until the time was right but that's a step we're taking to see um what other people are doing and what we can learn from that and how we can involve the broader community in problem solving Cindy one other question if I could are we doing any direct communication with the parents or the most chronically absent kids yep absolutely every single time a

052kid's missing school parents hear from us [Music] the email phone email Auto -person calls yes I'm glad to hear that it's not obviously had to solve the problem but I I guess we have at least established that line of communication with the parents because their kids have a serious problem and it's fun and you know Peter I would say it's interesting too because it's not just like not attending at all it's like in one of my favorite stories is Brandi had a parent a year or two ago who showed up at like two o'clock to drop her kid off for school and Brady's like you can't drive your kid off it's two o'clock in the afternoon the lady is like well I have a meeting in town what am I going to do with my

053kid I don't know if you sent your kid to school in the morning she'd have been here all day and you could have gone to your meeting you know and so there's like a weird perception that we're just here for people's convenience like no like we're really here to help give your kid a better future sure so that leads into our type testing yes please so here we are so in your in your package you have the chart the lots and lots of charts um and I'm just going to say on the K8 data we should have changed the label to aasa from azm2 because you know we've had like three incarnations of test names and we just forgot to change the label up above um we have I've met individually with all the administrators

054um they've all reviewed the data some of them have shed some ugly tears um we had there were some places where I would tell you language arts wise we were do we're doing like better than the state at the third and fourth grade level with the rates not so much but plus or minus three percent is within the margin really is within a margin of error for that kind of thing um where we did see the most significant dips in student performance was at the sixth grade level both in English language arts and in math and one of the things that and it's an excuse I'm so far beyond even like I don't even like to say it but there's a bit of reasoning to it and it's I'm just gonna say it's the rolling

055covet effect and the reason I want to say it's the rolling covet effect is I'll put it to you in the simplest terms whatsoever when um let's say a kid does kindergarten and they don't make all of the kindergarten expectations say they make 90 or 95 of them so they're going into first grade Maybe few weeks in learning behind let's say in first grade they do the same thing maybe they make accomplish 85 percent of the goals or 90 percent of the goals now they're leaving first grade and entering second grade even further behind it's The Compound Effect and so what happens is that rolling effect of learning loss is something that we're seeing and we we saw the hardest at the middle level because some of the most crucial learning for a kid to

056be successful in the Middle grades happens in grades three four and five and so as those kids have been rolling into middle school and we saw it through grades six seven and eight all across the board last year they had had massive gaps in their learning during grades three four and five like K2 you're learning a lot about like the basic building blocks right how to read basic computation number sense learning that you know this symbol means three which is this which is a word which is represents three items but when you third grade multiplication and division fourth grade longer and double triple digit division fifth grade applied skills so when you start seeing that rolling and compounded effect what you're seeing that's exactly what you saw at the middle school because in middle school

057you're supposed to take all that stuff that you learn in grades three four and five and now apply it to much more difficult and challenging work and so it wasn't a surprise to me that that's where we really saw the dip so that's what we're seeing at that level and then when you look at the science table results we don't have Arizona data but I would tell you when you look at um at our science results overall we're fairly consistently um I look especially at the red column because the red column tells me which kids aren't getting it at all like they're it's just like they're just not getting it but when you look at it from the biology level we're fairly consistent we're where we've been in the past when you look at at

058the eighth grade level the learning loss is there if you compare 22 and 23 to the pride to 18 and 19 and then because it rolled to fifth grade some of the data isn't as reliable as when it was just a fourth grade test but we definitely saw that dip now one of the things that I wanted to remind you of science wise remember we approved brand new science curriculum in the spring all of the curriculum materials were on site all the kits were on site and then tonight you approve stipends for three people to manage all of our science materials for all the labs at our campuses and and I've received email from teachers who are using the materials and they're like we just want to let you know we're using it the kids

059are super excited we cannot believe how much learning explosion and growth explosions have had where to use with science experiments but like how much growth we're experiencing in science because the kids and the teachers are excited with the materials is the new materials for um Ka well all the way KH oh super right yeah and maybe child is excited about learning and having fun learning yeah hard to learn and so our and sort of the teachers yeah because it's fun too because they finally feel like they have things to do their job so when we look at the ACT results for spring I did want to point out to you that we are as always we are sitting extremely close to the state's composite averages so we're sitting very very close so when you look

060at those um for that you you really did that those those ideas and those results so and why we did not have 2023 results until after we had prepared the report so we're still sitting pretty close so ninth grade is the Aspire test which is like pre-act test and so it um this is a state mandated test for ninth grade and it gives as an act is the state test for 11th grade so it does give us some predictability but I also wanted to remind you that Horizons is a test that we do at the high school for our Benchmark testing which is based on act style questions so students become comfortable and familiar with the testing format so we're consistently using that at the high school so I expect that our test results this

061year are going to show a bump just because kids are more familiar even with the format so all that to say now it's time for us to hear from the buildings unless you guys have questions okie dokie do you want to play your phone for us again sure let's see if I can do that twice [Music] so I get to start off with having all this data we are not a testable school with all that State Testing but we play a part of it because we're I mean we're unified we're foundational school where we work into it so moving on we're gonna flip over what we have oh do I click let's see oh we're gonna Advance it for you oh Lawrence I thought I got that again or not you can make it go

062away well your question oh there we go I don't know if I did it um so kindergarten we assess in all three areas and our real focus is Ela and math but in kindergarten and you guys have this up there 85 of our students this is our end of the year goal so that's where we're headed we have our data and you guys have the data in there also our scores but what we want at the end is 85 of our students and this is all students we don't exclude anybody so it doesn't matter if they're in special ed or not will be able to know and apply Benchmark phonological awareness skills and decoding work so that's their attack skills how they sound them out how they do all of their it's all embedded in

