001My name is Lisa Serero. I am assistant commissioner in the office of quality schools at the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Um, but you can call us DESIE. Um, I'm here today to open this public hearing. It is required by statute for districts that have been unacredited and are provisionally accredited and have not yet returned to full accredititation status. And at this moment in time um that is the situation that Normandy Schools Collaborative uh finds itself in. So, the purpose of this hearing tonight is to bring community members together to capture information that can be useful to the district um about ways that the community can help the district return to full accredititation status. So, um the district members have a program for you this evening. Um there will be an opportunity after
002the program we'll break into small groups and discuss some key questions that get at the purpose of this hearing which is how to help Normandy Schools collaborative return to fully accredited status. Um at the end of that discussion period each of the groups there'll be an opportunity to report out. Um, and then at the end I will adjourn the meeting, the hearing at 700 p.m. Um, I do want to let folks know that this meeting is being livereamed and uh, a recording will be available. So there is an opportunity for others who are not able to be here in the room um, to participate in this discussion. So before uh we move the agenda along, I would like to recognize a couple of my Desi colleagues who are with me here this evening. Um Lisa
003Hazel is area supervisor in the St. Louis region and Chenica Williams is uh charter director at the department. Um and [music] uh I don't think that I have missed any. We may have another colleague or two that will join us as the evening moves along. Um, now I would like to introduce our deputy commissioner, Kyle Cruz. Um, Dr. Cruz has the experience of being in a superintendent in Missouri school districts and he has been with the department for a relatively short period of time. But during that time he has gained a reput reputation um for steadfastness and [music] that calm reserve being able to work through complicated information and sometimes um maybe not such pleasant information when we think about budgets and budget cuts be able to communicate that clearly and uh gain confidence and
004trust of stakeholders. So, uh, [music] let me turn the microphone over to Dr. Cruz and he's going to provide a few welcoming remarks [applause] >> and I'm supposed to check that up. >> Thank you. Dr. Serena was very kind. I appreciate her remarks very much. She's correct. I was a school superintendent in Missouri. I actually served 32 years in public education and 20 years of those as superintendent. So I have been around the block a time or two. I was actually in the capital at about the time the current school funding formula was written and I revisited on many occasions and I actually have done uh school finance sessions for MASA and other groups around the state. So, my primary focus tonight though isn't talk about finance. It's talk about schools and kids. And I'll
005keep my remarks brief. But first off, I do want to bring greetings from Commissioner Carla Esinger and the entire staff at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and also our thanks for being here on a cold winter evening to talk about how we can help kids. Um, any day we talk about how to do good things for students, for our children is a good day. And I appreciate very much all of you being here tonight, taking time out of your schedules and making a point of gathering together to talk about the difficult work that sometimes has to happen and to talk about the bright futures that we can give our children at the end of that work. I appreciate very much the chance to meet your superintendent, Dr. Triplet, your board president, Dr. Petty
006and other school board members. They've just been a delight and welcomed us wholeheartedly and I'm grateful. I'm also grateful the fact that I look around the room and I see on the tables some chart paper that talk about community engagement and attendance and academic performance because those are the big things that can move the needle. And I want you to know that communities around the state are having the same discussions about the same topics. We're all in it together and together we can find the good solutions to do best for our children, for our students, and give them the kind of future they deserve. So, thank you again for being here. I'm happy to be as much help as I can. I hope to listen tonight and learn. I certainly don't have the answers to
007all the all the problems and all the situations that we face, but I do want to be part of the solution. So, thank you very much again for the warm welcome and thank you again for being here. [applause] I believe next up is Dr. Petty. >> Thank you, sir. >> Good evening everyone. Thank you for being here tonight. I'd like to begin by first acknowledging Dr. Michael Triplet, our superintendent of schools and his team. We as a board on behalf of the joint executive governing board. We want [music] to thank them for the work that they do each and every day. Again, I'm Dr. Christopher Petty and I am the president of the school board and I'd like to acknowledge my fellow board members who are with us here tonight. I'd like to begin with
008Vice President Teresa Pearson who's with us. Please recognize Vice President Terresa Pearson. I'd also like to recognize uh Director William Humphrey who was also a former and past board president. William Humphrey. [applause] We also have with us tonight Cheryl Milton Roberts who is also a past board president. [applause] We have director Erica Edwards who is a past board vice president with us tonight. Erica Edwards [applause] and unfortunately the board secretary Violet Taylor is unable to be with us tonight. She is home ill and uh the other director Diana Day is unable to be with us tonight. With that being said, we're hoping for tonight that everyone understands words are most effective when they're associated with action. And hopefully tonight's meeting can bring us to those actions that are going to be most effective for our
009efforts in terms of teaching and learning and providing a better educational product for our students. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Chris Tran. I'm communications director for Normandy. I wanted to repeat a little bit of what Lisa said about how this event is going to take place. We're going to do a a brief presentation from the superintendent and members of his cabinet. After the presentation, everyone's going to have an opportunity to participate on the tabletop discussions. You will see at where you're sitting um there are three questions that we want you to think about tonight. How can we best boost academic performance? How do we raise attendance? And how do we engage the community? And when we say we, we're not just talking about the school district. We're talking about everyone in this room.
