December 10, 2024, Governing Board Meeting

001good e hello hello okay mues we're gonna go ahead and get started all right so we're going to start get started with our budget hearing for R revision number two of the 2425 maintenance and operations in District additional assistant budgets and Mr Man I will go ahead and turn it to you thank you Madame President members of the board um you this is kind of routine but there's some interesting twists and turns and I'm speaking slowly to give Miss Shapiro a second here to get her presentation up and running and with that I will turn it over to Miss Shapiro to walk us budget revision thank you um Madame President governing board member superintendent man I am uh presenting tonight the fiscal year 20242 revised budget number two um we've discussed this a couple of

002times in our uh budget conver ations that in October the Arizona Department of Education does notify us if we are in a situation that requires a December budget revision this is in accordance with ars1 15- 905e we did receive a letter from the Arizona Department of Education stating that our District budget was exceeding the limit by $494,000 and um approximately and that a revision was required so some of the factors that do um require us to do a budget revision typically in a budget year is that we don't necessarily know our final budget balance carry forward when we bring our initial adopted uh proposed and adopted budget um this year with our revision number one we did make that um update to our numbers also another area that can impact the um and require a

003budget revision is that our final year end calculation of our student data isn't necessarily completed uh when it comes time to gather data in October um which is what they review in order to determine if we need a budget revision this year in October we did have uh some minor student data and our free and reduced price lunch data was not available in our um student data information due to a couple of reasons um our specifically our sped preschool data there were some complications in getting that uploaded to the Arizona Department of Ed we work with a student management system that system has to collaborate and talk to the Arizona Department of Ed system and sometimes we will have some issues with that our it department and our vendor worked diligently to ensure that that

004student data was updated in November fortunately it was not in time for the October review the other um piece that really impacted the budget was that ad revised the rules uh for submitting the free and reduced price lunch data student data uh because of that it didn't give our vendor time to make updates on their end to ensure that that data would upload properly um they have been working with us and again uh the problem has been resolved that was resolved in December and those counts are now showing up in our budget numbers again because they were not in our numbers in October it has required a budget revision um as per Arizona statute so those were the reasons for our December Revision in May when we bring a budget revision back to the board

005that's when those numbers will be updated and our final budget numbers uh will be corrected that's all I have and before I turn it over to any board members for comments or questions Miss wattis do we have any public comments okay perfect board members do we have any questions or additional comments all right um I was just gonna say thank you for everything and explaining all those adjustments and this is so small but under comments on your first page it says steamed on YouTube instead of streamed oh but I will correct thank you all right awesome thank you and that will since we have no questions or comments that will conclude our budget hearing portion of today's meeting and we could go ahead and get started where our regular board meeting the crane school district

006understands that our community of schools is located on the ancestral land of the oam jid and Akim oam people who descended from Hohokam and have inhabited these lands since time in Memorial the oam whose name translates literally to people are a vibrant culture and communi spanning countless of generations into the past continuing to thrive in the present and carrying a powerful Legacy for Generations into the future with this acknowledgement the Kon School District formally recognizes that the traditional care and keeping of these lands by indigenous people is an aspirational model of community stewardship that we are committed to honor with practices policy and human relations next agenda item 1 C is a rooll call we have everybody here Mr Man Miss Gibson McLean Miss SS myself miss m Jeffrey I shouldn't have said Mr Man

007no no you forgot Pledge of Allegiance oh my bad um Mr dupen or Dr dupen can you please lead us in the pledge thank you Miss wates I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to theic na indivisible thank you that brings us to our roll call Miss Gibson mle Miss SS myself Miss Mev and Miss MC cheffrey we want to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting and remind the audience of the request to address board cards that must be completed submitted to the board secretary if you wish to speak to an agenda item board policy provides for two cards White cards to be submitted in order to speak to a specific agenda item and blue cards to be submitted in order to speak during public comments due to the open

008meeting law board members are not allowed to address items that are not on the agenda white and blue cards can be um found on the left side by the coffee pot all right I move the governing board approve the agenda as presented second all those in favor I I also since we just did our adoption or we just had our budget hearing I move the governing board adopt the Revis number two total aggregate School District per a RS 15- 905 and specifically 15- 905 E1 for fiscal year 2425 second all those in favor I awesome thank you that brings us to 3A um we're going to do a special recognition of our outgoing governing board members do we have any um public comments for the specific agenda item okay um the administration and governing board

009would like to with great sincerity recognize the following outgoing governing board members for the service that they have given to the children and community of the CR Elementary School District we have Amy Miss MC cheffrey January 1st of 2015 through December 31st of 2024 that is 10 years of service Miss lindsy McCaleb January 1st 2021 through December 31st 2024 four years of service it has been a great honor working with both of you um I ran a slate the first time I ran with Miss MB and Miss SS it's been an amazing four years even though through our discussions you know differ since alignments and it's beautiful that for the past year we've been able to get on board and making sure that we're always putting our students first Miss MC cheffrey I want to

010thank you for every single time that when it was hard for some of us to say the things that maybe we didn't really want to see you have always brought an amazing perspective and always push for what's best for the district and for that I can never thank you enough um I would like to give this time to miss MC Jeffrey or Miss MB and any other board members if they have any comments or if you have any last words to say because it is our last meeting of the year I I'm sure we'll be seeing you guys around M Miss MB did you want us to talk first and then you guys yeah yeah that's fine I'll go because you might have more than me um I I can't believe I've been here for

011two years already I was just thinking oh wow um but it feels like I just got here but probably that's because the work has been I wouldn't say easy but good and so um kind of just echoing everything Sophia has said um you both have such uh very strong perspectives in and rooted in kind of your backgrounds and why and your why always and I think that shows through and how you show up on the board every day um and um I think Lindsay you've been invaluable as Heather um in in making sure that um we have teacher voice on this board and and even if it isn't somebody currently working in the district but folks who really get it um and I think just again Amy obviously you slog through some years on on

012some boards with some interesting characters um and so I think that um you know it's hard to survive some of those situations and feel like you're you're speaking and um I hope you feel confident in leaving where we're at right now so thank you thank you Miss Gibson mle misss um Lindy um I I've always appreciated your insights um and I am so happy that we ran together and that we've become such great friends and um I just really value our our friendship um Amy thank you for all the time that um you've put um on the board I know we always didn't see eye to eye but I really feel that we always did have the best interest of the kids in our hearts even if we didn't agree on everything so thank you

013Mr Man or Dr dupin if anybody else wants to say anything before I turn it over give me a microphone in a couple of minutes happy to contribute um I'll start Miss MC cheffrey with you I just want to thank you for 10 years of service I think you have watched so many of us grow as school leaders you've contributed to our growth with your critical thought partnership your encouragement your great questions and you have been a tireless advocate for excellence in kraton school district and and we have we have worked through some stuff and we are grateful kraton is positioned well because of your leadership and the Legacy that you leave is vast and my hope for you is that as you take your final vow tonight that you can look back on these

01410 years of service and recognize the the wonderful contrib contributions that you have made to all of us to our students and that's going to go on for Generations thank you so much Lindsay we have worked together in so many different capacities during your time in the district I remember working close close I've observed you teach I've watched you try so many cool Innovative practices we worked in Design Studio together you helped us build the infrastructure that has become the curriculum and instructional resource tools that we have today and always creative always Innovative always ready to try new things um and always seeking to put children first and to help us grow as an organization so you too leave your legacy of leadership um on all of us who remain on the generations of or

015the kids who've been here and the generations of students that will uh come in the future through our doors so thank you for your kind-hearted leadership you're modeling both of you for your years of service and I just want to say especially now where it feels like the rule of law the role of policy the foundations of democracy are challenged every day you know local school boards this model of governance where local communities make decisions for themselves through their elected officials is is hard work and it's it's to me never been more important that we have excellence in board leadership to really show how how democracy can function for the betterment of a community and you've really embodied that so thank you both so very much for your service to to the kraton community m

016m cheffrey i I would love to give a list of all the amazing Partnerships you've helped us form over the years but I would miss them all so I'm GNA I'm just going to share one in particular because it came up today um we were talking about an opportunity we have to potentially have a new partner to bring more music into the district and one of the things in our conversation that U that Dr dupin brought up was well we already have a mod for this because of the partnership that we have with Phoenix boys choir that was one of the many connections that you've made for us um but that have had a pretty deep impact on opportunities for students within our district so you know beyond the Partnerships you've been a tireless advocate

017for the community for what's right um and I have appreciated the combination of not only your support but your willingness to challenge me to help me push harder and further um I think has been really really important over the years and so thank you very much for for all of that um I think you've really helped this District move forward in ways that we might not have had we not had your support here as a governing board member um Miss MB you you always say I have the story wrong I still believe you pushed me out of my chair and took over the spreadsheet from me back in the day um so it didn't actually push it was there was no violence involved but you know it's been a pleasure to work with you as

018a teacher in the district as somebody who was a member of our Capital team that helped us um not only with passing the bond um that we passed in 2016 but also with the bond that we just recently passed as well a lot of that work is kind of outgrowth from that earlier work there's a connection there between you and and Miss MC cheffrey who helped pass our prior bond to that and helped us get our first M override in a number of years and capital override and as a Community because of both of your hard work we've been able to maintain all of those funding sources for the district and as um funding in Arizona you know we're 51 out of 50 states We're Not Gonna not likely to get anywhere near the national

019average anytime soon and as much as we hate the local taxpayers having to help out you've helped create value for the local taxpayers to be confident in helping out um in addition to that I remember you were a member of our Teachers Association and while we are streaming this meeting today live from this boardroom there was a time when you were the one with a handheld webcam here to stream the meeting from the board so um so it's as a board member you've helped our thinking you've brought your Professional Knowledge to bear and it's been super helpful to me in my first year and a half as a superintendent to have someone with your depth of knowledge as a classroom teacher and your time as a principal to fall back on um for wisdom and

020guidance so thank you thank you Miss MB do you have any words to say I'm gonna try um my goal tonight was to not cry on the days um not making promises um as uh Miss Aris and Miss Creo stated we ran a slate together in a pandemic um so I decided in the February of 2020 to try and go for an appointment didn't get it and said I'm but I'm going to run and then you know the world fall apart so um what a journey with the two of you running and then um with Miss MC cheffrey um as we navigated 2020 and 2021 as a board um very challenging but very rewarding um in all that was accomplished it's been a privilege to serve on the board for the past four years um

021on top of my five six years um working in the district prior to that um and uh for those of you that were listening back in this past February when I announced I wasn't rerunning um I for the record while it was a hard decision to make I am glad because I already have two night classes next semester that would have been a conflict um but I have learned so much and uh you will not be getting rid of me I plan on finding ways to continue to stay involved in the community um through committees and whatnot and I'm super excited to welcome our new board members and watch all of the amazing work this is I watch a lot of board meetings and read a lot of news about school boards and uh part

022of why I ran in the first place was seeing some dysfunction on the board that and as a staff member and so to be leaving with what I feel is truly aligned cohesive um strength of coming together and working so closely with our amazing new superintendent not new anymore really but um I'm just really proud of all the work this board has done the cabinet all of our administrators all of our teachers all of our staff um just thank you all for doing everything you do for this community thank you Miss MC sheery yeah um thank you thanks for those kind words to everybody um you know this it's not a secret that this has been a frustrating position for me um but it's been rewarding too I'm really I feel like I am leaving

023um the board and the district in a better place today and we had a nice um conversation and executive session just about how I think this board is in a really great position with Mr Man um um leading the way as our superintendent um because I haven't seen the board so aligned really since I've been on the board so it's really refreshing and relieving um and I think that's going to continue with our new board members that are coming in um so it I you know I'm happy to be leaving the board in this position and I think we're making progress it it's not always as fast as we want it but I see progress and so um I'm really grateful for everyone coming on board with the sofg because I think that's going to

024get us where we want to be um and while still recognizing all of the challenges that live outside the goals in the guard rails um so you know it's been a privilege I I want to say um the kids at kraton um are you know as capable as smart the smartest kids that I have seen you know as my kids were growing up so they are capable of doing everything that every other kid in any other District are in so please have faith in them and you know give them Grace for when they're you know misbehaving or doing whatever they shouldn't be doing for whatever reason but I have 100% confidence that um we're going to see um some growth here um in the next year so I'm excited to hear about it so um

025please keep me posted on all that and thank you thank you very much yes certificate and oh yes I better still get eighth grade promotion dates because I still have forever my student forever my kid so still have a few more years was eighth grade can you guys get a certificate in a nice open it open it it's an engraved that way you can never forget about K thank you plus if anything through the pandemic you have to stay hydrated thank you guys so much for your service and I hope that this is not the last time you guys are engaged you guys invaluable and we want to see you guys thank you all right that moves us over to our next item which is 3B and I'm so excited about this we have three

026well two new whole new board members that will be joining us and incumbent Miss SS that got reelected to another four years so at this time we would like to take the opportunity to publicly swearing the newly elected governing board members for a term of office to be three four year terms for January 1st 2025 to December 31st 2028 after the S um swearing in I will take a 15minute recess if you guys want to take pictures with your families up here in the Das whatever you guys want to do congratulate each other we'll do that and then after the 15minute break we'll come back and continue with our agenda um Miss htis do we do this up here in the front and then I have each one o of office we also have a

027notary here we have um Maria heenez here so after they're sworn in they can go over to the back counter and she can um notorized their signature on the old office I do need this back because I need to send it to um the mer County and then um and then you know we'll get perfect and then um if we can have all three just come up here I'll meute you guys at the podium down here and we can start with Miss SS feel like it's been like a quiet Church service so far and so don't be alarmed you can make noise in this room so you want to clap for somebody or you're happy please share we're not yeah can you guys hear me yeah if you want to we like this so they

028can see all right you're just gonna repeat after me okay State of Arizona county of Maricopa I Heather SS I Heather SS do solemnly swear or affirm do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States that I will support the Constitution and the Constitution and laws of the State of Arizona and the Constitution and laws of the state of Arizona that I will bear true faith that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and allegiance to the same and defend them against all enemies and defend them against all enemies foreign and domestic foreign and domestic and that I will faithfully and impartially and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of the office discharge the duties of the office of governing board member of

029cranon Elementary School District number 14 of governing board member board member of Katon Elementary School according to the best of my abilities according to the best of my abilities so help me God so help me [Music] go all right Miss Nico Marquez all right I Marquez I marus do solemnly swear or affirm do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution and law of the State of Arizona and the Constitution and laws of the State of Arizona that I will bear true faith that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same and allegiance to the same and defend them against all enemies and defend them against all enemies foreign and domestic foreign and domestic

030and that I will faithfully and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and partially discharge the duties of the office the duties of the office of governing board member of governing board member of Kayon Elementary School District number 14 of kraton Elementary School District number 14 according to the best of my abilities according to the best of my abilities so help me God so help me God I Tristan H Jones I Tristan h Jones do solemnly swear or affirm do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution and laws of the State of Arizona and the Constitution and laws of Arizona that I will bear true faith and allegiance that I will bear true faith and

031allegiance to the same to the same and defend them against all enemies defend them against all enemies foreign and domestic foreign and domestic and that I will Faithfully and that I will faithfully and impartially and impartially discharge the duties duties of the office of governing board member discharge the duties of the governing board member of kraton Elementary School District number 14 of kraton elementary school district 14 according to the best of my abilities according to the best of my abilities so help me God so help me God yay we want to do a picture with the board number yeah we can have I don't sound so infused and I call for the 15 minute recess now e e e good we have like five minutes left and we can go get started in charge I

