001Good evening. I hear about the work section of school commissioners for Tuesday, October 21st, 2025. Please stand and join me in the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Before we get started, I know that we have language translation services available for those of you here in person this evening. If there are any Spanish speakers present tonight who would benefit from a translation headset that provides real time translation services, please raise your hand and staff and make sure you receive the headset. The translation services will be made available at the agenda and action section next week. Good evening and thank everyone for coming out tonight for our work session session. Miss James, would you please call
002the Mr. Kerry, Mr. Mr. Thomas >> present to section two of the agenda. Any commissioners wish to have any opening comments they would like to share item 2.02 would like to mention that we'll continue to accept written public comments through our online portal. The written public comment for available under my.org and remain open until 4 p.m. on October 29th. At this time, we have not received any written public comments. It is my understanding that we do not have anyone signed up to provide public comment. Is there anyone present tonight who believes that they have registered to and signed up to speak? If so, please state your name for the record and provide your time. I'll turn the agenda over to Dr. Johnson to >> Thank you, President. Um, our item this evening continues our focus
003on our postsecary readiness work in the district. So pleased to have Dr. with us this evening to dive further into graduation. I recall last month they gave us kind of an overview of the whole high school that has happened at the state level. So this evening we will dive into specifically on it. We thought it wasn't okay. So, we're pleased to talk with you about the enrollment skills today just to um give you a little a little mapping of where we're headed at the next session. We'll be talking about our support for uh the enrollment skills including um on track services and SAT. So, that'll be next time. Uh this time we are looking at um enrollment specifically. So, uh, these first few slides are just there again to let us let you know who
004we are. We went through these last time. Um, we always want to center around our portrait of graduate, what we hope all students, um, will know and be able to do. Um, and we want them to achieve a fulfilling life of choice. So, students at the center, the fulfilling life of choice is where they're headed. And we know that if we can teach them to be stronger thinkers, more caring communicators who are balanced and reflective, they will be equipped to achieve that. for themselves. We went through these both last time. Um, essentially we know that the three E enrollment, employment, enlistment, when students identify one of those as their goal and are supported towards achieving that, it will lead them to the goals that they want for themselves, which for most students that's a career,
005and they're probably going to need some sort of credential or additional education beyond high school education in order to achieve that goal. And in our office, we work with the all choice high school model with the future center supports counseling services and support for our programmatic middle schools and our schools in general. So we would like to talk a little bit more about the enrollment for that. >> Thanks. Uh as she said tonight we will be talking about the six seals that we assessed last month. We're going to specifically focus on the enrollment honors and enrollment plus. What you will notice as we talk through this is that a lot of what is in the enrollment and honors plus skills resonates with our current version of an academic honor diploma. But it's not exactly the
006same. So I think it's really important that we dive a little bit deeper specifically into each but you'll see a little bit of that diploma in these two skills together. Sorry. So the first one we'll start with the seal on the left which is the enrollment honor seal. So in order to earn the enrollment honor seal students must complete um four credits of a world language and six credits of social studies and that's above what the base diploma requires if you were talking. Additionally the base diploma diploma requires six math credits. The enrollment honor seal on your left requires eight mathematics. So it must be algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2 and precal or any advanced math beyond algebra 2. It requires six science credits. So it has to be biology. It has to be chemistry
007and it must be one additional lab science course. The students must earn a C or higher in all of their courses and earn a BA GPA or 3.0 GPA. and they have to complete one of the following. So they have to earn either four AP credits, IB credits for Cambridge course credits and the corresponding exams or they can earn six college credits or they can score a 1250 on the SAT or 26 ACT or they can pick from the menu of options between three college credits, 280 credits of the exam, two credits of the exam or international credit. What's important to note is to get the honors plus seal, students must start by first earning the enrollment honor seal. So it would be required that students learn everything that's on the left hand side of
008your screen and in addition earn what's on the right hand side of the series to earn the honors plus seal. So the honors plus required everything noted in the honors enrollment field plus a credential of value. That could be something like an associates degree, a certificate, the college core, AP scholaration, Cambridge AIC diploma or the they must also earn 75 hours of workace learning and that can show up in a variety of methods whether that's face to face in person or nonpaid on site virtual or simulated and demonstrate skills in communication and collaboration. One of the really unique components specifically called the enrollment honors plus seal. One of the really unique things that the state of Indiana did when they launched these new fields is come up with a guarantee or a promise to our
