001the time is now 5:31 p.m. good evening W and welcome to the March 17 2025 academic achievement meeting I am Jamal J jongo chair of the academic achievement committee and the student member of the board for the Prince jge Prince George's County Public Schools I would like to welcome our committee members and board Representatives Dr Tiffany anderl and Zakia goens MCC a special welcome to Dr Judith White Chief Adu academic officer and superintendent design along with her team who will be leading tonight's presentations before we before we start we will have introductions starting with board members Administration staff and board staff board members do you want to go first sure I can go first Zakia going MCS board member representing District 8 good evening everyone I'm Dr Tiffany anderl I'm board board member representing district
002one superintendent team Dr Judith White hello everyone I'm Judith White Chief academic officer is there anybody else on the that wants to good good morning good morning good good evening I am Melissa canny I'm the supervisor for the English language development program good evening Victoria Holmes cordan supervisor for language and literacy good evening everyone D Santos multilingual family engagement specialist good evening my name is Nati Riley I'm the principal at Riverdale Elementary School good evening I'm Mr buos El teacher in River Elementary school good morning oh sorry good evening uh my name is Ina Belina and I'm also from Riverdale Elementary School I'm uh ELD chair good afternoon everyone I'm Miss Andra Riva I am the parent engagement assistant here at Riverdale Elementary and good evening I am Miss Cruz I am the community school
003coordinator here at Riverdale Elementary School I think a a little lasting board staff yes good evening my name is Rosa Lopez administrative secretary for the board office thank you everyone for those unable to join us live a recording will be available on the PGCPS YouTube channel and board doogs now we will proceed with roll call Miss Lopez can you please call the roll Mr jungo present Dr Ander present Miss Co mckin presid they three board members present with three board members and affirmative we now have Forum if there are no objections the committee shall adopt the March 17th to 2025 meeting agenda there being no objections the meeting agenda is adopted if there are no Corrections the um the committee shall approved the February 10th 2025 meeting minutes as distributed there being no Corrections the
004meeting minutes are approved um there are no registered public comment speakers for this evening I think now we're going to our yep first discussion item this committee will present three presentations from the administration tonight followed by discussions after each presentation I will now I will now yield to Dr Judith White Chief academic officer to introduce agenda 3.1 hello everyone um actually we have one presentation this evening around El and our family engagement um so in November this team came and talked about uh the work that they would do with schools and the use of working across collaboration with different positions in our schools to make sure our families were communicated with engaged with and finding ways to uh better the Partnerships with our home as far as our ELD students so tonight I'm going to
005turn it over to Dr Melissa canny she's our supervisor of ELD and she's Pro brought as you heard an amazing one of our amazing school teams as well as um her engagement specialist with us with her tonight um I'm excited as you heard from the school team the many positions that touch students and so I turn it over to you Dr to discuss um the topic for tonight thank you Dr White good evening everybody we are very excited to share with you the work that we have done um since the beginning of the school year and since we met with you in November I am here with Miss Santos and Miss Santos has only been here a short um five months six months maybe and has done all the work she's going to share in
006the slides and I'm very excited for her to share the work we've done we we also have two voices from the field we have a parent who will share via video and then we also have the team from Riverdale which we're very excited for them to share the impact that our work has had in Prince George's County and so now I will thank the board for allowing us to come and present and I will turn it over to Dr do I'm speaking an Indo existent Miss Santos good evening everyone and thank you again for allowing us to present on this important topic I want to start by saying that we have launched several districtwide initiatives to enhance family engagement for for multilingual Learners to start we are currently developing an 8-week family English literacy program
007using Rosetta Stone this compress comprehensive guide will help schools facilitate the program with ease offer an interactive lessons that can be implemented in person virtually or in a hybrid format it will also include detailed budgeting information and resources to promote meaningful family engagement we are currently collaborating with Samuel Chase and Fort foot elementary schools to develop and pilot the program this spring both schools expressed strong interest in piloting the program and we were and were willing to dedicate the necessary time and resources to collaborate with us and developing the guide their feedback throughout the pilot phase will help us refine and finalize the guide before its publication for schools we're also really excited to host the 11th annual International family day at Camp schmidth which is which will be held on May 3r 2025 to
