School Board Study Session, July 19, 2022

001this study session of independent school district 535 school board is called to order at 505 pm tuesday july 19 2022 in room 137 of the edison building this board acknowledges that this site and all rps sites are situated on the ancestral land of the dakota people and we honor the dakota nations and the sacred land of all indigenous peoples interested members of the public are welcome and encouraged to view this meeting remotely at youtube.com isd 535 where the live stream video may be found present at this meeting our school board members superintendent ken a non-voting ex officio member who will be attending remotely and assistant school board clerk ms michelle severson ms severson would you please call the role director amundsen thank you clerk barlow here director garcia here treasurer mclaughlin here jeremy here vice

002chair nathan here and director workmen here thank you at this time we offer the opportunity to say the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states 2.01 approval of the agenda are there any changes to the agenda it's been moved and seconded to approve the agenda all in favor say aye opposed the agenda is approved 3.0 focus topic this evening there are three areas of study that we'll be examining the first is 3.01 2021 22 academic and disciplined data summary dr pickell thank you dr marvin and if i can just be sure that all of you can hear me with anybody giving a thumbs up thank you all right so much so um as board members are aware i tested positive at the end of last week for covid i

003had hoped i would make it through this pandemic without experiencing it but i'm not so i'm on my last day in a required five day uh isolation period and so i apologize for not being there but thanks for making a space for me to at least kick these three subjects off and by the way i'm i'm doing fine and looking forward to being back and masked and joining you um as board members are aware the commitment of this school board and of the district to transparency and data and sharing is a very very strong one and in fact it's such a strong one that um today and tonight it actually got the best of us and we got a little ahead of ourselves we included in the material for tonight some data from our state

004minnesota comprehensive assessments um about a month and a half earlier than we should have because those are embargoed by the state so we've pulled those back we will be very eager to share those with the board and the community it was aggregate data not the school level data but that is the result of the shift i think when you have a superintendent who is isolated and quarantined and a very talented research director who's brand new to k-12 coming from higher education those things happen and so uh with apologies for that but i do think that is i'm not i'm not just making excuses i think it is actually exemplifies the commitment that we have to data driven decision-making and transparency and that is exemplified by the level of data that you are seeing in the

005discipline reports here we are reporting data by the school level by the type of action that was recorded in our system that led to a disciplinary response and then by the type of response board members reviewed aggregate data a couple of months ago around discipline and now we are sharing with you detailed data at the school level and at the subgroup level so a really important next step in our work peter's also going to share with you i think another hallmark at the end of his presentation and it's going to be relatively brief tonight but i think it exemplifies where we want to go as he's done some deeper analysis to merge the discipline data with data from our panorama survey and what that begins to do is take us out of the realm of

006just sort of diagnosing the problem to beginning to think about causes and solutions and so you'll begin to see what some of the students who have been impacted by our disciplinary procedures tell us about how they feel about being in our schools and as board members and and staff are aware those are not necessarily causal but they're very correlational they're very strong associations and they may suggest levers that we can push to address the issues that you're going to be talking about tonight um we're also going to be talking about act data and that data is very important data both for our individual students who are wanting to move on to college or some kind of post-secondary education it also is as more and more high school students are choosing not to take our state

007tests with their parents approval our best measure of academic readiness in terms of a standardized measure besides grades at the end of high school so very important act data and discipline data and some i think very intriguing early data in looking at factors and causes underneath that discipline data i want to thank board members and and peter and i got some emails over the weekend from community members who waited through a 100 plus page pdf document i want to uh share with you and everybody listening that in a number of months we will move beyond static pdf documents to dynamic dashboards that are available at the district and school levels that will allow us to not only report this data accurately and in real time but that will allow our school leaders our teachers others

008with authorized access to drill down through that data the the system that the board software platform that the board approved the purchase of in june will begin implementation early in the fall and so while this data report represents i think a good step forward for us in the volume of data and the level of data that we're sharing um it's not where we want to uh stay and it's part of a journey to really infuse everything that we do with data and evidence the final point that i think i would make is that i would urge all of us as peter walks us through a brief summary of the data and then as as jackie gives us a reminder jackie peterson our chief of schools gives us a reminder of some of the initial things

009we're doing to address those data that we see this as baseline data for the strategic plan that the board approved in june that this is the beginning and that we will be uh working very hard and expecting to see the strategies that you approved in june shifting the picture both in terms of academic outcomes and in terms of these discipline and student perception uh data sets that peter is going to describe for us now so this is the beginning of a journey an important next step i want to thank peter for the work that he did to get us to this point amidst a lot of other different priorities including leading implementation of that software platform that i just mentioned is going to be a powerful addition to our toolkit over the next couple months

010so um peter ruck turn it over to you to give the board and others a a general walk through and then if uh chair marvin would agree i would suggest that we turn to jackie peterson for a very brief reminder of what we're doing to address those data before we then open it for questions and comments all right thank you and good evening everyone uh so thanks for your patience with us as we kind of uh realized that uh embargo era with the mca data that we made so we will we'll release those later uh in august and come back to this topic that'll be nice it's my voice now all right um at a later date so this evening we will discuss uh briefly our act data and our discipline data from the last

011academic year and a little bit of trend information as well all of the details that are contained in this presentation as well as a lot more information is available in the pdf that's part of the board agenda when it included the mca data it clocked in at i believe 143 pages it's shorter now because we took out the mca pages so it makes for good reading can we get the other screen found possibly so let's see what's back oh okay as long as you got it all right so our ect results only a couple slides on this that summarize our our district-wide trend over the last four years all of our high school students have the opportunity to take the ect and it is currently our primary assessment for college readiness in our region and

012when i say region i mean the midwest that's what most colleges and universities within our geographic area use as their entrance assessment and even community colleges will accept act results uh in lieu of placement for their entry students the act was originally designed to predict first-year college grades it actually does that reasonably well but its utility in college admissions has been on the decline i'm sure all of you have read in the news that both sat and act are being required less and less or even if they are still required they're being given less weight within the admissions process all right so a bar graph on the screens now is showing you our ect results uh by the domain over time so 2018 2019 is our last full pre-pandemic year uh and then our last

013year 2122 is also shown essentially what you'll see is there's very little movement the scores uh essentially vary around a central mean there's no real trend up or down to put this in context of statewide and national results our results it depends on the domain but they are somewhere between the 52nd and 56th percentile i believe in the state so we're slightly above the state average just slightly nationally it's at about the 60th percentile minnesota is one of the top scoring states on the act in general so that's not necessarily surprising when you break down our act results by race and ethnicity you'll notice that there are some rather substantial gaps between student groups one demographic note that i want to make we only had three students that fell into the um native hawaiian pacific

014islander category so we did include them with asian students just so that they weren't such a small group by themselves what you can see on the on the chart shows that some of our demographic groups are scoring even a third to 40 percent lower than others you will see these same trends if you look at our mca data from prior years if you look at our act data from prior years uh these disparities are are stubborn and roughly consistent over time so moving on to discipline so um there are a couple of terms in the larger report and then in the slides here that i want to make sure i walk through the first one is infractions which is the incident itself the reason i mentioned that is the database actually calls it offenses so

015you will see in the pdf document the term offenses i prefer the term infractions they are one of the same in terms of the data themselves um same thing with consequence response or action after the fact we often think of it as a consequence or a response the database calls that an action so when you see those two terms reflected within the written report that's where they are coming from overall our disciplinary infractions are slightly down since the beginning of the pandemic however if you look at the school by school and specific infractions themselves the overall total obscures a fair amount of useful detail that can be gleaned when you start looking at a smaller unit of analysis like a school building so the longer report that's contained online will give you a lot of