009state that students who earn the honors plus seal will receive as a result of completing a very rigorous uh course while in high school. So if a student completes the honors plus seal they will be automatically accepted into Ball State University, Indiana State University, Indiana University Tech Community College, Purdue University, the University of Indiana and University and there are growing colleges and universities as you can imagine that are opting into this process and we anticipate that investors to start the flagship institutions. So now for a moment um I saw some of your as if you're reading through the honors and plus a seal. That's a lot to require of a high school student. We wanted to go uh through the model of a day in the life of what this might look like for one
010of our IP students with us in our so imagine who's in the software development pathway at George Washington and she's in pursuit of the honors seal for so she wakes up before the sun rises and she begins her software development path at George Washington with a bus ride to campus where her mind is already racing about coding for Mr. Carson's computer project which is a simple text based After debugging a few lines of Java, she shifts her gear to math 136, which is our dual credit calculus class with Mr. S, where she finds that logical problem solving skills uh that she's going to use for programming are just as crucial for solving complex questions. at lunch is a chance to meet professor with her friends and talk about her shared passion for technology before an
011afternoon class which includes website and database development and planning for an upcoming college sorry what you'll see there is that she's both enrolled in a CC pathway taking dual credit as part of the early college program and experiencing the connection between her dual credit or advanced sim courses like the dual credit math class and her software development If we change change over to Emilio, who is an engineering pathway student at tech pursuing the enrollment honors plus seal, you'll notice that his day may look a little bit similar to our past experience, but there's a little bit something that's different. So, he wakes up and goes to Arsenal Tech kicking off the day on the bus and he's reminded already, his mind is already buzzing with the design concepts to encounter. So, he starts his first
012class with Mr. Adams where he's engaged in hands-on problem solving. Today your challenge is to design a more efficient rich system using which requires him to carefully plan and collaborate with his peers. After this he transitions to phys 101 which is the dual credit physics course where he's understanding the fundamental laws of motion and energy is crucial for an aspiring engineer like himself. He's often spending time in the lab conducting experiments to solidify his grasp of these materials. In the afternoon, however, he transitions to an internship at a local manufacturing plant. And this is where he engages in meaningful workbased learning. Applying the principles that he's learning in his real real world production process and collaborating with professional engineers and optimization gain invaluable perspective on the industry standards. Now, I'll transition who's going to share
013a little bit more about what we're doing. And I'll I'll I'll note a couple of things before we move on to the day in the life. As Austin alluded to, this is not so different from what many of our students are doing now. So if you're wondering, you know, how feasible is this? We have students who in our health fellowship, for example, um are doing work that is the equivalent of the honors plus enrollment field. Now, of course, they don't have all of the course offerings that we'll be addition to, but we do have students who are definitely in that and experiencing days like this in our schools. So, um, our current SEAL focused offerings, wanted to review those and then we'll dig into what our strategy is. So, at Arsenal Tech, we are early
014college endorsed and we have 17 career related pathways. We have um students who have already graduated with the Indiana College at our swim tech and in some cases those students also took CTES at addex very similar with four career related pathways. We have had students who have graduated with both associates degrees and the college board in the last few years and they have also taken some of our health related courses. At the same time at George Washington we have not had our first for we are on track behind the other schools. So the same program that we did those schools is happening at George Washington. So um and there are seven career related pathways currently in George Washington. Then at short we are I international balorate authorized we consider that an equivalent to early college
015students can earn the same kinds of college credit through that program and there are three career pathways that shortage and we can take a look here at the college credits that our students are earning currently. you can see the growth over time and um we are not at full scale even in those Indiana college programs at Indiana yet. So we expect that these numbers will increase on the same arc that they've been increasing in the last year or so. So we're expecting many more dual credits for our students who are currently enrolled in those courses. And we wanted to dig in a little bit more deeply into the data with the breakdown by race so you can see which students are earning these credits. So I'll give you a minute without me talking to thisart.
