001good evening the time is now 5:34 and I would like to call to order the October 16th 2023 academic achievement committee meeting I am Dr Zapora Miller chair of the committee and the District Five representative of Prince Gees County Board of Education if everyone could please introduce themselves starting with the committee members other board members Prince George's County Public Schools administrator of staff and then the board office staff okay I'll go ahead and start Pamela Boozer struther Vice chair of the committee and District three Board of Education member hello everybody I'm nataline lasa Frasier District 8 hi I'm Judy mckin Murray uh chair of the board and ex officiary me member of this committee David Murray Board of educ district one good evening Kia McDaniel director of curriculum and instruction and good evening David Reese
002Jr office of equity diversity and belonging Betsy White diversity strategy officer office of equity diversity and belonging good evening everyone hi I'm Stephanie Bailey I'm an equity coach in the office of equity diversity and belonging good evening my name is Rosa Lopez I'm a board administrative uh secretary for the board office thank you so much everyone and thank you for being here this evening Miss Lopez could you please call the role Dr seora Miller present Miss buer Str pres Mr Jackson Mrs lasay freser present Mr Murray present and we have this mck maray but she's an ex official thank you thank you so we have Quorum may I have a motion to adopt the October 16th 2023 meeting agenda I make a motion that we adopt the October 16 2023 agenda second all in favor
003please signify by saying I I I I the agenda is adopted may I have a motion to approve the September 11 11 2023 meeting minutes make a motion to approve this September 11 2023 meeting minutes second signify by saying I if you are in favor I I the agenda is adopted we have no registered public comment speakers this evening so at this time I will now yield the floor to Dr Kia McDaniel who will be serving in Dr whitee to present the team that for this evening's agenda item Equity diversity and belonging pulling back the layers Equity leads Dash to action the theory behind practice thank you Dr Miller we're excited to have team members from the equity Diversy and belonging office here with us this evening um as is our structure for this school
004Year's academic achievement committee the team is going to be sharing the theory behind the practice some of the implementation of um the work of equity leads in the school and then when they return in February um they'll be bringing some um additional team members and school-based um support to just kind of give some an overview of how they are implementing some of the things that's been that's going to be shared with us this evening so with that want to turn it over to you Dr Reese thank you so much so I was going to ask Dr uh McDaniel I don't know whether it was just me could everybody hear because I don't know if she'll be presenting as well I could hear her just fine okay so it may have just been me sorry about
005that no worries and I'm not presenting so you never know with me I might want to pull you in because you're my sister in an office right across the street so um good evening everyone is a pleasure truly a pleasure to be here with you all and for those of you who are joining us hello out there uh again my name is David Reese Jr and I am the director of the office of equity diversity and belonging before we leave this slide though I just want to say a couple things to kind of Orient everyone to what we're doing today I'm excited that Dr White had the vision to title this session the theory behind the practice and that's because there's been a lot of excitement and energy around this new powerful tool that we
006have in Prince georgees County School District in collaboration with Handover research and that tool that you'll see a little bit later today is called the equity dashboard and I've been around the system in a lot of different ways in a different capacities as consultant employee champion and employee again since about 2011 and this is the first time that I am aware of where we've had a data source that was going to be public facing that all community members school board members teachers students anyone would have access to that lets them know about the performance of the district and in ways that look at equity and inequity um and so this is actually a pretty huge undertaking and I've done a lot of work in the past around scaling initiatives through throughout school districts and the
007challenge I want to pose to us today is one of scale so we have a new tool that the school board has been very exitting exed about that offers a lot of opportunity and now we have to make sure that everyone has access to the rich data that are there and that we have the collective skill to know how to interpret the data that are there in useful ways and know how to move forward to help individual schools and individual communities of of Learners in our district so the outcome of this session today is to invite the Board of Education to partner with us in some Vision casting so I want you all to think about as you see elements of the tool and what we think our plan is we want you to offer
008your absolute best thinking your hopes and fears your consideration so that as we move forward we're all working in tandem towards one objective so I look forward to that at the end of the presentation and that was the key for the next slide all right and so we are all familiar with I hope the mission and vision of the Prince georgees County public school system and I really want to just kind of Zone in for a moment on the mission side and yellow where it says we are aiming to provide a transformative educational experience anchored by excellence and Equity developing 21st century competencies and enabling each students and I want to put this in bold each students unique Brilliance unique Brilliance to flourish in order to build empowered communities communities into a more inclusive and
009just world so as we think about the events that are happening in the world right now there's so many Global and local events that are happening that are impacting us it is incumbent upon us to be sure that we're empowering each student to be their absolute best to bring all of his her or their tools to the table to make the world a better place so thank you all for pushing and joining us in that mission for PGCPS on the following slide you see an excerpt and everyone has access to this out there in The Ether um the next sert if you can go back one more slide to our um back the other way the other back great the PGCPS transformation 2026 strategic plan framework and the only thing I want to zoom in