016those important details i'll go over a few of the district-wide trends right now so this is infractions categorized into a few categories categorized into categories i'll go with it broken down by race and ethnicity this is with our last academic year as you can see uh oops as i lose my own place in my slides as you can see um essentially across the board there are uh disproportionate impact among different race and ethnic groups now we have talked about in previous uh board meetings what disproportion impact is however i never want to assume that we are all comfortable with that terms a little jargony so disproportionate impact at its heart simply means that if there was no impact you would expect to see the demographics of the district match the demographics of students who are

017getting into trouble or students who are achieving really high on a test or you know whatever the outcome is and when the two demographic breakdowns don't match that's when you have disproportionate impact if we look at the responses after the incident the consequence after the fact uh same thing the only thing i want to note in this bar chart there's one that looks a little out of whack and that's our no action column that is only seven chris you remember we just looked at this like 76 out of 4 000 or something it's a pretty small number um so that one it does look a little bit out of whack but the actual number is very small if we're looking at uh infractions by gender identity you will see that males are far more likely

018to commit any of the infractions that the district tracks we had discussed that previously as well you will see the same trend in the actions taken after the infraction one too far all right with english learners as you may recall from some of our previous discussions of student outcomes data especially with our most recent data from the panorama survey our english learners are one of our groups that tends to be the most impacted on any variety of these outcomes and that is also the case here our english learners are significantly overrepresented in the in the infractions and as a result also in the responses after the fact the last group is um discipline infractions and consequences by the type of educational service received whether it's general education services or special education services um given that

019our overall district proportion of special education is roughly 16 i believe um you can see that they're over represented in almost every single offense category that we track given their relative proportion within the population types of responses as well interestingly i do i do think it's notable here that some of the differences that you see between consultations and removals like iss and admin removal school level this one came up a lot with well in any number of venues this is our infractions by type broken down by the level of school that they occurred and as you can see it's our middle schools are the biggest chunk on almost all of them with the exception of academic dishonesty which is easily spread across all levels and weapons which was more likely in high school so looking

020under the numbers this is the part where people like me start to get a little excited so everything we've done so far has been descriptive frequencies and descriptives are very important they're very valuable they give you a very good snapshot of where you are today what they don't give you the best information on is what the relationship between those concepts might be or what the causal mechanism itself might be as well so um before today i was able to use our panorama data and tested against our discipline data what i set out to try to do was to use panorama items to predict a later disciplinary infraction the models included a variety of different types of a variety of different panorama items and then i accounted for what you can see on the list there

021so we included grade gender race ethnicity english learner status and so forth what that means is uh when you plug all this into the computer and tell it to do its wizardry it separates out the effect of each of those items so that you're getting us a um an estimate of the effect of the just the one thing you're looking at which in this case for us was the panorama item so finding summarized looks like the arrows so there are supposed to be down arrows instead of blocks but we'll go with blocks all right so what we're looking at here on the very on the left hand column is the panorama item the concept um and then what i was able to use is a procedure called a binary logistic regression and what that does

022is it gives you the effect of any given item on the odds of the outcome so for example if i have a high sense of belonging net of all those other factors that we just listed what are the effects of having a high sense of belonging on my odds of getting a disciplinary infraction everyone with me okay so the effects on the odds of a disciplinary infraction for grades three to five a high sense of belonging is associated with a 75 reduction in the odds of a disciplinary infraction others understanding me 60 percent comfortable asking for help 66 the effects are even larger when you get to the grades 6 through 12 in our secondary schools when you add in a couple of additional concepts like my teachers frequently encouraged me to do the best

023and if i arrived upset would my teachers notice that i was upset that was one of the strongest ones at an 85 percent reduction in the likelihood of a later disciplinary infraction um and the odds of a later disciplinary interaction so this is where um statisticians like me like to get excited because the rubber starts to hit the road we get to actually do um some of the testing and look at with a little bit higher degree of confidence how some of these items are really related to each other and whether they're a lever that we can try to pull or whether it's one we should move on from so with that i think my final thought on this slide is it also reinforces the importance of everything that we do that's not straight academics

024right if we're looking for solutions to some of these issues um they're on the slide right i mean these are these are things that are actionable for us to to try to get our heads around on how we might have an impact on infractions and and discipline so with that i believe if it pleases the chair it goes to jackie absolutely all right and miss peterson you're going to talk a little bit about not only what the district is doing to reduce behaviors but also to increase the level of belonging that students feel okay um what we felt throughout the school year is the picture is painted here by peter the middle schools kept us very busy in the office of school support not just our office but the schools themselves there was a feeling

025this year that that that there was an uptick in fighting and we found part way through the year that was not true it just it felt that way but we were dealing a lot with disruption of the educational environment significant disruption so first i want to say we didn't just sit back and wait for the year to end and then say we'll hit reset we did try some things at all of our sites and district-wide kellogg middle school implemented a cares program where they were students who had multiple you know repeat behaviors that were disruptive um engaged in in kind of an in-school suspension traditionally what you would think of but it wasn't sit and be quiet and do your work it was core instruction by licensed teachers it was work with students on social

026skills such as empathy it was a multi-day experience with the goal of having students go back to the regular environment and not not have the issue again and that was very successful and i will say during our belonging behavior summit um at the beginning of june uh when that concept was shared among all the schools there's great interest in collaborating and replicating something similar at other schools i will say willow creek also tried a version of a customized day for students toward the end of the year and um john adams middle school had something they called we called it rasp early on but like an alternative to suspension that was in school and utilized our technology and our ability to connect with students virtually so removing students from the classroom physically but not from the

027instruction so a lot of things were tried at you were aware that at one of our middle schools we increased the number of days we suspended students who were continuing to disrupt the learning environment so there were many things that we tried and that was really helpful at the summit to be able to talk about what worked and didn't work and as we look through the plans that were developed at that summit by the middle and and high schools some of the common themes i outlined in the memo clearly strengthening relationships between students and staff is number a number one priority with our schools i think we can all we all can cite research that's that that tells us and points to that is the key to being able to connect with students academically we

028have to develop those relationships first and some of our schools called out that we need to develop those kinds of relationships staff to staff first before we can or alongside doing that with students our schools are talking about adjusting schedules so that students can feel a sense of time to focus on things other than academics so looking at our advisory times our middle and high schools are talking about having things like morning meetings which traditionally had have been more of an elementary strategy we're talking about social skills lessons at the secondary level that we that can be customized so it's not a program a canned curriculum but something that we know will directly relate to students at that level we've talked about systems of support for students we have students who are not are going

029to class but not grasping the concept because either they've missed it during distance learning for whatever reason they are maybe not ready for the concept and students are themselves through avenues like the perspectives project that was conducted my my colleague will ruffin the second and his department students saying i get into class and a couple minutes in i'm already lost and why would i stay and try to attend when i don't know what's going on so we need to address how do we support kids and scaffold them so they can access the content being delivered we talked the their plans are full of suggestions of meaningful and regular connections with parents and caregivers because we know that's key this summer we have schools that are doing picnics and kellogg does popsicles with a principal regularly

030so you just show up and have a popsicle you might want to go in and tour the building and they'll do that they were recently last week at two different venues out in the community having a picnic with families so that's an example of those types of activities there are lots of of strategies that involve hearing students and elevating their voices and incorporating their what they're telling us they need into the school day and then there's the piece about responding to the data we need to make sure that all of our schools have access to their discipline data and that they're not waiting until the end of the quarter or the end of the school year to look at that but on a weekly basis so that if they're seeing some trends they can address

