October 15, 2024, Governing Board Meeting

001e e e um shot we're going to start our board meeting um Miss gibon M Clean we'll her shortly U members of the community who wish to address the governing board may do so in person or if you would like to visually virtually submit a comment please email hildah harez sps.org by 2 p.m the day of the meeting so that she can send you the link and instructions board members are not allowed to address items that are not on the agenda I'm going to call to order so uh we have um myself Miss mcrey and are you going by your new name yet did you do your land acknowledgement oh no I'm sorry I thought I did that first because then the land acknowledgement was below it no oh no you do the land acknowledgement

002first and en roll um pledge and en roll call okay all right um kraton School District land acknowledgement kraton School District understands that our community of school is located on the ancestral lands of the O oan JW and a odm people who descended from the hocom and have inhabited these lands since time in Memorial the O Odum whose name translates literally to people are a vibrant culture and Community spending countless Generations into the past continuing to thrive in the present and carrying a powerful lady Legacy a generation for the future with this acknowledgement the kraton school district formally recognizes that the traditional care and keeping of these lands by the indigenous people is an aspirational model of community stewardship that we are committed to honor with practices policies and human relations um Miss MC shery

003would you do to the pledge for us tonight sure IED Al to flaged States thank you all right now rul so we have Miss mcy here miss maleb here myself and Miss GI them and clean hopefully we'll be here shortly I want to welcome everybody tonight to the meeting and remind the audience of the request to address board cards that must be completed and submitted to the board secretary if they wish to speak to an agenda item or policy provides for two cards White cards to be submitted in order to speak to an agenda item and blue cards to be submitted in order to speak during public comments due to open meeting law board members are not allowed to address items that are not on the agenda approval of the agenda I move the governing

004board approve the agenda as presented I second all those in favor I I board and superintendent reports um Miss MB do you want to start tonight sure um I hope everybody got to relax a little bit over fall break those who don't get a fall break I hope you were at least able to reset somewhat and find some balance and get ready for Quarter Two um also want to congratulate Andy Gutierrez on his recent award as Arizona's nationally Distinguished Principal and that's all I have tonight This MC cheffrey I do not have a Bo report tonight all right um I just wanted to read um a little something from our president um she wanted everybody to know that she's in Texas graduating from a 9month um sofg implementation cohort um which she joined to further

005maximize the district's tools for improving student outcome governance and she also want to send out a reminder to hope that everybody has a voting plan as there are elections on the ballot that will directly impact our students and our community welcome hi do you have a board report that you like to give um no I apologize for being late I'm in trial and yes um we finally decided on a date for our advisory committee meeting is November 6th which is a Wednesday right here here in this room at 5:00 p.m. so please join us then for the uh continuation of the student conduct policy review other than that I do not have a report all right um I just want to wish everybody a welcome back I hope everybody enjoyed their break even though it

006was not cool um during the time it did not feel like fall um hopefully this weekend it will feel like fall um so I hope everybody uh rested and everybody's ready to come back I love second quarter it's always my favorite quarter because you have like the most days off and it's broken up really nicely um so second quarter is always my favorite all right we will move to superintendent report Mr Man thank you um I'd like to reiterate uh both the um welcome back from fall break and of course the congratulations to Mr Gutierrez so very welld deserved honor um in addition to that I'd like to just you know kind of give a round of thanks to some of our support teams because I know um a lot of times when there's things

007like fall break you know people are away but our support teams are here you know making the magic happen behind the scenes um so that way the resources and the tools are there um when we you know when those who are not around on fall break return from fall break um we kind of Leverage those windows of time when the schools are quiet to do what we need to do in those spaces and kind of in that same vein this week is also national school lunch week and so um with National School Lunch week upon us um I know our nutrition and wellness team um has some plans to promote the importance of the school lunch program and the impact that it has on our students both inside and outside of the classroom um they're

008actually running some specially decorated cafeteras some special menus this week and they've got a theme which is school lunch Pirates find your treasure so hopefully um that will be fun in our schools and uh we really appreciate that team and all the hard work and effort that they put in into making sure our students are getting a healthy breakfast and lunch that helps keep them focused on their learning and that is all I have for today thank you uh student outcome Focus governance we will start with Goal two progress monitoring report pass it over to Dr dupin all right y i I just wanted to set a little bit of framing um and I don't know if we can get the the actual sort of report up so folks can see it but um the

009goal two for us is very similar to goal one in that it's tied to both fifth and E well the goal itself is tied to eighth grade mathematics the interim measures are tied to Fifth and eighth grade so our current measure is eighth grade focused and our um interim measure is fifth grade focused and um the difference with this particular goal is that it focuses in on a specific subpopulation which is our black students who we identified we are not providing adequate supports to to help them be successful um in passing the ASA exam so um this first report is obviously based on pre-test data so we're not going to really see the the impact of the measures that are being put in place this year to begin to create movement but it does give

010us a baseline um as the original data set does it does raise some concerns and it also gave us the ability to sort of dig into that subpopulation and take a look at you know what specific needs might be there and how we might best serve and support those students to create improvements and so um the team will dig into that a little little bit more I know there was a couple questions we received prior to the meeting that we'll be addressing um as we review the progress monitoring report and I just really W to thank our team um Dr pombo is not with us tonight she's on the road um but maray twist was kind enough to join us she's she's our in-house math expert and we are talking math tonight um and the

011insights that we received from Dr dupin Tyson Meyers Dr pombo um and Marie are just really setting a framework for me of understanding why what we're doing is so important because if we weren't digging in on the subpopulation we wouldn't have dug into the data to the level of depth that we have and made some of the discoveries that we've made which I think will allow us to not only address the specific needs of this group of students but the way that we're approaching it will help us in addressing the needs of other students as well so when we've had our conversations and setting these goals about yes this is very specific to one group but if we do the work right All Ships will rise I think the types of learning and discoveries we're

012making are really ultimately going to help us um with this specifical and then also further to help create improvements for for All Ships so sorry it was way too long of a frame Eric originally I was trying to stall for the presentation to come up and then I got carried away with myself so so I will turn it over to Dr dup the first thing that I wanted is a volume check to make sure because I know last time I wasn't projecting well so is this is this better all right thank you everyone good evening Miss SS members of the governing board and fellow members of the executive team um this is our first progress report on goal two which is to increase Proficiency in math for black eighth grade students our goal is that

013the percent of eighth grade black students that score proficient on asasa math will increase from zero% in August 2023 to 28% by August 2028 and I'd like to provide just a little bit of context and framing to Jay's point about I'm sorry to superintendent man's point about our our this group of students it is a very uh unique and diverse community of Learners so when we we've actually gone through and looked through all of our data to understand who these students are and what I can share with you is that 63% of our black students in grades 5 and eight are new to our district in the last two years 21% of them have immigrant status and 15% of them are emerging multilingual Learners 24% of our black eighth graders are participating in our new

014algebra one2 partnership program with Phoenix Union High School District so that's that's the just some of the basic learning that we've been able to accomplish as a result of digging into the data and learning about these children and who they are what they represent we know that among those students who are emerging multilinguals they also represent probably five native language groups so it's a it really is a very diverse population akin to our our indigenous students they come from all over the country they were they have diverse aspects of identity different language backgrounds some of them have Urban living EXP experience some have lived on the various nations from which their families hail and so as a result um unique Learners and a unique profile of needs so it's cool and interesting to know uh

015just the the profile that these students bring so I just offer that as context as we move forward with the rest of the conversation um just briefly remind me again with that partnership are the students going to a Phoenix Union School and taking it or is there a teacher coming to them I just can't recall Miss twist that would be a perfect I would be delighted to a two minute summary um it'd be my pleasure to give you a two minute summary of our new algebra partnership I actually just finished up a meeting with the Phoenix Union teacher and our high school liaison 8th grade algebra Liaisons at each site about an hour ago and it was really exciting to get to meet with them and see just how passionate the teachers are about providing

016this opportunity for our students so we have 59 students at all of our schools except for Larry C Kennedy since they only go through fifth grade and builtmore prep since they are currently able to offer algebra as an in-person option so this is an opportunity for all of our students at our other schools that we don't where we don't have critical mass to be able to offer a full inperson opportunity just yet um it is an online course it's fully asynchronous and self-paced it's through the Phoenix Digital Academy at Phoenix Union High School District it's on Edgenuity which is the platform that we're using with the Virtual Academy um there is an iners there's a live teacher Miss Castile through Phoenix Union who supports the students she gives feedback she grades the work but the

017course really is self-paced so um in nominating our students the first thing we did is we looked at all of our students at all schools that were either proficient or highly proficient as possible candidates but then the next thing we did is we opened it up to the people that know them best which were their seventh and eighth grade teachers and we said okay we are looking for students who love math are highly motivated are self-driven and are looking for those High School opportunities because one of the things that we heard from Miss Georgia the principal at Phoenix Union and Miss Castile was that even for students that don't successfully complete the class it's a really positive opportunity for them it gives them more confidence when they do get into algebra their freshman year um

