BOE Meeting: January 10, 2022

001what's everybody doing to order christmas break trying to get extended and come and comcast and get that thing synced that's where i can get anything else okay i don't know mr president i know that the board approved the january 10th 2022 agenda second once you've made the second it mr president i'm not in sorry no rachel yes i don't know what's going on thank you oh all right so i guess we'll start our discussion of uh some smart quite a few people here to talk to you tonight and appreciate you taking this additional night out of the month to talk about trauma smart we have a few goals for tonight actually really two solid goals one is we'd like you to learn more about trauma smart and the impact that it's had on our elementary

002schools so far the strengths of the program the reason that we decided to to go with this program at the elementary level the second part of that is to talk about what our future is so we've talked a lot about other programs we need to bring into and to be part of who we are talk a lot about restorative practices and we had that discussion about you know the need to try to find one major process or program that we would connect ourselves to so that we don't overwhelm our staff with too many programs and processes in place and so part we want to talk about at the end a little bit is thinking about what we want to do to the future and how we want to involve trauma smart with our our overall

003program as we move forward so would that want to be would that be something that we would want to do with just elementary with k through how would that look like in connection with other programs that we've discussed so while we aren't anticipating any kind of a firm answer today we do want to work towards that kind of discussion and looking at what we might do in our overall program so i appreciate your time tonight i'm not the one that's going to be speaking a lot we have several that are going to but i'm going to invite dr moore up he wanted to have a couple words as well stay right here you can see me okay i'm not gonna be alone at all uh tonight i just want to introduce matt jones principal westbrook

004will be talking as well as melissa gabbard principal of spring valley and michelle jordan counselor at spring valley their schools went through the trauma smart training completed last year and they're going to talk a little later on uh before the next person i didn't want to just one thing it's important to me and to our all right i think our elementary schools and so forth with the trauma smart is we recognize that children we can't prevent children from having a trauma traumatic experience many of our kids are experiencing this but what we can do is through this training help them to cope and recover and we believe that will not only help them socially emotionally but they'll lead to better economic i mean educational outcomes so with that again thank you for the opportunity for

005us to talk about trauma smart today good evening i'm robert cordell director of student services i'd like to introduce our first guest speaker for this evening leanne kirk dankert is from trauma smart training of children's clinton hospital the st luke's health system as a director she oversees the training of various levels of schools and staff for the purposes of training with larger organizations leanne hello board thank you so much for allowing me to come and speak with you all today my name is my last name's actually keck um i come from children's uh christian children's center and i'm the director of trauma smart we are part of the sequence health system which you all might be familiar with we at crittenton children's center have been serving the kansas city metro area with supporting children and

006adolescents and their families with mental health for 120 years now and part of that process has always been working with our community and really making sure that we are connecting education and mental health together and we have been providing mental health services in our school area for probably over 40 years through that community service we've developed trauma smart so myself having my start in the mental health field and being an individual school counselor at a preschool program and then also doing private practice therapy with children and families who have experienced trauma that is my background working in hospice and with our veterans and our military families in addition to the school setting so i just wanted to share a little bit about my background before i meet with you guys today and i'm open to

007any questions or concerns you all might have as i walk through this because i really want to make sure that you all feel informed by the time we're done and if you see any barriers that you're worried about please feel free to ask so the trauma smart program has been operating now in the kansas city area since 2008 we got our start in the head starts and over the years have transitioned from urban areas rural settings suburban areas and have gone now in 12 states nationwide with this we have learned a lot from our school settings and working in different school districts learned that our program has to evolve and change social emotional curriculum being the foundation of that and ensuring that trauma smart is not there to replace your social emotional curriculum it's there

008to actually support it and be a strong foundation so that you're able to best support the children that you're working with so i want to make sure that that's really clear that we're not competing against social emotional curriculum sometimes that can be confusing to schools as i said credential children's center works with a lot of our community settings and we're one of those organizations in addition to foster care so we know that in our area there are a lot of children from our foster care program at clinton children's center that go to school here at raytown there are many other experiences of trauma that our children are experiencing day-to-day and that is a foundation that definitely impacts their education which is why as you'll hear in a little while some of the successes that um

009just operating in a manner in which our children have experienced trauma so if the adults that we're working with and those caregivers support of developing resilience are going to be a key portion of this okay so some of the goals within trauma smart reducing the negative impact of trauma and building resilience so as i mentioned that focus on trauma is going to be key in developing that resilience resiliency that's the foundation when we're working with education in addition to making practical strategies we don't want to just come up with these elaborate plans that are not feasible to apply within the classroom setting or at home so it's really important that we do a whole community environment and allow everyone that plays a part in this to be developing these strategies to work with our kids

010that involves the whole system approach with that i want to share a little bit about our timeline we want to make sure that there's a lot of time that goes into this free planning conversations and that is uh something that we started working on multiple years ago so those that have already implemented trauma smart know that we started discussions probably over three years ago um beginning that planning talking about all the logistics that go into training all the supports to make sure that you've got support not from just the top up but from the bottom up too so we want to make sure that we're meeting from both ends and that staff are being engaged and they're excited about the information they're going to receive and that staff buy-in really shows at raintown so as

011we talk about some of the successes that we're seeing in the schools really a lot of that has come from the key leadership support and how it was introduced to staff involving them in the process letting them ask questions and challenge at time and say hey you know this just isn't working we're experiencing a lot of trauma it's interrupting our education day in and day out in the classroom setting so we want to make sure that we're meeting their unique needs the implementation stage is that second stage where we're really there providing the staff training and i'm going to dive into that in a few minutes a little bit more detail but that is where little blue elementary and robinson elementary are in that implementation stage this year so they're about halfway through their training

012they've been receiving consultation services and they are midway through sustaining phase is the end so we want to begin with the end in mind we want to make sure that over time you're not having to find funding year in and year out to contract with trauma smart we want to make sure that whatever information we're giving you you can carry on every year and support new staff when turnover happens hopefully not as often we want to support that retention but at times there are going to be new staff that come in or needs in change so the trauma smart approach the key is is that you have somebody guiding you through this journey a lot of times individuals will start and big school systems will want to start a trauma-informed journey but they get overloaded

013with all the information so it's nice to have somebody that has worked with many different school districts and also gets to know you all so what we don't do is we don't come in and say this is what's going to do you know what you all need to do this is what you need to change we want to hear about raytown school district we want to hear about each of the individual buildings what their students and their families and their staff are experiencing so it's really important that you bring that community aspect into it and get to know each other it's a partnership so the consultant's there to guide them on this journey not instruct them on what they have to do to become trauma informed with that that sustaining aspect that's really going to

014be key is that you develop a trauma-informed care team at each building level and the district that's something that's really unique to raytown school district is that there is a very clear district message that supports this trauma-informed initiative which is why we've heard from many schools that they want this information too they're like man we've been hearing about the great successes at western europe and spring valley we want in on this so it's really important that that building level has key buy-in that can run and develop what are those goals that we're hearing from our staff what are they needing what do we want to focus on to have support now the staff training components a little unique to trauma smart is that we invite everyone from in the building to come to training so

015this is not just teachers and parents and administrators this is front office staff this is custodians this is the cafeteria and the uh support services in every aspect okay so anyone that can come into contact with children we wanted this training because it's not just about understanding what the trauma lends about what has impacted our children and families it's what impacts us day to day so we can apply this information personally not just professionally so we can better be a capable and aware of what things trigger us as adults and then how it comes out in the classroom or how it comes up in our interactions with each other and with the kids so with teachers having so much burnout and stress in our world right now even more so they've always had this but

016it's really been heightened the last few years this is going to help them recognize and own that and we've you'll hear a little bit more but in some of the handouts you hear about the successes and how this information has helped them even personally and feeling ready and capable to take on the day when they come into the building the next piece these two next ones actually kind of go together and with this these are the these are the sustaining aspects we want to make sure that there are key individuals within every building that are able to support their peers in applying the information that they're hearing and training so we don't want you just to go to training and spend a day or two days of pd in there taking great notes and thinking

017about all these things you want to go back and apply it's what we found over time is if you have a coach on site that supports you and applying this information and helps keep it top of mind and in front of you you're going to have better rates of applying smart connections that is our caregiver education or what some like to see our parent education but we know that there are there are many caregivers that support our kids in our lives we want to invite everyone we want to make sure that they also have the same information that our staff are having at the schools because at some point these kids are going to go home and then they're going to go on to the next grade and they're going to move on in their

018lives or they may relocate we want to make the largest impact we can on that child's life and that is really key to make sure that they're hearing that common language at school and at home we also want to make sure that our consultant is connecting our families and our school counselors with therapeutic resources that are trauma-informed and so this may be hey let's talk through how is our referral process working how are we identifying children and families that we are providing resources for mental health services outside of the school environment and how is that working do we need to invite others to come to our training do we want to do some of our smart connections with and invite their therapist at times so this is really that whole collective community aspect in trauma

019form and then i'm going to speak a little bit more about the sustaining power and what those components include okay so with your consultation component each of our schools receive consultation somebody that's directly identified and assigned to their building that's going to work with them they're going to be the one that is most often providing the training and the support services meeting with them a few times a month checking in with their trauma informed care team and seeing how they're doing so that they can walk them through their journey and some of the ways that they can do this is by be talking about each of those components that i just went over in the model and making sure that each of them are working they're not running up in any barriers make sure that

020it's working smoothly within their school it might be talking about meeting with your counselors and saying can i you know shatter you and walk you through the day and start recognizing natural opportunities to apply that information that we're talking about in training it's also going to be talking about there we go policies and procedures reviews the trauma informed journey is not a quick one this is a long-term journey we often times talk about how it does not end at one point that being said it doesn't mean that contracting with trauma smart means that it's forever what it means is we get you started we build sustaining power so that you have a strong trauma lens and you're able to analyze hey is the way that our school is operating the way that our classrooms are

021operating the way that we're working and supporting one another and working with the kids are we using our trauma lens we're going to be sharing some successes but that is a big part of consultation is recognizing the progress along the way sometimes we get so focused on the end in sight and we say oh my gosh we're so excited about becoming trauma informed and we think we're going to absolve trauma by the end of it like we heard earlier it's not going to stop trauma we're building resilience and that's not just for the kids it's difficult our teachers are experiencing secondary trauma every day teachers are not just teachers nowadays they take on so much and the support services that they have within that building are so key in keeping them coming in every day