010We collectively. [music] So, we want to hear from everyone. We want your ideas and we want to take that and improve the district. So we will begin the presentation. So we always begin our presentations with our mission. Normandy schools collaborative prepares global leaders for college career and productive citizenship by empowering a community of confident learners and val valuing the unique contributions of each student. The district currently has five strategic plans and you're going to hear from three about three of the strategic plans tonight and we want to go ahead and begin that. We'll have Dr. Triplet um begin his presentation and you will hear from the superintendent and some of his cabinet members. >> So, good [music] evening. So, let me start off by saying thank you um for attending tonight's hearing. We want to
011start off with some demographics uh district demographics. Let me do this. How about that? So currently we have uh 2583 students of that. Did I do that? of that 2583 uh we have a growing popular ELLL population we had 240 uh we have 409 sped students and we have general students we have 1934 who are our students so of of the 2583 students 69.6% are African-American. That represents 1798. Um 22.2% are unclassified. That's 573. And what that is is that they have not identified who they uh wanted to identify [music] on their enrollment forms. And that is legally that is their right. Our next population is the Hispanic population which represents 130 students. Then our Caucasian uh population would represents 49 then multi-racial 28 Asian four Pacific Islander [music] one. So who are our students?
012Our students are kind of the percentage wise they're kind of close. It was surprising to know that that we have more males in school than females. I was I was glad to hear that our males represent 1,313 and our female students represent 1,2170. So with regards to our culture and climate survey, I wanted to give you a brief briefing of our climate culture and climate survey. In the past, we we typically hover around two or 300 students who take the [music] the surveys. We have around 40 to 70 parents who take the surveys and we do pretty good with staffing who take the surveys [music] this year. Uh we opened the survey window from October [music] 6th through November 6th. We had and I I I hate to say this number because we got some
013alphas in here. We had 1906 uh 1,96 students who took the survey this year as opposed to about 200 last year. We had um in that breakdown early childhood represented 11% 22 students elementary grades 1 through 5 651 student uh the secondary schools our parents the number increase but most likely we're still working on that doesn't Um we had about 205 responses. So overall what staff consistent expectations uh need and deescalation support with parents and safety concerns, communication gaps and a desire for strong academic support. Now what we as soon as we do the climate conversations with buildings of the semester next year And all of these all of our surveys. Heat. So with regards to uh so we had a second and the message is clear. We have to have transformation. So MC8 just
014to give you some goodness the Yeah. Heat. Yeah. Heat. So what is this? This is how this is where the story happens. Heat up here. They take three years of data to make it impossible first three years we got a composite wasn't used to to affect the district's status in 25 they took 3 years data but that that data could be used to those status but not lower your status now I put this here because in 2026 which is next year that will be used to either raise or lower could be used to raise our lawyer status. That's why I put this here because this is important and it drives home the conversation around why our stores need to be transformational next year. So, let's key this column here. Can you guys see this? Okay.