063there um for first grade 85 of our students will be able to know and apply Benchmark phonics and word analysis skills in decoding word reading with accuracy and fluency so we're just progressing forward now they're using what they have and again um and then in second grade eighty percent of our students will be able to read read with accuracy and fluency which according to our scores tells us 128 words per minute to support comprehension so that we can they are using it and they're not sounding it out if they're not at the phonics or the um where they're sounding out every sound now they can actually apply it and use it to gain comprehension from what they're reading at their level with a reading at 128 words per minute so we want them to be

064able to do it and be successful um those for math we did 85 of our students will be able to recognize and represent this is kindergarten again 0 to 20 that not just that they know the numbers that they can actually if I say hand at me five items they can count five so it's that one-to-one correspondence but they really understand those numbers in first grade we're adding and subtracting within 10 fluently um 50 Edition and 50 subtraction math facts in second grade eighty percent can accurately add subtract 50 Edition or subtraction problems within 20. so that's the the factor goes up to 20 at that level so we have we're doing this mad minutes every day we're really killing and Drilling and we moved that a little bit higher so we could help third

065or support third grade going into third grade that they will be able to do it fluently and they're not thinking about it anymore fluency piece really kicks in so we have we have assigned minutes to ours state standard says that they can do it fluently but they don't give us a time frame so we kind of broke it down and have a time frame with that and how to get them to get them where we want them to be to be successful Amanda can I ask you a quick question second grade reading because that mean the child can see a book and read what he's seeing by reading out loud um yes the way we test it is literally read the words uh for the page absolutely that's great yeah thank you um at their

066level of course at the second grade level I can't give them well we can do kindergarten if you want I don't know I just read your second grade I just want to make sure I understood uh what your expectation was and all of these goals are for Kinder or for students who have been in attendance at least half of the school year we do get a I mean as you know we get a flex of kids that are constantly a revolving door if they have left us and come back we still count those as ours for the most part I'll be honest but the kids that come to us in April and May it's hard to get them where we want them to be at that point they're ready to roll but some or but

067I don't hold the teachers accountable for that we still push through a week we invest in them but they're not in our number first questions on the goals that we've set so how did you come about these goals no on the next page look at this so we took our data from the beginning of the year and we looked at where they test out and we are using a new program this year so our numbers are a little bit wonky this year we moved to a mirror which is an AI learning Avatar who does one-to-one correspondence but it's also a testing platform so what what we do is the kids read into the computer they have a screen when we do our testing we want the teacher sits with them and so it's one to

068one and the teacher is doing it but they read it to the computer it yeah there's all the information they're tested in all five area or six areas actually and then they give us a cut score for them and they call it their arm score which is a mirrors Mastery reading score so this is all when we take that 15 of our 2100 21 kiddos 15 of our kids are in the red according to what Amira says at this point um 87 are approaching the Benchmark and that's again the end of the year benchmarks so our kindergartners are doing pretty well right now we're pretty excited and 30 are at Benchmark does that mean we let them stay there no we keep pushing forward and we keep moving it um up but those are our

069numbers for kindergarten so that's where we took that data that we had and built off um actual these actual scores so we have first grade in there and then second grade is all in there and those are our students that we have tested now since we've done the initial testing these are beginning of the year testing we've had kids move in we've also had kids leave so the numbers are already a little bit wonky in there but for the most part it's pretty true usually we see a little bit higher at Benchmark but our cut scores are much higher in a mirror than what we were using in the original platform that's okay we're taking the challenge we're ready for it and then any questions on those before I flip to the map the math

070is scary math is scary but this is banked off of we increase we put time factors in there so when I throw that time in there everything goes up this is end of the year where I want them to be so I'm okay with the red right now because we're going to push them forward so you know I understand you just started the year but they're end of the year goal so it shows you your challenge is in this District as usual math and that's um our kids are able to do the adding and subtracting putting that time Factor so it's that fluency piece that they're just rapid fire or they can get them out it's a challenge and they're little and they're not ready for it yet and we know that but by the

071end of the year our goal is to have on there so questions on that all right so what are we gonna do all of our decisions are targeted off of data we have been focused our math and we have enhanced focus on our math instruction knowing that we want to really work on that we've done our mirror benchmark assessments we progress monitor every two weeks on our targeted skills so we're collecting data all the time we have esgi assessments which is a kindergarten platform that we use it's an educational software platform to collect data on that um all of our kindergarten assessment is done one to one so a teacher has to sit with them or we also train some parents who are regulars in there that can test our kiddos um monthly data meetings

072with in-depth data analysis so we're constantly looking at the data where our kids at why aren't they moving and we talk as a team as a grade level team what we can do making sure we're making meeting their needs we have quarterly assessments monitoring these exact goals that we're working on and then we have weekly and bi-weekly grade level meetings that we can talk about and discuss concerns or worries or successes we also get to celebrate a lot of successes in those so professional development instructional coach meets regularly with teachers we have wonders and Wonder Works reading for ELA we have on-site reading interventions intervention strategies by a reading endorsed by all reading endorsed teachers and that's we have pushing services and pull out Services we have a daily co-teaching with our sped teacher that's

073something new this year we're actually doing more pushing Services into the classroom which has been huge this year um Kagan active engagement strategies which all of our teachers are kagenaders we could call them and they're constantly and that's just getting the kids up and engaged in it not just paper and pencil so they're actually utilizing it and um moving around and not just sitting there we have our curriculum pacing guide with targeted skills we call our each grade level has their grade level Bible that is very targeted to what they need to what the goals are what assessments we're giving where they need to be it's a pacing guide what's a scope and sequence and we have daily phonological drills in all classrooms we use hegarty which is a chronological based program that isn't an