022that we have to recognize we have to take that time to step back and say hey where are those successes and sometimes we lose sight in that and that's just part of this the stress and the secondary trauma that happens every day and then there are always times that cert that things pop up in the middle of the day that require a little bit of analysis and processing and it's nice to be able to have somebody else to to bounce those ideas off of and make sure that you're on track and so that's another aspect that's a it's a safe relationship that's there that they know whatever they talk about to stay in that environment it's not going outside of the of that room so as i talked about our staff training you're involving everyone

023so some individuals might say well why would i come to this staff training i'm not a teacher right so the difference is is like i mentioned earlier you're applying this as an individual so there are many people that i have heard i'll tell you one quick story when i was working with one of our local schools i we did an initial presentation something similar to this to individuals that were in leadership positions and um we were just getting ready to start with them and so i had somebody come up and he was the lead uh custodian he said well this was so great you know it was really nice to meet you i probably won't see you again but i'm excited for everyone to get started i said well what do you mean you're going

024too what are you talking about you're going to be there he said wait why would i go i'm not a teacher so i talked to him a little bit more he said okay i'll give it a shot so just go and see what happens so he i saw him after he had been through i don't know if he had made it through all of him but he'd been through quite a few he kept coming and he told me i'm so glad that you told me that if i would have ran into you afterwards i wouldn't have shown up and i would have missed an opportunity because i was at one of our main buildings and happened to be going down the hallway and i saw one of the kids walking out looked fine it didn't

025look like anything was going on but i just said hi to him and say hey how's your day and he started talking to me and it wasn't anything you know he didn't open up to me and tell me you know his life story but instead he just said you know thanks for asking and so we got to talk and started telling me about football that he was playing he started telling me about a math test that he had and they just got into a conversation and i left that day feeling like i made a huge difference in that child's life that he needed that connection in that moment and i needed that connection in that moment he goes man i left that day and i was feeling like really invigorated about my job that my

026job had even more meaning that i was even aware of so it's things like that that make the difference it's that connection that foundation of relationships that are key and our trainings are really interactive we want to make sure unlike today where i'm just talking to you it's very interactive and activity-based discussions sharing and applying directly to your to your buildings and in those environments with that being said everyone is going to want to know what kind of model are using what is the evidence-based practice in this so we use the arc model and this is uh we build on this model that's called attachment self-regulation and competency by margaret blasting and christine kinderberg and we partnered with them for many years to help build what was meant to be a therapeutic group setting for

027youth in a mental health environment to a school setting and so we partnered together to make sure that this approach would work and as you'll notice here it's built as a pyramid the foundation is the attachment if strong attachment is not there this whole thing will crumble right so it's really important that a strong foundation is built with the caregivers so with each other within our school environments and also with the children and then from that once that strong safety and that foundation is built you're able to help them support and identify their own feelings work through problems with that foundation and structure of trauma-informed attachment you're going to help them be able to process information so i've heard lots of reference for restorative justice this is going to support that this is an opportunity

028that you help we have things called classroom lessons where we educate the kids about their brain structure and about where they're at in their brain and how they can identify when they're ready to learn and process information and then be aware of their feelings so that they can acknowledge where they were coming from when they maybe acted out in a way that has gotten them into some trouble now and how important it is to repair those relationships so that you can move on and become you know successful in your school environment and outside of school and from there once that ability to be aware of your your feelings and be able to express them in appropriate ways and calm yourself when you're feeling either really excited or really nervous and really upset then that's when

029executive function your ability to learn in the classroom comes so they build on one another that's really key guys so sustaining support we had talked about a trauma informed care team in each building and with that trauma informed care team you're going to have individuals that are specially trained outside of just the regular staff training to become qualified to train new hire staff so when new staff come in you can train them they're also going to be qualified to help coach do peer coaching and train and offer support for caregivers so that's going to be really key to continuing so with that attendance in the academies is key you're also going to be able to continue with providing consultation so they can support them as they go along their journey and identify action steps along

030the way that might shift over time and they're also going to make sure that it's a focus on your education so i'm going to share a couple of successes not to take away i know you ladies might have some more to share but these are just some of the um the references and successes that came out of our schools that we've started with brain as a car is an analogy that we teach staff and the kids to understand the different parts of your brain and how our emotions are linked to them and so many people we've heard many times that that has really been something that they've used within the classroom and also at home it's also increased understanding and empathy for others and i also wanted to share one more quick thing so this

031is the what we call program feedback we collect something that is called the arctic the attitudes related to trauma-informed care and that is a qualified assessment that allows us to really do a pre and post analysis of how people are using their tremolines before they receive training and services and then after and then we collect that after year after year this is more of a documentation and a collection where we ask staff to be to to share a little bit more of their practical application so we talked a lot about practical application and that being one of the goals of trauma smart and with that when we uh asked spring valley and westbridge what you know what did you learn or how is trauma supporting you so along the process these are the things that

032they should said were really key so 81 of the um the attendees at their presentations so that they're better able to remain calm and supportive when children are distressed so it means now they're more aware of how they respond in their own body and they're able to manage their own affect or their feelings or moods to better support the kids when they are having big feelings the other one um 79 which i feel like goes along with that definitely too is managing their own affect so when they're having a tough day they're better able to manage so they're not taking it out on the kids it's not stopping their learning it's not a barrier for them in the classroom and then i would say another key one after one year having big behaviors in children

033have decreased 23 of the time so i wanted to share a little bit with you all from that i appreciate all of your time and i will give you questions whatever you guys have thank you very much should we wait um if you want to ask questions along the way it's great i will tell you that we will probably answer a lot of them as we go through the presentation but please stop us if you'd like to as well either way okay amanda keane is going to come up next she's our behavior specialist and she's gonna give us a little bit of a bridge here it's not just it's not you it is the clicker that's helpful so um i'm just gonna really quickly it's not gonna take very long at all um you guys

034are probably aware that we already utilized pdis and we already utilized this within our especially our elementary schools but with all of our schools um so i'm actually a bcba i'm trained in behavior and i have spent the last several years working on that specialization that i have in behavior and how to increase or decrease it with trauma and how that impacts it i've done a lot of my own research i've done a lot i'm actually one of the trained people that liam was speaking about that can train new staff that can coach that can train and that can also meet with like families and caregivers so um but i have spent if the clicker works um i spent time with pbis so the tiered supports of the three support so the bottom we have

035our universal supports that's our tier one that's what gets everybody gets and then back tier two that small group of students who need they just need a little bit more and tier three our highest level of needs and this can be academically this can be behaviorally this can be with our social emotional curriculum as well so we have those tears for everything um and then we look at fists that we have so our goals for life i can be okay even if others are not um i can do hard things or i can do it even if i don't want to or it's hard and i can follow directions even if i don't want to that's the other one they just they get a little bit mixed up so they take that partnered with grace

036and accountability so i understand that things are going to happen i'm going to help you through that and i'm going to hold you accountable for that part because of that relationship that's built so and providing the students what they need so these are just quick overviews of things that are already within pdis and bist that pair really well and we've been using those to change our we've been using trauma smart to change your view with some of that so using that trauma lens that leanne mentioned and having that trauma lens become our foundation so in trauma smart they teach that we're changing our thinking from what's wrong with them to what happened to them and so using that as our basis for our tier one supports using that as our basis for our tier two

037and our tier three behavior plans what might happen to them at home what might happen to them outside of school that we can't control but we can put supports in place to help students be more successful on day-to-day basis so we pair it all together really quickly so we use trauma smart as our base and so we use this trauma lens to impact the effectiveness of what we already have because nothing within this harms kids who don't come from trauma but it benefits those who do and it also helps staff a lot has the potential to so this becomes our foundation and within our relationships get better and our ability to identify those missing skills is broken down we utilize that brain as a car because it tells you if you're in this place of

038your brain of your car then this is what you need so if i'm in my back seat i need a connection and so we take that to identify those missing skills and then i was talking to somebody and i don't remember who um but our tier two and our tier three plans specifically within west ridge and spring valley are so much more thoughtful there's more proactiveness there's more thought put behind everything and we're gonna do this because this is what we need and our tier one supports are better so when we have better tier one supports we have less kids that need tier 2 and tier 3 supports and those that do really really get what they need because we're using this trauma lens to increase how our plans are written so um i just

039kind of wanted to share that this does already work with practices that we're already using and that we use really well as a district i think because they've been around for quite some time with us but that is all for me we're going to have our buildings come up and talk about how trauma smart is is impacting their own building and so from spring valley mr gabbard michelle jordan um our counselors in the district and matt jones from westridge and we're going to start off with westbridge all right good evening so um i wanted to start off with the arc model and as mentioned before that it's the foundation of everything that kind of the root of trauma smart anus kind of already mentioned as well though that although this is rooted in the practices

040of trauma that the strategies that we implement are the best strategies to use regardless if trauma's involved in the behavior or not this isn't specific only for trauma but really the practices and more so how we react in those situations to hopefully more proactively reduce where students increase behaviors versus and then bring those babies down as opposed to continue to act out or when those big behaviors that occur where other consequences have to come in place and at westchurch last year and this year we focused on two areas specifically one of them maybe is in that foundational layer of attachment and specifically focused on attunement which we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second and then the second area was put a lot of time and effort into the idea of and

041the model of brain is a car i wanted to start first a little bit and discuss that concept of brain as a car and a quick shout out to oh look out our quick shout out to uh our corporate counselor tanisha love emily rooney our social worker and rachel barzee the admin intern at westridge they're responsible for a lot of these slides especially the branded car slides these are actually taken from the lessons that we did with our students in the classrooms to teach the concept so i just wanted to go kind of outline a little bit for you guys today um that's kind of briefly mentioned by leanne branson car kind of explains just how our brains work um depending on where we're feeling uh what's going on how we're responding to certain situations