018and for those who do complete the class they don't have to take the placement test the algebra qualifying test through Phoenix Union they automatically get that credit which qualifies them to start geometry as freshmen which we know opens up the pathways to calculus as seniors which opens up the pathways to those highly competitive outof state universities that offer full ride scholarships to a lot of students like ours um this course is not in place of their eighth grade math their eighth grade math is their first priority and teachers know that know making sure that they have that strong Foundation as eth graders but um there's a couple of different ways that teachers are running it some teachers for example um M Ooa at the Katon Academy is working on a Model where te students take

019the module assessment at the beginning for their eighth grade math they're taking that first little module assessment as a preest and then if they have already mastered a lot of those skills they're able to work on their online course during the school day for most of our students this is something that they're completing on their own time and outside um we've also worked with the IT department to ensure that students have the necessary paperwork in place to be able to request to take home their iPads over weekends and over break to work on it so it's really exciting we're just getting started we are stumbling through parts of it we're learning a lot um but it's a great opportunity for our kids and we've already started to start to figure out how do we collect

020a little bit of data about the qualitative experience so one of the things that I asked our teachers to do today was to look at their list of students and do a personal check-in with each one of those 58 kids to see okay where are you if you're a little bit behind Pace right now what do you need to be able to move forward thank you so much and as Dr dupin said we have um six of the students that are in the program are from our black population awesome thank you so much for sharing all that I can't believe that they are doing it on top of eighth grade math curriculum um that's a lot of work to sign up for so kudos to them it is it's estimated to be about an hour

021a day five days a week it's about five hours a week I mean if you get everything the first time I was an algebra repeater so I know well then we we appreciate that clarification because one of the questions when Dr dup and I were talking earlier today was we initially didn't know whether it was in lie of and the concern I think when I talk to miss MC cheffrey you one of the concerns is like are we missing these eighth grade standards while we if we have five kids that are in this goal group right and all of the kids that are eighth graders in there are in our you know uh current measure group then are we also kind of shooting ourselves in the foot because they're not really focusing in on those

022eighth grade standards but the beauty is they're both focusing in on those eth grade standards and taking this extra layer so sounds like a the only person one is at BPA okay was there an inperson one at mon Vista last year I don't Valdez or the year we haven't offered an in-person one since before Co interesting okay wow I'm really glad thank you much yeah I'm super glad to hear that we're doing this um I have been asking for this for a long time we did have it at excellencia once because a teacher was able to do it it's really been like if there's capacity in a teach teach's classroom um and you know I just want to remind everybody I don't know six years ago we shortened the school day by 30 minutes I

023mean this is great um because I mean some families have the resources to offer enrichment you know tutoring um but this is great that they have this option to get online and do it at at their at their own time yeah I mean I'm sure it's it's uh challenging but I'm so glad that we're offering this so thank you everybody and I think in addition to the skills I mean you're already they may be I mean if if you're able to do an asynchronous program like this and have the self-starting stuff I mean that's going to be payoff in college as well um I mean let alone high school but yeah well it it may position those students to also be able to take some dual credit courses in high school that certainly to them

024otherwise because I know a lot of those are available in a similar format so we're very we're fortunate for our team putting the hard work into it but we're also fortunate to Phoenix Union as a partner District it's been a conversation for a couple of years to figure out how we could work together to do this and um it's just awesome that it's you know coming to fruition now because as everyone has pointed out in this conversation the challenge is always us being able to have the Staffing to offer it but if we have a partner District that can help us overcome that hurdle then we just need to be very thankful for our Math teachers that are willing to take on kind of juggling all of that and our students who are willing to

025take on the extra hour report so and thank you I say I just want to double down um that it is a great opportunity I know I don't even know how many years ago when I worked here we were looking at starting some online classes and algebra W was one of the um points that we were starting with because it was hard to do it in anyone site um so this is amazing and I was thinking to like the you know ability to do the asynchronous classes that is a skill in and of its own it requires a specific type of learner um and I know beyond the Phoenix Digital Academy like Phoenix Union also has pxu city which is more of a hybrid program that can give students a really personalized path so I

026think this is amazing thank you think so thank you and I also had another question Dr dupin um what was the percentage of the students that were eel sorry we got caught up and everything else that was I can answer that mergent language 15% of Fifth and eighth graders Y and there is just another piece to point out this is a dynamic population of students that we'll have to be mindful of um Mrs twist and I were talking just before the meeting and she let me know that in her analysis going through our roster of students there have been some changes just in the just since returning from break so so that number will fluctuate give or take as we talk uh through this goal and that's a function of just the overall size this

027is a relative small population within our students which is why it's such an important population to watch closely and support specifically now I know it's not going to I'm not asking for anybody to qualify anything or ask for anything like that but I I think it would be interesting to keep that information at hand i' just be curious when we get to the end of the five years what that fluctuation looked like over that over time in terms of the transiency of the population that's a great point and I takes me back to our study session when we were talking about you know kind of the difference between the population and the changes over time so that's a good segue into current measure and the interim measure so that interim measure focuses on this year's

028fifth graders those who will be the eighth graders in 2028 so I think every time we talk about that group of kids we'll be able to to specifically say well this is how many were with us in 2024 this is how many are with us at at this point in time and we'll be able to look at those students and potentially even now we won't be able to do it with like great we'll have to be careful because the numbers are so small but we will be able to likely in general terms say this is these are the similarities or differences between kids who've been with us the whole time versus kids that have have recently joined ouro I mean yeah you certainly would want to know if the entire population turned over too like

029that's a huge that would be a huge deal I mean not that that's going to happen but I think that information would be important it it it's not likely to entirely turn over although it is possible and now knowing the dynamic identity attributes that exist within this group it does invite different conversations about how we create meaning and connection with these families because in our research to date to ex to to to bring the community of black students into school there's in into um like a sense of excellence in school there's so much about the power of belonging feeling seen heard known by name um in our work just last week Mr Man and I met with a professor at Northern Arizona University that Mr gutieres introduced us to and he shared his personal experience

030of his father being an immigrant from Nigeria Nigeria so he he himself grew up in the United States but in you know as the child of immigrant parents and he described to us the the sort of intersection of of being an immigrant being a language learner and then growing up in that environment in the United States where where Blackness has a particular set of cultural attributes and and behaviors and even you know languages and ways of being and moving uh through community so that was a very eye openening experience for us because our population of kids and families kind of matches that multiple identity community no and I really appreciate that because the intersectionality and all of those layers are so important rather than you know we typically say a subgroup but it's very rare

031that one human child or adult represents only that specific subgroup so I just really appreciate that because we have kind of um decrease the SI the sample size that we're looking at that it's allowed the ability to really Di in and get to know you know what's working and what's not based on all of the layers of who these kids are so just a reminder we have the current measure which focuses on our eighth graders this year and we'll monitor that um throughout the year and then we have the interim measure which focuses on our fifth graders and we're talking about making you know small percentage increases in their proficiency during the course of this year so again because the population is so small it's it's not advisable practice to publicly report um in when

032you're talking about groups that might be less than might be 10 or fewer so I can't break down for you by school the specific numbers for just our group of black students because again the numbers are so small so I do share however the all student group so this is all of our kids together and what it highlights for us is the fact that there is not a massive disparity in on the post test how our black students in grades five and eight were I'm sorry on eth in 8th grade our black eth graders were scoring on that initial assessment in comparison to the rest of their peers districtwide so we monitor that for kind of proportional representation and again because they can't break out individually by school due to small numbers so when we

033consider uh the percent our current measure which is for eighth grade black students that score proficient on the DNA math benchmark assessment to increase from zero in May 2024 to 4% by May 2025 what we've observed and you can you know see the pattern it's been extremely consistent um that the the passage rate has has remained on all the assessments very very low um what we don't know looking historically at this data back through the prior years is the degree to which Mobility played a role I can't tell you with these kids how many of them were through you know have been with us um well throughout so or were with us for multiple years of instruction as eighth graders so but however the the pattern is very very clear um we did uh the

034percentage of our eighth grade students that scored proficient increased by 4% between ibm2 and the post test last year and so now we need to make a similar kind of increase this year in order to meet current measure 2.1 so that suggests to us because of past performance on this assessment that we are on track to reach current measure 2.1 by the end of this year so in considering our interim measure 2.2 and the percentage of fifth grade students scoring proficient in math again this is all students and you can see the same level of performance exists when we group all of our students together and then when we look specifically at our black Learners you see the same kind of pattern uh being present that very you know non-existent passage rates uh across multiple

