Richmond Community Schools Board of Trustees Student Achievement Work Session - 2025, March 6th

001Thank you all for joining us today. Uh what is today? March 6 for uh work session for Richmond School. Please join me by uh stating the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. I have the reading of the community statement please. Uh mission statement, Richard Community Schools guide students on pathways of learning to a future of limitless possibilities. In the vision statement, sure. Thank you. Richmond community is a collaborative community nurturing mind, body, and spirit to prepare students for lives of choice, purpose, and service. Great. So, moving on. Uh item two, work session, student achievement. Dr. President picking trustees. I'm going to do something that I've never done before so as

002to break the ice and warm up the podium for our amazing educator that will come up and truly senator blaze. I'm going to come before you here at the podium if you don't mind. Nevertheless, good afternoon trustees, educators, and valued members of our school community out in TV land and those that are with us in the audience today. I stand before you with a deep sense of pride and gratitude as we reflect on the remarkable progress our students have made within the professional learning organization known as Victor Community Schools. Across our corporation, we have witnessed significant gains in student achievement. Gains that are not just reflected in test scores, but in the confidence, determination, and perseverance of our student learners. These successes are not accidental. They are a result of dedicated educators, supportive families, and

003most importantly, the resilience of our students. Resilience, as we know, is the power to rise after setbacks, to push forward when adversity presents itself and to believe in growth even when the path is truly difficult. Throughout the past few years, our students have demonstrated that power in extraordinary ways. Whether overcoming learning gaps, adapting to new expectations, or striving for excellence in the face of hardship, they have shown us what is possible when we cultivate a culture of perseverance and support. As a PLO, our responsibility is to continue fostering this resilience by providing highquality instruction, equitable outcomes, and the unwavering belief that every student can succeed. Let us now celebrate how far we've come while also keeping focus on how far we still have yet to go. Together with our commitment and shared vision, we will

004ensure that every student not only achieves, but thrives. I now would like to introduce to you Mr. Ryan Winter, who is the CEO of LinkedIn, a data mining firm that earlier this year generously allowed us to pilot their software for free for the entire 2425 school season. Mr. Winter is virtually joining us as you can see. However, uh his account director, Miss Jamie Owens behind me is here to support Mr. Winter's contribution. Following Mr. Winter's introductory contribution, we will then hear from our progressive achievement. I'm sorry. You will then hear about our progressive achievement from our educators throughout our PLO. Mr. Winter and Miss Owens will chime in from time to time to help submit various data points throughout the entirety of our presentation. While we as educators are data leaders, and we are the

005fine folks at Lincoln are data experts. Mining data and crunching numbers to the infinite is what they do daily. And so with that said, I now give you Mr. Ryan Winter. Thank you, Dr. Wright. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for having Jamie and I here today. Very excited to be discussing your data. We certainly appreciate the opportunity. So, just for context about what we're going to be going over today, we're going to be looking at five years worth of iLearn data um in sort of um your different subjects to provide a little bit of context about growth and achievement and specifically how the district is performing to different peer groups. So before I go into some of the headlines and some of the charts, I did want to sort of just provide a little bit

006of vocabulary and some context about what are the different peer groups that we will be comparing you to. Excuse me. So on this page what you will see is your school district here and we have some basic information about the number of students and some of the percentages of the composition of your demographics specifically program and race. But on the next row we've identified group um in what we call a decile band. So a desile band is 10 percentage points of districts in a similar economically disadvantaged group. So we can see there are 38 districts in your state who are between 60 and 70%. And why is that relevant to you? Because your economically disadvantaged percentage is 62%. And so one of the things that we strongly believe in, and I'm going to show you

007why on the next page, is the most relevant and appropriate peer group we believe to compare yourself to are districts of similar socioeconomics. However, we also want to show other comparisons as well. your county, your regional service agency, and your statewide uh all LDAS uh in the state. And so you can see for example when I look at the state that only 48% of students are economically disadvantaged, which is very different than your school district, which is very different than your peer group. And so one of the things that we've seen when really trying to best compare school districts is looking at school districts a few percentage points below and a few percentage points above is really the most relevant. And so we've dissected data looking at um size of district, racial composition, um you

008know, grade configuration of schools. And what we have seen time and time again across all states is that socioeconomics are the number one indicator and predictor of student achievement. It's not the only one, but it is by far the largest contributor. And what I wanted to show you is that we did a five-year research analysis of your state in ELA in the upper leftand corner, math in the upper right hand corner, science in the bottom left in green, and then orange is social studies. And this is a a scatter plot graph. And a scatter plot looks at basically every district in your state. So these points signify each district or LEA in the state including charters and vocational. And so what we plot is the percent of socioeconomics on the x axis. So districts that

009have more or lower socioeconomics or poorer students basically are here on the far right. And if I look at here on the y ais, we look at overall achievement as defined by proficiency on the ilearn test. What you will notice that these um dots really sort of are have a best fit line. Okay? And that's what this sort of line is. But you'll notice they kind of hover around the mean. And so in statistics there is a number called an R squared which we calculate in each of these charts which really measures the tightness of fit. Now what you'll notice is is there happen to be a lot of outliers uh in each of these charts. And if we were to remove these your R squares would go up. These outliers sometimes are the type

010of school districts. But by and large, what you do see here and what you see in every state that we've ever analyzed is that lower socioeconomics is correlated with lower achievement. And so when I look at that 62% area, which is kind of where your district lies, you can see basically uh of the districts to 60 to 70% that I referenced. This is those 38 districts I was referring to. And so we're going to talk about your district's placement in there. We're also going to look at the state. When I look at the state, remember they were 48% on average. Very different group. And so it is always okay to compare to any peer group if you so choose, but again, the ones that are closer to your socioeconomics are probably the most appropriate. And

011so what I wanted to do is really start the presentation with sort of the major headlines um and consistent with Dr. Wright's conclusions is that I think there is some major progress going on in your school district um that I'm excited to sort of report. And so what we did is we looked at across the state what your overall percentile was five years ago, the year preandemic in 1819 across all four core subjects. And then to the right here, we look at where your percentile was last year in 2324. And the takeaway is that in all four core subjects, there have been growth. The other thing that I'm going to show you, which is really the bulk of my presentation, is that ELA and math, which is often the the biggest areas of focus, have

012had consistent improvement each year and across different grade bands. So, these aren't two isolated data points that I'm cherry-picking to tell a roy. there is momentum across your different grades and subjects uh really in both ELA and math and science and social studies had some nice growth as well not to the same degree but there has been growth and so I am going to be looking at some trends to share with you that I think are are worth celebrating so here's language arts as I mentioned they've gone from the second percentile in 20189 19 overall to the 10th percentile in the most recent year. So there was a nice jump last year which is exciting. But in addition to sort of this percentile jump, we also have ranked school districts across your four bands. And

013one of the things that you'll notice is that in the overall state there were 288 LEAs five years ago. Of those 288 you were ranked 282. Last year there were 290 LEAs in our data set of which your rank was 261. You will notice for the last four years, despite where achievement has gone, your ranking had improved every single year. And basically, you were 21 spots above in ELA where you were five years ago after growing each year. When I look at that peer group that I was mentioning that is closest to you, you were 35 out of 38 five years ago and you have jumped six places to 29 versus the 38 districts. So I just want to pause and see if anyone has any questions before I break down a little bit between

014the different grade levels. Have a question. Yep. What's the advantage of comparing ourselves to our peer group? What do we do with that other than it makes our numbers look better? I I I think the goal is to look at just relative performance to see how you're doing versus your peers. Are you know one of the things that we believe in is just the future and and looking at growth. So, are we making improvement of growth gains stronger than different peer groups or different, you know, uh cohort populations. And I think what this is showing you is that um relative to the districts in your similar socioeconomic group, your students are making more achievement on academic performance. Mr. Would you also state that I believe as I heard you say before it's more apples to

015apples uh by by looking at the peer groups. collaborate at the same time and I believe in some of your later slides and I know in our educator slides we'll be looking at state data and how we also compare and compete uh with our our state counterparts but u but if the path I mean if you're striving for state average which is is minimal I I don't see how striving for it seems like we've just moved the goalpost lower. Can I answer this? I'm only from I teach educational psychology at U East and was a master's degree is and it's something that we talk about in assessments is you want to have norm reference test and you want to have criterion reference. Both of them are very valuable and give us insights. We have to

016look at both. I think it's good to know where we stand and good to know where we are. I'm hoping that and it seems like so far we're hearing both. It just gives us more information and more picture of where we need to be or where we're at compared to others. It helps us figure out are the tests being administered quality tests or where they need to be, but also lets us know, you know, that's what I from my perspective, I want to hear kind of both types of information. I I I'm just cautious that we don't I mean we have you know bottom 10% is not something to write home about and I appreciate the improvement. I know how hard people work. I know how our teachers work and how our our building level

017staff work. But I I think um if when you say you're bottom 10% that red that's a much bigger red flag than saying we're half mid mid midpack in our peer group. And so I'd rather personally as at the board level I'd rather have that red flag that call to action if you will than say amongst this group of people we're mid pack if that makes any sense. So, so, so, so just two comments I'll make is um one of the benefits of all this data analysis of that you can look at your achievement through different lenses. You guys use the I Ready assessment which provides a national percentile which is basically a very large going group. Um, and so you have national percentiles in this analysis. you state percentiles and then while we don't

018create local percentiles relative to your peer groups I think to your point about where you are in the pack is important and the point is just you're climbing the pack and so on the next page um or two slides I'm going to show you some uh interesting stuff in terms of elementary because in elementary you're a lot more ahead of the pack for example than you are middle school. So we'll d but dissect that a little bit. Um but this is looking at overall achievement um for your district in terms of proficiency for the last five years in each subject. And you'll notice a couple of highlights in grades three and four. You've made consecutive growth each year. But I want to point you to the right hand side of the page, which is again

019where we're comparing you versus the districts that are most like you and the overall state. And what you'll notice is in grades three and four is that you're outperforming your peer groups. Okay. The other conclusion that I will show you is that while starting in fifth grade you do underperform your peer groups. You will notice that overall over the last five years you have narrowed that gap. So five years ago you were basically 10 percentage points in terms of passing rates below your peers and now you're only two points below. So you are catching up basically to your peer group. And I'll just note I'll make two more observations that I think are worth celebrating is your district felt a lot less than every other cohort group basically during the pandemic. You'll notice that the

020state basically went down 7% pandemic and your peer group went down nine. You only went down 2%. You've also recovered at a faster rate. And so what you'll notice is that you're at 25% passing, which is what you were preandemic. When I look at the state, I'm sorry, when I look at the state, the state is 7 percentage points below where they were pre- pandemic. And your peer group was eight percentage points below as of last year. So relative to every other group, relative to the pandemic, you basically had gotten back to where you are. And one thing I think is also worth just sort of identifying in fourth grade starting two years ago, you started to outperform your preandemic average. And now you're at 35% in fourth grade. That's 8 percentage points higher than