074enhancement to our curriculum that every teacher does the same thing and it's a constant kill and drill with them so that is some of the stuff that we're using in the classrooms [Music] and then we have our school-wide interventions which core instruction with active engagement school-wide we do daily instruction with our sped co-teachers daily Title One pull push in and pull out and what I mean by pushing is we go into the classroom a staff member goes into the classroom and then we pull out to do more targeted intervention where they come and just meet um in the title one room we have a dyslexic interventionist we have daily El services this year provided by a certified teacher which is super exciting daily cup time intervention that is our focus on our Target skills that

075we do every day for 40 minutes 45 minutes everybody breaks down and does something we have our mirror reading character education with the certified counselor our monthly positive action focus and assemblies and we are starting Friday school and after school tutoring tutoring and we also have that's cut off our parent engagement we have two big parent engagement nights which is our ABC Bonanza and our Games Galore where we work with parents the kids come in and play games and we provide parents with things to work on at home with the kiddos that are games lots of fun Ela stuff questions you have for me and territorial [Music] Randy I think you're doing an awesome job trying to raise the kids methods and the reading skills from the very beginning because there are children that really

076struggle with this and just taking the time to work one-on-one with them as thank you we have a we have an amazing staff that is dedicated to our kiddos itself I'm very blessed to get to work with the staff I get to work with it is dedicated for these little ones that are with us thank you so I have a question so just to start maybe instead of killing and drilling you start with drilling first right we have fun okay we don't drill we don't kill any one some of them might think it's a dreaded thing but we have fun with it it's a game seriously um these interventions um do those change from year to year do you think have they been is this a uh We've added to so our daily push in

077with the co-ed teacher we've never had a sped co-ed teacher who actually go in and goes into the classroom and co-teaches with the Jeanette teacher and so some of those kids aren't they're not getting pulled out of any Core Curriculum the teacher actually goes in she's another teacher in the room and the kids filter through her which actually gives the kids all of the kids even if they're not identified special ed they get extra time with another interventionist in the in the room so that's been fun um the El teacher we've had a para doing that previously this year we have a certified teacher doing that the Amira reading is brand new with us so with those are some of the new ones that we've had in our dyslexic interventionist she is um fully certified

078PD and we have all of our staff is not all we have 10 staff members getting letters trained right now which is another um foundational career yeah learning for mainly Ela but our one of our instructional coach actually is getting certified so she can be an in-house letters facilitator and trained all staff and we don't have to send people out for training so that is another one that's happening right now so we keep the ones that are working and we massage and move on with the others thank you we appreciate it did that answer yeah so do you have any opinion as to why we seem to have uh district-wide more issues with imprficiency in math [Music] no at my level it's pretty much the same where we're at at this level at the level

079I have I mean they're all learning their numbers they're learning to add and subtract we haven't ever targeted that that they have to get it done in a specific amount of time so that's that's the new thing for us is will that help out our scores if it's a little bit more fluent they're not having to think about it anymore so just to let you know it's not just the school district it's basically across the country so it's just you know and we have to make some changes for our children to learn so I I agree with you Brandy you know what you're doing is awesome so we're gonna see we're gonna play with it and keep moving forward if this doesn't work we'll try something different but the data right now teachers are excited

080they know they have their work cut out for them for sure but they're under the challenge thank you all right Dr Moody okay I won't even try the click it works it worked yeah um Madam president members of the board Ms Daniels esteemed to Miss Dixon um uh thanks for your time um and I think I might be able to answer or at least espouse some concept um towards Mr fogle's Question uh obviously Del Rio we're a testable School um for better for worse we're a testable School the aasa or whatever Incarnation or name it will take next year as as tends to be the the way we go but obviously we you've seen these numbers um Ela you can fast forward thanks sir and there's our math scores we're particularly lagging at the fifth

081grade level let's move beyond that because I don't like looking at it um so um with that said I'm going to break this down into three sections number one what are our overall goals number two how are we going to test those goals and number three what are we doing to get there uh first off our Universal goal obviously is to meet the state standard but that's a floating Target and that's not necessarily something we know what we're looking for and I've always been um partial to the old proverbial notion that my grandfather beat into me how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time and so our one byte is we're looking obviously on an individual goal for every kid our goal at Del Rio is to learn to learn and that

082is to say we take the kid wherever they are whether they're coming in halfway through the year full year um and and we got a kid two weeks before the end of the school year last year wherever they show up with us we're going to take them and and Advance them obviously in ela and Matt those are our two biggest Notions universally I'd like to see us have a five percent bump on our overall test scores obviously at the ELA level that would put us well above the these state standards and at the math level we'd still be below um below the state average if the state averages continue to be where they are though we're going to focus our attention on math that is a minimal goal and looking at the third fourth and

083fifth grade State tests as well as I'll mention some of these here in just a moment as well as some in-house assessments and and what we do at Del Rio looking at um what we've Fallen at specifically our biggest issue is number one operations that is to say doing the work the actual calculations and on longer term and larger problems be they were problems or multi-digit problems our biggest issue is just they didn't do the multiplication well they didn't do the division well and if they slowed down and took some time to do that that's operations um at the third grade level we're having problems with fractions um five-thirds of them are having a problem with fractions thanks I appreciate that and um and then at the fourth and fifth grade level it's a measurement