035assessments across multiple years with the exception of the post test in 2223 when we did have a 5% passage rate there so the per the percentage of fifth grade students scoring efficient increased by 5% between ibm2 and the post test in 2223 so that does indicate to us kind of a sense of possibility around this goal uh but to incre to reach interim measure 2.1 by May 2025 we need to increase proficiency by 6% you know between now and the end of the year so because we don't have prior data to indicate that we've done that we are currently not on track to reach interim measure 2.2 and we have some proposals tonight or some strategies in mind that we'll talk about what we're going to do in response to that I I know that

036the last time we had a jump we had a different curriculum we weren't monitoring in the same way there's a lot of um additional variables there however was there anything in analysis that came to late that might have indicated why we saw a job honestly I know so much has changed that it's very app oranges there isn't U anything that comes specifically that I could offer as a as a definitive uh reason why that increased it could have come down to especially because of the small numbers it could have come down to the specific expertise of a teacher on one of the campuses um it could have come down to the impact of ongoing tutoring or effective instruction on a couple of students that had had acquired math knowledge in the past beyond that it

037would be pure speculation so in terms of you know what do we so what now what um as we discussed during the study session we did bring this data to our um to our kids Congress and we didn't speak with them explicitly about about black students in 8th grade we talked with them about math the kind of math learning experience overall and ask them for feedback and insights on their learning experience so the some of the things that they told us are that the teachers are trying very hard and they're providing instruction and practice and I can't stress enough how um complimentary the students really were of their teachers by name you know really recognizing the hard work that they feel their teachers are putting into to math classes they also indicated that Hands-On learning

038and the and the use of manipulatives is is very infrequent they don't they don't get that kind of practice now kids Congress is fifth through eighth graders so this is our Target group and we know based on our observations and practice that manipulatives you know blocks cubes um diagrams dice those are um tools that are commonly used in younger CH with younger children but are often not as present in the upper grades but we know now that we know that students in the upper grades benefit from those concrete examples as well so they can build their conceptual knowledge and then generalize so that stood out to us um as as valuable information and then they did describe um the the impact of long-term subs and the teacher shortage so they were very aware about the

039difference of having a teacher who's like their teacher and who's there every day versus a a a long-term sub even if it even if they're there for a while or certainly a daily sub and some of how that was described was that you know they know those teachers are trying hard as well but they don't feel like the other students maybe engage in the same way or behave in the same way and sometimes the behaviors actually create a distraction that prevents them from learning in classes where they don't have strong a strong teacher presence with strong management and strong relationships So based on that information we also inquired of you know based on our own observations and the information provided by our students we know that curriculum use is becoming more evident during the learning

040walks that's one of the things that we're looking across all of math instruction um to observe and we're not we're observing more frequent use of our adopted instructional materials Miss michaelb as you mentioned we do have we're in our second year of the the new Adoption of in maath um we're building our skills we building our awareness of those resources and it is becoming more evident um we have used the datawise process to identify a focus on increasing the use of success criteria ac across all grades and content areas and so learning walks for second quarter start again this coming Monday and we're going to continue to to monitor the use of that strategy and then support our teachers through the coaching process and through our assistant principles and principles to to do that work

041so what needs more attention for the future and this addresses the kind of where we're not on track greater awareness about the current and interim measures and annual targets need to be built with with and among our teachers so that means equipping our principles assistant principles our directors ourselves with with talking points and tools so we can go out and have the conversations to make sure everybody is aware of this priority and this focus and then the building of a sense of belonging for our black students that have been identified um to show them that they do belong in their math classes I think the algebra example is a really good one because again in this research what we discovered is that when students are highlighted because somebody thought to nominate them for this extra

042rigorous opportunity that sends a strong message of belief it sends a strong message of empowerment and then that in and of itself can motivate and Inspire those students to to do the hard work of the learning Miss Gibson mlan as you pointed out this is this is not easy for for kids to do and so taking on that challenge of those those that extra learning time is important so we're looking at several specific strategies um for our students specifically ideas include making sure that all of the lessons include what are like Windows and mirrors the concept of Windows and mirrors meaning in math problems that students get the opportunity to have a window into the lives and experiences of people who look like sound like and have lived like they have lived and then mirrors

043allow them to see themselves reflected in the content so that might mean a recommendation to purchase some differentiated instructional materials that are we we did establish a uh criteria when we adopted into maath as making sure that it did have culturally relevant examples but they might not be specific enough to this very specific group of students so I in continuing our research dug into like well what what can that look like and we got into some fascinating examples about how things like like like real phenomenon like subprime lending and how that has had an impact a disproportionate impact on communities of color um you know the high costs of like like the check cashing businesses and those kinds of things allowing students to Grapple with some of those real examples that they may have heard

044of may have seen um or may be aware of as they've navigated just their daily life could be of value um so that's just an example the way that interest rates work the way that interest rates are are sometimes unfairly distributed across Stu people of color and are um you know just biased quite frankly toward people of color those are the kinds of things I'm not saying that this is exactly what we would do but they're examples of Windows and mirrors that can be placed into um into learning experiences into curriculum that can help students feel more relevant and feel more more engaged can I ask a follow up on the students um is there a plan or talk of how to increase Hands-On learning and manipulatives that is this is such a fresh analysis

045that that's where we need to go next um so our our plan for that is to really look at the content of our professional development plan particularly for teachers of math grades five and eight and kind of start there and then unpack what's what has been planned and perhaps make modifications to to what has been planned you know our our instruction tends to focus on like the use of formulas the application of of like things you would memorize but not necessarily that deep content knowledge so we need to adjust the PD plan to set us IDE some of that and integrate some of these strategies we may also um and I wholeheartedly support what Mr Man said Marie is a phen Mrs twist is a phenomenal math expert um she and our four math coaches

046can't do it alone so we may need to procure some outside professional development support so that might look like going back to into maath and saying we've discovered or hmh is the publisher we have discovered that our students are not getting the practice that they would like or would benefit from with concrete examples realia and manipulatives we need professional development for our teachers on how to use the tools that came with our adoption more effectively please I was hoping you would didn't want to interrupt you um but actually our sixth through e8th grade math teachers started off the year with uh during our curriculum updates they started off the year with a two-hour professional development session on using algebra tiles which are a Hands-On manipulative that is relevant for sixth seventh and eighth grade students

047and is included in our adopted materials most of the teachers like I'm going to say 19 out of the 20 had not used them before they are amazing and there's a very steep learning curve and when you don't feel comfortable with a tool the last thing you want to do is get up in front of 13-year-olds and fumble with it and so we gave them the opportunity to work with a math professional development expert from the University of Arizona who was able to zoom in with us and provide a hybrid session with me for those teachers specifically um and then the course of our kraton professional learning sessions for the year one of the things that we have offered specifically for sixth seventh and eighth grade math teachers and some of our fifth grade teachers

048who are departmentalized um has been a partnership with the ad and their math content team on tools for building thinking classrooms which really encourage more Rich tasks and deeper thinking deeper collaboration among students as well as Hands-On learning experiences that are aligned with their standards so for example the session that they had in September gosh late August early September was specific to ratios and proportions and what kind of tools they already have again in their adopted materials in their classrooms ready to use to teach that in a way that's more concrete and more conceptual so giving students rather than teaching them this is how you find the ratio you flip it over and multiply instead of that it's like okay well how could you build a model how could you use your tiles now how

049could you turn that into a table how could you explain it to a partner what if we did it this way what would be a different way to do it so that's been some of the professional development we've already started their next session is going to be on math routines and again continuing the work with algebra tiles but we're working really closely with the facilitator from the Department of Education to bring really what's considered the gold standard right now which is building thinking classrooms and that connection between concrete like the things that you can touch pictoral and then abstract and the idea that the goal is not all abstract all the time and it's not a race to how do we get students to thinking abstractly that concrete pictorial and Abstract is something that you

050move back and forth between like you start off with concrete when you're building your idea about how to solve something but then even as you progress through being able to draw it being able to model it being able to talk about it or use an equation when you're confronted and we do this all the time in our real lives when you're confronted with something that is more challenging or a new or novel situation I know I like if I'm planning something at my we get out our piece of paper and we start to sketch it out again or we're going to encourage the students to get out their manipulatives again because it's a tool and it's not a crutch so we're really working to take away that stigma from oh you have to go and

051get the blocks to solve this too these are tools that we all use because they are helpful and they're engaging and really they make our math classes a lot more fun and a lot more interesting and so that's something that we're encouraging our upper grades teachers to really Embrace and run with for our students instead of something that students graduate from as they move out of the elementary years so I think our professional development plan for this year while it definitely still needs some adjustment especially for fifth grade specifically our Middle School teachers are really on a great path um and then another adjustment that we made this year is in the past our brand new teachers in their first couple of years have attended a new teacher professional development on those profession learning days