016So you can see that students from many different backgrounds including students who have ILPS and IEPs are accessing our dual credit courses and earning dual credits within them. And you can see um we a few years ago had an external entity that did a comparison of our or did an analysis of our data around our plans offerings and unlike really most school districts in the United States we do not the drastic opportunity gaps and I guess when it comes to our students race and the dual credits that they're earning I'll hand it back over to Austin. So to close us out, we want to talk a little bit more about we shared where we're at and where we've been and the credits that have obtained a variety of pathways. GP want to talk a little
017bit about where we're headed uh to make sure that we're prepared to implement the variety that the future. So this year we worked with the data team to create a college credit dashboard which pulls in higher education data from high community college university college board and the to make sure that we are mapping all the ways in which our students are earning college credit because we know that comes in a variety of different ways. In addition to that we built out the dual credit eligibility dashboard to drive increased enrollment into our advanced academic pathways. And so when students need a trigger of a variety of a points that they're eligible to be enrolled in a college course that can prompt that advising conversation with the counselor and the early college leadership team to have that
018conversation with the student about we see the possibility that you have the academic performance that you are demonstrating. We would love to make sure that you enroll in a course that's going to prepare you for your future plan. We've got staff credit initiatives that are happening. We got fellowship efforts that are being scaled to multiple high schools. We're scaling the number of high school credits that our middle schools are earning so that they when they get to high school, they can teach advanced coursework for high school. We are flexible work opportunities and consistent course offerings. So where are we headed beyond those specific programs that are in place? We are living and expanding the academic rigor in our programs. Um we have a partnership across our learning team in our schools with the National Institute
019for Excellence in Teaching which is working every day with our schools on instructional leadership and ensuring that strong instruction is supporting classrooms. That is the work not of the PS team but of the entire learning team. Um, we're also looking at staff recruitment and credentiing efforts to ensure that we can buy the credentials that we want students to be able to attain. So, we need dual credit certified instructors if we're to deliver credits. We have many of them, but we're looking at where the gaps are and what strategies we can use to ensure that our students can learn in dual credit on our school campuses. We're also using data to inform our decisions. Um Austin described some of the intentional advising that's happening. There is an effort around the state to think about defaulting students
020to qualify into certain advanced courses and having them opt out instead of saying they need to opt into those courses. So we have already done those efforts ahead of the required year in middle school for advanced math and we are looking at how we can apply some other advanced courses. We are getting information about middle school out earlier and we are doing more postsecary readiness work in middle school to help students be prepared to make decisions about their pathways when they go into high school. We are also looking at early indicator data as Austin described using data um in real time to see why students need support and using services in our writing centers and our future centers to support students before they fail in class with what they need in order to be successful.
021And then finally, we talked a little bit about this last time and we will talk more about this as we get into the employment skill in future sessions, but work based learning must become accessible to a a good percentage of our students in order for them to skills. As you saw with the enrollment honors plus students will need that 75 hours of work learning and that's something that's entirely new for most school districts in Indiana. this idea that students who are consider themselves college bound and quote unquote academic that there's really a division between these two things um also note but that is the information we have tonight answer questions My question is regarding So if a student already has experience now we have students that are able to take algebra in There's small are
022all of our high school or is there is there an opportunity for example finishing what working with is director of middle school articulating that process for each one each of the four high schools of how students when they get to that high school can take advanced course that's going to meet their needs and so with this new model of early college for all four high schools we have that opportunity to offer that advanced course meet the students where they're at so geometry seventh eighth grade we can offer them those advanced courses at the high schools and or we can get them on to a college class all the high school options even beyond the level because we've had that happen as well. So really innovative approach is there are students who arrive to us in
023our program who their metal needs on our campuses for anyone who's in the more advanced that we don't have. Um but if students that would stand for students take classes on campus or also Our team is tracking that mostly our middle school director and we can get that information for you. I don't have it in our heads. So I remember last month you were talking about some creative ways that you were getting to the So, how's that? >> I excuse me. I think it's it's going well this year. Um, but we haven't scaled it up yet, right? So, we're really um I wouldn't say we're using any more creative ways this year than we have in the past um because we solve the problems under the old rules. Um but we have to available for
024our students because we know that we're going to be transporting for students that work last time is really that forward looking. Um and I think more guidance will come from state and federal government about this as time passes because um IPS tends to be at the forefront of this work and sometimes it takes the other districts a little bit longer to um have fewer students out a little longer. catch up with what the problems are. We sometimes see them where others do and so um I suspect people are starting to catch up with how are we going to do this? So we may see some shifts because I think I might have missed it. You might have there opportunities to have a CTE to get CTE hours or credit in all four high schools. Yes,
025all four high schools have CT pathways and have workace learning that's currently occurring because in order to designate CT pathway as a high quality pathway you need to offer credentials of value or credit or based learning experience. So we have school based enterprises that exist Washington. Um we have students who do internships and >> I'm curious about um your partners that are involved with the early college credits. Um and you name automatic acceptance and that's awesome. I just wonder who's in our buildings delivering course and you know I don't know if you tack program which is like guaranteed acceptance it sound at all very similar to that but I know that involves being a commission for higher ed so what is is there authority that you're working with in order to make this a cohesive
026you know transfer among students as they graduate. >> There is I should say there are there's more than a going on this week. So um to your question who's delivering the courses for most students it's IPS teachers who are credential by IT as college instructors. So we use semester funds to a significant um credentiing effort that allowed us to certify dozens of teachers to deliver this content. So most students are receiving their dual credit in that way. We also have dual credit agreements. Um we have dual credit agreement with Vincense for some of our specific pathways. And then as I mentioned before we have SPAN program which is a dual enrollment program. So students who are selected for that program mostly at Arsenal Tech can take any courses on campus at no cost to themselves.