032know all right thank you so much we're going to go ahead and reconvene that brings us to item 3C which is governing board reports and we're going to go ahead and get started started with Miss mcrey well I don't I don't have anything more to say other than what I said before so thank you thank you Miss MB I was saying nothing other than um to all the staff I hope you survive the ne what do you have a week and a halfish eight days eight days all right um sorry I'm spoiled right now I'm not on a regular school year calendar this year it feels weird um but and truly take some time to relax and enjoy the holidays with your families and your friends thank you Miss MB Miss Gibson McLean um we

033just met for our advisory committee yesterday um and had a fun conversation and we're coming right back next Monday so where we get really putting the work in folks so again for your viewing pleasure on YouTube or come and join us in person if you want to hear about student conduct policies that we're revising And discussing um just excited for the work that we're continuing to do in that committee um and hopefully we'll grow that into other areas as well um yes eight days that's very exciting um I used to yeah just I used to recall what it felt like leading up to winter break and I can only commiserate and hope that everyone makes it in one piece and um trying to think of what else um um very pleased with our uh dismissal

034of the lawsuit that was brought against us um I know other people probably have more eloquent things to say but given that I'm from here you know you can't bring somebody up from Scottdale up in east Phoenix and try to beat us it ain't gonna happen so I'm very pleased with with with the results um and so I just think it's the right outcome and I know that there'll be an appeal I'm certain that there will be I'm I'm also certain that the the arguments that our um legal team made were strong and also I think that the precedent that it sets given if people aren't aware of the specifics of the statute in kind of kind of um enumerating a unique way to find standing in court that's not really seen in any other

035part of our um State statutes or Constitution or really recognized in common law of any state to just be able to have standing to anyone um I think that if we're continue to be successful on appeal it'll really um narrowly Define how how that statute is enforced in the future and only to our benefit because it will survive attacks like this which are baseless and unwarranted and continue to um let these programs Thrive as they should I'm I'm happy for our students I'm happy for our families I'm happy for our community and I'm most pleased that um we've stayed United as a board and as an administrative team in knowing that these programs are uh great for our communities and our kids and that um the right thing to do is to keep them going

036even if we're facing consequences one or two times or even if we see it again um we're still going to be ready to fight that and so um I'm just happy with the outcome and I appreciate everyone's kind of unwavering support of these programs and and them continuing within our district thank you SK some to clean Miss SS good evening um I just want to take a second to thank the community for um reelecting uh me into this position um I'm really happy to continue on with the work that we've been doing um I really enjoy seeing a different side of um education um so I've done a lot of different roles in education and this is something completely different so it kind of gives me a 360 view um and I I really am

037happy that we're continuing with the sofg framework um I really do truly believe in it and um think that it's that our kids are going to benefit from it um yeah eight days I'm totally counting I'm not going to lie like I want to countd down the hours because like I feel like everybody is really just needing this break so I'm really looking forward to this break um and I hope that the rest of the staff um has a great um holiday um during the two weeks so thank you thank you Miss SS um just for me I'm gonna double down on what Miss um Gibson McLean stated I am so happy that the Dual language um lawsuit was dismissed and I'm so thankful for our governing board members for standing strong at the end

038of the day we do represent the vision of the community and I know that dual language is a very much loved and wanted um parent choice you know using the same the terms that Mr horn likes to talk about um parent choice and I am so happy that that happened and that the governing board stayed steadfast I know of other districts that have ended their dual language programs in their districts because of whatever reasons if they were I don't know um but I'm just so thankful for our governing board members that said no this is what our community wants this is what's best for our students and we're going to hold steadfast and just bring it on so bring it um um also I was so happy and pleased to hear that um some of

039our administrators and coaches have gone through the sofg um training I know that it is very hard work but I will always double down on the student outcomes part that we are here to make sure that our students are thriving and that they have the tools that they deserve to succeed in any aspect of themselves it takes a huge mindset change um to jump on to something like that and it's much needed um it is the adults in the you know in the environment That Make It or Break It for these students or students are capable and we talk about parallel processing a lot and whatever our adults in the institution are parallel processing down to our students is imperative so I'm thankful to all those who are doing the work and to those who

040need a little bit more mindset work I I hope that you take that opportunity and and get on it so we have the best outcomes for our students and that is all for me we're going to go ahead and turn it to our superintendent report Mr Man thank you Madame President um one thing I I wanted to note um is that on our consent agenda tonight um should the board approve him um we have Mr Dominic Ruth who's being recommended for Director of Finance and he's not with us tonight because he's ill so I just wanted to I didn't want anyone to think he didn't show um and also wanted to if he happens to be watching wish him to get well quickly because we have a lot of work for him here in the

041district assuming the board approves his uh role here in the district so um in addition to that I have some really exciting news that I don't think we've had a chance to share in a board meeting yet but um some of these things feel like they were a thousand years ago even though it was probably two weeks but our manav Vista soccer team not only took first place in the district but they took first place in the idak tournament I so blue doubles I'm a Blue Devil well and and that idak tournament is um basically an interdistrict competition um among some of the districts uh that are part of the Phoenix Union grouping um and so it's typically pretty competitive so it's a a pretty big win for for armont of devils and um I

042didn't go back to check the record but I'm kind of wondering if that might be our first first place win in that tournament so it's pretty cool um and I know everyone shared a little bit about you know winter break is is upon us um I've been trying to share a message out with a lot of people and and I apologize but I'd like to share it here tonight you know the holidays are a truly delightful time but they're also a time that can be very much filled with stress right there's a lot of pressure on people it's the time where you know if there's family illness or tragedy it really kind of comes back to us again and so it can also be a very stressful time and so two things that I'm trying

043to be mindful of that I would like to share with others is that you know as that stress comes upon us it is very easy for us to transfer it to others we you know stress is very contagious and so my encouragement is for us to try to bring a sense of calm to each other rather than a sense of stress um and to also be very aware that for our students you know we get very excited about we've worked so hard all semester and now there's a period of break but for our students very often it is a time of stress because their safe place might be our schools and so the place where they get their meals from the place where they have safety and comfort is very very often within our buildings

044and within our doors so my thoughts go out to them I know we have support systems within the district um to help with support during the break but it's it's always a concern that I have and one of the things that I'd like to just kind of reiterate is that for our staff if you're feeling stress at this time of year we do have an employee assistance program that's there to help support you um and for staff students and Community we do have a partner in care Solace that can help with getting people connected with um support services that they may need and so I just kind of wanted to give a shout out for that as well because um you know very often when you're at that point of stress restrain it's difficult to

045start thinking about where you might get support So It's always important to be aware of it um before the need arises so with that I will stop lathering on and pass it back thank you Mr Man and I I apologize I forgot two important things one of them is I want to give a big shout out to our facilities team I know that um we're about to end the tree plantings of the grant that we got um LC I think um lck is the last school um Friday this Friday so I was able to attend one of them 32 trees were planted and it's just amazing because a lot of our schools are as you seen on previous agenda items square footage is being reduced and we're creating more outdoor spaces for our students and

046just the fact that our facilities team is on Deck you know there to um help out with the Arizona sustainability Alliance too big shout out to them because they were the ones that brought the tool schols the students got to plant these trees and it's just amazing seeing the kindergarteners first and second graders do that because by the time they hate 8th grade some of these trees are going to be matured and they were part of that so huge shout out to the facilities team and to the City of Phoenix for giving us this grant to be able to make our spaces more Greener and give their students shade during the summer because I always think it's crazy that when it snows like in Chicago people will stop school because they're snowing but we don't

047stop school because of the heat advisories that we have here so shade and trees are hugely important for that so thank you and thank you to all the principles for working because I know it takes a lot of you know especially with the solar panels that are going in there's a lot of stuff going on and still making the time to make sure that everybody arrives safely comes back and forth for this to happen I I was very pleased to see that and the best facilities yes we do have the best facilities team ever I I will double down on that um and also so um I was in one of our schools and I experienced what uh teachers calling out and having no subs looks like and I just want to double down on

048the administrators and teachers I saw teachers taking in extra kids from other classes I was there to volunteer for something else and then I was helping you know take all the kids everywhere to their designated areas and it really takes a village so it's beautiful to see how schools really take part in that community and we all just take care of each other so our students can be you know well so I really think those teachers that took all those extra kids on top of their class and trying to maintain everything it's it just I know it's really hard work I I could never do it that's why I'm not an educator but um it's it's beautiful to see it because I know that the majority of our people here are really for their students

049and not their self-interest so I just want to give a big shout out to that and yes hopefully you get the must rested that you guys need um coming on this winter break thank you all right that brings us to 4A which is our student outcomes Focus governance update we will be talking about progress monitoring report goal one and two and guard rail number one so in Fall of 2023 Kayon School District adopted a student outcomes Focus governance s SOG framework to ensure the focus on improving student outcomes the infographic that we have on the agenda that anybody can access provides information on sofg and describes the initial efforts that the district has taken to implement this framework the sofg framework is based on the idea that student outcomes don't change into adult behaviors change

050using sofg the cron School District board aims to create conditions that support improving student outcomes the sofg frame framework is structured around six research informed compet competencies vision and goals monitoring and accountability unity and Trust guardrails communication and coll collaboration and continuous Improvement the vision and goals describe the community's vision for the future direction of the school district they distinguish between inputs outputs and outcomes and pertain only to student outputs and outcomes and our goals are smart formatted meaning that they are specific measurable attainable result focused and time bound our guard rails our guard rails are based on Community Values and the Strategic plan vision and goals they identify specific actions that the district leaders may not use or allow in Pursuit Of The District student outcome goals and they do not undermine the district's

051ability to meet goals but often required leaders to accomplish them in a different way up here we have our goals and our guardrails for everybody to see and we also have them on the agenda and we're going to be doing our progress monitoring report um we're going to be going through our progress monitoring report and you may ask what is the progress monitoring it is a conversation between the school board and superintendent that provides boards the opportunity to evaluate the alignment between the community's vision goals towards student outcomes and the school's District's reality the current student performance or growth while student outcomes goals and current student performance may not match perfectly it only becomes problematic when there is no evidence of student growth and progress and even if students areen yet growing and making progress

052that's only catastrophic if the superintendent doesn't have sufficiently aggressive strategies in place for increasing growth and helping students make progress in addition to clarifying student and superintendent performance monitor when done well it confers several other organizational benefits it's lead by example it clarifies strategies it communicates expectations so we're all on the same page and it creates a formative evaluation with that being said we're going to go ahead and get started with our sofg goal one progress monitoring report and I will turn it over to either Mr Man or Dr dupin for this presentation I'm just gonna give a a quick frame and the Dr D but um I think just kind of marking our progress as a team um this is act well this is progress report two for goal one this actually marks the

053very first time that we not only have sort of our pre- dat but we actually have a a point in time of progress towards looking at outputs right or sorry toward yeah towards looking at outputs which are intended to be predictive of our outcomes and so it's it's kind of a milestone for us um it's our first time with that and then um upon completing goal one report two and goal two report to we have our very first guardrail report and guard in our first guardrail one um progress report and so just kind of wanted to note that because I think it's important as we're working through our our first year of having all of the components of the student outcomes Focus governance framework up and running and that may have been a little bit

054of an overreach because I'm not sure we have all the components yet but the most of the major components and so with that I will turn it over to Dr dupin to walk us through progress monitoring report for goal one report two thank you superintendent man president CIO members of the governing board and fellow members of executive team and Community just a reminder that goal one is focused on decreasing minimal Proficiency in mathematics for all eighth grade students the goal is that the percent of eth grade students that score minimally proficient on aasa math will decrease from 73% % in August of 2023 to 48% by August 2028 so that is our expected outcome we're monitoring progress along the way this year our annual Target based on and this graph shows all of our expected

055annual outcomes for the duration of the goal this year's annual Target is that the percent of eighth grade students that score minimally proficient on aasa math will decrease from 77% in August 24 to 71% by August of 25 so progress along the way we shared last time as as these were developed we have a current measure and an interim measure our current measure is looking at the group of students who are in that grade currently so our current eighth graders our interim measure is the kids who are going to be making progress this year they're in fifth grade those fifth graders are the eighth graders of 2028 and so we'll be monitoring their progress along the way and development as well we use two data sources for this goal and for the inter measure the

056primary data source is the ASA State assessment there is also um we use our DNA benchmarking assessment for the interim measures and I will say that the there is some talk just as a awareness for all of us there's some talk at the at the State Board about making some some adjustments to the stand standards and the state assessment that would be aligned to that um the current conversation is around right now we have a comprehensive set of Standards the conversation is about creating power standards or Focus standards within each content area U this could have a prettyy dramatic effect on the state test moving forward this is some years in development but the conversations are starting and they're really starting to get attention so I I can't predict at this point in time how

057this may affect our our progress and tricks but it'll be part of our conversation that was going to be my question yeah if they change this right now we're fortunate in that the blueprint so we can build a set of expected goals and annual targets uh in in like form so if that if that changes dramatically we may have to relook it at some of our targets we we will also have to be very mindful of how cut scores are established for each of the proficiency levels um but if that happens or if as the conversation evolves we'll continue to bring that information forward to all of you keep you informed so we can respond according so this is the breakdown of for current measure 1.1 for this year's eth grade students this is the

058breakdown of students who scored minimally proficient in math on interim Benchmark one this is the assessment that our students took the pre-assessment is right away in August interim Benchmark one was taken in October so all the data we're talking about with this interim measure collected in October our students are getting ready I believe on Monday they start interim Benchmark to so we'll have a whole new set of data for the upcoming uh round of progress reports but this is looking at reality of life back in January I'm sorry back in October um when you when we scan across our uh all of our schools you can see that the rate of minimal proficiency ranges from 81% at butore prep um the rest of the schools are kind of clustered between 93 95% up to 100%

059so there is still very much work to do in that uh with that that subgroup so the current measure of eth grade students um again with that inter and Benchmark measure there is uh some success to report at at the time of the inter and Benchmark one we were at 95% of students scoring minimal proficient and when we work with these we're always looking for places where there has been some change for the positive and so what we can what we notice here is that this proficiency level at 95% minimal proficient is actually lower than it was in the prior to school years when interim Benchmark one was at 97% so it's it's early to to call that it's early to call that a trend um but it is a a glimmer of positivity in

060in this this work which is going to be representative incremental progress so in our analysis we highlight that change the fact that that minimal proficiency level is lower um we know that our rate of students who scored minimally proficient decreases pretty substantially in 22 23 we went from 97% at the end of interim Benchmark one and I do have a little pointer going on the screen so kind of keeps my thinking on if that helps I don't know um 97% minimal proficiency after an A Benchmark one that went all the way down to 83% that's a 14% decrease last year we went from 97% again in Benchmark one down to 79 so being that we are at 95% we need to get a decrease of 18% to reach our um current our current measure for

061this year we we are making the determination at this time that we are currently on track to reach this the current measure 1.1 we also want to call out some schools where we're seeing some favorable progress and papao they had a decrease of minimal proficiency of 7% so this we we don't have the answers to this at this time but we are curious about what is happening with that set of practices with with with those conversations with those students in order to see if there's things that we can learn that can be beneficial across the district the Gateway had a decrease of 4% minimal proficiency and Linda had a decrease of 1% uh in measure 1.2 focuses now on our fifth grade students again these are the students who will be eth graders in 2028