008ensure accessibility Transportation will be provided from three different School sites we anticipate um welcoming about 200 multilingual families for this special event we are are working closely with Dr Love from the office of interpreting and translation who has successfully led the event for the past 10 years as well as the Department of Environmental Education at cap schmith to ensure a smooth transition and engaging programming for all attendees at the district level we have also formed the multilingual learner family engagement steering committee to place family voices at the heart of our initiatives the committee which held its first meeting in January consists of approximately 18 members including seven multilingual families we have teachers administrators central office leaders and a community partner its purpose is to Foster collaboration and ensure that the needs and perspectives of multilingual
009families are integrated into the development of Engagement programs we are also relaunching The Intern National parent leadership Consortium which is a six- week leadership development series to further develop them as parent leaders approximately 20 multilingual families will engage in collaborative presentations including a principal L segment where School leaders can share their insights directly with parents the series is scheduled to begin in mid April and conclude by June to give a more personal perspective Ganda Garcia a graduate of the international parent leadership Consortium and now a member of our multilingual learner family engagement steering committee will share her experiences this testimonial demonstrates the real world impact of family engagement programs on building leadership and Trust among multilingual families the video is in Spanish but there are English subtitles for you me cons [Music] p e [Music]
010s for we sincerely appreciate candida Garcia for sharing her valuable insights on family engagement partnership and also leadership so this Gant this Gant chart here is the same chart um from our initial presentation that laid out the plan for the year it has been updated to show which items are now in progress and which have been completed for district level initiatives we are currently progressing with most of our initiatives according to the proposed schedule however two adjustments have been made to this timeline first we decided to promote the international parent leadership consortion internally rather than posting it on our PGCPS website this change aims to make families feel more comfortable participating in in the current climate second we have chosen to Pilot the English literacy program in two schools instead of all schools this approach
011will allow us to develop a highly effective guide that other schools can replicate now I will highlight the school-based initiatives we have completed so far this year we have developed professional development workshops for staff to enhance family engagement efforts the first one was facilitating engagement nights for families of multilingual Learners this training helped staff explore the connection between family engagement and Student Success staff are also introduced to best practices for organizing events tailored to multilingual families this Workshop was shared with English language development Teachers Community School coordinators parent engagement assistants and administrators the next session was building Trust effective communication staff learned about barriers to engagement and strategies to Foster trust and meaningful communication with diverse families English language development chairpersons will have the opportunity to facilitate this session with their school staff we've also
012created a series of workshops for schools to implement throughout the school year these quarterly Workshop templates include topics like an overview of ELD in weda Access available programming in our district and how families can support their child at home the templates for these quarterly presentations were translated into Spanish French Dari and posture and an implementation of culturally responsive activities supporting materials for staff such as pre-designed flyers and evaluation forms and resources that can be shared with these materials are designed to be accessible customizable and supportive for schools working to engage multilingual families these materials can be used by all family facing stakeholders such as parent engagement assistants and ELD teachers these workshops will help to streamline the support that families receive across all schools okay thank you Miss now I'm excited to introduce principal Riley
013and her team from Riverdale they not only participated in Miss Santos workshops but they highlighted their work and found a way to collaborate to meet the needs of our multilingual Learners I don't want to take up any more of their time I'm going to turn it over to principal rri good afternoon everybody so I have the pleasure of introducing Riverdale Elementary to you all we're um a student by body of about students where we have about close to 85% of our students are El so that's the majority of our students so we don't we didn't start off um doing parent engagement events that were just tailored to our multilingual families they were schoolwide events but they still included our multilingual families because that's the majority of our families and what we noticed was they wanted
014to be there they wanted to be a part of it but they didn't feel as empowered as we needed them to so once uh our staff started to participate in the professional development we got ideas about how to segment and actually Target families where they felt more supported and empowered and this is how we came up with our ELD chat and choose which are done by grade level I'm going to tell you that the team is much larger than what you see here so all of the people that touch the program would be all of our secretaries all of our um ELD teachers which we have Aid in our building classroom teachers Administration and then of course our pea and CC so I'm going to allow them to share what they've been doing and the