052which is really great and really helpful but also would have taken them away from the deep content knowledge that they need to be successful so this year those new teachers now participate in a brief one- hour monthly new teacher codre where they're getting those skills which frees them up to develop their content expertise on those crate and professional learning days and that's something that was really important to us this year because I mean these long-term Subs they are trying but Fifth and eighth grade math are complex so there's a lot we played with some of the math problems during our study session so we we got firsthand experience how hardly they're challenging they're challenging um if you're able and you and it's okay if you're not I'll put you on the spot can you talk

053a little bit about the coaching process and how our coaches are standing in the gap between an August PD session and then what comes next yeah absolutely we are so lucky this year to have moved into a more content focused coach model so instead of all of our coaches having to know a little bit of everything or a lot of everything um we have four coaches that are dedicated to math and science specifically so we have one coach that supports two schools they're paired and then one coach that supports three of our schools um some of the things that they've started off with teachers are learning how to use our resources learning how to analyze standards they've spent a lot of time planning with teachers in the day-to-day lessons but also looking at what is

054the data showing us or with our newer teachers how do we plan a lesson from start to finish how do we look at where your students are or how do we look at student work and figure out okay they got it wrong but we could have 10 kids that got this problem wrong for eight different reasons and we're going to address all of those reasons differently so being able to do some of that student work analysis um we've taken on impact coaching this year which is really student centered in the sense that it's all about about changing student outcomes student Bel attitudes um but really teacher driven as far as creating true partnership with our teachers so rather than coaches being more directive um working with teachers to have them analyze their own instruction analyze

055their student work analyze their student achievement and then determine what goals they want to work on as a teacher the coach will work with them to really clarify ify is it powerful is it student focused is it evidence-based and then develop a strategy to meet that goal coaches are going in they're doing a lot of modeling and co- teing with those teachers and then following up with support thank you very much so this concludes the the like formal narrative portion of the report um we have a set of questions that President CIO shared in advance which I'm prepared to speak to ALS so happy to answer any additional questions that you want to bring forward at this time if you're okay with it because I I think as we look at these three questions they're

056probably questions all of you had um and so it might and the team thank you team including some who aren't with us this evening um really kind of dug in like the depth of the answers was impressive to me as we were getting feedback so and just from an administrative and operational side we appreciate the opportunity to have the question in advance so that we can provide meaningful um information so the first question was what are the key factors influencing the current Gap in math proficiency rates for eth grade black students and what strategies are being used to address those root causes so we've already discussed some of those um you know the first is that our student community in grades five and eight is incredibly diverse and so it represents those different back backgrounds

057a different um language needs and different uh amounts of time within kraton schools the other Factor affecting um the Gap in proficiency is that the teaching of mathematics requires a high level of professional expertise and so as Mrs twist so eloquently described there's a lot of work going in right now to build that that professional capacity and teachers are working really hard to acquire the Knowledge and Skills that they need and then engage the students appropriately um but what we do know is that there are many new teachers in middle school classes um with limited classroom management experience and limited understanding of the math standards and they are very complex and so that that affects planning it also can result in less rigorous instruction and so that's being addressed through the professional development and coaching

058process I still believe that we need to really look at the way the coaching process is supporting Fifth and eighth grade teachers explicitly U because the coaches have kind of a case load and and we're being thoughtful about how we meet the needs of new teachers but then also what about a teacher who's in their third or fourth year but might be new to teaching math those needs are different so really trying to think of the teachers individually as the coaching plans are built and modified over time um our instruction as I've mentioned can be General and kind of at lower levels of thinking um with memorization of formulas and not that deep building of conceptual understanding that kids need and then um finally math lessons may not reflect and and frequently do not reflect

059the experiences and backgrounds of black students and this group of black students in particular and what that does is it doesn't feel like an invitation to engage for the kids so it's not on the kids for not engaging it's on us for not having content questions and opportunities to to invite them in so that's the first question her second question was by the end of the Academic Year how can we Implement and measure the effectiveness of specific strategies to empower and support black students in math classes and so the first piece that I'll offer is uh the use of time so we want to ensure that we're utilizing existing time and really this is monitored through through observation and reflection with the teachers and with our administrative leadership team we want to make sure that

060we're utilizing existing time and materials to provide instruction in two ways one is at the grade level of students even for kids who are two years behind they they must have exposure to grade level content so that is what kind of whole group lessons are designed to provide but then they also need small group time at their instructional level which is where you build basic skills um understanding and so our Master course schedule this year was designed with TW with 30 30 minutes 30 minutes of additional time for reteaching and enrichment we've provided flexibility about whether that time is used for ELA or for math um it is our position at this time that that especially for Fifth and eighth graders that really should be focused on math to help them you know really have

061a consistent an opportunity for that instructional level uh instruction and then also with the adoption of into math and with new tools that we've purchased through the the with the remaining Esser dollars there's a lot of new instructional resources for tier two and tier three which would be those instructional level groups and we you know there're so new that we're still really some of them we haven't even set up yet because we just bought them with the the very last of Esser so we have a lot to do to make sure that the teachers feel supported and that they can use those materials but that we are also kind of creating an expectation that those materials do are used for Effective instructional level practice and and support for the kids can I go follow up

062please do I love that the retach and enrich um is built back into the schedule if it's not in the schedule it won't happen um is there Flex ability like I agree with pushing you know specifically for certain groups of students um to use it for math is there also the flexibility though of like two days math two days Ela there is I think that's the right now that's exactly how it is you know it's it's at the discretion of the school team and the teachers to decide how it's going to be best used for instructional you know for their students needs um I think ultimately our data wise process the evaluation of our assessments can drive that decision you know when we look at the data in math it it suggests strongly um but

063I have to give a lot of credit to our site leaders because as we've discussed we talked about this at the study session the challenge with these benchmarks is that they are comprehensive so that kids don't they haven't had the opportunity to learn everything that's tested until the post test so we're not going to see big changes between the preest and ibm1 and ibm2 but our site leaders and our teachers are using all kinds of the like the common assessments that come with the curriculum they're building their own assessments to try to create more of the just in time um response to what the kids are showing them and so there is you know while we haven't we we're we're starting now to have conversations about how formal and how structured to make that across

064the district but there is a lot of work happening to get more formative assessment into place and then that would ideally Drive how that decision gets made does that make sense yeah yeah no I was just wondering because it's I know it's hard like you look at this and you say that has to be a priority but then you also typically we'll have students who need support in both and so it's a balancing act well that's a great point because when we also consider the 15% are emerging multilinguals that means they're also in one of the the um blocks for language development either the targeted or the the pullout or um even dual language so so we know that language acquisition also plays a role which for those students might indicate a benef a greater

065benefit if that time was devoted to language and vocabulary development versus conceptual development in math so it really is it's a lot of kid byid work with this group of kiddos see so we' discussed the use of time the use of the tiered materials we've talked about professional collaboration and professional development support um and then as far as progress monitoring to to monitor the implementation of these supports we Dr Pomo just constantly reminds us of the importance of Street data so those formative assessments those just in time measures that the teachers are utilizing or building will be valuable um we also believe that a structure that allows us to track the existence and the impact of interventions specifically for this group of students will be valuable so now we know who they are we know

066where they are we know who their teachers are and we are able to monitor with greater um finesse or greater uh detail the the kinds of supports the kids are getting and then one of the things that we wonder about at this moment is just for these kids the their attendance in particular and we're wondering also if through our our community engagement and Outreach team it may be appropriate to convene some focused groups or a focused group to talk with parents and kids just to Elevate this conversation because it you know one of the challenges for me personally and I'll speak only for myself with this school is it's like we're talking about people who aren't in the room and it feels uncomfortable so we would like to and Mr Man and I have been

067discussing this create some opportunities with the people in the room who are affected by this school not to ask them to solve the problems but just to include them in the conversation um and then create a greater sense of belonging create a greater sense of connection and if there are social emotional learning needs or Community like basic support needs that the Family Resource Center could help with that might be the kinds of tools and supports that create that belonging that create that connection for multiple years that can eventually lead to success in mathematics and I think oh there's one more what adjustments or addition resources are needed to meet the May 2025 targets and how will our approach change to accelerate progress so one of the strategies that we've used um with success in the

068past is individual goal setting again Mr Gutierrez is an example of uh leader and there are many who have done that work actually sitting with students identifying progress setting goals um we may need to invest in additional math focused professional development or invest in time for people to participate in the Partnerships that we've built in that we have in place that Mrs twist described um she beautifully described the content in our professional development plan I think that you know is is always going to require kind of the possibility for ongoing adjustment but the plan that's in place looks very strong um and also we want to make sure that we are meeting the needs of those fifth grade teachers as well and um Mr Man and I have been meeting with a series of leaders

