001[Music] Good morning and welcome to the May 13, 2025 strategic planning committee meeting. My name is Brenda Wolf and I serve as chair. I'm also the district 5 representative to the board. At this time, I'll ask my colleagues to introduce themselves. I'll start with Miss Montoya. Good morning. Thank you for being here today. Rita Mononttoya, board member at large. Miss Zimmerman, who's on screen. Good morning, Natalie Zimmerman representing district 2. Thank you. Um, I'll ask each of you to introduce yourselves when we get to your presentation. At this time, do you have any questions about theformational summary? No. Natalie? Okay. Thank you. All right. So, can we pull up slide two? And good morning to everyone else and welcome to our fourth and final strategic planning committee meeting of the school year. Over the course
002of this year, we have focused on two key areas. first monitoring progress on the three pillars of our current strategic plan and second providing input and feedback on the development of our fiscal 2026 2030 strategic plan. Today we're going to continue this important work. We will begin with an update on the professional and operational excellence pillar of the current strategic plan. We'll first hear how the district is strengthening professional learning to advance equity and build the capacity of our teachers and leaders to support student success. As part of this section, we will also hear directly from a principal about the impact of professional learning on student achievement. Next, we will focus on the district's efforts to increase the diversity of teachers and leaders to better reflect the demographics of our student body. In the second
003half of today's meeting, we will review the goals, objectives, and metrics identified for the new 20 26 2030 strategic plan. These priorities are grounded in a careful analysis of student achievement data and reflect the input we have gathered throughout a year-long community engagement process. The final plan is scheduled for board adoption on June 10th, 2025. I will now turn it over to Dr. Marjorie M. Is it Mustas? I don't want to mispronounce it. Can you pronounce it for me? Good morning. My name is U. Margie Lo Mutato. Thank you so much. Director of district-wide professional learning to begin the presentation. Thank you for this opportunity to talk about uh the professional learning that we've worked on uh this school year. So actually about this time last school year, we collected feedback from teachers and leaders
004and they overwhelmingly reported that that they needed some uh that we needed to establish some coherence and for high quality instruction especially focusing on our emerging multilingual learners and students receiving special education services. So this year our focus with teachers was to build their knowledge and skills so they can more effectively connect content and language for our emerging multilingual learners. This slide details the learning that we provided. So we're focusing on about the 14,000 10-month um teachers and pareducators. There were four phases to to this learning and our purpose was to build their teachers knowledge and skills to design and deliver instruction that connects language and grade level content to meet the learning needs for emerging multilingual learners. As teachers implemented the learning, we collected feedback from various sources. We had reflections. We've collected performance
005data and we're continuing to collect that student performance data. Across the district, teachers reported that the learning and practice produced better understanding and mastery of objectives for emerging multilingual learners, increased use of academic language in reading and writing, and increased engagement with grade level content and learning experiences for emerging multilingual learners. Also, teachers and leaders expressed that the quality of planning improved and therefore supported students ability to think critically and engage in meaningful academic progress. While providing this ongoing learning to teachers uh has been essential to change outcomes for students, we also know that the that learning for the teachers is more likely to transfer to practice with the support of the instructional leaders in their buildings. Therefore, our focus for the professional learning with the leaders, school-based principles, administrators, and their leaders and key
006leadership members. Um, we created an impactful coaching and feedback cycles. We provided professional learning on coaching and feedback cycles that drive highquality instruction to impact student learning. We had four sessions. We worked with about 400 school-based leaders and the purpose was to build their knowledge and skills to create effective coaching cycles to increase class visits um conduct observations of instruction and provide feedback byite-size feedback to teachers. This learning um focused on um effective coaching practices and supporting providing that byite-size instructional features instructional feedback to teachers related to math and literacy instruction and we we talked about how these are cycles and how to pro how to work through these cycles with teachers. Throughout the sessions we had instructional specialists and leaders from across many offices. We had Delme there, uh, math, literacy, special education, and
007we, we showed teachers how to name effective practices that support emerging multilingual learners and students receiving special education services. We modeled improvement for teachers and we follow and how to follow up with teachers with data uh, monitoring and and support. As a result of the sessions this year, teachers across the district have reported receiving an increased amount of feedback specifically related to instruction for emerging multilingual learners and students receiving special education services. 74% of surveyed teachers also reported that this feedback that they received changed the way they deliver instruction. And we didn't stop there. We wanted to look at uh the impact on student achievement. So we asked in our last session we asked principles and and school leaders to come bringing data uh so we could look at student performance. Here's an example of
008the list of the data for which we they could use to evaluate student performance. So we could consider what impact the learning they had and then they used with teachers would have on students. To date, we received 104 data reports from schools. 83% of them reported an increase in student achievement on the data points I just shared. And when we asked about the academic performance of their focus students as a result, 75% reported growth and therefore progress towards their school improvement goals. The most growth reported was for Hispanic, Latino students and emerging multilingual learners. So we see that many of our schools have implemented the learning that we've been providing over the course of the school year. Now, we want you to hear a a story of success from one of our school leaders, Dr.