010here because there's a lot of text is the center box is kind of red or orange depending on what your computer is showing you right now and it says we want to have an organizational learning culture for me this is one of the most if not the most important aspect of what our system is aiming for in order to have a culture of learning for everyone people need to feel invited safe that they can participate and ask questions and questions are not necessarily challenges and sometimes passionate disagreement um is a good thing and it's healthy if it's anchored in a culture where we know that people are bringing their best their passions and their energy to improving the learning culture of PGCPS so I'm sure some of us have passions on the call today I
011invite you to bring those passions as we talk about what next steps can look like in order to make sure that we are doing the best for our community and the next Slide the division of academics um Dr McDaniel and Dr White a few years ago really led a lot of stakeholders across the system in creating a student learner profile and Dr White Challenger she said at any time that you are presenting to anyone I want you to focus on an aspect of the student learner profile that we spent a lot of time creating that is an anchor to our strategic plan and you can look at it very quickly and see that when we talk about the unique Brilliance of each individual student there are lots of ways where that Brilliance can show up
012and being a global citizen a communicator a critical thinker and Pusher a Creator and innovator and in this world today in the world of artificial intelligence and all kinds of other things we definely Le a lot of creativity and Innovation and we want people to be goal directed Learners to be able to understand this is where I want to go and have staff and families and students work together to figure out how best to meet those goals all right so now let's get into the heavy lifting so to speak Betsy White who joined our team recently as our diversity strategy officer has this this great idea so as we as we continue to see work in Prince geores County you hear the question did you know and the slide says did you know that black
013boys in PGCPS begin school with the same or higher levels of kindergarten Readiness as all other students and the data that you see here comes from the Handover Equity dashboard that I told you about earlier that everyone now has access to and what we love about this tool is that our school-based Equity leads who are um staff members who work at each school have received a lot of support and professional learning with understanding how to use this tool how to disaggregate data and how to find compelling stories that illuminate confirm or sometimes refute what we think might be happening within our system and the reason why it's important to know that black boys enter kindergarten with a higher level of Readiness or the same Readiness as all other students and that's what this is showing
014us in group a you can see the red circle where it says the gender is male the race is black and it's all students and for B you see that the gender is all and the race is all so we're looking at all students compared to just black black males and you can see that for the year 2022 for example 30.1% of black boys were measuring ready for kindergarten whereas 24.6% of all students where as you look at that data and move across every single year you see something that might be a counternarrative something opposite what we might expect to see based off of the types of conversations that we tend to hear about black boys in our school system and given the recent news that we've learned about our performance compared to other school
015districts and how black and Latin students are performing students who are black and Latin X are performing better in Prince George's County than they are in some of our other um local school systems in Maryland it's important to note that but I want to pause for a moment because our Equity leads at the school level are also learning this thing called principles of responsible data use so did you know that when I sit down to take this kindergarten Readiness assessment there might be a time when the the teacher who's administering the the assessment to the student might say you know this is this is a wallet I'm holding my wallet up right now and the teacher might say what color is the wallet and if the student says aul did you know the student doesn't
016get credit for that response so when I talk about we have to be careful when we get data from this powerful tool there's certain information we have to know about the assessments and we call that assessment literacy that's required so that when we're reading the data we understand the implications because we have a lot of latinx students in particular who might see this and say asso but our protocol says from the state they don't receive credit for that what color is that blue is the only correct answer and it must be said in the English language given the diverse language languages that people are speaking in Prince George's County whereas the data say that black boys enter kindergarten more ready I have a whole host of wonderings now around what Readiness looks like for the
017Myriad students for whom English is not their first language but they know their stuff and aren't getting credit for it so in this school district as we scale this really powerful tool to all principls assistant principal school-based Equity leads and you Board of Education members we have some work to do to understand what inferences we can really make from the data so that's a lot of the work behind the scenes that hopefully School leadership teams will dig their heels in and figure out all the learning that they have to do in order to make sure that we're focused on the right work next slide and I see you are writing good juicy questions now so I can't wait to entertain them at the end so based off of this and we just showed you one
018stagnant slide and there's probably a thousand different choices a person could choose to make when they're looking at that Equity dashboard to try to figure out what might be happening in beautiful PGCPS and so what happens next is a series of opportunities to attack disproportionality relentlessly and change the narrative around black and Latino boys and PGCPS and you might be asking why is David talking about black boys in Latino why why does he keep using those those two words well every year since I've come into the district we've had something called an equity Focus area year one we focused on students who might be a part of the lgbtq plus community and did a lot of professional learning to support understanding that population and needs connected to people who um are a part of that
019part of that family and then last year we spent a lot of time focusing on students who are learning the English language students who are multilingual emphasizing those who are newcomers to the United States to think about what those experiences are like and this year our focus is on black and Latino male students who represent over half of the student population in PGCPS and both of these groups are groups of people when you look at National Data and National stories and National headlines deserve to have a narrative about them that is positive affirming and correct and true to who they are so that's why all of our slides are have that focus is because that's the conversation that we're pushing principles assistant principes school-based Equity leads and you to focus on this year next slide