069in the field of anti-racism and we believe that a a a multifaceted approach to address anti-racism that leads to great a greater sense of belonging and inclusion for black students in particular and all students um can also be part of our adjustment to more effectively respond to the needss of these [Music] students I have a question um Mr Man and I had a good um uh chat today and I just kind of wanted we talked about it a little bit um already with the data that you found about the subgroup and I think that's really that's great information to have and so helpful um one of the things you mentioned long-term Subs and behavioral challenges impacting learning um what can we do or what um about like overd disciplining over suspending our black students because

070we know that's happening um and we know it affects their learning so and we know we have if you're coming from another country leaving your your home um that's like an incredible amount of trauma that these families are facing and I think it's hard to understand probably for a long-term sub who isn't an expert in the subject matter perhaps or even classroom management yet so um I know where we've got our um student conduct Advisory Board which is a awesome start um but is that something that we're going to look at as well I would say that that's a um a profound insight it and one of the benefits of being able to literally know who all these students are across the district is that we'll be able to we and by we I mean

071our site leadership teams and our teachers will be able to cultivate you know really meaningful conversations with the kids and I think be better positioned to intervene proactively before suspension becomes an issue or before an incident would occur um because you start to know what what their um kind of what their triggers are if they exist what their you know kind of who their friends are and who they don't get along with and how to potentially build relationships so I think that there's an opportunity with both our assistant principal team to think through and carefully mindfully address strategies for all of these students and then also um for our community engagement and Outreach Specialists to know all of these families and to be able to then provide any kinds of basic need supports or the

072social emotional supports that would be necessary to equip the kids to to feel confident and well solve problems to to um engage effectively at school and there I don't see it here now but there was I loved the comment about making sure that um every like the teacher knows the names of all of these students I think that's kind of a a low bar but it's every kid needs to have somebody close by that knows their name you know um but I think that's like getting to know them so to prevent a suspension is that's really what I I love hearing that so and we were feeling like so with this group of students the reason that they show up in these groups is because their families declared when they filled out the annual enrollment

073paperwork that this identity reflects me and my experience so what that means is you can't walk into a to a school or a classroom and and identify who the black students are just by looking and so we wanted to make sure that we really did know who was explicitly self-identifying through the registration process to join this subgroup and so to know exactly who they are and not to generalize and also to be able to say the practices that we've described are really beneficial for everybody however there are some explicit Invitational and inclusive acts and celebratory acts that are going to be meaningful to this group of kids by name that's where we've gotten as a result of this work so I appreciate that feedback I think the only other thing to re recognize in that

074is um trying to word this correctly I'm sorry but um the only other thing to recognize in that is I appreciate the way in which we approached uh identifying this group however when it comes to the specific things Mi MC cheffrey is talking about I don't think it comes I don't think we analyze that issue from that Viewpoint you need to analyze it from the Viewpoint of how they're being perceived by the folks who are potentially disciplining them and that's because we're not trying to be color blind here and how someone may identify in a certain way and not present as black to some and it with these issues it's going to be all about how they're being perceived by whoever is potentially disciplining them so I just want us to be cognizant I'm not

075saying we aren't I just want to make sure we're pointing that out that's valuable feedback thank you yeah and I think that ties back into you know some of the things we're looking at with the work around anti-racism is being able to you know put ourselves in a position to be able to identify some of those lenses that that we see the world through um but even beyond that to create space and this is why you know when we talk about it one of the things that we've been trying to figure out and it makes it more challenging but we have multiple layers that we really need to approach and those multiple layers really lend themselves to different specific groups so um we've been talking a lot about the students and the teachers tonight all

076of that's true but we also need to make sure that the site leaders the PE the folks who are involved in some of those processes where these determinations are made that they're receiving appropriate support as well um we also need to make certain that the parents and the families are as well so as we've been looking at both sides of the coin the the actual specific goals and how to make those effective and you know the correlated guard rail that ties to the anti-racism which really ties into this very closely one of the things we're trying to be very cognizant about is making certain that the approach we develop even if it requires support from multiple different venues approaches each one of those different groups specifically based on what the needs are for that specific

077group to to help be part of the solution rather than you know absolutely unintentionally being part of perpetuating sort of the existing status of things so um and one of the beautiful things that's happened throughout this process I think I shared this I might have shared it in in our last conversation or it may have been in the Saturday study session but one of the amazing things that Dr pombo brought to us um is this datawise process that we're using and um you as we as we continue to develop efficacy and skill with that process it really gives us the tools to be able to drill down deeper into the data to look at the differentiation between satellite data and Street data and really kind of understand our students at a much deeper level and

078by being able to do that that's really not only going to be able to help us engage those students by name but it'll be it'll Empower our teachers and our staff to be able to engage those students by need as well and so I think it's really important for us to be able to drill down to that level not just for this subpopulation but ultimately for all our students to be able to do that in the limited time frames that we have requires a very very high level of skill so it's not going to happen day one or this year but as we continue to progress we'll we'll see more and more effective implementation I had some experience with a similar process in a prior district and over a five-year period we shifted from looking

079at schoolwide data to classroom data to individual student data you know what some of our schools were already drilled down to that individual student level so as I think we're on a fast track to get better stronger with that um and that will really help us be more effective and and I was noticing I was taking a look because I thought I had seen it our next item is the board self- evaluation and one of the items within that board self- evaluation is a question about um whether the board has used Root data analysis as part of setting the goals so I mean we did our best attempt to do that but the data that we primarily had was aasa testing data that we dug through we dug into some other Benchmark data and whatnot

080I don't personally believe we were at a level of sophistication yet to get to True root cause analysis data where I see that living is in this data wise process that we've been sort of developing facility with and so that's not a bad thing right we've identified some real hot spots and we're going to dig in on them and we're going to create improvements and we're going to leverage the data wise process to help us do that but one of the things that really struck me in looking at the outcome focused governance work and the board's role in it is that the next time that we're able to sit down and reestablish goals I believe that our team will be at a point to be able to bring the type of data to the board

081and build a level of facility for the board in being able to do some of that root cause root cause analysis leveraging that datawise process and that will take us even a step further further Beyond where we're at right now I also had after listening to the four of you um I had just a follow-up wondering because you had mentioned like the long-term Subs um and so and again I don't have Solutions but I'm just thinking in terms because long-term Subs are typically sourced outside so they're not full-time parts of our staff so they're not going to get the same type of professional development um so my wondering is just kind of are we thinking about other ways that we could have support systems in place because I you know I know that there'll be

082a great level team that's like they have a system this team whenever they have a sub in they've you know got a support for the sub um but have there been any conversations about how can we better support systematically our long-term Subs because they are guests in our district and it's difficult to come in um and not have the same amount of training not necessarily know all of the students know the curriculum Etc I don't expect a concrete answer in detail on that right now it's more just a I would say it's definitely a a um a point of discussion at this time and I don't know Miss twist or Dr Lauren if you have anything to add about PD for the subs and you don't have to but if you uh I I know

083that there is an expectation for certification when they recertify sub that they are required to have a certain number of hours of professional development and I think that we could work with our partner ESI on how we could provide some of that um so that's certainly something I can take back to ESI and see what we can do to support in that way and then this year we looking for those hours so yeah it's a great point and a great strategy this year we built on um a model that had been in place at bmore Preparatory Academy and the kraton academy and and I think one or two other of our other sites to have team leads and so we actually used our um targeted School Improvement Grant to fund additional compensation for team leads

084who who are taking on a variety of responsibilities um including helping to support the planning process so that and um so there's a little bit more direct support and partnership for substitute teachers who would be at at any given grade level but it's it's 100% a need and something that needs more attention anybody else have any questions comments all right thank you Dr dupin thank you to your team um for all the hard work I know it's um hard to delve deep into this and it sounds like there's been a lot of good um outcomes for uh everybody and discovering certain things um we have to approve yes so well I mean you don't have to approve you can choose not to but but the board should should take action to either approve or disapprove

085prog progress monitoring so um I move to adopt the progress monitoring goal goal two second all in favor I I I all right now we're going to move on to our board self evaluation um and I have um um I have some things that uh Miss Creo has um typed up just to explain um about the self evaluation uh buenos noas I am pleased to introduce Katon Elementary School District governing board's first self- evaluation this initiative is essential for our continuous Improvement and Effectiveness in governance so why conduct a board self- evaluation a governing board's performance plays a critical role in the success of their District engaging in a governing board self-evaluation demonstrates a commitment to continuous Improvement which is essential to achieving student outcome goals by conducting a board self-evaluation the governing board not