009Harold Barber, principal of Jodie Le Elementary School. Morning. Morning. I'm Harold Barber, principal of Joan Leick Elementary School of Barnacres. Um, it's a pleasure to be here today. Um, just to give you some context in terms of our student population, we have approximately 761 students of which 67% of our students qualify for EML services and 87% of our students are Hispanic students. Um, my team and I have attended the leader learning training um, this school year and my team consists of my staff development teacher as well as my EML instructional coach. On the data slide there, we actually have our Maryland state report card which um indicates that we are a fourstar school largely due to the supports that we provided to our teachers using the cycle of professional coaching and we've made progress in
010um academic pro um progress. We've made progress towards English language proficiency and also progress in um the area of um school quality um success and we use the cycle of um coaching for impact where we identify um areas that we need to work on. We learn specific skills that we need to refine. We um improve those skills by better aligning our human resources as well as um the professional learning. And then we create a plan to actually monitor the implementation of that plan. Next slide um talks about uh professional coaching kickoff cycle. So what we do, we actually use our spring data to identify students and teachers that we need to focus on in the upcoming school year. And the first and second week of the school year, we actually spent on developing routines and
011developing and building relationships with um students and staff. And then the second week of school, we actually kick off our cycle of professional coaching. The cycle of professional coaching is an actual cyclical method that we use to actually set goals based on the data that we want to improve. We identify the learning that we want to take place and we actually provide um coaching and support to teachers and we collect data based on the work that we're doing and then we actually reflect on our practices and we continue with that cyclical um way of actually measuring our work. We anchored our work this year using um the professional learning that sticks um article that you see um outlined there by Tom Gutsky which actually talks about not just a oneanddone type of um framework of
012um engaging in professional learning is making sure that the professional learning is actually being implemented on a consistent basis and you see the desired results in your student achievement data. Next slide actually talks about the data. Um earlier I mentioned that I attend the professional learning sessions with my staff development teacher as well as my EML instructional coach. So the data set that you see there is actually my instructional instructional coach my EML instructional coach Wendy Lightton actually working with an EML teacher um Linda Lee. So our beginning of the year data that we um noted only 17% of our students were meeting the um target on the dibbles um data point. Dibbles is um a measure that actually looks at the foundational literacy skills of students and coming in earlier this year only 17%
013of our kindergarten students were actually meeting um proficiency on that particular assessment. And then we actually have um a teacher who was co-eing with Miss Lee who is the EML teacher and m Miss O Lighten was actually providing ongoing coaching and support to Miss Lee throughout the first semester. And then we actually see the results of the data in the second graph where uh Miss Howard's class went from 17% of students being proficient in the start of the school year to 80% of the students being proficient at the middle of the year largely due to the cycle of professional coaching and support and feedback that she received throughout the course of the first semester. And we specifically focus on a standard based on our PGS system. Standard two really narrowing down instruction to focus on
014content and language objectives and using um um turning the question around strategy um on student responses. And you definitely see the um results of that data point there. And we saw similar results in um Miss Carson's class as well, moving from 41% of her students being proficient early in the school year, moving to 50% of her students being proficient in the middle of the school year. and our goal is to continue to increase that when we administer the assessment again at the end of the school year. Then we dug a little deeper to actually look at specific students. We don't have the students names there, but we actually see how the students are actually making progress from one administration of assessment to the other administration of assessment. And of course the green um yellow and
015blue are the students who are proficient. But even though some students may not demonstrate a level of proficiency, you definitely see the growth across the board largely due to the cycle of professional coaching, very targeted coaching that we provide to specific teachers. Um that yields progress from beginning of the year to middle of the year data. In addition to um looking at the qualitative quantitative data points for students, we also collect um feedback or voice data from the teachers who are receiving um coaching support and also the coaches who are actually coaching the teachers. And we try to triangulate the voice data from the client or the teacher um voice data, the coachy or the um coach um voice data. And we try to triangulate that with how students actually perform on um the various
016assessments that we're looking at. [Music] We're really excited about the success at at Joan Lech Elementary School and and the the leadership of do um Dr. Barber and the team there. Um and and we have other schools that have this success too across the system. Uh we need to work to scale this and make it consistent across the system and that's what we'll continue to do in the upcoming school year. Uh we look forward to working with the the MSDE professional learning initiative for the upcoming school year um to keep on this. We see that the job embedded curriculum-based professional learning is having an impact and we're really excited to leverage the crossf functional teams to support and monitor student results and work more frequently in schools so we have some consistency across the system
017that builds on that big learning that we're doing at district-wide days and with the the school leaders and then the cross functional teams keeping that learning going into the school year. So, thanks for your time and I'll turn it over now for discussion. Well, thank you for the presentation and Dr. Barbara, we've had you before discussing this, so we know you're doing a great job. And Margie, if Margie, if I could call you that because I don't want to mess up your last name. I'm I'm glad to hear you say that you're going to model this for other schools because the success that Dr. Barbara is experiencing is not being experienced at many of our schools. And I'm not quite hearing the same discussion that you were hearing because what I'm understanding is that our
018EML kids are having a hard time with the instruction because the pacing isn't good. And so far, I haven't heard anyone, and I'm not talking about you, say that they've been given any leeway to adjust or or that anybody is listening to them talk about the challenges they're having with pacing. So I think it would be good if we could take groups over to see what Dr. Barber is doing. I think I think that's very important. Aside from that, I just have one other question on slide nine. You said I have not received any specific feedback and you got 10% there. What is going on there? That's uh so we asked we asked teachers about the feedback they've been receiving that they have um been observed and then feedback given to them. So we have
01910% of teachers who say I haven't gotten feedback on my on my teaching. Yeah. Well I think implementation consistent implementation is a big problem in our system. So, I think that's something we could look at for the, you know, upcoming year and any new curriculums we implement. Definitely. So, I'm going to ask Miss Montoya at this time if she has any questions. Thank you. Well, first I want to thank you again for being here. I'm so excited to see this growth. Um, I have elementary school children, so I'm very familiar with Dibbles um and even the new curriculum. One of my children uh was part of the pilot uh unbeknownst to me at the time as a parent. I just were going to school, right? Um, but I'm very familiar with also measuring this growth
