001All right. Uh, good evening. This is a regular meeting of the Ferndale Schools Board of Education being held Monday, April 21st, 2025. Our meeting is being video recorded and will be posted on the Ferndale Schools YouTube channel. All meetings in the Ferndale schools are held in public in compliance with the Open Meetings Act. Printed documents discussed in tonight's meeting are available to the public upon request with the exception of any information protected by student or employee privacy rights. Board meeting information is posted on our website at www.burnschool.org. If you do not have internet access and need information, please contact the board offices at 2485868652 by Thursday of the week prior to the meeting and district staff will do their best to work with you. Item 1.1 roll call. Michelle Crumb here. Deliver here. Kaiser here.
002here. President here. Thank you. Thank you. Um item 1.2 approval of the agenda. After review of the agenda, are there any items that anyone wants to update? Then without objection, unanimous consent, the agenda is approved. Brings us right up to our item to presentation of building Ferndale Middle School. Mr. Ker. Good evening everybody. Good evening. So I come here and thank you for giving me the opportunity to represent Ferndale Middle School at at April's board meeting. Um as you all aware of the uh five pillars of the district. Let me move this slide too please. Self-re reflection, transparency, attendance, collaboration, data as a flashlight. So I'm going to explain uh how we use these pillars in order to make our decisions at Ferndale schools, how to improve everything that we do. So we going to
003move on to the next slide, please. Every school has a story to tell and I'm here to tell you Ferndale Middle School's story, right? Um though I'm going to go through some of the things that we do every day at Ferndale Middle School. We're going to have our students give their own self experiences how they see things at Ferndale Middle School. Uh self-reflection. We have monthly grade level meetings sharing staff glow and grows uh for students. So what that means so anybody's aware uh grow and grow glow and grows is every month we talk to students about things that we noticing that's going well. these come from the teachers and the staff that sends me message me and things that I obviously see as well and the things that we want to get better at.
004We have candid conversations with our students on things that we notice and we want to make sure we uh learn from the things that we we can do better at. So uh whether it's academic, whether it's social, um we always strive to improve. Celebrating students of the month, uh you guys got to come over there sometime. If you've seen my newsletter, uh we do six students out of the month per grade level, one in each subject area, uh including stu uh students with uh special needs, um students that are selected for from our support staff and from the administrative offices as well as math of studies electives, ELA, uh and science. Uh every month we celebrate classroom character traits. Uh that's something that we strive on at Ferndale Middle School. If you know me, you'll
005know me. You I never mention grades to students. I never ask their GPA. I never if they all got A's and B's. I only ask, are you doing the best that you can be right? As educators, one thing that I've learned and that my teachers value as well is that we know that students have their own identity. They have their own pace and their own way to success and we want to honor that and support that. Uh with that being said, connect and reflection activities during PLC, we have to learn to one know one another. So every month we partake in fun activities also. We do that every month even as a leadership team with Miss Hibler. But we we do that also in our meetings because we want to learn about one another. We're
006ever evolving even as adults. Uh connected activity for staff to our staff meeting. I'm sorry. Data dig reflection specifically on I ready scores panoram perception surveys and teaching practices. Uh we do that not only just monthly but we dig in deeply uh at the at each fall and winter and springtime. Uh student data meetings. students are aware when they take these tests, specifically the I Ready test, to see where they are. If you're familiar with I Ready, they they're adaptable testing based on the students needs and where they're at. And so, it's important to let the students know what's what it's about and how we inform instruction based on where they're at and where their needs are. So, students are well informed and have that dialogue with their teachers. Uh we have daily support staff
007check-ins. We are fortunate enough to have a sort of practice coordinator uh two co two counselors, social worker and mental health specialists and they have a case load of students that they meet with and check on to make sure uh they're there for support in their everyday well-being but that's academic social behaviorally transparency. We we heard from our families. We had antiquated uh newsletter system and so I work with my staff to update the newsletter and I hope everybody like we really are trying I got a lot of competition when I have to compete with uh upper and lower. Uh but at middle school things are a little bit different but we really have we we see a lot of confidence. We really have um always open to suggestions but we update our newsletter provide
008a format with transparency and ease of communication for families and lately we've really been getting a lot of positive feedback. Uh we do daily everyday announcements uh lay student leia as as a matter of fact uh Mr. Mr. Huff does a great job, our social studies teacher, of recording announcements and our students, he re-records it. Sometime we have a guest on there, but the students for the most part leave those announcements. Uh we do a nuts and bolts at our PLC's. It's designed to share important updates and transparent information from administration to our uh staff during our two-hour staff meetings. We our support staff. So when I mention the restorative practice coordinator, the counselor, the mental health specialist, uh the social worker, those are what we uh call our support staff, we have bi-weekly meetings
009uh to keep up what's going on in the school where students need level support, where we need to make adjustments uh and those are, like I said, embedded in our scheduling attendance. It's important uh for me and important for our district. Obviously, it's one of our five pillars. We restrain our attendance uh way we do attendance uh with the support of our restorative practice coordinators in our community and school Mrs. Carr. Uh we were able to break the um attendance responsibilities down. So Miss Carr rep she does attendance for sixth grade Mr. Ridgeway for seventh grade Mr. Pierce for eighth grade. Our goal is to decrease these behaviors while providing support including whether it's need for transportation, mental health or resources to our families. uh also the decline in absentee reduction in targets particularly during
010first hour which freely was a significant concern significant concern. So we talk about a story to tell in my school data which tracks data uh throughout school state of Michigan which is open to public. If you look on any school district website you're going to see the transparency my school data and then the contracts that the district has with the uh um with their uh their unions. So if you look at my school data, you'll take a look at in 2122 our ontrack attendance which by definition on track attendance by the state of Michigan means a student is hope attending school regularly meeting the district threshold for attendance i.e less than 10% of absence in a school year we were at 64.08% coming out of the pandemic in 2223 we at 83.41% 41% and on
011track attendance in 2024 is 96.17. And so um uh though I don't I know and it's in our pillars that data is a flashlight. Well, it we flashing a light on this one. So I want you to be aware again we here to tell a story collaboration uh student success team take hold of the title. That's what we call our student success team because we want we meet together support our student success. uh MTSS identification instruction report for students in need of all tiers, tier one, two or three created weekly and monthly times for staff to share concerns and provide solutions. I shouldn't say concerns twice. Uh one thing I'm proud that we do at Ferndale Middle School, uh and Miss Cass, our counselor over here, can attest to that. We don't take we take