086only works towards enhancing the governing board's performance but also models the culture of continuous Improvement that the district must adopt to advance Student Success it is understood for most boards transitioning to an outcomes focused governance represents a significant shift this transformation won't happen overnight it requires intentional effort self-monitoring and a strong commitment to ongoing progress so using the framework we will utilize the student outcome focused governance or sofg structural Implement designed for the governing board as a whole the prayon governing board will score itself based on the sofg implementation rubric as a governing board in various practice areas with this tool these scores will combine to give us an overall score between 0er and 100 indicating our Effectiveness as a governing board and focusing on student outcomes so what's the process after scoring the president

087or the clerk will guide us through a collective planning process this will establish our starting points clarifying our strengths and areas for improvement during public meetings the governing board will publicly agree about where and how they plan to improve by the end of the next quarter we will revisit this process every 3 month months to track our progress and ensure our focus on student outcome continues to grow expected outcomes typically boards can Pro progress from a score of zero to over 80 within two years but this requires the support of a certified coach with this Guidance the necessary behavioral changes are easier to achieve in conclusion the self- evaluation is not just a formality but a commitment to the kraton elementary school district governing board's mission of improving student outcomes so hopefully everybody has uh

088gotten to take a look at um the rubric um I just we're gonna put that up right yeah it's just it's not let to be connect oh yeah there was like an internet problem for a second okay so we will get that um put up as soon as um we can because I would like but it is online too if it is online the manual just to reference it's on page 21 if you go to the attachment that's labeled student outcomes Focus governance manual and go to page 21 it starts I think I've got sorry connect mine has been saying no internet for some time but it just has been slow I think it's me yeah that's you that's an iPad yeah but should hopefully be legible sorry I didn't mean to interfere with the

089troubleshooting I'm an expediency guy so just for the audience purposes um especially because I'm an educator and a lot of you out there understand education the one thing that I think is different from this as to what we're used to um when we're doing evaluations is on here we have to make sure that each thing that is listed we are meeting in that area and if we say no to one of them then it's a no in that category so unlike um a lot of our evaluations if it's a yes in most things but maybe you know in a couple like we still get like that point or whatever so a much more intense rubric yeah so I like was like very shocked by that at first because I was like oh it's not like

090a okay it's almost all but um no it has to be every single um uh thing in that actual um section sorry just to clarify I was directing people to the actual evaluation section in the manual you all are looking at something else so you are looking at the rubric yeah the rubric is where you get the scores to put in on page 21 was my understanding but I wanted to clarify that too because you're like page 21 and I'm like wait what yeah that's where I was just because it wasn't clear it's just an entire manual that's uploaded here so if people are watching along and open this they're going to be like yeah no okay if you look at the table contents you would do what I would do and go immediately to

091board quarterly self-evaluation okay so um the first one that we're going to be scoring is vision and goals the board will in colaboration with the superintendent adopt goals that are student outcome focused so um I'm hoping that we've all looked at this and can maybe start at a starting point and then have discussions based on that instead of going through every single one does anybody want to start with this first one should we R I'm yeah I'm not sure what what we're doing so like I don't know if everybody's read through it but I've already read through it and kind of have made like some notes in like what I think I would give it then I think that we could have conversations about it then because we have to come to an agreement so

092instead of reading through every single one like if somebody says I think this is approaching like maybe we start there see I could do that for the vision and goals um when I was reviewing them I [Music] believe we are approaching I'm rereading them just to double check myself um because we have our smart goals we collaborate with superintendent we have the correct number we have interim goal three inome goals for each correct yes yes um and we're updating them throughout the school year well then I I would encourage you to take a look at the meeting column as well oh yeah no I think we we that's why I was like starting point I feel confident we've at least gotten approaching well I was gonna say we have at least meeting I didn't read

093through everything oning but I didn't think we're here at I did meeting on this one yeah I think we have done all these um on meeting on meeting I agree is there any one of those on meeting that anyone thinks we haven't done no are we comfortable with meeting for this first yes yes yes excellent all right let's move on to the next one next one values and guard rails the board will in collaboration with the superintendent adopt guard rails I um to be honest in between approaching and meeting so I I think for me this one is up for discussion as to which one um I'm leaning more towards I guess for the meeting I just don't know if it's an issue of semantics in terms of what we're not like saying theories of

094action out loud but I guess maybe if someone believes that we're doing that just say how we've done that I guess I I assume it's what you're presenting to us in the progress monitoring in terms of the path in which you're you've decided to try to take this there with with it with your team in conjunction with your team but that feels weird because it's saying the board is yeah it's it's it's interesting because in reading this one and and I feel woefully inadequate on it because it um it seems to be referring to a process that I'm not familiar with from the coaching process thus far so it may be something we haven't progressed into yet um but it it it implies that the superintendent was included in the theory consideration process which makes

095it sound like you were implying that the it was an activity by the board and I don't recall us doing that unless there's something we've done that I didn't interpret as being that like different language was used yeah so I think that's really the one that sticks out to me as we haven't done that yeah I would agree yeah and I would May a Culp on that top one too because while we have interim guardrail ending points we we did so we haven't I don't know that we have them for each year yeah so okay so approaching on this one is everybody in agreements yes yeah all right then we will move to the next one monitoring and accountability the board will devote significant time monthly to monitoring progress towards the goals so in this

096one um I just want to let you guys know that um I as a clerk I have been taking um times on each section um just to make sure that we are approaching like 50% of our time is spent on student focused governance and we are really close to the 50% Mark spending 50% of our meetings um so that first one says 25% so we definitely have hit are hitting that goal um in that one yeah I think it's like for me when I read through these I'm like it's hard to get to meet just because we haven't gotten to a full year so I don't feel good about saying we've done something even though we have a plan to do so we also haven't done the board has been provided copies of implementing board

097goals the in implementation instrument so I think we're still approaching on this one yeah I agree is everyone okay on approaching hold on okay um we have not get done a superintendent evaluation with this framework would be my caveat of what we have not met on a proing agree yeah true like I thought there was something on here and it's not bad that we're not there yet we just haven't had we just we haven't reached that point that's right yeah so should we drop it down to to not not student outcome Focus govern yeah all right okay excellent all right the next communication and collaboration the board will lead transparently and include stakeholders in the pursuit of the goals does anybody want to have discussion on where you want to start well we're definitely not

098meeting no I would start at approaching maybe and then go from there so all consent eligible items were placed on the consent agenda and all but a you were voted on using a consent agenda think we've switched over to that we have switched over to that the board tracks its use of time and board authorized public meetings categorizing every minute used as one of the following so we really have not done that I think and we haven't done the community engagement no we haven't really started yeah of the not at this one yeah I think so far because we've had um data provided to us as far as counting some of these categories on the for the minute but not all of them all right so are we in agreement for not student focused yes

099okay all right unity and Trust the board will lead with one voice in its pursuit of the goals well I think we're still we're at notd on this one as well we have not adopted a policy or procedure requiring that information provided by the superintendent to one board memb is provided to all board members we haven't reviewed all our policies etc etc yes I agree is there any other discussion or is everybody okay with that I'm fine with it yeah okay all right then the last one continuous Improvement the board board will invest time and resources towards improving its focus on the goals I know we're starting some of these pieces I been working on like the investment and the finances I don't know how much has been looked at as far as the time

100equivalents to the finances but I don't know that I don't think we're there for approaching no I think we're still at not I think we're totally at a not because this is our first cell phone and then yeah so like I don't know how we could have anything else but so is everybody okay with not student no not student outcome Focus yes yes okay so Hilda did you add those up by oh thank you I did not so 30 2 and the Z so then we just need to um make a motion to approve a goal of 30 or I mean not sorry not our goal our decision now just uh really quick though is maybe because I'm a lawyer but is somebody Gonna Fill In This template with our numbers and then keep it

101on files somewhere because we just said all this out loud it on my iPad but I'm just saying we need a record of this right H is 30 right now that what you have yeah yeah but what I mean is the actual form that's in this document is it going to be filled out kept on file somewhere so we have it well I think it'd be good if we could make like this template's good except across the top our the months don't match us oh the one yeah on page 21 so but if we could have running like Google that with that that this was sent to us as a PDF document yeah but you you can open it into a Google tried it wouldn't do it I have that on my compter at my

102desk and it it did not do well because I tried to like adjust it just because it drives me insane when something is on this page when it should start you Russell that's yeah I think that's a maybe I mean we'll manipulate Dr or maybe that's a Dr Ramos's question like or I can you know what I'm gonna email Dr R okay is there a fillable editable yeah it would be nice to have it like up on when you pull down on governing board on the website so that anybody can go there and see it transparency I'm ocing it right now if I can copy the spreadsheet out of there I will just put it I will just do it right now if it doesn't work then I'll be like whatever but I'm ocing it