031them right away and not wait for issues to become bigger issues we have really good avenues to do this through swiss at the elementary schools eventually we'll be all moving to educleimer a different platform but and then pbis rewards at the secondary and allows you to look at where are where are our behavior issues happening what time of day are they happening and i think we shared previously with the board it might be as simple as this hallway is too crowded and we need to change uh the the exit pattern out of the lunchroom and give students room to uh move to their next class and by not crowding we have fewer issues and then we also want to make sure that our staff and through pbis rewards at the secondary that our staff are

032able to communicate when they're having issues with a student that they would like support it might be that a student is expressing that they are behind or it might be they're expressing their discomfort with a behavior and so it's a two-way street so as a principal i can know what the teacher has already tried and then the teacher will know what i'm trying to so that we're not duplicating enough efforts but we're also making sure that we cover every base so those are some of the pieces that i look as you look through the plans some of the common themes that are coming certainly there are some very unique um strategies that uh that buildings are planning um as well i also want to call out we did identify work groups um that will will

033be that we're working on this summer one is around cell phones i think you'll be glad to hear that there's plenty of research out there around cell phones and our youth and if you talk to staff they'll tell you that it is not an easy it's not something that's easy to address because we want our students to be able to use their technology in their devices but we want them to do so appropriately so we have a group of secondary administrators assembling actually we're meeting tomorrow eric johnson has been curating research around cell phone use and some plans that other schools have found successful we have some of our buildings that have already kind of tried to develop some plans and i will say i if i could predict it won't be that you can't

034bring your cell phone to school but it will be very specific guidelines around where where your cell phone can be and when it can be used and most importantly what happens if you are struggling with those guidelines what are the steps we'll take to help you as a student be able to follow those guidelines so more to come on that when we have flushed those those plans out and then the other work group is actually something that chris lingan and i are working on and that is to re-look at how we are supporting schools with discipline there's kind of this um i think it's a misnomer that you can't suspend anyone without talking to someone in our office that's kind of floating out there among staff that administrators hands are tied and they're not able

035to suspend unless we say so and that is really it's not accurate but we want to make sure that our administrators are equipped so they know obviously they know that we trust them professionally but we also want them to continue to work with us because you can't just when you think you've seen everything you haven't seen everything and if we could write a book we would make millions just on what happens what's the things that things that kids think up to do and so we want to make sure that they are in regular communication with us if there's something that comes up that they haven't dealt with before but we want to make sure that they have that their professional judgment is valued but that they also have a really strong set of guidelines about

036what they can and can't do in terms of response to behavior so those are two things we're working on there are other other strategies that were identified as top strategies those will be some of those are addressed through the strategic plan thank you and are there questions or comments for either dr rucker miss peterson or or chris london or chris i'm mr lingan and from cabinet board members dr picali can't see you so if you have something to say just i can't okay okay oh i have a couple questions about i'll try not to get into the weeds because i know thank you that would be a good thing yeah so um do students all have school issue devices at this point in the secondary are students still relying on cell phones to get information

037no they all have a school-issued device okay so that's not going to be a reason then for students to have a cell phone that they don't have a device they should all have a device i mean there's times having been a middle school principal there are times that the device is at home and not at school right so it could be that on a situat it could be situational that they don't have a device okay thank you dr garcia yeah my mine is more about the students involvement in this plan do you plan to ask students about restrictions around devices in the classroom around the devices we haven't gotten to that point yet but i will add that to our agenda tomorrow when we meet i think it's really important i mean i think you

038could talk to some kids like at student school board just like you can talk to some parents who will support a million percent that we're going to rest restrict cell phones but you won't hear you you're not going to get everybody's opinion by talking to one group so i think it needs to be multiple venues i i think that a lot of kids will say that they would support restriction of cell phones but there but that's certainly not going to be a unanimous belief among our young people i even wonder just around strategy because i remember like when i was in high school cell phones most of them were flip phones at the time like had just started to become more commonplace but then when the phones started to become open-faced but had like a

039like you could feel the keyboard we were restricted from having phones in school like in the classroom where it had to be like in a backpacker in your you know pocket but then we just figured out that there were ringtones you could purchase that were unhearable to people 40 and older and that we could text through our pockets if we can figure out the key pad on our phone so we should really talk to you i'm a couple decades removed from all of the cool things to do i remember those days too to get around that so i'm thinking not just getting all the kids to knock on themselves but like to ask them what is what would work for them both in like recognizing the restriction needs to happen and how can they also

040still have access to a communication device they may need so if we have students for example that have a like a glucose reader monitor on their phone like we can't take their phone away from them right so i think i think they're teachers that have really developed strategies that work well there are teachers that maybe have a if you picture like like a shoe holder that you hang on your door at home and you put shoes in the pockets or some teachers have calculator caddies like that where it's really critical though that it's clear and see-through that this the student puts their phone there and they can see it there they know that it's not gone anywhere no one's messing with it it's not in a box with a bunch of other devices um that

041that is really helpful for students to that's a sense of comfort because for a lot of students if you say i need your phone they're not going to give you their their phone willingly and it is like taking their their most personal item from them and we have had situations this year where um that has become a power struggle and it can result in some behavior that it's really unfortunate that it maybe could have been avoided if we just back off and say all right i'm going to let this go right now and ask for help from an administrator do i really need the cell phone right now it's that that response from students is that strong and so it's really important that we do find out what are what are kids willing to do

042there are some teachers that will have like a charging station but i think the critical piece is that the the student knows their cell phone is there and safe and then they're not worried about it as much and miss peterson i'm sure that you've touched on this but i just want to make sure it's part of the conversation that are you also talking at your meetings then about engaging the students so they don't feel a need to you know if they're checked out they go to their phone as a default that they're engaged in the conversation right if instruction is engaging then maybe we're not thinking about our phone just like as adults when we're in meetings that never happens to me we're all guilty of it we were all so um dependent on our

043phones and if as long as we're engaged we can and that phone is not sitting next to us we we resist the temptation but we've all had that i saw a notification and now i'm i'm in a multitask and pretty soon you're not attending what's happening in the meeting that happens to you just imagine what that what that's like with the uh you know the brain of a of a middle schooler and i even think about you know the parents who worked at home the modeling that they were seeing at home when the parents were home was probably not the best modeling of that behavior as well exactly two things one about cell phones um i'm glad that you're compiling the research that we know about cell phone use and young minds because there's an

044abundance showing that kids really do get addicted and that frequent cell phone use lowers their attention span i mean i think part of the issue that we're seeing with fights in school there is barely an altercation anymore that isn't planned ahead of time by students with cell phones and then it gets taped and broadcast so every altercation now is sent out to the entire community and it is bad practice nonetheless i absolutely understand that students really believe that their cell phones are their lifeline and it's they have become sort of important have gained an importance far beyond what they should and then i have a question for dr rock when we're talking about the number of students with infractions or who are sent to the office do you have the data showing how many students

045per school i mean is it widespread or are there at each building a relatively small group that have continued interactions what kind of trends are you seeing here sure so the uh the longer document does contain a head count but not per school that's easy to calculate um i didn't look at every school but the ones that i did look at willow creek is the one that sticks in my head um there were 200 and some students who had an infraction but only 29 accounted for a majority of the fractions for the whole school 29 out of the 200 so and that you're going to find that at just about every site that makes a big difference in terms of how each and each building would know that right and if you talk to teachers

046and administrators in the building they're going to know who those 29 students are probably just on top so it's a whole different approach when it's some kids with real needs versus the entire student body right yeah thank you yes ms nathan so i really appreciate um the emphasis on um reminding everyone that he did not wait till the end of the year to look at this issue and that this discipline both the infraction and the consequence data is not news to our administrators as are the disparities and i really appreciate that in the plans that were presented to the board throughout the year there was always a consciousness of the impact of whatever plans we were having might have on disparities so um that has been a focus of this board obviously for many years