020with dibbles. Um, and we saw the growth even at that at my child's school, you know, two years ago at the parent PTA coffees, right? We would go and they would show up the dibble stores. Here's from fall, here's winter. And you could see the growth um even just during that time at that school. So, I know that um I'm I'm so proud of you and your team and everything that you've been able to do. And I know we have other schools in our system who have this growth as well. And I just think it's wonderful for our students. I know there's always challenges with new curriculums and everyone has to acclimate, but I'm really thrilled to see that we're seeing such growth so early on. Um because sometimes it takes a while, right, when
021we get new curriculums to adjust and acclimate and we even sometimes see a drop. Uh but we're not seeing that. So I think that's wonderful. Um I just have one question. Um how long have you been using this curriculum? Were was uh Joan Lil part of the pilot or is this the first year? No, this is our first year actually using it, but we do supplement using um another resource for our students. Oh, great. No, and I think that's fantastic because right, each school's ecosystem, each school's population is also very different and so you want to make sure you're meeting the needs of your specific students. So, um again, just, you know, congratulations. I'm really thrilled to see this and I know that the cross functional teams will help that model with making sure that
022our staff um are getting the kind of the training and specifically for what they need. So, I'm excited to see how that works out as well. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Zimmerman. Thank you. Um, so I also find um the coaching model can be a really wonderful way to operate. Um, I have had some wonderful um coaches in my uh teaching career. Um, I particularly um I haven't had a chance to shout out um Kathleen Schneider and she was one of the best staff development teachers I've ever had. So, um, just want to take a moment and praise the coaches that we have out in the space. Um, I do also want to bring up with like coaching and co-eing, um, especially as standard 2 was brought up in the PGS system. Um, I'm wondering,
023um, how your educators are feeling that this is collaboration and not like not observation, that it's not punitive. So, do do you have some feedback from your educators on that? Yes, we do. Um so the cycle that we use is more of clinical supervision. Um so myself and the other administrators are not involved in that particular cycle. We actually train and um support our coaches but the relationship between the coaches and the coach or the teachers is just between those two individuals and um that's something that we always um respect just in terms of like confidentiality and we use the PGS system just for consistency. So if they're receiving feedback around the PGS system standard 2 from an administrator, they should have similar conversations with um their coaches as well. So the sim the same
024language is being used by the administrators, the same language that the coaches are using in supporting um teachers that are being coached. Yeah. Um it sounds like we're on the same page that it's really essential that those two parts are are separate. You know, we're not trying to, you know, professional growth. Same with our students. We want our educators and our staff to grow. um we certainly don't want that to be punitive. So, um I appreciate that and I think that's just a really important part of the model that they're um that they can work in tandem, but also that they're separate. We want to see growth in our students and our educators. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I thank you for your presentation, Dr. Barbara. I'll be down soon to when school reopens to
025see the model in action. You know, I'm a firm believer in peer teaching, too. I think it would be good if he could share some of this with the other the other principles that have a number of EML students that are not progressing. And I'd also like to hear a little bit more. I see the African-American student number is lower, but what's going on there? But not at this time. So, good to see you. See you later. Thank you. So, thank you. I will now turn it over to Miss April Key, chief of human resources and development to provide an update on the district's recruitment and hiring efforts to increase the diversity of our teachers and leaders. April, Miss Montoya, Miss Zimmerman, let me get to my slides. All right. One of our strategic priorities
026this year has been to strengthen and diversify our teacher pipeline. And a key part of that work has been focused on our internship programs by investing early in aspiring educators, especially those in underrepresented communities. We're not only preparing them to be successful in the classroom, but we're also creating intentional pathways to into the profession through targeted professional development, campus engagement at historically black colleges and universities and Hispanic serving institutions and direct support through hiring preparation. We are seeing interns choose to stay in MCPS and we're proud to now see that reflected in our new hire data. This year we focused on building a rich intern experience. We held four professional de development days for our interns covering everything from orientation equity and differentiation to job readiness and teacher wellness. We also created a dedicated Canvas
027classroom to provide resources, application support, and we visited college classrooms where our interns study to guide them through the hiring process. These efforts are reinforced monthly through our higher education partnerships newsletter, which includes a dedicated section for interns. We've also deepened partnerships with key higher education institutions including University of Maryland, Talson, American University in Buoie State. We're collaborating with the Montgomery College and Townson to support displaced federal workers as they transition into education roles with H.B.CU and HSIS. We're reducing barriers to MCPS access. for example, by coordinating classroom visits and exploring summer opportunities for students while they're home. Finally, we're encouraging all interns to gain broader experience applying to substitute teach during and after internships. This allows them to explore different schools, different grade levels, while further preparing them for a future in MCPS. At
028the start of the 2425 school year, 645 new teachers were hired for the upcoming year. 44% of the new hires identified as white, totaling 285 individuals. 17% identified as black or African-American and another 17 identified as Hispanic. That's 110 and 112 hires respectively. 14% of our new Asian hires totaling 91 individuals. We also have 15 hires identifying as other and 32 individuals who chose not to disclose their race or ethnicity. This means over half, 51% of our new hires identify as racially or ethnically diverse. This is the result of intentional recruitment strategies, including deepening our [Music] partnerships. We are committed, these talking points are for um our administrative and supervisory department. We are committed to hiring a highly qualified and diverse workforce. This past hiring season, we hired 44 principles. 64% of the hires were
029diverse candidates. We continue to strive in this area as we are doing the following. Principal candidate huddles, attending conferences with a focus on diverse leaders, meeting with affinity education groups, enhancing the principal internship program, growing and developing MCS MCPS leaders through collaboration between ANS office leadership development, department of professional growth systems, and district-wide professional learning, and the office of school support and improvement. In the MC in MCPS approximately half of our schools have a farms rate of 40% or higher. As we know having a highly qualified and experienced principal is crucial crucially important to es especially in schools that are highly impacted. Here is a visual on the percentage of our highly impacted schools that have in blue experienced principles with three or more years of experience. This is 63.5 of the principles in highly
030impacted schools. In orange, we see principles currently in their third year as principal. This is 13.9% of the principles in highly impacted schools. These principles are part of the school year 23 principal hiring coho cohort and remain committed to serving in a high impact school as they complete their third year. In gray, we see principles currently in their first or second year as a principal. This is 22.6% of the principles in highly impacted schools. In addition to the support these principles receive from their director, they also receive support in job embedded professional development from consulting principles for their first and second year in the principal ship and are part of a new principal network which meets quarterly for ongoing seminars. A variety of professional develop development opportunities were provided to principles in highly impacted schools
