Volusia County School Board - School Board Workshop⧸Work Session 03⧸11⧸2025

001soon as we get with the pledge Amon good afternoon welcome to the Val County School Board Workshop today is Tuesday March 11th 2025 and the time now is 12:32 p.m. in just a moment I'm going to ask that each of you here in the audience stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence and reflection so at this time please stand I pledge 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 for all thank you you may be seated I'd like to take a moment to introduce the board members and staff that are here with me today on my far left we have Mrs Donna brosmer representing District 4 then we have

002Mrs Christa Goodrich representing District 2 Dr Gilbert Evans our Schoolboard attorney on my far right we have Miss Celeste Gilmore our agency clerk Mrs Jesse Thompson representing District 3 um virtually are on the phone joining us we have Mr Ruben cologne our vice chair representing District 5 then I have our wonderful superintendent Dr Carman Balaban here to my immediate right and I am Miss Jamie Haynes I am your chair um for this and I represent district one we only have one item today for the workshop but what has been shared with me is this is going to take three hours so board members yes because trust me I I tried to suggest when we met two weeks ago to put something else on at this time and they said no this is going to take

003three hours so I've tried to think about the best way to do this I think what we possibly need to do because there's different groups that are just going to keep rotating to speak to us is possibly hold our questions like for whoever sits there first when they finish their part ask our questions of them as then they rotate the next group up I think that will help us stay in the three-hour mark because I don't if we go to the 4-Hour Mark there will be no break um before we start the school board meeting and so um if that's okay with you guys we'll just whoever the first group is when they finish we'll ask the questions of them then the second group will come up and and they know how they're rotating we

004just have this nice PowerPoint presentation to follow along so Dr B would you like to go ahead and introduce our one item 2.01 thank you for that a great opening chair I I think we just scare the two new school board members I will tell you uh first and foremost good afternoon to everyone those of you in here in the audience to our staff members goal owners thank you for being here and for those of you chiming in and listening from home or another location um as as we know chair and board members when it comes to our strategic plan it's a living breeding document it's not something that sits with the shelf on right on the wall so with that said what we do and it usually it's around December January but because of

005the timeline this year for for Progress monitoring that it took took place much later this year this is our midyear um progress review for a strategic plan we have one goal and that primary goal is to engage all students in high levels of learning every day but we also have four guard rails and these four guard rails are almost like our secondary goals because without these guard rails we cannot realize goal number one so with that said the individuals that are here in this audience they're all goal owners so they have all contributed into looking at the data sets that we've obtained for midy year analyzing looking at where as an organization where our strengths are but so where some opportunities exist and based on that we put together what's called a midyear course correction

006plan so the team will be able to share a little bit with you about what what's taking place currently in our schools so that we can achieve help each School achieve their goals um also I'd like to give a shout out to one of our partners and Ed that's here Mr Eric n from Advent health and I know that we have several business partners that are probably um have logged in uh virtually and listening from home so with that said I'm going to ask our chief of staff but I really believe that this could be less than three hours I want you guys to know that um our chief of staff will come up and he will share with you the layout for the next um two hours and 15 minutes I don't know why

007you guys are laughing so hello chair haes board members superintendent balaman I am optimistic that it will be less than two hours and 15 minutes I don't know who's more guilty of Physicians barters or Educators when it comes to acronyms and those sort of things so as the superintendent said this is our vpm one of those acronyms again that we like to use Bia progress Bia progress monitoring and as you look on the screen you see that there just to kick this off and by the way today is a good day because what's exciting about this is the team that's sitting behind me from all of these individuals know their work very well and it's an opportunity for us to Showcase to you and to the public all the great strides we're making vush County

008Schools that's the intent of today's um Workshop so with that being said you can see as the superintendent alluded to this is aligned to our strategic plan with the goal being high quality instruction for every kid every day in every school and then the four guard rails that we have to support that and that is again listed as the agenda and this slide is one that I like very much when you look at it the goal is right in the middle it's about kids it's all about our students and then the other four guard rails support them and so with that being said we get to kick it off with Dr Viet and his TL team to talk about our strategic plan goal Dr V good afternoon Madame superintendent board chair and board members it

009is my honor to go over and review the oh hello um to review our go one um and so the work that we do in vucha County Schools is all in the in in teaching and learning that is our Core Business and when you think when we think about why our parents um they they they bring their their their child to vucha County Schools is to make sure that they get educated um and that we are offering in a worldclass education so we're going to review um all of our progress that we have thus far I do want to um make note that I have Dr Tamara Drayton who is our um executive director for secondary education here to my left but I also have the executive director of Elementary education Miss chrisy Castellanos in

010the audience you will hear from them because while I am the owner of this goal they they are all shareholders they're all co-owners of this go as well and so you're going to hear from content um experts you're going to hear from leaders that are out there rolling up their sleeves helping and supporting our schools to make sure that every student um increase um outcomes and so you'll see um and he from Jessica Duncan I want you to wave um she is our early learning um coordinator Heather Norris our English language arts coordinator Jennifer lowski our math coordinator Jennifer Taylor our science coordinator Rob milholland our social studies and advanced studies coordinator we have miss daquis copelin our ESC student um exceptional student education coordinator we have our specialist for multilingual Learners Miss Lucian tiado

011and we also have our data Guru Kyle shiker um here present as well that works within our Rea Department all right and so you're going to hear from every single one of them so I want to start um by saying that the Strategic plan we as um both Dr balabin and Mr Cash has explained that we have one goal that is teaching and learning and So within teaching and learning when we're talking about providing every student with consistent and challenging high quality instruction throughout the entire District that means that when we look at curriculum instruction and assessment we look at that tight alignment between those three areas that is huge um when you think about curriculum I want you to think about all the resources that lives under that umbrella I want you to think

012about the maps textbooks Maps I want you to think about um lesson plans I want you to think about scope and sequence when do we teach what at what time period I want you to think about interventions what do we do with those students that need um some remediation and intervention help to be able to get to Mastery of the standards but I also want you to think about acceleration what do we do with those students that need to to continue to accelerate their learning and just the whole framework of teaching these different content areas um and so that's the curriculum component in a nutshell but then there has to be alignment between the what and the how the how piece is the instruction piece so what do I do in collaborative planning as a

013teacher how do I support that as a district team to be able to truly align that collaborative planning with what's happening in the classroom when they're delivering instruction c um modeling lessons um the resource teachers you will you will hear from each of the coordinators what their team does in terms of rolling up their sleeves and make sure that they're out there doing either hand overhand modeling side by-side coaching um in the classroom and and also direct student support right now when you enter um in our schools elementary middle school or High School you are going to see small group instruction geared towards ensuring that our students are Mastery the standards as we are um into that um time period of the school year where we're getting ready for the progress monitoring State assessment and

014then we can't forget about the assessment piece so those three pieces you're going to hear today corriculo that this same team provides the instructional um supports that we provide as far as the boots on the ground with our schools with our teachers and then the assessment pieces the assessment piece seasons are district assessments as well as state assessments and that is what today through go one you're going to hear the progress that we have made um and the intent Focus um that we have in each of these content areas in our assessment pieces and how it all aligns so you're going to see um overall when you look at the mid year um progress monitoring for the state so progress monitoring when you hear prog monitoring assessment I want you to think about State assessment

015um so in the state assessment you will see that overall we have increased our English Language Art scores by 2% and in math we've increased by 3% compared to that of last school year so um it's important for us to determine how have we been increasing and the why we've been increasing and you're hear from each coordinator as to um what things have been we've been focusing on I want I want us to um be thinking about that when you have progress monitoring for the state you are looking at language English language arts for grades three through 10th right when you are looking at math for the state progress monitoring assessment it is only grades three through 8th because algebra and geometry is not measured through the state progress monitoring system however it is measured

016through an end of the year exam from the state that's called end of the year um comprehensive test which is your eocc so you'll hear the eoc's um and that's what that means for classes like algebra and geometry there is no science in the progress monitoring assessment from the state and there is no social studies from the progress monitoring from the state there is in our district assessment very important to note because I want you to make sure that you're looking at when we're looking at the state assessment that's a delineation between that and when we look at our district assessments we do add in those components into our progress monitoring for our district assessments are we good so I want to start off with Early Learning and I'm going to ask Jessica Duncan to

017come up because she will be um delivering what strategies we have put in place because it starts from the early years it doesn't start in kindergarten or in first second or it doesn't start when the students assess in third grade it starts from when they enter the door with a three and four yearold and Jessica you're actually gonna sit right here [Laughter] okay welcome Jessica good afternoon I'm actually very thrilled to be asked to represent I'm very proud of early learning and I do believe from my heart it is the begin getting that Foundation both as a mom and an educator it's very important to have that solid foundation so what we're looking at right now is the VPK star early literacy assessment so this is the state assessment that it's put in place when

018there is a voluntary pre-kindergarten program in your school district or privately so every State student takes that are using their their voucher in the program are taking the state assessment this assessment um provides kindergarten Readiness and shows you that alignment on how their expectations are likely to be at that progress monitoring one when they start kindergarten so it's a beautiful tool to be able to use I'm very proud to have it here in Valia and so you can see from pm1 we have last year and this year in the first assessment and then we have the progress monitoring two I kind of want to focus on the progress monitoring 2 because that's our kind of our now State and you can see that we have increased into 82% so what that means is 82% of

019our students are at this time meeting that state expectation to likely have that kindergarten Readiness and be proficient at their progress monitoring one when they start kindergarten so we watch that very closely and then we look at the students that are not meeting that as well as continue to support the ones that are meeting it to provide some supports to increase that so hopefully by pm3 we'll be 100% right all right so you can also see some of the things that we put in place that we feel has really increased this growth we started this year with implementing I took a team of the voluntary pre kindergarten teachers both from inclusive models and regular made a team to develop a canvas platform for our teachers so it was created with all of their resources easy

020at their fingertips instructional pacing guides and whatnot the second thing that we did is that same team really took at the current Curriculum maps and they updated them based on their expertise as a teacher what worked well what needed to change and then they took a little twist because I always get new teachers on how can we really support that first year teacher it's a nice big binder we call it our little um VPK bital I guess it keeps them organized right shows all of their assessments so those two tools has really made it easy as the teachers have that go-to on when they have questions in the program or assessments the other thing that we started was implementing the numor reading Bright Start and that is a based in the science of reading it

021was Grant funded it's a beautiful tool we trained all of our teachers at the beginning of the year to use this in small gr instruction specifically to Target the tier two um or three students uh many of the teachers actually are using with all of their students it's a small group instruction and it will be data collection along the way so I feel like that tool has been a huge part we currently use Frog Street but for small group using that is just research based has really shown some consistent growth we also implemented data chat so each of the resource teachers that I have that do the boots on the ground I tell them they make me look so great they have met with every one of their teachers and analyzed the star data from

022PM one to two I sat in on a couple of them they were beautiful to see that comparison and then they dug deep into the Renaissance platform and showed them tools and resources and reports and how to support the students even further amongst the new mois another area that we um off provide is all of the resource teachers are in the classrooms weekly with new teachers and bqu with our veteran teachers and what that looks like is they're not just checking my compliance for the state so that we're following all the rules but they're looking at the instruction and they're looking at the students for their mtss and other pieces that are very important to the growth of these scores right and so they provide coaching as well as um pulling in at this time

023of the year they're doing small group intervention so when they go they've already met with them on a data chat they know the students that are below and they're pulling them and doing an extra round of small group amongst what the teachers are doing daily with the kids so again that's why they're amazing we provide professional learning we've had someone from the state state is coming again to our uh our next upcoming early release professional learning day and they are providing data driven instruction based on the start Rel literacy so the teachers can see that report and how to drive their instruction to meet the needs of where the students are scoring and then a final area that I feel it's really helped is that we have made sure that all of our eligible families

024are applying for the new world's reading initiative enrollment here in visha County schools are just our VPK there's been about over 300 that have applied and actually using that new worlds reading initiative which is a free book every month that comes with their child's name um in the mail and that all provides the parent tools to use to read with them at home okay thank thank you Jessica and as you heard Jessica say and I just want to reiterate because you're going to hear this a lot it's it's about collaboration and support but I just don't want you to think collaboration is just a team going out there and just talking to each other right it is as she said in VPK which is you know our our youngest Learners on our campuses at the