047um since the office of civil rights data and i i think it's important to re-emphasize that even though we are responding to a higher level of behavior disruption we're still not losing that focus um and i don't know if this is a question for the superintendent um but i'm wondering about how obviously the students will experience the impact of these plans because hopefully they'll they'll see some changes but how will our staff and our families learn about what changes or what is being implemented in the buildings to address some of the concerns that they've had from this year and going into the new school year i think there's two pieces one is we we're in discussion about how we will roll these plans out to families to students and families as part of the site

048continuous improvement plan so our our thought is there will be some way to communicate the the overall plan for the school but within that plan these strategies around belonging behavior so we do want parents and students to know and be part of that we also have talked a little bit about next board meeting we'll be bringing the handbook the student handbook forward for approval and or for your review and um in the past we've printed those the the handbook is i don't know 60 pages long and there are a lot of hyperlinks in there that would not be very effective on paper we'd also kill a lot of trees sending it out so we now we now share that virtually but we will be directing each building to share the handbook with the student body

049and one way we know is effective that at the secondary level to share to bring grade levels of students together to talk about the highlights of the handbook and then at the elementary level by classroom to talk about the highlights of the handbook in their in their words and call out what what students need to know so we don't just expect students to read the handbook and we also will expect staff to read it as well not just the staff handbook but the student handbook and then there is a sign off on on skyward for families so that we um we can we know that we our kids tell us no one reads the handbook but we do want to make sure that we highlight information with them so that they're aware uh for me

050to jump in there really briefly sure yes all right sorry director bob nathan's point um i just want to name the fact this conversation that is very focused on discipline is super important to be transparent but when director nathan asks the question how do you share these plans there's a tension there because this is not the only thing by a mile that is happening in rochester public schools we are as focused on academic success and even as dr ron points out the disparate impacts that some of our youth of color special educations students multi-language learners are experiencing little discipline there are also kids of color multi-language learners students with disabilities who are thriving in our schools and who are going on to the university of minnesota and chicago and are doing extraordinary things and so

051while we want to be transparent and clear about this issue safety is foundational for all kids we want to put it in a broader context and so as we begin sharing these plans in the fall we're going to be talking very clearly about these strategies around safety and belonging but we're going to actually balance it with the academic priorities that are just as important for our schools and of course as the perspectives projects show they're linked when kids are academically engaged in thriving these behavioral issues shift and so we are going to be leading into two-way transparent communication around these issues and tonight's conversation is not about that other stuff because we want to be very focused on this issue but i think with our parents with our community and with the students we need

052to know this isn't the only lens through which we see any of these kids even the kids who are in that small group that are that are getting caught up in the disciplinary process a lot we care about those kids and we're working to support them educationally socially emotionally as well so it's not either or and we are going to be sharing those strategies but we unlike tonight are going to try and put these issues of major discipline in a broader context because that's not the only story or even the main story what's happening in rochester public schools i apologize director obama i wanted to just jump in and reinforce that point though at this moment thanks sure in part you did address some of the things i was going to inquire about i still

053will though so um really we're not necessarily seeing anything that we haven't previously seen i appreciate dr rock how you have packaged it and for me i'm thinking and i believe other board members and probably members of the community would like to see so what are you going to do um and and dr pikel alluded to this is just a small part of of the actual plan one of the original iterations of your report included verbiage of this being potentially lends into the instructional strategies we could potentially begin to utilize for our children which um would then lean into the academic priorities that we'd like each of our uh students to possess and so i'm anticipating and correct me if i'm wrong i'm anticipating that probably as we move into our strategic action plan this

054particular report will ultimately or the plan will which lens will we look through our discipline our research report or our strategic action plan to determine our outcomes i guess i don't want to be reactive i think for a moment the um toward the end of this past school year the increased suspensions for uh that were rolled out at one of our middle schools to me that was probably reactionary i don't know and we probably or you may be able to say well yeah it resulted in uh you know these positive uh outcomes i don't know you know just months removed from that but i guess i'm just kind of leaning toward i'm sure there's a goal beyond just the release of this annual report and as i previously said early on i'd like to see

055it tied to how it relates to our instructional strategies our academic priorities how it may even filter into our our our mt our multi-tier school uh our mtss how those particular items are incorporated into dealing with these behaviors and so all that now moving to this final piece um if i'm not mistaken often the rpd information is a part of this report and i noticed it was absent this time around and so rpd did not have any actions to report or will that be something separate or that was not really just part of this initial uh look we can get that information for you i know i'm not sure that it was in any of the downloads that that peter would have had access to i wouldn't have had access to that anyway okay but

056chris would have that data and can put that together so just to make sure i'm correct then aren't they don't we normally have both of them presented at the same time or they're part of we have done that in the past correct and so those intent to now separate them out i'm not trying to push one or the other i just want to make sure that we at some point are able to hear sense know what the rpd is doing in terms of our students but you need to see both um just as we are trying to make sure there is a very clear distinction between the disciplinary process the staff and where illegal behavior involves or unsafe involves law enforcement in the day-to-day life of our schools we're trying to keep them separate in

057looking at the data so we we do need to get that on the revised annual calendar time to the strategic plan to look at that with you um i would i would recommend that we continue to look at them separately because the mind would blur them and we work very hard not to have a kid who is being suspended or having any of the consequences that are in the data looking at tonight have a handoff to law enforcement unless there is a very clear threat to safety or illegal behavior and so that's the logic behind not bringing them to you tonight but you're right you need to see that and it's not on our annual calendar right now but it does need to be and so i'll work with the chair and the vice chair

058to um to bring that to you i would appreciate that because those two things are blurred together whether we want them to be or not so i think even if we're not going to present them at the same time being able to do that parallel process is necessary for the work we're doing around this can i just offer that you know 20 years ago we were provided with this intervention as well when i was on the board and while many things stay the same things also change and um i just wanted to point out that regardless if you look at this data together or you look at it separately and i don't think rochester public schools should be held harmless you know the data is not good and we want this to change but we

059also have to remember that we're part of a society that has not yet changed and rochester public schools can do its part superintendent and nope has noted the children are only in school 15 of their day and so until we can get that other percentage of their time addressing these disparities as well and the housing situation and just all those pieces um it's as he mentioned it's a much larger picture um it saddens me that we have this but there have been strategies that have changed in those 20 years since we've been looking at this data and there are things that are done differently but but as a nation we still have a lot of clutter to clear before we can expect that every student has the opportunities that all students should have other comments

060or questions ms nathan and mr i guess this goes to the timing of future annual calendar items as well but we have gotten into a pattern because of requirements from the office of civil rights and the minnesota department of human rights that we looked at this data twice a year there were times that we looked at it by semester and then we looked at it at the end of the year what is the right schedule on which we should look at the data in the context of our our plans having an impact and changing what we're seeing in the data patterns um i think it depends on what the strategy is that you're trying to evaluate the sort of rule that i have used in the past is quarterly but again i think it depends

061on the strategy that you're trying to evaluate because there are plenty of strategies that you can't reasonably expect to have an impact within a quarter it might only be an annual thing um so i think it would be i think it would depend um based on what the the objective is um i'm kind of struggling on how to ask this and who to ask this but i'll do my best here um one of the things that caught my attention in looking at the pdf is what i reviewed before the meeting where on let's see what pages are now page 33 it lists the various offenses and i guess the preliminary question i would have i guess is that there's a you know fairly large number for interruption to learning in a fairly large number for

062interruption to learning environment are those different categories and how are they different and how do administrators know the difference so we used to have we have we have dirt that we have to report to the disciplinary reporting system through the state and durs in october changed their um wording of things and so we kept october of 21 yep yep so we kept our wording and had to add theirs in because we didn't want to confuse our data entry people and those things because all of our documents had you know that in there so they're combined now they should so next school year there won't be that extensive list it will be just the one that's in dirt would it be possible for us to get that list and those definitions so that we can understand