031through partnerships such as MCPS and the association of Latino administrators and superintendent. Collaboration between MCPS districtwide professional learning and the new teacher product teacher project organization and professional learning from MCPS through cohort inspire. Alas and MCPS partnerships. We had 14 MCPS administrators that joined the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendent. National Principal Academy, which supports the development of aspiring and novice principles to address concerns that they may have or struggles that they may be experiencing. We have three principles from highly impacted schools who participated in Alas National Principal Academy. As we continue to build the principal pipeline, we have several assistant principles from highly impacted schools who participate in this academy. This partnership was formed in collaboration between the district-wide professional learning and the chief senior community advisor and OHRD. professional learning for principles in
032high impacted schools. You heard earlier in the presentation from one of our experienced principles, Dr. Harold Barber, and the impactful work being done at Joan Le Elementary School at Broadacres. The goal is to support and retain highly quality principles who are working in highly impacted schools. had 36 we had 36 principles in high need schools based on farms rate receive professional learning to support their leadership. We had 36 principles who participate in professional learning through the collaboration with district-wide professional learning and TNTP professional learning for principles in highly impacted schools through cohort inspire. It is a program designed for the current and aspiring school leaders interested in leading and an highly impacted school or for leaders already working in those environments. We have 11 principles from highly impacted schools who participate in cohort inspire from
0332021 to 2024. Again, as we continue to build the principal pipeline, we have several assistant principles from highly impacted schools who participate in cohort inspire. I can take your questions at this time. Thank you for the presentation. I know that you've been working very hard. I I will say um that the diversity of principal hires really is going to need some work. The number of Asian and Hispanic principles we were able to hire is not even close to being reflective of our demographics. And I wonder did you have a plan for improvement? Our goal is to reach out to those teacher leaders who are diverse and look at opportunities for them to have varied leadership opportunities that might lead them to being interested in being assistant principal. I think certainly the co experience has impacted
034our pool some to some degree. Well, you had a nice number of um teacher hires. Yes, it it would help me if you give me the actual teacher higher numbers as opposed to the percentages like you did for the principles. All right. But also, unless I missed it and did you talk about grow your own? I didn't I didn't hear anything about growing our own. So, um, with our grow your own program, um, it is typically run out of the recruitment office where, um, Britney is housed and we reach out to our, um, current pair professionals, other individuals who might be interested in we have partnerships with Talson, partnerships with Bowie, uh, University Maryland. All of which offer programs that will um allow potential teachers to come through the grow your own process at no
035at no expense to the employee. But I guess what I'm trying to hear is what are we doing for our students? You know, we do have a good number of Asian students, Hispanic students. Are we talking to them and encouraging them to go to school and come back and work here or doing anything extra to encourage that? I will have to get that information and get back to you because I don't know that we do anything particular for Asian or Hispanic students that we don't do for other students that I can. Okay. But whatever you do, I I'd like to hear about it. I I also would like to know how many Asian and Hispanic um I guess you princip how many are in the pipeline to be a principal. I'm going to turn to
036Miss Zimmerman now and see if she has any questions. We will provide you with Uh thank you, Miss Wolf. I actually um was curious about some of the same things along the lines. Um, so you asked a lot of the same questions that I was wondering about. Um, particularly because our our students are a great way to help us grow that they know the system. Um, but also as well what educators and what we're doing to um, show our educators about opportunities to grow in MCPS. I think there tends to be a view that um, if you're a teacher that it's hard to move to other places. um you know that there's not a lot of upward mobility but if we're able to show our educators we have those opportunities to do that. Um similarly
037I I appreciate that you um mentioned the supports that we offer for our new hires. Um I think that at the administrator level it tends to be um more I don't know if advertise is the right word but um you know that um the recruitment practices for those supports and the ways that we support our new hires that tends to be better known than at the educator level. Um so I I would encourage us to increase our recruitment there. Um and that how we've been talking about um going back into schools, you know, seeing some of our central office staff there, going to schools and talking to schools that we know have new hires and making sure they know about the supports available being there in person. Um it's really easy to let that email
038go unread and going to junk um as opposed to talking to a person. So is that are we going to schools and talking to folks about the supports that they have available? We have as cross functional teams that we will be doing that but currently we don't have a process by which we go in from human resource into classrooms and schools. Okay. Um so I think with cross functional teams I I'm hoping we see an increase. So thank you Miss Montoya. Thank you. Um I want to thank you for all of the information. This is really helpful for me to get kind of a snapshot of where we're at. Um I do have just a couple of suggestions. Um I guess maybe for future um I like Miss Wolf, I like to see the numbers
039and the percentage. So I think just anytime we have, you know, graphs, however they're presented, it's always helpful for us to see the numbers and the percentage. And then also for the community, we want to provide them with that information. Um, and then for the the the uh graphs where you have the diversity of new teachers or new principles, it's also really helpful for me to see them um by level. So like elementary versus middle versus high school. Um because I do think that sometimes we see some patterns depending on the level of schooling. Um I'd also like to see in terms of diversity uh gender as well as by level. Um because anecdotally it seems as if we have less male teachers in elementary versus perhaps middle or high school. Um quite frankly I'd
040be interested to know for teachers even subjects, right? Are we talking core subjects like math, science, social studies versus I see a lot of male teachers in PE and and band and things like that versus your general education, you know, kind of home room teachers. So, I think those are just really interesting patterns for us to see to look at to see are there patterns there and if so, is there a way that we can then um expand our recruitment and outreach efforts for example to have more male elementary school teachers because that does such a service for our children. Um but I you know I again I really appreciate the data if we can just I know it's always like well we don't want to give you too much but it's okay. Um but
041if we can also just note that for my staff that we can follow up on on that expansion of data. Um and then also um two things. Um if I can have a list of the high impact schools so I can know within our you know over 200 which ones are we talking about here which subsets how many schools is that? Um, and then I'm wondering in terms of kind of a, you know, grow your own or however we want to phrase it on social media, there are like Instagram accounts where it tells you, okay, at this high school this student is going has accepted an offer at this college and they're going to major in this or sometimes they're undecided or whatnot. Um, one, I enjoy seeing those. It's always wonderful to be able