015feedback but I want you to know that we've been doing this for years and it really evolved this year with the additional supports that we've gotten through the professional development Miss Rivera I am going to turn it over to you and Miss crud okay um good evening everyone so I'm so excited to be here we have a great ELD team and um they attended the faculty family engagement events for multilingual families and they've received a lot of support and a lot of ideas um and one of the goals that me and Miss Cruz as the Pea and the CSC here at our school was to really Empower our parents um so one of the task was um involving the ELD and we got a lot of feedback from parents saying that they wanted to help
016and be a part of their um students education but they were not sure how to do that so in our like weekly workshops as Miss Riley mentioned they are by grade level and they come to the the workshops and the esa teacher from that grade level works with them and kind of gives them um the tools resources examples things to take home um today we had our newcomer U with Mr Boo and the amilies were able to ask their questions and get to see what strategies they do in the classroom so that they can take it at home um we also provide some incentives so they are able to take we we try to to um not only just have them sit there but actually do an activity with the child and then they're able
017to take those home so uh one of the things was like discussion questions when they read um and then today they were given um by bilingual little books for them to read in their native language and in English so that the families have those resources at home um and we always try to when we have big school events like math night and uh stem night is coming up we also um the e is a part of that so they do try to do a schoolwide um event but also bring in those families so it's it's really amazing to see and as we've been doing it we've got more and more parent involvement so it's really beautiful to see that one thing I want to add so when we have a schoolwide event we try to
018start it with the ELD families coming in first where they get some information where there's translators and things of that sort and then we disperse by grade level and then the ELD teachers join a grade level as well so when they go into the grade level first there's a familiar face outside of the Genet teacher but then they're there giving additional supports for the elg families and then the next step in our chat and chooses to do what will you need to do to move to the next level of your El so if you're level one two three and they will be not done by grade level by by levels and we will invite all the families in to get some resources around things to work on over the summer and then another thing that
019we do is because we are the community school and the parent engagement we try to tie our events with other events cuz our parents are working parents so we try to also for example we have Monday food bags so they attend the workshop and at the end of the workshop once they do the valuation they also can receive a food bag so just trying to give them um a voice give them the things that they need for their child to be successful and it really empowers them um they ask questions and they take leadership of their child's education in that sense did you guys have any questions that we could clarify for [Music] you questions I didn't hear anything that either one of you said I'm sorry chair I don't know what you just said
020um can you repeat oh um I said board members do we have any questions oh we get that questions right now Melissa do you have um more slides or how many more we have a few more slides we okay then then we let's do the whole slides and then we'll come back at at the end and thank you principal Riley for sharing this is the type of work and the collaboration between the whole school to meet the needs of our multilingual Learners that we're hoping to see in all schools all righty so like Dr Kenny say thank you again uh River Elementary for sharing your insights it makes me really excited and happy to see how the work um is playing out at different School levels so I want to continue with our presentation we
021only have a couple more slides left um the Gant chart here is the same chart um from our initial initial presentation that laid out the plan for the year it has been updated to show which items are now in progress and which have been completed for school level initiatives we're currently progressing with most of our initiatives according to the proposed schedule and one of the additional things that we did at the district level with the transition to the new presidential Administration is we developed a presentation for central office and school based staff for our meeting the needs of our immigrant students and families to help them as we navigated this shift and we provided an over overview of immigration Trends as well as data about the Immigrant population and participants engaged in scenarios around how
022they could help their families and their students navigate these specific challenges we helped um over 15 stakeholder groups um engage in this information and help them to create a fostering belonging environment in their schools to date we've done over 25 presentations in collaboration with the international national student admissions office for over 1100 people and we have also developed a canvas course which was just rolled out and we have about 150 people that is are in that course and they participate that in a self-paced manner all righty so to track the success of our initiatives we've established an internal multilingual family engagement dashboard and as of February 1st 13.5% of school schol have held multilingual family engagement events more than 1300 families have participated in school level events 92 schools participated in District professional development focused