062again you can see the proficiency um the ranges of minimal proficiency are actually bit higher uh for fifth graders ranging from 93 90 93 at the low end all the way again to 100% with all the schools being at 90% or above another thing I want to remind us all of is that these assessments the kids haven't really seen all the standards they haven't had the opportunity to learn all the standards at the expected level of that until they take the post test so there's still a lot of really new information for the kids when they um are responding to questions on the inter Benchmark one especially so in this situation um what we see is that our October 24 rate to fifth graders scoring minimally proficient was at 96% on ibm1 that's actually a

063little higher than it was in Prior years so it's a little it's it's different than what we saw with our eighth grade students um when our fourth graders finished the year at the end of when they finished fourth grade they were at 86% minimal proficiency so they came into fifth grade with a little bit less of the prior knowledge that is needed to to Really demonstrate mastering these standards so we have a lot more ground a lot of ground to cover with our fifth grade students um however given the the substantial growth made between interim Benchmark one uh in 2223 and the post test and in 2324 between ibm1 and the post test we again are predicting um being on track to reach in measure 1.1 with our our fifth grade students so we have

064our team and one of the things as Jay superintendent man mentioned with our team progress a highlight is you know when we gave the first report it was really a very small group of us analyzing the data and working to provide this information in the time since our last report we've expanded the group that's working on this considerably so our entire administrative leadership team has had an opportunity to go through these reports and resp like look at the data give input have conversations about the the what what we're sharing tonight so what we're sharing with you is really reflective of you know many voice at this point in time and there's a much greater awareness which was one of the things we said last time needed more attention we needed to put explicit work into

065ensuring that communication was cascading throughout our organization uh all the way to the kids so we're we're making that happen Dr Pomo is here with members of our teaching and learning coaching team and that team has been working well to to to understand the goals understand the interim measures and give input into the analysis as well as recommendations for changes to the inputs moving forward so I'm going to introduce Dr pombo and her team at this time good evening president Kio and members of the board and superintendent man first I'd like to introduce Marie twist she's our coordinator for math so this is Marie good evening good to see you again and she's going to introduce our math coaches we are so lucky to have four coaches this year here specializing in math and science

066those are Patty Lockwood Maria Guyer and Sarah Larin casy aen couldn't be with us tonight so we're going to share with you what's working and then Marie will also just fill in whatever I forget to share um so what we've noticed in our learning walks we've been doing learning walks the first quarter and also the second quarter the first quarter we did about 190 and then this quarter we're about 150 but we wanted to show you just the math classroom so just Fifth and eighth grade math classrooms how they are um improving in our learning walks and so if you look at the the slideshow we have um with our learning walks we have 27% um of our classrooms in quarter one to 50% of our classrooms in Quarter Two where they were improving in

067learning targets for Success criteria which we talked about in our uh study session uh has also improved from 9% the first quarter to 30% in the second quarter so that's some of the work that we've been doing with the data wise process uh creating action plans our leadership teams creating action plans um conducting learning walks and then providing feedback and coaching from our coaching team um also we have one of the T one of the 10 teachers participa math Cadre and the fifth grade is a fifth grade teacher and 19 sixth through e8th grade teachers completed 10 hour a focused professional development in math instruction I don't know if Mar you want to talk more about sure okay absolutely I'd love to so math Cadre has been going on in kraton for several years and

068it's an Afterschool professional development it's a two-year commitment so our teachers that are invited to participate and agree to participate are making a really big investment in themselves as Educators and also in their students we meet monthly for an hour and a half after school they learn all about deepening their own practice and particularly in terms of the math standards and the standards for mathematical proficiency they also participate in collegial coaching Cycles where they get to we have release time for Subs to come and they get to go and observe each other putting the practices into action and giving feedback um it has been larger in the past one of the things that's been a challenge this year has been that we've lost some of our more experienced teachers um and of our math Cadre

069of our fifth and eighth grade teachers of our eighth grade teachers we have nine across the district five of them have already participated in math Cadre which is amazing um and then two of them are new to us one of them was on maternity leave so the rest of our eighth grade team just really has either has participated or didn't have the opportunity this year of our fifth grade teachers one of them is participating in math Cadre this year and we're so excited to have her she works at mon Vista she's delightful um seven of our fifth grade math teachers are new to us this year and most of them are new to the profession so that's been something that we're working through um we're really excited about the professional development that teachers have been

070receiving during our Craton professional learning days on those Wednesdays once per quarter um third through fifth grade has been focused on fraction fluency using a concrete representational and Abstract model so how do we get materials into students hands to help them make sense of it and make those connections between what they're holding and the Very abstract number crunching um at our sixth through eth grade we have a great partnership this year with the Department of Education and their math Specialists so someone is coming out and working with us there getting again manipulatives into the hands of our Middle School teachers so that they can become proficient and confident using those tools so that then they can go back and support their students through those um and then the math coach is and I actually had

071the opportunity we spent all day today at a math conference that was put on by Arizona math leaders and the Department of Education called math Mavericks where we got to attend three two-hour sessions with some of the brightest Minds in math education in the country today so we've already been all AB Buzz about how can we bring this back to our teachers to bring back to our students to start to transform what math instruction looks like in our classrooms so what me more attention um well first I wanted to thank the principles and our leadership teams and the coaches and and our teachers are all working really hard to uh meet this goal and what we found with the learning walk data is that the learning targets and success criteria are improving um and it's

072coming from the teacher perspective and the part we're talking about here about engagement and practice is that our students need more opportunities to engage with the learning Target and the success criteria uh right now most of it's coming from the teacher perspective and having the students have an opportunity to practice more so we talked a lot to the teachers about the students need to be practicing most of the time um either Reading Writing listening or speaking and collaborating with each other and so we just need to focus more on the students doing the work um and then the other part was about the curriculum being used less from the first quarter to the second quarter and as Marie shared we have a lot of new teachers and when we had the new teacher orientation we

073shared our curriculum how to use it how to lesson plan but as you know as a new teacher that was in July and as we're going through this school year it takes a lot to remember how to use that curriculum and so at Kennedy because we have most well all of them are new right all the new teachers are there so we had our um coaches go in there our math coaches and teach them how to use the curriculum and how to write lesson plans and the pacing guides and so we want to continue that with our other campuses especially with our new teachers on how to use the curriculum um because that's what we're noticing is just not that they don't want to use it's just how do you use it and how we

074can make it accessible for them um something something that I would add from our last visit when we spoke about the preest is that since then a change that we've made is all of our fifth and eighth grade math teachers are now working with a coach so all of them were working with a coach oneon-one most of them are working with one of our math and science coaches we do have a couple that are still perfecting their foundational teaching skills and so they're working with our student support coaches on the foundations of classroom management and instruction routines and procedures and then collaborating or Consulting with our math and science coaches to develop their content knowledge I think that's it for now one thing I want to point out real quickly when we talk about curriculum

075use is that the curriculum comprehensively includes several parts in kraton it includes our our pacing calendars which kind of show over time when standards should be taught throughout the year it includes unit guides which show how like what the standards are how they're deconstructed and you know what the what the outcomes should be for students while they're interacting with those standards and then it includes the instructional materials so in our case it's hot mlin harcart par cour hmh into math a lot of times when people talk about curriculum use they think of just that set of just the instructional materials so when we're when we're observing during learning walks and having conversations with teachers we're looking at all four of those components and one of the things that we've observed is that with regard to

076the pacing calendar we're in I mean we're halfway through the year and so the longer the year goes we're observing a little bit of Drift from the pacing calendar so it's not that the M like the instructional material aren't being used it's that they might be two or three or four weeks off of the intended Pace that's Guided by the the pacing calendar so when you see that decrease we believe that that accounts for some of that and so we'll we'll want to talk a bit more about what we're planning to do about that but that is an observation that we've made is like as time goes on this shift is happening we know the math is hard and it takes time but also if you stay four weeks behind if you're four week weeks

077behind at the half way point you're going to be eight weeks behind which is almost a whole quarter by the end of the year and you're not going to be prepared and that's how you end up with students that are two and three years behind as the as the grades progress so we're we're keenly aware of that based on this year's observations and the other part of the curriculum on the rubric is that it's at the rigor of the standard and the rigor of the curriculum and sometimes they're using a curriculum they might be on Pace but it's not the right level of rigor so that's the other area when we're when we're measuring curriculum use thank you so much I know that we're going to open it up to questions but before we get

078questions I just want to share that monitor this monitoring is about understanding the extent to which reality matches the boards adopted goals in term goals monitoring is never about offering advice or recommendations most of the monitoring is a better understanding where we are and how we got here the board's attention is focused on what's true for students not on what adults are or not doing so with that being said I know that there was some prequests um set up if the board did not have an opportunity to preas some questions we can open it up and ask some questions Dr dupin yes we are ready to to respond so should we just go through the questions yeah I think you can go through um goal one um the ones that were pre-made and then I

079can open it up to the board members if they have any other questions and they did not have a chance to submit their questions yes happy to so one of the things that we were asked was to to was to Think Through um what our what plans were putting in place to ensure that um we were supporting teachers in effective use of the curriculum so Dr Pomo uh Mrs twist will you talk about the changes we've made in the support for teachers to effectively use the curriculum yeah so one of the things we talked about was giving them uh providing more professional development on using um the adopted curriculum and we've been doing that on Wednesdays and so we'll increase that we also um have coaching support so we have been having our coaches work

080with our our teachers and we change where they're working more closely with our fifth and eth grade teachers so helping them with planning um to make sure we're meeting the rigor of the standard and then obviously regular monitoring in the classroom so working with our principles when they doing learning walks we do learning walks once a quarter at every school but also the learning walks in between monitoring the curriculum um use and then in January we have our um leadership seminar and during that time we look at all of our data so we're going to look at our benchmark assessments we're going to look at our learning walk data and from there we make action plans and identify a student learning problem so we look at what are the students not learning and we create

081an action plan based on that during that time we will talk about how to create an action plan to increase the pace or get back on Pace um with our with our units because like Dr dupin shared we' done learning walks in there a month behind sometimes they two month behind so how do we get back on track with our with our pacing guides anything else you want to add um I would add that particularly with pacing that is something that coaches are really familiar with the standards and they're really familiar with what's most important and what's going to impact their future success as well as what they need to be learning right this moment or what we would expect them to be learning right this moment so one of the things that they do

082when they work with teachers who are behind Pace a little bit is to sometimes help them reprioritize sometimes help them see you know what this unit on coins that'll be a really great one let's bump that to the end of the year and let's get back to place value because we know that your students really need these place value Concepts to be able to move forward with the next things whereas this this particular piece this could wait until a little bit later in the year um and especially as the student get older and we are a little bit more focused on those outcomes and testing sometimes it's a matter of looking at what is the key core understanding in eth grade in eth grade it's expressions and equations and so statistics and probability if you

083were supposed to teach that right now let's wait let's put that one off a little bit longer and let's make sure you have a really foundational understanding because that's what our high school partners are telling us they care about when these students come in so that's one of the things that they're able to do to help support teachers especially newer teachers because having newer teachers one of the questions that I got from a newer teacher recently was how am I supposed to know how am I supposed to Pace it and plan it out if I don't know how long it's going to take like I planned for it and I thought it was going to take me a day and it took me three days to teach it because those are things you just don't

084know yet um you you think that you have it planned out for a 45 minute lesson and it turns out that you were very mistaken sometimes um so that's one of the things that they help with they also sit one-on-one with teachers during their prep and plan actual lessons which sometimes involves let's look at the lesson and let's get out the manipulatives together I've sat in on some planning meetings in the last few weeks where the coach was teaching the teacher how to use these tools great let's do some practice problems which of these are going to be most beneficial for your students because when know if teachers aren't comfortable using them they are not going to get up in front of 12 to 13 14 year olds and look foolish and lose their credibility

085so our coaches are helping teachers to build their confidence so that then they feel prepared to go and work with their students so that speaks to the teachers role in addressing um the curriculum use needs the second question is about support what support systems are being implemented to address the engagement gaps so the students role in learning identified in classrooms to meet the required standards well it's very similar answer it's going to be through coaching um I observed actually a coach today working with a teacher on how to engage the students in the standard and so part of the coaching is that each teacher sets a goal and then that they work with their coach to set up the criteria for that goal and so they might be thinking about an engagement strategy how do

086I engage the students in learning Target success criteria and they set up a checklist and from there the coach models that and then the teacher goes over the checklist while the coach is modeling that strategy and then the teacher tries it and so it's just going to be a lot through coaching and professional development on engagement strategies and how to engage with the learning targets how to engage with success criteria and how to get students practicing more reading and writing and talking more about what they're learning may I have a follow-up to that um are we asking any of the kids what engagement looks like to them or what works or it's not working for them personally as being the student in the classroom I think that's a really good idea to talk to the

087students about um what engagement looks like to them and I think that could be done through teachers especially with at at the end of a lesson doing a check for understanding or checking with them on engagement okay so it's not currently being done I could say that I know there is one piece of it is that sometimes frequently when our coaches are modeling lessons they're really trying to work on bringing in student voice to show teachers how powerful it can be so for example I can think of I know that um Mrs Guyer modeled the lesson recently at Mackin where at the end of the lesson she had her students that she was working with reflect on how did turn and talk impact how did talking about the math impact your learning today and then

088the teacher was able to see that and that was really powerful I think things like that are going to obviously benefit our students you know obviously critical thinking skills and then depending on how you're delivering that obviously can be like literacy too depending on how you want that feedback given um but I think that's just a great idea I just sometimes when we're talking about the things it gives me um like gives me flashbacks to to times when I because I felt like as a student math was just I was always behind I was always trying to like stay above water um and felt like everybody was moving faster and so I would just um hate to see it maybe thought of as engagement necessarily um when there's clearly s and and maybe they can't

089communicate it exactly to you but I think with all of these these prongs all around there's got to be some way to identify you know for some kids what's going on even if it's not having to do necessarily with how the curriculums like you know being in delivered I don't know how to put it exactly but I there's got to be some solution to really get all of these points out there and so I'm happy to hear about that and one one of the things that that we've been talking about too is that you know as we look at trying to correct some of the pacing challenges the the risk that we create as we create urgency around timing is that people tend to revert to their old practices or they or they revert to

090what feels most time efficient to them and so I think one of the balancing acts for the team as they're working with teachers is going to be to help to continue to model those opportunities for that that student voice for that student engagement and how to engage the students but at the same time while creating that urgency around getting on Pace to not J in that because it might be faster to just talk to the students and talk to them twice as fast to get further along right but twice as fast might move you further faster but not necessarily effectively where the students are being successful with gaining the knowledge and skill sets that they need to be able to to have the um outcomes that we want to see for them bless you I

091just wantan to coach to miss anything that you want to add that we're doing to address this I don't want to put you on the spot I just don't anything we forgot you yeah we're not scary yeah yeah I know thank you um I was just gonna add um another teacher that I was working with one of the things that she considered was um asking students to like self rate themselves in terms of if you were going to work in a small group with a teacher what portion of this assessment that I just gave would you need help on and so just trying to um let the students tell the teacher this is what I think I need help with and it it showed a couple of things kids who actually knew all the stuff

092and got it 100% right but still felt like they didn't know it so like okay you need to talk to that student because that's just a confidence issue right like they get it they just need to know they get it but then also the students who said you know I'm struggling with whatever the concept was like yeah you're right you are and that's good information for the students to know about themselves and for the teacher to be able to address so just trying to show teachers that they can do that in a really quick simple Google form like a really easy way and their minds are blown with like what their kids are telling them so I think that's just another really good example of like how we can help teachers talk to their kids