012concerns. We don't take complaints. Complaints is when you say things and they're not there to help anybody. Concerns is like these are things legitimate. Let's work to improve it. That's one thing that we stand out with every one of our staff meetings and our staff is wonderful at adhering to that. FMS support staff again the principal myself assistant principal uh mental health specialist social worker our two counselors Miss Perry and Miss Castle CIS student uh support coordinators restoative practice coordinator all meet bi-weekly again to support our students we have weekly PLC meeting whether it's grade level district subject uh and special education meetings embedded in our monthly schedule every week uh parent to conference flexible parent to conference virtual and in person we want to meet the needs of our parents parents as well. Um
013we intentionally make uh virtual and in person for parents that have to work late uh or parents that have may have time to come in and have those personal conversations. Uh we were the first school uh in Ferndale to start our back on track. We have for two years in a row back on track is our after school programming. It's an intensive uh for our seventh and eighth graders and also our sixth graders. We also were the first school to start our tutoring program which in coordination with Ferndale Youth Assistant. I want to say we got going by October of this year. Uh something that that uh was a a good success for us. Um uh back on track and sixth grade and seventh eighth grade intervention and and back on track working to tackle
014and meet needs of students almost at grade level provides intensive uh reading and math but also emotional mental health support. So for example, we designed our sixth graders a little bit differently. Uh seventh seventh eighth grade is specific towards academics, math and and ELA. But our sixth graders we felt needed a little bit more support. So we ded it so they have the ABC schedule. So they come in three days a week um 3 to 4:30 for after school, Monday, Tuesdays and Thursdays. But because we felt they needed extra support, we designed where one day they're in math, a group, uh B group is in ELA, C group is with uh not u with our restorative practice coordinator and our mental health specialist and they do a mentoring program. So they get each of those
015components every day, every day of the week. Been very very helpful. Um we move on to our next slide. That is a flashlight. So again, uh most of the time we present we present like our RER data um PSAT scores which we haven't gotten quite yet. We've had the midyear which we've done well in sixth and seventh grade show very good growth. We're still working with our eighth graders. We have a lot of promise towards their spring scores. But again if I go back to my school data which again is any very transparent on Michigan data systems uh in 2122 our growth index data. So growth index mean are your students meeting their growth level? So are they at least getting to the baseline and moving forward from there? So in 2122 post um uh
016uh co uh our target was our percentage of students meeting their growth target was 61.54%. In 2223 we met at 96.21% their growth data. and 23 24 we had a slight dip but we still you can still see we we are really making progress 8630%. Um and I Ready, we have our fall, winter, spring progress monitoring for I Ready identification for students for student success team which is part of our MTSS process use panorama uh and student and community data uh to you for student voices a student and community voice. We have AVID schoolwide that's our that's one thing that I'm promoting that we're working with our curric uh instruction department as well as Miss Hibler. While it's a great program, everything in AVID is good for any student and I'm standing here strongly support.
017That's a direction that I would like us to go in. Uh data supports ability for organizational structure with a focus on materials and thinking this year. At this time, I'm going to call Miss Castle up, our sixth and seventh grade counselor. One more thing I want to brag about. two years in a row. N I just came back from National Honor Society. Uh today we've had a record-breaking for the second year row number two inducted National Honor Society. Specifically for specifically for sixth grade two years in a row, sixth grade inductees the majority of the inductees. So just say all right so hi I'm Mrs. Castle. This is my third year as one of the two school counselors at Ferndale Middle School. Um, and something that we're really proud of at FMS is we value
018our students input. So, we want to hear from them. We want to get their ideas, their voice, um, and incorporate that into the things that we're doing in the classroom and obviously activities that we're doing outside of the classroom. Um, so I have a few students with me here tonight. Um, and I will introduce them and ask them just a couple questions. Um, so they can share a little bit about their experience with you guys. Um, because they are, you know, the experts on what's happening in the middle school. Um, so I will just have them say their name and what grade they're in and then I will go around um and ask them their question. We could start with you. Awesome. Um, so each of these students, um, I picked kind of a diverse
019group so you could get a lot of different experiences from them. Um, being some of our eighth graders, they've been in the middle school, so they've seen a lot of the growth and the change that we've been through. And then for some of our sixth graders, I wanted you guys to be able to see, you know, what's been their experience as a brand new student joining the middle school. Um, so if you can just flip to the next slide and then we will go through some of those questions. All right. So I'm going to start with Sydney and Michael um to talk about what have you guys been involved with while you have been a student at FA Middle School. So for after school I did volleyball and I'm also a member of engage and
020I'm also a part of the dance program. I'm 67 and I'm also in PLW project leading model. Awesome. Great job. Um, all right. I'm gonna jump to Kamura. Um, how has staff helped you navigate social aspects of middle school? What does that look like for you? Um most of the staff are very caring. Um I think everybody wants their child to be super safe and I think one of the places that you can be super safe is with school um um she helps students learn. She lets us do something. It really helps us and most of the staff um if there's always a situation we always want to hear both sides stories so there won't be anything like favoritism going on especially Mr. because if anybody does something wrong or if there's a perspective of
021somebody else he still wants to bring it up. I think both of the staff is nice and all the staff is very care. Thanks, Copra. Right. I'm gonna go to Leila um and have you talk about some extra academic support that you've gotten in some of our tutoring or back on track programs. [Music] And how has that been? What have you guys been doing in there? Yep, that's great. Um, and then I'm going to jump over to Naima. Um, how has the support given to you during your time at FMS? Obviously, you're in sixth grade, so this school year, helped you succeed. Um, like how it helped me succeed is like, um, so I take a and it helps me stay like really organized with all my stuff. she make sure we fill out every
022day, make sure we have all of our classes filled out and it's just like really helpful to make everything. Awesome. And then I'm gonna go down to number seven. Um, and I'm going to have Nolan share about a staff member that has had the um the biggest positive impact on his middle school experience. [Music] respect in her class. She's there to help you. She time to finish anything. So, she just [Laughter] like awesome. Um, any other questions that or anything you guys wanted to add about your experience so far? Kamar, you had something? Um, I think Ferndale is one of the good schools to go to because our school is very care. We do a lot of things so all the students can be seen and heard. Like when Mr. remember saying earlier we do
023announcements and most of the students go up there like today my best friend my um she was on the announcements and everybody was super proud of her because it takes a lot of to sit in front of a screen and read the announcements and just say everybody but I think that's a way to open and at middle school you will always get a chance know regardless of what happens like let's say next year I volleyball. Um, let's say I don't get into volleyball. I think they'll try again. And at the same time, it's still like you did bad. It's not like that or be like, you have a very good, you know, example for yourself and stuff, but we really just need more stronger people. And that's saying it in a nice way as well.