084whether it be specifically using rulers um or devices for the measurement or or measurement of kilometers to miles and things of that notion and so we're focusing our attention especially um later in the year that is to say February and March when we have multiplication tables under our belt when we have some experiential learning on the computers under our belt we're focusing our attention there so that when they do get to the state test they have a little bit of a a running start into it and so that's our that's our overall and our individual goals there you go there you go okay um how are we measuring that well there's a variety of ways we're we're doing this obviously um I'll start at the bottom and work our way back just as a side

085note in the background of this um I was told many many years ago never put backgrounds on slides so I always do um this is our new on-site armed security guard officer gronick playing football in the afternoon with a few kids while we're waiting for the buses just as uh a side note he's got a pretty good arm in comparison to Fourth Graders so um we're working our at the bottom and work our way back obviously the state assessment that's our that's our Our Big Goal um but then looking at both Ela and math AR scores are our most consistent gold AR is Accelerated Reader then that is how we measure um proficiency of students in the books they're reading so Mr Antonio referred to okay what are they reading we're measuring their reading levels

086on a consistent and continuing basis and then as they read books in those levels they're testing for competency and understanding of those books and then the more they read the higher their level goes and they set though they set goals both personally and we do it programmatically so that they can achieve those goals and progress through um so you know we have fifth graders right now reading at a ninth and 10th grade level and so that's a and we have one third grader who's reading a seventh grade level so um so we're continuously measuring their AR scores uh but then map and and Ela we um we look at um we there's some contention on our campus as to what to call them but collectively we call them daps and and um that's District assessment

087programs I like draps because it's Del Rio assessment programs but I'm the only one so um um we are measuring a variety of things at math we're using my math uh we're using uh the assessments uh within the curriculum once a quarter we're using I Steep and we're using classroom and they have to have at least four of those assessments per quarter at which we're looking at at grade level meetings for ELA we're using ice deep program again we're using wonders we're using star reading and again um just as as a notion if you don't know this kids universally dread this but then when we get to the state assessment they universally go wow that was great every quarter we have a day-long writing assessment where they spend the entire day mapping out the topic

088the concept doing the Reading Writing a rough draft and typing out their answer so that when they get to the state assessment that's what they're supposed to do and they have a day to do it we give them the same parameters and we use different texts every quarter so it's informational or or whatever scientific whatever it may be and so we're um I I say all that to say this we're not basing it just on state assessments though that's what the public sees obviously but that's not all we're using collectively as teachers we're meeting as a third grade level a fourth grade level a fifth grade level what's working what's not working oh look at the striving that they're doing here let's add this in let's progress faster let's progress slower so that we can

089still meet the goals and obviously Curriculum maps are part of that so okay they're progressing faster they're progressing slower what are we going to do to kind of help them along thank you um first off I've put those on every email to my entire staff there in the bottom left Semper Gumby always flexible um they'll have my staff doesn't know who Gumby is yeah um but um a lot of this is focused on what we're doing collectively academically some of this is focused on obviously absenteeism is an issue we want them to come to school I want a kid who's absent to come back the next day and go man I really missed being here I want a kid to wake up in the morning and go I want to go to school and and

090that's something we work really hard on so we have a variety of things a tutoring and I just think collectively and this is the way I speak on campus so it's the way I'm going to speak here um when I think tutoring I think anything after school um that includes math tutoring by their math teacher or at grade level that includes Ela and writing and reading tutoring um at their grade level by their teachers or teachers at their grade level it includes clubs that include student council um we're going to be starting a uh we have a gardening club that's literally meeting right this very second we have a chess club that's starting tomorrow that I'm looking forward to getting beat by fourth graders um you know we have uh yearbook and student council and

091ukulele and quilting and all these things that there's actually a waiting list for our quilting club which I really enjoy um and so we we have all these things going on that make kids want to be in school so they can stay longer at school as Bradley mentioned we have Friday school it's actually starting this Friday we have 60 of our kids who are going to be in that and if we need to expand it we need to expand it we have Friday school starting this Friday um we're using computers universally and ubiquitously in classes or any number of things a um getting into the curriculum and B obviously practicing those skills in computer class and in regular class that they're going to need to be doing at um at aasa testing time and there's

092been a variety of studies that have come out from any number of different places um I just jotted down two here from the world bank and then um from Brown University are the two most recent ones that show you can be well proficient at grade level and this is a study across the United States um you can be well proficient at grade level for Math and or science some states test that more universally than we do and fail the test because you have no idea how to approach it on the computer because you didn't know how to scroll because you didn't know to click and so we're teaching those skills specifically obviously we're focusing on operational computation in mathematics which is something that we're doing um I'm also this this is like that brings me

093the biggest smile every day I went in and was stretching with our PE class this morning and they laughed me when I tried to do jumping jacks it is what it is um but there's a variety of studies as well the most recent from Naperville Illinois and the CDC who show that there's a 14 to 23 percent increase in academic performance for schools that have PE and and I wish we had it every day but um we we've reinstituted PE kids are loving it they want to come to school for PE we're having a variety of contests between classes to for their not necessarily they're running the fastest but that they're they're participating the most um so we're hoping obviously and we'll never I think be able to fully say our test Rising our test

094scores Rising is because of PE but I certainly think it's going to be part of it um we're also introducing and and Ms Cox mentioned this as well we have a fully certified full-time um El teacher and aide at Del Rio and there's a variety of interventions and in fact we've even added a class for El kids at the end of the day that we're pretty excited about and I'll talk at subsequent board meetings about um but it's for kids who show up on our campus who speak literally no English um and at the end of the day we're having a just a conversational day to kind of teach them to be social and be part of the the community and maybe they won't pass the aasa but they'll be they'll be progressing and learning