042or stimulus we are at different parts in our brain and really um our brains really aren't much different than they were millions of years ago when we came and wandered around and has two jobs one to make sense of the world around us and ensure we survive and that that fight or flight mode if we're worried about our safety and so the idea of bringing the car is to teach this model so not only it does help our students but really helping our staff knowing where certain reactions are coming from why they're happening that way and what's the best way that we can provide that support so at the front seat of our car is that prefrontal cortex that's the part where we have our logic where we make our intentional decisions and just like

043in a car i'm in the front seat i've got the steering wheel i've got the gas i'm dictating where we're going how we're going to get there i'm in full control and that mirrors to where we are when we are in our prefrontal cortex and that front part of our band bring in the decisions that we make sometimes things happen that might increase levels or emotions and we start to have somewhat of an emotional reaction whether that is frustration anger excitement happiness any sort of feelings we have we that's when we can move into the back backseat of our brain that limbic system that's what drives the emotions and feelings that we have and start to affect how we react in those situations it's actually why um you know when you don't necessarily have the

044words for decision but you're like it's this gut feeling that i have that comes from the limbic system because it is associated with their words like the prefrontal cortex is it's associated with that emotional feeling that we have with that and so being able to describe this as being in our back seat is something that our kids can connect to that we can all connect to and understand that oh if i'm not in the driver's seat i'm starting to have these early feelings and what does that mean for me and what do i need to do about it and our goal always is to help not only us be able to identify our kids when they're moving to the back seats but eventually kids being able to defy that for themselves and self-regulate so they

045don't end up in the trunk and then having a big reaction that might create into a bigger problem and of course at the end um we have the trunk where i'm completely in the brain stem that's where we are in that caveman fight or flight i've got to survive the situation i'm in danger and having that big reaction to that and so um in this breakdown obviously it's not as important for our kids to know these three areas and these words and it comes to the actual parts of our brain talking about what it means to be in a front seat what it means to be in our back seat and what it means to be in our trunk i'm scared to press it again so um these are just an example of the lessons

046that we'd have with our students is that with teachers we would talk about what does it look like to be in the front seat what does it look like to be in the back seat what does it look like for you to be in the trunk how do our bodies feel what does your face look like what are you doing with your hands we also talk about what are things that put you in the back seat what are things that put you in the front seat or the trunk um this is an empower we found to be in a powerful part and part of the reason why we focus so heavily on brain as a car because we all have this common language and this common understanding um i could say i'm mad but what

047i what mad means to me is different what means what mad means to you what bad needs to you and bad means to you and also i can be mad and be in my front seat i can be mad and be in my backseat i can be mad at me in my trunk having these specific actual instead of describing potentially the feelings that we have but more so where we are within our body and where we are with our brain has helped us provide this common understanding common language with our students that as we pair that with the tumen and i can see a kid walking down the hallway and they seem to be upset i might be able to stop and go hey are you okay i noticed it looks like you might be

048upset right now your eyebrows are bent over or your hood's up is something wrong and it looks like you might be in your back seat being able to say that having that common language kids can more understand that we're affordable man you look like you're mad i'm not mad okay yeah i guess you're not mad it helps kind of get that commonality and then be able to more consistently defined what that actually means as opposed to just relying solely on what emotion they may or may not be feeling the other powerful note is this as i said is um it helps we have when we have these conversations with our with our students it helps them identify those triggers and what might put them in those areas so the more that they become aware of

049what puts them in that space and why it puts them there then the more consistently and more likely they're going to eventually be able to come to build up that skill set to self-regulate or know hey i better not go and you know oh i know that if i'm every time i try to play kickball and uh matt jones is there he always cheats and it makes me mad and i get upset so i'm not gonna go play kickball today starting to become aware of our triggers what might cause us to feel certain emotions or feelings okay so um just kind of in summation of why we chose brain as a car as i said it provided that common language the is a visual representation it's almost concrete in the fact that um every kid

050knows what a car is every kid knows what the front seat the back seat of the trunk is so we all have this kind of common understanding of where it is within our brain it's easy to replicate and connect to and before this um historically at westridge we've had we've done a five-point scale or zones of regulations where kids are kind of identified where they're at but again that can be somewhat ambiguous to our kids and it could you know where i'm at on green or red or orange might be different for somebody else but again having kind of this more concrete and easier to apply and understand front seat backseat or trunk you could go into westridge right now and ask most students where are you right now and why you were there they

051will be able to tell you whether they're in the front seat backseat they're in the trunk they might not tell you they're drunk in that moment but later on when we go back to it we'll be able to talk about that um and so because it is this less ambiguous thing it's more consistent throughout it does help kids become more um skilled at having that self-regulation being able to monitor myself and know when i need help and accept that help as i move from the back seat to the truck or vice president this is an example of a thing sheet that we use and this is uh just how we paired uh trauma smart with best part of bist uh is having an opportunity to process and talk through when a problem occurs and one

052key element that has been really powerful with trump smart where um all the strengths that this has is that it again the focus on the practices of the adults how are how we respond to behaviors and students and how our own inner feelings might affect that response um has been i think we've seen the biggest impact with that at westridge an example is something as simple in the sting sheet where um when we've had think she's the pastor process through what happened and missed the first question was always what was the problem what could you have done differently but when we talked about this as staff i remember one of the questions i asked was if you saw let's say a teammate or friend and you saw they're very upset what's the first thing you're

053gonna ask them it's are you okay what do you need and that when we focus specifically on the accountability all the important and needed when we do that first without making sure we have that relationship and that connection there that's what creates the power struggles that's what can create the resentment and potentially push buttons to then cause a problem to grow as opposed to what we're really trying to do is intervene help de-escalate and partner together to help fix and so even a small switch like where were you in your car what puts you in the back seat instead it's more what happened to you here why did it put you there okay now that we know that that situation can put you in that state what do you need what does that look like

054and then what do you need in that moment so we can help you so it doesn't create a bigger problem for you or so it keeps you from progressing down where you might have to leave the classroom and how can we help support you in that moment and so it really kind of has helped shifted what our intention of the conversation is and we still get to the accountability piece we still talk about what would be better choices but it allows us to first connect and be in that moment as opposed to just going straight to what did you do wrong here's just an example of what we have for students you know the primary level that may not be able to fully read or write yet icons that we use to help drive those

055conversations so next um is our focus on attunement which uh we felt paul paired very well with brain as a car and essentially the concept of a tumor is being able to accurately read the cues of another person basically being able to see them and empathize where they're at and then from that knowing getting to a point where i can figure out here's what might be going on how can i help you with that and as you can see here there's a little bit better there's a cycle or kind of steps that we go through as we intervene in a situation so the first thing that we do is notice check and really when we talk about notice it's first notice where i'm at am i in my front seat if i'm not at a

056spot i can't match intense behavior with attention or attention motion with the tense of motion all i'm going to do is continue to elevate that so if i'm as the teacher if i'm involved and i'm upset about something and i'm trying to intervene i might need to do some more self-care before i do that does this have to be addressed right at this moment do i need to call for help and tap out so that way that i'm not throwing gasoline on the fire and making the issue grow once i know that i'm in a good spot then i'm looking at what do i notice about the student what are they telling me that they might need or be feeling then the next thing is i'm going to name that like in that example here

057you're scribbling on your paper i might look and then go hey are you okay you look like you might be frustrated i notice you're scribbling on your paper is there something i can do to help and then that validated maybe student goes i don't even know where to start i don't know how to do this man i know when somebody asked me to do something and i don't know where to start i get really frustrated too and that's hard how can i help you would you like me to review the questions or can we do the first part together to make so that you know how to start and where to go next in that moment when we use the tuning it's a powerful for a lot of reason but the two main reason why

058we decided to focus on it first and foremost is it forces us to be self-aware to not contribute and grow to the problem where we get into those power struggles or again where high emotion we tie motion and just kind of can kind of come to a head and make things worse i have to be able to stop if i'm going to notice myself i have to stop and notice the students so it prevents me from reacting to the to whatever's going on and being more of a support and health secondly it's um in the moment um learning it's it's a learning experience right then there's a teachable moment that if a student isn't fully capable yet of identifying what emotion they're feeling or even what that feels like in my mom and i go

059hey you're feeling frustrated because of this and so they can even go oh i know in my old behavior skill days we talked it about um your body's like a car i like like the car too and how your engines all revved up and it feels like it's going like this so we can sometimes help our students connect to that no hey this feeling right here when you start to feel that you know you're heading towards your back seat and potentially some of our students real quickly heading to your trunk if we don't do something now when you start to feel that way and that's okay i know we found when we were having conversations so many of our students feelings and emotions especially anger was something that just happened to you you didn't have

060control over it and oh i just won't get bad anymore and having a lot of time you're gonna get mad again everybody gets mad it's knowing that and how to react to that so attunement allows us as the teachers to stop in the moment go hey here's what you're feeling here's what we can do about it here's how i can help you and so when our students begin to feel that with not just their teacher but every other adult they actually they start to build up this vulnerability and trust that in that moment think about it when we're mad sometimes it just feels good to stay mad i don't want you to help me right now i just want to stay mad so by by having this continuous of entombment our kids we kind of

061want to teach them that emotions aren't things that happen to you the things that are always going to happen and we have control in how we respond to them and then continually supporting through that it also helps us learn our students better so that we can accurately we can be a better caregivers for them when they need us in that time when they start to shift from their front seat to their backseat or trunk so kind of as i said our focus on why we kind of stuck with the attunement these first couple years is again it helps with that care effect management first question is noticing where am i at as the adult am i in my front seat am i in a good place right now so i can respond appropriately or is

062this did the kid push one of my buttons is this one of my triggers and i need to step back and take a second before i interact or react to a situation um limits reacting to that behavior rarely do we immediately react to something and react to the way we have because we're probably in that emotional things we're not in that front seat fully thinking about our actions and we're going to say something or do something or put a consequence in place that we can't follow through or create a power struggle that we didn't really mean caused us to slow down stop think intervening and supporting as i said and then finally the wrap-up teaches students the specifics for self-regulation in that moment teachable moment teaching them here's what you're feeling here's what drove that