021your prepandemic average. And that 35% is really sort of that difference is higher than any of the other demographic groups relative to the state. You were 23 points below the state five years ago. Now you're only 16. And Mr. Win, if I may interject just to that point, I know that when we had conversation and of course uh our our teams have been scouring through the data and arriving at these same discoveries. I know that one of the things you mentioned is that u that's thus is what what allowed you to join us today uh is because of some of the percentage points that you've seen compared to other corporations you've worked in there have been some significant and tremendous uh growth and I think to Mr. Weber's point or board member Weber's point and

022it's it's a great point that he he makes and we all keep our our firmal focus on it. Uh I think it's also important to confirm that what we are and have been doing is also working. Absolutely. And this next slide to me is worth illustrating because I think your point you know about you know the bottom 10% not being sort of where you want to be. I think it's important to unpack your growth, dissect it. Where is growth happening and where is it not? And I want to show you grade three through five and six through eight because I think grade through five, what I see here is pretty awesome in my opinion. Um, you can see grade three was seventh percentile five years ago and look at this line up to 33%. It

023grew 13 percentile points last year. Fourth grade, fifth percentile grew to 35th percentile. Again, a huge jump over last year and certainly a huge jump versus five years ago. Fifth grade, big jump up from last year. Still a lot lower than third and fourth grade, but overall improvement. And so, I'm not trying to play a rosy picture that growth is happening every place in the same degree, but it is happening in each of the grade levels. And this jump in elementary language arts is happening consistently and significantly in the most recent school year. That momentum is tough to replicate and I imagine it will continue. When I look at middle school, the story isn't as great. What you can see here is that the percentile on middle school is lower. So overall, we were in

024the first percentile basically five years ago. It has jumped up to the fifth percentile after sort of dropping sort of a couple of years ago. My biggest concern about middle school in both ELA and math is 8th grade. Eighth grade is just the one area I will point out where I do see some downwards performance. Seventh grade had a nice jump last year. Sixth grade is also similar to fifth grade at its all-time high. middle school we've seen around the country be very difficult uh for students during that transitionary period. So you know it's just something worth noting when I look at the rankings though that I think are pretty interesting in elementary and I did want to just point this out. We were tw 276 out of 286 five years ago, but we jumped

02541 spots over the last five years to 235 relative to your peer groups. And this this goes to the gentleman's comment about being in the middle of the pack. You are pretty much now almost in the middle of the pack in elementary. So if you remember overall you climbed six spots but if I look at elementary went from 34 out of 37 to now 21 out of 27. So you know that is almost the middle of the pack in elementary when you look at math actually one of the things that's interesting about your data is your math data is actually very similar to your ELA data. So, a lot of congruence there, but you went from the third to the 10th percentile, which is great. Your overall state ranking improved 20 spots. You went from

026281 to 261. When I look at your closest peer group, you climbed five spots. So, almost identical. You climbed six spots in um ELA, five spots in uh math. When I look at your math data overall, you're only two or three percentage points below the pandemic. When I look at your closest peer group, 10% below the prepandemic average. When I look at the state, seven percentage points below. Again, similar to ELA, you guys fell less during the pandemic. That was the key. You also recovered better. So both things working in your favor. You can see both the state and your peer group grew more fell more than 10%. When I look at math um from a percentile of grade 3 through five versus 6 through 8, the good news is overall we've gone from five

027to 14 uh to the 14th percentile. So, not the same as ELA, but again, still growth in a positive direction. You can see third and fourth grade um you know, doing pretty good. Third grade has had a big jump versus five years ago, whereas fourth grade's kind of maintained a similar level. Fifth grade has had two years of sort of a big jump from three years ago. In middle school, sixth grade had a big jump last year, its all-time high. Seventh grade had a nice jump again at its all-time high. Eighth grade is again my big concern in both ELA and math went down, but overall it went up five percentile points in math. And then in science and social studies and then that sort of concludes my presentation. No, we are higher than where

028we are five percentile points. Um we're in the low teens. It hasn't grown much. You can see there is strength in fourth grade in biology relative to sixth grade and in social studies we see sort of the low teens. And so now all of your subjects are kind of in the 10 to 15 percentile range. Um again much higher than where we were five years ago. So that concludes my presentation. I'm going to pause and just see if anyone has comments or questions for me. Um I have a question. Um looking at the eighth grade data for language arts and math um and it's such a huge increase in 2020 and 2021. So to me a direct correlation is online learning and eighth graders may benefit more from a different learning style. That could be

029an assumption. But to see it jump that high and then immediately plummet again once kids were back in school, you know, to me I'd want to dig in what what were we doing for our eighth grade kids then because you know we were doing something right during co for eighth graders. Um so what was that? Did they like it better? you know, is it that's just my assumption on that, but that's something I like us to, you know. Do you have any thoughts as far as what to attribute it to? And then and great to draw what I know the during the co uh measures of accountability or not as as virtually or not as what they currently are in person and were during CO. Um, however, uh, we also know that following CO there

030was and I'm sure Mr. winter and I know that we'll still need the thunder from Miss Cooper, but I know that uh as students were transitioning back in relearning the ideal of being a student and applying myself was was a challenge but definitely will look into yes absolutely I mean I think it equates to the corporate world too. I could never go back to office, right? I'm so much more productive since co and you know the world has sort of had to change and I think this education is it's been harder obviously because to get people back in but so as as m Mr. winter transitions away. I think one of the things that um he shared and one of the things that I I I know that uh is going to be highlighted later

031on, but as our elementary data continues to improve, we can almost uh anticipate and expect that that secondary uh data is going to continue with the systemic alignment and structures that we have in place. Um again, we we'll continue to see that that vertical articulation of success. One thing to that same point, I'm also curious um as to the break like digging into that or I'm sure it's been dug into, but what building students are asked? We have students at multiple buildings, you know, has that is that a play in here like how does that break down? Is there a clear or is it all eighth graders that be interested in that data? We also again this is something the data that we all been scouring over and I know that Dr. Bill and the

032leaders have been discussing with their own family staff. There are discoveries that we've made. This really confirms going back to this brought a little too early. This confirms some of the the facts that we've known there at our middle school level. We've uh we all balanced there's been a challenge in more ways than one. caliber with system in line with uh stateability with leadership along with teachers. We also know that our faculty and staff that um there at Dennis are continuing to receive uh the ultimate support when it comes to instruction which is the the true control that we have overall uh with student achievement. So there's definitely uh some some areas that we have to continue to for sure. Mr. Winter, I'm sorry. I I had a question. I think that observation about eighth

033grade in 202021 is a very insightful one. Just curious about whether testing that year was mandatory. Um I know I'm just looking at statewide trends in Indiana here on test participation and I saw that numbers were a lot lower from the basically 201819 school year. One of the things that we did see in that 2021 school year is PSAT and SAT scores went up significantly year after the pandemic and the reason wasn't really I and again I'm speculating here and this may not be a reason but if it wasn't mandatory to take the test what we did find is your higher achieving students did take the test and lower achieving students did not. And so there may just be a population in those results that year. And which our our high school principal is uh

034shaking her head to confirm. And as we know during that time there were a lot of there was a lot of grace that was extended in more ways than one. But it's definitely an investigate and look into and find some answers and get the bottom up for sure. And I you know could to definitely assume that. I just don't want to write off something that will help other you know something else that may that helps. I I I think it's a very interesting observation. I think it'll be interesting to also look at other data like behavior and attendance data in the following years because I think to your point you know the socialization aspect of being in school could we know certainly impacts achievement um and less trouble you can get in at home um

035achievement has the opportunity to go up that that was a very um thoughtful reason Mr. That's a great segue into the next uh phase of our presentation. That brings us to our assistant superintendents, Mrs. Margaret Elementary and Mr. Pritchard secondary. Ladies, lady and gentlemen, I'm sorry. People have to ask questions now or should they wait until the end of public commentary? Uh yes, with public commentary. That'd be great if they can take the just so that we can try and stay as efficient and effective with the presentation, but we definitely will open up at the end of this year's public commentary. Bridget, Mr. Oh, thank you, sir. Okay. Well, that was kind of meant to give you the historical perspective, you know, of how things have and and the upward trajectory for the district. And

036so now these next couple slides, Mrs. Mark and I will share what sort of narrow us down is what you're going to hear is current actionable kinds of things are happening from our building leaders. And so, just as a reminder as they come forward about um about our instruction in our buildings, Mrs. Marker and I are kind of in charge of that. Uh tier one systemic alignment is a tenant of the corporation and so uh we have a new reading curriculum as a reminder that's been underway in K through8. Um wit and wisdom uh the the instructional coaches and uh Mrs. Kirk who's with us today has been working hard to get that implemented to keep that ELA momentum that you saw happening this year. Uh we also have a new science curriculum uh through

037Savas. used to be Pearson for those of you who remember, but that is in place now for K through 8. Uh and then the ready math curriculum has also been in place. This is year three for that curriculum. So as you see the numbers coming, you'll kind of have some perspective for you. But that math curriculum has in place been here for three years with the exception of logos uses the CPM program which that's aligned with the high school uh the high school freshman algebra classes they use that CPM program. So that's another one of those and another piece of our systemic alignment is our partnership with NIT. And so we've been aligned K through 12 um with our partnership and our on-site coaching working with our building level leaders, our instructional coaches, our mentor

038teachers, implementing structures in place such as cluster and um ILT district ILT and then ALT team meetings um have also been an intricate part of our increase um in our data that um we just um were shared with us um In addition to we talked about social emotional learning, the impact of um COVID on our learners. And so being in year two and phase two with the board support of TBRRI, um you will hear from our amazing building leaders and presenters and teachers um and coaches about how the impact of TBRRI has made on um not only um the um social emotional support of our students, behavior data, attendance, and also academic data as well. And we wouldn't be remiss without sharing also just the resilience of our entire school community. We know the hard

039work that all of our teachers put in every single day, our support staff, our building administrators. Um, and we are incredibly proud of everything that they're doing with all of our initiatives um that we've implemented this school year and and in school years past. And so we wanted to make sure that we said a big thank you to them and thank you to our our board of education and those going before you over the past few years that have continued to provide unwing support, encouragement along the way. Absolutely. F question on the NIET. I believe the the thought was that that would be their footprint in our district be reduced. It doesn't seem like that has happened. Is there new thinking or what direction do we see with an IET? Absolutely. And just as was

040the initial um ideal uh in IET this year still continues to have a very effective impact on our classrooms. power as we move into the next phase of their support, it will be more toward the administrative side of of what they have to offer so that we as uh villain leaders and and instructional leaders uh continue to uh to flourish and and continue to improve upon our craft as we move uh move down the road. But yes, uh of what we experienced a few years back, uh we've definitely gotten down the road and as Mrs. as Margaret alluded to and as our uh brilliant educators will also um partly there has been a mindset shift and a shift instructionally in how it is that we are u we're we're we're making and creating uh our

041own way and so yes to your question Mr. However, um as as we come out of this school season, as we move into next school season, their footprint will be a lot less within our classrooms and more so continue to be supportive of we could not belabor the issue. Could we have some a nar narrative summary of NIT current and how we see going forward like maybe in the next update? Would that be possible to know what it might look like when you because I don't really know what an administrative NIT looks like versus a coaching NIT and if we can just have a half a page or a page that would be helpful. And we we'll definitely do that. And just to u quick answer and some of our principles in the room can

042attest uh believe it was two summers ago. We went through the NIT principal standards rubric training uh so as to uh continue to familiarize ourselves with how best to u serve and support those students with the framework. I'm sorry teachers with the framework um as they are navigating through. So Mr. Pritchard, Mrs. Marber, thank you so much. I think we now move with Mr. service and perfume. Come on down. Well, good evening everyone. I'm with my coach Rebecca. So, we're going to present some of our current with you. Um, so we thought we'd share our school goals with you. So, if you see on the screen, um, you'll look at our ivory school goals and our island goals. Now, you look at those percentages and you say, "Oh, 30%, 50%, 25%, 35%." Those are low

043because we wanted to make attainable goals um before um our goals were like 75% of our students would pass, but that wasn't realistic. We looked at our data and dug in and met with our school improvement team and came up with these goals and made it more realistic. So hoping to show growth in small increments so our teachers and our staff can and our kids can see the growth that we're making. So that's the reason on those first hand goals. So this is our ready reading data and I know those numbers are really really small right there. So if you look at the red those are um they're three or more red levels behind. So if you look at that bottom number that's in parentheses, that's where we started at the beginning of the year.