025elementary school it is side by-side coaching that they the resource teachers provide the teachers um it's walking the classrooms providing feedback helping them understand that data from that we get from the start assessment so it is really Hands-On approach and it's just not with her resource teachers it's with student services if we can't get the students here um to school you know it's those that looking at the whole child to make sure that even our youngest Learners starting before they even in our kindergarten right but they're on our campuses are getting the supports that they need and the families have the supports that they need so you're going to hear that a lot throughout this whole presentation is about that collaboration and support from every single person sitting in here their teams with the school

026level hi good afternoon we're excited to be here and right now I'm excited to share with you I'm looking at our progress monitoring for kindergarten through 2 grade um as you can see here um each cohort has increased year-over-year so as they travel from kindergarten to first grade first to second we see that that data is increasing um one of the things that we have looked at with this is really focus on how do we use the science of reading and ensure that our students are getting those foundations they need and so this year we have doubled how many schools are receiving are being a reader of materials which is taking those foundations and actually applying those um foundations to decodable text and so we've been hitting the ground running with observation days and professional

027learning for those teachers we've had ongoing um training with them through it's virtual as well as face Toof face and we're continuing that work in the summer with um more support with science of reading and we've also had multiple days this year for teachers to come to best practices days not only to work on what we do with our whole group instruction and that core but also for interventions and so working with both intervention teachers and the teachers who are providing interventions at their schools um to ensure that all students are closing those gaps and making sure they're ready to read once they hit these intermediate grades for K2 mathematics we see a 3% increase from last year we see that increase across each grade level as well as within each cohort those groups of

028students moving from K to one and from one to two this growth can be attributed to many factors in our Curriculum maps for grades K1 and two we have increased specific opportunities for the teachers to check for understanding throughout the lessons we we have increased teachers instructional notes within the PowerPoint slides for each lesson we have implemented our K2 best practices in mathematics professional learning that was offered to coaches and to teachers the professional learning provided in-depth uh I'll call it a deep dive into the Big M the Big M is a document that's provided by the state it stands for the best instructional guide in mathematics this is an extremely robust document it includes it is is laid out really by every Benchmark and includes a narrative that has a purpose and instructional strategies

029for each Benchmark it talks about how the benchmarks are aligned not only to benchmarks within that course but talks about prior and future learning that the students will engage in it goes through key vocabulary that the students would need to be able to use different strategies to support our different Learners there's key items that could be used as examples or tasks within the classroom and our professional learning was focused on how to use that document to understand the depth of the Benchmark to design the lessons to meet the needs of our students in addition to that professional learning we've also included uh the grade two Everglades workbooks that were provided to each campus these workbooks are an additional resource that provide multiple Benchmark aligned items for the students and lastly for K2 we have provided

030K2 focused mathematics intervention kits that were provided to each campus for tutoring for grades three through five in ela we um as using our progress monitoring we have tiered our schools to determine areas of support we have about 31% of our teachers um have less than three years so we know that we have a lot of um professional learning that we need to give constantly to our teachers to ensure that they're able to meet the needs of those students we've provided um additional small group resources this is our second year of having more scripted resources so that our more novice teachers know exactly what to say and do to help students we have provided opportunities for teachers to hold all students accountable by adding ways to check for understanding so that all students are being

031checked during the whole group instruction and we're providing professional learning opportunities very similar to our kindergarten through second grade we are providing um best practices for core instruction and through intervention we've also met with a group of teachers to really call them the ELA content experts and help them figure out how to use the data and strategies and kind of lead their schools not only the coaches but teachers to look at that data and make those best decisions with their schools in order to know these are the needs of my students and here are some resources that are going to be able to be used to meet those needs and get students back on track for 35 mathematics we see a % increase from year-over-year as well as increase across each grade level in cohort

032similar to K2 we can attribute that growth to updates on our curriculum apps including those specific opportunities to check for understanding as well as those increased instructional notes in the PowerPoint slide we extended our three five offerings for our best practices professional learning to include more targeted invitations based on our tiered support for our schools and our students and teachers our session semester two sessions really focused on the parts of the bigm that addressed strategies for different Learners specifically for students that are needing further intervention on prior skills so our semester two sessions looked at common student misconceptions strategies that specifically assist those Learners based on the data that uh The Benchmark level data that was reviewed we've also provided the Everglades workbooks for each school campus for grades three through five that again is

033that additional resource that allows students to practice multiple Benchmark aligned items and provided the grade three through five focused mathematics intervention kits for tutoring we are very excited to see how much Middle School Ela has increased over the last couple of years um Middle School is always a struggle for multiple reasons as our students um shift to from elementary and that protected environment to middle school and our benchmarks have become more robust um when we shifted to best so we really like that we're seeing that we're closing that Gap and we worked with our teachers and we have a canvas feedback page that we review every quarter and teachers give us feedback on the resources that we have and they help with us um design the maps that we are using this year and based

034on their feedback we have had very intentional small group opportunities that we provide in our maps and then also in our slides um teachers were struggling to figure out how can I really help the students based on their needs so they worked with us to create those opportunities that we have in our Maps and as we're looking at that data what we're really excited is that we were able to have best practices for our novice teachers in six through 8 and really dive into what does small group look like what does it look like to hold all students accountable how do I check for understanding and allow them opportunity to not only work with their teachers at their school but across the different grade levels or across the same grade level but from different schools

035so that they're able to get um have another group of people to M IDE ideas off of and when we looked at sixth grade at the beginning of the year on progress monitoring one and and our relip Benchmark assessment one we noticed that they were really struggling and what we're so excited to see is that sixth grade we looked at progress Maring 2 had the highest level of achievement and we attributed that to the hard work that the teachers are doing and we also had additional best practices days just for sixth grade where all the sixth grade teachers from the district were able to come in and work together and really dive into what students need for grade 6 through eight math we can see an increase of 1% overall as well as a 2%

036increase in grade six as we review the seventh and eighth grade data we should recall that in March of last year during the student progression plan presentation we shared the updated mathematics progression plan this plan was developed by the district team comprised of directors curriculum our chief academic officer and our Rea Department who work together to research the change in assessment for our grade seven accelerated students the grade seven accelerated mathematics course covers the entirety of the 8th grade benchmarks excuse me the assessment that the students take is now the grade A assessment so 100% of what they are learning this year is tested on the eighth grade assessment due to this change we anticipated the decrease in seventh grade and the increase in eighth grade that we see here in in addition to the

037changes in our progression this year's Curriculum maps were revised by teacher requests through a feedback process as our Curriculum maps are created for teachers and by teachers we have increased our additional aligned problems within each lesson and have provided more opportunities to check for understanding throughout the lesson we also continue to implement our best practices in mathematics instruction that professional learning for coaches and teachers that highlights the use of that Big M robust document provided by the state with a specific focus on the use of the manipulatives in the instructional strategies as well as the strategies that support tiered instruction for our small group instruction can you go back and explain again the structural change that was made to seventh grade why it was made explain that again so for our seventh grade students in

038mathematics there are two courses that they could take where they experience um Middle grades mathematics there is a seventh grade regular class that is the enti iry of the grade seven benchmarks and then there is a seven accelerated class that is a half of grade seven and all of grade eight so all 40 grade eight benchmarks are instructed in the seventh accelerated course so as we look at that the appropriate assessment for them to take would be the assessment that is aligned to their learning this year which is 100% of the eighth grade benchmarks so this year is the first year that the grade seven accelerated students take the eighth grade assessment as opposed to this assessment on the seventh grade benchmarks and there is a num numerator and a denominator okay yes okay for

039our high school Ela students um as you can see highlighted with that Arrow there we can see that our ninth grade cohort from last year they're now 10th graders has increased this has been our struggling group over the years since we implemented B benchmarks and we can see that they are in inreasing and we really attribute the increase in high school to the hard work of our teachers they really led the way with um small group instruction um very similar to um sixth seventh and eth grade we worked with our teachers to revise our Curriculum maps to include those small group opportunities and we've also had best practice days where we worked with our novice teachers in high school to really look at how do I Le this instruction what does small group look like

040how do I ensure that all students are learning what are my checks for understanding and if if school has requested we've also had those additional days to work with schools to dive into their data and make their plans and I would just like to add because you're going to hear this again and since we've moved to high school um small group instruction is not typically known to be implemented in high schools because people feel you know it's Elementary we do small group in elementary but we have been very intentional about conducting small group instruction in the secondary level especially in the high school and we can attribute a lot of our um progress because of the intentionality of working with a smaller group of students with what they need so we identify through our data

041meetings where students gaps are in terms of the benchmarks that we need to focus on and so our teachers have gone through professional learning to ensure that when we conduct that small group instruction we are about we are providing that intentional um basically prescription for what that student needs therefore we're able to close those gaps and so you'll hear small group instruction in all of our content areas so now we're moving on to science science and social studies had a good story to go with that but I don't afternoon um in science if you because there's a lot of work sweat and tears that goes behind those um I am so proud privileged and blessed to work with the most amazing young scientist in the State of Florida if not in the nation and on

042top of that I work with the most amazing teachers in addition to that I have the best team ever they're small in number but Mighty So based on state assessments we tear that support at our schools and throughout the year that the support changes Based on data we don't keep the same support at the schools all year long what is the key to our success well it's our people of course it's our kids but it's also our curriculum apps our curriculum apps are you based on state standards and they're created for teachers by teachers so this isn't something that we work on at the district office and push out this is something that we collaborate with teachers all year long and we work on together they decide pacing they decide what goes in it and

043they decide what those teacher hints are for our new teachers that are new to teaching bio in addition this year we increase professional learning for our teachers and one of the things that I'm most proud of is our best practices and we were able to hold those throughout the school year our best practices we take those curriculum apps and we unpack them with teachers so that they understand exactly what it sounds like looks like and feels like in a classroom in addition we talk about what it shouldn't look like what those misconceptions that pop up might look like and then how we respond to those misconceptions in addition we practice we do Labs we model together we create things that can be used the next day in the classrooms and all of those resources are

044then placed on cus to be shared by other teachers so at this time I'll pass it on to social studies catch my thank you social studies is Alive and Well in vucha County schools and thank you Mrs brosar for coming to our social studes fair and and being able to to make that happen it was very appreciated um teachers in social studies are are phenomenal at all levels but the two that we most currently look at are seventh grade civics and high school US History because those are our two end of course exam uh courses with a state assessment um as with science all of our all of our Curriculum maps and and resources everything that comes out of our office is aligned to the benchmarks and standards for those courses um and that way

045teachers are confident that that whatever they're using in in the classroom is directly aligned to those benchmarks and to those standards as well you'll notice a slight decrease um in in the Civics performance um and the reason for that is is is really because uh two years ago there was a complete revamp of the Civics and government benchmarks and standards by the state and that was and we did re react to those and then last um at the beginning of this year we had to also Implement further clarifications of those standards and benchmarks from that the state provided so it was it it was more like a two-year process that the state went through that here are are here's the new standards and benchmarks and by the way next year we're we here's some further

046clarifications for you so it was it was a response to getting used to those new standards and benchmarks um we definitely do see a a an increase um that we're looking for for this year with the EOC and Civics and you know it's also indicative that within social studies each course in social studies in sixth grade through 12th grade is basically a standalone course it does not rely on the information that comes before it from the previous year uh to kind of give you an example the sixth grade US history is the first half of US History all the way up through um the Civil War and parts of reconstruction and then students don't touch that again until 11th grade which starts back with reconstruction to the present day so there's a there is a

047definite Gap there um there is no continuity from one grade level to the next to the next in social studies in the content that they that they learn so everything is brand new to them and that's really important to to help you understand that that it is difficult for our students you know to go from one year in US history in sixth grade seventh grade is civics and government which does rely we were able to shift our progression in in middle school so that early US history and the Civics and government kind of do coincide together because they really do and then e8th grade is world history and then moving on through through the other grades in high school uh for high school US history um we we have definitely increased and our teachers are