024And I think that for sure is one of those schools that you Well, mostly you're about on like the internet about good things like you can search up for middle school on the internet and you can see a lot of positive videos and you know some teachers like some of the science teachers they have a Tik Tok and then they you know scientist scientist um kind of like jokes and stuff on there and it is like a super fun school and I recommend that if you have children if they already don't burn out at least try because they are as anybody record that repeat all of that again. It's a Ferndale commercial. We'll find you. We know where to find you. Yeah. Well, thank you guys so much and thank you to my students. Um
025they, you know, volunteered their time to stay after school. Um, and these are some of the my regulars that are consistently participating in sports, consistently going to tutoring, they're involved in the play. They're, you know, involved in a lot of different things um, spanning throughout our school. So, I really appreciate you guys and thank you to the board for taking the time to listen today. Now, you see why I'm the proud of Ferndale School. So, thank you all and thank you for your time. Thank you. Excellent job. Thank you so much. Highlight of the week for me. You made my day. Enjoy your pizza. Are we not taking a picture? I can get a picture. Mr. Bruner, I'll take a picture. You took a picture. Yeah. Let's do it. Yeah. Yep. Thank you. For the
026board. Mr. Bruner and the board. They can just come over here. Are the students and Mr. Bruner? Students and Mr. Bruner. Okay. Bruna's running the other way. You want to come behind? You want to? No, they can actually just stay right there. They're ready to eat. They're ready to eat. Oh, they have that's for eagles. Go Eagles. Thanks so much. Now we need a total of six. Okay. That brings us to uh item three, the winter data preservation. Mhm. Good evening everybody. Definitely a tough one to follow. Do my best. So, good evening ladies and gentlemen. little bit later in the year than and we typically like to to come and do the winter data, but we thought in was that February when we did the the first of the policies around teaching and learning
027that we get out of here just shy of what 9:30. We we thought that meeting was probably not the right time to to so um so we're here tonight to to share out our winter data. Um, but I also to talk a little bit about a change in in how I'm I'm sharing data and the data that I'm sharing. You've all heard me joke uh a few times, some of you sat through those 222 slide presentations. This is not going to be that long. If there is a desire to take that deep level dive into the data, I would be more than happy to to do, you know, we did that at a Saturday retreat a couple years ago, and that seemed to to be a good platform. If there's interest, I'd be more than
028happy to do that again for you. But, um, for our board meetings, what I've decided to do is focus on our MYIP data. So, if you're not familiar, my is the Michigan Integrated Continuous Improvement Process. It is the MDE's newest version of school and district improvement plan. Sorry, I was trying to be the excellent job. It's a great series. The break is right. I apologize. No worries. No worries. There you go. Thank you. No worries. No worries. Thank you. Um so as a part of our my kit process um each at the beginning of of each school year building level teams look at assessment data typically from the prior spring. So, I ready, NWEA, MSTEP, PSAT, SAT for the appropriate grades. And the building levels, you know, the building teams, I should say, decide what
029they want to focus on as far as areas of growth during that school year. So, then as a district team, we'll meet multiple times throughout the year to kind of revisit the data, talk about strategies for impacting a particular area. Um to back up a little bit, each building sets three growth area, three focal points for for themselves for the year. Um a math goal, a literacy goal, and a social emotional learning goal. So as we go through the year, instead of looking at 222 slides of data, we've decided to just focus on the my goals. what is going to be the most impactful and most telling piece of data or pieces of data that that are telling us if what we're doing is working or not. So after our winter benchmark window closed, I
030asked each of the building principles to work with their their teams to to look at the winter data, compare it to the fall data, look at some fall to winter growth data, and again, specifically looking at, hey, how how does this data tell us whether we're we're making progress or not? and then what are we going to do for the rest of the year to to continue on the pathway to meeting our goals. So that's really what I'm sharing with you tonight or what was shared with you. I'm not going to go deep on every slide. um really try and focus on that fall to winter growth uh and also what the principles are saying about the fall to winter data and then what the buildings are going to do for the rest of the
031year to to continue to have a an impact on their their goals. Okay. Uh excuse me. So, we'll start with TCE. And I think it's pretty exciting for me anyway that we actually get to include TCE in our data conversation. This is the the first year that TCE has been doing the same benchmark assessment as the rest of the district. So, it it it brings them into the conversation a much better way than than we've been in the past. So, um, so if we can skip up to the winter 2025 data and principal comments, you'll see that for for TCE students, basically their their fall to winter data appears to be flat or decreasing. In talking with Mr. Cory, one of the things that he pointed out was because of the nature of TCE, there
032might be roughly the same number of students testing from fall to winter. Although, as you can see, in the winter, especially for math, there's many more students testing. Um, there's typically not the same exact student population that's testing. So, it's great that we have the data. We're still trying to figure out the best way to get the read because some of the students who are testing in the fall don't stick around to test again in the winter. And then a lot of the students we have in the winter didn't test in the fall. So, so that's a challenge that that we have to work through at TCE in particular. So, you can see that Mr. Cory's concerned with with their low scores, lack of participation and/or attendance in the supplemental programming to address the large
033gaps. You probably know that a lot of TCE students are 100% virtual. So getting them to come on site to take a test that they have to take in person is a challenge. So that is something that that TCE has been working on for a couple of years. It's one of the reasons that they've been identified as a comprehensive support school as we talked about previously because they don't get 95% participation on their SAT. So getting those students in the building to test is a challenge. Um, but they're working on it and they have increased their participation over the past couple years. So, so that's a good thing. And again, as as I mentioned, their winner scores are lower due to new enrollments for for second semester, but they are committed to benchmarking and looking