095to learn and and be part of our community and Kids come out of that class giggling every day it's on my way to the buses in the afternoon and it's actually kind of a cool thing to see them come out excited um there's any number of different things Title One grade level meetings things I've mentioned um we celebrate every month with popsicles those kids that have met math and AR goals we're having kid you know teachers co-teach and we have any number of things I'd like to point out that this is all occurring on our campus in the midst of our front office being closed because our parking lot renovation the HVAC the the fire watch the fire panels I just wrote down a few of them um weatherizing the gas lines though that actually

096got done with one day it's it's a pretty big deal um but but kids are are jumping over things and and just they're they're happy to be at school it's good to see Smiles on their faces and so far um we we've noted growth of and let me just look at my notes Here if we're just looking at our internal data right now um 90 of third graders has grown Ela um 92 percent of fourth graders 92 percent of fifth graders have all grown Ela and for math um that is to say just um internal math scores we haven't done our quarter assessments yet um we've got 81 percent at third grade we've got 83 at fourth grade and 87 at fifth grade and so those are just our internal trackings tracking Apples to Apples

097so that's a lot I know we're all you know standing up here tonight but if there's any questions I can quick questions the Friday is cool is that voluntary or the teacher will tell the kid you were coming to Friday school right so Friday school is for students who are kind of on the bubble and need just a little bit of assistance to kind of make it to that next level they are invited by teachers to um be part of it and then it's voluntary as to whether the we provide transportation we provide breakfast we provide lunches from eight to twelve um but as voluntary as to whether or not the the parents want them to come parents can opt out I was a little worried about that because sometimes the kids who need the

098most are the kids who want it the least and uh yeah um and that's true um but kids are kids are jazzed about Friday School actually um we we um 60 our capacity is 60 right now and um of all 60 we asked 62 kids to come and 60 of them were like yep coming awesome great and and we have kids asking their teachers can I get a Friday school packet that's great thank you yep I just I just have a quick comment um so I understand that last week you guys had your um election for your student council president yes we do so my third grader this is his first time ever really dealing with student council and he came home and he was so excited because he's voting for this kid because he

099said he's gonna get an hour-long recess I couldn't shoot him down and let him know that that's not how it works but it was really hysterical that he had it so he's like okay that's fine yeah if he didn't win it's funny there was a lot of Tears on Thursday when we announced today [Music] yes so my question is going to be the same for every building leader that's here and that is uh um what's your theory around why we seem to have a persistent problem with uh Proficiency in math learning and if I heard what you said I think your answer is uh gave me a few ideas that you've already pondered one of them is that PE it's going to make a difference one of them is that they'll become more familiar with

100the actual tool at uh assessment time and I think those are great and the other one was and lots of students who essentially don't know any English and uh so so they're not English speakers at this point in time so if we attack you know those things and one by it at a time one bite at a time and one building at a time this might help yeah absolutely and I think I think another large part of it Ms Daniels spoke to it earlier is kids being in school it's hard for us to to test and I don't have the numbers literally right here in front of me but in the 30s for for Del Rio it's it's hard to test them on things that they're not there to learn and that's a that's kind

101of a difficult pill to swallow um so we're doing everything we can to to get them there okay yeah great thanks thank you anything else thank you thank you all right Miss McGill I'm here at HMS I am hello okay let me go the principal at Heritage Middle School I would like to say my daughter came home from Garden Club with a plant this big and a huge smile on her face um uh ditto and can I sit down no Okay so I had the remote I promise it works um so I'm at the middle school which had atrocious numbers which as you guys know you just hired me that was I don't want to say tears but a little bit but okay so the goals that we have so the Galileo Benchmark testing that's

102how we we test them out the goal is going to be 80 for um each grade level for sixth seventh and eighth grade that they will be proficient or higher as you guys can see on the picture right there in the green this is our pre-test scores so similar to what Brandi did is pre-test we can see the opportunity for growth positively important and the remote does work thank you and you can see a little bit better for the ELA our same same type of goal I'm just picking up what I was given and seeing what we can do here so it's similar to like this before so the goal is for students to have attended HMS for the whole Academic Year 80 their score proficient or higher I think this is a very attainable

103goal so my appreciation is a little shorter than Dr Moody so uh how do we know where to focus essential standards have been identifying and goals have been developed by each content team based on the beginning of the year benchmarks and these benchmarks with the Galileo benchmarks a professional development that I did have did hold we went through in each content area since went through this and we identified standards and where they needed to grow how will we know students learn the material the utilization of the assessments from the curriculum pertaining to those essential standards weekly formative assessments um to place in student and bi-weekly reteach extension class so we call that our interview of children and it's called the cat class uh it's amazing that the teachers do it's like a logistical nightmare but

104every two weeks they go in and moving things around and the students if they're weak in that area they're put in a specific remediation type of class and they're taught maybe that standard that they dip down in over those two weeks so we're catching them faster it's not the end of the quarter oh no what do we do it's catching them every two weeks which is really great the kids who are achieving already they have I want to say extension classes that are a little bit more fun but they still have the undertone of ela and math summative assessments are done three times per year in August November and March we do the star reading school-wide quarterly writing assessments Galileo benchmarks the digital and the eyes implemented this digital individual student data trackers to assess

105progress toward Mastery so we will be rolling out the digital version be rolling out quarter two last year uh from what I saw the problem was papers were lost middle so there's three of things blah blah so we will waiting that why are we waiting till second quarter just because there's a little bit of a computer are coming else just sit with that uh attend school on a regular basis in partnership with juvenile probation they touched on that so I've already met met with them we've already started this process we're reaching out they are driving to kids home them up and bringing them if that's something that needs to be done and of course there's this state assessment in the spring to achieve this goal the essential standards are identified in each contact area that's