044And then that bold number tells you how many students we have in that area now. So if you look, we went from 18 students three or more grade levels below to 14. We went from 32 students to 20 students two grade levels below. We went from 140 students to 101 students one grade level below. And then 23 students to 60 students that are early on grade level. and then nine students to 29 students mid or above grade level. So you can see with I reading our students are making progress which is what we want to see. And then our I Ready reading typical growth from August to December. Our goal is where you want your kids to be like at the mid year is like 50% in typical growth and our kids in reading are

045at 55. So they're a little bit above where they should be right now. So that's good news. So, and then our I Ready math data, um, and that three grade levels or more, we went from 48 students to 18. That's huge. Um, went from 151 students to 149 students, one grade level or below. We went from 10 students to 35 students early on grade level and zero students to 13 students mid or above grade level. So we can see that you know our students are making work in reading and then the I already math and book road from August to December where in reading we were at 55 and now we're at 56. So our students are on target for hoping to move more kids to be on grade level in reading and math according

046to I read. Then our growth data for dibbles that's K through 2 grade. So you can see where we were at the beginning of the year from the blue to the green, yellow, and red. And then you look at middle of year. So you see that red getting smaller. And this is our first year um using dentals in K through 2 grade. And then where are we now? So I'm going to let Mrs. Leuse talk about where are we now. Thank you. So obviously she shared all the numbers but we all know there's a lot of hard work that goes into getting those numbers. So I want to celebrate and share some of the things that we're doing. Um went wisdom is a amazing program but it's taken a lot of time and we're continuing

047to learn and develop and we know that that won't stop after this year. So we will continue to implement that with integrity meaning that we need to stick with it. We need to stick with how the program is written and make sure that we're meeting the needs of our students with what we're given. So we do an weekly meetings with the coaches the coach myself um Miss Van Biddlesworth who is our literacy cotty coach and Mrs. service as well to help support them um with their wit and wisdom but also with all their planning. So we've implemented those those happen weekly. So we attend all the K4 planning meetings. Um we have clusters. Clusters are an important part of our growth and um we have started implementing follow-ups. So whatever we're focusing on for that

048cycle that is broken down throughout a six to nine or 10 week um cycle supporting the development of that cycle. and I'm going in and I'm following up with um looking at and targeting those specific needs. It's very different from when Mrs. Service goes in because I'm not the evaluator. I'm your coach. So, I'm there to help you with best practices, to work things through with you, to celebrate successes, and also to brainstorm with you. Um and then our ILT has started implementing our field testing. Our ILT meets every Monday after school. We would love to have anybody there that wants to learn more about ILT and the hard work that we use um to help drive um growth in our buildings. But um the field testing has been a big part of our year.

049We're able to evaluate, reflect and make shifts before we deliver it to the staff. Um our current cycle we really targeted the use of dibbles and geodess which geodess is a separate part of Whitten Wisdom. So what have is the reading the foundations is going to be that phonics and um then the geodess is then for K2 and implementing that background knowledge and putting all pieces together during that success time. Um and it's when you think of funological and phmic awareness that's a big umbrella and we were able to really narrow down specifically how we wanted to target because the idea of cluster is to not give more work to teachers it's to embed it with what they're already doing. So those are some things that have helped us get to where we are now,

050but we have a long way to go and we know that. So we are continuing to work to create that environment that promotes critical thinking in the classroom because we're all learners. Everybody in that building from the administrator to Paris Paris to the custodian to the students. We want to continue to foster that critical thinking. We know that's important. We want to continue to promote teamwork and self-reflection because we know that we have to own what we do. We have to reflect to continue to get better and obviously we want to implement best practices. We will continue to implement our five new programs of Whiten Wisdom Foundations Geod TBRI and Sabbaths because we know those are going to help us meet our goals. We know those programs are important to student success. And we're going

051to be spending time um in the last cluster cycle revisiting ready math and going over those instructions and looking at opportunities for growth within mass. And then we're going to continue to stay committed as an ILT to use data plus the NIT framework to provide the best quality professional development because we know our kids deserve it. And with that, uh again, as uh we alluded to and and for our board, uh the data points that we're referencing in the schools are referencing are the same data points that we presented to you all last year. This is just a little more formal focused per school that's presenting at the elementary level, and I know Mrs. Mark can allude to it. And I I see him in the back. He's trying to hide out. Um but the

052principal of our uh most recently identified Blue Ribbon Elementary School, Mr. Jones, uh I believe could also weigh in. And I know Mrs. Markward and uh Mr. Service and Miss McFuse could could share that across the corporation uh elementary schools have been seeing very similar uh growth and and in some areas uh they've u they've seen even more and so again we we definitely are excited as to not only where Fairview is going and again as we know uh not long ago Fairview uh had some other challenges and I think Mr. Mr. Winter in his uh initial uh presentation alluded to where things were pretty cold and where they are now. And I know Mr. Service and with Mrs. Lefuse and uh the Mrs. Eisenbergers and of course the Cynthia Kirk who is districtwide have

053been really working hard and the faculty staff have been really working hard there at Fairview to not only maintain but also continue to build upon that moment. So we appreciate you all. Uh, and at this point, if there are no questions, we'll transition into our next. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great job. Great job. Mrs. Brazzle from Test Indie School. How are you guys? Welcome. You're welcome. Okay. So, I just Sorry about that. If he gets a little anxious, it's fine. Fine. Um, so I just pulled some of our I Ready data. I figured you're hearing from many, many schools. This is very big picture for test where we are. I'm celebrating my 16th month as the principal at TEST. So, I was very excited when I hit my one-year mark because now things

054don't surprise me anymore. I've seen the whole school year, which is a really big deal. Um, so in reading you can see that we showed really good growth in the sixth grade and we did not show really good growth in the fifth grade. So that's something that we've talked about. Um, we are in year one of Whiten Wisdom. So is this an implementation dip? Is this part of the transition that you saw a dip in the historical data of the district from fourth to fifth grade? So we know that transition is big for kids. So that is something that we have talked about as a team because we are not excited that our median growth there is 25% in the fifth grade but it is significantly higher. It's 87% in the sixth grade on the

055I ready reading test. In math our two grade Oh so here's the placement level. Um, so to John's earlier point about are we on grade level, right? So like we can feel good about growing, but if we're still behind, like we need to know that, right? So this is where the grade level placement shows you that. Um so you can see there's the August is at the top and then December so beginning of year to midyear you can see that sixth grade we see the grain increases and in fifth grade it pretty much stays the same right so that's how the grade level placement looks for the population of students that test right now so then when you go to math we're showing better results in math we showed good growth growth in both fifth

056and sixth grade. So, in three of our four metrics, we show good growth and we're real proud of that. We are still looking at that reading in fifth grade. Um, so you can see there, we are on target to meet our goals. So, that progress bar right there, that's the median number. So, as long as a kid is 50% of the way to their goal from August to December, they're on target to meet it. So we actually have more of our kids than h like more than half our school is on target um to meet their growth goal. And so then here's the placement in math. So you can see from August to December there's notably more green um when you look at fifth grade and sixth grade um were moving kids up levels um

057according to the I Ready math test. So that's the big picture data. Another way to look at that um is this graph um which I like. So the bottom of it is the performance and then the vertical is the growth. And so of those four quadrants, we are right now in low performance, but three of our four measures were in high growth. Right? So, in a perfect world, we're going to get over into that high performance area. And really, the best place to be is if you're on the quadrant on the upper right where your high performance and high growth. Okay, we're not at the high performance yet. What we can control is that we're making sure that we're growing. Then the last thing that I pulled because I I didn't know what data I

058was supposed to be putting. So, here's some discipline data, which is maybe off topic. I don't know. That's great. Um, so right now we are struggling with a lot of referrals at test. I would say overall our referrals are not down. But the good news, and that's kind of what I highlighted on there, is that the referrals for major behaviors, physical aggression is down, fighting is down, tobacco is down. A lot of those major incidents that kids go home with and then talk about, those are down. um our day-to-day like disruption, defiance, we are still working really hard on that. Um and so you can see that triangle data report, the green is the number of kids with zero to one referrals. So you've got a pretty good chunk of your school that has zero

059to one referrals, but we haven't really made a lot of progress. we're kind of holding steady um with how many kids are in those green, yellow, and red bands, but the type of referrals that we're getting a lot of, that is a place where I feel like we can see some significant improvement. And that's all I got. And Mrs. Razel, to your point again, and we talked about it and Mrs. Markford and Pritchard allude to TBRI and of course our board has have heard me referencing in Nazio uh the visionary perspective as far as quality general instruction systemic alignment and social emotional supports of the TBRI interventions. Would you uh would it be safe to infer that of those as you referenced uh major violations that TBRRI is and I know that test immediate a

060few years back uh we um uh had a brief uh investment uh with um uh the initiative uh with the your homes your houses the um get your teach so there's been some intentional focus on the culture and climate and making sure that students understand from a social emotional standoint point uh that hey you got to come school ready and uh and would you would you attest that that those things are still continuing to I mean I hope so I I mean I really hope so that all the work that we've put into building relationships and connections with kids then gives them the idea that okay I don't do that at school. Yes. Right. I don't do that at school. Yes. And most importantly to to your point tests become that much when you when

061you when you dial down such aggression becomes out of shape. Yeah. Questions for Mr. Bradley before we move on. Thank you, Mrs. Bradley. We now bring up the Indiana Association of School Principles teacher of the year. I'm sorry, principal of the year, Miss Crystal Cooper from Dennis Middle School. Hi, Crystal Cooper. So, this is my third year as the principal here at Dennis. We're going to kind of run through some of the stuff that we've seen improvement on since I've started here as principal, but I do want to start on our goals. So, just so you have an idea of what our actual school goals are for the year, we did decide to focus on growth. Um, many of our kids are coming in to this to the school very low on the placement realm.