093about what they know what they think they know what they don't know and then just start that cycle thank you for sharing that I really appreciate that two-way communication because at times as adults you know we're like nope this is how it's going to be and you guys have no say and we really do learn a lot from our students on what their needs are versus us um trying to input what we think their needs are so I appreciate that and I was going to add when we talked about the different levels of data that's the street data talking to the students examining their work um and that's one of the areas we want to strengthen is that street dat awesome well building on that I'm wondering um you know there there are not curricul

094like example lessons out there like I know through like CCR Frameworks and things that address specifically self-efficacy and they're quick little like 10-minute things you know depending on what the schedules are with morning meeting kind of things and that might be really powerful to explore especially like math just tends to be one of those subjects where self-efficacy if it's low it tanks really quickly um but I think maybe some other tools like that and letting our teachers know that it's okay to have you know that social emotional learning right and that space um when we're navigating difficult Concepts so thank you and in particular that feedback is helpful because I think when we so the coaches will be able to get much more granular and much more focused into the planning with teachers when we

095do learning walks it's kind of high level but one thing we we do ask the kids is what are you learning if it's appropriate we don't interrupt direct instruction if it's happening but if the kids are working and it's appropriate for us to interact with them without creating a disruption we'll ask are you learning or more frequently now tell us about your learning targets and success criteria and um but it's a very different question to ask what engagement are using or what engagement would work for you so that's a tweak I think we could make um it's still pretty infrequent that kids sometimes they can't they're starting to be able to more frequently articulate learning targets and success criteria that's still very much like external to the learner and now the shift we're making is

096trying to get get it internal so appreciate the feedback did anybody else have I'm sorry was that the last question that was submitted yes does anybody have any other questions questions I had were answered so thank you I'm also pumped to hear that math Cadre is still going strong because that is a really powerful thing and I think once it's great to know how many teachers have already gone through that and then seeing the partnership between um the coaches as far as classroom management while still addressing the content um and I hope that we can continue to push to get some of those NE newer teachers once ready into things like math Cadre as well I like again just things like that are are bonuses to working for a district and having those types of

097professional development opportunities so I think that's really great and I wish we had more than 10 people in it when throughout the conversation on on all the goals um one of the questions that was recently posed to us which I think we'll want to keep going with is how are we going to evaluate the impact of the change in our coaching model because we made a really significant change in the model this year CA has given us feedback to integrate um like like satisfaction survey type feedback um and so the team has built a way for people who are participating in coaching now it's just getting started right to be able to give feedback on their coaching experience that's one piece a question I was going to ask but I didn't know if it fit

098into sofg but I didn't ask it but I was wondering if that was something that was being considered as a part of the coaching changes yeah I don't know where it fits either but it definitely feels appropriate given that our answer to many questions is effective coaching effective coaching well so we feel a growing obligation to be able to measure the impact of that coaching experience and we're really are going to be tying it to the outcomes which are the assessment results and in particular students in these grade levels are students of teachers who have been receiving specific and ongoing professional development and we're looking for for Trends and patterns there so we're Ser we're surveying in that now right now we're sending those out to get feedback before the break so we can make

099plans in the second the second half um similarly like for those teachers that are focused more on classroom management is there some framework for evaluating when they're ready to kind of start getting in more heavy on the content because like at some point those kind of go hand inand right um well they're doing their impact coaching cycle so when they meet reach their goals but then also the content coaches and the student support coaches are working closely together so some of the teachers are getting both at the same time the content and the student support awesome do we have any other questions I just have a thought like I'm just wondering how we can normalize um newer teachers asking for that help when they get that far behind because I find it Troublesome that they're

100a month behind I mean I can see like a couple weeks I think that's kind of normal but I'm wondering like how can we get our teachers our new teachers to say hey I'm like drowning I need help before they get that far behind or their checks are in place like assuming lesson plans are submitted and things like that to where it can kind of come to people's attention right like are the principls looking at the lesson plans and seeing hey this is where they are and this is where they should be on The Curriculum maps or are the coaches seeing their lesson PL saying oh they should be here but how can I help them here I just like I I know that we try to shove so much down our our kids' throats

101like and I know it's really hard I'm sure for new teachers I haven't been one for a long time but um and I know it takes time but that I I just feel like we need something in place to make sure that they're not getting that far behind thank you for the feedback I think it's an excellent question you know we try to make the coaching process and the learning walks as collegial and and supportive and nurturing as they possibly can be um but that's something I I think we need to take back as a team and think through and you know talk with some teachers about how to how to help I I do think a big part of it is is noticing like hey I noticed that you're here on the unit guide

102like let's we should be here like just it doesn't need to be punitive but just like how can we how can we ensure that there's kind of a more timely before it gets to that point are you seeing that pacing issue pretty consistently across the board for all new teachers or is it just here and there uh I don't think it's just new teachers it's not localized to new teachers okay I mean I'm sure you're still trying to normalize the pacing guides because I know that it's kind of a hard thing to do when you have new curriculum and you're constantly like adjusting those um so I know there's a lot of like factors that play into that well I was also going to share Marie's in charge of this too but the new teachers

103she meets with them once a month so the coaches do you want to explain that how the coaches them once a month yeah absolutely so we do have a new teacher Cadre this year which is part of our ongoing commitment to support the professional development of those that are new to the profession so teachers that are new to kraton and also in their first two years in the profession participate in one one-hour session once a month it is scheduled very close to after their school's dismissal so on those Mondays there are three separate sessions to accommodate the three different release times um and our Coes collaborate on those those are really focused on foundational skills for teaching so which includes things like learning targets it's a lot of classroom management it's a lot of routines

104and procedures um helping helping teachers to be successful and then because it is consistent districtwide for I believe the first time this year it's a district program rather than something that's run at each school and it's similar but maybe it's a little bit different and it kind of depends um because it is a district-wide message this year and the coaches all collaborate in planning it and delivering it all new teachers are getting that same message and support no matter who their coaches after sessions we communicate clearly with principles this is what your teachers learned last night here's who attended here's how you can support them and here's some highlights from their feedback do you have any like Mentor programs here as well we do we also have a mentor program that new teachers participated for

105their first two years in kraton um I will say that one of the challenges that we've had is having enough mentors some of our campuses we really don't have critical mass of teachers that are in their thir fourth sixth 10th year um and so we have some mentors that are mentoring three or four teachers we have some mentors that are mentoring teachers that are not on their on their grade level team so they don't share a prep um there's some challenges as far as staying after school or being able to meet but we do have a mentor program um Maria guire is our district coordinator for it she meets with the mentors to train them and support them in how to be a good Mentor and how to check in and provide that support um

106but it's definitely something that we're still looking to grow and expand we're looking to figure out how we can better support our teachers who are here on H1 and J1 visas specifically um so we we know that we still have some work to do but it's very much on our radar thank you so much do we have any other questions for this progress monitoring report all right so given this progress monitor report if we have no other questions and if you feel that our questions have been in smart format and we have asked questions not necessarily looking at adult inputs but student um outcomes I move the governing board we adopt goal one progress monitoring report two second all those in favor I I thank you so much for that and that brings us to

107our goal to progress progress monitoring report you might as well stay close by because we're goal two is very similar to goal one but with a very special and important subgroup gr goal two is to increase Proficiency in math for black eth grade students the percent of eth grade black students that score proficient on aasa math will increase from 0% in August 2023 to 28% by August 2028 and I want to to start with an apology you likely noticed a difference between the materials that you received a week in advance in our um governing board update and then when we publish the the reports for this evening's conversation there was a change with this goal and that is my fault I transposed a column and I reported a 1% increase in proficiency on an ear

108and Benchmark one per black students and it I I would say I got caught up in the excitement of seeing a change and I I I missed it so fortunately we have an excellent team and Mrs twist brought it to my attention quickly and was like you know there are I think 30 give take students in this group so a 1% increase would be like3 of a student that's not possible so we went back and and I so appreciate it for the feedback and apologize to the board uh for having made that error it's it's completely mine so upon revision of the materials we bring to you this information our focus our annual Target for black students is to increase proficiency so we're looking for that graph to go up from 0% in August 2024

109to 6% by August 202 our current measure for this year's eighth graders is that on the DNA math benchmark they would increase from 0% in May at the post test when they were seventh graders to 4% by May by this may at the end of this year's post test the interim measure for the fifth grade students who will be our eighth graders in 2025 is that they would go from 0% as well to 6% by May of 2025 so again given the very small um totality of this subgroup we share we kind of talk in terms of all of our eighth graders when we look at our school by school breakdown you can see that the school the proficiency rate for students in eth grade is still very very much clustered together and very very

110much uh at or near zero per. so as we Analyze This uh we continue to see that from there was no change from pre to interim Benchmark one um we therefore report that we are currently not on track to reach current measure 2.1 uh the 4% by the end of this year for our fifth graders again proficiency proficiency does there's not the the slight range of proficiency for our fifth grade students many more schools have a proficiency rate of zero uh at this time so our fifth grade students again that rate of proficiency uh remains at 0% as of interim Benchmark one and we are currently not on track to meet uh in our measure 2.2 so we continue to put energy and effort and inputs into the the focus on this goal so a

111lot of what's been done for our eighth grade students um I'm sorry for our entire eth grade student and our entire fifth grade student population applies very specifically to these groups as well to this group as well but I invite once again Dr Pomo and Mrs twist to to share some of the highlights of this the work well this one is very similar the the difference that we did between um just the whole eighth grade class and then also focused on our subgroup is that now all of the schools have a list of their students that are um that identify as black to support and follow their data and also do that street data and find out how we can ensure that connection and belonging um but the number even some of our our coaches

112are tracking who the who our students are so we can see how they're doing and also during our learning walks um observing in the classroom to see how our our black students are learning in the classroom so that's just the only main difference between here and the other one do you is there anything else or anything else I know Mrs twist you're monitoring you actually are monitoring these students on an individual basis is that correct so that's how you know that was one of the ways when she looked at the initial progress monitoring draft she's like this number is wrong because I know each kid and I know them by name and I can tell you that there's the movement isn't there so that is a strategy an input that we've added is to have

113that direct progress monitoring for those individual students at the district level um anything else so the what we did here is and Mrs twist and I have had this conversation to go from absolutely 0% to go from not being proficient on the test and you may recall when we were looking at the test Quest sample test questions during our study session the the test questions are complex they often are multi-art so you have to do multiple steps or respond to two different parts in order to get credit for the entire answer so to go from not being able to access or show what you know on that content at the beginning of the year to proficiency is a huge jump for one year remember when we were talking about that so we we wanted to

114provide with you some information that's kind of about what's happening in between so for these students and so you can see across the top column of the little white boxes there are 29 students in this subgroup kids who took the preest and interim Benchmark one who are black eighth graders so 13 of them actually showed growth and can you elaborate on that just what the growth means um it was a percentage score so for example if a student scored a 15% on the preest and a 19% on Benchmark 1 then they showed growth so this is helpful when kind of trying to look at all the kids being at zero in terms of proficiency what did they grow at all was there any change so this is we do see that for 13 of them

115there was individual progress six of the clarify to be in the growth or the loss ground it could even just be 1% or yes yeah yeah and we did this as an initial analysis for ourselves just to kind of see because I think ultimately what we we we coulding this down and say okay well what would be and this might be future conversation what would be the expected growth how much growth would a child have to make to get from um minimally proficient to partially proficient like how many percent or how many more questions would a student need to get right and we could maybe get a little bit more precise u in our monitoring perhaps in our coaching so when we get our interim Benchmark 2 data back in January one of the other

116things that we've changed is our leadership seminar usually for many years happened later in January like the third or fourth week that's a lot of weeks between the time the kids take the interim Benchmark and when we have not that schools don't take action on it but when we have a time to be systemic with our data wise process so this year we've moved it to the first week back so the kids are going to finish their assessment right before they go on winter break the our team is going to Crunch all the data while we're on break and then as soon as we get back we have we have we have the data like fresh so we're going to bring the leaders all together we're going to implement use our data wise process and

117evaluate and for these students in particular really start to dig into those more subtle changes and determine problems of practice and learning centered problems based on those more subtle distinctions for third quarter because you know realistically we've got from January to early April spring break so like spring breaks in the middle so we don't have a lot of time between two and when the students sit for asasa so we have to be really targeted and really precise in these areas no and thank you for bringing that up because I think I do like having the data laid out this way I think it is helpful because if you're just looking at zero proficiency to zero proficiency you never see where things are blossoming and changing um but to build on on Miss uh Gibson mlan

118I think the next step for you all would be let's dive in and see of those 13 making growth are they making you know 20% growth or whatever those kind of can we make this up um and then my other especially with those numbers we're g to say on that like a third of eth graders that are losing ground or a half of them fifth graders that's a little concerning on the opposite end yeah um and so I think yeah with that being able to monitor how much ground if they're losing 1% you know they're almost in that maintaining still problematic obviously um and then my follow-up question to that would be how are or how often are conversations being had with the teachers about those specific students because this you know could be a

119teacher has one of these students right and so how often are is that happening in planning time with coaches like about that specific student well I I mean I think it probably depends on each School some schools have um you know grade level meetings or plc's or um they have their Wednesdays but I don't I don't think we know exactly how often they're talking with their teachers so that's valuable feedback we could structure or create a a frequency for for those those monitorings I guess those check-ins yeah well because I'm just thinking you know when we have like we know the subgroup for this but often too you know you have a student who isn't qualified for things and you're trying to you know make up those gaps and being able to spend explicit time

120talking about what's one win I can get with this student this one student this next two weeks right you know in little pieces like that thank you I think there was some submitted questions for this but oh go ahead Dr dupin I have the questions so just if you're ready what plans are in place to address the observed decrease in in classroom curriculum adoption and use particularly for populations where proficiency gains are critical so much in the same way that we talked about addressing curriculum use and engagement uh by students how are we thinking about that what are we doing to think about that for these students in particular um I think it it's the same thing that we were talking about just um obviously bringing that awareness to the teachers I know that some

121of our some of our schools the leaders have created data sheets to make sure um that we know who the students are and that they're monitoring them so like you were saying but I just don't know how often they're doing that but the same thing like professional development understanding how to read the um the data to be able to address that with the curriculum um and there and the standards and then using that datawise process see what standards our students are not understanding and how we can use a curriculum to support that um we have gotten some new curriculum which is Freckle right and other areas to have students practice at home um but basically it's the same strategies for increasing that curriculum use and pacing I know you had read the thing before about

122and I I'm trying to like not give advice or it go into that and I don't know how to word things but I guess what the point I'm trying to get across is um I think that it's going to require you know and I we've already been here we already know this it's going to require some level of intentionality some level of differentiation to really like obviously there's a difference here right the I mean we've identified uh black 8th grade students for a reason and therefore I think there's going to have to be some intentionality and differentiation and how um and and what's working and like what needs more attention because I don't know that applying the same things for all eighth graders is necessarily going to be always successful for this this cohort of

123students and I think that's the like core of what this goal is and how to make movement here and I think that's where I totally see that last bullet point on what is working and I don't know that that's enough and I know we've just started and I'm hoping we can continue work on how we can become more intentional with something some more things things like the last bullet point that talk about what are we doing with that information rather than just supplying it or how are we you know being intentional or learning new things about how to work with black students in making sure that they're making growth in math and so I'm not trying to do this in in like violation of how we how we do this progress monitoring but that's just