063this page and then also get the new list so we can understand what it is that we'll be looking at in the future that that would be helpful and i guess the other related question is things like i guess the thing that keeps crossing my mind is the subjectivity of some of this you know what's harassment what's bullying how do different admins look at those things and how are they trained to categorize them that part is very difficult between harassment discipline fighting and physical altercation all of those are you know they're it's not not an easy thing to say this is for sure this part of it um because somebody's look at it this way some look at it a different way within it um but as a whole i would see you know the

064bullying um and the harassment piece may come down to how many times things have gone on would two different admins look at that differently possibly okay and i guess i bring it up i'd say that for sure that would be every time that's how i view it i guess my worry is that without knowing some of that detail how much of that is playing a role in the disparities there's a definition of bullying is you know over time and it's intentional and unwanted and where a lot of times we'll hear from a student or a parent my student is being bullied and when it comes down to it it's a single incident and then is that bullying or is it misbehavior so there are definitions to follow but i will say i mean it really

065is we're dealing with people with little little people sometimes i can tell i was at a building one day this past year and i've been working with the building about a student who was tearing apart class of the classroom like destroying the classroom so on the phone i'm hearing this and i happened to be at the school when the principal got a radio call the student was tearing apart the classroom and destroying the classroom and i want to go see this so i went on the call with the principal and my definition of tearing apart a classroom and what i saw that day very very different but it's it's because of my experiences compared to that principal's experience and i it was not though i didn't i didn't see what i expected to see you

066know furniture i did not see furniture turned upside down and classroom materials everywhere it was it didn't meet my definition but that was because of my background of what i was used to seeing so yeah um yeah i think i'm trying to look at this both from a more global level as well as a um you know in the trenches kind of level so i think the board is going to be looking at it from a global perspective you know once again to emphasize there is a distinction between management and governance so the governance level i think we need to have this information presented to us a couple times a year or you know whenever it works for you while understanding that it's not just twice a year that this is happening that you all

067are working on it every single day with students and administrators and and parents when they need to be involved whereas we're looking at the big picture so i would be i i think the board would be very remiss to come in and say well i really think this this is how you should be doing it you know so unless we have board members who are in the classroom as teachers i don't know maybe substitutes but you know we're not there every single day to see whether or not what's working and what's not working so from a purely a point of pure interest you know i'd be interested in saying you know hearing here here are some of the strategies we tried that did didn't work here are some that did work here are strata here's

068a strategy that maybe worked in this building at this particular time but that strategy did not work in another building at a particular time so that those strategies might be effective or not based on the context of the situation in the building um you know and that's and that's that's at the granular level of what you guys are doing right and the important piece is the quarterly look well the weekly look at the building level is the practitioner piece exact addressing the behavior and i think and i think too we've said before that every discipline situation tells a story and the and the administrators and teachers can tell you um it's not just a number on a page and i think looking at looking at discipline data weekly or even quarterly um doesn't doesn't tell

069the story sitting in this room i mean i can tell you that there there are high schools who have said um at the end of a quarter well our discipline date is going to really be skewed because of homecoming or because of prom and the party bus you know rolled up and we had nine kids suspended you know the at that school level um that's where it's really important that we're addressing and looking at trends and responding to support our students and i think there's there's just a lot of data and information that has to be woven together and i'm really glad that we have such competent people here who can do that um for us to to get a better feel of oh well like was just shown on the slide earlier um you

070know those relationships matter and they do reduce behaviors so it's you know as was mentioned earlier it's not just one thing it's just it's a whole range of things that have to be woven together like a tapestry in order for us to see that picture other questions or comments his name i guess to build on director mclaughlin's question in terms of the definitions we're going to be looking at the student handbook those things are spelled out in the studio and there is going to be training for staff i think i remember that in the overall plan for the district one of the work groups was to look at all of our discipline responses and is there is there regular training that our staff gets on an annual level to say these are what the definitions

071are administrators or staff the people who have to make the decision about how to classify the the student behavior yeah actually i was looking at a document that you shared earlier a matrix of um this is the behavior here's the response and we actually have something like that that's been in existence for probably 20 years and updated i won't say regularly but updated and the point of it is so that we can agree as administrators what the interaction is and that we can agree that if if i'm at mayo high school and i i have this behavior that the response to my behavior would be about the same as if i was at a century and i had that that behavior so not not saying that every case has a set like three-day suspension but

072that there's some sort of framework around it so it's not a wildly different response from one school of the next i think that's part of our office's role by going to the buildings by having those meetings that we've talked about and also just the conversations that come when a building principal calls you and say i've got a situation here i haven't run across yet what do you think and then how are other people coding this i haven't had this before well this is what happened at century and this is what we did at the amber valley it may not be exactly the same but there's going to be some some similar pieces within that and part of just out of our office we also have administrators call and say i'm thinking a three-day suspension and

073it might be we agree with you or well let's talk about that and then we scale it back but those conversations are important to have because number one the the administrative team might be in the heat of the moment and um and thinking maybe it needs to be more and or they might not have had something like that before but we're we're we're aware of what's going on across the district and we can we can help them settle on what's what's appropriate and we we have tried to reduce we we don't feel that you know three days is three days of suspension does something magical compared to one or two but you know the goal is and the directors of our director barlow's earlier point about the middle school where we expanded the number of

074days we suspended that did have a an impact on a number of students who just turned it around it was enough to get their attention and they wanted to be at school but there were enough kids also that was like great five days i don't have to be at school and that's the last thing we want to do so that was a kind of a hail mary at the end of the year to see if we could get some get some behavior response from our students in the right direction but it's certainly not something that we want to continue to do so thank you to everybody who's presented and for this discussion clearly it's going to be an important discussion it's going to continue throughout the school year and throughout the school years we we've

075got some great resources and we're going to do better i will move on to 3.02 office for equity and engagement structure and functions dr kakel thank you um very much dr marvin um as board members are aware before i got to rochester the new office of diversity equity and inclusion was created and a highly respected teacher at educator from the school district where will ruffin ii became the first leader of that effort and as i got here a year ago the nurturing of that work in the district became one of my priorities and in fact it's one of my priorities for the 2021-2022 school year that the board will be evaluating me on in august and so as we talked about the uh somewhat slower pace of things in the summer for the board and

076staff we thought this was a good time to pause and do a progress check on how the progress of the office has unfolded over the course of the year understanding that it's a work in progress and i'm really glad that will has asked willie and sarah louise and heather to join you and i won't steal any of their thunder in terms of talking about the work of the past year because i know they're going to give you a more granular action vision of that than i could i do want to say briefly two things about the future direction tied to the strategic plan because as board members are aware i have asked will to assume somewhat broader responsibility and we've renamed the office from diversity equity and inclusion to equity and engagement and it's a

077longer discussion but the the two pieces that are so critical that we're adding to this expanded office are supporting and preparing our students for success in life after high school especially in post-secondary education and in the world of careers and the second is engaging our families and both of those functions have an all kid's agenda which is to say we'll be looking to will in the office to be preparing all rochester students starting for sure in middle school i think likely in elementary school for success in post-secondary education and career to become thriving adults similarly we're going to be looking to the office to help develop a framework for engaging all families authentically but at the core of our most urgent challenge are supporting those students and those families from historically marginalized communities and so