062So we are focusing on growth within the building and trying to move that scale right now to eventually get us to the proficient scale. But right now we are focused on growth. a 10% average for our English learners and our math uh 10% but then also throwing in behavioral because if many of you remember Dennis's uh school when I came into it that maybe had a few behavior issues that we needed to work on. So we have decided to focus this year on our special education population specifically and lower those behavior referrals that are coming in because ultimately we want those students to remain and be um productive in their classrooms as well. So these are our three growths. So looking at math growth and this is one more I ready math growth from our

063fall which was August to our winter and December we did have 20% of our seventh graders and 28% of our eighth graders demonstrate a full year's growth between that time um looking at our stretch growth. So really we want to focus on our stretch growth because if we are just growing kids one year, they are always going to be behind the rest of their peers. So our stretch growth is really what we're focusing on. Uh we did have 7% of our seventh grade and 8% of our eighth graders achieve the stretch growth between August and December. We have due to maybe lowering our discipline problems that we have had in the building, we've been able to bring in um I Ready specific professional development to build the capacity of our teachers to teach the I

064Ready math because we believe our students are at a place in the classroom. Our classroom management is at a place in our classroom where we can focus on some instruction and classroom management behaviors is not a detriment to the learning that's happening in the buildings. So that is our math. English 32% of our seventh grade and 42% of our eighth graders have demonstrated a year's growth. Um and this is with witten wisdom which is new the same for us. So, it is a learning curve this year for our teachers to switch into a more structured English uh curriculum. Um, which many of them have embraced. So, they're they're very they didn't at first, I'll be very honest. But more and more of them are kind of getting on board of like, you know what, I'm

065I am seeing the growth within the classrooms out of our students with the structured curriculum. It is working for us. And then stretch growth. 12% of our seventh graders and 17% of our eighth graders are demonstrating that stretch growth. And again, this is with the brand new curriculum of Whitney Wisdom discipline. So, it's it's always going to be up there. Right now, hopefully one day we'll get there, but we won't have a whole bunch of discipline happening in the building, but it is still here. Uh so my first year which was the 2223 school year in the first semester we had 631 referrals. That's a lot. Um this year we are down to 332. So we have cut that almost in half. Um still a lot. Don't get me wrong I understand 332 referrals. Trust

066us we feel it. It is a lot. Um but I am systematically if you look through the years our discipline data is getting better better and better. Um but we are still sitting at 332 referrals. That is classroom um classroom hallway uh lunchroom. Um I will say our fights have dropped significantly. Um from when I first came in it was a weekly. Now we go stretches and then jinx ourselves because we're like man I haven't had a fight in a while and then what happens? Um but we try not to do that now. Um but we are our major disruptions are on a downhill trend. Um a lot of this is still coming from just goofiness. They're 13 and 14 year olds. They're they're going to be goofy. They're going to be hey let's rub

067house and play turns into a fight. Trying to explain that to 13 and 14y old boys can be challenging because they don't quite get that piece. But we are seeing some of that behavior still continue. But we are working on improving that. Mr. Before you move on, I apologize to interject, but to Mr. Weber's point, while again, 332 is still not where we want to be. Two years ago, you were almost 300 referral cases more than where you are now. And that again, just uh from and the year prior to that, I think we had almost 18 1,800 referrals for the year. Yes. To put that in perspective, it was a lot when I first got here. And then we dropped it to I think we were sitting at maybe 12 and then we sat

068at between like 750 775 is where we were last year. So we're hoping that just continues to drop as we are going from year to year to year. Procedures are put in place. Um kids are not allowed to move as freely as they once were. They may not like it but I know our teachers do and it puts a lot more structure within the day. Um, and which has helped that much safer and safer than it was previously very much so. And that gets into my next which is our attendance rates. So again, in the 2022 school year, our attendance rate for the year was only 42.3%. It's really low. Um, my first year it was 54.5 and then last year we jumped up to 75% attendance rate. And I think that goes back to

069what Dr. Wright was saying. our students are feeling like this is a safer environment for them to come to school. It's a place they want to come. They've built those relationships with the teachers and I I hand that all to my teachers and what they have done uh to want our kids to come to school to learn ultimately that is why they are here and if I can get the kids in the door and stay in the door I can teach them. So, I'm very proud of our attendance. Cooper, just for the for those in TV land, uh the photograph there, uh can you explain exactly what that is? We won the first official attendance trophy um last year because our attendance had been was so great last year that we did win the very

070first attendance trophy. And trust me, when it was announced at the in civic hall, I think we all went a little crazy like what you're talking about, Dennis, what you know. So, we were very proud of it. So we took many pictures and posted it. So the entire corporation went crazy that you So that is all I have. You got one more. Do I have homework? You're kind of talking what we are doing. There you go. So English teachers are participating in ongoing professional development. Whiten Wisdom. We've been very lucky um to have I think this Friday is our fourth time that Whiten Wisdom has come in to uh help build the capacity of our teachers this year. We this time our teachers are going and visiting each other and they've got a very structured

071plan of what they're going to be looking at when they are watching their peers teach wit and wisdom and the different styles in which it is being taught. um which I think is going to be very beneficial to our teachers because it allows them to watch their peers not just to go in and sit in the back of the room, but it is a this is what we're looking for. What did you think? It's a reflection piece afterwards. Um so I'm I'm very impressed with the wit wisdom um staff that we have coming in and working with us. They've also done a day of professional development where they have trained the administration staff on what to look for when we go in. what does good teaching look like with wit and wisdom. So they did

072come in and do a day of professional development for the admin team and I know Mr. Pritchard was there as well, Miss Markford was there and Cynthia K still here somewhere uh she came as well but that was very beneficial for us. So we know what does good teaching where can we help the teachers improve and build their capacity without wit and wisdom professionals with us. Um so that was very helpful. Same with math. We've been very very fortunate to have I Ready come in. They came in Monday um of this week as well and did another full day of professional development for our teachers on how to teach I Ready um with fidelity and with rigor within the classroom. Um our NIT focus for this past week has been grouping. So outside of the

073professional professional development, we are still doing our clusters and nit or in-house professional development with our teachers to continue to build their capacity on the daily of what does group how do you group students because I think that was lost somewhere along the line of co we got so used to we're going to sit behind our desks, nobody can come up to my desk and the art of grouping got lost especially at the middle school level because it is an art. how do you let them loop without completely losing control of the classroom? So, we've been focused on that to try and get some more hands-on grouping within the classroom instead of just sitting. Um, so we've been really focused on that as well, but now I think that's my last question. So, was it

074last year, 18 months ago, did we go to team teaching? We did. We also went to team teaching. Um, and we're still doing that. Correct. Can you expound? I mean, that was I mean, I It's been 18 months, so it's been a while, but it seems like that was a big change that structurally, I'm guessing, has a lot to do with some of your positive performance. Yes, that was a very large change. If many of you may not remember, I did move 25 teachers over that summer. It was it was a lot. We were very silo based when I first got there. Teachers didn't really interact with each other. They were on both floors, both grade levels. I mean, it was it was everywhere. And as a as a union, we all got together. We

075decided this would be they'd never done it before and many of the teachers there. We got together, came up with a master schedule and moved 25 teachers to go into the teameing model. And I think that directly has impacted my discipline levels because now it's a classroom with or a school within a school almost feeling because they have their own team names. they have their own identities. It's easier to do field trips because you're only having to deal with the same 120 kids than, well, I'm pulling out of this class and I'm pulling out of this class and it just created a different environment. We also separated seventh grade from eighth grade. Um, eighth grade shall never be in the seventh grade hallway and the seventh grade shall never be in the eighth grade. And

076if I see you, I'm like, are you an eighth grader? Yeah. Get back into your hallway. So that helped very much structurally um in the building and again I think that goes back to the attendance rates as well because it created a family feel. I'm on the same team as you and I get to know you and then the teams are mixed as they mix and they move into eighth grade. So it's not you have a team in seventh grade that exact team goes into eighth. It's a whole mixture up again. So you still get that I get to meet new people and be on different teams in eighth grade versus seventh grade. So yes, we did do that. And I think my teachers this year are like we're not changing that, right? We're staying

077with it. I'm like to the best of my knowledge, we are not changing it because they do like it. And that's a great point. It's great outside. It's encouraging to hear that because I know those of us who were on the board at the time um were excited about possibility and to see it implemented then with success is exciting for us kind of. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So we also split the electives. So electives are seventh grade electives and these electives are eighth grade which has allowed us to also bring in a lot of the high school accredited courses at Dennis. uh we now have intro to business, PCC, journalism, and then algebra in our math class. But it's allowed us because we're we've separated them so completely to do some of the higher level

078electives in our in our grade level. Yeah. And and to that point and and before you uh take a seat, as we talked about the professional learning organization corporationwide within our professional learning communities, our schools, that same sense of systemic alignment and structuring uh will continue to pay off. And as I referenced and as Mr. winter referencing his presentation as we continue to see that data growing at the elementary level as those successful elementary students enter test intermediate they're structurally sound infrastructurally academically sound and Dennis will continue to see that grow so as to when they enter as freshman at RHS they're at their very best which is our our goal and and going back to the gentleman that was doing the data before those third graders they're now my eighth graders so where I

079still have some of those kiddos in their fundamental whole group of third and fourth grade. They're still in my building. Those are my seventh and eighth graders that are current that I currently have in my building that did not receive the same third and fourth experience they're receiving now. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you, Miss Cooper. You're very welcome. And as Miss Cooper uh takes our seat and we hear from Red Devils Bridgemond High School, I just simply want to reiterate some of the things that also have been brought up because it's PLO best practice language. You're hearing cluster, you're hearing IoT, and that's all in it. Um, but again, as we know, and I'm sure that they're going to continue to allude to where we have the most control is curriculum and instruction

080and what happens in the classroom. And so, Miss Wy, uh, Miss Johnson, ladies, well, thank you for being here and yours. Thank you. Um, and, um, I want to introduce my data coach. U, we spent a lot of time together in the data room at Richmond High School, uh, Celeste Johnson. So I uh couldn't we couldn't do what we what we do as far as looking at data without uh Celeste. So all right, what data do we use at RHS? Well, at the high school level, uh we are we get a report card. It's called the federal accountability report card. And that report card has indicators on it. And as you can see, these are the six indicators of note. uh the graduation rate is the highest weight. Uh four points are the math academic

081achievement and ELA are both two points. So uh that will uh that will come up in our presentation as to our focus. Uh the ELA and the math achievement is taken from the SAT. Every junior in every high school in Indiana has to take the SAT exam. In fact, next when Thursday, March the 12th, Wednesday, um next Wednesday, every junior will be taking the SAT. Um and what we do with the SAT, we now do what is called the PSAT in 9th grade. We do the PSAT10 and in October of every year our 9inth, our 10th and our 11th graders all take the PSAT. We it it is like you know almost the entire school. It gives us really really important data so we can catch them as ninth graders. Take that data and see

082okay where are our kids weakest? where are their strengths and then we take that after we disagregate the data we then in input that into our professional development. So because of the SAT the state has gone from uh ECAs to IEP at the high school level to now the SAT. So, uh, they they keep changing the game and we feel like we've got a good grasp now with the, uh, the PSA where it can be consistent. The IEP, it was like, oh, no, no, no. You can't look at any of the questions. You you can't know how you did, but the PSAT from the college board, we get all kinds of information from that. All right. our federal uh accountability report card and this is a three-year uh trend data from uh since they have