103right now so do so do I just make a motion to approve the score of 30 yeah to basically approve the board self- evaluation okay cuz it's not just the score of 30 like we capture it what it was for each of the categories yes yeah okay then I make a motion to approve the um where is it wow I'm really like lost in here the board self- evaluation um for our first one in resulting in a score of 30 my second all those in favor I I all right next we [Music] have our consent no sorry our public comments Hilda do we have any public comments All right so approval of consent I move the governing board approve consent items a through G in accordance with policy gov I oh sorry all those favor

104I I thank you all right this leads us to our next section which is business implant all right Miss Shapiro hand it over to you thank you so while Miss Shapiro is setting up I um just wanted to share that this is our annual Bond and override proceeds presentation um there is a statutory requirement that we present on this um by October each year um in a public meeting that public meeting doesn't specifically have to be a board meeting we choose to do it as part of our governing board meeting um and Miss Shapiro and her team have been working to get all the numbers gathered together to be able to um provide the board with this Look Backwards to the 2324 fiscal year and some historical data about our expenditures sure the one time

105I'm not longwind it's we need more time sing for us um the only request I've ever received is to stop singing so i i s for you it takes a village every time really there I know I get real hot I'm like on fire I think it's happening it'll happen it's happening thank you um board member superintendent man tonight I'll be presenting um as required by Statute information regarding the use of bond and override proceeds during the 20232 24 school year the most recent Bond authorization was passed November 8th 2016 at a special election um obviously we've been expending those Bond dollars uh some of those bigger uh pieces were at the kraton Academy at Kennedy um this is the bond authorization that we are phasing out as we move into November election all three

106Bond sales for that authorization have been completed and we do need to um reasonably uh expect to expend those Bond sales within three years and that's an IRS ruling it's very tiny um let's see can I make it bigger oh cool nope I canot um our bond expenditures are broken out on this slide uh in order to let uh give the information by our School site and by uh the type of expenditures you'll see on here that there are um construction items some of our technology doors fencing flooring Roofing Plumbing those are the items that these Bond dollars are so important and critical uh to have access to in order to upkeep these types of systems uh we do not receive enough Capital dollars to upkeep this without these Bond initiatives and these are some

107historic Bond expenditures you can see that um these are three different authorizations that kind of overlap over the years since fiscal year um 2011 to current and again as we're phasing out this um last uh Bond authorization we have approximately 15 million dollar remaining those Bond dollars uh are planned in this upcoming year to cover some of our Safety and Security upgrades uh we've had lots of discussions with our uh board members regarding our EV buses uh some of these projects the Kennedy north um projects uh that were not included in the Kennedy build um a lot of those life uh Safety and Security Pro uh projects that you saw on some of those previous slides um the same types of items that we expend on every year the remodels fencing playgrounds um the things

108that we need to do to upkeep our schools and keep our facilities in good repair and safe for our students uh we are looking at some Marquee upgrades this year uh these things happen on a on a cycle that's why you'll see life cycle projects um as we move through it you don't want to replace all the fencing that would not that means then when they need repair would be all of the fences would need repair so you want to look at life cycle projects where one year at one school you might do painting and fencing and plumbing and at another school maybe you're doing a Technologies intercom and mares we do spread that out and do significant Capital planning uh working with our it Department and our facilities Department um and transportation to ensure

109that uh we can plan these projects out sometimes unexpected things happen like a grease trap um project that's going to have to happen at builtmore it's very pricey um and uh that's why those uh Bond planned projects stay pretty flexible in addition to those Bond dollars we also have um a d AA uh Capital override um we utilize these funding sources based on what's in our voter pamplets and what our voters have voted for um in this case our capital is being used for uh additional assistance those are some of those playgrounds um and other bigger projects at the school sites but also these are our curriculum materials this is our adoption dollars these are the instructional materials the manipulatives these are also for furniture and equipment and Technology at the school sites our planned

110Capital expenditures in 2425 um are going to be similar to what we were doing in 2324 um curriculum and supplemental purchases and licenses we're anticipating additional dollars being spent in these areas because of sofg so uh we wanted to make sure in our planning that we have that capacity to be very flexible as needs are defined uh when we go through our interim goals so a lot of the things that we've been talking about tonight uh when we're talking about our anti-racism and those layers uh We've budgeted dollars in to ensure that we have the capacity to step up to that once uh those determinations have been made in addition to those other uh voter initiatives we also have in place currently an M override uh that's a 15% override of our um budgeted M

111dollars that the state allows us to have um the override accounted for approximately 5 million budget capacity in FY 24 um again those election pamplets uh outline those needs this uh current emino override election pamphlet is supporting maintaining um not only teacher salaries but also programs such as full day kindergarten um our special areas opportunities additional opportunities for students um but also our assistant principles um a lot of those supervisory and um uh support positions for classrooms and um supplies and materials for classroom instruction each year the auditor general uh does a report on all School District spending and how we're spending our dollars this report is from FY 23 last year I had showed you fy or fiscal year 22 that'd be the school year of 20 2122 um the auditor general is it

112needs to wait until our financials are filed with the state in order to pull that uh information so this report is always one year behind the information I'll be sharing tonight with the annual financial report which will close up our fiscal year 2324 spending um it's kind of interesting because last year when I uh pulled the annual financial report I had noticed uh some decreases and increases that uh we put in our presentation it was nice to see that fall out into the auditor General's report which was a slight decrease in administrative spending um we know that uh this is happening because of some of our um efficiency look at some of our areas and uh uh some more alignment and reorganization of our areas we continue to be looking in those areas so I

113expect to see um probably in the future a slight decline in administrative spending um also what we had seen was an increase in that direct student support spending um outside of the classroom this is really directly because of those Sesser dollars so I expect to see that decrease um because we are completely sunsetting those S dollars that gave that opportunity to extend things that um uh and not have the direct impact that we would have normally seen in a declining enrollment state so because we're um we kept going and utilizing those dollars uh we'll start seeing some decreases and available funding uh as we move down the path of those uh dollars not being available and our declining enrollment situation but there's always strategies and planning and and we know it's happening uh and we

114have um sofg kind of supporting the decision-making and helping to focus into the important key areas so uh it is exciting when you talked about how we're tying these things together uh to have that laser focus uh even at this level which is not something that um I've always gotten to do when it ties budget and expenditures actual student learning so I really do get very excited about it and I just appreciate the board bringing something like this that really does allow us uh to make these connections and that is the end of that presentation thank you is there any questions all right then we move to B presentation and approval of annual financial report for fiscal year 203 ah I did it without help [Laughter] Russell um get to my thing uh again uh

115there is a statutory requirement to present the annual financial report to our governing board in a public meeting and also submit this report which I will be doing tonight to the auditor general by October 15th and Post links to that information on our website um the purpose of the annual financial report is to provide um our school district fiscal years are running from July 1 to June 30th so once our expenditures are completed in those years we have a couple of months in um July and August to close up the year then we spend the rest of September um up into October 15 uh shutting it down cleaning it up a lot of people working um at a frantic Pace to because at the same time we're running the next fiscal year so you have

116a a temporary amount of time that you are running two fiscal years uh it is fun to say the least um statute requires us to approve and submit it by October 15 luckily we had a meeting tonight the AFR also goes out very publicly and allows policy makers and taxpayers taxpayers to uh look at that information so that we can be very transparent um and we do put that out in many areas as I said it not only is it on the state's website uh but also on our own Local website it does need to be approved by the governing board and um and it is published so our M budget balance uh I know this is like one of the more interesting areas because it is uh it does make up um a large

117amount of our general fund and I wanted to do some comparisons this year I think in last year's um presentation we just kind of gave how did we finish up for this year and I like that historical comparison um it it has some interesting information in there so in the prior year uh py 2223 we had a budget of 45 million and because of some changes in the legislature and just um uh some foresight and planning our budgeted M expenditures ended up in 23 24 at 47 million our actual expenditures you can see there a 35 we increased to 38 uh that was uh primarily for funding salaries and benefits and then we have that ending budget balance so there's a um an interest in that budget balance carry forward so that's that in number

118and that's the number that we're caring for that we are focused on when we go into uh our meet and confer talks uh when we're planning the future dis District fiscal Health uh we are looking at and I've shared with the board um some mechanisms to have a fund balance Reserve policy as we move through this year uh I expect to have a fund balance Reserve policy that is presented and approved by the board um some of the um percentages that we've put out there is it takes anywhere from to 30% of a fund balance Reserve to ensure a District's fiscal Health it depends on risk level it depends on uh our Focus um having the ability to have flexibility as I said before as we move through sofg and we target certain areas there's

119an interest there to ensure that we are being very um precise and well thought as we move through that process so I expect to be bringing some of that information to the board in the future the other big piece this year that kind of came up in this last year budget was the quasm Meer I apologize everyone says it differently um lawsuit we discussed that a few times in and governing board updates the district was exceedingly lucky to have a cash Reserve balance in M um what that is is a fund balance because m is collected from taxpayers and it's a a function of tax collection you don't that doesn't tie exactly to budget so you're never going to see the same numbers there because of our tax collection and those cash balances the district