078that's why those two critical parts of our strategic plan are going to be housed with this effort we're not diminishing the emphasis on equity but we're broadening the portfolio such that those two critical functions of putting kids on that positive path and engaging families and creating a parent empowerment program are going to have a strong rooting in equity even as they also are leading system change across the district so that's the work looking forward and i know uh the the four colleagues that are there we'll be talking about that um but they're also going to give you a glimpse of the work that good work that they've been doing today so i want to thank will for his leadership uh in this work in progress and turn it over ahead all right i just want

079to acknowledge like he did that we do have a couple members of our team they are going to speak to some of the highlights of the year that they felt stood out to them but i also wanted to introduce heather hogan who is a new member of our team who will be heading up c-tec and also our post-secondary um focus and uh our school counselors so welcome aboard others thank you it's okay if you want to do the soft clap that's all right so thank you for that but i was thinking about the school year i took a deep breath because it was a long school year on so many efforts but i think about prior to last july this department didn't exist at all so there was truly none of this that i just

080passed out was in place at least not structural so now that we have a department we can focus on many of these wins that we're going to talk about but then also some of the challenges that are not yet in place and also need to be in place so i think about things like um our equity specialists who were hired many of us talked about how representation matters how it matters to see a person like you in the schools and i think that was a huge win for us we hired eight equity specialists just about midway of the school year we also changed one title from a minority liaison to an equity specialist so we have a total of 13 total that's huge and i think it's a huge one for our district one area

081that i think we can improve upon is all of our equity specialists look like me i am not representative of all of the students in rochester public schools so as we continue to get a handle on this i think we should continue to expand what the equity specialists look like if we're going to tap into the various communities of our schools over of rochester we also have to diversify the people who are working in our schools so although it was a win this school year that's one area that i think that we can improve on for sure going forward right and i also think that it's going to come with time because i do feel there's a population of people who want to see us do the work first before they take that leap of

082faith and want to join the fight so just on that front alone this department has been huge because i do feel people are watching us and they're listening to what we do are our actions actually matching the words that we say we're gonna do when i look at this list that i provided feel our actions are matching up so just thinking about how american indian education started to collaborate better with our apac group that was one relationship that was needing some repairing so that's another win that i think we have to know just by having our liaison in place it's a good thing but that liaison position has also been a revolving door we've had many people in that same position throughout the year so what do we need to do to get this solidified

083we have to listen to the people who are on the ground we have to listen to that eight-pack group what are your needs and then the school district's job is to figure out how we're going to support that person in that position so just starting to mend that relationship is a step in the right direction and part of many that relationship we were able to send a small team to the national and state education conference this was something that apac group wanted to see they wanted to see more people getting informed on the experience of native americans so we tried to honor that we brought back the feathering ceremony and the powwow which we weren't able to do and i'm i'm actually honored to say that i'm glad that i saw many of you there

084participating because people also look at things like that too is it one thing to sit in the office and say we're going to do things but it's a totally other thing to actually be in the community being at the events talking to people shaking their hands letting them ask you questions being vulnerable in that space with them this is what we have to do okay so what i'm going to do now is stop because i'm going to monitor the time that i'm taking up and i'm going to invite willie and sarah louise into the space because i want you to highlight some of the wins that you thought occurred throughout the school year and then we will pass it over to heather and then heather's going to introduce herself and her vision for the role

085for the school year and after that we'll open it up for questions if that's okay forever all right hello everyone a beautiful night it was kind of it's chilly in here but it's really warm outside i'll take that anyway um i think it's really been a it's been a really great year for us um especially for me you know just being having an opportunity to start out the school year um in my role and then have an opportunity to supervise five equity specialists and then by mid-year pretty much in january have an opportunity to add eight more to the team during the school year which was something that in the beginning you sit back and think wow that's a lot to bring on at one time but you know having having a team that we

086have and having the young men and women that we actually hired on was great it was great for us and it was great for for the district as a whole i think as we continue to move forward during the school year we all had learning curves a lot to learn adjustments um but yet i think the most important component to the people that we hired is they're they're student driven and you know and when you're student driven you have a passion and you want to really make a difference and at times sometimes when you have those type of passions and you come from a different perspective the challenge with that comes sometimes when the communication between all parties understand how we're going to make this work how can we align this in order to make

087sure that not only the students but the families as well have that success and i think we did a pretty good job at that and we learned a whole lot and we know exactly what needs to be done in regards to going into the up-and-coming school year but some highlights one thing was the collaboration between equities specials and the school resource officers i think that was that was really huge especially because the fact that we have went through so much over the last couple years for them for the for the sros and the police department to want to do this collaboration and work alongside of us to be able to help students to be able to give students a different perspective to give them an opportunity to share and build relationships with students but yet

088the most important piece was for students to be able to see the collaborative work between both parties so that as time moved on and as we continue to build on those relationships it's not just important for them to have those relationships within the buildings but when they're outside in the community like you said we only have them for 15 of the day and the rest of the day they're out within the community so we want for them to have those relationships and the only way that that can happen is for us to sit down and have those type of conversations giving them the platform to share their lives with students so they can see a different side of them and i think that went a long way not only with the sros but them building

089relationships with students but for the equity specialists as well because they were able to see law enforcement from a different perspective and building those relationships and i hope that as we continue to move forward we can continue to do that and another a couple other highlights i'm not gonna take up all day but we had our first annual um male muslim student association a fire celebration which was huge um all of the students were great they did a great presentation i know a lot of you guys were there the food was excellent great opportunity to learn a lot about our muslim population great way to build relationships um development of the lg on bq btq support group at lincoln that was huge you know those students they needed a platform they needed an opportunity to

090have a space we provided that for them and they continued to build on that um you know family engagement events at middle park in oaktails know just being able to get out in the community once again and for those families to be able to see us in a different light we get taken resources rather than always asking them to come to the buildings we were able to get out in the community and bring those resources to them rather than employment um you know food supports you know community services help you know whomever we tried to make sure that everyone was there invisible and they had to support and given families an opportunity to build on those relationships as well so and we hope to continue to do that as well i just think that having

091these these type of opportunities with the diagnosis specialists along with the rest of our staff and as they continue to grow okay they have aspirations of you know rather be continuing education to continue to grow in the field of education um you know they have opportunities to continue to build relationships throughout the community but i think the most important piece is building relationships with our with our administration and staff within the buildings being able to give them the perspective that sometimes we may not have um you know based off our experiences i know that mr ruffin spoke to you know most of our equity specialists look like us with the exception of a couple and that we do need to be more diverse but for now with the ones that we actually have you know

092we're going to continue to grow it and branch it out and make sure that we're doing the best that we can to make sure that we are being supportive of all students not just students of color but all students because the bottom line is in order for this to work we have to make sure we we are bringing that bridge of understanding for all in order for all students to feel wanted and they're valued but yet at the same time having success throughout the school year [Music] so i think that one big thing that i've been saying is that our community is really in a season of rebuilding trust with our district and i think that that really lends itself to how this year has been we have seen many needs in our community with

093our students and our families and this was a year where we really tried stuff out to see what was going to work we heard certain issues that arose and like hey let's try out this solution some things work some days did some things will continue to grow in the years to come so that's been really exciting as far as that trust building i think the increased visibility that has happened in our community is huge i think we have been able to connect with parents and with families and also other community members and that piece has really allowed us to not just address certain issues but also include them and well what do you think are some things that we can improve on what are some strategies that you see for the district and so that

094has been definitely an asset to an asset that has come from our department i think renaming the department made a lot of sense because that engagement piece what we have done is broader than what our name kind of civilized before and so some of the other things that i have noted along with my colleagues is supporting the curriculum and instruction piece and looking at those when we are looking at changing texts and supporting the difficulties that sometimes come with that change piece having our department gave an opportunity for parents and staff to voice concerns and have a place to discuss what the reasoning behind some of those changes are and really get a sense of what our district stands for um so when there were concerns around the text we were able to respond to