063lower to what we can do in that moment to help bring you back to your front seat so that we can make logical responses and then finally this is just a an example of also the marriage of trauma smart and pbis a component of pbis is creating a flowchart of how to respond to negative behavior and what's expected of students and teachers and so um the team and i we got together and basically kind of more front uh made the changes so it matched our process and what we'd expect of students when it comes to trauma smart asking what students look like where it matches and what the caregiver looks like and what they would be doing and then the reactions reflections are questions that teachers can ask of themselves and guiding questions that we

064have when we have a behavior drt meetings or even an individual teacher when we're talking about behavior plans or how what might be going on with the student is looking and self-reflecting on where in in this in this continuum as a student exhibits their behaviors and what are we doing as the caregivers to support them during that time kind of in the middle of the middle box reactions and reflections it says do i need to protect them from a missing skill what does that mean sure so so many times students could tend to struggle get in trouble in situations in which they don't have the skill set to manage yet let's say if i have a really hard time um let's go back to matt jones at kickball he cheats all the time because he

065hates to lose and he doesn't really play well with other super bowl and so um if i know that about him but then i continue just to let him play kickball every day and get to fight an argument every day i'm putting him in a situation and i said that he didn't have the skill set yet i have to protect him from that and teach him that skills before i allowed to do it again the most logical comparison i can make is i wouldn't give a first grader a third grade book and say hey you should be able to read this it's kind of the same exact thing hello i'm glad to be here thank you for allowing us to come my name is michelle jordan and i'm the school counselor at spring valley elementary

066and i'm just going to talk about mindfulness for a moment um so looking at this picture i was told that a picture is worth a thousand words and if you look at this slide here it puts my thank you this puts mindfulness in the mode of exactly what it is so if you look at the picture to the right you see the dog who is just living the simple life and he's just he or she is just taking what life has given him and which is not a lot in his thoughts however the person on the left has a lot going on and when you think about what we're experiencing even now with the changes of cobit and all of the different things in our jobs and in our lives and our personal family lives

067and people that we love our lives at this point in time will put us in our back seat and as matt was talking about when we are in our back seat we're needing safety that is what me that is what is the need when we're i'm sorry when we're in our trunk we're needing safety please forgive me for that and our back seat we're needing connection and then when we are in our front seat we're needing meaning and so what mindfulness does it allows us to pause just because so that we can be able to move from our trunk into our back seat into our front seat it allows our brain to take a rest from what is happening in life so that we can that we can function so it is it's really about

068awareness it's about allowing us to reduce stress it allows us to be more powerful in our productivity and it allows us to increase our self-regulation so that we aren't as anxious as we can be especially when the kids come in at spring valley we have a whole school um mindfulness mode in which we started last year ms gabbard allowed us to start it last year and the start of our day and at the end of our day is when we do it and so what happens is every teacher gets a um login and they click on a link and then there's a mindfulness it's just like five minutes or less for all the kids to take some breathing they do some breathing we're going to practice here so you can get an example of what

069it entails but what that does is allowing our building to calm down and no matter what's on their mind in that 3d slide as you saw there could be a lot going on in their minds but it allows them to get moved from hopefully their back seat into their front seat when the kids come in we have brain as a car and they're able to check in with their teachers and the teachers will then know where they are in their car and what extra tools that they might need along with the five-minute mindfulness that we do at the beginning of the day and the reason we do it at the end of the day of course is because it's transition we would like for all the students to leave without having a lot of stuff

070going on in their minds so these are some of the quotes that some of the people here stated about mindfulness and i'm not going to get lost in reading it but what i will say is that what what it purposely does is it allows people to just stop thinking about all of the to-do lists to stop thinking about all of the issues and it allows them to just be present in the moment and i know that sounds kind of weird especially if you're not practicing it or you're not familiar with it however as time progresses it becomes more natural because in our brain as matt was referring to and all of a sudden referring to with a car when you look at it from a scientific point of view you had and it was already

071mentioned where the neocortex is considered the front part and that's the front seat in which you're doing your thinking your limbic system is where your emotions and the amygdala is connected and your repetition is where your inside organs are working and functioning that's your breathing and so what happens is when you are in your back seat in your trunk and you can flip your lid when your limbic system and reptilian link up together because the amygdala will start producing certain hormones and cortisol different things that will trigger your body and your breathing to increase when you are taking those deep breaths it will calm that amygdala down to where it's not presenting this much cortisol it doesn't pump as much and it slows it down where you can think clear and you're able to connect

072in your front seat and as you know from some of you may be familiar with maslod's hierarchy of knees it's the same thing as it relates to the brain that correlates because if your knees are met at the bottom tier your basic needs then you're able to have those um friendships and have more self-awareness with self with self-esteem and feeling belonging and loving and connecting that would be again um the middle part of your car the back seat of your car actually and then you're able to then have self-fulfillment and help other people so as we move on there it is uh-oh okay mindfulness has a lot of benefits it increases all of the things that you see there it also allows people to be able to connect with themselves and then that will allow

073them to enhance relationships with other people so just for a moment let's just take a moment to breathe so you don't have to close your eyes before you feel comfortable you can close your eyes but i'm going to cue us to breathe in and breathe out and you'll get an example of what our kids experience daily so at this time i'm going to close my eyes if it's okay with you and i would like for you guys to breathe in with me and i'm going to do the counting with us so we're going to breathe in through our nose and then we're going to breathe out through our mouth so here we go we breathe in two three hold and breathe out through your mouth two three four hold let's try that again breathe in

074hold and out hold last time breathe in hold and out now i would like for you just to set this moment to think of a quiet place in your mind think of a place that makes you feel safe in a place that you feel happy with and think of people in your life that you love just think of that person in your mind and i'd like for you to just imagine doing some of the things that you enjoy doing with the people that you love or at that special place that makes you happy and let's breathe in hold and blow out and then as you think about the people i'd like for you to just think of one message that you can say to that person it may be i love you i miss you

075i enjoy being around you just one happy affirmation that you can say to that person breathe in fold and blow out and then come back to the sound of my voice and open your eyes so that's just a simple segment there's more to it when what we do in the building but just for a moment it allows you to just think about the here and now and not even the presentation my special place was dairy queen michelle creates these great videos for our kids every day of the school year so yes they're amazing and i will say that a lot of times mr moore people do think about food and in the video i do talk about food so that is that's part of your happy place is when your tummy is happy and that

076olive garden was amazing so along with mindfulness we also have calming kits and tools for each classroom and i'm going to go in a little bit more detail in the next few slides but these tools are not just to be given to kids for them to just play with what they are actually doing is they are actually being mindful of what they're doing so just like in differentiated education you have to differentiate how you're going to instruct certain kids because of their needs the same thing works with calming tools and mindfulness and grounding senses so in that respect when at spring valley what we do is we teach a process when they receive these tools so before the kids use the tools they actually teachers have to introduce and model how they can use them

077safely so when we think of modeling and practicing we actually do this when they are in their front seat so that they are actually finding meaning when using these tools and then that way when they're having these big emotions and in their backseat they automatically know what tool meets their needs this is common corners can look very different in various classrooms teachers have the option to choose where they would like to have it and what they would like to have in their calling corner but the basis is k-2 they receive a bag of tools along with the process of the breathing strategies and then we also incorporate yoga because when trauma is trauma is more than just in your brain it's also in your body and so when you're doing these breathing strategies and you're

078um using your yoga strategies and posing you're releasing the cortisol and those hormones like i mentioned earlier as they practice these things and so um this is just another example of other tools and you can even see on the right it's a chair it's not necessarily a corner but it's a chair and they have the calming tools on the chair versus having it on the floor so it's just um just a space for kids to be able to take a moment to breathe the other one also on the right you can see a picture above i don't know if you can see it really well but it's a picture of playful picture kids choose the type of pictures that make them happy and they design their space so that when they go there they can

079really become mindful they can do their breathing and they'll be able to calm themselves their own bodies down their own minds down based on what they like and this is also a place where they practice they practice this throughout the day and as needed does each classroom have that yes okay so i am going to um talk about the self-care asset and this um slide was added because somehow we forgot to add this when we originally sent it so my apologies um so self-care is essential um now more than ever it seems like and we know that we must focus on our staff so that our staff can be in a good place to focus on our student needs so um last summer um michelle and tanisha love who was at westridge did and part

080they became part of the curriculum summit where they do pd for teachers and they did a pd or presentation on selfie and they use this acronym grapes and we try to utilize this at spring valley when we are implementing self-care with our staff and with our students so gratitude is being thankful for what you have in your life and so at staff meetings we try to sit with other staff members from different teams so that we can get to know what other people are thinking and doing and i always pose a gratitude question before the staff meeting and they know to get started on it if i'm not there because um sometimes i'm late to do with dismissal and um so some of the questions that i post are like what are you thankful for

081or what has made you happy this week um and then they talk about five minutes amongst their group write down what their um whatever their answer is to the question and then we do a share out and you share out about somebody else granted that you've asked them hey is it okay if i share about you um and so that's one way that we can learn about others and build relationships and show gratitude all in one relaxation and exercising your brain slowing it down in your mind also with your mind also and our tick team is a wonderful group of five that worked very well together and we decided to give self-care breaks to our staff and miss jordan bless our heart is the one that mostly tries to get that done but the rest

082of us help when we can as well and so she has gives teachers the opportunity to take a 15-minute self-care per week and she has set up in her awesome room i wish we had pictures on here of it and when you walk in you feel like you're like at a spa there's like a waterfall thing and the kids love it kids can go in there for breaks as well as her groups that she does but teachers can go in there there's an affirmation wall and we put our own affirmations on there we put affirmations that we've got from other people there's fidget fidgets there's calming music there's tools there's a sand thing that teachers can use and then of course there's snacks because you know food makes people happy and i like to keep

083my people happy um so we do these breaks on a rotation we also have like matt was talking about brain in the car we have brain as a car for each teacher in our teachers lounge over in a corner and um our tick team rotates to check in to see um if they're teachers in their back seat or their trunk and they the staff utilize it and then that way we know to go check in on them hey what can we do for you do you need a break do you need me to do something specifically for you and so that has been really um really good we just implemented that this year actually and then we move on to affirmations true and positive messages you tell yourself that help you feel relaxed so again