042to be proud of our kids, but it also showed me we have a lot of students interested in education or elementary education. I've seen speech pathology, which is a huge need we have. And so I'm just wondering if we have any mechanism for tracking that, right? Who are students who are going into at least at this point they may change but they have an interest in maybe potentially a career which where they could come back to MCPS. Is there a way for us to track those students and potentially offer some support or connect them with other outside support resources during their college journey so that then when it comes time for jobs or teaching certifications etc we have spaces maybe that they may be interested in or maybe and and forgive my ignorance about how
043the process works but there are parts where maybe they need an internship or something like that and maybe we can say oh well hey here's some things we have and you know come back home. Um, so I'm just wondering, again, I'm just seeing it on social media. Obviously, that's not a great tracking tool. Uh, but if there is, you know, a way to do that, I think that maybe helps us to kind of say, "Oh, look, here's some students who are definitely interested. How can we keep them interested?" And then how can we get them to come back and serve the community that produced them. Thank you so much. Thank you, April. At this time, I want to turn it over to Dr. Kesha Addison, director of shared accountability to walk us through the goals,
044objectives, and metrics of our new strategic plan. Good morning. Almost said afternoon. Um so yes, here we are to kind of put a halftied bow on our strategic plan. Um, as we have come before you several times as it relates to the development of the strategic plan, we continue to share this was a phased process and um, at each phase we have shared with you the results. It is available in our Google web page and we are currently at phase five which is finalizing the strategic plan. Do this myself. So on this slide we have and it's titled vision but it's actually the vision and the mission. Um the vision is actually future ready and that first paragraph all students will graduate with the knowledge, skills and experiences necessary to thrive in a constantly changing
045world is our vision. The mission is unleashing potential and it aligns to those four bullets where we want to ensure that our graduates have a solid academic foundation and strong critical thinking abilities. They're resilient. Um they have adaptability, curiosity, and lifelong learning. Their skills for effective communication and collaboration to build meaningful relationships. and they have positive community impact and readiness for success in careers and life no matter how society or the job market evolves. And so, as we've come before you before, we have focused heavily on five interconnected priorities. And those five priorities are on the left. And what I'm going to do for you this morning is align them to our focus areas and show how we have continued to evolve our strategic plan and evolved and um kind of moved from the more
046comprehensive focus of the goals and the strategies to really focusing on the goals, objectives, performance metrics and measures as well as when we will report them out. And one of the things that you were looking to hear that we're going to talk about in the lens is um the accountability framework. So how will you all hold us as a district accountable and how will we hold ourselves accountable? And so what we're going to focus on today aligns to that. And so I want to assure you and all of our hundreds of uh watchers that what you have seen before you, the um comprehensive plan, all of the voices that we have engaged with, the staff, the students, and the community is still honored in what we're bringing forward. Um although the wording may appear different
047from the comprehensive document that highlights our key strategies, what I bring for you today is to call out those specific goals and associated objectives. Additionally, you will see and hear the specific performance metrics identified for measuring the objectives, the data points or measures and the reporting frequency for these. As we engage in this discussion, I will um at times infuse a reminder of what is identified in the comprehensive plan as a reminder of the connections. In our comprehensive plan, there are five um interconnected priorities as I shared that align to those four focus areas on the right. As you read out the five priorities, you will notice they focus on how we need to attain these priorities. Our focus areas that are aligned with them um focus on the what what are the goals, objectives,
048and measures and when will we report them with transforming structures for equity and student success priority area and the comprehensive document. The goals are focused on areas that align to the academic excellence and preparing our students to be future ready. All of the goals under this priority area remain, but what you will see this morning is the accountability framework or again what I will refer to throughout the conversation as a scorecard and that will be used to identify and report annually. Here are the three essential aspects of our strategic plan that we shared the last time we were with you. We will know we are successful when all of our schools are earning four or more stars as measured by the Maryland school report card. when we improve proficiency rates on the Maryland school report
049card for students identified as economically disadvantaged multilingual learners, students receiving special education services, Hispanic, Latino students, and black or African-American students. And in the previous version, um it was written as reduce proficiency disparities. So, we just flipped that to um indicated in the positive. And then the third aspect remains as previously communicated, which is to graduate 95% of students annually. and our reporting categories to be equipped with the knowledge, skills and experiences needed to thrive in the everanging world. So on to our focus areas and our four goals. Um on this slide is a quick overview of the four goals related to each of the focus areas and the number of associated objectives that will be shared in more detail on the subsequent slides. Again, what we shared with you previously remains but are now
050indicated as objectives under these goals. and the front pocket of your binder. So, you have a binder, a strategic plan binder. Didn't queue up, but now's the time to look at your binder. Can I just interrupt you a second there? Yes. Uh Natalie, the binder was handed out this morning. I've left it in your mailbox. She said, "All right, so um in your binder are several tabs. First, um is a who are we tab, which includes values, vision, and mission for the 2026 2030 strategic plan. Also in this section is our future ready objective, our three aspects for knowing we are successful and the profile of an MCPS graduate which includes the knowledge skills and dispositions that every graduate should have. And these s six six essential areas critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, community impact,
051and well-being or caring um are further detailed on the next pages in your binder where you see the MCPS future ready framework. Following that are the four focus area tabs that include the specific goal and objectives for each and the scorecard. And so for the remainder of our time and in the spirit of brevity, I will use the scorecard view um to present the goals, objectives, measures, and reporting frequency. So um on this slide is the scorecard for goal one. And I want to first acclimate you to the layout of each scorecard and then we're going to go through a few of the objectives. And so um on the slide is are five numbers. 1 2 3 4 5 again across the top is the goal. Um section one outlined in yellow is where you
052will find the specific objectives. And when you see BP and um the initials BP that references the connection to the blueprint for Maryland's future. Section two outlined in green is where the performance metrics associated with the objectives is are located. Uh section three outlined in purple are the measures aligned with the performance metrics. Section four outlined in red is where you will indicate where we will indicate and report our targets for the identified school year as well as the actuals. These are not yet indicated as our baseline data will be from this school year 2024 2025. And so once we have that data then we can set our targets um incremental targets leading up to 2030. And then the last section is where we indicate the reporting frequency more clearly. How often we will report