095that and also in that there was the development of the educators accountability group which also helps to it's a supporting employee resource group for white educators and we tapped into that group as well as the employees of color resource group with scenarios and solutions that helped us support our community as we go through some of these changes so the development of having those groups was definitely a benefit as well as that we also provided affinity spaces we know that with our client common in society things have happened and to be able to offer a safe space where people can come and talk even virtually well that's kind of how we did it was virtually we provide a couple hours for people to just come and just feel seen and heard so that you're not just

096coming into the district like okay well we want you to come do your job no it shows that there are people who care about employees and that part is also helpful with retention another piece that comes from the importance of retaining those staff of color in particular was with the mentorship component so there's also some one-on-one mentorship that took place that was stem from our department another exciting piece was the professional development opportunities so as we were able to go and gain all of this information there are different sites that reached out to have professional development opportunities individually and also we went to hawthorne was another place that we went and really just gave us the opportunity to share all of the things that we were in in that one thing that's always exciting to

097me is that we find people who also have skills throughout our district who know um just pieces that we can tap into so you're able to see all of the talent and the abundance of people that are willing to help and stand with us on our um goals were able to also look at as you're aware the perspectives project and implementing that i did want to point that out because a bulk of that was done by people in our department and so it didn't take time for people who were doing who were already very heavy on their workload and we were able to provide um sort of that service to our district as well and also idid briefs so with the equity teacher leaders each site has different goals that they want to work on

098and a way for sites to kind of get a baseline of where their staff are at is using the idi and in doing that we didn't have to outsource to do the debrief of that i was able to meet with um sites and individuals and go through that with them and it was just nice to have a way to use that tool and so i'm very excited i may be biased but i think our department is doing some fantastic things with the support of the board and also increased support from the community thank you and just before we actually go to ms hogan could you for those who may not know just explain briefly what idi is yes again thank you that's the entire intercultural intercultural development inventory and what it does is it is

099an assessment that asks you questions that are engaging where you are on your experiences with different cultures and so it takes into account by the questions um history of your experience with people with other cultures and also the ability to interact and um adapt to working with people of other cultures so it gives you a kind of a baseline of where you're at and then also it gives you when we do debrief that gives you the opportunity to learn growth opportunities of how to get to the next point in your growth um so i'm heather hogan um and i told will that i might not have a fully formulated vision after two and a half weeks um but maybe some hopes that um i'm i'm hoping that can come about with this position as our

100department works together to develop the business so right now i feel a little bit like i'm pulling on the strings and the skein of yarn and as you pull more out you get tangles and when working on untangling some of those things with everything that i'm learning about and bringing together some of the hopes that i have is that we develop a vehicle for our students and families um working with the students to better understand themselves and how they fit in the world around them as they're preparing um for life after rochester public schools that they are able to identify their strengths and their passions and how they can use those to be a successful member of the community that they choose to be a part of whether it's here with us in rochester or

101um somewhere else and that they feel like they have options and that they are not limited when they move beyond rps and that they feel like they have the skills for those options or know how to tap into resources to develop the skills that they need to be that person that they see themselves being in the future and all of this with our day-to-day looking at what are we offering our students to be able to develop those skills and expanding those pathways for students whether it's through the ctec program where i will be housed or through our other schools and building and expanding on the partnerships that we um have partners whether that's with our rctc partnership our ibm partnerships with the mayo clinic and really strengthening those because i think that from what i've

102learned so far is that there's a lot of willingness to partner with us we just need to harness that and have a clear path and a direction for that and working to significantly increase that representation of students who have been traditionally underrepresented in those dual credit earning courses and the pathways that we have so that we make sure that students are not being limited by not seeing themselves in areas that they may be curious about or wanting to explore those are the things that are rolling around in my head as i am beginning this work thank you any questions or comments for any of these folks yeah i am so enthusiastic and in love with the fact that you all exist um i think that this is something that our district has needed for a

103very long time and i think to mr ruffin the second's point about how far we've come and just the year is so impressive and i think um amy ike and i were at the lincoln's first gsa meeting and even though we were sort of like oh the admin that's there at the meeting i think it it had such a huge trickle-down effect because i feel like the kids don't know who we are but the staff understood who we are and the staff being excited that they feel supported at this level and then the students seeing the number of educators that were in the room was just beyond me and there were like probably 30 plus kids in that room and so i think just knowing that that was clearly something that was needed educators were

104able to mobilize to make that happen for their students and they were given the support that they needed to do that and they're continuing to feel the support is to me like the tangible evidence of the importance of why this office exists and so i appreciate um that's just one example obviously and i just appreciate the fact that that it's here because i think going all the way back to what we learned in the beginning is that you know 85 or i can't remember exactly mr rock explained but it was we we would reduce the amount of infractions for students the more they feel a sense of belonging with the school and i think that you're you are far and away kind of uh the mobilizing force for that and so i really appreciate that

105you're here and i recognize that there are other people who do not believe that that matters in a district and that we should stick to academics i do not believe that and i feel like the data shows that that's not the case and you all are doing that work um i really appreciate everything that you've done and this is a wonderful list and i look forward to participating in many more of those activities to support our students families the rest of you and i just like to echo similarly as a doctor as doctor director did it's because i have my mask on right oh garcia garcia uh and i think it's so important because i have the opportunity to um attend uh this past week uh our opening round of uh school board candidate forums

106and there seemingly it's a great deal of misunderstanding as to the equity what we're doing as a district and and and this presentation tonight and the creation of a department that includes both equity and engagement is so important because it allows uh the community and and those who uh choose to be aware that this is so much more it isn't just a single talking point issue but it is something that is so meaningful and significant and i realize that we really haven't and maybe mr will ruff in the second will uh share other aspects of the department but you know to include bilingual and family engagement and aie that is so important and it isn't just a single thing and i appreciate the fact that um you're right just uh a year ago and it

107was just a the the board i commend the board for sensing the need not necessarily understanding in totality what that would look like i'm not sure we have this in mind it exceeds i believe of what our expectation was i commend dr pickell and and you mr ruffin i think had you not been who you are perhaps this may not have been developed into what it is but you and your staff you by you being who you are have set the bar high so it can only go higher we're not going to accept lower but higher for sure and we're looking forward to uh another great report i don't know i don't know how often you will bring reports such as this to the board but we're i think always interested and want to be

108fully supportive of these efforts so thank you well dr barlow uh stole some of my thoughts and i'm going to reiterate it but i remember the budget meeting in 2020 um when the board and i remember the look on mr carlson's face when we first brought up the idea of a cabinet level person in charge of equity because we were talking about all the things that the district was doing that was driven by the findings from the ocr report and mdhr and discipline data that we really felt it needed a focus i don't think as director borrows that at that time we ever imagined that we would be here um i do know that if i had known that mr ruffin would have been the director that would have not insisted on it far sooner

109because your leadership has really even before you were in this position your voice in this district to honestly share the perspective of both staff and students and their needs in this area it opened my eyes it educated me in a way that i did not know before it inspired me so thank you and the people that we have um added to the department um seeing all of you in action in especially in your engagement with families family engagement has been a passion of mine for many years so to see it embedded in this department and already reaching some of those more marginalized families that's where we started we started with reaching out to those families and our family engagement and i think the family engagement work that will come out of this department will only

110benefit from that um all families will be served by the lessons that we learned by working with with the families we've been working with and i appreciate the ongoing commitment to embedding this work at the top level of our district work uh not that it's just a department and people but it's in our strategic plan it's it's not just a piece of our strategic plan it's interwoven in multiple areas of the strategic initiatives or the circles or whatever we end up describing it as superintendent account and it is a commitment that as director barlow said is not going to go away um because the peak the the board speaking for myself i'm committed to continuing it and um we have the people who have the passion that are going to keep it going so thank