124kind of immediately where my brain went when kind of looking at all this and seeing kind of just the similarities between the two because they aren't the same goal for the that very reason you know and so that's just kind of where I'm at and I agree with you about the differentiation because we've been able to do that with literacy and teach how to do small group instruction and how to differentiate for our students and so we've talked about how do how do we replicate that in math and have differentiate instruction based on the student data and what skills they're ready to learn next and so that's what we're working on as a team but for starting with all of us getting professional development on how to do that certainly and I understand that I

125was going to ask kind of with that um if you can remind me because I know like the schedules are the same across the schools yes yes with the exception in dual language there are some some variations and I know typically in K5 you can kind of wiggle room a little easier with you know having this 30 minutes is you're you know teaching and you know retach and enrich what does that look like for the schedule wise for the teachers especially in eth grade do they have is the schedule built out is that maybe a infrastructure constraint where even if they knew how to differentiate do they really have that time built block it definitely was an expectation that was set forward um as far as building Master course schedules for the year some schools

126due to Staffing challenges like as far as students not coming in their neat little boxes um were unable to incorporate that 30 minutes of ret time every day also in the upper grades correct me if I'm wrong there's 30 minutes of reteach or enrich built in in middle school and that would be math or Ela and I would say a lot of schools have chosen to use that in ela time um something else that's really interesting is that of our eighth graders of our black eth grade students seven of them are emerging multilinguals and of our fifth graders 15 of them 15 of the 45 are emerging multilinguals um and then of course as you heard at one of our last sessions of the emerging multilinguals in our district half of them are pre-emergent emergent

127so it's definitely a a need um one of the ways that we're supporting that is by having our SEI Cadre that's working with Heidi kosy and Sarah Beth and our SEI our elll coaches that are working with teachers um as you can imagine though our Math teachers are not getting that direct professional development on how to engage emerging multilinguals in math instruction but I can tell you that it's something that teachers are asking for that coaches are very much aware of as far as helping them to plan starting even just with some basic strategies for how do we make math instruction more accessible to our emerging multilingual students oh and I'm happy to hear that because I think you know there can be opportunities in math for the emerging multilingual because there's the universality of

128the numbers and if we can help with that vocabulary which is still meeting you know their instructional minutes as far as language immersion so and this is another place where we see also an intersection between the guard rails and the goals so a lot of that awareness for that dig down into noticing that multilingual connection came through a conversation we had um with Dr o from na um and some of his personal life experience that he shared with us that really kind of opened our eyes to we don't have a monolithic subgroup of black students like within within this very small subgroup there are subgroups of the subgroup and so you know as we look at things like strategies you heard the team talk a lot about very individualized differentiation and ultimately that's going to

129be the key because if we try to create like a blanket type of individualization for this sub group as if they're all the same we will be we won't make significant progress doing that and in some ways we'll create greater problems than had we not tried to differentiate and I wonder too like it sounds like it's possible but are we checking to see is there greater absenteeism with these students is there um have they been suspended you know things like that that could contribute have a list of who they are and we're following them I assume that we would have access to situational stuff like that yeah now now that we have the now that we have them identified it's easier to look at that situational data yeah this is very helpful feedback and I

130think so some of the things that we can take back are um I appreciate the recommendation around or the I the the conversation around monitoring absenteeism and suspension that is not something that we're currently doing relative to these students um not not specifically um the intersection between language learning and math that is not something that we're we've been giving explicit attention to so so when we're teaching language acquisition strategies they're typically applied in the language development space so that makes us start to wonder we start to wonder if we can work on a way to kind of bring that planning together so when you're learning whether you're a teacher and you're learning how to teach language or whether you're a student and you're learning how to apply language acquisition strategies do we have an explicit

131way to bring the to apply that across Ela and math could they could we somehow facilitate the planning process in a way to bring those together those are ideas what's that it's an in science right right right for sure because vocabul is a huge part of this as well there's just you know so if there's some preloading that we could do with the um with the math vocabulary that might also help because that's one of the language acquisition strategies so this has been valuable for us to take back and continue to work on so that we can bring back a more robust uh progress report for the next round yeah I was going to share too that Maria and I have been discussing how to replicate a lot of the things we're doing in literacy

132and in math and the different different ation can happen during the normal math block um it's just teaching how to how to do that because we do that in literacy they have times where they're working independently and they're working in small groups with a teacher or independently with the teacher we could do the same thing in math it's just getting um the training and and implementing that plan but also the intense coaching that the literacy team is getting with Heidi kosy like something similar for our math team I appreciate that do we have any other questions s on this specific goal to progress monitoring report just one other thought I mean again without I'm not sure how to 10 years of like recommending yeah um you know we're doing the math in Spanish in our

133dual language program so I mean maybe you know we are already doing that with some students it's not the same I know but um you know math is a universal as Lindy said Universal skill so you know there may be some ahas over there you know even talking to those teachers you know I just want to say a thank you to you all because your jobs at a district level and serving multiple schools is typically to look more macro at the data and to be this intentional and spend this much time with individual teachers on individual students I know that takes a lot of hard work and effort so I and and working on data over the break so I just also want to appreciate all of you yes thank you um any other questions

134all right with that being said I will move the governing board adopt the Craton SOG go to progress monitoring report to Second all those in favor I thank you so much that moves us along to progress monitoring report for guard rail one so at this time I'm going to invite Mr kahal to come forward this is exciting because this is our first guard rail progress monit Mr kahal and the entire team at um our Family Resource Center and our uh Community Education Center play a big role in helping us to keep this this guardrail so he's going to add some insight and help with responses to some of the questions that were provided so we have four guardrails tonight's conversation is about guardrail one which is that the superintendent will not neglect student social emotional

135health wellness and development so for this guardrail we have the board established two interim measures the first is that the percent of students in grades six through eight who respond favorably to indicators of self-management on the Panorama survey will increase from 62% in May of 2024 to 66% in May of 2025 the second interim measure is that the percent of persons utilizing the Katon Family Resources Center who respond favorably to indicators of customer satisfaction on the listen for good survey will increase from 0% in May of 20124 to 25% by May 2025 so we've introduced two additional data sets the Panorama survey is a tool that we have been using for about four years in the district we began to use it when we were part of project Elevate and so we do have um

136years of comparative data uh although though the when we first started with Panorama we were under an agreement with the Arizona Department of Education under the prior superintendent of Public Instruction and then when the administration changed the relationship of Panorama ended so we had to transition it to our own management so we only have access to our couple years of of of data from when the agreement uh has been between the district and Panorama directly and then the listen for good is new to us this year can you give us just a tiny tiny little bit about what listen for good is and absolutely Madam president members of the board executive team thank you it's my pleasure to be able to uh share some information about you we're super excited uh all of the Family

137Resource Centers uh across the Arizona State um are working with listening forood this is a company that specializes in surveys uh to find out uh the high quality of uh customer services that all of the Resource Centers are providing to the families and also what gaping services are in between and so the service I specifically designed uh to gather that information about Services uh what we're doing right what's something that we can improve and what was the ultimately the impact that the family and the child um are obtaining through those uh Services resources and support so one of the things that we learned about the listen for good survey this comes comes to us through the first things first grant which provides essential funding to the Family Resource Center for its operations so we didn't

138initially go about selecting it however we've been researching it and what we learned is really exciting because it deeply aligns across our guard rails and I just wanted to share several of the key principles that guide the listen for good survey as a tool one of those is that they have this concept of a feedback loop so we ask for feedback and receive the the voice and then take that information back to inform the community of of participants and and then keep that relationship ongoing so to be high quality a feedback loop has to be in service of equity it is an equity Centric tool designed to elevate voice and share power and that is highly aligned to our District's Mission it is highly aligned to the work of the Family Resource Center and it

139is highly aligned to the intention of this and the other guard rails so it's the more we learn about it the more we like it and and it's still in its kind of infancy for us but it is we are optimistic about the value that we will be able to to gain from the information provided but also the relationships that we anticipate being able to build with our with our community so I'm going to switch back to the Panorama survey uh what I'm sharing with you is is um the responses by our student subgroups so these are screenshots of the actual reports that we have in our Panorama dashboard so I was unable to to manipulate them too much in terms of you know how they're presented but I wanted to highlight some of the

140acronyms that are used in there because they they label things a little bit differently than we might typically talk so the first grid shows our student elll status these are our emerging multilinguals in multilingual students in grades 6th through 8th um yes the yes bar is more like that's a the percentage of students giving a positive or favorable response no would be the percentage of students giving a a no response so we can see a difference in most cases between how the general population of students in sixth through eth grade is responding versus a very specific subgroup so the English language learner the emerging multilingual students overall positive responses are a bit lower than our um than the the population as a whole free and reduced price lunch those are students who um are qualify

141for participation in it's it's a poverty indicator um we can see the breakdown with our students who are uh receiving free or qualifying for reduced price lunches having slightly lower indicators of of positive responses on these questions um students with spectral education status also a little bit lower positive response so it was interesting to look at this breakdown by these groups to kind of see um interestingly our male students expressed a slightly less positive uh set of responses they're all you know kind of generally higher than 50% but there is a difference with within the subgroups [Music] our this is just the breakdown of participation in grades six seven and eight so the majority of the respondents were eth graders on this survey and then the majority of respondents across um ra or this is

142just the breakdown of of all the students who responded how did they self-identify in terms of their race oh okay so of all the kids of all the 266 students who took the the the survey 68% of them identified as black or africanamerican and so forth um so wait so it's not showing that students of different races had viewer points no it's saying that 90% of the 26 6 students who did the which is I'm sorry I I was like that doesn't align with our like actual student math I'm sorry the percentage of favorable responses okay favorable responses okay I was like how does this work sometimes I get lost in all the bargraphs okay a lot of data my apologies those are percent favorable percent of students responding favorably overall by sub by sub

143okay that's thank you thank you thank you for the questions I'm like you had me five of the six graphs and then just it was that numbers meme in front of your face well do you know do you ever have that where you look at something so many times you can't see it anymore so that's my relationship with these images so overall 69% of the students in grade 6 through 8th that responded favorably to indicators of self-management 69% of the students responded favorably so that is actually higher than it has ever been um I don't know if we address this but what are the indicators of self-management you know I will be I can provide that to you I can give you the questions I intended to have that here but I can put that

144in a board update it's a very valuable question and I only asked that because obviously looking at the racial breakdown it made me wonder how much those indicators are rooted in whiteness and that's why 90% of them are are giving favorable responses I just that's my curiosity there well and I have another question too about like the language and the vocabulary used in them so if they're students that are you know an eighth grader but they're at a fifth grade reading level if they're multi emerging multilingual is that affecting how they can access the survey yeah I I just want to speak to that real quick I would say that that's one of the things that about panorama that isn't working so well it is a complicated assess um survey okay the vocabulary is pretty

145high it has a lot of questions on it so it I I think that one of I think that that actually might be contributing to the response rate which was one of the board questions is what can we do to get the response rate up as you can see this is based on 277 students who took the assessment in October we do require we are required to get parent consent before we can give this survey to our students so I actually haven't looked at the breakdown between how many parents said sure let my student take this uh survey versus how many actually did it but I I I do know that one of the things that is challenging about panorama is the complexity of the language and the length of the survey which could contribute

146to rate of response and given what you just said there also what is kind of generally the format of the answers is it multiple choice is it a free form scale it's both it's primarily lyer scale multiple choice responses it also has spaces for free response to open-ended questions and sometimes those liyer scales depending on the vocabulary can then be very confusing in deciding well which end of this means this and which end of this means that kind of like those job interview questions in the applications or the attitudinal assessments that people get and they're like is there a wrong answer I think it's important to think about because it's difficult to measure these things right you're always going to have an error Mar a margin of error because it's self-reporting from middle schoolers who

147are trying to figure out how to articulate their own abilities and feelings and efficacy um but I think it's definitely worth looking into is this the right tool if the vocabulary and things like that are making it so difficult to even understand adult struggle with which side is strongly [Laughter] disagree and that's the beautiful thing about you know these progress monitor report that we haven't really had anything like this it's the first time but as we keep going in time if we see that this is not really being effective you know if by the next round we still have the same amount of kids obviously we have more than 4,500 student enrollment so that's not even a you know um and that's why I kind of asked that question is how is the District addressing

148the parent opt out rates because as a parent myself I didn't really get any um yeah like education on what this was or how it was happening how I can talk to my you know anybody else um I'm on all the newsletters I didn't really see it going out so what is specifically is the district um addressing to make sure that parents are aware of like hey these are conversations you can be having with your kids or this is what this is meant for that's definitely an input that I think we need to strengthen is the the the communication component about the survey to students to the even to the teachers and then ultimately to our parents families and so Mr Carvajal is prepared to talk a bit about how we're we're seeking to address

149all of our surveys because as we mentioned and there's a question about um survey fatigue so one of the other questions is what processes are in play to mitigate the effect of survey fatigue while ensuring critical data collection so you know this is a long survey listen for good you know we're looking at specific questions Panorama we're looking at specific questions but the survey encompasses quite a number of things so um you want to just dive into before you jump into that if I could just something that I think is important from a p you know an important perspective for us to have as we work with the data too is the survey itself may not be perfect and we may be able to find alternate tool sets you know that can improve over time

150um or we may be able to improve the way we interact with the existing survey regardless of that um the I think one of the things that was important to us as a team we felt was important to the board was to find a tool set right so this is the tool set we had um and I'm not saying this as an excuse or anything but one of the things that that I've come to learn is often with then student outcomes Focus governance people will say well we can't really do anything with this right now because we don't have a tool set to use right so we're trying to find the best tool set that we have I'm saying that as a frame because the other thing that's important to know is we are measuring

151over time so whatever problems pre-exist within the survey the comparative to Prior years those problems still existed so as a measure for measure it still gives us um some amount of valid data because it provides us with a comparative based on the system having the same problems within it at each point of measure now that's not me saying oh let's not find a way to do better absolutely let's find a way to do better but I just don't want us to throw throw out the results you know based on oh but it's only 272 or oh there was all these barriers or the language is difficult you know we're we're still the language was the same language in Spring of 23 24 as it will be in Spring of 2425 so there still is a

152comparative there you know that we can draw out of that soor going to say the baby with the bath iied I avoided it I completely dodged it so but I almost went there and with that I'll turn over thank you that's a good set way because everyone likes to receive support and resources until they ask to give feedback whether it's in a survey or B that's like I don't have time I'm leaving I got what I needed and off they go and so the first thing that we need to do to ensure that the community understands is to provide a staff member that is going to be the link uh with that person with that student in that case is staff member or a teacher um for the families is our Outreach specialist Our Family

153Resource Center and our community ed Adult Learning Center through those venues we have those conversations and we are able to explain to parents this is why important you may think that your voice doesn't matter but it does matters let's Empower you you have yeah a brain in your head and we want to hear what you're thinking if we're meeting the goal and how we're best uh supporting you when we ask those questions people are okay until they're about three to five questions none of these surveys are three to five questions they're 15 20 or over absolutely not yes and then once once you think you're done through all of the survey question on the content and the areas that we want to collect the data to report back and improve our practices then we hit