084we have those in the counselor's room and we have self-affirmations in our teacher's lounge as well and staff can add their own affirmations as well if they find one that they really like that they want to share with the staff pleasure fun activities that you use that use your senses and so we try to one like i said food keeps people happy or it does spring valley anyway so i offer a snack cart i do that on drt days when i meet with them once a week about data i offer it on wednesday meetings and also during staff meetings sometimes i will change it up if we have a pd day we will do breakfast sometimes if we're staying late for a special meeting we will do like chip salsa and cheese dip we will

085do sonic drinks and in the fall and spring when the weather is a little bit warmer we will do a different ice cream and we do that do those things for kids as well as staff and then we do trauma smart refreshers at one at our monthly meetings and so we try to implement activities that teachers can take back and use in their calming corners or views with their students and they usually involve the senses and teachers love creating them and love that we've taken the time to do that with all of us rather than just giving them paper and telling them hey you can do this on your own time so we're pretty meaningful in it um and then exercise physical activities that get your body um sweating and your heart pumping i don't

086know that we try to do that during the meetings like that instance but um prior to meetings um and through our wellness leader we engage in breathing and or like miss jordan said yoga positions or moves and again we do that sometimes in between presentations and it just kind of refocuses everybody and then teachers also will go back and do those things with their classrooms so what we're doing with the staff they're able to do with their kids as well and then socially spending mindful time with those you trust in person on the phone or online i personally have made it a priority to have one-on-ones with staff so that i can get to know them not necessarily just about what they are like at school but about their personal life what their goals are

087in school what their goals are outside of school as well and then mixing up the staff at meetings this also built opportunity for relationships to be built within our building and i think it you can really tell this year that staff don't just have little clicks among their people that they see every day that you know that second grade team together all the time you see other grade levels coming together and so that's been really nice so to tie all of that together in december i did a snowman hunt where i tried to bring all of our self-care pieces together to make it an opportunity for all of the staff members for ge kitchen staff custodians everybody that works at spring valley they were a part of it so i hid snowmen in the hallways

088they had numbers on them the teachers and all the staff got to come and hunt for them the next that monday and then they had a number on the snowman they then came and got a coupon from me and they came on was something that they um specifically got to redeem those next 12 and a half days counting down to winter break that we were all looking forward to and um so some of the things that i gave were i gave self-care bags to some of the employees i gave a winter snack bag i gave a free lunch from jason's deli to some of the staff i did a self-care break where i went and read to the students where they had a 15-minute break which i love to do so that one was probably

089more fun for me and then um i did sonic drinks quick drip drinks oh and i let a few people pick a day that they could leave early and myself or my admin intern would take over their duty so um just a little thing it was little to me but it was really big to the staff and so those are some things that we do at spring valley to make sure that self-care is happening with students thank you all right so we have time for questions so one of my questions is um you know you talk about um trauma smart doesn't harm the kids who don't come from trauma that helps those who really need it so are you seeing um those kids who don't come from trauma relate better and in more positive ways

090to the other to the kids that do experience it what's that look like i think that honestly trauma happens to everybody in some form or fashion and so what is traumatic for one is again different for another and i do know that it helps all children regardless to what upbringings they've had or where they come because day in and day out kids are going to have some type of interaction that's going to make them feel disregulated in some fashion and that's traumatic for them and so yes i believe that trauma smart connects with all kids no matter and that's how it connects with us and it's connecting them with one another on top of that well with relationships yes yeah i can um i think that's universally that's a a long-term goal where we see

091that but i definitely can think about examples where students are better especially in situations where uh small things fester you know believe it or not two fourth grade girls that uh heard one one girl said something bad about the other we'll hold on to that for a few months and never speak of it and uh so there's been some opportunities where we've been able to sit and talk about that and i feel like the conversations that we've had i don't know um about you guys in spring valley but like where when we have those time to talk through things they might be a little bit more in tune to speak specifically to not just what the other person did but how maybe that made them feel or how that contributed to the problem growing i

092think although i don't have any specific evidence i feel like that's probably a a part of the impact that toronto smart has had and us being able to specifically connect those things i can uh on a programmatic standpoint too and i have heard different stories of successes within different classrooms and within the buildings but one of the biggest things is that trauma smart speaks to a culture shift in an environment in a trauma-informed environment and so with that being said the focus is relationships and building empathy at the same time just developing those those trauma lines and when you're also applying things like brain as a car and attunement you're modeling for the kids how to attune to one another and so then they're beginning to attune to one another in addition um seeing that

093that's okay when teachers provide that kind of an environment that it's safe and it feels safe then they're going to start noticing when their neighbor sitting next to them is having a tough morning and they might even start noticing well when i have a tough day and i come in and i put my that i'm in my back seat now i'm noticing that my neighbor next to me is saying they're in their backseat today sometimes when i'm in my backseat and i need connection it feels really good when someone comes and checks on me i'm going to go do that too so you start seeing that skill development happen at a really young age so how in how effective has this been for students with a particularly high number of aces um i know that

094we don't like officially can collect any information that tells us how many aces a student would have um so i don't know if we have any specific data based on that but a lot of times in my experience the students that would have those higher numbers are the students that a lot i work with a lot because they're the ones that are on that level that tier three behavior or that tier three social emotional and they're still not progressing and those are the kids that i think teachers can get really burned out on really easily because it's the same kid every day all the time and this really brings that level of awareness of oh well they're doing it because this happened and they don't know how to deal with that yet so it kind

095of like because teachers are our goals teach and so well now you told me what i can teach and i can teach this skill that they're missing so i think that that probably that that would be that tie and that benefit that i see thank you i can just uh add on to although i don't have any specifics directly tied to again individual students aces scores as a general over the last was one two three four five six seven over the last eight years created one of those as a year and a half of that is last year in the year before wackiness of covet but on average recovery visits so those are major behaviors that have to leave the classroom typically something substantial happened um our average is around or less one two three

096four five over the last five years the average has been about anywhere around four reacted visits today so four trips to recovery a day for the building um this year we're at uh slightly over averaging one a day so uh and then suspension numbers are also similar to i think that directly has a correlation to that thank you i have a couple questions so first of all a couple general questions and follow-up what other districts are using trauma smart if any i can speak to that um school district center school district shawnee mission school district gordon parks elementary and we have some uh boys and girls club and uh ymca born after school programs that are in a lot of fiscal districts now so how long have we been doing it two years this is

097this is year two and three trails is also in their first year okay so how did we how do we pick spring valley and westbridge to get started and what's our plan to to take this to the rest of the elementary schools or time frame well i met jerry jacobs three years ago and i used to teach jazzercise and she at the time was the i don't know what her position president thank you and she i had done some my master's has in um how brain how trauma affects the brain and her and i were in some discussions about trauma in the brain and she's the one who informed me that clinton didn't have this program and so tanisha was one of the people that i always linked to as far as over the counselors

098and so i told her about this program and jerry met with tanisha and myself along with dr nixon i want to say and she then shared this information to us and so it it was um dr nixon i'm not sure how you guys chose spring valley in westeros but i know this because tunisia and i had i think we already had that connection yes since we had that connection with jerry that's how we were able to get it started and then this year i think they're doing two schools per year is that correct yeah part of the part of the reason for the two schools a year thing is we were we had grant money um that's able to sustain us through that um but moving forward we do see the power of this and

099so sometimes we'll dive into something kind of as a pilot and see how it's working we've seen and you've heard some of the data it's been tremendous we've had great success we think it's worthy of going district-wide for our elementary schools we actually have talked about a plan that dr florville is working on where we would bring on the rest of the six elementaries on into their year one next year so we really believe in this i'm sorry go ahead mrs dayton um thank you so much for the presentation of dr jones miss jordan and principal gabriel i love the passion and love what you've put into the program to develop the program and clearly is off to a great start i think that trauma smart as their foundation has made a huge difference based

100on what you have shared with us today i am also excited that the whole staff the entire staff is involved and that they have an opportunity to participate and become trauma smart themselves miss keck you mentioned um that the part of the whole system was multi-generational right and i don't know specifically what that points to when you talk about multi-generational i can think of the parents and the caregivers but that's parental involvement and part of the trauma connections i don't know what the whole system how it relates to being multi-generational as well so what it's speaking to is that trauma can be passed down through generations we're talking about also grandparents raising kids right so we have a lot of uh different caregiver levels a lot of families are living in one home when i

101was growing up i had my grandparents there i had my parents you know you have to speak to that there's also generational trauma there's uh with that it's how we experienced growing up how impacted the way that we parent um and it's that goes into the foundation of our smart connection for parent education component where we're talking to caregivers and it's in a safe environment that recognizes how we bring our own traumas into how we interact with each other and with the children and it's it's it's not shaming it's just acknowledgement i'm not saying that you you know that anybody's done anything wrong as a parent it's that sometimes there are new ways that we are just learning about and talking about and so to acknowledge that and how we bring our own traumas and

102how that impacts the way that we parent so that is a huge component of the model and so multi-generational goes through our caregiver education component in addition wonderful also in regards to smart connections how are the parents informed of how to support trauma smart in the home we've talked a lot about this um like myself with emily and miss jordan uh the social worker at westridge um and unfortunately with covid we haven't been able to do as much of the smart connection that we wanted um because it's hard to bring in a whole bunch of people so you guys did a virtual one last year didn't you do you guys yeah somebody did a virtual one last year yeah i think we both did too we done we did two sessions virtually with our parents

103and we received great feedback from our families in regards to the virtual smart connection sessions that we've had we are going to do three more additionally this year virtually i'm sure yes we're in the planning process of that so yes and that content can also be delivered one-on-one so sometimes there are families that would prefer to have that one-on-one and not do that in a group setting especially if there are some children that you're working with that are on those you know higher tiers that need that more intensive work and so you want to have more one-on-one engagement with the families you can also use that same information and then work at your own pace instead of as the group's pace something similar we actually had a three-night event close towards the end of the