048doing a phenomenal job just absolutely phenomenal job uh across the district and and making sure that the students understand not only the impact of of those historical events in since reconstruction to the present but also how it affects Florida as well because that is a recur that is our one recurring Benchmark um in high school US history is how did whatever the is include include Florida then we get into how do we how do we support our teachers and that's in terms of of things like best practice days where we can we bring teachers uh of civics and US History together so that we can work with them on the standards and benchmarks online their their lessons and make sure that that everything that they're producing and teaching the students goes along with the standards

049and benchmarks so that they will in turn be suc successful on the state assessment um we do that together as as as more like a a district best practice but we also go out into the schools themselves and and provide that that one-on-one School support with best practices as well uh we we also have a tiered system where if a school or a teacher in particular is performing at a high level let them do their job let them because they've shown their students have shown that are being successful and we work integrated uh with with those lower performing students in schools as well we also do small group instruction where we go out into the classroom and enhance that that classroom teacher instruction we're not going to take take away from it we we're there

050to enhance that instruction and provide those students with additional support that they might need in order to have that deeper understanding of of the course that they're in whether it's civics or High School US history sure okay all right so next we're moving into our priority strategy B so this is provide all students with challenging learning experience experiences through differentiated instruction and we have Luc lucianne up here for esol and Mrs Copeland for ESC thank you hi good afternoon so overall for our English language learner so that's what I'll be reviewing today great maintaining growth continuing to make progress and the way that we attribute this growth to again we have those conversations with our schools each semester we call them those action data planning meetings where we review with the administrators who are the

051students that are struggling specifically at their schools where are the gaps that are happening at that school specifically and how can we contribute to Bridging the Gap and helping our English language Learners so the way that we do that is that we introduce them to who is the resource teacher who will be assigned to your school who will be receiving that Weekly support and what that looks like and we go back to what Dr Dron said about those small groups right being very intentional what are we targeting where are the gaps that these English language Learners are having and how can that resource teacher at the school make sure that she's targeting and being intentional with where they are struggling we also make sure that they have tutoring available at the schools that they can

052use those programs to be able to bridge those gaps and again we always collaborate not only with our English language arts department but across all content areas making sure that the resource teachers know what that curriculum map looks like what the pacing should be where should the teachers be so they can offer that support as well of of course professional development you know not only for our administrators but our teachers our par professionals who also work with our English language Learners in small groups making sure they know that they have to Target the specific content areas of math of Science of computer literacy and that the resource teacher can then follow up and have that engagement with our English language arts courses so continuing with strategy B in Rel to our students with exceptional needs

053our ESC we continue to make sure that we are looking at our subgroup data and making sure that the analysis that we do with this data that we are matching the supports for each school so we're making sure that the supports that the district provides is based on the data and needs of each school we also continue to monitor our IEP implementation and so we've taken it a step further this year where we're actually pulling IEPs walking in classrooms to ensure those supports and services are being being met for each student because we know that those supports and services support them in all content areas also our collaboration with the math department using those prerequisite reports from IR to help assist our support facilitation teachers and their instruction the ESC Department continues to provide small

054group support at elementary and middle schools and as I spoke about before our ESC report card has truly uh given us a sense of urgency with making sure that our priorities are met with the needs of our ESC students to ensure that we are making sure that our student outcomes are what they need to be so that we can continue to improve the work that we're doing for each and every student [Applause] all right so um for this priority strategy C we're looking at our valua Benchmark assessment which is our district assessment I remember I had said stated in the beginning that there's a difference between our state versus our district assessments and what the state measures the um vucha benchmark assessments measure also not just those content areas that we um had explained in

055the beginning that is not assess through our progress monitoring but also it's real time data so if I teach during the second quarter that is all I'm going to be responsible for plus any recurring um standards that um we have added from the previous quarter but you're not going to as a student receive questions that you need to be expected to answer if you have not been taught that material whereas in progress monitoring it is a whole Year's worth of benchmarks so you will notice that during our um second administration of the Vala Benchmark assessment we had an increase in all VBA um areas compared to last school year in each of these core content areas um and so I am going to have now this is going to be this is going to go

056fairly quickly um this portion of it and then I'm going to come back up and talk about what is it that we're doing now as we prepare for the end of the school year um for the state assessment so I'm going to have Norris have the Norris and Jennifer luski come up so they can review the VBA all right thank you so for our bla benchmark assessments we are looking at those as what have we done instructionally versus in of the Year expectations um in order to create these we use teachers and we have our canvas feedback page where our teachers give feedback and we adjust based on their feedback for these assessments um when we look at this data we know that we have to make a plan the second semester and what do

057our schools need so for ELA we have 27 schools that we are supporting with small group instruction and I obviously don't have 27 people on my team so this is a complete District effort we have people who are in Human Resources we have people who yes are in tll like the professional learning Department we have people who are on on student services Federal programs ese Esau technology it is an all handson deck effort to make sure that our schools are successful and by our schools I mean our students in order to make that happen we have created remediation plans based on each individual Benchmark and we trained these um people who are coming out to help us and we meet with them by weekly to see how they're doing how's it going with their schools

058it is an effort with the schools as a partnership we we've had data means with the schools and the schools have files that they are tracking how students are doing based on the skills that they are needing so we have pretty much like a menu of options with a a shared folder where the people who are going out to supporting um the students are able to figure out which benchmarks are they struggling with and then not only is it Benchmark it's also scaffolded support to help those students reach their goals and this has been a team effort to do this um and it's all hands on deck for grades three five math just with just as with Ela the volution benchmark assessments are quarterly and they cover what instruction has already occurred they are also

059created with teacher input through our canvas discussion board and we use that data to determine what instructional adjustments might be needed and what the remediation needs are based on this data we've partnered with the schools to create a small group support plan for math we have 29 schools that are currently receiving additional support for the small group instruction again those 20 schools are receiving support not only from our district team but from members of instructional materials Federal programs Ese and student services two of our elementary schools are also receiving support from Carnegie Learning and seven are receiving support from the bile education group our district teams have created remediation calendars to support this small group instruction those calendars include a benchmark of focus for a specific time frame as well as suggested checks for understanding

060alignment to that best instructional guide in mathematics document and we've been specific not only for grades 3 through five but also for our lowest cortile students in grade four and grade five and our Middle School Ela as you can see our cohorts are increasing across every grade level so we're very proud of that work um just like in elementary we've had very targeted data meetings with uh District Personnel the schools and re a to really dive into which school which students are we targeting which teachers how can we support both the teachers and students to meet those goals we've created um a pacing calendar for our additional District support we have people from human resources and from ESC who are also helping us at middle school and they are using those resources in order to

061close that Gap and also track that data with our schools um oh you I saw you ready to jump in no for our Middle grades math we talk about those data meetings that we have with schools to really determine their strategic report support the Middle School mathematics data chats are more complex as over the three years there are actually eight mathematics courses that the students could be registered in and as they engage in that mathematics you want to take a look at the data and see that the trend we saw with our progress monitoring for grades seven and eight also shows in our VBA data so you'll see that seventh grade regular is a little bit um lower than 8th grade though we do celebrate the increase and we see that math 8 assessment that

062is the eighth grade students and the seventh accelerated students combined is increasing and we appreciate that data point because that shows true algebra Readiness and we'll be able to use that information to determine a student's algebra Readiness for next year based on the data we have 12 middle schools that are currently receiving support from our district team and they have similar resources such as a benchmark Focus aligned uh resources to be able to support those students in small groups and similar in high school we also have had those data meetings with our high schools to really look at students and targeting that small group support we have those remediation plans based on the Benchmark support um we have our resource teachers and Specialists supporting those high schools and we are very excited to see if

063you look at where ninth grade was last year compared to this year um that is not indicative that 10th grade is you know knocking out the ballpark they are but even though nth grade looked a little lower last year if you knew the history of those students they came in with a lot of gaps from the first year of having best and it has been a team effort in high schools the last two years to get those students to that percentile so I just am very proud of all the work that our nth and 10th grade teachers have done because it really shows that their instruction is paying off as we reach algebra and geometry Dr V mentioned that these are the two courses that we see in high school that do not have the

064progress monitoring assessments that our grades three through eight mathematics have so our district valua benchmark assessments really are the driving force between how we analyze data to make sure we're teering our schools for support so we use this data to be able to determine which schools will be receiving support from resource teachers as well as which students will be able to be assigned to small groups to to be able to have that individualized Benchmark aligned instruction it's important to note that again in that student progression plan in March of last year we also addressed the progression from algebra 1A to Algebra 1 and this is the first year that our algebra data includes not only our students from pre-algebra but also from algebra 1A with that change we did anticipate a decrease in our Algebra

0651 VBA scores but it's important to note that due to that small increase excuse me a small decrease we can say that the use of algebra 1A to fill those prior knowledge skill gaps is working our eighth grade schools that are also working with students that are in eth grade algebra 1 are receiving support there's actually um 12 middle schools that are receiving support in Algebra 1 small groups in addition to the eight high schools that are receiving support in algebra and geometry small groups their data is reflected here in the secondary Mathematics page so to start off with I think it's important that we talk a little bit about why or how science is different from Alien math um one of the major differences is at the state level for science there's only one

066test in elementary and that's in fifth grade there's one test in middle school and that's in eth grade and there's one test in high school and that's biology so there's this thing called fair game at the state level for elementary and middle school and what that means is it's fair game to assess any of the benchmarks that have come before our teachers and students don't always feel like this is very fair but that's the way it is in Florida so in fifth grade 33% of the test is third grade standards about 33% is fourth grade and 33% is fifth grade and the same thing happens in middle school so think about your students in your zones who came from out of state we don't all teach science the same way and in the same order

067so we definitely have a challenge to make sure that we're filling those gaps for our kids so one of the things we have to do is create internal Assessments in order to know right off off the bat where are those gaps and how can we start supporting our kids right from the start so one of the things that we do with schools right off the bat is we have data chats we give a preest let's say so we know what benchmarks are missing so we can begin to fill those and we have products called penda and Elementary and Middle School which is an online resource that they can actually go in and do intervention and Remediation on any of those three grade levels we also have resources that have been created for teachers by teachers

068with collaboration for my team called replay books and they do the same thing um this year in middle school we were also able to create with a couple other districts something called memory missions which also goes back and reviews prior benchmarks so sometimes people think that it just means like we started with layer one and then we had layer two and then we had layer three at the same Benchmark that's not the way it works at all we teach rocks in one grade level weather in another grade level and the planets in a completely different grade level so the burden on that fifth grade teacher the burden on that eighth grade teacher the burden on that fifth grade eth grade student is they have to for in some schools learn all three grade levels within

069that one grade level so that's the support of my team especially in elementary and middle school they are there four to five days a week some of my team is now working Saturdays to try to fill those gaps for our kids and they're doing a great job um the other thing that I wanted to share biology is a one-year test um and with that test teachers came together and created something called Biology one pagers which is also a remediation tool so at the beginning of the year my team is in schools modeling coaching planning um teaching helping teachers grow in instruction at this time of the year we have pulled those bubble kids with the teachers in a process called we like to call Spring training so after the VBA 2 we work with teachers

070a full day and we go through kid by Kid we have conversations about every single child and we decide what is it that they need to be successful where are they right now um in order to cross that finish line and we create an individualized plan for each school so I would love to say here's the plan we have for Bia County Schools but it's different depending on which school you go to and we build a calendar out day by day um and within that calendar I'm proud to say my team is embedded in that plan where they and they pull their own small groups so at this time of the year they have their own babies that they're monitoring and that they're collecting data on um and they're cheering on to to do great

071on the on the last day so thank you so with social studies one of the things I like to do is go last because some of the things that that have already been said ditto uh we definitely do react to the valua benchmark assessments and and that tells us is those those students that are needing that extra support and that extra help within a particular Benchmark as well as as that classroom support one of the things that that is we are really really proud of with with our team is that our our reliability with the volution benchmark assessments is very high it is a very very good predictor of how those students will will perform on the eocc and we can Target early on where that support is needed whether it's at the classroom level