034at their data. They do PLC's just like the rest of our our buildings, and they are working on that data on a weekly basis. Their plan for the remainder of the year includes um continuing to work on disciplinary literacy. So when you see we'll incorporate the 10 essential practices that's referring to disciplinary literacy which is you know kind of a if you want to think about it it's just how do we act how do we how do we think like a mathematician or a writer or a scientist or a historian right? Um they're also looking at universal design for learning, another district initiative. We have two or three PCE students participating in our UDL cohort, which is another exciting step forward for us. In the past, many of the TCE teachers didn't participate in our
035district-wide PDS and cohort. So, so it's nice to have them participating. So that's kind of TCE fall to winter in a nutshell. We can move on to university high school and again we we'll kind of look at the the winter data and in particular the fall to winter data. Go up a couple more slides. Sorry, I actually go a little bit further where it says fall to winter. Yeah, right there. Thank you. Um, so as a just a a quick preview, what you're looking at here are the average grade levels for students taking the test at at UHS. So what you see there is in the fall the average ninth grader was testing just under a fourth grade level. After or during the winter benchmark window the average increased almost two full years. So just
036under a sixth grade which obviously is not where we want our students to be. But if we continue to show that kind of growth over the the course of time we'll have our kids where we want them to be. um 10th grade not quite as big of jump but uh still a nice jump and then uh ninth and tth grade reading as well showed showed impressive jumps. Uh that bottom row sense of belonging that is part of the panorama survey. If you remember a couple weeks ago, we talked about Panorama. Um, one of the the components of their survey asked students about their sense of belonging at the school. You can see a little bit of an increase there for university high school students. Their plan for the remainder of the year is multiaceted. uh
037you you'll notice Il math and reading discourse disciplinary literacy MTSS. So a lot of the the initiatives that we've been focusing on across the district um this year and past couple of years as well. You'll notice building thinking classrooms in mathematics. That's actually a researchbased book that several of our secondary math teachers have have kind of um learned about and it it there's some wonderful strategies in there. I wish I was still in the math classroom. I would be using a lot of them. Um but that that's that's something you'll notice on a couple of our buildings focusing on on BTC or building thinking classrooms. and the SEAL column CPC that's their college preparatory course that's the you know seminarish course for lack of better term ruler is a social emotional learning out of Yale
038I believe they do their mood meters their eagle activity days their classroom circles related to restorative practices relationship mapping enhanced support systems and again MTSS us. So that's UHS. Moving on to Ferndale High School again. If we can go to the fall to winter. All right. So a lot of data on this particular slide. What you're looking at here is percent of change from fall to winter. So if you're looking at uh for the reading mid or above grade level 3.35% what that's really saying is that there was an increase in that particular category of 3.35% of our students from fall to winter moving left to right. So mid or above grade level that's where we want our students to be. So, we want to see those numbers on the left side being positive and
039the the categories on the right side two grade levels below, three grade levels below. We want those numbers to go down. And we can see that that for reading that exactly happened. Um, focusing on the farthest, right, three or more grade levels below, we had 9.31% fewer students in that category in the winter than we did in the fall. And for 10th graders, we had 11% of our students, fewer in that category. So again, not where we want to be or where we need to be, but that's an indicator that that some things are moving in the right direction for math. The So I I had to do some some calculations for you because they didn't show up properly. Um, but I'm going to read the actual changes to you. Um, so for 9th grade
040math, we had a 2.72% increase. So if you have paper in front of you, you can cross out the 4.96 and 2.72% higher. Uh, for the mid or above grade early on grade level, we saw a decrease of 73%. One grade level below, we saw a decrease of 1.56%. two grade levels below we saw an increase of 5.29% and then three or more grade levels below we saw a decrease of 5.62. So the two or more grade level is not what we want to see but the three or more was was a nice jump. For 10th grade uh percentages from left to right should have been.19% so basically flat for the mid or above grade level. Early on grade level, we saw a decrease of 1 and a.5%. One grade level below, we saw an
041increase of 3.25%. Two grade levels below, we saw an increase of 1.77%. And then three or more grade levels below, we saw a decrease of 2.7%. when you're thinking about those those numbers, especially in the the 10th grade, you know, we obviously want to see more positives farther on the left. We didn't see that across the board, but when when you're thinking about why did we have 1.77% higher or more students in the the two grade levels below? Well, that might actually be a good thing because we're we're moving students from three grade levels below up a level, right? So, maybe we didn't move as many of those two grade levels up to one below, but at least we got some more from that three in. So, um when you have five categories like this,
042sometimes it can be tough to to kind of see and think about where those are coming. But um the bottom line is like the other buildings that we've looked at so far some improvement but got a lot of work to do still. Okay. So their uh Ferndale High School plan for the remainder of the year. Before I go into this slide, have we talked about tiers of instruction? Like if I say tier one, tier two, tier three, do we not? Probably not. All right. Okay. All right. Um, so tier one instruction is what teachers are doing for the entire class. Tier two is typically what students are doing for smaller groups of students. And then tier three is um typically groups of students where maybe an interventionist is working with some students. So, we want