020okay and so because of the opportunity there are a lot of opportunities that we have with this Equity dashboard um lots of stakeholder access to a range of data like I said earlier for the first time that I'm aware of the same data sets and because of that enhanced accountability and transparency will be important so as as a school board and you all very very um good as I've been watching your work at asking good questions and pushing us to do better by everyone in our school district that's staff and I invite that because the accountability should be high and the transparency is really important so we can all be on the same page around knowing where we're going that requires an intense amount of collaboration and learning for everyone together and so I ask
021people all the time be serious as a learner but also be patient with other people's learning because it takes time to really understand and unpack all of the data that will be in front of you so never hesitate to ask questions say I see something and I'm not sure what's behind that so that others that a lot of Staff members we have a lot of expertise and Prince Gees County can help us understand what's behind the data and last we have the opportunity to tell really powerful stories around our systemic Focus areas and if you saw the last board meeting you saw Dr strer do a very powerful presentation telling a very powerful story around what performance looks like in Prince George's County and those are things that you narratives that you might not see
022in the headlines um because we have to go a little bit deeper to really see what's behind the numbers um because that to people right and it connects to practice and it connects to just a lot all right and the next um part of this presentation talks about the rollouts as you could imagine we're a very large district and it's taking quite a long time in some ways to make sure everyone has access to the information Dr White had a meeting with all of academics Dr McDaniel was there about 400 people about a couple weeks ago all went into the platform and looked at it and had their minds blown by what they were seeing some of them for the first time um Feliz Dua and monitoring accountability and her team have looked at this
023and they're thinking about implications for our CSI schools our atsi schools and how the information in this dashboard can really help really shape the specific work at the school level and we had our our e our school-based Equity leads who gave some reactions to the professional development that Stephanie Jason and Duren Campbell did with them just the other day so I'll pause for a moment and actually because I've been talking so much Stephanie would you mind reading those three that are there for me so we can get past my monotone voice sure um one school-based Equity lead said I had no idea that this data was already compiled it's very helpful in order to address disparities within ethnic groups the ability to quickly see different groups side by side was a real aha moment it
024quickly helps identify Trends and patterns the dashboard offers so many insightful and impactful data pieces to think about having this information readily available as we work with our team this year will help wonderful so if you could imagine the hund the almost 200 um we have 200 slots for Equity Le because you can have one per School our office is working with them directly again they have their minds blown and this is just a quick snapshot at what school based staff members were saying based off of their experience with it so there's a lot of excitement and energy around moving the work forward and scaling so that everyone has access and the same understanding and then I want to move relatively quickly now through the rest of the slides that are there and this is
025the theory part so imagine imagine there is a school-based equity lead this is not a real story we're imagining right now we're in Imagine land all right I want you all to Vision with me and the school based Equity leaders out of middle school and their name is Horus and Horus attended this training with our office around the equity dashboard next slide and Horus was wondering you know I'm doing this data dive I'm looking at stuff I'm clicking on all the different areas trying to figure out what's going on and Horus noticed something Hispanic and Latin X male students consistently have fewer disciplinary incidents reported to msde than all other students in Middle School number one our protocol is what did you see that confirmed something you thought to be true illuminated or refuted something
026in you to be true and we could think about where Horus was on that Continuum and then Horus said wait a minute this represents a real opportunity here because I'm noticing that group a which has the male Hispanic latinx population in 2022 s .7% of them had a disciplinary disciplinary incident whereas 99.8% had a disciplinary incident in 2022 and as you read the data pre pandemic and during the pandemic and post pandemic for every single year it is true that Hispanic and latinx male students had fewer disciplinary incidents than all students in PGCPS next slide so imagine that Horus and this Equity team come together for their pre-service um professional learning and they're looking at culture and climate and they have this wondering which is a natural wondering we're coming out I still have my
027Hispanic Heritage Month up because we love our latinx teachers because I'm going to hold on to it I know it's the 16th and it's technically passed but it's every day uh they they they begin to wonder why Hispanic Latin xmail students have fewer disciplinary incidents and so they start to record their questions they have about this next slide Horus remembers our student learner profile that Dr mcdel and Dr White have been pushing in the system to make sure that we're all cented in on it and they have this idea around creators and innovators and you know is there an opportunity here to engage students and helping us to address some problems that might exist in PGCPS and this group of students has an asset right because there's some whether they know it or not there's
028something that they're doing that we all might need to learn from next slide so with his principal support because they're all on the same page they decide to convene a group of Hispanic and Latin ex-mil students so they can learn more about what are you doing did you know that as a group you all are your behavior you're having fewer incidents did you know that and can you help us understand how are you responding to teachers to staff what gets you excited about school like help us understand what's working for you so that we can scale those practices or teach other people about it I I don't know because we want you to create innovate and help us solve some of the discipline problems that we have in our school district and the equity team