154them with the extra which is the demographics and please it's a tachy feeling but I need you to identify yourself in the next five seven questions and so the first thing that we need to do uh as as a team to uh ensure that the community understand is to be transparent and the best way to be transparent is this is the purpose of the survey and your answers are Anonymous and this is how your feedback is going to help us improve another thing that we can do is to streamline the surveys and what I streamline the surveys I mean let's minimize the number of questions if they're similar can we combine them so instead of 12 questions can I have eight and I can get the same the same uh uh data we also um

155uh we uh don't rely only on the questions that we want but we have uh Handover research we have first first listening for good and other people who this is what they do for for for work and so they let us know which items will give us the answers or the information that we really need and so they help us with the design of the survey what will be more practical whether there's going to be a scale uh whether there's going to be a a multiple choice or whether there's going to be an emoji for specific students or specific language so that's that makes the uh survey more attractive and less intimidated if it feels like a test I won't take the the the survey but if it's more friendly then uh then I'll be

156more willing to give you my feedback in addition to that the next step that we can do is to incentivize people to take the surveys how do we do that here's a coupon for the next time you come to this class here's you're going to be entering to a raffle and we're not coercing the results we're not trying if you give us good a good survey results we're going to give you this it's just a way to incentive people we know that motivation um leaps better discipline is a little bit more precise but motivations we need like we need to answer all of these questions I don't know if the latter is something we can delve into that will be that will be one one one thing to steal and then the last thing that

157we do for our our surveys that we try to time and right what will be the best time is it weekends is it during paring conferences is it a at a carnival event what would be the uh the best time for parents or students to give us their their responses and of course knowing that uh in our district there are spoken over 27 different languages we offer not just in English and Spanish but with all languages so everybody's counted and everybody has an opportunity to provide the feedback so you a not sh that's how we try to mitigate the survey resolve and how our process to collect data goes into any survey not just uh a specific department or school did you say that um there is the ability to customize on either of them

158Panorama or the listen for good yes yes so we have the ability within Panorama and one of the things we'll have to study is if we do customize how does it affect the yeah relatability of result so that's not to say you want to keep giving a you know a survey that may be too much or misaligned but if you if we just gave for example the indicators of um of uh student geez I'm bat in a thousand s Management self management thank you then but by the time they get to those questions are they influenced by the question they already taken so if you break those out but there are ways to customize in both tool set and and we have actually um we've diagnostically customized it in the past where like if we

159saw troubling results we've sometimes um I don't think we've done it with with student data but with staff data we've sometimes gone back and after there's been some sort of effort to improve situations taken a subset of questions and deliver them to staff in order to be able to determine did we make an impact on this or not so so they're I don't know if it works the same way with the students or I don't know that's a good question what I do know and this is why we part of why we have to get parental consent for Panorama is we actually can see the how each child responds so if you get um and I don't know that I don't know that everybody can see that but like I can log in look and

160see the results of individuals and so if you get you know students who are flagging really low or like are really showing it like you can know who they are and plan for individual followup so that's one of the things that we like about panorama it gives it that experience and so we're hopeful that as we um are successful in selecting our academic director for student support um and in restorative practices that this will be a data set that actually could inform our mtss process um there's a lot to work out with the details of that but that is a piece that could be very Val about this survey tool so we could potentially go back and either through survey or through personal followup get more detail about a student's responses so just a few

161things about what is working and related to the guardrail holistically which speaks to the superintendent not neglecting social emotional development surveys are a measurement but there's other pieces that go into what shapes the responses that our students are providing so all of our school schs will have a ruler implementation team and all members will complete 6 hours of initial orientation training by May 2025 three of four of our teaching and learning coaches for student support have been hired the academic director for student support and inclusive practices position has been created and is posted thank you and the listen for good survey has been fully developed and is now live for family use the items that need more attention um Frankly Speaking Harmony and ruler implementation have been delayed due to un unanticipated staff vacancies and

162the the the fact that we had to reorganize around those teams the those vacancies so I've been going through the training Miss wasik's been going training that wasn't part of our initial plan but I've been learning a lot about ruler as has m molik um Eve Carol from our effective schools team is is going through the training now and that wasn't part of the plan but all all to say um there has been a delay in implementation and we're working to catch up and we have a team like going tomorrow to tour a third year implementation at a neighboring District correct yeah we have 17 staff going tomorrow with ruler or harmony with ruler okay ruler um one of our teaching and learning coach for student support position remains vacant so we've hired the three

163out of the four uh we have been unable so far to fill the fourth we've done some interviews um and it remains vacant the role of the teaching and learning coach for student support is unclear and requires Focus they've done some good stuff but but it's a new role it's kind of like the the shifting from the child Justice advocacy role that we phased out into this new role and what is it supposed to do do they are they in charge of ruler are they not how do they support selfless Behavioral Health how they integrate with car Solis these are all questions that Dr pombo and team have worked really hard to try to to to bring into efficacy and so they the the decision was let's work with new teachers and support their integration

164into the district with best practices related to student um classroom management um that's very much a need but the intent here is to really build the capacity working with kids and working with our staff to support the social emotional needs of our students um and we've talked about the survey structure requiring parent consent some parents do exercise their their right to opt out uh we believe that with more information more time um you know this year we are only doing one round we did one round at the beginning of hey we're given a survey here's how you give consent for that um we could do another round supported by additional uh Outreach and opportunities to learn and um we still are very much in the beginning phases of looking for good and though we believe

165it's a great survey we're going to have a lot of learning to do as we start to get data back thank you for that oh go ahead Mr Man I think in this case we may have hit the two questions I believe so yes so yeah do we have any other questions or comment on thank you so much for all the hard work thank you seeing no further questions or comments I move the governing board approve cron sofg guard ra one progress monitoring report one second all those in favor thank you so much and that concludes our student outcomes Focus governance um conversation we are moving over to public comments uh Miss watad is no public comments thank you moving over to six which is approval of consent I move the governing board approve consent

166agenda items a through o in accordance with policy bb- e all those in favor I and congratulations to our new hire I'm excited to meet them and see where the district moves forward with their added on assistance that brings us to 7A which is exceptional student services department update so I'm privileged to introduce Miss Gretchen Kaiser our director of exceptional student services I can't believe it's been just now a year right so you didn't get here yesterday she and the team have been working tirelessly to uh support the work of the department but also provide um evaluation and honest reflection about progress made and progress yet to come so at this time I'll turn it over to you and we of course stand ready to respond to questions throughout and at the end of the

167presentation of course thank you this is that time in the presentation where you need the Jeopardy music to kind of thank you for your patience well you figure that out does it feel like it's simultaneously been a month and 10 years that you've been here [Laughter] yeah holding on back up help if it's helpful I can use we can use thank you I it's it typically Works patience I we even tested we even tested it so thank you for your patience oh that's why that's why yeah we're too prepared you're right you had that up and going no call for backup Panic di just SP that interesting probably a restart right fix everything or over okay either one Dr I'm gonna bring my computer to you thank you for your patience I apologize for the

168delay no thank you Dr D it's late the Technology's tired thank you all for your patience on that Madame President governing board members superintendent man leadership thank you Dr dupin thank you for the opportunity to stand here today to talk about one of my most favorite comment topics our kids and what we do and to really celebrate and look at the work of the exceptional student services department perfect thank you sir on the side thank you for that in the spirit of our student outcomes Focus governance um what what we expect of our colleagues we model and expect of ourselves I like to highlight today our learning targets and success criteria of our time together today we will understand how the exceptional student services department serves the Craton families students and staff the common themes

169of Celebration and action items for continuing department and programmatic de um Improvement and our success criteria how will we know um while learning about this update we will identify the responsibilities of the department describe the celebrations and ongoing needs and summarize the recommendations to support actions and next steps I would like to formally introduce you to the team our leadership team of the exceptional students Department um I'll first highlight the structure and then I'd like to proudly introduce some of my teammates behind me on the perimeter of your screen you will see um the members of the exceptional student service department that are housed at the district office that we then are used to support and deploy to campuses as needed the director two coordinators and right now we have three teaching and learning coaches

170um and I'd like just to highlight as you know the the loss of our teammate Allen this year was one of the vacancies that you see listed there in that second coordin has yet to been filled all year and we currently have one of our teaching and learning coaches on long-term leave one thing I would like to continue to highlight is our colleagues um located in the center circle these colleagues serve as our leads and departments to really support the work of special education in the exceptional services department and I would like to highlight that each one of the members you see our lead um psychologists lead speech and language Pathologists our motor lead lead and assisted technology carry full jobs during the day including case loads of students and service are part of our

171preschool child find team and so are committed to carrying out our initiatives outside the workday so I just like to highlight the commitment they have to our department um and to the work of our team I would like to take a minute just to introduce you um I'm so proud to be members um of this team we have Dorothy green one of our instructional coaches we have NIS marel who is our lead of our Universal Design assisted technology and accessibility lead and our lead motor therapist um William Ormsby you heard a little bit about who we are um the next topic I want to discuss is our why really what drives us um to do the work in which um we do with the exceptional C student services department we do provide services and supports

172to bring our student outcomes focused governance goals Within Reach to each and every CR learner when we're looking and talking about the work of decreasing minimal Proficiency in math for all eth graders increasing math proficiency increasing English proficiency for emerging multilinguals for increasing reading proficiency for third graders our students that do receive specialized support within the exceptional students Department are in that subgroup so we are we believe and we work towards the sofg goals to support student outcomes for all when we're looking at the exceptional student services department sometimes people think that that is just supporting special education and that is a huge part of what we do and we're very proud and which to do it and in kraton we service the entire the entire District in many different ways and so the two

173column highlights um the the groups in which we serve and the way that that team that I mentioned that leadership team of our instructional coaches and our leads who we serve and who we support the exceptional services department does support all of our students who visiting the health office we have the great privilege of supporting our nurses and medical team we do support our Community Preschool which is our students who might not yet be identified or are not identified um our general education preschool students looking to grow our long-term K8 team within preschool we also service our students um through the Rehabilitation Act Section 504 plans who may have a disability um and do require accommodations and support in order to access that of their typical peers we also serve as I mentioned before we

174have 11 nurses and medical staff in which we support and we have the great privilege of walking alongside our hardworking leaders our principles and assistant principles at the elementary schools when we're looking at the profile of the support in which that we serve really believe in that that servant leadership within exceptional student services as of the 70th day numbers we are currently supporting 674 um students identified with with special needs who are currently on an individual education plan that's just under 14% And in looking at the data from last year we were hovering right around 12 that is an increase in our students in which we are serving in the special education realm we right now identify and support 48 developmental preschool students those are our students and our families that are coming in at

175the age of three through five looking for that early intervention supports and services and we are proud to be supporting our developmental preschool students and families as well part of the work in which we do also support within special education is we support our private day schools and our homeschool families that have that reside or live or in the boundaries of our kraton elementary school district and currently that does include the entire child find process as well as developing and customizing individualized service plans which is a little bit different than an IEP in the public setting but we are also currently serving 27 of our students who are apprently privately placed or our homeschool families we have the great honor of supporting and walking alongside our special education teachers our educational professionals our psychologists our

176speech and language pathologist our occupational therapists our physical therapist and our assisted technology specialist we are so proud to serve and support our teams that are doing the right thing for our kids in our campuses this snapshot is a highlight of just recognizing and identifying the different areas in which the exceptional student services support Sports and the yellow the shades of yellow are that general education that that support of all students there are Health Services 504 preschool we also collaborate directly with our head starts team in providing Direct Services in some of our related areas for our headart families we support our students who are on home instruction our general education students who do require that type of instruction um and we also support as I mentioned before that Universal Design our assisted technology and

177Loan library and highlighting some of that education um our teams do support all of the child find find evaluation that federal law of making sure that we are identifying and supporting our students with special needs we support and I'll talk a little bit about in a minute our special education programs we'll talk about the Continuum of services in which we provide our developmental preschools um our team within the exceptional students Department also supports our alternative assessments so the students who are eligible um into a modified assessment and that don't take the aasa we also provide our homebound instruction those students who are not yet able or not quite ready or able to attend a full day of inperson school or in school at all we support our home instruction our team also looks at the

178Medicaid and runs all the Medicaid supports and again the private parentally privately placed we are a busy and exciting um department and we're really as I mentioned before it really does come together to support the whole team and the whole child looking at both that general education side and that special education side as I mentioned before in the slide um we are proud kraton is proud our department is proud to provide a Continuum of services so not one size fits all for our students who are identified with special needs um so we do provide a Continuum of services and if I may frame for just a moment please one thing you'll notice in the next two slides is that each of our program description starts with a cross-categorical program federal law does require for students

179to be eligible and receive specialized Services they must meet metrics or criteria under a category we very much believe kraton believes our team believes that a student's eligibility criteria is not the story it does not define them and sometimes um that can be oh well that's that it's they're cross-categorical it is part of the story but we customize supports the program does not fit the student this the student doesn't fit the program we make sure that we build the IEP to meet their needs and offering that Continuum of services like to highlight some of those programs in which that we do provide those customized supports and those methodologies that differ so we're able to meet the unique needs of our of our Learners one um program that many people are familiar with is known as

180that resource program that's looking at the cross-categorical program offering a blend of instruction to support students in the academic social emotional whatever those needs may be um the students oftentimes their disability is not yet impacting a enough where they're unable to access the typical or general education setting so that Continuum of services could be push in into the general education classroom it could provide some customized pullout support the majority of our students do fall under that category um for our resource programming and that type of support is offered at every single school to meet the needs of the students when we're looking at our regional programs I'll go through a couple acronyms and talk a little bit about the programs and where they're located as those are Regional programs in which we support our students

181taking responsibility for success is our star program that is located at lomalinda school um that crosscat categorical program um supports students who may struggle with social and emotional D um regulation to a degree again that interferes with their ability to be in the general education classroom throughout the day it's a customized um Regional program that we provide different methodologies um and curriculum supports in which to support students who might have those needs at lomol our structured teaching reinforcement individual environment our strive program is located at two campuses at excellen and papigo we're looking at that cross-categorical program providing those supports both academic and adaptive supporting students with those developmental disabilities that significantly affects their verbal and non-verbal um communication and those social interactions again that in a way that adversely um impacts their performance in

182the typical education setting reaching for um reaching Independence through supports and education a Rise program is proudly located at Mackin again a crosso program that looks at academic and social for students functioning below their peers and intellectual ability our practical academics and Community Education is also cross categorical categorical program um who for students who do function significantly below that their peers again that adversely affects their ability to access learning in the general education or typical setting and one of our um um Regional programs that's at the new Larry C Kennedy is our providing learning and Community essential skills are places um which is looking at again those cognitive and self- health adaptive needs for students who are functioning significantly below their typical peers it also customized supports in our students who might have medical needs

183that require consistent supervision or support in order for them to access their fre appropriate public education that's located at Larry C Kennedy was that the one that was on yes ma'am that's correct yes thank you heard a little bit about who and why and what drives us and who we are and I'd like to spend the rest of the time really leaning into the programs review our focus of the work in which that I've had the great privilege of of of of supporting um since my tenure started about a year ago here in kraton the intentional work when I first began was to really understand and listen to what is the current reality to hear and understand the celebrations to talk through and have cander with our colleagues to have those rough conversations um to

184say not only where are we what are those celebrations what strengths can we build on but what's that honest conversation of where do we need to go what are those blue skies I want to start by saying um the amount of time that my colleagues um gave me um for one-on-one conversations for attending site meetings that every single site for visiting with our cohorts or um there's just a list of the amount of people that offered their heart their cander and their honesty to help provide a picture again of those successes and also where we really need to go um based on their experiences and based on their expertise and disciplines in all different roles both both special education and general education around the district and I'll tell you it was so cool to start