043our tier one instruction to have the most impact because that should be addressing every student. So, for for tier one at Ferndale High School, you're going to continue um supporting staff with additional planning tools, modeling good instruction, um providing time to collaborate on evidence-based uh math and ELA strategies. For tiers two and three, looking at refining push in and pull out practices, increasing the fidelity with which their intervention products and protocols are being implemented, and then uh continuing to use the I Ready diagnostics to to guide groupings. Part of the I Ready reports will help teachers group students based on the results of of the tests. um looking at providing professional learning uh for teachers focused on differentiated instruction. Related to that, our our Panorama pilot that we talked about two weeks ago has a
044really nice tool that builds differentiated lesson plans for teachers. Uh and again, it's directed right at a teacher's student. So, if I'm a teacher in a math classroom, I can request a differentiated lesson plan and Panorama will build that lesson plan based on the data that's in the system for my students. So, it's not just a a generic plan. Um, so we'll be tapping into Panorama during our pilot phase. And then last thing, supporting student agency to help students have personal growth goals and then track them over time. Right? to sometimes do a good job of setting goals and then not revisiting them until too far down the line. So, Ferndale High School, Ferndale Middle School, you already heard a little bit about Ferndale Middle School tonight. If we go to fall to winter, sorry,
045flip to the next page. My apologies. Um so one of the risks when when you send out some guidelines and say hey send me the data the way that it makes sense you we get some different uh formats and and you get a little bit different format here um from the Ferndale middle school. So if we look at FMS math action plan winter to spring one more up please sorry there sorry just a couple more down right there it's at if you can what's at the bottom just move that up a little bit that'd be perfect please and thank you. Okay. Um, so see Mr. Bruner included the the myip goal 70% of the students to achieve their growth goal and a minimum goal of 5% increase in overall percentages. So based on their their
046fall to winter data, you'll see that they're they're going to continue leaning into their tier one instruction, making sure that all students get the best instruction that they possibly can. Uh, building thinking classrooms, UDL, universal design for learning and disciplinary literacy, small groupoup instruction, math intervention and afterchool tutoring, IXL, um, and student work protocol is a data analysis protocol that we introduced a couple of years ago in our team PLC's. Basically what that is is a teacher will volunteer to bring a few examples of student work, share the the work with the team and then the team will kind of look at the the student work and provide some thoughts and ideas on on how the classroom teacher can then go back to the students to increase uh the students proficiency and achievement over the
047content. So, um, that's one of the ways that that we we actually have professional learning communities on our early release Wednesdays. Literacy action plan, you'll see a very similar goal, very similar strategy. So, I won't spend a lot of time there. The only thing I I'll highlight is u unlike math where we have math intervention classes is kind of focused on the I Ready results and and classroom instruction as far as the grade level math. We do have a reading intervention program. It's called read 180 that our reading intervention classes have at uh middle school and Cornell High School. um for SEAL focusing on self-management which you heard a little about with the a little bit about with the AVID schoolwide goals uh being around organization and then social awareness how well students are are
048considering the perspectives of their classmates that's Ferndale Middle School. So moving on to Ferndale Upper Elementary. If we look at winter 2025 data, my focus, go back down one slide for me, please. The chart slide one more. There we go. Thank you. Um, so what Miss Jeffoffrey has provided is the fall to winter all in one slide. Oh, I apologize. Can you go down one more slide? I am so sorry. No, sorry. There's there's a chart that shows two numbers in in each cell. There you go. Sorry. Thank you. Yeah. So what you can see here is in one slide the how the the changes in different uh categories. So well below below at well above and above you'll see numbers increasing for the most part left to right. And just to be clear unlike
049data table we saw previously where we had the the highest levels on the left here we've got the highest levels on the right. So we want to see numbers increasing from left to right and um you know the numbers on the the right side of the arrow on the right side of the table being being bigger than the left and and we do see that. So um we look down at the next slide follow the winter my kip goal progress. So third grade 7% met end of year goal. Basically what that means is that even though we're only halfway through the year when this assessment data was collected, 7% of the students had already met their full year goal. Um 5% of the fifth graders and 6% of the fifth graders met the the goal.
050If we look at the the building average and winter, I'm sorry, I should say the goal. So by June 2025, pathways of progress, uh that's reading um will grow from 63% to 73 or sorry, 70%. What you see there is that the building average was 69%. So even though we're only halfway through the year, we're only one percentage point away from meeting that end of year goal. So knocking on the door. So, we we expect to to really crash through that door in the spring. Um, and then the the bottom category there, 10% of our students increasing um categories from well below to at least one proficiency level above. Sorry. You'll see that they exceeded that goal uh in all three grade levels, third, fourth, and fifth grade. Katie included some some just for fun
051I ready progress um because that that's kind of like extra credit there. We're going to skip that, but it be happy to stick around and after the meeting if you have any questions about that, be happy to talk about it. But um let's see. I get Yeah, let's look at uh principal's comments. Fall the winter. All grade levels and I ready reading were above the expected median growth. So from fall to winter, we would expect our growth median to be 50% representing half of the the full year goal and all of the grades exceeded that. Um third grade is currently above the the national curve for stretch growth. If you're not familiar with stretch growth, I ready has what they deem typical growth for a year, which is based on norms of historical test takers.