104year um that was all virtual um on different different undergraduate different topics but it included some of the learnings that we're doing we also uh had parents sign up and so then we sent materials home like one of them we did is we taught them how to make like a weighted rice sock so then when you had and talked about what a common core in an area and uh probably need to revisit myself as a parent sometimes getting into those power troubles with their kids everything goes out the window but um and and so and it was really encouraging because we were worried this close that for us it was that close in year everything already going on virtual uh but the positive feedback that we got from that um and so definitely looking for

105more opportunities that and then also said i know especially with our social worker and with uh where it also plugs in so well right now with um i just left my brain the accounting services with kappa that sometimes that does in conjunction with the counseling that the family or the student is giving from those professionals we're able to kind of triangulate and speak the same language and work together and uh that fits in that same kind of mold up here hey here's what they're hearing here's what the therapist said here's the supports right at school here's how that can be mirrored with you and your family at home thank you so much the number of schools that you listed there that are involved with it are they doing a k through 12 or is this

106just mostly elementary elementary right all right let's talk about the others oh i'm sorry yeah that's a great question um there are there's varying so shawnee mission it's elementary age hickman mills just this year we finished going all the way through high school so they have had pre-k all the way through um with independents we did their early learning sites uh center actually received funding so they're going to be finishing elementary and going through middle school high school coming up this next year are you finding the same success at the high school level that you are at the elementary level and being accepted as as enthusiastic as this is it sounds like well we're in our beginning of our piloting so we've only worked with hickman mills and actually applying and doing the implementing stages

107of the of the high school in the middle school in high school the one thing you know because we're learning every time we want to get feedback what we have learned that it's really key to get that building by end level and that district level support and so if the prioritizing of trauma-informed foundation is key which it from all of my experiences that is really set in tone here that is going to increase the likelihood of success because it's already being a priority and the biggest i think factor in whether or not middle schools and high schools continue and this was an issue with when we started with elementary schools is how much time it takes to train and so the commitment has already been made within the district and there's been some models for

108success and it's difficult training calendars are difficult to take that time it's a it's a huge commitment on time-wise um and so i think that that that time and resources that you all have already committed is going to be a lay that groundwork for success over time we use the time when the new building so like uh robinson and little blue are doing their first year training we use that same time because we know it fits within the elementary pe schedule leave wednesdays and that's when we take all of the new staff from westridge and spring valley and they all come over and do their training as well so that way we're able to sustain that second year and that way no one building is really responsible for making sure they get the whole 10

109modules i have another question that's somewhat related to that since we're only in year two we don't have that much experience yet but so this is great everything is sounding great and going well but we're seeing you know one thing that we're looking at dealing with is is this but our secondary students that are having issues so even though we've been a short time what do you foresee and what specifically what you do with fifth graders to help them retain this and take it with them forward in the sixth grade even if there's not yet an established program there some things that we started last year besides the calming corner information and the um or the common corners is um like matt was saying earlier when kids start you know talking and saying hey i

110have a problem in using their words or like someone that might be quiet you know someone's doing something to them and they kind of are just shy and quiet about it don't say anything and we've done a lot of peer mediation and i think getting a peer mediation going with the secondary would be beneficial in my experience as a former middle school person if we can get those fifth graders kind of trained in that aspect some of you know some of our students i think that moving forward might go well with the trauma smart as they move on my question was sort of maybe something similar but just taking it even more so um looking at that secondary level and just you're talking about having common languages and you're teaching your students ways of being

111able to regulate and you're talking about um you know the brain is a car and all of that um and i know we have interventions at the secondary level but i was just curious if there is any if there was any transition plan uh between the two levels of school um so like what that looks like and i know this is new but you guys thoughts on that with students that are specifically higher needs i do get to work k-12 so a lot of those students i will go to this next level with and be like hey these are the supports that they had in elementary school these are the supports that are written in their plan here are scripts here are all of their visuals here everything that you might need because you don't

112know this information yet but they responded really well and let's work on if we have to adapting it and changing it so that it's the same language but it might look a little bit different so that it's something that they have that understanding with but i worked with a lot of sixth grade this year um working on that because the fifth graders at south middle because the fifth graders that came from here so if i may too the true answer is we don't have anything for right now and we do we do need to think about this as a k-12 issue we believe firmly that what we talked about today with trauma-informed education it needs to be k-12 no matter what we do no matter what decision we make that trauma-informed education needs to be

113in our system k-12 and all the plans that we have brought to you include that as being a component that that that moves throughout our entire system so that could be in one of two forms so it could be that we do trauma smart um all the way through 12th grade we could do trauma smart in conjunction with something else but as you probably got the idea china smart is very involving it's really at least a two year process to get a building spun up to trauma smart so if we choose to do that anything else that we would want to do would need to be delayed or we would need to remove other things in order to to put it into place appropriately so as a for instance we decided that we wanted to

114do restorative practices in the middle schools we would have to either do trauma smart first let it go through the two-year implementation phase and then start restorative practices or we would have to do restorative practices which does have trauma-informed components and just use the trauma-informed component of extraordinary practices instead now the restorative practices component that is trauma informed is not nearly as in-depth as the trauma smart training because restorative practice has a a very large trained component for it by itself so one of the things i told you we talked about towards the end or at the end was really what do we want to do as we move forward what what does the board see as being our best steps as we move move through this uh quite honestly we do believe that the

115program that we have in place with trauma smart bist and pbis is the best process for elementary schools we've seen good success with it we've seen our discipline rates drop we don't have the disproportionality in elementary school we do in secondary buildings we believe that that is a good team of supports that works very well together the problem with trauma smart in itself is it's not complete and so that's why we have the best and the pbs component in addition to the trauma smart component you really do need to have the triad together to get that complete picture we could do that in middle school because we have seen success with piss pissed and pbis in middle schools as well let's not go out again so we could do that combination of those schools as

116well and that would be very beneficial we believe it would be effective or we could go the direction of having um just using the the restored practices in middle schools we would we do believe we go restorative practices that does fulfill the other components we need to remove pbis and bist and just do the restorative practices we do believe that the high school we need to make a rather large change there pbs best are ineffective at the high school we know this and so it is right for a complete overhaul where we might have the restorative practices as the components for high school that doesn't mean that we couldn't start with a trauma smart first at the high school level to get a deep training in this and then back it up with restorative practices

117you just can't do them concurrently or we could just do restorative practices and lean on the the trauma informed portion of that training so that's looking forward you know as the kind of ideas and the process you know the different directions we could go but to your to your question now we we do feel that it's important that we have the entire package and we want to do it k-12 it's that important we'll really pre-k12 we got three trails doing it too right question uh um one of the first ones kind of two-part question it might be some kind of stupid question but i want to know uh what is trauma and are all big behaviors a result of trauma trauma [Laughter] it's any situation and it's different depending upon the person so in any

118situation that will make the brain disregulate kind of trigger an emotion that is big to um impact a person in a way that they're not able to function in a normal capacity um it's it's it is different in the sense of what may be traumatic to me may in the same situation may not be traumatic to miss gabbard so it's an individual experience that dysregulates the brain and that jolts the whole person to where they cannot function productively um what was the second part of your question i'm sorry for all big behaviors trauma i would say behaviorally all good behaviors no um big behaviors are there because of trauma but sometimes they're there because they work because when i go to level 10 they go to level 10 and i get what i want um

119i mean honestly behaviorally sometimes it is that black and white um all big behaviors can cause trauma uh can cause trauma for the adults present it can cause trauma for the other students present and for the student themselves but things like disability or mental health issues or trauma or just the behavior works are reasons that we see big behaviors so there's a lot of different things that can cause that but it seemed like the answer would be yes i mean i don't it seems like everything's dramatic but i mean at some point if it's causing some type of irregularity in the brain or something uh the reason the reason i i just i asked that question because um i guess we wanted to find out more about trauma smart in regards to our discipline practices

120and in regards to our disparity which i don't think we have that issue in elementary um so i'm trying to figure out how this relates to that it's not that we wouldn't need trauma smart it seems like something we this is definitely good and i look at i guess the the success that you're speaking of is the percentages by the time you get to module 10 um which i think they're all that's a great measure of success but i don't know necessarily the reason why we brought up restorative practices i don't know that that's is that being addressed in this that that is one of the reasons why i started off the way i did was saying although this is all rooted within trauma smart and the the practices that are in place are the

121best practices in responding to behavior generally um that how you know even using the tune of seeing baby or naming and being able to stop and preventing myself from reacting is this is it going to solve every big problem in every suspension no and without looking at the doubt in front of me though i would venture to say that every minute a significant amount of our big behavior problems i'll speak in the elementary and even speak to western world started in small problems somewhere along the line that if we had a better job of being able to identify or the student be able to identify themselves might have prevented it from growing to a point where like in the example i gave with two fourth three girls are mad because somebody said they looked ugly

122two weeks ago and now they're looking for little things that grow and grow and grow until eventually it becomes this big fight and suspensions happen that when we can teach these skills and students become more effective it helps prevent that and that's the case across the board all of these trauma smarts restorative practices all the components of relationship to try to understand where students are coming from and then methods of trying to to modify redirect behaviors because i'll take yours a bit further you know you said are all behaviors they start with trauma i will say that you can generalize and say all big behaviors start with something there is some something that has moved them to this point it could be a chemical dysregulation and we need to work with their doctors to get

123medication to help them it may be because like you said it works and so we find other methods of being able to um to change their environment rather than go to this direction but all behaviors have some sort of impetus to them and these trainings help our staff to be able to identify and and modify these kind of uh behaviors that predispose for the big behaviors that we don't want to see so so yeah and actually it's back into pbis talks about that you know finding out what uh what these predisposing behaviors are so we can try to avoid them as we move forward but really it's all about relationships about understanding students about listening to them and seeing who they are so we can make modifications with our own behaviors so that we don't

124escalate behaviors and take something that's small like maybe it's just a conversation between two girls who don't understand each other well to something that's large where there is big behaviors and now we end up having to use the discipline policy okay yeah i i was just going to add you know as i mentioned earlier trauma smoke's not there to replace social emotional curriculum that's really key that's really important the trauma smart is a prevention-based model and the idea is that if we develop our trauma lens and we are more aware as the caregivers then we're going to be able to catch those things early de-escalate them and help model how to do that and even recognize and mobilize the kids when we feel frustrated so if we're able to regulate ourselves as the adults we're