023on family engagement of families of multilingual Learners 380 school-based staff have attended a district professional development to enhance family engagement we currently do not have enough data to determine the percentage of schools that have held multilingual family engagement PDS and the number of Staff members that attended we continue to review this data as a helps us monitor participation and improve our efforts the internal multilingual family engagement dashboard allows us to desegregate data showing attendance Trends across different School types and Board of Education districts this is data based on attendance from at least one school-based staff member schools with higher attendance rates included Title One schools Community Schools and those identified as atsi CSI area one which is comprised of mostly elementary schools has the highest attendance rate compared to area 2 and area three Board
024of Education districts 3 2 and 8 had the highest attendance rates while districts 5 seven and six had lower participation We are continuing to explore correlations between attendance at District PDS and school engagement events to identify areas of improvement thank you for listening to us this evening that is all we have um and now we will turn it over and ask if you have any questions for us and so um board member student board member Jango just before we start questions I just want to remind the team so the the academic achievement team from the Board of Education side last year um in collaboration with me determined the topics so we knew that we had a lot of multilingual families that were not engaged and so one of the topics that they wanted to dig
025deeper in was to find out ways that we could um bring our families in work with schools and create um scenarios where parents could really get a voice have advocacy and be able to support schools so with that also at the same time the state wanted every school system to hire Miss Santos's position so we were fortunate you see Miss Santos is a rock star so we were fortunate to give her and she's done a lot of these things that we didn't have in place right because our our goal should be it's easy to do all of these parent meetings right through our family engagement office which actually falls under Communications and chief Boyd but it's different when now you want to Target special education or multilingual Learners and how do you do that how
026do you make them feel welcome how do you create a space where someone is advocating so when you listen to that one parent although she gave us all of that back it was so rich what she said um because she now had an Avenue in a voice so I just wanted to paint that picture so you know why this topic you all on this board once we come back in May all three topics that have gone will come and we will talk through what Lessons Learned and how to improve for next year and then I will work with you all on which of those three big areas be as we go into next year where we may want to know more and and go into the field uh try something see if it works and
027come back and Report out so just wanted to give that background before you all begin to ask questions okay thank you so much for the presentation um board members I'm opening the floor for questions um does anyone have any questions oh I'm guessing board member yes thank you so much chair jungo um for this round of questioning I am uh want to first of all say thank you all so much for um bringing us this presentation and all the amazing work that you all are doing getting so excited um looking at all of this even just seeing that the presentation itself um is bilingual just made me really excited so I know my constituents can all of my constituents have access to it and can read can read it and follow along with what's going
028on really appreciate that how um are parents able to get connected with this International parent leadership Consortium like is there an application process how does that happen yes that's a great question so we are going to be posting information Dr KY has a ELD Weekly Newsletter that um many principles in ELD teachers receive from there they will be recommending um parent leaders at their schools because we do have a limited amount of space and there will be an application um that is translated that will be translated into English um Spanish French PTO and dar and then my other question in that vein for the family engagement steering committee and basically all of the ways that you all are reaching out to get parents is it all pretty much the same process the principles are recommending
029parents or how are how are you getting that engagement to start helping you all build engagement yes it is a a collaboration with parent engagement assistants Community School coordinators English language development um chairpersons um we do have a a small um collaborative team of family facing stakeholder groups that includes Title One sped Judy centers and then from there with that collaboration we're able to also share the information with them so they can share with their Specialists and coordinators and Miss Santos found a few of her people our family members who were on our committee when she was doing a family engagement session for the district so through their active participation she was able to find people that weren't even recommended by our schools wonderful thank you for that additional contact that was incredibly helpful that