029then imagine that they're presenting their findings to the principal it gets into the positive behavior support system and then through the assets of the Latin xmail Community we are now moving and grooving trying to figure out how to better support other groups of students in PGCPS next slide so they celebrate the students for their contributions made possible by the work of so many stakeholders but because the School Board office of equity diversity and belonging all the academics team the Monitor and accountability team everybody's been celebrating them we're all paying attention and imagine what happens with the stora of approaches climate and culture feeling like you belong in a school because we know from our students who know best how best to help other students regarding some of the discipline incidences that we see and remember
030for some people this represents a counternarrative because some people might not think about this group of students as having this asset and this strength that they can share with us next slide and so now we're at a discussion point so we gave you a fictitious example which absolutely could be real because it's steeped in data and if all engines are firing in the way that we need them to imagine the power that schools can have and that the central office can have and that the school board can have to have a collective asset-based conversation about what's real in Prince George's County and use that as a way to get even better so with that what excites you most about these opportunities and I don't really know how Dr Miller you all like to engage with
031questions and answers so I'll kick it back to you and then we have a whole team who can respond so um this this is a presentation right or you coming back I want to gauge the time so we can this is a this is a presentation okay I do think we're coming back was it in February Dr McDaniel gotcha okay no I was wondering whether you had a part two okay I was wondering whether you had a part two tonight so I can gauge the time so we'll just go with the same format where um we will just limit our time to five minutes and then second round um three minutes and then we'll see what what we how we're doing for time at that point so you could just signify by raising your hand
032and then we'll go from there what remember lasah frasia thank you Madame chair first of all I want to just thank um everybody I am so excited about this this is one of the um most exciting things since I've been a school board member so thank you for that um I I've been looking for the opportunity to have these dashboards and be able to be transparent to the community so I I already see that this is going to be a wonderful tool for everyone but I'm wondering can you share a little bit about how is it going to roll out in terms of how we're going to use it as a training opportunity for our our our staff and then how are we going to roll it out to um help our families and public
033learn about it and then um what are your uh plans for us as the school board to engage in some training of our own so that we can learn um perhaps from each of the districts um I would love to spend a day just diving into the data um it I'm nerd when it comes to these things I love data so um this is going to be great um but I'm wondering what are the plans and how can we support it all right thank you for that question and Stephanie and bety please jump in um and I tend to do I always forget we're formal in Prince George's County so Miss Bailey and Miss White feel free to jump in whenever whenever you whenever you want to so the scale challenge in Prince George's County
034because we're a very large school district is a real one uh so it's important to note that as I said earlier all of academics has had their initial foray into the equity dashboard and so has many still have many people on duck duck straters team dror straters team and the accountability division um specifically in monitoring an accountability we did some work with all the principal supervisors in the area offices to reintroduce them to this tool and when they were reintroduced to the tool they had new information and that is this is something we're all using when they first learned about it there was this tool that's out there that has really cool information but now they all know not only is everyone going to be using it but we have to build everybody's capacity so
035as you and I want to be brief in my briefer in my response I know it's the whole five minute thing I'm a big talker um you will be able to reach out to my office for sure and lots of other people who can help direct and guide us and how to use the dashboard and what some of those datawise principles of responsible data use look like so that we can learn how to make good and correct inferences from the data that we see so it's going to take time because you can always learn something you can learn for forever um it just never stops uh and so a part of the role is making sure that more people in central office are on the same page with it and then we can work with
036Schoolboard members or whomever whenever they reach out and when we direct them to there's a both end and will you also be um providing opportunities to um so I I think most of us if not all of us have Community chats so uh presenting this information to the our constituents um I would love to as we move along in in the process maybe in the spring or later on to bring it to um our constituents thank you for that and I do think we need to get I need to take some time with other leaders in the system to think about benchmarking so that if we're clear about who has capacity when can we responsibly begin engaging families with it not to put it off because it's important that families are engaged to help with
037these solutions to problems um but we definitely want to make sure that we're um prepared to do that and do it in in a timely manner I think spring sounds sounds realistic one more question since I still have a little bit of time how are we um how we rolling it out so how are we making the announcement that you know we know that it's there but how are we making it a point that everybody knows that is there and how are they able to access it okay so that's a that's also a very good question and and and Betsy White my she's the big communicator on the team because she's like David how are we going to make sure everybody knows are we putting it in the PGCPS Express do people understand this Handover
038thing exists so we have to have a really strong Communications plan and I'll be very transparent with you I didn't want to do a whole lot of work to make it available to everyone right now because we know we have to make sure that people can get their questions answered in a responsible way um so we need to put a plan together to make sure that the roll out um is so when we come back in February I'm making a note Stephanie's taking a note right now because I can see you're doing it we're going to make sure that we are um queued up for that so thank you for the push thank you so much I'm excited you're welcome any other questions I see no more hands so I mean it was a great