106broken down a specific learning targets tied to the skills and it's been mapped up for each year as I mentioned earlier there's the cougar academic time that's the daily retouch classes based on formative assessment I'm going to be trying to start the cougar Academy for fright School individual tutoring tutoring the teachers are offering that before school um during during lunch time or after school we progress monitoring on the essential standards as you right there um we do data walk results based on leadership that'll be something I'm implementing a little bit more um data is as a teacher you have to come in and explain your data to me as we go a little bit more in that Weekly professional Learning Community meetings to review student data that is a big one that is on Wednesday

107There's No IEPs that day I've already told the staff and they're very rep they're very they love it it's if you need to bring your children sit there fine but don't be scheduling your appointments and stuff that day you need to be participating in that and they are and when I walk around and even talking to the academic coach we're seeing a lot of um PLC thing professional development on culture building and data and data analysis with solution tree that is coming up you guys approved a September 22nd PD and that we're gonna be working on that I was just talking to solution Tree on Friday about implementing more of that smaller advisory classes to assist with students support and goal setting that's already in place right now and we're doing quarterly celebrations in weekly

108character education with the certified accounts what is an advisory class okay sorry homeroom the easiest way to put that would be it's like a home room but I'm going to call it advisory because we're building in uh like in two weeks we have an entire a week of character and Community Building or they set um individ they build relationships with those students be like where are you at how do we help your grades and boost that themes during the year during this time period right and I've actually I was just talking miss Ann knows about this I wanted to start implement this just came to mind before after I made the slideshow um building in into that advisory period a little bit of the CTE a little bit of learning about different careers and stuff

109so they know what they're going to be getting more in high school but also you guys may be familiar something like 85 percent of women or girls have decided by the end of eighth grade if they're going to be in a stem field or not so why not start introducing them into those things and just that during that time no thanks that's my Anthony oh I guess I have your question I mean so what do you think any theories on persistent math prop issues alerting math yeah about that since July when I went so attend Ed them to want to come to school but if their parents don't want them become more is unable to come that's something different but um I would just like to say Dental on what those what they said but

110I really feel attendance is huge I'm coming from a background where um though Across the Nation we do see the large dip I I wasn't you know the probation officer wasn't needed as much so I do see the big difference being school to learn it that's my thing I'm new at this role so please ask me in a couple years I appreciate that so I have a suggestion there maybe um take away the attendance issues that seem to be a postcovid yes phenomena um these issues of having problems becoming proficient at math I've always been there so what do we do yeah I mean as a parent I'm over there like having my kids you know supplementing at home with the multiplication right a woman there are those engaging those engaging apps that get her

111on you know giving the quick recall I mean there's just those little those little things that I guess the teachers do during the especially during that cat time I would love to have you guys come look at a cat time I think it's amazing it's that really like intense and they're smaller classes and that times they can put for that but getting them to want to come to school wanting them to be excited to be there participate in the sports trying to build the clubs up a little bit but anything else thank you we appreciate it all right thank you all right Miss Crawford let's hear from the high school hello you save the best for last Madam president members of the board thank you um so a lot of this kind of been similar

112to Caitlyn is that I came in and had talked to Heidi a lot and my team to figure out okay where are we at where do we want to be and how do we get there um I kind of want to start with your question first but I'll wait to the very end Mr Bubble um we do use a system it's called Horizons it tests all it tests nine ten and eleventh graders only um on act based questions so in math English science and reading and so when we go over some of those results you'll see like big picture by grade level then I had my departments look at Horizon did a great thing this year where we could drill it down to the class so we worked with our it team and we were

113able to upload kids by class so that we could start looking at data at the classroom level before it was only at grade level now we can actually do targeted uh interventions within the class because teachers know exactly what their kids scored and and it's not just this big flyover data set that they're looking at so the purpose of it is to help kids prepare so at the high school level ACT scores are kind of The Benchmark of proficiency in those areas and so kids take that test officially their junior year and they have to they have to take the ACT whether they pass it or not is is not the issue but it's a requirement for graduation a lot of schools right now don't use ACT scores a lot of colleges have moved away

114from it but it's still at least a way for us to assess the four core areas so we're still going to continue testing in that in those areas so I went backwards because 11th graders this is where we're at right now these kids um the their average score right now as a grade level is a 13. um we haven't really deviated over the last few years from a 13 in all grade levels 10th grade it's a 12th ninth grade to 13. now these numbers are a little bit skewed because the way that the test is designed so you'll see even in ninth grade there's assessment number two so one grade or one class accidentally took assessment number two and they didn't take out the data for that and then we accidentally had some kids take

115different tests like a ninth grader took the junior level one and and passed really well so I was like oh great um you're going to do really well but we had stuff it was the way it's just a test design flaw and so that's a variable that I think we can easily get rid of with the PD session can I ask a question about these charts just make sure I'm understanding them so this is 13 out of a possible 36 12 items so so it's only uh you know roughly a third of the desired uh level yes for the Perfect Score yes and Ms Daniels had mentioned earlier what I our normal cut score over like the five-year data Trend I didn't want to put everything in there otherwise I would take up I already

116told these guys I'm going to take up way more time but the five-year data trend is we have around like 16.1 16.9 composite score for juniors we did get our data and I don't know what it compares to the state I haven't gotten that but our average cut score for the high school last year was 17.1 the year before that I think it was 16.7 or 16.9 so we did have a bit of a gain now act says even though that's around the state average ACT says that you have to have a 19 to be minimum that's the bottom end of proficiency so we're not quite there but um a reasonable goal I think is for us to at least make a one point composite gain in each grade level I think that is very