030was all for this round Dr andul yes um thank you all again I'm gonna Echo um board member goes M um this is um this is fantastic this is the work that you know everyone needs to know about so um kudos to all of you for for doing this and continuing it in your respective um schools and obviously across the district um to start I just I had a um I had the same question you had um board member gor mcant so thank you for addressing that regards to the ELD newsletter and the recruitment of um the recruitment of parents to be involved in the Consortium um with regard to the English family what is this the family English literacy pilot um so the two schools that you selected it looks like what Samuel Chase
031and Fort foot how did you all choose those specific schools um to be a part of that pilot I'm seeing they're both like on the southern side of the county um how would they selected so first of all I want to give the board cudos because they actually asked us to start a family literacy workshop for our families and we were like let's figure out how this works um and so miss Santos took the Rosetta Stone the Samuel Chase and Fort foot were schools that were already interested and had already begun working with Rosetta Stone with their families and because we wanted to Pilot this we wanted schools that were already interested where we could create the groundwork so that other schools can do it and it just happened that these two schools were in
032the southern end I also want to provide additional context these two schools do not receive Community School um Title One funding and they are both new Community Schools so we wanted to ensure that we Pro provide a guide that can can be replicated by other schools that are not designated as Community Schools or Title One schools okay that's really helpful um interesting okay and wait where's my clock okay um and um the pilot remind me again because I'm following Along on a separate screen you know I'm struggling with just one screen today um so your faces are very small and I have a slide deck up remind me again so for this pilot it started this year um and as through the duration of this school year then you'll of report out on findings and
033figure out like what worked what didn't and think about the possibility of scaling is that kind of the the plan I'm looking at your um kind of Gant chart here so miss Santos just started in October and so we developed the family literacy so that they will be an eight-week increments and that families can continue to participate if schools offer them twice or possibly three times but it's an 8-week course and we're actually going to be starting it shortly here with our schools we haven't we did a lot of planning we didn't want to just throw something and see if it worked we wanted to make sure that we put a lot of effort into the planning before we actually implemented the pilot okay I'm sorry thank you I misre it says work group not
034Workshop I thought I miss read okay thank you it works I'm Sorry Miss Santos if it works well it when it works um and we have a chance to look at it even if we don't start the next round in September we'll pick up a new eight-week sessions at sometime once the school year starts right yes and and schools will be able to once we have our facilitation guide will have an estimate of about how much it costs when they go through SBB they'll be able to use some of their extra funding that they have left over to be able to purchase the items they would need to do a family English literacy at their school and then miss Santos and the teachers who did this from Samuel Chase in Fort foot would help to
035facilitate the training for those schools and then we also um would still do a few County ones where any individuals who attend a school that's not able to host it would be able to attend our family literacy classes thank you I just wanted to add the last thing thank you Dr Kenny for clarifying um that I just also wanted to say that um many schools do already have an English literacy program however most of the time they do have a vendor or they just receive Rosetta Stone licenses so we wanted to provide a clear guide that has all the presentations has all the activities has all the resources the materials and the workbook so schools that do not have the additional funding to purchase a vendor to teach these classes still receive an opportunity to
036host them at their school great um oh um do you want to do a second round okay um before we do a second round I think I should um I got one question just one um are there any plans well my um well not really concern but my um I was kind of in um I guess shocked about the professional development um like the low participation in um the professional development and is there any plans to to provide any additional resources or incentives for staff in districts with low um participation rates in these um professional development days Miss Santos has everything nicely organized on one document that any school could use so even if they didn't attend the professional development they can still access and it's clearly laid out and Miss Santos has actually started
037looking at schools and figuring out where she can start contacting schools that haven't had any particip ation or haven't had anybody to engage so that we can start reaching out to schools one by one so that it's not just left to people not coming so we really want to Target those schools that aren't coming and see what we can do to get their family engagement up and running and what I love and just want to just bring attention to the room is uh one of the data points first off I love the fact that we have a dashboard for multilingual Learners so shout out for you all for working um to get that platform I know that was a work in progress for us um but when you look at the districts be mindful that