072the student level or even if it's multiple teachers within the same school we can we can adjust our support as we go along throughout the year uh the we do the valua benchmark assessments every quarter um so first quarter second at the end of of second second quarter and then the third quarter as well um we our teachers are just now finishing up VBA 3 uh really for for all all of our content areas so we will readjust our content and and and our focus in that support as when we're finished analyzing all of this data so when we come back from spring break we're ready to hit the road running with those teachers with those students and with those schools to ensure that they are going to make it and and and perform well

073um one thing that that is is really important for people to understand is is that the eoc's the the um the end of course assessment is 30% of a student's grade so that factors into whatever their final grade is when you're talking high school that factors into whether or not that student is going to earn the credit and and that's a really really important thing that we we help our teachers and our students understand it's not just a thing that hangs out there all by itself but it is an integral part of what we do all the time and we have increased our number of of uh checks for understanding so that way teachers have a bank of of questions to be able to use as they are going through those questions mimic the type

074of questions students are going to see on the EOC is in terms of of complexity low moderate or high complexity and also difficulty two totally different things um and and so that way everything is is aligned with not only the course standards but also with with the EOC as well so we have finished the first section and we're open for questions did who decides some of where these classes are placed but it makes no sense to me that our US History classes are not consecutive and that seems like something we could request of whoever makes that decision uh because it's bound to set students back if they have to try to remember what they learned several years ago I would have to have a refresher uh so um that seems like a relatively simple fix

075and probably one that other districts would support as well my other observation is about Civics I don't know what genius thought that seventh graders should learn Civics but that is that does not relate to kids who were in seventh grade um it seems to me that it ought to be I had it I think in eighth grade that was bad enough but personally I I think it should be at a higher level because then they start to hear it from a a practical application standpoint how how do the levels of government fit their lives they don't care about that in seventh grade so anyway um just those two observations and other than that thank you all for your for your information and presentations anyone else with questions I have a few but you know what

076for the sake of time I'll send mine in an email and it and it truly has to do with I analyzed like I'll just pick a grade level you know fourth grade last year who are this year's fifth graders in this and I compared where did they finish in fourth grade and where are they at now in fifth grade and so I as I said I'll put mine in email because I have some very specific questions on and and I appreciate Jennifer lowski doing the piece about the math okay um but I even have a question about that um and I am happy to hear that algebra 1A was placed back in because there are some students that are not ready to do the full year but I also think that our legislators are listening

077to us because right now we're holding our public school students to a single test that determines whether or not they get a high school diploma and if they're homeschooled if they are in private school or charter school they're not being held to that same criteria and I'm fine if we I'm fine with choice if we hold everyone to the same criteria but I think they're finally hearing us because I've been following some legislation on that piece a single test after 13 years of instruction should not keep a child from graduating so I'm happy about that but I will send you um just some questions I have when comparing because that's that's what you have to do you have to look at where did they finish last year and where are they at this year and

078if there is a dip then we have to look at is it something we're not covering is it as we will know and I made note that the percentage of teachers that we have that are three years or less sure and we know that that also plays a factor it also plays a factor if um a student doesn't start the year with a teacher or they lose a teacher partway through and so those are just a few things Mobility as well yes and the Mobil I will mention this before going into guard r one Dr bamman if I may um at this point of the school year now one of the things that um I have the team do with me in Rea is at the beginning of the year and we do this several

079times is we look at rot cause analysis as to why we might see not just a dip also increases because both things are very important we want to know what's working and why and want to know what's not working and what we need to do to rectify that to that end um right now we use um the term we and it's not just right now throughout I think if you all just think about a plan that you put in place even if it's a personal plan um in your household in order for you to know if that plan is successful there has to be different checkpoints and there also has to be a point in time where you have to maybe correct some of the actions or steps in order for you to re to

080achieve that goal and for us it's course correction um during this juncture of the school year we do a lot of that which means that um we're being and and Milan and I actually touch um some of this where um he talks about during this third wave of final assessments that we have for the district what do we do with that data you look at that corer group of students um as well so that we know exactly if the students that we're supporting are the are the ones that we need to based on the information based on the benchmarks that might be lacking and is the um as as well as the support that we're providing our teachers um at school so it's a lot of rolling up your your sleeves and and all hands

081on deck um it's it's is what I say um during all parts of the school year but being very laser focused um is important to do that at any at any point of the school year and especially now two things quickly can you explain for those of that are listening in because as you stated Miss Haynes 1A what is 1A and who's place in 1A as you recall last year we had a thorough discussion about this um and this has been put in place but what is 1A for those that may not no that's that's one and um the second would be gez Miss haes I just had it I should have written it down go ahead explain the onea so algebra 1A is a high school course that we provide for um students that

082are lacking the um skill set to be able to be successful in a whole year course of algebra so algebra 1A is half of the year but it's being taught for the entire year so you have more time to be able to fill in those gaps that they need and algebra 1A doesn't have an end of thee course exam um like the algebra one test for the state and so um the notion behind that the idea behind that is if I can fill in the gaps during the algebra 1 a strengthen all those um skills necessary to be successful in Algebra 1 for the entire course the next year when I take Algebra 1 I'll get some of the algebra 1A back some of those first half of the Year standards but then I'm focusing

083on making sure that I master the rest of the of the course so that at the end of the school year when I get the EOC when I take the EOC as a student I'm able to um pass it so miss lowski did I do justice with that okay just making sure you pass I do remember the next Miss Thompson I want to thank all of the board members who really took the time to join us in a um in a meting meeting where they they came in person to Olsen and sat in so that they can really look at our research evaluation and accountability data warehouse because when we talk about being very intentional and looking at student by student what skills they are they're performing their best in or what is some areas

084that they opportunities we saw how detailed it was but also I want to give a shout out to Miss Thompson who called me on Monday yesterday and shared with me that over the weekend she was meeting with some parents and um and they were having some discussions about assessments and she was able to share what why VB why we use the VB and what is it that the VBA will measure versus the PM don't um so thank you for doing that but most importantly she shared something that many of the other board members shared is that when we're looking at quarterly when those progress reports are going home ensuring that there is a deta print out from our um for that student that's included with that that um report card that's going home so that

085the parent can see skill by scale how their children are doing for every subject area yes so um and that's one thing that um the two executive directors with their respective teams have been working with our principls in terms of and what Dr Babin is referring to is what we often call like a baseball card you have a snap shot of the student and exactly what skills where they're at where they need to um focus on and so being able to also attach that as part of report cards but also parent teacher conferences when there's a parent night um regarding academics I there's so many different venues that um different schools utilize to get parents out to talk about academics that's important to to do so that is something we have um Incorporated um m

086Mr cologne has a question Oh Mr cologne hey I know you don't laugh at me I sound horrible I have a question for you um what is the time frame can you guys hear me yes yes what is the time frame between the VBA and the progress monitoring and do you have an example of the uh tweaks or any example of the tweaks that you all make in that time that have shown I mean like a real life example I know your team in the back is dying to come up and share an example of uh a time where they were able to make those tweaks I mean that it made a difference so what's the time frame so they do the VBA and then how many weeks do we have to make those uh

087necessarily adjustment necessary adjustments so thank you Mr cologne so while Kyle shiker um comes up here for um to answer the question regarding the the window um between vbnm I do want to mention that um one of the things we did last year that we will continue to do this year um is to bring in a cross-section of various teachers um from elementary middle and high East Side West Side also have it available on team so that they can join to be able to provide their feedback based on that pacing that we're talking about the time the timelines in which we have a window for pm and window for VBA um and so we did that last year h we got our assessment calendar for this year and I'm sure that there are um teachers

088that now that we're in it um is able to provide other feedback to make it better I don't know that it will any I don't know that any year it will ever be perfect but it can definitely um be better to address certain things that they might see once they are actually in it which is why it's important to bring those teachers in to be able to give us that feedback and we're doing that with principles as well and what are some I think Mr colog can you repeat like maybe one school the level of support that they're receiving in what just talk about one give one example I think that was one of his questions as Mr col what was your question regarding the love of support yeah so what's the timeline between I

089guess it starts off with what's the timeline between the VBA and the um and the progress monitoring like how many weeks in other words how much time does that lend us to adjust the curriculum so between uh our pm2 and VBA 3 we have about six weeks of instruction and in between VBA 3 and pm3 again it's about six weeks of instruction so we we just wrapped up VBA 3 today was one of our last days we have makeups through the rest of the week then we have six weeks of instruction before pm3 and our eoc's um start in the first week of May wonderful Mr Shaker can you think of an example of uh a school where you all made these tweaks and were able or anyone we able to uh decide uh what

090changes needed to be made and then what outcomes we're expecting yes I can hi Mr colone I hope that you're feeling okay uh but I can speak to that um I have my directors who are sitting in here Carrie lesli a lady and and I have already been out at schools based on the VBA data that we're receiving so Palm terce Carrie was just we were on the phone yesterday she was already out there looking at the masth scor with the principal with the school-based team with the district resource teacher with everybody involved and we saw that there were some students who we needed to add to small group and we also saw that our resource teacher who was supporting the school has time within the schedule to have another group of students So based

091on that data we're already making those tweaks at the schools and you know Kyle will tell you it's not even finalized yet but we're like it doesn't matter we have data we're moving and so we're already at the schools making those little adjustments that we see if some students who are you know soaring and then they're making tremendous gains you know we're we're saying what's working is working for that student we just don't want to release them and just put them back and say we're not going to see you in small group anymore but we're saying okay what's a student that's almost there that bubble student can we are are there certain benchmarks that that student needs and we're pulling them into small group instruction too are inviting them to tutoring inviting them to Saturday

092boot camps I don't know if you guys know but a lot of our school have Saturday boot camps where teachers and principes come in on Saturdays to work with our students um so there's just so much going on um within our schools but as soon as we get this VBA data we're making those adjustments that are needed because I mean what do we want we want all students to be successful so it happens immediately Mr clone and we're already out there running with our feet and our tires going to every single school getting out there as much as we can to to make those tweaks to make sure every student gets the support that they need and spring break oh yes we do we have three schools that are hosting spring break Camp which we're

093so excited uh so we have Orange City as sunrise and uh Stark and they are going to have just a few days um some students Monday and Tuesday or Monday Tuesday Wednesday with the principal and there were a lot of teachers at each of the schools who wanted to provide that support to the students because we all know how important it is to support our students so they're excited about it um we're excited host the spring break C Camp and as we continue we'll probably host more of them as in the in the upcoming year so we're excited about that thank you wonderful thank you okay at this time it is um 1:50 p.m. we are going to take a 10-minute break we are going to be back here to start at 2 p.m with

094guard rail 1 and so those of you that have the four guard rails basically you have 15 to 18 minutes to present and then about four minutes to five minutes for questions depending on when they end their presentation for us to end on time at 3:30 so I'm giving you fair chance to look at your presentation to be ready we'll be back in here at two thank you e e e soci welcome back Dr B we're going to start with guardrail one now high quality staff so it is 2:01 p.m. uh Miss Hayes yes what did you say you call we're going to start with guardrail one high quality staff absolutely so um chief of staff and just to so that you know he has he has a new task now which is to um

095have the timer going well I calculated it out so that we can yeah he's gonna make sure that I'm setting my timer right now okay all right come on up guys good afternoon uh guardrail one as Dr balabin stated is focused on high quality staff after our students our greatest asset is our employees what we focus on in this guardrail is recruiting supporting developing and retaining that high quality staff we do that with three strands the first that Miss Fuller is going to discuss is our recruitment support retention systems so good afternoon I'm Tiffany Fuller and so in guard world one strategy a our focus is on the recruitment support and retention of those staff members and that's really focusing on innovating and collaborating and increasing those Partnerships um recruitment is not a one-person show

096and so we work to expand those partnership opportunities so this is just a snapshot of some of the work out of the recruitment office um gives you a quick glance over the last three years what we have done in the recruitment office has been really intentional in casting a much larger and a much wider net um we find that our employees are coming from all types of walks of life all types of career and job experiences and so we made it our um intentional effort to be in as many places as possible to make sure that people were aware of the opportunities that they had for employment in vucha County Schools as a result of that you can see that as we've increased our hiring events we have reduced vacancies and increased hiring as a