111you and i do look forward to many more reports like this i think yeah some of what bothered me um during some of my work as part of the school board piece on the equity policy to begin with which kept going back and forth and back and forth to the people who really couldn't inform us as to what that needed to look like the idea was there that this needs to be at the top of our work and so will ruffin ii was hired to do it all by himself initially you know we we didn't the board we didn't say okay you're gonna have this is you plus where's the funding for all the other people and all the work that has to be done and everything else but you took it and you ran

112with it and it's not just you of course we have a whole team um this has just exceeded what i could have ever possibly imagined so i'm glad it wasn't left to me to figure it out because we probably i know we would be spinning our wheels and it probably wouldn't be going much of anywhere but the board had this idea and worked with people in order to make it come to fruition and i look at this and i think my gosh in a year this is incredible no pressure but i can't wait until we see what we have a year from now um it's it's just it's just been amazing and equity work is just it's so important for all of our students and especially the ones who have been marginalized or left behind

113or ignored or you know whatever their circumstances are and um i'm thrilled so thank you sorry i just want to make a follow-up comment because a couple of my colleagues had added that you know this is this has become something beyond our wildest dreams and i want to add my voice to that too but with a caveat that it's not when we hired you i expected that you would just you would do all things right you would build this team and i it was not let me think about i want to phrase this i was not doubting your ability to make all of this happen or to be the catalyst for that change i will be honest and that i doubted our district's readiness to allow this to happen and so i want to send

114some appreciation to my colleagues on the board for continuing to support this for doing something like our equity policy and the statements that we've put out because it is important and i think that if we do that sort of you know management governance balance and we say here's your support we will get out of the way but we will offer you the things the tools and the resources that you need to make it happen i hope that that continues for the entirety of rochester public schools assistance [Laughter] i think it's so important that it's been our strategic plan is called planning for purpose and it seems to me that that's what equity is about to ensure that every single child you know knows they're important they have a purpose that we accept them and we

115respect them whoever they are whatever their memberships that there is a place for them here and we will do what we can to support that child and i won't live long enough but it would be wonderful if we got to the point someday where we don't need a focus on equity because it's just who we are it's just the culture that we cheer so i'm done well you know i think i will add um i wasn't sure if the school district was ready to do what needed to be done also and also support trey i just said daddy you just have to let them know you the way everyone knows you just have to let them know and that's all i've been trying to do is just do me but none of this happens by

116by itself right by myself we have a team the team is expanding but the second thing i wanted to notice i got here from a place of pain from not having an ideal in the school district and that is what i want to cease for everyone else because when students talk i believe them because i can say it happened to me too when other staff members approach me i can say yep you got to change that because that's happened to me too so out of this pain comes something beautiful and that's the hope that i want to be a part of that's the dream for this position for the district that's what i want to repair for everyone who's been harmed by the district we're going to be the symbol that we can learn from

117our mistakes and we will be better that's our commitment to anyone listening students staff caregiver whoever our commitment is to be better adjustment slightly different issues am i coming across there you are you are yeah sorry i was i was so interested in what will was saying i was trying to get over to youtube to hear him so i uh i i got the vibe if not all the language um i should also mention non-sequitur i should have said it at the beginning of the meeting i was looking for the board members who have not yet met our new chief academic officer dr effey advamu to introduce you tonight um fa is a very dignified person so i won't go to a lot of details but she fractured a leg over the weekend and is

118going to be um figuring out exactly how to make that work so we're thinking of her i know she's watching on youtube right now but i wanted uh otherwise this would have been her first study session and i know she was looking forward to that but it's a marathon not a sprint and she'll she was with us virtually today um and so we're thinking of her as she's balancing that challenging circumstance um this is an uh item and i um don't imagine it will take a lot of time though of course that's at the up to you as board members we've had a number of questions about renewing the planning well-being days that we convened in the 2021 school year in the 2022-23 school year of course were we to do that it would require

119board action because as a board you've already approved the calendar as you had for last year for the current school year last year on an emergency basis given the severity of the covet 19 pandemic and the academic challenges social challenges mo emotional and mental health challenges that our students were facing as you all know on an emergency basis we decided to have four days where students did not report to class to give our teachers time to reinvent curriculum to identify interventions for students who are struggling and yes to take a pause to find an opportunity to get their feet about them in the midst of a really challenging school year the feedback that we received from staff was i have to say overwhelmingly positive and appreciative of those days that said we also knew and

120board members certainly knew this going into the decision and then we heard from other others over the course of the year it created a hardship for some parents who depend upon our schools for child care for young children in particular and it also did modestly reduce learning time over the course of that year those were four days that otherwise would have gone toward instruction so i think it was a very good decision in the last school year and one of the questions i've gotten is what about the school year going forward at this time after a lot of thought i am not recommending that you take emergency action to revise the already approved calendar for 2022-2023 but i believe we should be vigilant and carefully watch the need to do that we as you know

121are continually monitoring the impact of covid not just on the spread of the virus uh within our schools but on staff shortages which was why we had to go to distance learning for two weeks last year we will continue to do that and i think i would recommend the board continue to retain the right to add days like that in the coming school year should we find ourselves at a point where that proves necessary um while my own circumstance sitting here in isolation from covid illustrates that we are not out of the pandemic yet i don't think we're at a point now where we know that the level of stress and the impact of the pandemic on our schools merits reducing scheduled instructional time at this point and so we will watch it very carefully

122and a commitment that i would make to try and rectify something that did occur last year was if it does appear that that is a strategy that we want to utilize again we would strongly endeavor to give families at least two months notice so that they could make adjustments and that we could do whatever we could do to increase spaces that are available in our school age child care which we were able to do with any ike's really great leadership on very short notice last year when we went to distance learning also if we did renew these days in the 22-23 school year once again we would definitely put them in the middle of the week so it's very clear this is not a long weekend even though i have no problems with long weekends

123when they when they fall on days that are previously scheduled and we also would put them at a period where there is a long stretch of at least three and potentially four or one with six weeks where there would otherwise be no break so that these are really strategically placed days so my recommendation and there is no vote that's being requested because it there's no board action that would be required since i'm not recommending a change in your approved plan would be not to do that for the 2022-23 school year but to remain vigilant about it however i think that as we begin our uh or continue our work with the rochester education association to design the school calendar for the 23-24 school year which we will be doing in the coming weeks and months

124that we consider replicating this strategy of strategically placing non-student contact days in the midst of those long stretches and the middle of the weeks when staff collaboration and planning time can be very valuable however i would i would recommend and we'll be talking with our colleagues at rea if we do that we don't do that at the expense of instructional time that we have the additional instructional days for our students because those are precious days for learning so kind of to sum up 21 22 i think it was a home run it was it was a difficult decision that that the recommendation i made and that the board approved to do it i think it was a very successful um in the last school year i don't recommend at this time that we take that

125step but that we monitor very carefully the uh spread of the virus and the level of challenge our staff are facing and that we have that as a tool in our tool kit in the school year ahead if we decide we need it and that we work with rea and ultimately bring you a proposal at the board for the 23 24 school year and perhaps beyond that replicates that strategy but not on an emergency basis but one that builds into the school calendar so an update for you everything i just said is summarized in writing in a couple of slides that are available on the website and i'd be glad to either engage in dialogue now but as mentioned previously this isn't an item on which we will anticipate asking for action in the near

126term but wanted to let you and certainly many in the community who have been wondering about this know what what my recommendation would be at this time thank you board members any quick comments or feedback hearing none and unless there are other comments about anything we will move to 6.01 item number 6.01 it is 657 and we are thank adjourned