083done the uh federal accountability report card. Uh in red is 2122, blue is 2223 and then the green is 2324. And as you can see in ELA uh we have grown and what we have put on the chart are the points that we are given on our report card. All right. So those are points. Um we have shown growth in ELA in the past three years. Our math achievement is is going uh up uh but it it's slow. Uh math is I believe across the district. Um, but math is a struggle. Um, every, you know, we have kids that come and say, "Well, I can't do math, but that's okay because my mom said that she can't do math either." Well, yes, you can. So, a lot of it is just convincing students that, yeah,

084yes, you can do this. Uh, graduation rate points is one of our strongest categories. Obviously, it is worth four points. It's worth twice as many points on our grade uh report than any of the other indicators. Uh strength of diploma. Uh you'll see that data disagregated uh here in a minute, but right now we have four diplomas. You can get a general diploma, you can get a core 40 diploma, you can get an academic honors, or you can get a technical honors. that is changing with the incoming ninth graders because we have a whole new diploma. um our progress in achieving uh English language learners. Uh as you can see, we struggle there, but we are so appreciative to the district because we noted that last year uh our Hispanic population uh doubled uh went

085up 200%. And so we were given another English language learner teacher uh that started this year who do push in to our classes. We have so many students that speak zero English. And so that has really helped us. So we're anxious to see if that will help in our growth. Chronic absenteeism is an issue across the country. Every principal that I talk to, I have a principal group. Everybody's fighting absenteeism. I I believe even employers are uh you know I I I could work from home and so why do I have to come in to work? Uh you'll see later again what what we are doing. So our overall points we are in um and again you'll see on our slides um but we are improving in our overall points if we had and I

086keep saying if we had not gone down in absenteeism we would have had uh 15 more points and you know but she's anyway we didn't so but our attendance is improving uh the bottom right there shows that last year we were at 90.42% uh within the beginning of school up to I think first semester. This year it is 93.6%. I have to give kudos to my assistant principal Stephanie Baker, our attendance liaison, Matt Fischer, who uh kiddingly tell us they know every pitbull in Richmond and every door that they better not go in and knock on or a gate that they better go through uh when they're finding out why Ray's not coming to school. So, not only do we do home visits, we have what are called AIM uh attendance intervention meetings. Uh that

087is a meeting where I have gotten to the point where my attendance is not it is not good at all. And that includes the parent, that includes the counselor, it includes an administrator, our attendance liaison, and probation. All right. So we do that we calls to parents we have a communication protocol that teachers are to follow uh if students are failing class or if students are not attending. So we are trying to uh do all we can to just get kids uh Crystal said uh if they're not there we can't teach them. So, we've got to have them uh at school. So, all right. Federal report card has four categories. Does not meet expectations, approaching expectations, meets expectations, and exceeds expectations. So, just look for the color coding. Yeah. All right. Okay. Red is Richmond.

088All right. So, this is ELA. And as you can see the yellow is approaches and the green is meats. And in 2324 we were at 56.88 points. Again these are points and the meats category is 74 uh9. We have gone in 3 years from 44 points to 56 points. Obviously though, our goal is we want to be in the exceeds column, but we got to get into that meets column first. So, uh, that's our goal. Our math academic achievement, again, the red columns are Richmond High School. We did move into the approaching expectations last year. Um, and again, gradual growth that we are seeing from our math achievement. uh this is the SAT comparison data uh the RN that's reading and writing in 2023 and what you want to see is in the meats uh

089columns you want to see those increase all right so we went from 23 in reading and writing and SAT from 36 to 43% and then in uh math we went from 17 to 18. So those were the students that met the proficiency. Correct. All right. And then uh in the approaching category uh you want to see that we want to move everybody to the left because in the not met columns you want those to decrease. So as you can see the number of students the percentage of students that did not meet uh reading and writing in 2023 was at 57% went down to 49% last year and a math again we struggled. We we went up um one percentage point of students not meeting our math standards and MP if I'm not mistaken that's rather

090consistent with the state and as Dr. state superintendent has alluded to while we are seeing major gains in reading mathematics still continue to be at at Hill State and again uh I cannot commend our teachers enough we have done Celeste um the professional development that we have done the past two years and I said this again today um has been the best that I have. I've been principal for 14 almost 14 and a half years now and I've been in the district for I won't even tell you how long. It it has been the best professional development that I have seen. Our teachers are in uh PLC professional learning community groups led by our department chairs. We have created leaders. Uh we model Celeste administrators, we model for the department chairs. It's it's kind of

091like the practice session before the the game and we model the PD and then our department chairs go in and lead the PD. So we are now creating leaders. We just got through meeting with our department chairs Monday and our department chairs are going to we're calling this uh we did many projects which included a lot of the uh the critical thinking the collaboration the skills that employers want to see. Uh we did many projects. Well, we're doing mini projects. Take two. Our department chairs are going to be field testing. They're going to have they're going to go out. They're going to do a mini project. They're going to come back. We're going to meet what can we improve. They have a rubric and then they are going to go introduce that to all of

092their teachers who will then have three weeks to do and finish. Amen. Again, M I apologize, but that again is standard practice, standard best practice within uh thriving and competent professional learning communities, communities, professional learning organizations. And I'd be remiss if I didn't say uh that of that professional development that you're referencing, I know NIT has alluded to the fact that RHS by far uh within our corporation uh while we have had much growth uh has grown uh the most uh when it comes to that instructor. We we've taken the uh NIT what do we call those clusters and yeah well yeah we we call them PLC's clusters PLC uh but we have taken uh from the NIAT a focus of what it is we want our teachers to know understand and be able to

093do to uh help our students be better critical thinkers that's the big thing problem solvers, critical thinkers, and reading and writing. Bottom line, that's foundational. All right? If we can't do any of that, we're not going to be able to build upon that. So, um, gradu Okay, graduation rate. Okay. Or did we do graduation rate? I don't think we did talk about the beginning. Yeah. All right. So, graduation rate, four points. Uh, we knock it out of the park. All right. We have been over 90% graduation rate for 10 plus years. Uh, and that's pretty darn good for in 2006 when Richmond was the dropout factory by John Hopkins. So, uh, again, the highest number of points you can see, uh, we are almost at the maximum number of points for graduation rate. Graduation is

094simply this. Graduation is I have to get 40 credits. I have to pass the required courses and I have to have a pathway. All right? That's how I graduate from high school. So because of that, we want our students to get a diploma. So that's our focus. That's how that again is how we build everything to that graduation uh to that graduation point. So what do we do? We start at the end of every semester. We do a data report and it has how many credits I got, what is my GPA, am I a specialed student, am I an EL student? We have all what is my attendance rate? all kinds of data that we can sort and we can see. All right, who are the kids that are not on track to graduate? Well,

095what I have been doing this semester, the counselors and I with 10th graders, we are meeting with every student, every 10th grader that is not on track to graduate. Their parent or guardian has to come, the counselor comes and an administrator and and I tried to be at those meetings because everybody else is is busy as well. And we make a plan. All right, you're not on track. We also are doing that with our seniors right now. And then Celeste and the counselors do junior on track to graduate meetings in that's in August and September. We do them throughout the year, but it's based upon like where they are, you know, how many credits they have, how far they are behind. So if you're on the on target list, that means you're pretty far behind.

096And uh so we have we have those meetings, we have those conversations. But one of the thing uh that I want to point out about the data is and again the blue's nine, red's 10, uh the gold is 11th. And if you see on in and ninth grade, we know ninth grade is the critical grade. It's they have to we have to set the stage there. They have to be successful in ninth grade because the research and the and the data across the country will tell you if I am not successful in the ninth grade, my chances of graduating from high school just drop drastically. So for the past and I I've got seven years worth of data and actually I've got data from when I did ninth grade academy but ninth grade has been

097kind of stuck at that 75 to 77ish% are on track to graduate at the end of the ninth grade year. Well last year it went up 10 10 points 85%. Well, here's what we've done the last two years. In 2122, we started out with a couple of classes and we called them CIE CIE, career information exploration. It was basically a mentoring class where we took freshmen who were struggling and they passed their classes. So we said, "Hey, in 2223, we said, well, we'll we'll we'll do a couple more." All right. And then in 2324, as many teachers as we could get uh from the schedule to teach C uh to see teach CIE, we did. And so we had a a pretty large group and 85%. And so the then so what we're doing is

098Oh, I know that's that's that I'm getting off track. I know. So what this has resulted in is next year we are starting a freshman seminar class. Now we're not the only one. Um I again am in conversation with other principles. This is also going on in some other schools. And so we're starting a freshman seminar class and it will be a transition to high school and help set the stage for their success. So we hope that 85% is going to go up to 90 plus% after next year uh are our ninth graders that the ones coming in. Strength of diploma I I already uh talked with you about that. There's four types of diplomas. One of the things with the federal accountability is the general diploma. They don't like the general diplomas. We don't

099like the general diplomas. Uh 3 years ago, we were probably around 30ish general diplomas. Last year, we had 12. All right. The other thing that I think you guys should uh be so proud of, our applied skills students at Richmond High School take a lot of our gened courses. We get them out. Thank you, Stephanie Baker, um our assistant principal that my is in charge of special ed uh and the applied skills teachers. This year we are going to have the first applied skills student that is going to graduate in four years with a general diploma. And this Oh, this kid is just he has a story. Oh my gosh. So, uh we did have a couple that got general diplomas last year, but they uh you know, applied skills students can stay in school

100until they're 22. And those two students I believe were either in their fifth or sixth year, but they did get a general diploma also. So when we say we educate everybody, we educate everybody and we try to lift all of them up to the best that they can be. Uh and these are just examples of the types of diplomas. You can see the uh generals uh went down and the uh academic honors and you know it just all fluctuates you know when you if they're not getting a core 40 they may be getting an academic honors or a technical honors. So uh our diplomas we want core 40 technical or academic those that those are the categories we want to be in until the new diploma comes and then it's a whole new ball game.

101That's true. Uh this is our again I we shared this our English language proficiency. Uh thank you again to the district for helping us uh with these students our action steps. I'll let Celeste do this. Um so Ray already mentioned that we are going to start doing the freshman seminar class. We've noticed and we've used the data to show that freshman having that transition class really boosts um their confidence, the way that they can get their credits, they actually understand what's going on in high school that, you know, coming in and having to get credits and your grade actually means something is is something huge. And so having someone mentor them and help them in a class monitor their grades, they really need that. So the CIE is what originally was called, we are now

102going to call that freshman seminar. Um and then the SAT performance, we are we are getting better and we are using professional development to help our teachers become better. Um one of the things that we focused on in NIT um was questioning and then a little bit of grading. So um we do a jump start. We're doing it right now. And every single day, one period a day, every single student at Richmond High School gets two questions that are uh released from the SAT. Um and so one is English, one is math and again every single teacher it's 100% by everybody's doing it. Every single teacher gives every sing or one class every single student is getting that. So um and then they they the degree of difficulty changes from day to day. But I'm

103obviously the kids are getting to see what the what they look like and we just want them to be able to see and practice those questions before they actually sit down next Wednesday to take that test. The SAT is very similar to the PSAT like Ray mentioned, but it's just higher stakes because it is their graduation exam. And then uh as the as we move towards that new diploma, we are having meetings every single day or every single month throughout the year just to talk about what we need to do. And we're making changes because that new diploma is going to allow us to have some flexibility and so maybe offering new classes. I mean just giving opportunities to our students. Um like Ray has mentioned, we've hired additional staff. We're taught them additional courses.