097result of that effort as we've made adjustments into the alloc ation models in this last school year particularly we have been really intentional and focused on where we prioritize that hiring need and we've made sure that we were focused on the areas of greatest need and so we're going to talk a little bit about that but as you can see just really quickly that was at the first line in 2425 is specific to the end of quarter 1 that's when that data was first pulled and then that green line is kind of that midyear update and so we're reducing our vacancies consistently and still increasing our hiring as a result of those intentional efforts sorry so as we looked at that with that intentional effort we've been focused on two primary areas that we talked

098about in our last meeting when we convened in December and that was um our bus operator shortage that was one area that was of particular focus and shortage and so some of the actions that have come as a result of that um focus area was to make sure that we were able to rise and match that salary increase and so that department has seen um a significant increase and we've been able to capitalize on the work of that HR team and the work they did in that effort and the transportation team and so we've leveraged set into the marketing and promotion of the position and so from that end we've had three different bus driver bus operator specific career events um across those times we've met 287 candidates that were only interested in the bus

099driver position so it starts by making sure that we have applicants that are focused on the job that we're hiring for um within that we've had 34 requests to hire as of the end of December and so we are moving in the right direction and we're also working to expand those Partnerships and Pathways to make sure that we're leaving no stone un turn turn to bring applicants who meet all of the different requirements as there are several to be a bus driver um who meet those requirements and are eligible to take over the positions as we're offering them one thing I'd like to add is that if all goes well when we return for the fourth quarter all routes will be covered we will have hired all of the operator positions we've had vacant so

100that's huge compared to where we've been the last couple of years and so in addition outside of our support area Focus the other instructional area Focus was our ESC teacher focus and so we wanted to take a really intentional look at what we can do to help bolster um candidates and leads and opportunities to fill that shortage area and so when we last met we spoke about the valua associate teacher substitute model and we we brought that to your attention since that time we've now had the job description approved and so we're really excited about that I have had five different webinars I believe of informational sessions to meet with our employees to talk about what this program is how they can be eligible for it what it offers them and to to answer all

101of their questions and so the application portal is now open we've received applications I was responding to emails on the last break and we have principles that have already submitted recommendations for persons in this um pipeline so we're really excited about growing and expanding um the career opportunities for our existing employees and also filling the pipeline for our shortage area needs and so this is just a really quick snapshot this is one of the areas of focus that I spend my time on when I talk to our employees who are wanting to go into teaching and they hear about these Pathways and there's so much to know and and not always the clarity that's needed so this is to help make it clear for them as to what's the pathway that I need what are

102the different Pathways help guide me on which one I should choose and so we talk about PA to teacher program is not a ubiquitous umbrella it's a very specific program and what is the tap program and what does that require what does that mean when you're an apprentice and what is the new model of the vets and so we talk through each of them we talk about what are the strengths and pros and cons you the employee make a determination to what pathway best fits you according to your strengths and needs and program and with that I would like to ask Miss Brandy hog to join us at the podium to discuss where we are with our leadership recruitment update you're doing great still got 10 minutes good afternoon everyone um I had the pleasure

103of joining you back in December and doing a pretty extensive presentation regarding leadership development and recruitment so I'm just going to highlight some key points with you since we met last um over the past few years fucha County schools has made significant shrines in leadership Recruitment and development ensuring a strong pipeline of Future Leaders monthly training sessions engage over 100 leaders promoting ongoing growth and providing consistent support across a variety of leadership programs a major accomplishment that we've had recently is we transitioned 42 toas into administrative Dean roles accompanied by updated job descriptions which enhance their leadership capacity and prepare them for future roles in school administration the aspiring leaders Academy otherwise otherwise known as ala has successfully completed three cohorts engaging a total of 68 instructional participants what's especially exciting is that 29 of

104those participants have already been promoted into leadership roles demonstrating the impact and effectiveness of this early leadership development program the principal preparation program otherwise known as the PPP continues to play a vital role in leadership succession planning over the last four cohorts the program has produced 37 new principles showing that our investment in developing assistant principles is paying off additionally over the past four years 53 new assistant principles have stepped into their roles strengthening the district's overall leadership capacity notably 57% of current principles have five years or less of experience which highlights the continued need for intentional leadership development and comprehensive support systems to ensure their growth and success together these efforts reflect the district's commitment to cultivating a strong and enduring leadership pipeline another key component of our leadership development strategy is ensuring that

105our current principles are supported empowered and continuously growing in their roles we've had a strong engagement in our ston leadership series which focuses on building cultures to support and retain teachers 63 school-based leaders have taken part in this professional learning opportunity we're also proud of the work happening through our mentoring program which is currently supporting 19 first and second year principles this structured mentorship includes guidance encouragement and realtime problem solving support to help our new leaders build confidence and Thrive finally we're continuing to Foster our collaboration with the teaching leading and learning Department this partnership ensures that leaders are not only supported with leadership development but also aligned with instruction priorities and districtwide initiatives creating a cohesive and effective support system all together these efforts are helping us build strong resilient School leaders who are

106equipped to lead effectively and with lasting impact in our district thank you and one thing I'd like to add is that um throughout the first semester and the first couple of weeks of the second semester Brandy and I have met with every Cabinet member as well as their leadership team to talk about how we can collaborate to make sure that at each of these different levels of the leadership pathway we're getting the information that those departments need into those roles so that by the time they become a principal they have all of the foundation they need at each of those different levels okay our last guard rail has to do with um with focusing on our feedback and our employee performance so miss fed again thank you good afternoon everyone my name is Alisa Fedigan

107and I'm the coordinator of employment performance and uh with Mrs H I was fortunate enough to come and give you an in-depth um presentation back in December regarding the work that we're doing toward our strategic plan so today I'm just going to focus on a few highlights um the Milestones over this past year have focused on providing aligning evaluation tools to provide that feedback um to align to our strategic um strategy C so we're going to start with our Vel steering committee they redesigned the Vel evaluation Vel meaning vuia system for empowering leaders that is a state approved evaluation plan um that assesses our school leadership and we align this uh plan with the new Florida Educational leadership standards so subsequently we've redesigned the evaluation platform and that is being utilized for the first time

108this school year additionally our vet steering committee which is the valua system for empowering teachers teachers which is our state approved evaluation plan for teachers um our steering committee updated the vsep plan to incorporate recent changes in the Florida educator accomplished practices and these changes resulted in updates to several of our rubrics and the realignment of several evaluation components so this committee also played a key role in adjusting observation Cycles specifically for our experienc proficient teachers which we're utilizing this school year so our steering committees have collaborated to create new performance metrics that are tied directly to each teacher's student roster in every instance where this is applicable our performance calculations utilize the effect size model the performance model and the original value added model or a combination of these approaches and the school leader

109evaluation has been updated this year to reflect the changes to the teacher performance metrics so this realignment aims to strengthen the relationship between our teacher observation data that's collected by the evaluator and student performance outcomes more closely and reflects our teachers instructional impact and so as we begin evaluations actually for this school year we reflect on last year's instructional evaluation data and this a schematic shows that uh 56% of our instructional staff received an overall Mark of effective last school year with 43% scoring highly effective effective and less than 1% scoring needs Improvement this data reflects scores from the administrative observational piece of the evaluation which is worth 40% of the final score and their teacher self-directed professional development plan is weighted at 25% and the student performance metric is at 35% last school year

110our school leader evaluation data resulted in 74% receiving an overall Mark of effective and 26 highly effective and this data reflects the assessment of the Florida principal leadership standards which were the standards we were evaluated on last year for our school leadership team um that was at 50% and the self-directed professional development plan at 15% and then the student performance metric is at 35% okay that concludes our guard rail so we're available for any questions we have anyone that has any questions cologne does he have any questions I do not thank you Miss Goodridge mine's not a question just wanted to share that yesterday I U met a pair of that had gone into a teaching role she'd been at a middle school for 19 years and this gave her the pathway an opportunity to

111get there so it's working um and so keep up the good work thank you I actually wanted to share um on the transportation piece yesterday this was was a topic for the central Florida school board Coalition and I sent it over to miss core one of the districts um actually gave us a whole layout of where they've gone with hiring bus drivers and bus attendants and things like that and what they've been doing and we each had a chance to share um and what they were really asking is like would each of us fill out a sheet so that we understand you know if we see one County there is one County that talked yesterday that they have 250 um drivers so they're not having a problem finding drivers um but then other counties are

112in the same situation as so I'm very thankful that by the fourth quarter we're going to be fully staffed but there was one thing that they did share that I found to be interesting every county is different you know some of them are a lot more congested in areas some have some rural areas well one County for the rural areas where they maybe only had two students or three students that needed to be transported from somewhere to a specialized program that could take an hour instead of sending an entire bus out there for that they actually invested in some Vans and by doing that they were able to not tie up an entire bus and a bus driver because you don't have to have the CDL to do the van and so they shared that

113yesterday with us that that was one of the ways they found as a solution in those unique cases that they have and sometimes that happens for us when students are being assigned to um Riverview or high Banks Learning Center if they're up in Taylor and they're having to go to High Banks which is down you know in DeBerry DeBerry why send a whole bus to Taylor to pick up one kid to bring down so I kind of found some of the things they shared and I think they're if everybody will fill out the information and get it back in then we will have a full look at what every everyone is doing at least out of the 14 districts that we work with in that Coalition group and so that was a an appropriate topic

114and so I wanted you to know we're on the right path with this and I'm happy by fourth quarter we'll be fully staffed but that's the whole purpose we should all be sharing with each other things that we find that work and I just would have never thought about the van and how we could have you know been using those to transport some of those kids long distances and not tying up an entire bus but thank you for everything thank you guys um Mr Cash we're gonna start with guard rail two by the way guard rail one came in two minutes okay doesn't mean no I don't want it I don't want it Mr malli hello hello how is the goal Le doing great we are doing great good afternoon good afternoon Madam chair superintendent

115balabin school board members I am Mike mcalli executive director of grad assurance and student services and I am pleased to be here with you today to go over guard rail 2 uh safe and supportive environment and we are looking to create an optimal conditions for student learning through a safe and healthy and supportive environment and I have my team with me here in the back and I'm going to ask them to slowly start making their way up to the front uh so we can transition here with since we are on a time constraint uh you will hear us go over the the guard rails here that we have we have five of them here uh implementing a proactive behavior management strategies rather than reactive measures which is guardrail a uh strengthening and expanding school safety

116measures and protocols uh which is B enhancing and supporting school safety uh training in our staff to recognize early warning signs and mental health concerns uh for appropriate interventions and techniques and then also developing comprehensive approaches to improve student behaviors and also create campus cultures that you're going to hear some gentlemen speak about as well so the first group that I have that is going to speak is going to be our coordinator Mr James baringer and our mtss specialist Miss yavon rushing good afternoon everyone as Mr malli shared my name is James baringer and I the coordinator for school Psychological Services and I am joined with the amazing Von rushing she is our mtss specialist and today we're going to talk about like we've heard a lot of people talk about that multi-tiered system of

117support so I want to be clear that what we're talking about here is no different right we work very closely with with our curriculum teams to make sure that we're following those best practice standards and using EV evidence-based interventions so here on the first slide you could see um there's two different graphics and I know with acronyms right so um ips2 is basically our monitoring system for teachers when they're reaching out to parents and and sharing how the student's doing in class uh whether that's academically or behaviorally they're just sharing how they're um performing and what interventions we're implementing and that leads into ips4 which is that initial intervention plan that they put in place uh whether that's like I said academics Behavior or attendance uh they are providing those interventions and they're communicating that

118with the family because we know that homeschool collaboration is the most important piece um okay so throughout this school year we have done um a lot of training over 170 staff members have been trained um that includes our mtss chairs which are the point people at each School designated for the mtss process but we've also had some administrators that have come some academic coaches that have come as well and so we've trained quite a bit of Staff uh through the MTS for the mtss process we've also had a specialized training for our school psychologists as well because they're seen as one of those extra experts on the team that can really analyze data talk about Behavior provide behavioral support and so they did receive a specialized training to be able to support the mtss chairs