052And then they have what they call a stretch growth, which is really meant to drive students catching up if they're behind grade level or really moving into an accelerated level. Um, so we've got a lot of our students at PUL who who are working on their stretch goal and, you know, pretty confident that that the traditional goal will will be a piece of cake for them and really want uh want that stretch goal. I I I appreciate the the fuel staff and students looking at the stretch goal and not just the the regular growth goal um because that's how we we you know get into our excelling mode and not just surviving for lack of a better term. You'll also notice fish tank curriculum. Miss Robinson presented on fish tank a couple months ago. Oftentimes
053there's an implementation dip. Um, but because the implementation and the product are so strong, we're actually seeing an increase in year one. So, we're excited about that and anticipate that that will continue. Um, we're seeing uh significant resources in ELA that are suggesting that our MTSS program is working and that's also very exciting for for us. Um for the math um growth overall is more across all placement levels. Um this is suggesting some more equitable instruction. We still have a need to move students who are multiple grade levels below. Um less support at the MTSS level than in ELA, meaning building wide. They have more reading core support. They have reading intervention. They have one math core person. And so they have multiple people providing reading intervention, only one person providing math, but we're still
054seeing some some positive growth. So, and then the plan over at PUAS is um to continue moving things forward and they're going to add in some academic discourse and talk moves for math to to try and jump start those a little bit more. All right, last one. Um, Fernill lower. If we look at the winter 2025 data, Miss Heath didn't provide fall to winter growth, so I I'll I'll read some of them for you. So, let's kind of focus at the the well above or at and and well above. So from fall to winter and kindergarten we we saw a 7% increase in at and a 13% decrease in well above. Now, at first glance, that's that's concerning, and it is, but I also want you to think about, you know, at the beginning of
055the year in kindergarten, what what the students are being tested on is really alphabet um recognition, right? And then when you get into the middle of the year, they're asked to do a lot more. So, it's concerning, but it's not really concerning be because they're being asked to do a lot more. So, um you know, we'll look at that. We'll we'll learn and we'll we'll get better at it. Um but it it's not totally unexpected. Um for first grade at went up 1%, well above went up 8%. Second grade at went up 1% well above went up 4%. So you can see in first and second grade ELA that that we are seeing the growth that that we would hope to see. Um math kindergarten at went up from fall to winter 7% and above
056went up 11%. So overall 18% increase in students at or above in in kindergarten math. First grade uh at went up 5% above went up 17% so 22% overall increase at and above. And for math and second grade at went up 6% above went up 11%. So 17% increase of students at or above fall to winter. You know, if we skip down to plan for the remainder of the year, continue data conversations with our lattas, which are language arts teaching assistants in order to drill down into skills for the individuals in kindergarten. Increase frequency with targeted small groups in first grade, focus groups in second grade two times per week based on ability. continue with our progress monitoring and ability checks or sorry accountability checks, student success team, that's SST, SST progress and tiered intervention
057and um working hard to to get more students in their back on track tutoring program, make sure that we're really having an impact with the students who need it. And for math, similar to what we saw at Ferndale Upper, um bringing academic discourse and talk moves back. Um continuing with back on track tutoring for math and then crossgrade level conversation so our teachers can learn from each other, questions. What's most surprising about all that data you just um yeah guess what's probably most surprising is that we didn't see a little bit more growth in in the high schools. you know, it's typically a little harder to move high schools on on tests like IRA and NWA um because of the the way that standards are covered through the grades and also um you know the
058way the tests are designed. But I I that being said, I I think we do have room for for more growth at the high school level. Um, and I would really like to start seeing more of our students not only grow, but get up to grade level proficient. Growth is absolutely critical and it it's relevant. But we really need to to make sure that we're getting our students up to grade level and keeping them there. I thought you add time, but may I answer? Yeah, I was helping everybody. Okay. It was not just a topic. Okay. Um for me um I was most surprised to see growth already in K5 literacy. I was expecting with this being their first year of implementing their new curriculum. I mean typically with a new tool you see an
059implementation dip because you're prioritizing a new curriculum and you just you know you usually see a dip year one and it kind of comes back up year two with becoming more comfortable etc etc. But to see growth already fall to winter is was positively surprising for me extremely. I was prepared and um to see that growth already is great. I'll also say too that this is the first year implementation for I Ready. So to see um the analyses from the principles at that level and digging so deeply into the data and the reporting tools that another new program was able to provide. Um surprising for me. Yeah, I would agree. Thanks for bringing those up because those are good points to be made. Other questions? Uh, can we get a standard report for each? Yes.
060When you say a standard report, what exactly do you mean? Everybody's reporting the same stuff, same way. We've got goals. Some of these are really good. Some of these could use some work. Uh, and just sort of setting a bar because I think it'll be much easier to read. Like when I'm printing out 150 pages and just being able to read read the same thing, but also, you know, have able to see how everybody's doing. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Do you think that' be a good thing to have for our data? A deep dive. Yeah. Or even just bring a temp template back. We can kind of review it and just give the direct. But just something where it's just like it's easy to everything's apples to apples. Yeah. And also and and um within like
061there's certain principles that shared certain thing like went above and beyond that you kind of but so then that kind of makes you wonder well what did the other school do you know it just raises question but I got uh yeah did did not all the schools do surveys No. Um, so lower doesn't do panorama surveys. They do surveys. Um, paper pencil or like teacher cares about me. Thank you. Yeah. every other building does the panorama surveys, but I think that there was there was something with the timing of when this reporting when we had to turn in the board for I believe we were still in a window. So, so that may be a piece as well. It was something that happened with the timing. So, we we do have uh fall to winter
062for the back. One of the the reporting um tricky parts for for the panorama survey is it's such an indepth platform that they really don't have a a quick easy summary report that that we can print out. Um that's why in the past we we've often jumped into the Panorama platform live and kind of showed you some of the highlights. Um, and yeah, I'm not sure why there would I should have asked for more specifics on um, but we can definitely share out some some highlights and some areas for for concern when we share the the I Ready and Aadian data. Any other questions? If you have any questions, uh, direct them to Miss Hibler. She'll send them to me and I'll be happy to get them answered for you. Thanks. Thanks everybody. Thank you.