039time with you no no I just was trying not to you know I was going to wait till everybody else and I was going to ask mine okay I see Hands I see Hands okay uh board chair Judy mckin Murray hey you're you're on mute we can go with Vice chair uh Pamela oh yeah that's right so I apologize Vice chair um Vice chair Panela Str right thank you thank you so much Dr Reese and team um I had the um pleasure of taking the summer course on the equity dashboard along with the um uh results of the focus groups uh for the climate and culture survey and I um I think I expressed to you Dr ree at the time that it was um just kind of you know one of the most um
040kind of emotional moments as a board member of the data that showed how we we could see our success moving we could see evidence of strategic plan in the last five years and the summer Equity study groups and the equity leads um and blueprint but at the same time the data that um of the more work to do and I think that this dashboard is the is finally the the evidence of the data to make for decision Mak so I just want to congratulate everyone on on that investment and working with Handover because I know for years we've been talking about it and how we would reach this moment in time and uh I see all the potential so I did want to ask if you could talk about how the the data and the
041equity strategic plan is feeding into the budget cycle because I know it's December 5th is not far off from when a a budget new budget will be presented for 2425 if there's anything you could comment on at this point uh regarding uh budget priorities so there are a couple quick things first board member Bozer Str thank you for the reminder that the strategic planning and resource management office has held sessions that any staff member could have come to to learn about the dashboard um and that kind of connects to um board member the sou Fraser's question around what the roll out look like but that was people reading and say oh I want to check this out let me click on it and see what's happening and so that's people going because they're naturally curious
042and they can become our brand ambassadors to build other people's capacity so when it's more when it's mandated there is a cad of people who can help their responses now regarding the budget cycle there are two things I want to tell you about our office the office of off diversity equity and belonging we have about our teachers our staff members are doing a lot of work and they're they're pulling double duty in some time in some instances right so every school right now does not have a school-based equity lead we have about 30 who don't and full transparency and it's because there's so much work happening in schools that people haven't in some instances signed up to do this very important role to support the leadership teams learning so our office is asking to increase
043the stipended of the school-based equity lead who's doing a lot of work um not a lot of money but it's going to be an increase that we're going to be asking for the school board to support so that we can do a better job of rewarding the people and and saying thank you um for the hard work that they're doing going above and beyond and maybe entice them others to do it and then on the the the school side when we think about title one and then monitoring an accountability there are and um Miss dza and in monitoring accountability now we're having this conversation around how principles will be able to to see very clearly what their focus areas could be and perhaps should be in very clear ways that they hadn't been able to
044before which could help them think about the resources that they will need to help um support more students and so I think this they they're already doing that work in our schools but I think they'll be able to do it with a lot more intentionality and that should help Drive the decisions that they're making and time for the new budget cycle and so we are introducing re introducing to all principles in the next month and so a lot of this work will be happening right as the budget um situation is queuing up did I I hope I answered all your questions uh yes thank you welcome Bo chair Judy mckin Mar thank you so much uh Dr Reese I'm always impressed when I hear from you you everywhere you present you you teach in a
045way that is clear and we all understand it my question is around the equity leads that's a dual role within the school system in other words are are those teachers that in addition to the teaching they have have this responsibility yes oftentimes it's a teacher sometimes it is someone who might be um you know and I use the word teacher Loosely right but you might be a librarian and in some instances where there's no certificated staff member who was willing to do it or able to do it there are some non-certificated staff members who are doing an amazing job of leading for equity and getting a lot of monthly training with our office so Stephanie Jen and Jason are doing a lot of work to really build their capacity and Betsy and I are kind
046of you know guides on the side uh to to Really support that learning so there's a lot of intentional learning happening for them okay let me ask you this what about per professionals could Peril professionals fill that role with that requirement or not and so I'm not the I'm not the strongest person with contract I'll be I'm always going to be transparent with you all fine there is no one who is able to if there is no one from certain um bargaining units who is able to do the perform the role then it opens up to other people I I'm most certain that I'm correct about that Miss White do you have any more clarification as a former principal in our system right I was gonna say so I believe and it's only been two
047years but it is my understanding that only unit one um members can participate with the stien with the yeah with the stiens of the school uh par professionals are not unit one and therefore they are not eligible to participate I think it's definitely something that should change we at at least at my school we had amazing pair of professionals that if they were entrusted to substitute longterm for a teacher they should surely be able to be school-based Equity lead so I think that's definitely something that should be considered okay I appreciate this conversation because one of the things that we continue to learn as we grapple with the blueprint and all of those new requirements that they have and putting on teachers we must get them some help this board understands that very clearly so
048if we can think outside the box you guys have some suggestions that you please go through the superintended to come to us with because we're not trying to circumvent any processes but to help us to see the merits and if you can help us to see the merits and make the case then there could be some other opportunities where we partner either with the unions or or however all I'm saying is that it's clear we need additional help in the those classrooms and we need to figure out how to how to make that happen so thank you thank you so much but uh Dr ree again I love seeing you present I really do you are very good at this craft thank you thank you for those kind words I was trained to be a