117possible from now year or the quarter a year so we will do um we have another test in November and then we have another test in February but the ACT test happens in March I don't know what the official date is but it's usually March could be April we're doing it online so I think it might be April okay so to break it down a little bit more here's pre-act so ninth grade you'll see at the on the left side those are our areas identified as strengths which is a little bit ironic because um this is why I say there's a test it's a it's a system flaw it's not a irregularity on our part but they're like where it says word and real world problems is it like that's just cruel that's word that's

118a tongue twister but that also came up as like a lowest scored area so I couldn't as we were starting to drill it down per student and what the actual results were um we did department chair my department chairs looked at all of the data within their departments I had my teachers create their own Improvement goals for this year because what I really want is for them to own the data and then I want them to be able to go back into their classroom and do targeted interventions and so they need to get familiar with what the data means and what it looks like so right now in grade nine if you look at the graph The Benchmark this is where act Horizons program says this is where we should be right now they think

119okay if we get to a 13 we're on we're on track okay so we're good there for English in math there's a four point differentiation reading three and science there's a seven point differentiation so science for us right now is a division area all across the board you'll see that as we go across grade levels for grade 10. if you're looking at the strengths areas interpretation of data and locating information again later in the data we were looking it actually said that that was a low area as well so in order for us to really determine what a low area was we had to go to their results and look at every category and they break it down sometimes into four or five so we had all departments kind of look at that and say

120okay we'll pick what's the most efficient area and how can we how can we attack it if you look at the bottom so just to summarize our sophomores in English actually scored one point composite above the Benchmark so we're we're trending in the right direction I know right in math we drop where there's a four point deviation now it's a six point in math and reading there's a three-point deviation and then in science we're hovering that six to seven point deviation for juniors note these are our kids this year who are going to actually take the pre-ct this is the second year that the high school has had Horizon which is nice because just the formatting of the test just to give you a snapshot there was um I was looking at the reading or

121English test and it gives you a paragraph and they just have these little bubbles underneath certain words and then over on the right hand side there was a uh you there wasn't even a corresponding number you just had to know there are no directions you just had to know for number 31 . you had to know okay 31 there's no directions where do I find 31 over here and then you had to figure out what was the problem without any direction and it ended up being a grammatical thing instead of a a comma it was supposed to be a semicolon so it's stuff like that that trips kids up and they might otherwise if they had clear Direction they might have gotten it correct or a better percentage but that's not that's not the case

122we're not the test creators um but we are trying to expose kids to these these tests so that they're more familiar with it by the time that they're a junior all right we're gonna keep going English Department said okay based off of the results we want to improve production of writing with an emphasis on main focus so we're talking about a thesis as well as thorough reading comprehension skills so a writing goal and a reading goal so reading comprehension is close reads are we able to extract information are we actually comprehending what we are reading and then grammar rules this was kind of a side thing but as a school we decided to focus on the the writing and reading because we can kind of do that at all in all content areas English is

123specifically going to focus on grammar rules semicolons colons and parallelism for math focus on algebraic skills the large majority of the ACT test tests algebraic skills second to that is geometry so for for us we said okay specifically the skills slope and polynomials we saw that that was an area where kids were really deficient the overall algebraic skills so even in Geometry they're going to make a better link so what you do is algebra and then you you use it in a spatial content and geometry so you have a cube and it's n plus three and then over on the side might be six and we have to that's an algebraic concept and so their job they're going to try and intentionally link this is an algebra skill we just added a shape so we're

124going to focus a little bit more on being more intentional with making that linkage there and then also word see word and real world problems so word problems that has that continues to be a trip up because if kids are proficient in Reading well if they're trying to read a math problem and they're deficient in algebra skills well it's going to be very difficult for them to set up an equation so the math department is working on ways on how they can even generate act tests like questions that they can share within their department and just have like ACT test prep Focus points during the day as part of bell ringers or warm-ups or closures science so scientific investigation comparing and contrasting figures in text so the scientific investigation point but then more specifically comparing

125and contrasting figures and types so looking at a diagram comparing and contrasting information and then interpreting data just locating so identifying things that might be on the paper that one I was we'll see how that goes because that seems like it would be a no-brainer but the test results show that the kids scored really well in that area okay interventions Mr Fogle a lot of the stuff is similar there are a couple of things that I'll point out as I go through that we've changed this year or added so Monday through Thursday before and after school tutoring we have English math science and social studies so science we have twice a week social studies once a week English and math we've got every day every day after school and then um Wednesdays are a protected

126PLC day for us or professional learning communities that's where departments get together it's a sacred time no meetings for IEPs or 504s or parent meetings that is time dedicated for them to be within their Department to plan um I'll skip to where it says introduced multi-tiered systems of support training so it's commonly referred to as mtss we started with phase one of that and it has to do with raising tier one instruction so if you think of a triangle it's the bottom and if we get really good solid tier one instruction that is going to help 80 of our kids in class which will then build capacity for teachers to address students who might be like on that first go about 15 10 to 15 percent of the kids where they might need additional help

127scaffolding a differentiated that gives the teacher more capacity to help students who are not at grade level um and then tier three at the very top of the triangle that's usually your targeted instruction where they're in um a more restricted environment it could be for Behavior it could also be an instructional academic but so we just talked about well what does good instruction look like so Mr Fogle I think it's twofold it's yes we need kids here but then it's we have to really clearly Define what is Mastery what does Mastery look like um because if the kids don't understand what masteries look like then it's like throwing a dart in the dark um so we're working on trying to build up the professional development within the school and getting teachers to do what they