104We have heritage courses. Um we have um ELLL teachers that are actually um they're going in, they're teaching vocabulary. It's it's just we're making great strides with those with those classes and with those students. And then continuing to work on our attendance because um like Mrs. Cooper said, like Rey said, we have to get them there. If we can get them there, we can we can teach them. We can help them improve. As you alluded to, you know, that jump start uh those videos and and the opportunity for students to be exposed to what it is they're looking to be accessed to. It reminds me of the times in which as a school principal and Miss Wy, I'm sure you've alluded to this, and I know all of our principles have have told their own

105staffs that every teacher, regardless of your content area, is a reading teacher. And that's what that uh that jump start piece reminds me most of because what I hear you saying is all classes every day of all students. We had we had a huge slide uh that we had at professional development and we've kind of put it in front of them. This belongs to all of us and you're like you said you're all reading, you're all problem solving, you are all writing. So, we've got more and more of our teachers writing. Uh, you know what? Even if you're in math, explain and writing what you just did. So, so having gone through ACT, SAT prep with my own students and and realizing that there's it's more of knowing how the qu it's a thinking test

106rather than a knowledge test. a college student obviously is motivated to study and train for that. What's if I'm if I don't if I'm looking for a career or something, how do you get those kids to buy in that the the SAT is important? I guess that's hard. Yeah. I mean, they make everybody take the SAT, which I I don't agree with. Uh but I don't agree with a lot of things that DOE does. You can sell it as a critical thinking tool. We're we're teaching you to to process information is what you're doing. Yes. So, in one of the videos I'm just curious in one of the videos because we want all of our students to buy in and one of the things that we said in the video and it's it's it's been

107um well, we did some research on it. Um careers are looking for that. Part of being the on the SID, you said it's a critical thinking test. An employer wants you to be able to think on your feet, wants you to be able to solve problems. So, it's not just about going to college. Awesome. When you go to get a career, when you're trying to um get that job, they want to know, can you solve problems? Well, this is a way this is a way to help you. So, that is one of the ways that we we try to sell. Yeah. We took the uh we found this the it's called the NACE. It's the National Association of Colleges and Employers. And what it does is employers tell colleges, "This is what we want. This

108is what we need, but this is what we're getting." And problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, teamwork. So, we've shared all of that with our teachers so they can say to those students, "Hey, here are the skills that you need." And we're doing that. We, you know, from questioning, we've got to teach our students to think and we just try to hammer that home. They have got to know how to think, how to problem solve, how to figure it out and not us just pouring the answers in and then they regurgitate it on a test. We've got to teach our kids how to think. So that is one of the things that we have just like I said the last two years in professional development have been phenomenal uh with things that we've been doing. So

109being just relevant relevant is the word. How does what I'm why am I doing what I'm doing? Kids want to know well when am I ever going to use that math that well let's show them. Let's do something that connects it to your learning. You're learning that you're I was in a class today, math class. He's having them build their dreamhouse because he wants them to learn about area. And if he said area once, he said, you know, you got to figure out what the area of that living room's going to be to see if you can fit that swimming pool you want to put inside your house. and you're going to have to use this formula to figure this out. And so he's connecting it to he said, you know, I was laying carpet

110in my house and I had to figure out the area. I'm telling you, every kid in the class, it wasn't an honors class. It was just a regular geometry class. They were all just, you know, building their dreamhouse and using math to do it. I I'm not sure some of them even realize that connection. So ladies, thank you so much. Appreciate you chat. And as Mr. Hensley is coming up for our last two professional learning community presentations, I'll share and Miss Wolby alluded to that we also are working with our county counterparts uh Someville North Eastern uh Lincoln and Herstown their high school principles. We as superintendents were all working collaboratively with chamber association for Wayne County Wayne County Foundation and others to really capture the essence of what this new diploma is calling for

111and we're already proactively taking those steps. And so without further ado, Mr. Steven Hensley, the proud principal. I'm Stephen. Um I'm still on an hour tonight. So I work was told she had 10 minutes. So I may have 10 slides. So I encourage you to strap in. Yes. Had to bring a clipboard. Um just a reminder I am the brand new principal of the H building. It's a great job. Best job. I love it. Uh it's great work. So um a reminder from what the building kind of does. It's a program building. So we have three programs. We have grades three through eight. There we have the Logos program which grades three through eight. applied skills which is 5 through8 and then steam which is 5 through8 but about 310 kiddos right now 308 we

112picked up some kiddos and applied skills um so we picked up a couple numbers there so that's a growing program so it's been really cool uh learning experience every day no day is the same so it's really the joy of middle school so I'm going to present some data to you so if I'm going through I'm slide 56 I checked so if you can you memorize all of these slides I love that for you but if you have questions afterwards because I'm sure it's a lot of numbers from all buildings. Reach out to me, Sam, Dr. Wright, and I can get those questions answered for you in maybe a more holistic way because this is just a kind of bird's eye view. If you have very specific questions, I can answer those, but maybe not

113all of them right now because you've been here for over an hour and a half. I love that reminder of what our building kind of does. There are three school goals that we've kind of really looked at. Um, we looked at like growth and um two of those goals and a performance goal. We've looked at growth for typical growth and a growth goal for stretch go. So we know that our kiddos who are on grade level typical growth is where we're going to strive. It's where what we want to do in addition to our stretch growth. But with those kiddos who are m like multiple grade levels below two three grade levels below stretch growth is what has to happen. So we have some 80% of our kiddos are going to meet their typical growth

114and then 50% of them are going to meet their stretch growth. And we talk about performance a lot as well. So you'll see some data here is about performance data. It's not just about growth data. It's also performance of where they actually rank um against their grade level peers and even nationally when we look at I already for the esoteric measure of the norm values. So for the performance go we look at we want like 80% of our kiddos um on the I learn to be proficiency. So I will begin the conversation with some data. So again we're three through eight. So I'm going to start with our logos ELA data. That's the third and fourth graders. These are our littles. They are cues you can possibly imagine and they are crushing in the classroom.

115So if you look for the performance 100% of them are in that early on grade level or they're on um on grade level or above grade level. So they are crushing it. They've been crushing it. They stay crushing it. Um but what's really impressive to me is if you look at the second guard at the bottom you look at and students with improved placement. That means that they've gone up in a placement. So from the light green to the green with the the lines. So they have they've progressed from early on grade level to mid-grade level. As you will find in the research, it is really really hard to hit those stretch those growth points when they're performing on or above grade level. You're pushing that much harder. So the the third and fourth graders

116are crushing it and they're going to keep crushing it. That's for ELA. You look at math data, we see very much the same the same thing. They are crushing it for math data. And again, if you look those students with improved placement from the beginning of year to the middle of year, our third and fourth graders are putting the work in, man. And their teachers deserve all the praise. They're incredible. So, I'm really really really impressed with that. We see that all of our kiddos are in the green and green bolded. So, really, really great work there. Um, now we'll jump to the middle school section of the building. And this is again, this is I Ready. So, we're looking at math by grade level. So, you can see a three board there because I've

117kind of talked about it, but you can also see 5, six, seven, eight are there as well. That's the entire building. So, not a programmatic breakdown. It's not disagregated, but it is looking at 5, 6, 7, and 8. Um, we'll see that you can see the placements by column. And if you look at the very left and students assess, you're like, why do these kids not take this? How rostering works? Our applied skill students who do not take this assessment are rostered into it. So, those are the missing numbers. That's why they're not there. So, this is math performance for the ready for the middle of diagnostic assessment. This is just looking at performance at the middle of year. Now, what I think is worth talking about is the second one, which is their growth

118data. So this is where they group. So from the beginning of a year to the middle of a year and if you look that percent met that well be one two three column the percent met who met their typical growth you can see those numbers I want that to be about 50%. So we are not where I'm going to be but again as we get closer to the ceiling it's really really getting tougher to push towards those growth points. So it's encouraging to me to just keep pushing even further. Got to push harder. Got to push harder. Got to push harder. But what's really encouraging for me is the students with improved placement. So next to last column, you'll see that in grades five and six, 35% of those kiddos improve their placement, 16% in

119grade seven. So we had a little dip there. So seventh grade have some work to do. Um seventh grade performs pretty well. So the growth is really it's tricky, but we're going to keep pushing there. And then our eighth graders, who are a lot of energy, uh they had 37%. So I'm really proud of them. I'm really proud of my eighth graders because they think high school is now. So they're ready. So this is a programmatic breakdown. You'll see I just went ahead and I broke it down by grade level and by program. So you see the top bars are usually the logos program and the bottom bars of the steam program. You'll see where the numbers kind of are for performance. Um you'll see that in steam grade five and grade six perform a

120little bit lower. But again steam's a genet program. It's built to look like Richmond. That's how we built the lottery. And the logos is the high building program. So the the high I'm not concerned about the the Logos program. They're really doing a great job. We have we have a couple kids, maybe one who um is in that yellow, but that yellow we're going to transition them into the green. We'll get there. And then our sixth grade has been um we have if you see they're kind of my class and cohort. You can see there's one cohort in grade five that's a little lower than the other one and about the same thing in grade six. So addition performance, this is their growth data. So I'll give you to take that in. And again, I

121didn't put the labels on because I was screenshotting and kind of pasting it together. The next last column is that percent of students with improved placement. So you'll see that like our students in grade five and six have all had 43, 39, 27. These these are kids are moving up this scale. It's really great work. Again, for the third column, we want to see about 50% of those kiddos to meet their typical growth. And we're not there yet. our fifth grade we've noticed we've had some problems in steam and math so that's an area where I have kind of addressed our teacher um I'm like hey what can we do and talking about how we transition kids from fourth grade into fifth grade and some interventions for that um and that's been helping because you'll

122see in our grade six we have 21% again it's not where we're going to be but we're I put some professional in place for our new math teacher so that takes me to grade seven and eight again grade seven is doing pretty a really good job across the board. Um especially in logos, they're crushing it. And then in the lo in steam, we have a few kiddos we're working on. But again, that's that's a pretty high performing group. And I'll show you some data. This is just one version of data. This is I Ready. There's another I'm going to show you the iLearn, which are state accountability test. And I think you will be interested to see kind of how the I Ready and I learn kind of stack up against each other because they

123are different. Um but again, eighth grade is down there below. our eighth grade. Keep in mind Crystal did tell us that those are the kiddos that were in third, fourth grade during open. So they are a lower performing group, but they I will tell you they're putting the work in. They are putting work in and you'll see the growth data to support that. So that's the growth data for them. We have 45% of our eighth graders in Steam. That bottom bottom bottom one didn't improve their placement. So almost half of them improved their placement, which is great. So let's talk a little bit about yearly performance. This is just from August to December. This is where we went. This is this is the middle of year and that's the growth from middle of year. Again,