049teacher this is what teachers do and I will say I know um Miss Miss Bailey and Miss wh the same way but Miss Bailey is when when think about possibilities and pushing the status quo to make something happen she is um the phrase like a on a bone about it and kind of Relentless so we definitely look to see if we can make some changes so that more people can be included in learning that makes a difference remember theia I can speak about this all day so I'm like I'm gonna contain my excitement but I'm wondering in terms of best practices looking at the budget looking at we have 33 high schools um have we looked at the neighboring jurisdictions um practices I know that coming from Arlington County um we have diversity equity and
050inclusion coordinators at each of the high schools they work with our students they um their focus is to close the opportunity Gap where are we in that sort of creativity I'm thinking 33 high schools can we start with 17 coordinators I don't know I know it's a big pie in the sky but um just wondering where we are in that FL process it is pie in the sky and I'm gonna actually um ask Miss Bailey if she would give a little a couple comments to this I know as we are working with the so we have one stiped position for the school-based equity lead and one of their first tasks if they can is to form an equity team and over the last few years we've been doing this work is something that she as
051an equity coach have really been pushing the equity leads around so Miss Bailey can you give any examples or a um a story about how an equity team has formed at a high school or at a school and how they're moving the work um I can I think at one particular high school I'm thinking of they got a lot of responses for staff who just wanted to be participatory in the equity team um the team set some goals around one of their focus areas as a school and what they decided was that like it's not the role of one person in the school to do this we need to support the capacity of all of our staff members around this particular goal um so I think what we've seen is that for our Equity leads
052overall like the ones that are most successful have been able to Garner support from the whole staff and really lead the whole staff around um Equity practices for specific needs in the school um principles have gone in and done observations and provided feedback around specific areas that the teams have been looking at um and even our team has gone into some I'm thinking of elementary schools but we've been into different schools to do learning walks and provide feedback around areas of need for the schools as well um so we do not have specific Dei coordinators at the schools right now but I think that our schools are starting to see that we need Buy in from the whole staff in order to be effective in closing the gaps that we're seeing and to lessen disproportionality
053and board member of the South Fria I appreciate the visioning because we asked you all to be rigorous with us and you know one of our team members Dr Campbell said and then Miss White when she came on Bo this is a position like this is a FTE with with with what our vision is for what this could become so stay tuned for more um more board requests I agree I don't see any more questions but I'm going to ask and if you have any more questions um R please just raise your hand so we can engage in this discussion but I too I am just chomping at the bit I was like I wanted to ask first me me me please um because this is just powerful data um and uh between the meeting
054last week where we saw that data and that was just a breath of fresh year to see that data disaggregated that way and then to come here and to see the data dashboard and I'm thinking how did I miss the summer course and I'm sure board member Pamela Bo Str probably told me about it and now I'm mad that I missed that course because I feel like I'm missing out on something so let us know when you are training again or make it intentional because I I want to ensure that I participate in the course whatever you have training so that um I also can see what the dashboard um just dig deeper in the dashboard um you talked about principles of responsible data use I'm thinking about my question um for that because as
055I see you rolling this out I can see how this D the power in this data but I can see how it can also um I don't want to speak in the negative so I'm not sure how to put it but basically it can be used in a manner which in in which it was not intended right so the goal of this data is to look really look at where we are and then to challenge where we are as individuals um and what we need to do with the dis disproportionality that we're seeing or for example the example that you used when you you looked at the data and you said um Latin X students have the least amount of referrals to the state celebrate it but how do we use that data so that
056we are moving our students forward and what is it that we need to do so that we can see this behavior in different you know student groups so talk to me about the professional development because you're well-versed and even in the way you presented the data you can tell that you live this like you sleep you dream everything you live this but everybody's not there yet how do we get them bite at a time so that it's not misused for lack of a better word all right so thank you for thank you for that question and so I have a belief and the belief is we should not use data to wound and to hurt and to embarrass but at the same time we can use data for accountability to look at areas of improvement
057and give critical feedback and I think the spirit in which we offer that critical feedback as a learning organization and in a learning culture um the spirit in which we give it absolutely matters so when I think about the principles of responsible data use I'm thinking about some some professional learning that a lot of people in our system were engaged with um with the data wise improvement process and now we're using um pdsa with Carnegie but in that there's this tool called the latter of inference and in Prince Geor dis County we spent a lot of time a lot of time and you still see latter of inferences posters everywhere what do I see what can I observe what can I inference can I actually make based off of what I see ask questions about
058it before I jump to action and taking conclusions and because we've done so much work with that across our district we have a lot of muscle memory for how to engage um in data practices so that there's some safety around the data but we act in understanding but we actually do take take meaningful action so I think as a system we will need to recommit to scaling that beyond the staff into families and others so that there's a data culture and a way of looking at data that we all understand so that we can really ask hard questions in tough questions and point to things that are unacceptable for the purpose of understanding why it looks the way that it looks without thinking that it's because we can't or we haven't or we don't care