119and the schools academically and behaviorally again with providing those multiple tiers of support and and and a large reason those School psychologists are present and they have that specialized training is because they are really that liaison between student services and Miss Copeland's team and and working collaboratively uh because if we have a student that's not performing um and we're implementing those inter itions uh for Behavior or academics and we see that you know it's still we're not still closing that Gap we look at an evaluation under idea to see if the child meet eligibility criteria uh for special education services and so the school psychologist really works to help facilitate that process and make sure that the parents receive informed consent yes and they signing and what those assessment procedures are um and then we

120also I've also developed a behavior intervention guide or resource it's a living document and it just outlines additional behavioral resources and tools that teachers and schools can use um just different things that we might not have thought about so again we know checkin check out and that's on there but there are a lot of other resources and behavioral interventions and strategies that schools now have access to and in addition to that each mtss cheer also has access to our canvas page which has a ton of Behavioral support visuals outlines uh procedures and so they also have access to that and then forthcoming I'm hoping to have a teacher one as well so that all teachers have access access to some of that information as well yes so on the I guess that'll be your on

121the right hand side of that slide you will see one of the many tools that schools have to be able to help monitor those students that are in need and so the one that you see now is our failure report and so it outlined the students grade point I'm sorry grades from first quarter to second quarter and then if they received an F they'll show up on this report and so it outlines whether or not the student increased or decreased and that's for by by each course and so again it's just another tool to help schools identify what are those students that we need to be looking at to make sure that we're providing that support and so they have this tool in addition to a couple other tools that they have to be able

122to utilize that and the goal is really to help streamline this process and again see it is not something that is separate it's something that we're doing ongoing we're constantly looking at data and making decisions based on data and so we really want to again make that make sense with what they're already doing on a regular basis and so that's one of the thing one of the tools that they have to be able to do that um I'm sorry and I'm sorry academic supports as well that so again we work closely with the department and based on some of the decision rules trees that they have they also have access to cheat sheets which outlines interventions and progress monitoring tools that they can use as well and those progress monitoring tools for kindergarten through fifth

123are pretty standard um and so there's consistency there as well in addition to that they also have access to graphs that they can also use to provide consistency as well and that's academic graphs and behavioral graphs as well yeah and and the reason that's so important is once again we're required to provide those interventions because of the gened intervention Rule and the reason we progress monitor those areas is because of our early warning system which is part of that state legislation that requires us to identify students that are at risk of graduation as early as kindergarten right we're already looking at that information and those risk indicators um and also that graphing and information is utilized for eligibility determination uh for special education services one of one of the tools specifically for ews that they

124have are the ews indicators for all schools and the students the number of indicators that they have and then in addition to that which have have we done parent contact which is that ips2 and then do we have an intervention plan in place and that's an ipst 4 and that's another tool that schools have as well all um so this is just like kind of our achievement so far and we're looking to improve all those Professional Resources that we've already done uh in the incom upcoming school year and Beyond uh so we've had that growth and parent engagement which I think we can always expand on and always improve because it is really essential to the problem solving process um and we are also looking to streamline some more of our Focus documents not necessarily

125to make it easier for teachers but we really want to make sure that the conversation is based on problem solving and student data right we can talk about forms a lot but it really what we want to engage in that problem solving process and talk about how students performing because we really learn from each other especially those school-based problem solving teams when teachers are collaborating I mean that's the most beautiful thing that we can do to to improve student achievement right there and we don't want the documentation of that to be a barrier for them doing that so and I must say yavon used to be a school psychologist and she actually joined us since September in transition and she's created all these documents to make everything such user friendly and put everything at the

126fingertips of teachers and school-based Personnel so thank you yvon and James you they've done a great job as you can see in slide one where the numbers increase so drastically from this time last year to this year with the interventions for um surveys and interventions two and four uh Dr Elie is not with us today so I'm gonna take her slide regarding PBIS um she was here uh last school board meeting recognizing some schools that had gold silver and bronze uh recognitions uh for those the PBIS stands for positive behavior intervention and supports it's a framework used in our schools to improve social emotional and academic outcomes for all students uh this approach focuses on creating maintaining and positive School environments by establishing a clear behavior of expectations teaching these expectations to students acknowledging appropriate

127behavior and using the data to make data decisions for Behavior interventions rather than focusing on just primary ing punishing negative behaviors the PBIS emphasizes on prevention and teaching reinforcements and positive behaviors so you can see here in this graph here that we have some of the key highlights you will see our elementary has or increased from 76 to 96 from the 23 to the 2425 school year our middle school has also improved uh from 63% to 70 or 67.5% uh from the 23 24 20 24 25 school year and then the high schools have also increased their Improvement um and that's the participation with the growth that PBIS is actually growing in all the schools at all levels so you guys are aware of that from 64 to just a hair over 64.5 for this

128year um more than doubled uh the percentage of schools with the effect of core PBIS um from the 67 to 73 you guys can see the collaboration with the education technology has been able to increase our database problem solving teams working with the mtss team and being able to assist and track these these schools and these tools um and also it's been a it's a great way for us to increase the model School awards that you guys saw last uh time that we were all together at the school board meeting when we were able to recognize I believe the seven schools who were the the gold the bronze and the silver recognition schools that met the uh State criteria to be a Florida PBIS school so this is the recognition that they were able to

129receive by the criteria um and this is the percentage of schools that we currently have participating in it that it's a firm believer they walk it they speak it on Camp campus and this is something that it's a culture at their school that they they they breed and Dr Elie does a good job of going around she's only one lady but she does a great job getting herself throughout all those schools and campuses uh when she's able to so that is our PBIS for guardrail 2 and I'm going to now bring up Captain Smith who is gonna go over to C for us afternoon superintendent Madam chair board members I'm captain Todd Smith the director of Safety and Security for Valia County Schools today we will be discussing the steps taken to enhance support around

130School Safety and Security we've been working closely with our stakeholders such as principles student services parents the community our students and the legislature to ensure success as you can see we've been very busy from managing significant fortify Florida tips to implementing house Bill 1473 to implementing a weapons detection K9 program we're working hard to ensure our students are safe as the rest of the country saw massive increases in threats Luchia County Schools saw massive decreases for our students we are consistently pushing out training from fortify Florida to safer zones see something say something bicycle safety to resiliency campaigns for our students for our staff we've trained our school resource deputies and school resource officers on mental preparedness how to handle the unexpected how to address Ada issues Crisis Intervention and most importantly deescalation at the

131school-based level we train on Safety and Security best practices making proper notifications and ensuring documentation is correct through the integration of systems like CICS the crime Center the security operations center fusus Gaggle fortify floor fla random screenings Partnerships with mental health secure campuses threat management drilling safe zones integrated dispatching live 911 Vape detectors stop the bleed kits highquality training safety walks visitor management a new safety manual a weapons detection K9 program and high quality mapping we have built a shield of protection around our students and staff early in February I met with the assault committee a committee of students who provide us with a student-based perspective from the meeting the students made it clear how much they notice and appreciate the improvements in Safety and Security that we have made on our campuses successful audits

132by the office of safe schools and the auditor General's office supported by a new Safety and Security team filled with high performance employees has resulted in success with clear procedures a strong vision of the future and high drive for Success we have a team to be proud of we are succeeding pushing forward and always looking to improve um I have a question for Captain you shared this just yesterday with us at cabinet there's a passing score for the state for the other for districts in the State of Florida for these audits what is it and where are we here in VCS my understanding is the average around the state is about 50% and we are at 90 Ando thank you know that when you have um 67 schools there is a lot of uh interactions

133that's taking place a lot of variables at play but this team I mean I you know the Sheriff's Office all of our municipalities along with our team I will tell you they they are doing their very best to stay on top of 62,000 students so thank you have no minutes left thank you thank you Mr Cash all right now moving on to um 2D which is our coordinator um Jessica McIntyre for our mental health youth mental health she's goingon to go through her slides very quickly and then we have one more presentation after that we're a big guard rail all right good afternoon um as Mike said I'm I am Jessica McIntyre I'm the coordinator of mental health and I'm here to talk about strategy D to provide all staff with education about science of

134mental health concerns and how to support students through those early intervention strategies so this could be Behavioral Health um substance use different stressors crisis situations anything that our students and staff are experiencing um so what the Department of Education has done is they have required that all school districts have youth awareness training for all staff um they have determined that we use youth Mental Health First Aid to demonstrate that students support and commitment and education so to date um there's actually a different number here I calculated before we came in but 81.3 6% of the entire district has received that training in youth Mental Health First Aid there was a memo that came out from the commissioner annually certifying that at least 80% of all staff need to be trained so at this point we

135have hit this and we still have 17 more trainings um I'm sorry 21 more trainings to go um not including what we are going to schedule for valua learns so um as as a whole too for the required job codes at this point that came out with the memo we are at 86.4 7% so we are going to be able to certify that we have met that for the Department of Education and are very happy with that we also have a few large groups groups in planning so this Friday we are actually going to be training transportation that is a large one um we are planning on doing custodians over the summer um we are working with Greg Schwarz for Ed and schoolway Cafe we've been in touch with them to have the start of

136the coming school year to be able to get them trained so we know that early identification education intervention are all important for the continued growth and need for services and supports Within our schools so we beyond the youth Mental Health First Aid want to be able to expand the educational opportunities that we provide to our staff so we do want to continue to train and recognize those challenges um through of course um youth Mental Health First Aid um and then also educate on work life balance Stress Management self-care techniques which we've already started doing and this will come with those professional development opportunities throughout the course of the years um valua learns we did one this last summer on supporting staff mental health and self-care um I worked with Futures on a resiliency webinar on

137partnering with parents in the schools and we're working on planning for trauma informed care um support for students inside the classroom um we are also continuing to work together with our employee assistance program and our Wellness team um partnering with other service um agencies um to have that collaboration with additional Partnerships our community agencies to provide those service services and also educational opportunities um and then also the expansion with Gaggle for crisis and tele theapy services that will complement our EAP which will provide additional services and supports for our staff um as well as assisting staff in helping our students with our student support monitoring and management plans and last but not least I'm going to ask three gentlemen who are the backbone of our student services to come up here with me Mr Pender

138Nate Anderson and Nick Prince they are going to go over school culture some discipline stuff and some things that we have going on um and I'm going to get out of their way and just turn it over to them you're limited on time gentlemen you're you're actually okay okay all right you're fine okay with the time limit [Laughter] um all right uh good afternoon board Craig Pender and then like I said Mr Anderson and Mr Prince here uh we're just gonna share a little bit about guardwell 2 providing conditions that enhance student learning uh priority priority strategy e Provide support to school-based teams to provide student behavior and culture on school campuses and we do a lot of freelancing so this is just a guide for us but um this year we we well yeah

139this year we started a new VAP program because we heard from the school board that um we wanted to be more educational towards kids who were vaping and not so much as punitive so we started the vaping program which essentially is if you get in trouble with a vape you now get pass you also get the opportunity to take a one-time Vape course through canvas um and then unfortunally if you get caught a second time you do get a 45 day alt Ted suspension but we have seen that yes it is reducing the out of school suspensions more kids are in um in school suspension I think the parents are very appreciative of it just so you know we do have some parents who immediately say no just give my kids 45 days because I

140don't think they'll do the class but um but parents are happy that we are doing something other than just suspending their kids um so we'll you know at the end of the year see what kind of effect that has um the you know educational courses replaces disciplinary action the team health risk promotes healthy choices Rehabilitation and growth rather than exclusion and like I said in school suspensions are up U but that is on purpose so when you see that data it is what it is um as you see as this dat we've had foreign seven kids that are in The Vape class all right so uh we are working earnestly into looking into an elementary version next year because unfortunately we do have elementary kids who are vaping um they have weed and everything else