124our eighth grade didn't grow the way we wanted them to in ELA, but they did in math. So I was really happy with their math performance, but not ELA. So that took us But what is encouraging is to see the students with improved placements, especially in grade four. They're crushing it. They had 64% of them improve placement and you saw they're all they're all in the above grade level and that's a Logos program. So they're doing exactly what we expect them to do. They're meeting every expectation showing up and crushing it. Our seventh grader is not where we wanted to be. That is where we focus a lot of our energy. Our seventh graders um they did not perform what we wanted them to and growth. So we're going to work on that. So this

125is just the steam academy. I want to make sure I pulled that one out on the logo program rosters. I I can get that to you, but it was kind of tricky to pull. But this is Steam. So you see performance from August to December. This is where this is where they are placing out as a program. That's by class 2. So now we're going to transition into the island data. This is what got really interesting. We are in a checkpoint year. So it's brand new. It's a pilot year for checkpoints. We have three of them in addition to the island, the large operational test at the very end of the year. So this is brand new. So, our kiddos um I just pulled a couple this I pulled fifth grade and seventh grade just

126to show you what it might look like. I did not pull math because I showed you a lot of math data for I already look at I learn. So, if you look for checkpoint one, it's looking at very specific standards. They're the columns on the far right. They're looking at those um green and yellow. You'll see the states performing at 32%. Logos is performing at 73% and we're performing and steam at 43%. So, we're outperforming the state in every regard. You look at checkpoint 2, same thing. And you actually see higher percentage of pass. State 34, Logos is 82, and Steam is 45%. So we're outperforming the state yet again, which is great. Again, 45% is 45%. Let's call it thing a thing. But we are still outperforming our state. Look at grade 7. ELA

127checkpoint one. Um, states at 33, Logos at 65, Steam's at 42. And if you look at checkpoint 2 looking at the specific standards, states at 33, Logos is at 90, STEM's at 48. So we are significantly performing. I mean really positive numbers. Not perfect but very much positive. That is just some academic data. There's a lot of things that go into the academic data that make it even possible. And the first thing is going to be attendance. The kids got to come to school. They got to be here. Strong attendance policy is required. Not just attendance policy, tardy policy. It's one thing to show up every day on time. It's one thing to show up at 10 o'clock every day because you're going to miss your first two classes. So something to consider. Now the

128average rate for us right now is 95.6%. So our kids are coming to school, which is great because if they don't, they know that I will call attendance meeting and I will sit them down with their parents and I will talk about all the things. And it is a ton of work and time for my building and my secretary and my clerical to track down all the attendants and monitor it. But we are doing it with Fidelity. It is just a huge amount of energy to get them to school. And I can't complain because our parents and families are great. They communicate with me. We respond. Like sometimes we forget. Like if you go to the orthodontist, you forgot your doctor's note. It's kind of to go back to the orthodontist and get one. And

129so the a day goes by, then two days go by, then a week goes by, and then it's happened more than once and more than twice, and then they stuck up. So it's just a a paperwork game, too. Just a reminding and encouraging to bring a document. But since this is great, um there's a weekly breakdown for first semester. You'll see where the tense rate was every single week. Let's talk about some of the behavioral data. So these are referrals by days of the week and also by days of the month. Now you will see from the month one, January is a really hard month. And anybody guess why? I can tell you why. We had a lot of delays. We had a lot of sickness, not just with students and staff. the the inconsistency

130with routine and inconsistency with structure creates a little bit of chaotic energy that we had to address in both January and February. Our data was significantly down the first semester of school, but January was a tough month and that kind of spilled over into February. March has got back on track. Our referrals are down again. They're now they're way down compared to last year. Um but again, January is hard because of the inconsistency of structured routine and we had a lot of staff out, a lot of kids out. So, we addressed that. Um because you can only have five subs on one day and it gets a little tricky. And you have third rate three. Is it? I do. Yeah. Um days of the week. Last year Tuesday was our high referral day or I

131mean Thursday. This year it's kind of spread out. So looks like Wednesdays are the really chill day for some reason. It was tired baby. Um but on Thursdays the kiddos seem to like just be have a little more energy and also we have the referrals come in. Teachers are like I've done this all week. And so we we like to address that intervention wise on Wednesdays. The next slide you will see is about referrals by grade. If you correlate the performance next to the referral data, you should probably see a correlation. Our sixth graders do receive the highest number of referrals. Um, and they are one of our tougher performing groups. So, just keep that in your hat. For by time of day, that's if you want it, it's there. It'll show you like I

132can pinpoint. I know where to be at time of day. I know where not to be. If I'm going to be in a classroom, I know whose classroom to be in because it'll show me. And so I use that data to tell me every single day what walkthrough to do, what evaluation to do, be present here, there. It kind it navigates my day. So Mr. French is putting a lot of this data in and it's really really helpful. Um, and I think my last slide is about the triangle report. Um, Laura showed you one of these too, but it shows you how many kiddos receive referrals or if you have high flyers or the red. And you'll see that so far we have zero to one. That's middle school. Kids do some dumb things. Sometimes

133they get called on it. That zero to one doesn't really concern me. I want that yellow and red to go down. I need our highf flyers to reduce and it looks like by the data we are and that's really positive because we put a lot of support and a lot of energy and time into tier 2 behavior. So kids make mistakes. We have grace teaching we it's a school. We love kids. So we do get those numbers occasionally to zero ones but our high-f flyers. We're getting them down. We're we're intervening um in an aggressive kind of way. So I'm really proud of that. Well and it also shows as you alluded to uh the majority of our students as uh Mrs. surpris majority of our students in all of our schools are coming to

134school with databases to do what it is they are supposed to do. They're behaving they're they're and they're creating safe environments. Well, if it's not safe, it's not safe for anybody. That's right. So, did you Mr. Hley? And for our last record time, no doubt about it. You hit the mark. You hit the mark. I did. for our last professional learning community. Uh and it's a community that as we know is our largest growing community and continues to expand and that's the department of education and so Mrs. Book is here to present some data regarding special education. Good evening. I'll be fast because most of my informationational excuse me um I'm representing Mrs. Wolfen myself. She had another commitment tonight and so I am um I originally had another commitment the original night we were

135supposed to present and so I I'm the one here tonight. So, the Department of Exceptional Ed has a lot of things under its umbrella. Obviously, special education, we cover 504s, multilingual learners, who uh Kristen Jones helps me with that a lot. And then we have McKenna Vento, and we have our high ability program, which Mr. Hensley just gave some information on. So, you can see the trend data here on our identification, our students who are eligible for IEPs. This does include students who are speech and language only. So that's about 500ish who um have speech on their um as either their primary or secondary disability. So the number over here on the the left hand side it does say that we have 1355 kids with IEPs that fluctuates. It's it's somewhere between 1300400 on any

136given day. So it's a big chunk. It's 28% of our population. Over a quarter of our kids are special services. So that is um higher than the state average but it's not when we think about learning loss when we think about um you know those kids that have these gaps that ever are ever increasing then we we see those gaps and there are areas of strength and weakness when we we qualify them. Uh kids with section 504 plans. So 504 plans are uh students who have a medical need or a medical disability that does not necessitate goals or services but it does necessitate accommodations. So, we hold pretty steady with those. I think the high school has around 55 of those and then they're spread out throughout the district. So, we have 119 kids being

137served through 504 plans right now. English learners, we are up just a tiny bit. We have about 360 kids uh within the district who have um an ILP. And like I said, Kristen Jones is my lifesaver because I don't understand multilingual learner like the WEDA program. I don't I don't I'm learning all of that. So, um she saves my life and Cindy came to me the other day with a question and I said Chris said it. It's real. So, um it's it's a really cool population to work for or work with. Um our interpreters are wonderful people. Our EL teachers are amazing. So, it's a really positive community to be around. And then our McKenna Vento, these are up. We know that Richmond has some um economic disadvantages, some real serious things going on. So

138our 57 kids, that's right now. And our McKenna Vento um that's those policies help with um making sure kids can still access their home schools. They're still getting everything that they need. They can access sports, extracurriculars, um music programs, everything. Um transportation is a big one. That's the one that we struggle with the most. And then that 57 students, that includes kids who are doubled up, so they're sleeping on a couch at a friend's, you know, cousin's house or whoever. So that's not necessarily living in a car, living in a shelter. Those are kids who just don't have permanent housing and no change in definition. So I mean, the the number is I mean, it's significantly more that there's been no criteria change or anything. No, no criteria change. It's just we've had a couple

139of house fires. We've had um some kids identified as being uh that DCS will find and say you need to be in the district. And then we recognize that they are homeless and that's why they haven't been in school. And then here's our high ability numbers. We have not finished kindergarten identification. That's happening right now. We are about to finish our second grade and fifth grade identification. We've got a really nice group of second graders. We're going to identify larger numbers than last year. I think that's because second grade last year was an online test and we went back to paper pencil this year and we found a few more kids. So that's really positive. Um we have eight kids from out of district wanting to test. So that's pretty good. And that's all the

140the Cogat test. That's the Cogette test. Yep. And that's the only So we have the identification flowchart. So kids who ident who are identified using KOAD, they have to be at the 96th percentile or higher to get an automatic label. And then if they are in the 85th in another area, that's when they're invited to Logos. But we also look at our I Ready scores. We look at um the rating scales that teachers can fill out to to boost some of their scores. And then there are times when we look at the whole picture of the kid, you know, are they at a um do they have a rating sample? Do they have a a really strong teacher recommendation? Are they just not great test takers? So, we look at all of those things to

141to qualify them. Good. But we do have about 375 kids. Well, we do have 375 kids in our district right now, not counting our kindergarteners. So, we I mean, we're doing a pretty pretty good job. That's a pretty significant number of our kids who qualify. And this is just information about Teachtown. So, Teachtown is our new curriculum. This is our second year with them for applied skills. So, you can see that we have um pre-est information on here. It's being most used at our elementaryaries and our high school. Middle school, we have given them the option to use it. I think next year we're going to really do a push for middle school. We we purchased licenses. So we we disseminated those to the teachers who really wanted them first and teachers who were less

142um experienced. So we have seen a big jump. So our pre-EST is 23% and our post- test average is 93%. So that's a pretty significant indication that this is good software and this is a good program. And we just met with them last week to talk about prek possibly using for prek questions about section one. That's a good question. Um, you know, I know we identify kindergarteners. We test them. And, you know, I also know they within the elementary schools, you all work with kiddos that are identified to potentially have different types of curriculum or kind of look at a higher level. But I guess my question is do can we or do or do we not have the population to really have the logos program have those kiddos put into logos earlier? Mhm. And

143then yes that's my question. I just you know like are are we doing them a disservice by sort of keeping them and giving them some special education services if they're identified as liability? or do we just not have the bandwidth or space or is it so generally pulling them out for Logos is controversial because we are taking the top and and principles don't like that. I understand but it's similar to special education. It is they have a specialized need and so they need it's not like you would take your antibiotic once a week for something that's happening every day. So it's very much you need to have a rich curriculum every day all day if you are identified in one area or both. And that is the perk of Lus. We are one of only