059to do something differently because most of us really do care and want to do better um so I just I always start with that belief thank you that's very helpful and it's good to know that there was that um the staff so I'm I'm assuming it went down not down but to the teacher level principal central office staff with the lad of inference so as you come back with this date of dashboard it would be something that you're just bringing back as a refresher as you're looking at the data every single time just like Dr we student learner profile every single time as a as an image just to Anchor us this is how we do our in PGCPS awesome any other questions discussions discussion points I think just one more thing in terms of
060messaging I think that um going back to that Communications plan and how we going to roll it out to the general Community it's important to to share that this is a a baseline it that provides us a beginning it provides us a way to plan for the future future and it gives us the opportunity to not only plan out for um one or two years but five and 10 and 20 right so it gives us an opportunity to grow and that if we use a growth mindset for this OPP this opportunity I think that then um those potential negative inferences can be eradicated so we can work towards the the beauty of what this brings to our County just saying in terms of messaging Communications be ke thank you so much I have a couple
061next steps that I want to make sure that that that the team is capturing one is to connect with um our strategic planning resource management office I know Vanessa weatherington is probably out there watching right now so that we can do some specific work with um with um the school board and others to reintroduce um this powerful platform and I do take um take your your feedback seriously so I think starting with static slides that everybody can see and notice and wonder with together around some of our critical areas of focus for academics and mental health can help us see what the dashboard can do before we start to play in it so that we can kind of create an expectation of how we look at the data what is in there before people kind
062of go into the public facing portal and do some of their own uh disaggregation so those are two things that I'm taking away um from this time and I know that Miss Bailey probably has lots of other stuff I have a follow-up question as you worked with the academics team were what were the conversations around or have we started conversations around how we marry teaching and learning curriculum writing um professional development with what we're seeing in the data dashboard so Elba Elba standing in front of the room um with with all 400 people in there what what I will say is we had people saying there's data that's missing where's data from this content area how do we get it into the dashboard so they were put I love a good push back because when
063you push that means we get better and so through Dr McDaniel's team we're actually working to make sure that we get some social studies data and some science data in the dashboard that was a social studies teacher and it wasn't even in the dashboard I was like David what are you doing this is your content um but we all sometimes have blind spots I mean I don't mean to say blind spots sometimes we our our vision sometimes we don't see things in the same ways I want to be careful about um being ableist when I say things like blind blind spots and my apologies so we're taking people's feedback from that that was a powerful team and I I can't unfortunately tell you about all the different Rich conversations that they had but they were
064a buzz um with the possibilities and at some point um Dr Daniel McDaniel I'm sorry I could probably tell you more I will just say that um similar to the experiences that Dr ree said with um other audiences everyone was amazed that oh wait we have this data someone's collecting this data it's not just you know the little bits and pieces that we um you know we're collecting on our own so it was exciting for the data that was there to just see it all in one place and nowhere to be able to refer to it and again um as you mentioned my team did push back around some of them not already included and Dr Miller you would have been one of them as well as a former science supervisor um and so they
065did um want to ensure that their data was represented as well than yeah that hurt to hear science was one of not included hurt real bad included soon okay um Bo member and vice chair Pamela budas thank you um one feedback that I gave I pretty sure it was through the comments after the class was the um one thing I couldn't track was students that were tag identified and then that their participation in in the specialty programs at high school like Science and Tech and that is a that is something that has talked a lot about in my district um this assumption that your tag identified that you're going to get those seats because you're going to get algebra in middle school and you're going to be more ready for the PSAT and um that
066was there the data didn't allow for that like to um it I think it was in there but the the dashboard itself and I know for sure that that's a question that I hear a lot there's a lot of parents who are so concerned about tag identification because of that belief that it is the way to Elanor Roosevelt Science and Tech or dual or Oxen Hill so that is that's something that that I I could use as a board member to see what those Trends truly are that's very um thank you board member booer Str so I you know I'll always be transparent and as honest as I as I can be but my honesty doesn't mean that I'm right okay so this Equity data dashboard is a really really powerful tool and it can
067do some things but it cannot and will not do everything so the wondering that I'm left with is when we have a question like the one that you posed around tag Trends what are the ways that we can what are the ways we can answer that question in PGCPS because sometimes the more nuanced questions might require Dr Strader's team or Dr White's team to do a different level of analysis with us it might be able to happen in the dashboard but it might not but whether it can happen there or not doesn't mean that we shouldn't be able to provide you with the the answer yeah I appreciate that thank you board chair Judy mckin Murray thank you uh I'm not sure if this question should be asked here but what I'm thinking about is
068the impact of of chronic absenteeism and um and climate in the schools on the learning and do you capture that and I don't know if you do but I do know that it is problem for our system yes this dashboard does capture that in a couple different ways um what we showed you with the dropdowns was one um way that you can look that data but we also have a different thing that um like to call it the splash page which is coded grid and with like light green to light orange and dark orange and it shows over and under representation I don't want to get too fancy but absenteeism is something that we can look at across a lot of different demographics um in terms of race ethnicity um social economic status um and