015This is an important area right here. What this does, it tells us the possible points, the points we earned, and then the percentage we earn. And typically, that percentage is where you gain your accredititation status. This year, we scored 51% which is lower than the past 3 to four years. But our composite our composite for the last few years is still at 55%. Although we scored at 51 this year, it's a composite of over 3 years. This is just a breakdown of of this is just a breakdown [clears throat] of how we scored. If a ELA of the possible points we had six was 50%. And it gives you a deep uh NPI score that's a map performance index and it tells you if you're approaching emerging on track target for I didn't give you
016that uh matrix but it it dictates where you fit on that on that spectrum. So this is just a breakdown. Now, these although I'm going a little fast through these, these these uh this school court will be on the website for your viewing and individual schools will have theirs on their website as well. So, there's a there's a performance side and there's a continuous improvement side. And this is this is how you get your score. Now, how do we perform? That's this success uh ready students. It tells you where you performed and then it gives you a total at the bottom. So you divide 46 points earned versus 140 possible points and you get this. This is for performance and then you go down to uh continuous improvement. If you look, we we do pretty
017good with continuous improvement because some of those things we've done the pre-work and some of the things are are given based on pre-work and other uh uh pieces of the formula culture climate surveys uh continuous improvement plan response to standards and other required documentation and then success rate measures. As you can see, we've done pretty well in that area. The area we need to concentrate on. Not saying that we don't need to give this attention, but we have to concentrate really really hard on this performance area. So, before I I give the uh microphone to Dr. McConnell. I do want to say that we have we currently have a um strategic plan and we're currently working on a CES plan, but we needed a quick response to what the APR data was saying to us.
018So, we created an accredititation plan and that accredititation plan um sometime next week will be placed on the district website as well. And in that plan, I just want to tell you we have seven really powerful uh uh high level overviews that I already mentioned that we're focusing on that should gain us, give us the points we need to have a solid above 70 APR score. We're going to focus on strengthening tier one instruction across every classroom. Implement districtwide assessment readiness systems. Build powerful PLC's and data teams uh that drive instruction. Increase proportional attendance to maximize APR points. Elevate column care readiness through full pathway implementation. Protect every APR point through data integrity and accurate reporting. state reporting and we're going to strengthen leadership accountability and monitoring systems. If we put all of those things
019in place, we'll keep a strong handle on what's happening in the classroom, what support teachers need, what support students need, and and and making sure that we're providing those uh support for those needs. That's how we get these points and we have to make sure that we're hitting those those lowhanging fruits. Those are things that are out that we can just get. So, we're missing a lot of low hanging fruit that we have to get. Thank you. with this time out. >> Thank you, Superintendent. Uh, my name is Tiffany McConnell and I'm the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction. And as I listen to the superintendent share our performance data, it is uh it's it really does reinforce just how essential it is that we confront this data with clarity with uh strong very strong
020uh a sense of urgency and with a shared responsibility. So in response, we're committing to an approach that addresses the root causes that are reflected in this data. And each of our improvement efforts are aligned to strategic priority number two, college ready teaching and learning. Here you'll see four key components or approaches that we are committed to to taking. The first is school turnaround plans. We have four schools that have been identified as school turnaround schools. And what that means is that these schools have to have uh developed turnaround plans that have measurable goals and clear action steps that are monitored frequently. They also have a leadership team where they collaborate and they problem solve around these action steps. Accreditation plan. Our superintendent has just shared with you uh this very accelerated plan where we
021have to act with precision. We have about 17 weeks to implement this plan with fidelity to ensure that we have the outcomes that we want to reach and we meet our targeted goals. NPI targets per school. Each school has target NPIs where they are developing a plan where they actually identify students numbers of school students based on a formula that they would need to move from each proficiency level. That NPI target also will be monitoring very closely in some cases weekly to see if we're actually moving students at the rate that we need to move them so that we can reach our goals by the end of this school year. College and ready career readiness plans. We have expanded our pathways. We now have pathways at our elementary schools and again uh with our PLTW.
022We have very strong advising at our high school and our middle schools. And we've also expanded our AP courses, accountability, monitoring, and professional growth. Each of our schools participate in what's called professional learning communities where they collaborate. There has Good evening everyone. We're going to come back and reassemble. We're going to come back and reassemble and have our groups to present out. So, if you all could come, if you could bring your conversations to a close. Thank you. >> Thank you for bringing your conversations to a close. Thank you for bringing your conversation to a close. We're almost there. Just a few more. >> Thank you for sharing. And we're going to now have our groups to share out. Thank you. >> Actually, we're gonna start. So, we're going to begin uh with community engagement.