185in kraton and hear the brag to hear the the cool celebrations I didn't really know a lot of people yet so I said I got to meet that one or I'd love to pop in that classroom but the celebrations were great and I know the list might look small but I want to still and celebrate and highlight the conversations that in the previous list through those interviews those surveys those one-on-one conversations there was so much celebration around the dedication of our teachers our teachers are coming in every day to work very very hard for our students and that is I'm like I'm walking into some place really awesome so really wanted to highlight the work of our teachers additionally thinking of the boots on the ground our committed pair professionals which really often times serve

186as the glue to some of our regional programs and provide those accommodations and additional supports for our students um throughout the day many of our teams identified strong collaboration with maybe their School site with their grade level collaboration with their Department team um that open conversation that productivity those conversations many of our schools highlighted some of those strong collaborative relationship ship and partners within their school team or Department some of our campuses were highlighting their established inclusionary practices right that collaboration with our special education and our general education teachers what does that look like in supporting our students with special needs in their least restrictive environment so hearing some of those campuses talk about those inclusionary practices was a great celebration to identify our sightly asons is a term that we use pretty much interchangeably

187within the ESS Department of our instructional coach or our teachers on assignment as I mentioned before um U the department team as well as our leads as I had mentioned often times are deployed to sites to provide coaching to provide guidance to look at unique situations and be a thought partner and critical thinker for our school teams also they're called out when things get tricky and and there's the interpretation of what does this look like from the legal perspective and how do we write by students and making sure that we're honoring all of those layers so a huge opportunity to brag on our our instruction coaches are site liaison from our school teams that say thank you for coming out on their support and I Echo that um and um I came in um to

188kraton and the celebrations really looked at the compliance we had recently completed our compliance report and audit with our department of education and some of the schools really had highlighted their practices and what they're looking at for compliance and making sure that our IEPs are comprehensive and meet um the compliance regulations for Department of Education so a lot of great celebrations I do want to lean into and identify with that program's review the cander the heart the honesty and the trust given to me um in those interviews to really highlight some of those deficiencies that were identified in that programs review that went from November to February in category in categorizing them through big picture there was a strong Trend and really leaning into the feeling that relationships between the department and the schools were

189not strong whether that was I'm not sure who to speak to or sometimes when I approach someone it may not always feel like it's super approachable so it might not feel as if I can come and ask a question that I might need help with also looking at who supports me with that and if I'm looking for that unique thing is that who is that in the department so those relationships and the ability to access them well was identified as one of the deficiencies in the programs review may I ask a clarifying question when this um feedback was given is this coming more of a teacher to an administrative role not feeling supported by their administrators or was it peer-to-peer what what do you mean by lack of strong relationships between department and schools thank

190you thank you madam president if I may go back a slide to kind of highlight the the stakeholder group so I think that's a great question I think from the principal's perspective I can honestly say from that perspective that Trend was we want to lean into the department for help in certain areas we not quite sure who to lean into or we don't always feels if we get a timely response back in which to support um in looking at um art special education teachers a lot of them are asking for we want support and we want to build that relationship with you but you're not spending enough time out there to really establish those relationships so we're asking that our department for building those relationships spend more time on our campus so I think there

191was a common theme um Madame President um in in each of the perspectives that again was resonated enough for me to identify it's not everywhere but it's it's threaded enough through each of those stakeholder groups to say we have some action to do in that area Madame President did I answer your question yes thank you great um some feedback we received is um the end I labeled it as no standardized structures for meeting practices that special education meetings run long that sometimes they feel unorganized um that our colleagues are are maybe not all the time coming prepared that we're not providing a structure in which families can meaningfully participate in I AP meetings and in met meetings so identifying that as the standardized structures for meetings um as a topic identified as a need very

192limited curricular resources for specially designed instruction and that's what's really unique about special education is not that it's the same as general education just repeat a couple more times speci um specially designed instruction has a definition in bylaw it is adaptive it is looking at the content it is restructuring how we teach so it is a highly need of a skill and when we're looking at our student outcomes and we're seeing the lagging student outcomes and we're seeing the need to bridge that Gap with the special education process with those instructional practices and with the curricular resources um both of those were aligned as a need our teachers are eager and willing and many of them know a lot of great things but how do we keep elev what they have in their classroom so

193they can really tailor and customize what they need to provide specially designed instruction for their IEP needs when you say um I guess for in terms of the very limited is that at like the district level or is it um there's not a connect I guess at a at a greater level in general across this country is there Li there and so then in turn I guess is my question if that makes sense in in response to the data gather gaed through this survey our teams again teacher level Administration level identify that we and kraton have a lot of different resources and some people have access to resources that can better be adaptive for specially designed instruction so this um um board member um Gibson McLean is specific to the resources available for our teams

194within the kraton school thank you for that question and please stop me at any point thank you for that additional deficiency identified as I talked a little bit about the relationship examples labeled in the first was the varied perceptions of roles and responsibilities again I'm needing help and sometimes it's urgent sometimes it might wait till next week but who am I going to and how do I get the help I need especially in a timely manner in which I feel as if I then can take that information and support in what I need what was also identified as inadequate departmental structures and systems and I that is huge when we're looking at doing really really hard work and when we're looking at the needs of our special education students and families much of that requires

195unique decisions within the framework of a system that makes sense and in a system in which our teams can talk critically think brainstorm and make those decisions within that system so that was an identified need um as well and one of the additional deficiencies identified was those inconsistent use of multi-tiered systems of support and that is part of the exceptional student services department we are collectively part of that tiered system tier one tier two and three in identifying and looking at those areas of deficiencies then our team really looked critically and identified those top priorities for improvement and identified them in the following categories first and foremost starting with us what does that dep Department culture look like and how is that an area that we can grow in those relationships how do we provide

196efficient customer service we are servant leaders that is what we do our goal and our job is to serve our our students to serve our teachers and to serve our schools providing as I mentioned appropriate resources for specially designed instruction as I mentioned before also implementing those effective instructional practices a big part of that is and how are we equipping our teams in which to do it how are we intentionally providing structures and professional development so that our teams we can be respons to what our teams need as well as provide that ongoing professional development as we know that's what research supports it's not the one time it's that ongoing relevant professional development and also looking at engaging and empowering our families in this process as well those are those top priorities in looking at

197Priority One that department culture as I mentioned before our team looked at said how can we lead what does that mean for us so some accomplishments to date and I'll highlight um our um created commitments and core values on the next page I'll first review some of those accomplishments to date please um again created those commitments and core values as we talked about relationships who do I go to what does that look like in moving forward how does my voice get heard how how do I understand how decisions are made so I I understand that process a little bit more um we initiated the special education task force um beginning of last year and that task force is a committee that we meet Reg L and it is open to any of our members certificated

198classified administrative um so we are excited to continue that and that was initiated um as an accomplishment thus far and it is continuing into year two now increased engagement with staff through our professional learning communities and Special Education team meetings in order to build relationships we need to be out we need to be walking alongside we need to be learning we need to be understanding so that was a big goal and that was a commitment that we made within our team to rep prioritize our work to see how do we get how do we lessen some of the work that's taking us away from the priorities of our students and teachers in the classrooms and that's also part of that evaluating those roles and responsibilities how are we in line with our sofg focusing our

199efforts and our time on the outcomes for our students with those identified accomplishments I'm very much leaning in also to those areas of ongoing needs due to some of our vacancies and some of the challenges which we are facing that is an area that I still identify as ongoing I stand here very humbly saying the commitment is there the intentionality is still there and it is an area for us to be looking at moving forward and continuing to be present on our campuses um to build those relationships and to walk alongside our teams at the campuses and that's also looking at increased visibility and communication when we're looking at building those relationships we're looking at building the decisions in which we make building those guidance documents helping those systems how are we lering in communication

200well so that way it's responsive and meets the needs and in a way that our our teams can hear it and receive it absolutely in ongoing need that we are addressing and continuing to look at I have a question how much of your time do you believe is spent on case management versus actual you know in in classroom I mean does that take away time from other things that you could be focusing on or is it pretty even what does that look like Madam president are you asking that of my role right now current or are you ask sorry you asking for the the the department in in in a whole um that really is our charge is when we're looking at restructuring our instructional coaches to mirror the work and the cycle and the

201coaching cycle of our curriculum instruction and assessment team that really is the number one priority so I would like to say and I think now I don't know if I'm able to provide that because we haven't been able to be out in rooms as much as we are currently operating a department of three um but that when we're looking at that Target goal and mirroring what that is we're looking to have that be at least 50 to 80% of our time and that's our Target goal unfortunately right now we're unable unable to meet that need but that is constantly the conversation um within our instructional team on how are we prioritizing time on campus in the classrooms walking alongside our teams okay thank you um thank you for that question Madam president um evalu the

202roles of responsibility and the ongoing needs is that is absolutely a place that we need to go and when we think about our student outcomes and we think about research supporting that the most important person in a students live is our teacher if we want to see movement within our students we need to be there to support our teachers as I mentioned before the first thing we did as a department is really looked in within this is our brainstorming session as a leadership team and I include this as not only our Department's team our instructional coaches and at that point our coordinator but also so our leads so our our motor um our assisted technology our school psychology leads we really are brainstorming about what is it that we prioritize who are we what does

203it look like who do we want to commit to be really looking at students first building that trust that Integrity that reliability the ad the advocating that we believe that we look at long-term trajectory of having our students ready for college career community that access in that education needs to be a high option to spr opportunities for our families and students looking at those relationship building as well as Solutions I Channel Alan blankstein failure is not an option our kids need it now so how are we focusing on those Solutions and next steps converting those priorities in the We Believe statements what are we anchoring our practices in what are we anchoring our behaviors in We Believe decisions to be made with the best interest of students working together we believe in the power and

204the promise of Education We Believe in leading by example we believe in building strong relationships and we believe in being flexible creative thinking and problem solving that is focused on Solutions so highlighting the work in which the team identified collectively as who we are who we want to be known by and how do we keep holding ourselves accountable and each other accountable to our commitments and core values highlighting priority two um efficient customer service as we mentioned those first two priorities we're really looking within and really looking within for me as a new member to the team and knowing that there is strong work happening already around the district who did I want to be joining in a team who do I want to be as a leader who do I want to be as

205a team member part of what we looked at that a fmer customer service very much believe in servant leadership that is the role and the commitment that we have being in the privileged spots at the district office in the ESS Department again creating that special education task force to support transparency to support input input to get that voice and talk through through that system with any of those members that are willing to be part of that brainstorming um opportunity to solve problems and to work through things that might be barriers within our system right now increased Inu instructional coaching that is a high priority for us and not just instructional coaching of spending time in the room but even working with our team recently and in that true coaching cycle of spending time with that

206teacher getting to know what that need is including an observation potentially modeling inviting a debrief and coming back in a couple days to follow up I we're I'm excited to highlight that later in what we're doing with our corrective reading and reading Mastery with our team with McGraw Hill but that is still a great need that we recognize and it's also as you will see um on our leaning in the deficiency areas as well in joining collaboratively with our charge for a unified front for our sofg framework joining our educational leadership team joining our curriculum instruction and assessment team and joining those learning walks so we are out there we are seeing we are walking it we are supporting we know how to respond in a timely way that is directly linked to those Targets

207in sofg looking at the standardized systems within the department um again what does that look like how can people operate freely and well and make those decisions within the framework of a of an understood system allows for building capacity and allows for that agency of our teams to build those decision-making on their campus and lastly the establish the use of agendas within special education meetings are blue skies as you will see on the right hand side are ongoing needs is truly getting to um a fully facilitated special education process with the Mets and the IEPs and phase one this year is we've established an expectation of agendas we've provided some model examples um and as our leadership team is joining teams if we're able to add some of those facilitation flares um we hope to

208that is is absolutely a great need that we need to continue and to expand that to just beyond the agendas but the the value of what that does allowing for Meaningful input so continued intentionality and developing a skill set of facilitation for the met and iips increasing communication it is everywhere we recognize that that needs to be something to we do better we do more intentionally and we do in a way that our teams are able to receive the information which we give we continue to evaluate roles and responsibility within the apartment to build that capacity one thing we realized um collectively and the programs review is that we have a lot of great experts on our team and just over the years they have remained the one expert on our team and so oftentimes

209if somebody is out if someone unexpectedly is no longer with with us that skill set that expertise that understanding of that system that platform of the student information system um that also is lost with that with that colleague no longer being with us or out for a couple days so building that capacity within our team and sharing that intentionality of the work so that there's that crash training and opportunity for us to expand on that we need to continue conducting our learning walks we are doing that not only with the sofg um we will continue doing that with our corrective reading and reading Mastery team which I'll highlight here um shortly continue the facilitation of special education meetings and again continue to streamline the resources documents and websites so our teams have access to that

210that's well and easy to navigate and find the information they need appropriate resources for specially designed instruction accomplished to date we are thank you governing board for your support of the special education task force recommendation for um the reading program mcra Hill reading Mastery and corrective reading um we are in implementation on that and we're very excited to have um that information um up and running um and we are partnering right now with mcra Hill to provide that coaching cycle with our instructional coaches we're a little bit thin and not quite on the pace to hit every single classroom that we intended to at quarter one but that goal is still going strong and we're prioritizing that work in semester two as an ongoing need um continue customizing that professional development what is it that

211we see that we need especially in response to the data that we're collecting not only from visiting the classrooms ging teacher input but addition looking at the sofg learning walk data how can we support that and customize that within our special education programs as well also continue to evaluate those curricular resources so our colleagues our teachers in the class have the tools they need to meet the needs of their students as well looking at those effective instructional practices again learning walks increase our instructional coaching Implement a corrective reading and reading Mastery within our special education programs we're also working directly and we'll highlight that in our professional development but working directly with our program specialist of the Department of Education for our preschool teams both community and developmental preschool working on those Early Learning best

212practices not only are we inviting those experts in throughout the year to provide the direct instruction from those experts at Department of Education We're working directly with our teachers to develop our own best practices and look for us in the classroom and that's done in a collaborative way um and we're building that together and then reviewing that data together as we look at those best Early Learning practices and continuing those learning walks continuing those coaching Cycles not just visiting the classroom but truly one-on-one with our teams um to identify what those needs are and continue to be responsive to the needs of the data the needs of our teams to customize that professional development as I mentioned before the continued collaboration of we as kraton collaborating with our curriculum and instruction um and assessment teams

213and coaches um as I mentioned before we throughout the year I think we have two more um at least two more sessions with our mcra Hill expert to come in to provide that coaching um not only are we doing learning foxs with learning walks with our mgra Hill team team but we're also providing on those Wednesdays for professional for Craton professional learning we're also providing providing that tailored ongoing for times of year um followup after learning walk data is collected in the special education classrooms to build that professional development um based on the needs and implementation plan of our teams and as I mentioned before I'm working with the Department of Education to support our um Developmental and our community programs Early Learning best practices um and as well the feedback from some of the

214summer work with our colleague then alen and one of our school psychologists an Henry of building us that that system um for supporting that tier 2 data collection understanding what that looks like the feedback was so strong that we also brought it back to our um learning this year so we have our Craton professional learning that's also four times a year um we have um um stakeholder groups general education our school psychologist also um accessible to that tier 2 um behavior supports Within the classroom throughout the year continue to develop that customized um professional development plan to look at those instructional strategies and use of resources and again you'll hear me say that again but it's something we believe in so deeply we need to get in the classrooms and support our teachers directly with