053on the metric with the identified measure. So let's walk through a few objectives. Um so for goal one, all students will demonstrate high levels of student academic achievement and growth. Again, there are seven objectives. Objective one. So objective one is all students will meet proficiency benchmarks and grow in literacy grades preK through 11. Now I do want to pause and share that although this was not identified as a goal previously we received feedback about missing measures particularly for students that are primary grades and so we thought it essential to add this as an objective. Um, so back to the visual with this objective, the first performance metric identified is the percent of students scoring proficient or above on the state English language arts literacy assessment which is measured by the Maryland comprehensive assessment program or
054the alternate alternative uh Maryland comprehensive assessment program or MCAP as we often refer to it in the area of English language arts. This is indicated as being reported annually as students participate in this assessment once per year. Um and additionally performance metrics under this objective include the percent of students meeting or exceeding grade level reading expectations as measured by MAP reading and it should also indicate the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills or dibbles as we often say. And you will also notice that under objective one we have performance metrics identified for our multilingual learners which will be me measured by access for ELL's. Um objective three is the mathematics focused version of objective one. Um on this slide we will focus on objective five still under goal one and um objective five MCPS
055will have the highest academic performance in Maryland as measured by the Maryland school report card. There are two performance metrics. One uh percent of students with a percent of schools I apologize with a star rating of four or higher and the second is our district ranking in the state for performance. Both will be measured by the Maryland school report card and both again reported annually. Let's now look at objective seven which is MCPS will provide programmatic and discrete opportunities for all students to demonstrate innovations and enrichment to enhance learning experiences. There are two performance metrics that focus on student enrollment and advanced or accelerated courses and participation in enrichment programs. Both will be measured by course enrollment and reported bianually. And by annually we mean reported midyear and at the end of the year. Moving
056on to goal two. And so on this slide um let's focus on objectives one and three and four. Um all of these are in response to what you have shared as board members regarding the importance of post-secondary plans for students. Objective one is focused on high school students. All high school students will have a plan to be employed and listed and or enrolled in a post-secary learning institution upon graduation. The performance metrics include not only um students having post-secary plan but also the percentage of graduates who complete either the FAFSA or the MISFA which is the Maryland state financial aid application and these will be measured by post-secondary plans the FAFSA and MIVA um MIFSA communic uh completion and reported annually. Objective three is focused on middle school students. So all middle school students will
057complete an individualized college and career readiness and exploration plan and will revisit and revise it with their school counselor annually. The performance metric for this is the percent of students with a documented plan and um that is reviewed at least once per year. The measure is the plan and it will rep be reported by annually. And then objective four, we take it down to our elementary level where our focus is also to um and the objective is all elementary students will develop awareness of the 16 career clusters and be provided with different opportunities to explore career fields within each cluster. The metric is percent of elementary students participating in at least one career exploration activity activity related to each of the 16 clusters. Um the measure will be course enrollment andor that experience and again
058we will report it annually by annually. Um next let's focus on still under goal two let's look at objective seven. All high school students will successfully demonstrate financial literacy. This is based on the feedback that we have continued to hear not only from you as board members but also from our students. And the performance metric is the percent of high school students who complete a financial literacy or course course or module prior to graduation. The measure will be that course enrollment or module um participation and we will report that by annually. Objective 8 is connected to our current work and the continued feedback to ensure all families are informed about the various career pathways and options. Objective 8 states all families will have an understanding of educational options and career pathways. There are two performance
059metrics. The percent of families reporting increased understanding of options and pathways on postevent surveys and availability and usage of multilingual accessibility family resources. And these uh measures for these include the event survey um usage, parent view usage as well as language line and any other um multilingual supports that we may have in the district that we will include and this will be reported annually. Moving on to goal three. Goal three, uh, ensure a safe, welcoming and inclusive learning and work environments through positive climate and effective operations has 11 objectives. Um, the first three objectives focus on the perspectives of students, staff, and families as measured through our district-wide climate surveys. Shameless plug, survey launched yesterday. It's currently open. Um it will be open through June 16th and beginning next school year the survey will be
060administered two times per year and so when you see the reporting frequency for these you will see that it says by annual. Um to date we have been reporting that annually. Objective four reduce hate bias and bullying incidents has two performance metrics. The first is to um the number of documented bullying and hate bias incidents reported annually disagregated by type and location and the second is the percent of staff completing training on hate bias prevention and inclusive practices. The measures are hate bias and bullying incidents and training participation and um hate bias bullying incidents will be reported by annually. We can do that mid year and at the end of the year as well as the training participation for staff will be at the um annually. Moving along on this slide, let's take a look
061at objective 10 which is ensure communication is clear, culturally responsive and easy to understand supporting effective schooltoome relationships. We have two performance metrics that will be measured using our district climate survey. Um data will be obtained also from the app as well as parent square and we will report the climate survey results um by annually again that will be administered twice per year and then um for the response rates as it relates to district uh communications that will be reported annually. On to our fourth goal, support and invest in all staff. Um there are five objectives. Let's focus on objective three which states um that we will ensure that all students have access to highquality, highly qualified, diverse educators. This objective has three performance metrics. um one being the percent of students taught by teachers
062who are certified and teaching within their subject area or expertise. The next is the percent of national board certified teachers. And the third is the percent of educator workforce identifying as black latino um andor other underrepresented groups. And our measures include certification uh national board certified teacher status as well as educator diversity. And each of these will be reported annually. And uh the last objective I'll highlight is uh objective five which has two performance metrics. Objective five is to ensure all staff engage in inclusive culturally responsive and anti-racist practices. One metric will be the percent of educators participating in inclusive, culturally responsive and anti-racist professional learning opportunities. And the second metric is intended to talk about the how. Right? So to ensure that it's being implemented as intended. And so that second metric is the
063percent of educators with practices identified as culturally responsive based on a rubric that will be developed. And so the measures include professional learning opportunities as well as the implementation based on a a rubric and each will be reported annually. And at this time I will uh turn it back to you all for conversation. Uh thank you. I really appreciate the work that you've done on this. Um, and I'm going to turn to Miss Montoya for comments. Actually, I know that Miss Zimmerman has to step away at some point. So, if she's free now, I mean, perhaps we should let her go first. Natalie, are you on? I didn't get a message. We can just give her a moment. Bring up Natalie. I just want to allow her a moment if she's able. I know she