144three I think pull out programs in the state and we demonstrate that that program is successful through our Lily scholars through our academic excellence through our kids who receive scholarships and so whether you support the program or whether you think the program should be changed the kids demonstrate that they are they're they're getting what they need. I have a kid program so I have a dog in a fight. Um so um I think that we could serve one too. I think I don't see too many negatives, but I would like to hear from principles and hear from other other districts that do pull out if they because I know Sidner in Indianapolis they are K5 K6 uh sure or one six I'm not sure but they do go down lower than we do and I

145think the interest is there and the numbers are there because we identify a similar number in every grade level. It's usually between 15 and 25 for grade level. Okay. Yeah. So my second kind of followup to that is which kind of could be Mr. a question Mr. Hanssley too is I think we've talked about uh Steam going down to third and sort of mirroring up against you know logos and steam. Um just I have a kiddo and he was in steam and now he's in logos and um and I feel like those two programs really the kiddos benefit from each other. So again, is that space and I would say that that the students I'm sorry to cut. Um students at Logos are receiving lots of science and lots of social studies and that is

146not necessarily what the time is allocated for in the elementary other elementary schools as much. No, no, you no shame. I'm just saying that they're getting more now through wisdom than that knowledge building. Fantastic. Um, so I think that the science and social studies and the math that is happening in Logos could be mirrored in steam that that's really useful with that. Yeah. And it's like to take it down to third grade, too. It's a question is is there physical Philly space to do that? That's a question for a whole different day. Right. But I think if there's interest in exploring going down to third grade, absolutely. But I think the board has to understand that there are trade-offs. There's ripple effects. their staffing concerns. There's a lot of things we think through. I'm not

147saying it's a great idea. I would love it. I got a dog in the fight. I I came with it. I love it. Off the porch, but let's just I want to just be honest up front and say here are the things we should consider as a district and not just selfishly what I want because I sure yeah, love that. Sounds great. Um because I it would be a good idea. I think it's I think it's really power in it. Um but if that's a conversation, I would support it. But I don't want to say anything too publicly tonight. But it would be very very cool to explore that idea. Yeah. I just didn't know if it, you know, we even if it was even an option based on the type of program, but I

148know we talk about the project based learning. Um, so a really love it for my kiddos and we talk about critical thinking to me that is and student learning. Yeah, it's so beneficial to how steam and logos right are structured with and object based learning is not for everybody. It's not, but it can be. It's beneficial to go through. Absolutely. But it's a choice. Yeah. And one one caveat to identification between K and one is that kindergarteners who come from a language rich household and and you households where parents talk to their kids and they have experiences, they're going to qualify a lot more easily in kindergarten. And then there may be a gap between K and one. And so if we did that, we might look at our identification procedures to to determine if

149that's a good year to test or if we would want to put it off to one. Yeah, I think I mean having kids gone through the system, I think the the one the one benefit that I don't know how you replicate at the high school is the time management piece and I think that translates to college success. The correlation has to be super tight because I think to how they manage time in those logos project groups that you don't have another experience like that and so and that's super valuable when you go to the next level. One of my previous mentors said, "Show me your schedule. I'll show you how you value time. I'll show you what you care about." So, I think how we schedule the building, how the day looks. And it's how

150the kids, it's how they process. I have this dude and this dude, and this dude and this dude, and then they formulate their own. And I don't know if Mr. Hinsley feels this way, but I feel that when I was the principal that Logos was in charge of Logos, and I was just there to make sure things happened. And so that translates to kids feeling autonomous and feeling like they can drive their own learning. Learnersh. I have a question just about the McKenna mento. You mentioned that transportation continues to be a trouble or a challenge I guess. Can you explain a little bit more? Yeah, of course. So we have a family right now who is living over in the Rose Hamilton district and so we are sending a bus over to them and they

151may or may not get on the bus and so that's a resource that we are providing but may maybe not in the best interest of the students. So we're exploring whether or not that students whether or not that is um in their best interest basically should they live they could see Rose Hamilton. Maybe we um suggest you know some alternatives or we have a family who had um a tragedy in their family in their home so housefire and so they're living in Ohio and so we have a staff member who lives in Ohio who's transporting those kids to school every day. Vegas was taking some kids home. It's just we have to figure it out. And so I've gone to some webinars recently. I mean we can put them in taxis, we can put them

152in Ubers, we can do all that stuff but you have to make sure that people are background checked. We're not a city bus system that's kid-friendly. So, those are just challenges that um the bus garage has been very willing to help with, but just challenging. Yeah. No, thank you for I just wanted to make sure because we were doing everything like we are and our staff does a great job of of connecting us with resources and making sure that families have what they need and that I'm aware if there's a special circumstance. Thank you. Speaking of Bridget Hazel, great. See how smooth that one? So the final slide of our presentation, Miss Direct. So um I'm trying to put on my other glasses so I can see this as well. But um yeah, overall attendance

153is going really well. So again, this is my first year as the director of student support and communications. So I am overseeing the attendance attendance leaison um centerstone reading all of those things. But part of the attendance I am meeting monthly with our attendance lethons in all of our buildings. We actually have a meeting tomorrow morning um and we go over some of those best practices. What are some things you're stuck on? Um the letters have been non-stop. Um you may remember um K through six um is that new attendance law as far as those AI meetings like Mrs. um what we have said. So those attendance intervention meetings are really um making a difference with our students. So when we when we give a have a meeting with the parent um talking to them

154um if my child misses the bus who is a backup that I have so my child can still get to school the next day you know for that afternoon if my child has a dentist appointment in the morning they come back to school in the after you know after that appointment um keeping those sort of um that communication um making an agreement even just talking with that parent what is a good time for that child to be in bed um what time do they need to be at the bus stop um things like that so again it's just trying to reinforce force some of that. So, um, again, the 6.8% increase from last year districtwide attendance is really quite amazing. And again, this is just for semester. I did not go all the way up

155till um current um the current seme current current month right now. But, um you can see every one of our schools is improving. So, um I um I I'm I'm very very pleased with that. And uh it's a lot of paperwork and a lot of communication. um communities and schools is helping us as well with those um pieces. Um Centerstone, Meridian, um you know, just just all of it. Um Vegas and Matt Fischer um Dustin Cushing maybe another um help helpful person for us also with attendance at Richmond High School. So um just I can't thank him enough. Attendance just been um a great piece. again those wraparound services that you've been putting in place and and of the intentionality that collectively everyone has well we're just looking we're meeting monthly with the principles um

156as a support team so getting that attendance leaison um and meeting with a counselor but like we're looking at who are those kids that have high you know high office referrals high attendance um who have maybe um maybe some mobility that are moving between schools to school to schools so um again just trying to see what kind of support services, wraparound services we have for those kiddos. Um, and getting them getting them set up. I have a quick question about attendance, which I guess I never thought into it. Is it does it matter if it's excused or unexcused that gets put into this number? So even so, DOE is looking at a tip an absent as an a student is not at school and that's per class, right? Because we track it. That's so yeah,

157we're doing if a student misses one day because they went to the dentist maybe, you know, same as going being out. Um, we give we give parents well at the at the corporation, they get nine excused absences to to be out of the building and then we start making those unexcused absences or they need to bring a doctor's note. So, um, we're just really really trying to watch those kids who are virtual truins to have more than 10 unexcused absences already and and and the importance to parents to call the school, let us know where your child is. Um, you know, just we we want we want kids in school. So, yeah. I was looking at the I think it was I don't know if it was the RHS data just about like I'm mom

158four kids you know they all get sick throughout the week right I forget to you know luckily parent square sends out the notice so we can just yes um but there's a lot of times I'm like oh I totally forgot to send that even though that's could be one percentage well and chamber of commerce is really helping us too with attendant I mean you the seniors, those seniors perfect attendance, they wanted more and uh a lot of different um incentives as well. So, we're looking at maybe looking at some community partners, business partners to see what we can do to help strengthen that maybe incentive. Maybe a family can have an incentive to help and not just perfect attendance and bring attendance. So, that's what we're trying to look at to help these kids. Yeah.

159Thank you, Mr. Hast Baker. And again, anecdotally, we all have that conversation and have acknowledged the overall improvement throughout Richmond Community Schools. However, of which you've heard this evening, hopefully uh that that feeling has been remented uh with data that proves that that feeling is real. And so if you all don't mind as a board of education, if we can give a round of applause to our amazing educators who remain attentive the uh the laborious task of putting such data together in slides. Uh again, I be remissed not to. In conclusion, we truly appreciate your attentiveness and most importantly, we are grateful for your unwanted support as a board of trustees. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Our board continues to prove that we have the ability to address complex issues ahead

160of and work together to place our students on pathways of learning to a future of limitless possibilities. And so again, I thank you. I appreciate you and we will continue to fight. Yes, thank you. Yeah. So, I was gonna say too, I don't know if anyone I think Erica had signed up for public commentary, but I saw her. She did. So, did we have we don't have anyone else say that part. Okay. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Just go ahead quick because I know that people I just I wanted to take a minute just to acknowledge you thank the teachers, the staff, the you know the the coaches, department chairs, all of the you know teachers who are are making a difference and just acknowledge for a minute the challenges that teachers face that kids come

161to school without food. It's hard to learn. you know, your parents had a fight in the morning or you're sleeping on a couch or all of those things create challenges for our teachers. So, I appreciate um work them working through those and you know, showing us this data and I'm I'm excited about the growth. Um I wanted to also acknowledge my own personal philosophy that testing gives a picture but not the entire picture of the student. And that's important for me to say out loud that we're measuring academics, which we need to and it's important, but there's a lot of things that aren't measured um that are really important like being kind and helping other people, problem solving, you know, whether you're artistic, like there's things that aren't measured and that's important to acknowledge for

162me personally. Um, but also that, you know, h having worked with kindergarteners and testing at Veil the last several years that I've worked with kindergarteners who come in and I'm they're trying to learn letters and they can't they don't know any letters and I come back in six weeks and they still don't still don't know any letters, but they're at least saying names of letters, you know, so they still have zero and they have shown no growth, but they have grown and they are growing and that isn't visible here as well. So those were just the things I wanted to make sure and acknowledge. Well, I'll just uh probably close with this. I was at Bell Elementary School reading to the same kindergarten class I read to first semester and this semester the night and

163day difference not only from a behavioral standpoint but just also as you referenced from an intellectual standpoint. Uh it's just it's it's remarkable uh the growth and most importantly as I continue to say the most important people in our classrooms are our teachers and they continue to it's knocked out of the park as was said by our eloquent leadership team and instruction coaches and everyone. So again thank you also other no I just also wanted to say um I really do just appreciate all that you guys do. I mean, I know some of us, Kristen and I, former educators, we know it is hard day in day out, all of the the grit and grind that you deal with. It is hard. Um, and so just to be able to celebrate that with you tonight.

164Um, yes, we have work to do still and we acknowledge that. That's who we are as a district. We and we will own that. But we want to just say high five and good job for the progress that we have seen. So, please um feel applauded. I know we've physically applauded you several times, but please know that I know I personally feel like you guys are doing a great job. So, to to borrow your uh Stephen crushing it I started counting. I was like, thank you. Thank you, Miss Forencia L and Mr. Winter along with Mr. State. We appreciate you all sitting. Yes. I think you all me