128do best and teach the content without so many distractions so I know it's not popular opinion around here but like having the cell phone and earbud policy and having a dress code having things that are put structure in place for our kids has been very helpful for the teachers so if my teachers feel like they can teach gosh it's worth it if they're happy then my kids are going to be happy because we know that that passion transfers into the classroom so little tweaks to our climate and culture big big gains because it's a hard job so anything I can do to kind of make their life a little bit easier we're going to do within reason um three additional trainings will be held we have one coming up on October 20th that's going to

129be on differentiate instruction and Scaffolding because those are two very different ideas um and so we'll dive into that a little bit more we're going to do data on that day so we've scheduled a training with Horizon they're going to go over the data in detail with my teachers teach them how to break it down how to utilize it access it we did adjust some numbers in algebra one we were able to look at it and add two sections so algebra one is that foundational um foundational level at the high school so algebra one is so important to develop those skills up through pre-calcular Algebra 2 that they're going to get at their junior level so with smaller class sizes it's more attainable so we were able to add to a sec two sections we

130dissolved one section of geometry and that opened up space for us to have another teacher teach two additional sections of algebra one um grade level meetings we focus on standards department meetings we focus on standards so sometimes we'll switch it up on Wednesdays that's a sacred day for professionals to get together it could be at grade level department it's mostly Bennett Department we'll eventually get to grade level but right now I need them to look at the data at their Department level before they can meet within their grade level we have an El English teacher Miss karate which everybody I think everybody knows she's amazing talked to her just a couple days ago with Miss Daniels and we've hired an El tutor so she'll be coming in Tuesdays and Thursdays she's going to provide services

131in the morning and afternoon and then also our Friday tutoring she also has helped out with professional development okay I'll just kind of buzz through some of these so if you had some questions feel free to ask supplemental intervention so um they purchased some science and social studies textbooks in Spanish so we can make the content more accessible to our Spanish speakers math Excel is an online program that you can utilize in the classroom to help break down math concepts or get kids you can create centers have some kids working here while the teacher is working one-on-one with another student professional development three instructional assistants to work with small groups so we've got Diana with El we've got Miss karate and we also have Daryl right now has been doing a lot for us at

132the special ed level and then we've just got instructional coaches in general Helen is at the high school which I'm really grateful for so part-time she's there every day for three periods trying to help some of our teachers and then we have Julie Bryce who's been coming in and helping with our teachers who are coming to us from an alternative educational background because really the more that and I get fired up because later when I have some training with my teachers the better we get the the higher level of self-out efficacy the it is John Hattie um there's this this study of the Monumental growth you can almost make a whole two years worth of gain um if we get excited and and you only get excited when you see kids improve and so trying

133to develop the teacher so that they can then go back to the classroom and see the results themselves um that there's magic in that and so we're getting there biting one one little nibble at a time student support position it's Riley right now at the high school she pulls reports for D's and S we just notified every kid and their family uh that if they had a drf on their progress report they were notified and then we will do some pollance to track and monitor those kids say hey how are we going to get better a more streamlined attendance system okay so I won't go into great great detail right now what we're trying to do is just do what's in our handbook really really well for The Chronic absenteeism I do have a student

134committee I took I pulled um a large audience of not just my department chairs but of my athletic director and some of my after-school Club folks I said hey because I don't want the STK the same 10 kids I want to know okay I'm going to propose this problem to them I'm going to talk about it at site Council and say hey what do you think the problem is and what are some solutions because we could talk about the problem all day long but how are we going to improve it and get some input from other people and eventually take it to the community and maybe possibly build talk to the other high schools in the area because I think it'd be really great I know we're not the only ones struggling with absenteeism I

135think it's too easy for kids to miss school it's really easy for kids to especially at the high school right now the law doesn't help us at 16 they can we know with parent support they can opt out so trying to get them to see the value of a four-year high school education program is is definitely something that's on my mind but we also have to make it more difficult for them to just leave so we're going to try and work on that over the course of the year we incentivized excellent achievement on benchmarks we just treated them actually today it was supposed to be on Thursday but the person who read the announcement didn't do anything the date to be read so it was fine and we were prepared in the cafeteria so the

136kids got a tree treat and then other kids are like wait what yeah because I didn't advertise it ahead of time I just fomo gets kids fear of missing out so we announced hey we're we're giving you guys a free treat at the student store kind of or I mean the cafeteria um and they were excited and then data assessment to create shared goals generated generated by teachers we've already done that and plc's every week and then I do monthly department chair meetings that's actually tomorrow that's where that's where we're trending um improve 85 85 of our student benchmark scores decreased chronic absenteeism by 10 I think that's a lofty goal but we're going to go for it student data sharing so able to see the results our goal is to get the test results

137to the kids and and show them and do a little of a better job of revealing what it is that they well they get an instant test score but what does that mean they know what they got but let's break it down at the classroom level teachers can now see data at their class level first PLC meeting about the test was August 30th and we developed shared Improvement goals for each department thank you any questions you look like you're pondering yeah you know so this math issue has puzzled me it's a I just as a educator for a long time uh an administrator um and um I I guess I want to comment similarly to what uh Miss uh hilborn commented after I asked Brandy if you're doing all a great job clearly there's a

138lot of work going on I recognize all of that kind of work it's very similar to when I was struggling with these issues and then miss hilborn said we've really got to change the way we teach kids so it seems to me we need a Manhattan Project on math learning um and I don't I don't know what the answers are and I and I I met and I was not asking these questions to be critical um but maybe I was asking these questions for that maybe we think a little bit harder and maybe a little bit differently about it this has been a persistent problem and you know I grant you the the attendance issue is big but this was this persisted well before the kind of attendance problem we're now we're now struggling um

139so um at any rate um thank you for all of your responses you're welcome thank you thank you well thank you all of you we appreciate the presentations tonight and with that we're going to say good night adios