038if there's a district that's lower you know you would expect the districts to have schools in the north to be way higher than some schools in the South so also we have to quate for the type of learner that's in certain schools could also play a role in why some districts aren't showing up as more pronounced as others Additionally the month of January February and March was also the waa access um time frame so many of our staff members were very overwhelmed during this time um we will be offering additional professional development um within the next two months and as Dr Kenny said my recordings are available for our staff which includes all of the resources that they need to implement the information thank you oh and then what um just white like one slight
039um I think I guess comment I didn't see um District nine in that last slide where we talked about like um the the districts with the um the amount the percentage of districts in the county I think it was I didn't see District nine I heard all the other ones I just didn't hear District nine yeah yeah so I don't know one it looks like we just highlighted the top two or three and the lowest two or three so if if you would here you got to bring that District so we G we gonna get you that information for all of us we'll get you that okay I no I just didn't see so I thought it was all of them okay um yeah but that's it from me um m going M do you
040want to go in for your second round yes please thank you chair jungle I will try to keep um these two questions that I have brief I'm curious about the um number one your keep performance indicators that you all have for this work overall really excited about um this dashboard and being able to access it and go through it but specifically for your work with the um family community engagement how are you all seeing and I know we're early but seeing and tracking how increased engagement is affecting academic achievements specifically how students are performing on access and even to a certain extent how things are going with weeda screeners if we're seeing a difference based off of Engagement and then the other half of my question is how can we as board members support you
041all in these efforts we haven't gotten down to the access level but I love that kind of question because I'm always pushing my staff so now that we have the schools that have the higher percentage when we get our access scores we can kind of compare and see if there's an impact or if it's just nominal um I think our biggest metric right now is seeing if the work that Miss Santos is doing is leading to schools actually shifting their practice in hosting events that was the first thing we wanted to do is get every school hosting events and we are trying to give a series of events that every school can host all the slides are done so that every school can consistently provide the same information for a multilingual learner families so I
042think it's more about getting out there but now you've challenged Miss Santos and I and we love so we'll start to explore that impact on our students with their access scor another thing to think about too um Melissa that they may not know is that Melissa has a um multilingual learner or um ELD strategic plan so I think when you look at how schools are doing it's a multiple it's multiple aspects that you would have to look at Family engagement is interesting because a lot of times and you all know this we operate on like what we can controlling what we can do and so sometimes we leave that voice behind and this was about the intentionality of a parent group that wanted to be involved and don't know how to get connected and so
043hopefully that makes the difference to help their children on what's what's coming in what's the right questions to ask how can I be feel more connected um at the schoolhouse level but know that we're trying to attack many things through her strategic plan and at some point um I'll make sure you all get a copy of her strategic plan as well and she gets two more minutes because we took up um some of her time answering question sh Jango can they answer the second half of the question yeah we're um we still got time um I can grant it yeah thank you and the second half was just how we as the board can support you all's work I think as we have our flyers for our family engagement events making sure that we share
044them with you and that you share them with your constituents I think that would be the best way to help and then I think going back to Active Parent engagement so yes Miss Santos has a plan for families to engage in our iplc but if you know of an active parent of a multilingual learner that you think would be good we'd love your recommendations as well so by all means share that with us and we can give them the application or get that to you so that they can apply he um the oh the floor goes to Dr anul thank you um yeah this is I I just keep saying this is great work because it really is um you know I I have a question for the the Riverdale Elementary School team thank you
045all um so much for joining um you know I think one of the first things you said um that I heard you say um principal Riley was that um you know that it it wasn't until you all were able to engage in the professional development that things kind of took off right and you all were able to utilize some of what you learned during that time um I mean I'm paraphrasing uh to kind of add on to some of the work that you were already doing so I'm I'm just curious to hear a little more about I mean what what's shared here is that you all obviously were able to you know host an event um I'm curious to hear from you all what specifically from the professional development was most helpful um to you