141but like currently the program we have is for for secondary but we do have one in mind for the fall see sometimes you need help there we go this is the big stuff where we'll kind of like take turns and we are shifting from a reactive proactive discipline creating supportive environment where behaviors are managed before escalation basically what that is saying is we're trying to be proactive we have we consider ourselves kind of the discipline team we sometimes say or I sometimes say it's CNN if you catch on to that part but um we are going out based on he got it thank you we're we're going out trying to solve some of the issues some of the hot bed spots looking at at at uh data know there's a lot of stuff to report

142back to Mr malli uh when things are going a little ride schools that the suspensions are going up or referrals are going up or weird things we go out uh we consider ourselves the original boots on the ground because everybody's used that today but um Mr Anderson is is our big um what I call procedures guy so I'm G kind of let him kind of share a little about about what that means when we go out and our culture walks and all that other good stuff that way I don't talk so much it's all right you can have the stage just want to say hello to everybody I know our time is limited so I jump right into it what one of the things that that we are we pride ourselves on is even though

143we are administrators uh we we remind ourselves that we're still Educators so we like to make sure that our teachers are protected our students are protected so we are trying to take a more proactive uh stance uh because we we teach them about different principles and practices but it's our job we go out to the schools and we actually show them how to do things we we don't just give them the information a lot of times we'll go out and we'll show them how to successfully run a lunch how to successfully do uh class transition so we we're doing the handsone approach to make sure that they got it we don't want to assume they have it we want to make sure they have it so some of the things we've been doing is we'll

144go and we'll meet with the principles uh or their their entire staff we will review what's going going on on their campuses and we'll sit down and we'll give them some feedback on some best practices some of those best practices aren't just coming from us they're coming from other campuses where we're seeing successful things take place uh so we will uh and we try to do our best to share things another thing that we're doing and and uh we're proud of is we are uh asking schools to now step up their bullying practice to once a month where once a month every school is doing some type of bullying initiative to make sure that they are teaching uh our students and our Scholars uh how to be better citizens on the campus so that's another

145thing that we're doing we also do what we call a culture walk culture walk is usually a quick snapshot of what we see on campuses and we we fill those uh forms out and we leave them for the schools to give them feedback and if they're having trouble with things we'll come back and we'll show them how to do things also we have schools that have taken that feedback made Corrections and invited us back to come and see the changes that they've made uh so we're very proud of that and and we are we are truly the boots on the ground we want to make sure our schools are safe want to make sure our uh um uh staff is safe uh only thing that we are pressing for and we're getting more of that

146is opportunity to get in front of Administrators and principles um some of the directors executive directors they're making room for us to do that so we appreciate and just to add to that because uh he called us kind of the backbone I guess as the discipline side we understand that no school you know we're talking about the test scores we're talking about all this other stuff none of that can exist in chaos if there's no order if there's no plan so a lot of things we've been sharing with the schools is you got to have a plan um we have been meeting with Transportation as well hearing their concerns trying to bridge all of that we actually go out with the uh K9 to do the metal detective screenings whenever we're out there doing that

147we're still doing our other roles observing what's going on figuring out how we can make um something better uh we're becoming very integrated with uh I guess with tll um going out a lot dealing with some of the issues because at the root of a lot of things that we're having at the school is still the system of structures or what you know that are in place but maybe maybe not being done as well as they should so we kind of go in and look at that and and try to leave feedback so it's a big thing I I want to make sure that Mr Prince gets to say something about the restorative practices because he he goes out a lot lot with the elementary kids to the point he now has me mentoring a

148young third grader at a school um I'm doing my thing too I I'll be really quick thank you for having me uh letting me have this opportunity I believe that building positive relationships are the backbone uh of changing both academic and discipline Behavior so uh my role is really going out building relationships showing uh demonstrate how you build this relationship showing that if you buil these positive relationships uh you're going to start changing behaviors uh we use restorative practices uh there's a shift from going from um punishment to consequence with accountability all right and it starts with building positive relationships so I go to a lot of the schools do small groups or do check-ins or oneone um to some of the more difficult places just to start building that relationship with those students to

149to talk to them how can we change the behavior what you need from us but at the end of the day we have to have order there has to be consequences okay right I think that's it anybody else want to add no okay questions I guess thank you thank you got get off the stage yes yes yeah we don't want to take every time sorry and this is just a couple slides of just ongoing initiatives that everybody has talked about uh with the Vape program uh dare that we have we have um the S success always uh Safety First initiative with the four different uh counties fla Flagler putam St John's and us with uh RJ Lara and uh Jessica forgot to mention too we are piloting something with Gaggle that's upcoming with our ssmp

150students which is so I don't get it wrong it's our student support management plans that we are going to be the first to actually pilot with gagle I think throughout the nation with them is that they're going to provide uh crisis plans for our medium and high level students um that they're coming to us to do and we are going to be like their model showcase um to reach out to those kids for teleah health therapy in whatever language that their families needs they're going to be like the extra backbone to support um kind of a ReachOut therapy support system as well um so it's going to be kind of cool and neat with two times a month that they're going to be offering the support to those families and then they also will give

151us the reports as well of what they are talking about in the the feedback that they're giving with those students as well so we've got some good things planned with gagle and we're looking to phase that out to also our faculty and also our families as well so can you share a little bit how with the new system that we're looking at for how we will be doing that checkin with students also which is the piece that we're going to be enhancing with the checkin with the check-in piece yes so when with the check-in piece when we get to there with with what it's going to do is so when students are getting it's going to notify the students that we're notified before students on campus so like when students come to campus and a

152student's having a bad day or this student has had a threat assessment done or something along those lines and they're a medium or highlevel threat and we we have coded them in our system gagle is on the radar and something is taking place with them and gagle has been checking in and monitoring their progress Gaggle will then alert us to let us know prior to them getting on campus if there's anything up and then what we want to do is also have the students be able to fill out some sort of a how are they feeling how are they doing that day before the school day even starts so we can proactively get involved before the day starts instead of having something happen during the school day and then let something trigger trigger trigger and

153then for us to be more proactive as a school-based level so we have those things that we're playing with with them to try to build it for the upcoming school year so that we can push that out to our medial medium and high level students so they would have to actually complete that before they step on campus and we would then be able to interact with that student or provide whatever additional support that that student needs for crisis if it is you know determining that the student needs it so questions any questions from guard rail three two two we're moving be yeah okay thank you Mr malli and team and here comes the Tria how are we doing with time um Mr Cash great okay we're we're right where we need to be pretty close

154all right all right here we go with guard rail number three which you can see is an amalgam of three different divisions we Pro provide the technical operational and financial support behind the scenes to make sure our Educators can be successful and we have three strategies there a b and c starting with its then miss core will talk about operations and then Mr P about Finance so we begin with its uh as you recall from last fall its finished the VCS technology plan which is really a plan underneath the umbrella of the Strategic plan so it goes right along uh on a timeline in alignment with the Strategic plan so it's about two and a half years from now when it will be completed so in the half year that we've had in that plan

155uh we have completed four in its of the 58 tactics under 14 objectives so what I'm going to show you is only the objectives and tactics that have been completed so under objective number one we've re redesigned the its website we've done a lot of cross training and uh mentorship to improve our staff skills we've updated all of our job descriptions across the entire division uh to make them more compatible with the actual expectations of the jobs and that has increased by the way our retention and recruiting efforts objective two technical outfitting for new construction we um we just finished with of course operations t t and tamoka and we are now technical outfitting Orange um city and Stark and of course there's more on the radar forms management it sounds like a pretty boring

156topic I know but forms are really important they are what Drive the system IC operations of the district so we needed to get a handle on our forms uh we have AR we've created a centralized digital archive we've vetted the forms to a particular format and we've gotten rid of the old ones objective for network and data center modernization uh We've improved the way we leverage e-rate funding uh so we don't do that just for our internet services we also do that for our construction outfitting now objective five telecommunications and hotspots uh we need to modernize our phone systems so we're doing we we have uh gotten close to doing that by first doing the cell phones next will be the actual handset phones or what we call VoIP systems we've moved from a hotspot

157system that used to be more of a pandemic hotspot system where you get hotpots kind of all the time because you're doing a lot of remote learning to more of a hotspot system where only students who actually have a an issue at home where they don't have reliable bandwidth get a Hotpot objective six cyber security defensive defenses we've improved our cyber security defenses in many ways as you recently have heard with our uh audits logistical efficiency uh We've obtained some grant funding so that we have this is a big one this is probably the biggest one for me uh We've made it so that we can purchase our devices six months earlier than we ever have in the past that is enabling us to deploy student devices over the summertime instead of during school first

158semester when it's really not a good time to be messing with the schools um and that also means that we now can break the school into five or the district into five different cohorts of schools to deploy de devices so that's what objective eight is that replacement cycle it will take us actually years to get all of those into the five groups but we have started doing that the first group got done last semester the next group is about to be done this summer objective nine software systems functional we've improved the processes uh by selecting and now implementing an Erp system and it is already starting to retire other systems uh go live for payroll in HR is July 1 that's the end of phase one and then we will be moving into phase two

159which will go live April of next school year and then we will have a fully implemented new Erp system which we've been trying to do for many years objective 13 comprehensive print shop services The Print Shop is no longer called The Copy Center because it doesn't just make copies it is a comprehensive print shop that does all sorts of things banners promotional items t-shirts engraving you name it and it sells to not only the district but also the outside community and it is a self-funded mechanism um not part of the actual its budget finally last one objective 14 standards and processes we have about a 100 standard operating procedures that we need to write and we've only written probably about 20% of those right now 20 of them uh because it takes a while it's

160these are very complicated technical documents but you have to do that to professionalize an its division you can't just be on a folklore system of how things are done it's got to be documented so now I'll move to the team and Miss core thank you Dr I appreciate that so priority strategy within this guard rail is to increase operational efficiencies across all the Departments with the Operations Division as you know that includes um many many of the behind the scenes work that we do um so first we have uh our design and construction and business planning and I have our director Ron young here to discuss very high level items with you very high level good afternoon chair board members Dr B to talk about guard rail 3 and improving operational efficiency for the office

161of design and construction uh we have decreased through planning uh we have decreased Capital spending by over 2.7 million on 29 change orders over 51 projects um reduce change orders national standards about 10% I've heard that when we first started this it was we were running around 7% I'm not sure of that number but our first report a couple of years ago we had reduced that number to 1.2% and I'm happy to report today that through the efforts of Tom Brown Tracy and Tiffany and that whole crew that they have reduced that now to 0.19% that's unbelievable we've opened two elementary schools in August of 24 and we're working on two Replacements right now and that is Stark in Orange City and in business planning we have achieved Optimum level of service in 21 of

16225 schools with attendance boundary changes and we have increased collaboration with municipalities and planning agencies we have plan meetings planner meetings uh twice a year in May and November with all the municipalities uh that choose to attend and we attend municipality meetings and we also are attend a very long list of other County meetings okay the next division under priority strategy B is schoolway Cafe led by our director Heather deola good afternoon um scway Cafe is here to support schools um we all know that hungry students can't learn um so we think that providing a nutritious meal to every student is very important breakfast meal participation is one of our goals um and initiatives so breakfast participation from July to December of this year we were at 3.62% which is an increase of 86% and

163lunch participation we went to 6.45% through July to December and uh that was a 3.7% increase from the year prior July to December so to do this we are very intentional we continue to um have the Food Matters task force and then also get the foods out to the students to make sure that the students approve the Foods um and before we purchase the foods and then serve them and we design our menu around that as well and then we're intentional on redesigning and updating seven High School cafeterias this summer uh to help increase that meal participation and we're also um we've opened up additional points of sale in high school cafeterias to make the line shorter so we've open opened up eight breakfast High School lines as well as seven High School lines um

164to help reduce the weight for students thank you heather Dr Olsen will now join us to discuss Transportation good afternoon team um thanks for letting us speak on Transportation it's been mentioned a couple of times but we're definitely excited with the progress that we've made since since the vote for the raise uh two months ago so it's been mentioned that we've added over 30 drivers in that short period of time so that's definitely going to increase our our goals for the Strategic plan which is to incre improve our ontime arrival um so I do want to caution everybody though we've gotten when we come back from spring break we will have all of our routes filled we need to create more routes and so we've gotten we this was our first goal was to get