215our students pardon me for going fast if I okay thank you it is it is who I naturally am so and I get really excited and when I get excited I speak I speed up a little bit too so thank you for your grace on that priority six looking at engaging and empowering our families we have um established the special education family advisory Council our cfac not only have we established it but we've really as a collective team with our families identified our purpose which is working together to strengthen a solid foundation of diversity that empowers students to be strong independent Learners that with our colleagues in the CAC depart um coun and the CAC committee um we do meet regularly um we're looking at increasing supports within our health services department similar to seeing

216an increase in um our students who are identified in special ed education as identified this year we're just under 14% we're also noticing that some of the student needs are really unique and are requiring not just tapping into our child find team but also tapping into our nurses and our medical professionals and to see them work directly the unique needs collaborating with families collaborating with parental consent with doctors to really understand and tailor the medical needs so that is not a barrier for students to access um the the campus has been really impressive so I'm really proud to brag on the work our nurses and medical staff are doing and again as I mentioned before by establishing the use of agendas within the Special Education meeting does allow for a meeting structure for Meaningful input

217from each member of the team including our families at those meetings ongoing needs is continue the momentum increase um the CAC membership and continue to build the capacity and understanding what those facilitated special education meetings and I'd like to extend that as well that very much could also mean 504 meetings it's the structure of facilitation um Madame President governing board members while I am very proud of the accomplishments we've made in the past 10 months I stand Here humbly recognizing that we have a long way to go and our team is committed to that long that long way to go because we believe in the work and we believe in the students and in which to do so like to propose some recommendations for your consideration please the recommendations um are to reclassify two coordinators

218to our two managers of exceptional student services in looking at um our staffing as I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation one of our coordinators Alan H served in that coordinator position and there was a restructuring a parody study um that happened before um I arrived and I would yield to leadership to explain it if there's any additional questions on that um that um that allowed for that work to happen at a different salary schedule the coordinator position um also when we're looking at the needs of our district we're also looking at the needs for coordinator versus manager the work is very different and I'll explain why when we're looking at the need to focus on our instruction and to focus on the time in the classroom the work of the coordinator really covered

219too much of that instructional coach and that teacher on assignment and what we need to look as identified in our ongoing needs are those structural building that capacity supporting our team in the systems and that is one of the reasons why we're by making the recommendation to U Move the coordinator position to a manager for a more competitive salary schedule to attract people that have that skill set and have that heart and knowledge to meet those needs that identified in those deficiencies um as well as um to really better articulate that scope of work that Al LS to the work we need with our department to make those moves for our students additionally um the request and recommendation is to hire an additional instructional coach for a myriad of reasons as I mentioned before we

220believe and want to prioritize that work and protect our instructional coach from doing coordinator and manager duties that we're currently doing right now because of the Staffing shortages but also really restructuring that to protect their time as I mentioned to get that increased time in the classroom in true coaching Cycles not just visiting and popping in but that cycle of modeling and coaching and looking at that implementation of instructural practices and curriculum and additionally when we're looking that strong collaboration of we are Craton and focusing on the sofg to align with the model within the curriculum and instruction um coaching model as well our recommendations we have work to do to continue to evaluate our department roles to align to Resources with needs we need to continue to increase capacity within our team I sit

221on the leadership team with so many great experts and we need to continue to understand what each of those experts are um and I can say very transparently my colleague Dorothy green is one of the Departments and District's expert in preschool that is the new learning for me and I'm humbled by what she has teaching me but she's teaching me what I need to continue to learn so I'm grateful for her time and looking at that how do we continue to build that capacity so the work is shared and the work gets done in a way um that's Equitable and meets the needs of our families themes and lastly we need to continue to evaluate systems and methods of Service delivery to maximize efficiency and impact on student achievement we have a proficiency of our

222students with disabilities at 5% for reading and math our state average is covering right around the past Trend data past couple years hovering around between 12 11 to 15% we also are currently identified um through our federal um monitoring system that we are a targeted School Improvement for our students with disabilities that's they continue to underperform to that the rate of other um students identify with special needs and our students with disabilities continue to lag in achievement and outcomes compared to their typical peers so when we look at continuing to evaluate the work which we do we are protecting our time with our teachers we are protecting our time with our instructional coaches so we will continue and be committed to re-evaluating how are we spending our time on the leadership team to prioritize that

223work in the classroom if I may provide thank you for your grace and keeping up with my pace of speech um the proposed organizational structure organizational structure will look then similar to this so we started where we were at at the first slide um and then the vision of how do we really start making an impact to moving that needle for High student outcomes this would be that new organizational structure um that I just explained and and asking for consideration um as my recommendation moving forward um industry-wise I I guess I know this is kind of like a Personnel HR thing in terms and the industry in terms of manager coordinator teaching learning coach so I guess my curiosity is essentially I know you kind of got into the difference between the manager and the

224coordinator but then I'm wondering you know what's the gap between a coordinator and a teaching and learning coach and if we're going to not have any coordinators is there another Gap that's going to be need to be filled down the road or how does all of that fit together well I no that's I just which one thank you uh I think one of the differen between the coordinator and the manager position is the supervision piece uh and that would be directly related to how the support for the coaches would be distributed among the managers so there was that position um that was sort of part of the work that Allen did uh but wasn't really operationalized as a coordinator whereas the manager position really is supervisory position in addition to all of the other things

225that Miss Kaiser had shared certainly okay board M get McLean we did did in that consideration of what does that work look like and looking at those job descriptions to say what truly meets the need of the work ahead very transparently we did we did I did consider and did have thought Partners to look at what does that structure meet that's fiscally responsible and does meet the need and that still yielded the conversion the reclassification to the two managers um and forgive my ignorance but um I you did mention that through the federal department we are below average right do we get additional funding because we are at that level and are those funds what can those funds actually be used for thank you um Dr dupan I know um we've been working collaborating with

226you on with our ad specialist would you mind jumping in explaining that a little bit I'll do my best thank you there's a formula no one understands precisely we get access we will get access to additional funds to support our CSI targeted needs the difference though is that the funds directly to the school level okay they're they're for use at the school level they don't filter through the district whereas like um the CSI comprehensive School Improvement grant that we got at the district level that's what we used to fund all of the stiens for the lead teachers we could do that as a districtwide structure whereas with the CSI it it'll be targeted to the school level we will still have a great deal of input into how that's prioritized but there's going to be

227a lot of site involvement in in how that works and I'm not sure when we get access to those dollars we'll find out and our teams are currently collaborating with the school tight and our instructional coaches are joining in many of those meetings as well okay got it thank you thank you and they're not I just I do want to say real quick since we're on this one this topic they're not dollarars that could really be utilized for um personel I figured thank you Dr thank you Dr do we have any other questions or wonderings a question um I mean I should know this but um what is the difference between the G Ed home instruction and then special ed homebound instruction and how do parents or students that need it how do they find

228out about it here in kraton because I think it's a different um District to District thank you Miss M for that question the distinct difference is looking at a student identified at general education or identified with special education um so home instruction there could be a myriad of reasons why a student um general education student is unable to attend school whether it be medically whether it be other needs um and our homebound instruction is looking at that specialized instruction for students identified with IEPs so very similar process but is a little bit different because we're supporting under fatee a little bit different process process for special education than general education um but similar um and they both come through our department so um if anyone does have additional questions and we can happy um to

229support that or to help identify if someone's unsure what those requirements are what those needs are we're happy to support okay so from a practical standpoint say someone um is going through cancer treatment or something and can't physically make it to school how do our parents know that that is an option like how do we capture them and that may not know I yeah I mean I sure what my typical experience has been because I've kind of you know I've had a variety of different roles at a variety of different districts and in many cases it's intersected with some of those students um because uh I spent a fair bit of time in technology at several districts and a lot of times it was the technology tool set that created connections for those students um

230very often it's through a conversation that happens the School site where a parent will come in and say you know my child's not going to be able to be here for 6 months because they're either going to be at home convalescing or they're going to be checked in at Phoenix Children's Hospital and um typically in those cases uh it's sort of the internal communication structure within the district that connects th those families to the available Services either with special education you know or in my case um I had some experiences where we were leveraging iPads for video conferencing into the classroom to be able to connect students to their classroom peers and not have them lose that connectivity during their treatment period you know or whatever that might be and so um some of the

231things that Miss Kaiser talked about earlier in relation to you know the efforts that are being put into strengthening those ties between the department and the schools and that feeling of well who do I talk to about this you know is really in those cases it's very magnified because what you don't want to see happening is a parent comes in they're distraught like my kids got to have you know um you know bone marrow transplants or something like that and then at the school site they're like well I should be connecting with somebody district office but I don't know who that is right because that can create delays in being able to get those those resources to those families I don't know Dr dup and if you have any alternate experience or correction the only

232thing I would add to it is that there are there have been occasions when families don't self-report tragically so in those cases what is it's incumbent upon the staff of the school when they're monitoring attendance you know usually after ideally PE parents are contacted on a daily basis if an absence goes unreported but typ but after you know a period of time of absence a day two three days Outreach is made to connect with the families or attempts at outreach are made to to connect with the families to figure out what's going on and so usually it's through that interface that families will say well this this is why this is what we're dealing with and then we can dispatch Family Resources um our uh effective um geeez I'm tired our wonderful CEOs our community

233engagement Outreach Specialists and then connect through the ESS Department to engage homebound service if if I can add also from my experience um off in Phenix Children's Hospitals a really good example they are proactive with their social workers and their class their teachers because they have teachers on staff uh that they will be working with the families to make sure that they're having that communication that's a two-way communication uh and I I found that that can be a very successful model for some students as well great thank you yeah and while we're talking about related to like some of those medical concerns it's actually not far off from um some of the processes that Mr carvajal's connected to in relation to homelessness or you know other types of displacement issues for our families and it

234is it is an area that is often a struggle because when a family goes offline you know sometimes by the time you realize this has been an extended period of absence there might be communication challenges and so it's certainly an area where I think we have a desire to be strong in but there's there's always some room for continued Improvement I know like in my experience working with Phoenix children like I sometimes had to reach out but then once I did like their staff is amazing and they'll you know have transition plans and things like that they have the resources but sometimes it takes like no like I had I had my human and then that human moved another job and then I'm like so similarly with people here knowing who to go to in

235the department it's making sure we have connections um because they do have a ton of resources for those cases and I'll Echo um executive team superintendent man really our school teams are such great Advocates this the teachers recognizing someone's not there a school nurse is coming in because there's a concern about a chronic health issue or need or the principal's reaching out because they see someone at pickup and there's conversation so I really do Echo um leadership explaining that really credit our school teams for recognizing the need for us to respond in a different way I just have a other random question does the student services department do you also service gifted students except no we don't oh sorry Dr D those uh gifted services are under curriculum instruction they used to be we moved

236them under curriculum I don't know five or six years ago that's what I thought I just couldn't remember and it's one of those things that varies District yes some districts it is and others yes great question do we have have any other qu I just had a comment um so thank you very much for the thoroughness in this you know I've been um concerned about this apartment for a long time and um you know Mr Man and I have talked and you know it's a very very challenging um uh many different needs and it's I think it will not ever be perfect that's just the nature of this um but I do recognize improvements that I have heard um staff asking for um and I know we're still in a huge challenge because we're so

237underst staffed which is you know I believe happened because we've had a broken system for a while so it's there is going to take some rebuilding to do and I know that's really kind of where we're at right now but I appreciate um the recommendations the things that have gone into place like the resources the curriculum resources that was something that was being asked for um and then all of the other things so I appreciate this very much and all the hard work that you guys have all been working on thank you and recognizing that there's still a lot yes ma'am yes ma'am and I really just look back and I'm so proud to be on the team I'll tell you that I'm so proud to be on the team because of the colle especially

238you Dorothy that I have the privilege to work with no no I was gonna say I mean I I don't know what you knew you were stepping into a year ago or if you knew anything but I mean I really appreciate all of the um time and energy that's been put into try trying to figure things out or at least get a lay of the land and then figure out where to guide things um and I know you're giving credit to your team but it it takes someone to come in and and have that leadership to to figure out kind of the landscape and figure out where things need to go um so I really appreciate that I appreciate all this this is like all great information and and just so informative um and and

239I just look forward to things Contin continuing to improve and on a side note I used to love uh listening to uh Dr Lauren because I said his voice was like ASMR and I found myself in the same space again feeling very relaxed listening to you speak here and I kept thinking I need to not fall asleep and not because this is boring but just because of how relaxing your voice well I well I always tell myself to be mindful when you get excited slow down but I was excited so I appreciate your grace and and in that thank you for that it was great thank you yeah thank you so much any other questions or comments I just wanted to say that there was um a list of questions comments concerns that I did

240get from teachers um in in the in time I just email I mean I texted uh Mr Man um and asked him to find those answers to those questions because I also don't want to bombard you with a bunch of things that maybe you don't know the answers to but I think they're really relevant so um maybe you could give a update to um the person on that that um text that I sent to you and then just a update to the board on some of those questions and comments and concerns we can include it in in the board update and we'll certainly close the loop on that I I think there may be just at glancing at it there may be a few misunderstandings because there were some places like well you know where

241is we we're not seeing and it's like well it's in the column that says working on right so so there may be some assumptions like well this one's done and and yet some of those things were identified as this is yet to come but we we can easily kind of approach all of those and give a status update and share that both with the board and folks that are that are asking those questions and um and I just want to also add that um the structure of this board meeting is a little bit out of the norm because we've Trad Ally put like this manager position into consent but we felt it wasn't really the right Pathway to say hey can you approve this and then find out from Miss Kaiser why you might be

242interested in approving this and and also rather than just you know kind of standing on principle and going well it goes in consent you'll have to move it if you want it after the presentation we've just placed it into personnel which follows Educational Services but I wanted to point out the connection between the two items because you know that that is in this restructure that is one of the steps if the board's in favor of making these adjustments that's one of the ways um it's we'll put it back into our sofg terminology it's an input that you can approve to help create the outcomes that we're hoping to create for our special education uh student subpopulation before we do that just another thing that occurred to me and it goes with the vein of the

243communication and the structures I think this was really informative and it might be worth just sharing this slide Deck with not just special education teachers but the gened teachers as well because they often have students um with special needs in their classrooms just to help kind of that continuous loop of communication um and let people know you know it's great that there are specific people that reached out asking questions there's probably a dozen more that have the same questions so thank you for that recommendation Bard M Mayors thank you for that feedback look forward to being able to respond well to those inquiries thank you any other questions or comments awesome thank you so much thank you thank you for your time that brings us to 8A which is approve the job description for manager

244of exceptional student services department I move the governing board approve the job description for manager of exceptional student services department second all those in favor I I I motion has passed and hopefully we can fulfill that those two to vacant positions as soon as possible um any future agenda items just keep an eye that our board study session will be February 22nd and it's going to be a very informative one so hopefully everybody can make themselves available for that I do not have any other future agenda items um here February 22nd 2nd 20 seconds corrector 2 two2 alignment numbers all right seeing no other questions or no other future agenda items I move the governing board adjourn all those in favor I'm done yeah I just it's absolutely I mean we have no qualms with

245answering just I was flipping through them but I don't want to like I didn't I thought that was weird I just didn't want to bombard and I think part of the reason you understand them is because they they literally were questions teachers that they haven't had this training it's like future by thank you so you by by