063Item four, equal excellence presentation. All right. Brings us to item five. Is there anyone here for public comment? All right. Six, consent agenda. Item 6.1, request to approve minutes of the special meeting committee of the whole Monday, March 3rd, 2025. Item 6.2, request to approve minutes of the regular meeting, Monday, March 17, 2025. Item 6.3, the request to approve new hires, resignations, and transfers. Item 6.4, request to approve bills, accounts, and accounts for March 2025. Does anyone wish to remove an item from the consent agenda for questions or discussion later? Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. So moved by Mark. Second. Seconded by Aaron. That was Sorry, it was Lisa. I knew it was Lisa, but Erin's in my side over here from Ryan. Yes. Bar. Yes. Yes.
064Kaiser. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. With seven yes votes. Motion passes and the consent agenda is approved. Brings us to item seven action items. 7.1 request to approve network wireless access refresh. How you doing? I'm wonderful. How are you? Long time no see for real. Good evening everyone. Good evening. Uh tonight before the board is for your consideration is the -ate network wireless refresh. Uh, as we discussed at the earlier meeting this month, this is a refresh of all of our wireless networking and our UPS's, the battery backups that power all of our equipment. We're using the federal rate funds, uh, which is basically free money to the district to help offset the cost. The remaining portion will be covering from our bond the technology for the allocation. For the -ate bid response, uh, for the
065network wireless, we had five responses. We're recommending the lowest qualified bidder, which is Incom technical services with the Moroi Cisco Wireless solutions, the same Cisco Wireless, upgrading our 7-year-old systems to the newest standards with seven-year licensing and uh installation. For the UPS's, we're recommending Delta Networks and other trusted partner uh across the county for the Eaton UPS's and battery uh extensions packs as the lowest qualified bidder that includes installation disposal uh of the systems for a one to one. Um we have any particular questions I can entertain? Be happy to do so. Uh just for everyone's clarification, you say lowest qualified bidder, you mean lowest cost qualified bidder, right? Well, yes. So when we look at the the qualified bidder, sometimes the biders don't make for uh appear to be lower pricing, but once you
066do an apples to apples comparison, sometimes they forget that. I just want the lowest is not referring to the word qualified. We're cost qualified biders and in this case, yes. I'll entertain a motion to approve item 7.1, request to approve T rate network wireless access refresh. So moved by Aaron, seconded by Jonathan. Any discussion on the motion? Excited to be up to date. I'm sorry. Excited to be up to date. Oh, absolutely. The techiey's dream. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. With seven yes votes, the motion passes and the consent agenda is approved. Thanks for all your work on this. Thank you. All right. Item 7.2 request to approve Barnell Middle School social study proposal. Hello again. I'll be shorter this time. Um so I'm here to on behalf of Taiwan Robinson remember she
067presented to you a couple weeks ago on social studies curriculum resource for Ferndale Middle School TCI teachers curriculum institute don't have anything new other than she did include teachers comments that you had asked for so hope you you saw saw those and reviewed those in your packet. Other than that, we are asking for approval of our proposal to start with uh TCI in the fall of 2025. I'll entertain any questions. I'll entertain a motion to approve item 7.2, request to approve the Berno Middle School social studies proposal by Lisa. Second by David. Any discussion on the motion roll? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. With seven yes votes. The motion passed and 7.2. The request to approve Frank School social studies proposals approved. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Item 7.3, request for
068second reading approval of title 9 policy revisions. Good evening everybody. Good evening. Uh very briefly would like to summarize what you have in front of you for second read and approval tonight. Uh this is a policy series that we have from our legal council trun. Um, as you know, the uh Title 9 um regulations were revised to reflect a 2024 administration and in this past summer um those regulations were blocked by a federal judge. And so, uh, the policy that we have brought before you for approval tonight, uh, is from our legal council trun and is in compliance with the current Title 9 regulations, which closely mirror the 2020 regulations that we previously follow. So, I can I'd be happy to answer any questions about that, but I'm submitting the Title 9 policies for approval
069this evening. I entertain a motion to approve item 7.3 request for second read and approval of the title 9 policy revisions. I'll move by Jonathan seconded by Jackie. Any discussion on the motion just thank you Tom for all the work you do on the policy. Trying my heart. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. With seven yes votes. The motion passes and is approved. Item 7.4 request for the second read and approval of salary schedules for central office administrators and exempt employees. Thank you very much, President Dukie. Uh presenting to you for second read and approval uh salary schedules for our central office administrators and exempt staff. Um as we talked about the committee the whole uh this is in response to really two different things. The primary being a recommendation from um Mesa MASA
070uh to develop salary schedules for our non-represented employees and in particular our superintendent and administrative staff. Uh we also feel a strong need for consistency with salaries in our in our central office staff. Uh and uh as you can see in the the uh information presented uh some minor salary tweaks for a couple of individuals that are uh salary studies showed were were a little out of whack. And so we feel this is going to be a good thing for us in the long term. Um and is also going to pro protect some of our staff members in their uh retirement and RS calculations. So again happy to answer any questions about that. But uh presenting this tonight for second read and approval. I entertain a motion to approve item 7.4 request for second read
071and approval of salary schedules for central office administrators and executive employees. So moved by second by Aaron. Any discussion on the motion? Just want to thank you again for doing this important work. Thank you father. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. With seven yes votes, the motion passes and the item is approved. Bring us to number eight. Superintendent update. Good evening. Um it is not very exciting when the superintendent has to um report out on a bunch of meetings. Um but um my uh last two weeks has been filled with preparations for 2526. Um so having very um intentional um conversations with leaders um looking forward to 25 26 and essentially working to um plan ahead while still developing the dynamic plan. Um just making sure that everyone is on the same page as we
072go into the um to next school year. But definitely working to ensure everyone's head is on closing out strong this school year while also looking ahead to 2526. Um, also want to highlight, of course, um, much of my season at this time has been, um, preparing for our upcoming 2025 bond proposal, um, which includes a presentation at Royal Oak Township Council meeting, which was lovely. Um, great questions. Um, and, um, also a, um, PTA, PTA, elementary PTA had opportunity to present there as well. Also wonderful questions. Um but um bond proposal as well as preparations has definitely been um the bulk of my time since we met last. Um but also looking forward to update on the next steps in our dynamic plan um based on our next couple of meetings that are coming up.