046all um and actually you know figuring out how best to engage families and support families in your um in your school and that can be to anyone so we're going to give you two parts so I'm gonna say that we've been hosting events for our families for eight years let me um and then when miss bja and Mr buos attended the parent the engagement event through the ELD office we almost moved it to how we do in our classroom which is in small group so I'm going to allow them to tell you what they took away and why it's working better this way got it Mr busos and miss bioner you have to speak up unmute yeah just a couple of hours ago I just uh I just facilitated um a parent engagement so I'm
047I'm the ELD newcomer teacher so I invited the parents of the new Commerce students of the parents of the newcomer students I was able to explain to them the process of the uh uh English language development and they're so appreciative about because sometimes the uh new parents and new students are at a loss of what what what we are doing in the classroom so I do know a part that we took away from the actual professional development was the breakdown of information and how to piece it out instead of giving them so much to take in which has been the most part the biggest part of empowering parents is giving them the words of like what should I look for what are the questions to ask and then what can I take home to support
048my children so every level has had a different piece of the um the learning to take home but the biggest part was that we needed to segment it down so that everyone felt comfortable in a safe space to ask questions and that we were able to to model the things that we were having them do and then to take it home I think another powerful thing you said is when you think about our multilingual Learners and their different proficiency levels how you talked about just the newcomers the newcomer families are going to just come in general with so many needs that your more proficient students their families have been there or they've already started at a proficiency level so even thinking about differentiating for parents which we know is good professional learning practice that we
049do for educators as well it's taken a lot of time I'm not going to lie to you for us to do it by grade level and then by level of students but what we're noticing is that the parents our parents want to be a part of it that's not an issue we have at Riverdale our parents will come if we say come the whole building will show up but it's what we do when they're there and how we help them feel like they're a part of the learning so one big thing at Riverdale is we always have translators present for every event and usually the translators are first there to help the parent understand but then they come and sit next to us as the teachers and the administrators and they tell us what's being
050said because we allow the functions to be run in other languages so that everyone has a voice and they don't feel like it's an obstacle um and if I can add so we started like Miss Riley was saying it's by like levels but also introducing what ELD is because a lot of our parents um would be like what is El I don't know what that is a lot of the parents were asking if they have to pay for it if it's after school and explaining what that is um and the format of what they do the pullouts and um pushing into the classrooms and as well as like even just the weeda access like what does that mean the components um in our teachers are really um engaged with them in the workshops and they
051kind of like explain to it in the PowerPoint like this is what a level one should be able to do and this is what a level four and they and walk the parents through the whole process I think that is a big thing um that our parents are really happy to learn about yeah and then I would just like to add one I think our parents like really like the take-home activities that get to do like not only are they doing it here in the workshop when they're here with us but then they're able to demonstrate this at home and I feel like our parents really appreciate because in the feedback and the service the number one thing is what they pref what they like is activity that they're able to do at home and
052it's not just like a one-time thing they're showing them what they're doing in the classroom and how they could support them at home because I think that's the number one big question that a lot of parents have is how can I support my child at home and sometimes they don't feel empowered to do so but I think in these workshops we give them the power back to them showing them exactly how they could help their child at home and then they also find Community within each other and I think that's big because a lot of times they feel like oh it's just me but then when they see that other families are here and we we do Spanish um Patu Dy like we have a Spanish is our second biggest language but we have a
053bunch of other languages and we try to make sure that those families also feel heard and seen so Melissa when you think about next month we'll come and we'll talk about uh things that we learned that you are amazing so you you and N may have already done this but what I'm thinking of in the moment is when we get to one of the next principal meetings or even as we go into the end of the year closeout or SLI is maybe Niti will come with her team along with um Miss Santos and then that way you can present to other principles they hear it they're going to trust their colle who's in the work and who's seen it which may really get them involved in wanting to do it so that's just an idea
054great well we were planning on submitting some proposals for SLI and now we will involve Miss Riley her colleagues will listen to her she'll she'll talk through what she just said and that gets like I want to send my teachers I want to know more about those small pieces oh that's something I can try cuz if you see one of your colleagues doing it you you you not that they don't listen to us but they'll really listen to them we'll do the leg work principal Riley we'll get you to add a few input input to a few slides after Canon you know that I'll do anything for you so yeah thank you okay um I see Dr go MC I said Dr M go MC has a um a third round question I'm guessing so