069lots of other different demographic criteria so we can have a we we might when we do our work with the school board start with some of the absenteeism data so that we can do some noticings and wonderings around it okay then I appreciate that so when you create this class and not create it but make this opportunity available for Dr Miller can you please include me so that I can attend that training thank you all are welcome you got it right sh Pamela Bo yeah I just wanted to follow up with chair mickens Murray that AB that absent ism is a data point and when I referen my initial reactions when I um got in there and looked at data absenteeism was one of the ones that just hit me so hard and why you
070hear me paying more attention to it around the uh report card and msde and what absenteeism truly is because it is we are you know also a system that you know the beginning of last school year not not not this one but when we returned in full after um Co closure um our our former superintendant sent out a letter that said please keep your kids home if you have any symptoms right there coid RSV the flu and then at the same time you have principal saying I need my kids in the building for my report card like it's just not going to be fair so and I think it's a public health thing so I think absenteeism is data point in the equity dashboard also isn't split among health and other reasons and I think
071health and those other reasons are critical like and I think we could as PGCPS demonstrate you know why I disagreed with the the re you know the now former State superintendent when his answer back to us at May was ABS being abs as being absent I completely disagree I think that that we have to go deeper so I I said that as a plea to the state board and state superintendent so I'll just say it here internally to us you know that that we have some responsibility on that as well and and thank you uh boy member Pamela V strs and one of the things that I am looking at is how can we as school as the school board assist with this because I know it's a problem I know that it's all hands
072on deck so how can these hands help you guys with that piece that's an awesome question thank you and there are some people who can answer it better than I can in our school system so hopefully they're listening but I'll be reaching out to them I do want to make a do a quick teaching point though and I'm not going to ask you all to answer this question um in class tonight but um if I were to ask you what is chronic absenteeism think about what your answer is and then think about if you expect that your answer is the same as everyone else's answer and so when I say principles of responsible data use as a system there's this thing again called assessment or data literacy when we're looking at these data we would
073all know exactly what the definition of chronic absenteeism is how many days over what period of time and how much of a day counts as chronically absent if you have a doctor's note is it the same as not having a doctor's note and that's not to say little David could be in class not paying chair Micks Murray any attention I could just be sitting there and not paying at all right but I'm present you just manage my expectations thank you but I always pay you attention right but there's so many ways of thinking about what it means to be absent and what it means to be present and I love to think about these things all the time as a thinker but I know as a system we have to be very calibrated around our
074understanding of what's in the data before we have any conversation about what we feel about it or what we should do about it or all of those things because we might not be having the same conversation correct so when I tell you all I want you to be patient with us with this is because we have a lot of teaching and learning to do right which doesn't mean that we're aren't taking action but we want to make sure that people are prepared as best as possible to use the data in positive ways that can really um impact outcomes so with this data dashboard um I think more so like a a logistical question you this came about as a partnership with Handover research is it like a month a yearly subscription does it go away
075at some point what do we need to know as a board so that we can ensure that it stays as you are trying to scale it so that we're using it um syst systemically so through Dr Strader's budget every year he puts a request in um and he makes sure that that that funding is there so thank you for approving Dr Strader's budget and I know there are other people um like Dr McDaniel's team has a relationship with Handover research not for this purpose but for other purposes um and one thing just to to toot our PGCPS horn for a moment we were in a conversation with the research team from Handover research they said we love what PGCPS is doing with this dashboard because we're doing things that other systems are not doing with
076it and really trying to make sure I mean we actually in the academics meeting we crashed the system because there were so many people in it and and so we have to figure that they that's a problem that they now have to solve and they're excited about it uh so this is um lots of promise but um again Dr strer through his budget um takes care care of all of that in his requests I was trying to practice my weight time I'm not that good um any more questions okay seeing none um this is great and I look forward to to uh additional conversations I actually do have another question I I don't know whether it's for Dr Reese or do Dr McDaniel um when you come back the next time I know you're bringing
077um stakeholders who are at the school level right and and they're using this are we is is this a possibility that they could talk to us about how they using it the impact on instruction impact on culture and climate um just curious what was the so we can see the impact of what this is having at a school level yes that's the exact um Vision that we had that you would just get some of the basic information in the initial presentation and then you can hear from those actually um implementing whatever in this case the dashboard and how they're using it um both posit their positive experiences if there are any um next steps that they're recommending um just so you can hear it straight from um those who are utilizing it that's great thank
078you thank you all right with that um colleagues followup to items from September 11 2023 committee meeting have been posted on board dos for your review and I would like to thank the qu team the curriculum and instruction team this has been totally totally amazing um and I mean just we I know I've learned a lot um and really excited and so to the teams to the board office to the board staff to my colleagues uh just thank you for another great meeting and if we have no more questions I'm going to close so may I have a motion to adjourn I make a motion to adjourn second all in favor signify by saying I I I so it is now 6:40 pm and we are adjourned so have a great evening thank you