125then modeling for the kids it's okay to get upset we all do and here's a way that you can modify your own affect and be able to regulate yourself when you're upset and move from that back seat to the front seat even though you are upset and so i think that that's the key because a lot of our stories we've been telling kids for so many years is you can't be mad you can't get upset and that's just not realistic because as adults we all get mad and upset and scared and nervous and so it's what you do with that information and i think it humanizes the teacher to each other and to the students and that creates that sense of safety and it takes that step back to say you can be a really

126great teacher and have a great relationship with your students and you can have that personal connection with the kids and actually that is going to help them develop and grow and be more open willing to learn in your classroom and then we are more willing to learn to put that lens on and notice that man i'm going to get curious and ask what's going on with that child when i start seeing these behaviors and instead of just assuming that that kid's being bad in that moment or having an issue what's wrong with them we're going to say man it's the same time every day it's the same you know something what is it that's triggering and then you start getting curious and investigating and start realizing that there's so many other factors that come in

127and then we stop the blaming and the immediate punitive response and reactivity and story take a step back and try to keep them keep them in that classroom instead of sending them out which then separates and teaches the children that it's not safe to express themselves are you seeing the same rate of success for secondary uh we we don't have all the numbers back because they're just finishing up their first full training year what i will see or say is that i have seen referrals go down i have seen behaviors go down um i have seen a lot of reports from teachers just saying hey i'm feeling more connected to my students the biggest thing is that the classrooms that are applying those classroom lessons like we saw mr jones share sharing and teaching actually

128involving the kids and learning about their brain and how it's impacting them providing that to that secondary level of education is huge they're realizing how their brain is focusing and impacts their daily life so i would say that i hopefully have something by the end of this school year to prove that but i think the biggest thing is that the leadership application of this and consistently applying it and really supporting the long-term sustainability we're seeing that shift from pre-k through high school during those transition periods even between the alternative schools and the secondary providers now they're really working on a smooth transition where those kids feel supported moving into an alternative school and moving back so those are things that are not numbers but situations that weren't occurring before that i know is building that

129safety for those kids i don't know if you know but do some of those school districts have restorative practices as well right um not consistently applied in a full model yet but there are some like um that have been in talks of that's the next step now that they have this foundation for trauma and they feel like it will support but they wanted to have a trauma-informed uh foundation first so mr president um i just i like some of the components of the program the only thing that's missing for me is that this is more more of a preventive [Music] the training and everything is to prevent students are to assist students that are having behavior challenges but when that kid does do something i don't see anything in this program that comes back to

130try to assist the kid rather than being punitive but being maybe working it out rather than having a kid to be suspended so that's overall i think it's a good program it sounds good anyway and uh but i would like to see restorative justice and that working together because i think it would bring a wholeness to the student's life it's the before and then it is if something should happen and bobby to that extent that's why i said that there has to be a combination bist is really that component in elementary schools that's where we go through the whole process when a student does do something and we have the the safe seat we have the budget we have the recovery room we have this process to try and work that student back into the

131into the classroom setting it's not completely perfect we do have students that are going to do things outside of that process but it is largely effective and so we that's why i say we feel that we have all the components in place there where it's where it's affected where we start to lose that as we get into the older grades especially in high school we don't have the pbi the pbis and the best component in a solid manner we've got to have that other component that restorative practices brings yeah i would look at it although it may not be formally there it is a natural i think i feel like a natural byproduct when our whys and how especially teachers perceive behaviors and how they might be apt to respond to it where in the

132past where all of the students distributed my class for example the elementary level you need to go to a budding room you start to see a shift in teachers mindset where it's not just here's this baby here's this kind of robotic reaction and more so of seeking to understand and intervene in a more productive way of exactly what you're talking about what's causing this how can we fix this and working on that together i can definitely speak for estrogen that there were times where that piece was missed but as mindsets and understandings and perception change so did our reactions to that which i'm in my opinion our consequences kind of fall under that umbrella and i keep thinking of one of our students in particular who has made a huge shift and it's because his

133mindset he thinks of strategies and things that he can use from mindfulness and from breathing and from just taking a five-minute break on a trampoline that will get him back or doing a buddy walk with an adult to get him back on track and he uses his words and he actually asks for those things rather than reacting falling out acting out and then has to have like an escort come so we have seen um that turnaround in elementary with some of the kids who were close to possibly a tier three or a tier three and now they move to a tier two or even not even needing a plan at all anymore and i don't know what the academic level was that student but when when the student figures this thing out for themselves and

134of course the teacher then figures it out for themselves are you seeing a huge increase in their academic level too or yes he's he's being a ton more productive with his work and willing to put effort through um than he was ever before well he's spending 90 percent more time in class rather than recovery stuff yeah and his in his family also his mom is doing some of the same and she has some calming tools at home and is trying to utilize because she's talked a lot with the teacher she's talked a lot with her interventionist myself and with miss jordan and so she has changed also so that has been very eye-opening i would mention you man then as i talked about so many more kids thinking that emotions and feelings are things that

135happen to them also the mindset that learning and quote being smart is something that happens to people it's getting lucky to do it not seeing the direct correlation to opportunity work and result and as we open up these avenues and starting to feel the first step in becoming successful and using replacement behaviors is actually believing that i can do them and it's going to work so these successes i think open up the doors to them start to take those risks and believe that oh i do if i do listen to a message and i do practice this i am going i'm not going to fail it is going to work um that's a jump that's always been hard for i feel like many of our kids to trust that and to go why should i

136try even if i try i'm not smart so it's not going to work it's kind of helping us open that avenue even got to attend the pbis party for the first time and he's in second grade there you go so he was ecstatic about it it's good you think it might be a little bit resistant to those things if they get older i guess well i'm speaking more into the secondary like you know like they were saying we don't really have a foundation of this to pvis so so the trauma smart training i do believe is going to be effective all the way through um because because here here's the thing you've got adults that will look at a student and think they're just being bad all right and so what trauma smart helps you

137do is it helps the adults to change their mindset to think not what is wrong with the child but maybe what's wrong with the child you know it's not the behavior that they're exhibiting right now but what's going on behind that behavior and so getting to know that child and understanding where they're coming from and maybe addressing some of that the behaviors that are creating the behaviors so it really is about changing the mindset of the adults which helps to get students to understand maybe where they are and so yeah that's effective all the way through um we have found that pit that best and pbis aren't as effective because um quite honestly they've been doing the kids been doing it since they were in kindergarten and once they get to high school it doesn't

138matter you change the language they know what you're doing so they know you're missing them and and they resist it they see it as as young behaviors so that's why really at high school we almost need to just do a complete revamp of it and just change things around now in middle schools we do see pbis and best effectively we do need an additional component which the trauma smart is going to bring we think that that would be a very nice addition that's going to help our students our our staff change their thought process about our students which is enormous so when i was working at northwood i was an nwsa teacher for my last three years and my first year there we started just being trauma informed so this was three years before i

139started doing this before we started trauma smart but just that trauma informed piece and that lens there and i worked with high school mostly and they were kids that weren't okay in their school and had significant mental health issues potentially and they would come there and i saw less big behaviors with them than i see with some kids in our other schools because our entire staff were there and ready and cognizant of this is probably something bigger how can we help teach them how to deal with this and so we used some different curriculums and stuff like when uh matt mentioned that five-point scale and zones regulation fit really well in with trauma smart uh i was zones of regulation for three years and i did it and i spoke it and my my ias

140spoke it and all of our kids spoke and said man i'm really feeling like i'm in the orange zone right now i need to go take a walk down the hall is that cool yep see you soon so like we would and that was with high schoolers and we had some high scores that they were real tough they didn't want to buy into anything that they thought was for a little kid and we saw big big differences with them just with that trauma informed care we do believe that trauma informed is beneficial so that's why i said earlier whatever we do we believe it needs to have a trauma-informed component pre-k through 12. i was just going to add consider i think anything with consistency and time there's some research about what curriculums students um

141learn the most from all the different types whether it's the book we have what we actually test what we plan to teach what we actually teach what the state says we have to teach the only curriculum that had a direct correlation to student learning what kids actually took away was referred to as the hidden curriculum essentially the culture of school that what i live and what i hear what i experience every day is what i take with me once i'm gone um and so i think as they have this consistent message and feeling throughout they tend to believe that and feel that i know that um i think that has to come with experience in overtime personally i have had a couple of different trauma informed trainings in my career and the one thing that

142i appreciate and love about trauma smart is that one it's not a five or ten hour pd you get twice and then no one ever comes to talk to you about it again they have a program it's solid you meet monthly you get training then the next year you're getting refreshers you're still meeting once a month with your person so i feel like they it's a team they're with you they're making sure that things are being implemented in your school they're reminding you through the meetings what things you can do you're talking about things so i feel it's solid nothing i received in middle school when i did middle school when i did elementary the past 23 years has ever touched what trauma smart house not just in toronto is it in general yeah i

143think whatever we're committing to though i think we're all in agreement that we we would not leave somebody untrained and just drop the ball so whether that's their restorative practices or in implementing the trauma program it it would be um with great fidelity and it wouldn't just be leaving someone and i like i understand what you mean i've been at pd's where you have like two hour training and then you don't know what to do and there's no follow-up there's no guidance and i like what you guys mentioned that this is not a journey for being alone and i think some similar things were mentioned also like with the restorative practices so really great programs we are committed and no matter what we're referring to this is something that's going to be um deep training

144up front and then uh revisited throughout and and pervasive because it's otherwise you can go to a trauma and we've actually sent plenty of folks with trauma informed when you go to any any uh conference anymore you can go to two-hour session on trauma training it's worthless you've got to embed it it's got to be a part of who you are and it's got to be continuous there's got to be a school-like approach also like you guys are talking about speaking the same language so that they're and kind of like what someone mentioned you are you in orange today or or whatever that language is and the teachers have to buy into it and real and see how it's going to support them in the classroom and that it's not you know another training that