165up to our 175 pre-o we were we had about 202 routes on the road and so where you see that impact in our on-time arrival it particularly shows up with our high school and our middle school routes um when you look at the am on time arrival we want to get that number into the mid 90s so if we can add more routes we'll be able to not only reduce the amount of students on each route and relieve the overcrowding but it'll help with our ontime arrival too so we still still have a ways to go we want to continue to push um but we're definitely excited with the progress and then to your to to your point earlier that you may miss Haynes we have five uh eight passenger Toyota Sienna on order right

166now and they'll be coming in in the next few weeks we've got one on inventory already so that'll outfit all six of our areas with one of those Toyota siennas and that's for emergency transportation so we have had those conversations and we'll look to explore those opportunities too particularly with our out of pocket students thank you Dr Olen and for our maintenance division that keeps us running and HVAC this is your gentleman right here Mr Rod Smith it's cool right now right uh good evening everyone uh maintenance and operation our priority this year was to uh reduce the number of days our work orders are being open uh so we divided our work orders up into three sections uh safety cited work orders proactive work orders and then also reactive work orders so it's not

167good enough just to close out a work order but previously the amount of days they were open were 17 days so our goal was to get those work orders closed um within 10 days uh so right now our safety sighted work orders are open on average of 10 days proactive 10 days and reactive nine days um the way we was able to attain these goals in the first semester was uh we have meetings we have coordinators meetings every Monday uh we discuss strategies we uh prioritize our work orders we prioritize our safety uh work orders so obviously something that's a a tripping Hazard on the sidewalk is obviously going to take presidents over were um spoil carpet you know staying carpets U we also created a um project team which assist our four hubs uh

168with taking care of Safety cided Orders we also have our maintenance work orders our maintenance workers uh that walk with the safety inspectors on the um audit so that has also paid huge dividends for us um you see nextly um out of 18,000 93 work orders between July 1 and December 24th we closed out 16 , 696 um again that that's at our 10day average that's what we expect um obviously our work orders have multiple phases sometimes uh because it may take a painter it may take a carer it may take an electrician to close out one single work order those work orders are not considered complete until all three phases or four phases have been closed out um also Incorporated audits um our Hub supervisors weekly they have to randomly pick five work orders

169and just go through the phases that I just mentioned to make sure that the guys didn't just close them out without actually doing the work um we did create an internship program with the CT student um at Delan High um this was an experiment uh we had some Growing Pains we learned a lot uh we did it for two months um we talked with uh Miss Tiffany mccan and so moving forward we're going to make some slight adjustments but it was a very good um internship it was a paid internship and we look we look forward um to getting more students in and then lastly we just uh saved the district by centralizing our castil warehouse uh we received the district over $2,000 by $200,000 I'm sorry uh by pre-ordering certain items such as trash

170bag soap toilet paper paper towel dispensers those items we will store in our Delan warehouse thank you Mr Smith and then joining us today are other members of our maintenance team some of our coordinators and our operations team and some of our assistant directors so I want to thank everybody for being here um everything we do also we talk about intentionality a lot and we we believe our role is We Exist because we have 60s something thousand students and 8,000 faculty and staff walking through every one of our facilities every single day and that's why we exist to support those are our customers um and we do things with intentionality and so the savings I'm so proud about a lot of the savings from the um Construction department but the custodial Warehouse they got heads

171up that the price was going to increase on several items significantly in one case almost double so because we have the warehouse um opportunity because they're so intentional about what they do they pre-ordered a ton of stock and we can store it and save a lot of money by instead of waiting for the price to go up and at some point we will have to pay that increased rate because at some point we will run out um but those are the types of things that this team has been empowered to do and I'm I'm extremely proud proud of them uh now we have the last part of our um guard rail is Mr C and the fin side good afternoon P superintendent everything you heard here so far it has to do with money the

172allocation resources that we receive from the state but then how do we allocate our resources to make sure that we're effectively using them and the main driver here is really the success of our students it's it's the it's the mental health of our students it's the safety of our students it's the meeting their instructional needs so how do we get there and what what what have we done there's many changes that we put in place as you as you heard we're kind of I'm I'm chug in finance I've been chugging along I I inherited A system that um was a little bit broken so we did some workarounds but I'm going to be excited when we get um a full functioning ER Erp in place that will assist us a little bit in streamlining our

173systems a little bit further the district also underw several operational audits this year as I shared with you and and passed along um for example we had RSM our internal Auditors issued a pecard audit student discipline audit we also had the AG operational audit that was done we had the AG Financial audit that was done that I just want to report that was a clean audit too with no audit opinions on that one the AG also did a federal audit on a Child Nutrition cluster James Moore did a school's internal accounts Financial audit um and they reviewed internal controls doe also does um their review of safe schools so so there's a lot of transparency that the district undergoes and I just wanted to share that what we want to do is when we go

174out and looking look for a grant we want to make sure that that Grant is going to meet our vision here in fuia we just don't want to go out and apply for money knowing that we would never really we would never want to implement that type of program that the grant calls for so we want to be selective in making sure that those grants that we go out for um U meet our vision here and what we know is going to be effective in moving um our students forward here also the um enhancing Administration administrative processes um again this goes back to streamlining processes enhancing I don't like and and the words that or the phrase I should say is like well this is how we've always done it um I'm always it's about

175change and it's about how we effectively look at our processes and can we make them stronger so that's what that's what this one's about and then the procurement Department um it's about the rebranding um I when I came on board here there was a change where procurement was under operations rolled up under Finance so there was some some challenges there we the director we had replaced a director there she the other one retired and we hired a new one same with our finance director she had retired so we brought on a new one and also our director of budget she went on to bigger and better things and then we brought on a new director budget but what does that mean that means is that now there's an opportunity to do things and look at

176our process from fresh fresh eyes and that's what we've done so um really that's all I have here for my part if there's any questions or any questions from this guard rail at Mr cologne has a question Mr col actually actually it was a question for Mike so I can wait until the end if not I can always email them okay oh sorry thank you okay we'll wait till the end then any other questions for this group for guard rail three thank you thank you very much we're moving on to guard ril four last yes and I think it's very short yes hello board just me so that means it probably be a little bit shorter it's just me for those at home who don't know who I am my name is Sarah Lux I'm

177the public information officer and I manage guard whale 4 and what's great about guard whale 4 is it's all about who we're talking to and who we're educating to and that can be to what we call the whole community so that could business partners it could be students families it could be teachers internal staff it's a whole broad variety of different kinds of people that we actively try to communicate clearly quickly and with as much information as possible too that being said go ahead and Skip right along here so you guys can get out uh so the first part of our guardrail strategy a is going to be building beneficial and engaging Partnerships with a broad community and what I want to showcase here is how great of a job we've done at growing our

178mentors our volunteers and our business partners so right now um the numbers on the right hand column are to date you can see that we're poised to either meet or surpass previous years so that's really exciting um the number I love to see down at the bottom is the volunteer hours so we're already at 7,088 active volunteers for this school year and out of from those 7,088 there are 42,8 58 hours logged and I think that's pretty incredible so uh Denise who is sitting behind me Denise riro is in charge of doing all of this and she's done a wonderful job we've been able to up these numbers by really coordinating with schools on how we're promoting and educating others about these uh about these opportunities that being said uh this year we've also had

179a lot of first so we've started creating a lot more whole Community engaging events and we're doing this specifically to make sure that everybody can come out to us and engage with us where they may be and so uh one of the ones that we've planned for this year is the state of our schools address that I know you were all at thank you for being there it was a really exciting event to have all of our business partners come all of our big stakeholders come into one place and hear about the successes of our schools and of our students uh the CTE bus tours were another really great thing uh they happened when I first came on so and I know that miss brazma and miss goodwitch you guys weren't hear yet but they

180were very fun we took them around to all kinds of different schools so that they could see different CTE programs our business partners it was a lot of fun the CTE Workforce Expo also allowed uh our students and different business partners to come together and talk about opportunities in the CTE space and then we also had the annual Great American Teach in which allowed people from our community successful entrepreneurs business owners people in charge of organizations and the like to come in and speak directly to our students it was really fun so we're looking to do not just these and continuing these every year but additional events after that as well all right that being said so the kind of events that we're doing you'll see here that we have um all kinds of events

181moving forward we have 114 engagement initiatives and what I want to bring your attention to is that's going to be initiatives that engage multiple pieces of the community not just one so it may be a school event where there's different kinds of stakeholders showing up to the same school or it may be an outside event um like a Workforce Expo for instance we've had um more than 65 School visits with our stakeholders we've had uh students at events uh 69 times and we've had events with employees 105 times all right so that being said we went ahead and we surveyed our community now our community tells us all kinds of things and we like to uh to reassess it at least once a year we do a survey in the fall we had 200 um

182sorry 2533 responses in our fall survey and what you guys need to know is that the community in terms of believing that communication was effective it all pretty much remained steady across the board that being said the subcategories into the different kinds I'm on CICS I apologize the subcategories into the different kinds of communication all increased so while overall communication stayed fairly even all the subcategories increased for instance um so the percentage of uh uh families who believed that communication between VCS and families uh within the community has somewhat or effectively remain steady like I said uh but they do appreciate the way that we're communicating to them so we do have um text messages being the primary preferred form of communication and I know that may be shocking to some people I think the

183more shocking number is that only 2% of families preferred to get their information on social media and I think that's really good information for us to have uh families predominantly chose phone calls emails and text messages and I think that's interesting so that's something we're Incorporated more of we asked if they thought we communicated effectively during a crisis and it from 69% in 20123 it moved up to 77% of families agreed strongly agreed or agreed that we had were effective in communicating during a crisis so that's a big increase for us we're excited about that 77 strongly or agreed that we improve that we communicate well on a crisis that being said we also asked if they thought that we did a good job informing them about District events and offer and that number of

184families who either agreed or strongly agreed again increased from 67% to 72% we asked them if they thought we communicated well on social media with highlights and information and again families agreed or strongly agreed um it Rose from 57% in 2023 to 60% in 2024 to kind of look over the external the family survey uh parents generally they're content with Communications but they do sometimes feel overwhelmed in the comment section of our communication survey we got a lot of feedback that they felt a little bit overwhelmed especially if they had multiple students in school so they were getting double the emails um they also stated that they may be a little bit uh overwhelmed by attendance alots and we are working with Mike mcalli to make sure that those attendance numbers go up and then

185they will get less attendance alerts parents generally prer text messages over phone calls and social media updates we also asked our employees hey do you like the way that we're communicating as well right and so uh percentage of Staff who believed communication between VCS and employees was somewhat or very effective increased from 65% to 77% it's a big increase we're very excited about that we did get 1,700 staff responses so that's a pretty good sizable chunk um we also asked them do you think we communicate information quickly to you the employees who agreed or strongly agre agreed increase from 63 to 73% double digit increase we asked them if they thought we AG uh communicated clearly with employees and the number of Staff who agreed or strongly agre agreed increase from 57 to 69% and

186we asked them if we communicated accurately to our employees and the staff who agreed or strongly agreed increased from 56 to 69% so a lot of really big increases across the board overall in the comment section of our survey we saw that employees appreciated clear and timely communication but other would like to hear information sooner and a lot of that falls back on that they would like to make sure that they hear before the rest of our community does family does they want to make sure internal staff holders are the ones hearing it uh they also want to make sure that we communicate more often and more clearly really break down policy changes policy changes are difficult sometimes for them to grasp and so we want to make sure that they can fully understand policies

187that you guys vote on every single uh board meeting right and so we're going to break those down to make those easier to understand to our internal stakeholders other than that I'm good do you guys have any questions I was nice and fast right are there any questions okay then at this time Mr clone um we can bring Mr mcalli back up if you'd like to ask I'm good I'm good I'll follow up with him offline thank you okay all right so no questions of anyone all right then um we actually finished it early we did [Applause] yes so with no further questions at this time it is 37 p.m. we are adjourned from the school board workshop and we'll be back in here at 4:30 for the Schoolboard meeting