073Um but um very busy but also um it's very busy time. Exciting. happy to answer any questions that the board may have based on my update. You mind doing like uh 30 seconds on what everyone can expect at the community town hall? Yes, I was going to Okay, community town hall um um is going to be wonderful. Let me just say um we will be talking about how K12 funding act actually actually works um and why what is happening in um Washington at the federal level is so crucial that our um community understands exactly how that funding works. So we'll not only talk about at the federal level, we'll bring it of course down to the Ferndale level and what the impact could be mean for us. Um and the most important aspect of the
074evening is what to do about it. Um so we'll have some very specific um advocacy opportunities um call to actions all of the things for us to get a little bit organized with our support um for what is right which is appropriate funding for K12 education. We're very excited and also dinner is is also very exciting which will begin promptly at 6 pm on April 30th. That was more than 30 seconds but I'm very excited about it. Here is it. It will be here. Yep. It will be here in our gymnasium. We're also happy to I think this is our first like large scale event um for non staff in this building. Um, so we're also excited about that. Nothing too exciting to see in our building, but it we are working from out of
075here and so we're excited to show that off as well. Right. Item nine. Thank you. Item nine, informationational items 9.1, budget to actual. Hello. Good evening. Good evening. Um, this is the budget to actual for March uh 2025. Um things are rolling along. There's not too many differences from the budget. Um just some staffing here and there. But are there any questions? Thanks. Okay. Item 10. We didn't have any pulled consent agenda items. Item 11. Our next committee y'all committee of the whole is Monday May 5th 6 o'clock and our next regular board meeting is Monday May 19th at 7 o'clock brings us to item 13 Eagles points of pride comments concerns start I mean points of pride I gota point to uh being able to hang out with um to me what was one
076of the biggest learning for me as being a rookie outside a lot about Beyonce was the fact that what we have here is not the norm. So, I think um I I appreciate that and I didn't really realize that, but it's cool to know. Um and it was it was nice. I'm gonna piggy back on that. Sure. Um, my point of pride is our superintendent and our president, our board president, um, gave an incredible presentation at the NSDA conference. Um, I learned a lot about the history of this board and, uh, the work that it has taken to develop the relationship that has taken place between the people who have had relationship up to this point. And uh I'm just excited to be a part of it and to grow in that relationship with you
077all and um yeah, you all gave an incredible presentation. So, thanks for thanks for that hard work. Thank you. I'll go. Um just to uh reiterate how proud I was um watching the two of you share our story and your story and um having so many people who attended the session wanting to learn more. Um it just shows um as Dave was saying that we have a great story to tell and um after having gone to so many sessions I know that there's more to tell. Um many of the sessions that I attended in my mind I'm thinking we could do this because this is nothing new or our story is better. Um, the one session I did attend was on student advocacy and how we can get uh our students uh to be at
078the table with us, getting to hear their voices to really drive how we make our decisions. Um, and then seeing the middle school students, I already have some ideas in mind on how I would love to in the fall revamp and restart our student board representatives. So, I'm really excited about tapping some of those students that we heard tonight. I was on the next mine since we're doing one was really on the middle school presentation. Seeing how the students were able to speak to their love of not only middle school but burnoff schools as a whole was really a sight to see, especially since they didn't have a script in front of them. I think that was a really big point for me. So, just again giving a shout out to our friend community. Um
079I uh will give like a point of pride slash one that is coming up as well is like next six weeks are just bonkers for everybody uh and just all the people that are that are volunteering time and whether it's you all out and about uh deputy superintendent Robert with skate night uh folks that are out uh volunteering right now uh for the bond to concerts. It's just like this is this is where it's crazy, but this is also where this community is so great where you just see so many people volunteering, teachers and everybody. So, uh just thank you for for all the time everybody puts into this for our kids. Um I can go. Mr. Bruner took mine a little bit, but I was going to say another congrats to the kids who
080are being inducted into NJHS day like as we speak um in middle school. And then I also want to just give a shout out to camp season in K through five. Um it is just a super cool program that we have at Ferndale schools that we have this element of outdoor education. It's huge community builder and it requires so so so many volunteers. Um, and the people who put it on put so much time and effort into planning it. Um, so anybody's I'm sure everybody's like dying to watch this board meeting on YouTube. So if you're watching, go sign up to volunteer for camp um and help make a great experience. So, I want to piggy back on on yours and that this is just a wonderful community. Skate night is always a big night.
081It's absolutely wonderful to see so many families from all the age groups there. Really a big big community event. And then I have to do a shameless plug. So May 17th, Saturday, 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. our health and wellness premiere will be at Ferndale High School and that is sponsored by our wellness community. So really looking forward to everybody being there, getting some resources before summer really starts. Really hope you can come out and it's going to be our first annual. Absolutely. So can echo everything that was said here, but um I would like to u my eagle excellence is two words, giggle pickles. Um I this has just been such an amazing journey. I just keep thinking about like all of the life lessons and life experiences that the students got just from
082like every aspect of their season, right? and to um have the experience of going to the world championship. I mean, they were competing against high school students, right? Um and being in the top 15 in the world. I am just floored by their experience. I'm so proud. There are no words. Um and similar to what was mentioned, this is a communityled like volunteer-led um um organization, right? um that it this is their first year. This it's just again I'm just um the words escape me the the pride that I have from um being a part of um being able to support them, watching them journey, watching them learn so many life lessons. Um and it's just such a cool name. I excited to say every time I can. So shout out to Giggle Pickles and
083everyone involved with the with the organization. I'm going to give a shout out to the admin professionals since it's their day today. Um, is it today or is it Wednesday? It's Wednesday. Well, I'm going to do it today because I'm not going to be here on Wednesday. So, sending my shout out um to those folks that keep they're the glue of the buildings. Um, keep the things running. Um, hopefully that uh your administrators treat you well. If they don't, let me know. I might know somebody. Um, yeah, kudos to you all. So with that we are adjourned at 8:21.