064has to get to work. Okay, she can't. I apologize. I just wanted to make sure. Thank you. No worries. Um, but I do want to highlight some concerns um that I know that she had. Um, and if it's okay, I'm going to do that first. Um, there's a concern that using district created assessments as a metric for measuring these. Um and so for example for school climate data or similar the cons the the concern is whether or not we can develop that with our partners and get continuous feedback but um to be cautious about using internal metrics for student performance. Um, so that's just something that um, she wanted to be raised. And then if you can give me one moment and I know that you mentioned um, in terms of the metrics that we're
065going to start from this year and so that's why that's not filled in. Um, is it possible to maybe get an idea of where we're at now? Yes. Um, and again, obviously not not right at this moment, but just in when we're looking at this, I think that kind of helps to tell us like where are we trying to to move from. So for some metrics yes definitely um for example a number of the metrics under academic excellence right we can start with those because we have dibbles data we have right state data um for other metrics for things that need to be developed we would not have them available yet and so those are areas that we could indicate not yet available okay and that makes sense um and again I want to thank
066you for all of your hard work this is provides a lot of clarity for me personally um I was really happy to see this um I know that we're still working it out and you know kind of getting things you know as we move along and make decisions as a system um there might be some things that change here and there but I just really appreciate all of your hard work and really pulling this together in a very clear um cohesive way. Um I especially want to applaud the early elementary school benchmarks for literacy. Um that's something we hear from the community. I know even before I was on the board I would hear those conversations. So it's fantastic and I really like the way that you've broken that down. It helps to give that
067kind of early warning signal that we all want to know about. Um I'm also really pleased to see and let me just go back so I can read it correctly. Um I believe it's goal two objective eight and where we're looking at making sure that our families have an understanding of the options available. Um I can say even as a high school student I was like oh you could have majored in that. Oh you can be that. I just didn't know. So I think that's so important and I'm really grateful for that. I do have um a couple of questions. Um one suggestion also is just maybe a glossery. Um for example, and and you help me to understand that economically disadvantaged is different than our farms rate, right? And so some of those things
068that we just might not understand the vernacular or exactly what that um means. I think that would be really helpful if there's any other terms that you feel like that would be useful for. So, I do have some questions or concerns about specific objectives and goals, but I think one overarching question I have is where are our special education students in this plan? Um, and I know, you know, we talk about measuring things and sometimes we're looking at literally this number to this number or did you meet this proficiency rate and perhaps not that's not the right approach um for our special education students. you know, maybe it's growth or some or something else that you feel like would be more appropriate, but I just want to make sure that we're not and we're not
069doing this and I don't think this was the intent at all, but I just want to make sure that we're also concerned about the growth for our students as well, especially because they encompass just such a wide Yes. variety of of students. So, um, thank you for elevating that. I failed to mention that aspect. Um, one of the things that we did as we were looking to create this condensed version is ask the questions who are we missing? Who is who are we missing? Right? And so one thing that is not clearly articulated here um but will happen is for example for objective one when we're focused on the percent of students scoring proficient at or above um the literacy expectation that data will be disagregated by not only our racial ethnic groups but also
070our um student groups who are receiving services. So one of the things we wanted to be intentional about is it might not be written here because you know it's compact like you're like placemat right um but we will report the data in that manner so that we can see how all of our student groups are performing. Um, another area I do want to point out that we intentionally call out um, our students who are receiving um, special education services or students who may not be diplomaabound is um, goal two, objective six. And so that goal um is all high school students will have access to postcol and career readiness programs to graduate with a diploma or certificate of program completion endorsement or at least one marketable credential or specialization. And so um for our students
071who are seeking a diploma, they can have um endorsements as well as our students who are going to receive a program certificate of program completion can also have endorsements. So, we've been intentional to call it out. Um, to your point in terms of how can we ensure that everyone sees their child there, we can include make sure we have that language included. And then I just want to go back to your um request for a glossery. That is definitely something that we plan to include as part of this process. Okay. Thank you. And and I I figured and I know that you know you're always thinking about all of the things. Um but just to make sure that the community is aware too that you know if you see something left out here, one, this
072is a draft. We're still working on it. um and that you know we're going to be as comprehensive as we can. Yes. Um so I appreciate that. um in terms of just some quick um specific items um and I can even follow up with an email so don't feel like you need to take a bunch of notes but um on goal two um objective five actually which I think you just talked about it says we'll have access but then when I see the actual performance metrics were using what I might categorize more of as performance right so this is the number of students who completed these or got these, but that just tells me who performed well enough to achieve the end result. It doesn't tell me, you know, maybe they knew about it and
073decided they didn't want to or, you know, so I'm just wondering how we capture does that capture access in itself? It may be part of it. Um, but is there some other way to capture kind of like the understanding the way you had with the families? It seems to me that that's more what access um is about. Yes. And and not to interrupt, but um there is an opportunity there to include participation. So we typically do participation and performance. So we can definitely have Yeah. Just to add that just so that also no one else misunderstands what those numbers mean. Um or positive or negative either way, right? Um and then the same thing I think with objective six. So that would be objective five and six both say access. So maybe just to make
074sure we're also doing that understanding piece. Um or you know to the extent that you feel like that overlaps with objective eight. That one's the families though versus the students, right? Um goal three, objective four, which is reduction in hate bias and bullying incidents, which I am very happy to see that in there. Um, but I'm also wondering if there's a space in there for the perception of the students because sometimes students don't report. Sometimes, unfortunately, um, school adults may not report or may not quite see something in a different way. And we, you know, at the end of the day, it's about, do our students feel safe in these spaces? And so maybe there's some information to pull from climate surveys to include in that that section. Um goal three, same goal, but objective