027That's one way students access and in terms of who supports us in this work or how we collaborate because it is you know I tech this transfer of credits the random acts of dual credit as we call them it really is real um so we work with the center for excellence and leadership learning cell which is an entity out of university of Indianapolis and they really the gold standard for early colleges in Indiana so our two certifications September through them and then George Washington will also do some work to help with that alignment. But we also work with the new skills network which is um I tech us and some other school districts and entities working to sort of solve some of these problems in real time. That's actually where the seamless work emerged was
028the conversations that are happening with that group. >> So just to clarify no matter who's inurmatic acceptance into the institutions that you So it seems like everybody's kind of everybody's work. >> Yeah, that's right. I'll say the the admission is based on GPA. So it doesn't matter what our GPA, but the submission you all saw back the other screen is a statewide initiative that the governor and the education with regardless of GPA, regardless of Google credit status, if you need automatically accepted that institution and I think you also asked maybe a question but it for me about college what is that credit um and so I think one of the areas we share here is the college is in state law is a public all public institutions in the state of Indiana must accept those
029college credits as a unit of credit and they cannot say I don't want that credit from this from they must accept that so it's guaranteed transfer of college credits to all public institutions in the state of Indiana and we've seen a lot of private institutions last years thank you for lifting that up because I don't accept the students you know, credits that they acquired through high school be honored and you know what I mean. So student is enrolling into a degree want or I guess another question just to follow up. What if they haven't got the entire associates degree? So you're saying that even maybe they have you know 20 22 25 credits it's not quite there we can still honor the course. >> Yeah absolutely. So if a student doesn't credit let's say for
030example um we've been very intentional in selecting the liberal arts school credit that we offer. The commission for higher education has a crosswalk database. If you take this course at where will that transfer to try to get the most transferable credit possible questions. Um my first question is like can the enrollment plus the um work hours 75 hours um do they have to be completed in the same field of study? >> Okay, good. Um and then my next question is with George Washington, you mentioned for early college, they're still in the progress. What's the timeline on that being ready to go for Washington? >> We can't say for sure, but we feel we will be The big hurdle is you have to have a graduate who earns the college. So the earliest of that earlate
031>> so that's a lot of pressure on the students in order to just get that. I I don't know if they do they know about the certification. I don't know. I mean it's It's hard work that they're doing, but um they're amazing. So, it's been amazing to see. >> And then my last question is are you had mentioned the dual credit um certified teachers um and getting creative. So, I I was curious on are the dual credit um certified educators across the district. Are they working solely in one high school each? Are they working in two or more? What does that look like? >> Right now, they're working in one high school, but I expect that if we have as we advance into these state courses right now, we feel equipped, but you know, as
032you can imagine, there's one certified teacher and that it takes a little while. certified and so we have some options there. One option is they can go onto a college campus or we can do a professor program to the school. But I I think the whole team is open to whether or not something we might want to share or find a way essentially we're monitoring closely and we will propose solutions if we encounter those problems. I don't want to take Thank you. Here even though we're sitting next to each other to share I feel like I'm shouting you and I have a few questions oneonone. So feel free to just answer me if that's possible. Um the extra credentials I saw the list and I myself you know what goes along with each one of
033those credentials and students to navigate if I want to go that list was pretty >> and I was like I'm sure each one of those has it own. So how does that work? >> Yeah. So um >> yes it is working. So uh the answer is primarily our future centers and our counseling staff are the experts in this. We have had to design a tracking system that aligns with our school student information system so that you know all entities all adults can have visibility to where students are in the process. And we have to collaborate across the learning team to ensure that the ways we intervene when students are off track are aligned and effective. And so next week we will be talking more about our track services and we'll talk a bit about how