023>> And again, this is uh items that were discussed at the tabletop about how we can all work together to engage the community. Do we have a All right. So, I try to encompass what every table that um talked about how can we engage the community and I changed it a little bit to how can we engage the community and and increase the parents experience. So, what our groups pretty much talked about and our overall themes were more culturally relevant events, um, parent requested events, having midday, evening, and virtual options when it comes to having district events because I'mma use like our parent committee for um, for example. So usually um when the superintendent have his um parent committee meetings those um are held during the day but possibly not not only having them during
024the day but having like a virtual option and the evening option as well um so more parents can attend because a lot of our school community parents work while their kids are at school. So just having more options for them. um having district staff visibility at community events because in the Normandy area we do have a lot of events going on and like our students and families love to see us at those events. So just you know like making sure we have more district representation at those events. Um creating more welcoming and informed spaces for parents um in all of our schools. um having a parent university. And what this could look like um is basically like on a monthly bas basis just like having sessions for parents to attend so they can learn a
025lot of these little buzzwords that they hear all the time especially like when it comes to like powers school learning what powers school is how to navigate that attendance. How can you as a parent help us you know increase the attendance the sped process that's a big one you know just understanding what what is our spare process? What's the care team process? What does that look like? Um and last but not least, um wraparound partners and tutoring programs. We do have some strong wraparound services, but we can even um increase that a notch because I just learned from one of our groupmates who was a repres um representative from AMSU that, you know, like they do have funds available for like afterchool tutoring um and things of that nature. So, just strengthening like our partnerships
026that we have within the community. Um, I'm not at the moment, but she, you know, she gave us information about it and so No, you're fine. So, that's I already made that note like, you know, we're definitely looking looking into that because I'm all about free. So, I love begging for money. So, I'm definitely going to be reaching [laughter] out to her. nursing and uh I would say that it's a a possibility. So I would not uh I didn't mean that we already have an existing like after school tutoring program but I think it's like a possibility maybe like contact organizations such as or other institution and see if there are like opportunities for collaboration because we do have like a uh education department there pretty strong and uh engaging with the community is one
027of um what we um like our mission, right? So, uh yeah, I think it's a great opportunity to uh partner with uh other institutions. >> Thank you very much. And our last one, I'm not reading that. It said food having food at every event. So, next we're going to hear about how we can all work together to improve attendance. Do we have a uh Okay, we have like too much stuff on here. Um I think the key thing that we have on here is Oh, I think the key thing that we have on here is that the kids help to drive attendance. And I think we're looking at it in the other way. It shouldn't be a um disciplinary thing. It should be the kids want to come to school because it's so much fun
028and they're learning so much stuff and there's so much to engage them versus a punitive situation where they're coming because they have to. Learning oftentimes for kids is a byproduct of the other things that they do. Um so it's about how do you make the school a destination? How do you excite the kids? Um how do you um demonstrate how do you allow the kids to demonstrate success in something every single day because they're interested in music or sports or whatever it may be. um making sure that you engage the kids then has an after effect that's really very positive and that it engages the parents because the kids then say mom I need to go to school mom I need you to come to this event you know whatever the case may be um
029so you know that's very important I heard um Dr. campaign mentioned something about education and the best educator of the parents are the kids and so that's one of the things we have there. The other thing is the understanding of through lines when we're talking about before care afterare summer opportunities those are not just opportunities for babysitting those are opportunities to extend your learning hours because you connect all those pieces together. So you have your morning snack, you do some reading, you go to class, you do another snack, you do your homework, you do some more, you know, and so all of those are opportunities for us to connect that through line. The same thing with um summer experiences, you know, how do you engage um I know Dr. Spray is into, you know, um
030science. How do you engage using gardening and things of that nature? Um but then it's tying to science and it's tying to literacy and so forth. Um one of the things we talked about was psychological as well as physical safety. We keep seeing safety come up and one of our team members here said that some of that safety is actually psychological, not just physical because they're walking into the building and often times they're walking into a building that is, you know, like I will say it's kind of like going through the middle passage. Okay, there's like these metal detectors, it's a narrow hall, there's people with guns and badges and uniforms and there are things that we can do to make that less ominous um and to make it more, you know, more safe. and
031then when they get past that to make it more welcoming so that the kids know that we want them to be here. Okay. So, it's about relationships, not just the physical are the doors locked and things of that nature. Um, one of the other things we talked about was that there needs to be some consistency as it relates to um conversations around what's happening with kids, i.e. suspensions and things of that nature. Um so that that follow-up process so when that kid comes back there's a you know there's a thing that happens when they come back there's a re-entry there's an exit there's you know all those kinds of things. Um something else that we talked about was um okay yeah communication um and how how each family is doing as it relates to their