055if there's no objections um we can allow a third round question this wasn't a third round question I was going to ask if we can make a request as a committee for um when they come back for additional information yeah um Rosa um if I'm wrong or not I think so yes if that's do consider a followup um we we can go on the third round of this discussion is that okay Mr Jungle you you replace again the that yeah everything um Dr I saw hand up did you have a question my request was going to be about um when we're doing the family and Community engagement I know at least there was when I was working for PGCPS um in our high schools we had a large number of unaccompanied Miners and students who
056necessarily we didn't have parents who were going to be engaged like the student in effect was their own guardian or their own main adult in the home and just wondering how you all are working with high schools to specifically engage those students and connect them to their own and I know schools are doing part of it but what that looks like from you all's office and if that has been uh factored into this family engagement at all thank you for sharing that with the supporting our immigrant students families and staff we realized we met St staff and central office and then Dr love Dr Jackson Miss anos and I did presentations for families and we realized that the unaccompanied minor population may just kind of be left because they don't fall into any of those
057populations and so we are working on planning a presentation specifically for high school students 9th through 12 we're not calling out on accompanied miners because that's not what we're doing but we want to make sure that if they're interested in that information that they will be able to get through that presentation but we will also provide additional details how how we may engage them additionally um is there any other questions Dr Andel yes um this Dr White you already mentioned this um and it's partially true but not just because I'm from district one but I am really interested in um if possible getting a sense of what the engagement in District One um looks like and I mean quite honestly across the board like I'm I'm just curious about who all is actually participating um
058who isn't um so any you know additional you know information um that you have on kind of who all is engaging and where their gaps um I'd be curious to see um and also see if there's a way that we can support um you know I I just I don't know I mean I I find it surprising I'm not going to lie I find it very surprising that we don't have a large representation um in the north I know there are a number of factors that could potentially be I'm playing into that um but if there's any way that I can support or others that I know in district one who are very much I know would be very much invested um in trying to get folks plugged in to a lot of these amazing
059resources um we'd love to be able to figure out how we can support and then Melissa another thing that you could do also and at least for the two districts um board member jongo do you have a district no no I don't have a district I didn't think so I am from District nine but okay when you ask District nine that's why I had to pause like maybe that's new okay but for the other two um that are here also maybe see if Sheila has some just information for par parental things for their districts as well but it could be especially since I hear uh board member anderl talk about the north uh same way natia say she's these are things she had already done but this allowed her to do it differently a lot
060of those schools because they're tital one because they're Community Schools have other things that may not be tracked through what we're doing so um at some point we could figure out a way it may be Melissa and um Miss Santos away with maybe some of our schools where we know we have over a certain percentage like what are some of the activities that they did during the year to list them out which would kind of give you more information and general about what's being done not necessarily led by our office and that could be helpful and and I have to share that this is a self-reporting document so we know there's flawed data there so miss Santos follows our schools will share for me to celebrate in our updates that they did a family night
061but they won't complete Miss Santos form so when Miss Santos sees that she sends them the form and says complete our form for crying out loud but what we hope to do is share at the beginning of the year the data and be able to show everybody that since this is our first year this is really Baseline data to get a picture of what things are looking like and as we share it with schools we we think we'll see an increase in them completing the form okay great um you just want to make sure is there any more questions good okay um pull this up real o one second minor technical difficulty okay I think it's working now all right um thank you everyone for the great presentations truly um I found it very informative
062and I learned a lot any follow any follow-ups from tonight's meeting will be shared upon the receipt um I would like to thank the public the committee members PGCPS Administration staff and the board office staff for joining us this evening there being no further business the time is now 6:28 p.m. and the March 17 2025 academic achievement committee meeting is adjourned thank you to everyone and have a great night thank you good night thank you have a good evening