07511, we're talking about efficiency, transparency, um accountability, you know, stewardship, basically fiscal accountability. Um I'm wondering if we might consider including a section, um you know, the principal is the ultimate fiscal steward of of each school. Um what about their training? How often are they being trained? Have they been trained recently? What does recently even mean? Um to include also our interim and acting principles because on a yearly basis we have various people coming and going because that's just the nature of the game. But we want to make sure that they're trained properly because our staff needs to be able to rely on them ultimately. Um and they're the ultimate signature right on the on the reports. Um and then just two quick ones that I I'm goal four. Um objective four, give me one
076moment here. Um so for number four I guess just anytime I see things in terms of recruitment where we're disagregating the data um I think this is one of the fields where we have a predominant gender um you know it similar to nursing perhaps or maybe you know construction right we have a predominant gender that tends to come to this field um and I think that we always want to make things balanced for our students and here we're talking about not enough male teachers right? Especially in certain levels of schooling. Um, so I think it would be great to also have that as one of our disagregations. Okay. Um, and then for goal four, number five, ensuring all staff engage in inclusive, culturally responsive, and anti-racist practices. I think the performance metrics you have are
077important, but they don't tell me what's actually happening. It tells me what information the staff are receiving, right? Are they receiving training on these practices? Are they receiving um is it is it is the are the is the information and training they're receiving in alignment with the rubric? Very important. I do want to keep those, but it doesn't tell me the way they're taking that information and then what are they doing with it into the schools. Um unfortunately, and not just in the school system, a lot of people across the board, we receive all kinds of information, but that implementation part is where it can really get us. So, and I'd have to think about it a little bit more. Maybe there is maybe that's part of the student climate survey or or whatnot. Um,
078but there just seems to be that's not quite going far enough about telling me what's actually happening. How do the students feel? You know, I remember for my own children there was questions like, "Do you feel like you can go to your teacher to ask questions?" And some of the data that would come out would be like, well, the Latino students don't feel that way, but maybe the white students do or the black students don't feel. And so then you're looking, well, are there black teachers at the school? Is that why they feel like they don't have an adult to go to? You know, we don't know. These are all the questions we need to ask, but we can't do it without the performance metric. So, I do want to take a little bit of
079time for that second performance metric and just tell you the preliminary thinking related to that one. I you can't tell yet, but it is intended to get at what you are um requesting because it really is about developing a rubric that identifies what's happening in the classroom during that time that demonstrates that educators are putting into practice what they're learning. And so that rubric is and we've looked at um some things from Steinhard New York University that really has information related to culturally responsive um instructional practices. And so really bringing together a team and this is kind of getting into the how and the strategies but really bringing together a um a crossf functional I probably shouldn't use that but a collaborative team um that is involved with um not only community members to develop
080this rubric so that once we know what do we mean by what is culturally responsive and then we go in and see that and I do agree and hear your point how do we also get the perspective of those receiving it that's the other side of what you shared in terms of that um culturally responsive environment and practices and right because these things are you know it's not always going to be some formal report that gets sent to a principal for example for something that happened in the classroom or the way a parent felt when they were engaged with perhaps by a teacher or a staff member that they felt or maybe they're even having to question is this happening because of the culture and race that I come from right that in itself is
081a challenge that we're even having to ask those questions so um I you know I know you're great at figuring out how to measure things Um, so I just wanted to give you a little food for thought, but thank you again so much for all of your work. Much appreciated. Thank you. I want to thank you, Kesha. Um, this is a really great document. I just have um Rita's covered most of this stuff. I just have a couple of things. Whenever you talk about under reppresented groups, I noticed that you use black and Latino. I think you need to add Asian in there. Okay. And on objective under goal for objective three you have percent of national board certified teachers but so what I mean what is that what is that going to do just
082the percent of them we know we have a high percentage we have the highest percentage in the state but what is that going to do for ensuring that all students have access to highquality teachers in the classroom and With regard to Rita's question about um culturally responsive training, you know, I've had that question for seven years, but I think we're going to have to take a look at the teacher evaluation document as opposed to the strategic plan. So, I think that is all I have for right now. And I'm really pleased to see elementary school, you know, even though I have one in the fifth grade, my grandson, and he's going out. I think a lot of the things that we do, we need to start thinking about moving to the elementary level so that
083their mindset is on what's available when they get there. So again, thank you for your work on this. Thank everybody on the team who has been working on this for the entire year. And unless you have something else, we're finished. I just have one quick question about your um comment related to the percent of nationally board certified teachers. Is it your recommendation that this would not be the best performance metric for this one? Like are you recommending we remove it or is it add to it? What I'm saying is that it's not tied to anything. Just telling me that you have a percentage of national board certified teachers even though you have it under there to ensure that the classroom has you know highly qualified teachers. you haven't said or they'll be this percentage will
084be in the classroom because you know we do have a number of board certified staff that are in central office that are media assistants that aren't even getting credit for being board certified. So if you can't tie it to something that's going to have an impact on the students, I don't see the need for it. And and so thank you for that because I I'm now thinking about how to tie it to for example the percent of national board certified teachers in certain types of schools and things like that. Absolutely. We can enhance that one. The other thing I did want to say and I forgot to say this. I'm glad to see you're going to be using the Remind app. Do the students get the Remind app notices because that's a good way to
085get them to fill out that survey. I know in elementary school they gave out they gave time to work on it but if you put that remind app on that cell phone you're gonna get some responses from the students. Also when you do a survey you give me more than four questions I'm going to get I'm going to be done with you. So if you send me 10 15 questions you're not going to get 10 or 15 answers. So okay. So we have intentionally reduced the number of items. Last year there were close to 30. We we cut that almost in half um at the request of Dr. Taylor to really be intentional about what we're interested in, what we're focused on to obtain the essential information we need. Um it is challenging to get
086all of the essential information particularly connected to our strategic plan and the areas we want to focus on in five questions. Well, I'm just saying the the fewer questions, the more likely people are to answer it and I'm optimistic that people will be happy to see fewer items this go around. Um, we definitely have continued opportunities to enhance and improve. But if you put it on that Remind app and it pops up on my phone, I'm going to answer it. Yes. And I thought they pushed it out that way, but um because I did hear some feedback. I'm not sure about students though, so that's definitely something we can look into. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, do you have anything else? If not, I want to thank you and the team for your work on
087this. And we are adjourned. [Music]