032kids and the importance of using powers school to do that. And we don't have a lot of our families right now on power school. So we've got to figure out how to do that. that could be through, you know, a contest or whatever it is. But if that's our tool to communicate, then we need to make that our tool to communicate and really force the issue so that we can make sure that they have as much information as possible um around powers school. The other thing about powers school, however, is we need to have more than one expert on powers school. Okay? So, if we whatever the system is that we put in, yes, you have to have somebody that's the system leader, but there should be a subject matter expert at every single location
033and a backup. You have to have redundancy. So if there's a problem, then somebody can help with that problem. And that's not just that they kind of got the handout, but rather that they went to the training and they genuinely understand that process so they can help parents because parents should be coming to us via that front door, which is a welcoming center, okay? And they should be able to access power school or whatever it is there if they don't have it at home. We talked about the fact that coding was very important. Um we talked about some of the challenges because we have students that are transient and how proportional um attendance impacts us negatively in that way. And so one of the notes that we put down is that that may be something
034that we could look at to see if there's some support that we can lend um to help make that happen. Um and you know and the whole process of transferring students and tracking students and so forth. How do we support that a little bit better? Um, and then another thing that we had on here is that parents are concerned oftentimes about afterchool safety. We hear all the time, the parents didn't sign up for tutoring. The parents didn't sign up for the afterchool program, but nobody ever puts the dots together and says it's because the kid doesn't have a way home. We've got kids walking home on St. Charles Rock Road. I work for MDOT. That is a highway. Okay? I would not have my child walking on St. Charles Rock Road. So, you have to
035have if you're going to have these activities that the kids are going to go to after school or before school, you also have to have the support to help with that. Okay. Did I miss anything? >> Okay. Thank you. >> I don't know who's next. >> Thank you. [clears throat] Next, we're going to hear uh how we can boost academic performance. Here you go. How's everybody doing today? This evening. This evening. Big >> day. Okay. How can we boost uh academic performance? Um one was create academic plans for students, involve stakeholders, and work on skills. Um radically change how students progress from one grade to the next. Uh build teacher capacity to enrich and intervene. Uh there's also college and career readiness in middle school and what's this called? The uh AVID program. I'm not
036familiar with it at the I guess introducing it to the middle school. Um over here we have summer engagement with students and parents. Uh so parents know what's going on in the in the district. summer reading programs, yearround programs, program like the library with incentives may work with the library system. Uh this attendance is key. So I guess it piggybacks on attendance. Uh contests and incentives for students and parents. Uh come to school 100% of the time and get an incentive. uh uh a pep rally before school, maybe within the community, after school enrichment for students. Uh yeah, uh club, sports, stems, STEM, and things of that nature. And on this one, all students come to school every day on time, ready to learn. Continue to focus on priority standards. Incentives for stu for teachers.
037Incentives for teachers. Uh even evenly distribute performance level scores for MAP and ELC. Uh parent accountability. Focus on delivering solid tier one core instruction. Uh, old school blue books. I'm not I don't know what that is. And internet, not internet. Yes, that's it. Followup. Um, in addition, one of the things that Dr. Triplet has us doing along with Dr. McConnell in our curriculum and instruction department is we're actually drilling down to the data pieces. We're actually looking at the students. We're assessing where their levels are and we're tailoring the professional development to teach the teachers how to teach those students where they are. We're more determined and we're more laser focused now. And that's one of the things that he and Dr. McConnell have impressed upon us from day one. And that's what we're actually
038doing. We're actually assessing more. We're seeing where the kids are. We're drilling down to what skills are necessary and what training they need. we're giving that specific training to the teachers so that they can deliver more effective uh instruction. So we're expecting that we will see some gains and some turnarounds because we have shifted our focus and we are drilling down more deeper and we're less at the service and more looking at the specific kid how we can help that kid grow how we can give the teachers what they need. So we wanted to let make make sure that everyone knew that there is a concerted effort to really drill down the data to lift up the children and give the teachers and the students what they need and we expect that we're going to
039see some gains. >> Thank you. Thank you. At this time we're going to close out the participation uh activity, but do know that this the notes we capture all of the notes and we'll make sure they're posted on the website for your viewing. Uh that said, I want to turn the microphone over to Lisa Serino so that she can close us out. >> Thank you. Um on behalf of the department, I really want to thank everyone for coming out this evening. Um yes, it is a cold and now dark winter evening, but the level of engagement inside this room and the conversations and the participation um has been very intense and very encouraging. Um, I think there's lots of rich information that the district can use toward the ultimate goal, which is um, regaining accreditation
040and supporting all of the students in the district. I want to thank the uh, Normandy School Board members who were able to be here this evening, um, current and past. Um, thank you to Dr. Petty and Dr. Triplet and Normandy High School for hosting this event. Um and the hearing is adjourned. Thank you.