034I knew the future center was involved. wasn't sure that you know to make sure students aren't falling through the cracks because they just didn't understand how to >> I would add to that one of the powers of us being able to capture all of our higher education data in the new college dashboard is way smarter than I that data and ways that it's actually creating a barraph that shows Austin and how close is he to the Indiana college so we can make sure we fall in love with Austin and have extremely you know, passing away from this. Let's make sure we keep you engaged. So, we saw that power come live this fall for the first time when we obviously enrolled new students and we were quickly able to say, "Okay, we've got these 40
035kids that we're quickly tracking for DNA college. Let's check to make sure they're accurately enrolled in their college class they need to get the data in May." And so that's provided our team and our school based team with the power um to make sure that we are doing best. We had one young lady who transferred from Addict to George Washington as a senior and if we did not have early college on the other campuses one she would not have had the same opportunity and also didn't have that dashboard available for school she might have seen that signal check to make sure you get her enrolled in these other college classes and so for the course we're very hopeful that she'll graduate from being a college now even after transferring from So obviously more pres. >>
036Yeah. So like career pathways where it's happening at other schools. >> Oh duplicated. Yes. So um computer science is one that appears in different forms in multiple schools but the state has mandated that we all teach computer science and so that's there's plenty there both well there's design which appears but it's like bridges of I learn the opportunities presented to students and where they are. So thank you for that. Um and then you mentioned equity and how we are being here and I'm wondering is that just a numbers game who is involved or is it our work? >> It's our work but you know I do want to know what ahead. >> Yeah. So I have a just touched on topics. So, >> so when I say it's our work, that's where our shortage ID
037program, we learned a lot about what it meant to be an I for all program where all students access and Austin and I since we've come on board with the PSR team have worked very diligently to take what we learned from that program and apply it in the other three high schools as we go credit. And so we actually we don't find ourselves tracking data by race very frequently because we don't see because our programs are designed in such a way that all using data we're not um we're not gatekeeping right systems that place opportunities for all students and supports for all students. So that's why I said it is right >> I would also one of the sorry I will use my voice as well one of the key there are eight or principles
038of early college from our one of those key pillars is targeting student population making sure your students that are enrolled in early college and earning college credits is reflective of your community. So while we got the children, we're also keenly aware of that as part of our I just a warm moment. Steve from cell was at our Christmas addicts breakfast this year for the early college where all the families and students were and he was sitting with us and he said if I told people what was happening on the data every day because question around my question is how are we question I'll give you a general overview but we do have in a few months a deep dive into that for all of you. But we are going to have to retool the way
039we support in our schools. Our positions in our schools will become more students. As you can imagine, we're going from having a handful of students are trying to get 650 hours of learning right to a large number of students including those students but also students or 75. So it is a significant we have the freshman are in the new fields now by the time they're juniors >> question you mentioned that we don't see opportunity is that the opportunity has students that are in the those students are across our high schools. >> We see plenty of opportunity gaps across our high school students. You'll see them next week when we bring you those gaps in the students. I'm glad this work is expanding in 1989. And so that would be initial. >> Thank you. That was
040our only question. comments. Thank you. I just wanted to let everyone know there's not very much we had our first meeting this year last night and trying to the purpose of the meeting to reestablish members and that had fallen off and reassum called a lot of things, but ended up wanting to elevate students voice a go back to their communities, whether they're community members or families or district employees or representatives of different goities ask questions to bring back to committee for us to bring those to adward. So nothing was decided. It was just a small conversation that I bring to you all because one of the things that we had brought up was the possibility session. Our next scheduled meeting is our review session on Tuesday, October 28th at 6 a.m. in the boardroom. Having
041completed all items on the agenda, the meeting will now session