120did not have to go out to our local taxpayers and ask for more money to cover um the reserves for this lawsuit so um that was a really big win for kraton there were other districts that had to do Tans or had to go back out to their taxpayers uh increase their tax levies uh by millions of dollars so good planning I did some like I went a deep dive when this article came out and like I went through all of the like urban districts and per um like per capita I forgot what unit I was looking at we would be like the most impacted because it's like very strange the demographics financially of our district geographically speaking versus you know the population we serve and so um um it was just I'm glad we

121had the stuff in the reserves it still made me angry because if we didn't have that then we'd be footing the bill because of someone's mistake and way disproportionately than any other even the largest districts in the state yes it was enraging to me to watch and so I hope if no one's listening to this but I asked Jay at the time I hope we're sending a letter to the assessor's office to say hey this better not happen again this is ridiculous yeah so I hope it doesn't happen again I I do it was a scramble and it took us a while to figure out how we were going to handle it as soon as it uh became clear to me um what reserves were there I I felt pretty confident bringing that information to

122the board other districts did not have the same capability that we had so as you said we could have been very impacted and would have had to go out to our taxpayers and put that burden on them I think too like you know all of this is so complex and it's already a struggle when we're going out for bonds and overrides to explain where the funds go and how they're marked and how it all works and so when like I agree with you it's enraging because it can have the unintended consequence of losing more trust in school districts when the school districts had nothing to do with the mistakes that were made so I typed a novel on next door just this morning on and over I've changed know we didn't make the mistake we

123did not so um I think an area that's very interesting with maintenance and operation uh expenditures is where what category is it and we've done a little bit of um uh sessions uh study sessions with the board explaining kind of how these category or functions in the um uh expenditure side happen and it all comes from my favorite account codes and so because we have a very good structure of account coding within the district we're able to align uh these categories historically I can look at information um I can know so much by just looking at a string of numbers it's fascinating to me and so I just put a slide in that just makes me happy and I think brings the board good information classroom instruction is that like Direct in the classroom these

124are teachers these are materials being used right in the classroom and you can see um that there was a very slight decrease of in classroom instruction Uh I that primarily came from um the administrative section in schools not in general admin so not at the district office level uh but the in schools which were those assistant principles um that came about because that was directly in our voter pamplet and our voters voted to have assistant principles in our schools they felt that that was important and we needed to acknowledge that and get that put in place um we also uh see that about oh I can't see my notes um 70 plus percent is at the school site support so that's either direct classroom support direct student support um administrative support directly at the school

125site over 70% of our budget goes to there and then you can see the other areas our physical plant another one that is a bigger spend because we're upkeeping those facilities uh so those dollars are going straight to our school sites and then Transportation um and then slightly our our uh Central Services the other is our uh Family Resource Center and that support that we offer our community is a small percentage of our memo expenditures so I just wanted to make sure I pointed out some of the notable changes uh as Mr Man said this isn't something like this is what it is I can't go back and change what's happened these are where we expended our monies so I'd like to uh point out what we did um our ADM which is our average

126daily membership of our students when we're talking about that enrollment this is a number that pushes the dollars it decreased by 213 um that is a slower rate from the prior year the prior year was over 300 so it's nice to see that it is uh slowing down uh but we still none of the information or demographics are telling us that it's going to change in any way uh so we are just expecting a all the experts are telling us that birth rates have declined it's happening at all school districts it's happening at Charter districts and private schools it's happening across the state um our IMO spending increased by $3 million 2.2 million of that increase was in staff salaries and benefits which is where we're focusing those dollars uh we know our people are

127most important um asset and so we want to continue to support in that area the rest was due to those inflationary increases that I think everybody's been aware of how much things cost uh they cost more um that's another reason why we build some reserves because we did see some dramatic increases in inflationary um expenditures and luckily we were able to handle that and still continue to purchase the supplies and services that are necessary our federal uh spending has decreased by 4 million that's sunsetting those those covid funds the Esser we also know that we had decreased title funding that also is affected by um uh various demographic but includes declining enrollment we are going to continue to see decreases in that expenditure so what's really fantastic in kraton is that we have um core

128areas and in the Grants Department we have some just amazing staff who are very very good at what they're doing and we are working in Partnership to ensure that these funds they're not happening in a vacuum we talk about these and we collaborate to ensure that we're supporting each other as these funds are decreasing we want to have the maximum bang for our buck so we uh work closely with effective schools to ensure that they know what we're doing and we know that what they're doing our Capital spending decrease by 4 .3 million this is uh an interesting number because uh as we talked about that Capital spending and how restricted it is it can only be used for um the voter initiative dollars can only be used for that we have a very tiny

129amount of capital spending that comes in that's just um uh unreserved capital outlay and what that means is then we can use it on any eligible capital expenditure that does not include salaries and benefits that's um remodels Construction Equipment Technology uh those types of items but I'm not necessarily tied down to a voter pamphlet saying I can only spend it on a bus or I can only spend it on a on a disc so um we get very little of that money I kind of make sure that we keep that protected um but one of the things that kraton does a really good job is planning ahead and so you're going to see that Capital spending fluctuate as we plan ahead for bigger items like adoptions that cost millions of dollars so you'll see decrease

130spending for a couple years as we save up in order to have the bigger spend for a plann uh project just very it's been done very well here I just I don't know what else to say uh um and that's the end of that presentation I'll take any questions thank you does anyone have questions I mean I was going to say you can tell me off if I'm wrong but I just uh when we ever we get these presentations I thank you so much for your work and your whole team I know there's a lot of work that's going on and I know that we are in this position because of your leadership and I makes me happy every day that we've solidified our choice in leadership and I appreciate all the work You' done

131for years in leading that department well I I need to give kudos to Miss Shapiro because the improvements she's been making since coming on board are just order of magnitude and so um our ability to look at data has improved and I think our decision- making will get better and better and then with our I need to thank the board for being able to restructure our federal programs Department some of the adjustments and alterations we made in our business and finance department like the the conversations and the level of collaboration has never been higher and it has actually um bailed us out of potentially losing monies along the way over the course of this last six months or so and so it's I'm appreciative that the trust exists because the trust allowed us to make

132adjustments and bring new people into the mix who are really making a big difference and how effectively we can use our dollars and our fi Director of Finance yes yeah yeah gotta give this would be a great opportunity so I'm gonna give a big shout out to Dina dumal who's been our Director of Finance um for I think eight or nine years now probably nine years now and um honestly always been the voice of reason in finance um and one of the things and I've said this many times in the past that I really appreciated was having a finance director with the background of having been a social worker because the focus was always on what the needs of our of our community is what the needs of our students are um and that's driven

133you know a lot of her guidance and decision making over the years and it's one of the big reasons that we're in the wonderful place that we are so as we get ready to to celebrate her retirement um I think both mrir and I want to give a huge shout out because we would not be where we are without her and um having had the opportunity to work side by side with her for a length of time has been one of the great honors of my life it's like you have a lot of working relationships in your career um and there are some people who just make you better and she's one of those people um that I greatly appreciated she always made me better and never left me kind of hanging out there holding

134the bag wondering where we should be I always kind of had a sense of you know her support and guidance that helped with really really good and solid decision making and I know um our meet and confer teams over the years have also very much valued her her guidance and support yes absolutely 100% I'm not thinking too much about her retirement I'm just trying to think of all of the positive wonderful things she'll be doing uh I don't know how often you see um staff retire from the school district World they go off and then they come back and taunt you with their better skin and their just easy demeanor their lack of stress and less gray hair I have I don't know what happens after you retire but it's some mystical thing uh so

135I'm wishing all of the best and all the good things and uh she hopefully it won't go too far from us because we value and appreciate her so much thank you so seeing no other questions or comments I move the governing board approve the annual financial report for fiscal year 2023 to 2024 second I'm going to do a roll call um on this one so miss MC cheffrey hi um still maleb I I don't know why I'm not changing my name I don't know why I'm zoning out on your last name this GI mlan I and myself I all right we'll move on to 12 future agenda items does anyone have future agenda items that they would like to add um we did add the board self- evaluation number two for February I would like

136to just add two things one is if we could have a discussion on student L restorative practices or how we could Implement that into what we already do and then also maybe a discussion on a student Bill of Rights I know that's something that we may be disc discussing or maybe more appropriate for the advisor committee but it's something I just wanted to add to Future agenda items okay and then for accountability purposes I already made a word version of that template and I sent it Sophia and Hilda awesome anybody else have any future agenda items all right then we'll move to 13 um I motion I move the governing board adjourn second all those in favor I thank you have a good evening than this everybody needs to sign this oh yeah that one's

137important report since we did it in the 11th Hour