145type of thing it's right now we've got to be committed to it and part of that commitment is obviously you all saying yes this is something we're doing we're putting money towards it we're putting time towards it and we're going to be dedicated for the future to do this it's that's a big deal it says a lot to our staff to know me what's the call sign uh robert we have a and actually um we have this uh within our escrow plan to do the six elementary schools i believe we actually have to do the high schools and middle schools as well which we don't have to do we can modify that plan but uh robert do you remember on top of your head what we're spending on elementary schools uh a close estimate would

146be about 170 000 for next year we did the six of remaining elementary schools and remain preschool and then trauma smart would have matching funds from a grant that they have a federal grant to match it and then we would need to address the training time on wednesdays during the schedule and then also the monthly or the building pd time the building budget for for staff and that supports sustaining the schools that are already in the process either direction trauma smart or restorative practices requires us to be dedicated throughout the year with all of our training time to be towards that so even as we modified we modified the wednesday schedule for the rest of this year to give some time back to teachers except their teachers because we still have to do the trauma

147smart training um it's it is and and i don't think your teachers had an issue with that right they i think they would have been upset if we would have stopped the training so this is a big deal for these buildings they know it's a big deal they love that we're doing it and they want to continue doing it who did the actual integration between uh trauma smart and this and pbis i worked with this and pbis i work with our consultants for both okay and that's going to be something that's done as well for if we do it on the secondary level we did it for middle school yes we could theoretically do it for high school but i don't think that's wise so but middle school i believe it'd be effective yeah i

148know i mean not the i mean as far as the integration if we were to choose restorative practices and and okay so uh restorative practice already has trauma informed embedded in it and so if we were to do let's say trauma smart first for two years and then restorative practices after that it's a very natural progression because the trauma informed training is already part of the restorative practices training so it's an important component of it or we could just do the restorative practices training which has the trauma informed component already embedded i i have a little bit of concern about some of the language you're using brian about whatever we do or if we do we're all smart people up here and we have different opinions but you guys are the ones doing the job

149on the front lines i'm not going to be comfortable making a decision unless it's based on a recommendation that you a specific solid recommendation you guys bring us sure so i'm not going to sit here and vote okay this is what we're going to do even though i don't know everything there is about unless i hear that that's what you're recommending for us to do now you may recommend recommendation that we may not like and may not go for but i think it needs to start there so that's part of what we're doing tonight is we wanted to make you give some more information about what's going on with this component our recommendation is that we do keep this in place for elementary schools we believe that trauma smart connective abyss and pbis is effective

150and it has a good future for us we shouldn't touch it it's working well let's let it roll okay um so the two easiest um uh recommendations would be the two the two um levels on either end for the high school we do believe we need to go one of two directions that is to to go the direction of restorative practices we could start with doing the trauma smart first and then go into storage practices or we could just go into restorative practices we do believe that for rsa ray high and south high it might be effective just to dive right into restorative practices and at least get a good idea about how that works for us in the district uh from middle school for right now the it might be uh wisest to go

151with the pbs bist and restorative practice and trunk smart because we already have a good component of pbs and this already working there and what we do believe is that we need to have some in-depth training for our staff and how to work with our students who are are experiencing trauma so if you ask me right now for recommendation that would be it so either one of those will take uh resources so you would actually come back to us with some kind of specific it would and so all of them and then the two kind of resources we're talking about a lot of money a lot of time and we do have both of those capabilities in the next in the coming years um we've we've already dedicated esther money to be able to like

152i said earlier towards trauma smart we can redirect those funds towards the restorative practices and we brought that you know that to this board as a k-12 proposal obviously we did as a 912 it would be much less expensive it's it's actually fairly similar in cost between the two to implement and put in place well i'd like to just uh cast my little thoughts out there too in reference to our high schoolers i definitely would like to see restorative practice in place in the high school because i think that it it is very necessary and needful that we work towards trying to help these kids not have uh be suspended out of school uh for long periods of time we need to work towards those things that will keep them in the classroom versus those

153things that gets them out of the classroom i mean working with the students i know the school is set up for educating the mind but we also have to educate the heart too and i think that that trauma smart is working towards that changing the way we think about how we do how we uh help kids that are having issues uh that you know of because some kids might come to school with issues but you don't know them and uh and and that comes in we've got to learn the signs that indicate that something is going on in this kid's life because they may not want to share various reasons but uh it is a challenge and i understand that it is a challenge for the district in finances it's a challenge for the teachers

154in in the time but i also think that the value of the human mind is worth us giving more sacrifice to it to help these kids make a difference in their life before they leave this building because i mean someone else may never take time to invest in their minds or help them with to transition from going a different direction to a better direction but i think that is the burden that's upon the school district and not just retails to the district but since i'm here speaking of this one but it is a burden that it's upon school districts all across our nation to help our kids do the best they can we understand we got kids that have issues that issues that are very well to put them in in jail and all of

155that but let's do everything we can within our power to help the kids and let us not always use dollars as a reason not to do things because we use dog we do we do just about whatever we want to do when it comes to things that we really really want to do if we want to put something out there if we want to build something or add something we'll find a way to do it and i just refuse to hear and accept the fact that we can't spend the money to help kids make a better choice and we have a plan to spend that money that's really is not a barrier uh truly is not it's it's information it's what it is it's not a barrier uh and bob you're right that our adolescent

156kids they don't understand math they don't understand english the way they will when they're 25 they also don't understand how to behave and that's that was the case when you and i were that age as well okay that has never changed and it won't change the especially especially boys brains will slow develop sometimes and they continue to make bad decisions it is really about us to understand where they're coming from to help redirect and help them understand what those good decisions are so yeah we do we train the whole body the whole kid comes in the building we train the whole kid yeah that's great concept i like the recommendations it's made and what bobby said i think of it like i mean what's been the picture that i've been painting for me today is

157seeing that we can retain our kids and they go through the trauma smart and by the time they're in middle school in high school then they can have something to have the tools that they need to and also whereas restorative practices maybe like bobby was saying that uh we have an issue right now that uh after the after the act and uh and that could maybe address those things so along those lines i've been somewhat surprised at their number of postgraduates that are dealing with anxiety and not knowing how to handle that and i think this would be giving them a gift you know uh it it's true we do want to launch our students to success success is not just understanding how to do it on an act test isn't it um and you

158know we want that common language which you mentioned mr burton you know about trauma informed we can have that common language k through 12. and so a high school teacher will even though we're not using trauma smart will know through the trauma training within restorative practices how to work with students in the same manner that they've been working you know worked with at the elementary school so you know believe it or not you know this common corner and the wonderful environment you have in the counseling office that is not unusual for a high school to have the exact same thing i was going to say i i have plenty of calming corners in my room and i use them myself on a daily basis there's a reason why we don't play metallica in the counseling

159office president go ahead no i was just letting you know that's on this side the extra training that it's going to take for our teachers that that's one of the concerns that i have and if we're training through our wednesday's sessions and professional development days to go through this training how how many times a month did you have to have your teachers stay two or three hours after after school for a couple hours how how much extra time is it going to take for our teachers based on what they've already got to do so we work out uh plans that it's rather unique to each building the part where i talk with my with my coordinator team today our district coordinator team is that we need to be concerned about how we're going to segment

160our training into next year and that's we have a lot of new things coming up we're going to be adopting a new ela curriculum or ela resource for elementary schools uh we are going to adopt a new testing platform for star along with many other things we need to incorporate that training in what i told them though is that the um the blocks of training time will not change so we have our our couple days of training in this in the fall that we do typically we come back we have our wednesdays but part of what we're doing too is we're paying staff when they're staying late i'm not sure if we did that with your buildings or not a lot right but we're paying staff when we're when we're getting outside of those windows

161of time so we're not expecting them to stay late without compensating because we believe that if if we find it valuable we're going to pay for your time because your time is valuable so we will work out the the logistics of that um and sometimes it's about taking blocks of teachers out of the out of the building for an entire day and can bring substitutes in [Music] i would say that we've had more ability even a couple of years ago do that sort of thing like right now we don't want to take anybody out for anything but we will find a way to get it done thank you on the wednesday current wednesday schedule the buildings probably had about 30 minutes outside of contract time we were really lucky we got to do this during

162last year when we didn't have wednesdays because of how we how everything fell with learning so at least once a month sometimes twice some of the teachers had two hours after teaching through this pandemic full day after school was dismissed going to a six o'clock zoom training but one thing one we wiped pretty much anything else this is all we did to try to compensate for that but to hear the conversations and the feedback from teachers even after those really really long days two hours after never did i hear one if it wasn't worth it or frustration or tired of doing it which if anybody had any time to have an excuse last year was the time yeah thank you same with spring i am very pleased to have had this presentation i am excited

163about how it's impacting the culture at your schools and eventually all of our elementary schools um it sounds like a great program so thank you for allowing us this opportunity today and we know that with any understanding as those teachers and staff reach out to students and work to understand where they're coming from there is importance that should be applied to cultural competency as well and understanding them culturally and understanding them with the equity lens as well does trauma smart speak to that or does our cultural competency program speak to that yes you cannot be trauma informed without uh being fulfilled and you know this is something that our team um as health providers have been going on our own personal journey of dei and diversity equity inclusive inclusion work to ensure that we're able

164and comfortable and willing to have these conversations among our team apply it in our content with our schools so that's not something that i feel like we are there yet we're on that journey ourselves but you cannot be it's one of the six principles of being trauma informed you have to bring in cultural diversity equity making sure that we have access to services and support and the individual and who they are as a person is really key to that so i feel very strongly about that aspect if we can go thank you so much and ms keck i appreciate that and sharing the information about the trauma smart program dr jones principal gabbard ms when it comes to the schools and working with the students now your schools do they have the cultural competency program

165in place already yes okay so this was no surprise it wasn't a huge learning curve and everyone at your school has participated in the cultural competency thomas partners became our focus of our culture competency and that's another reason why i feel like the label of trauma isn't totally fair of that when we look at what's why is this happening or what's behind that a lot of the time our conversation especially where it comes most relevant i feel like in uh when we have deep real cultural competency conversations is about uh the term of disrespect and is this coming from really a true intent of disrespect or are we just perceiving as disrespectful and how does that then that perception affect how i respond to it and so having it this has allowed us another avenue

166another lens to have those conversations and how we perceive our students behavior and then again how in turn affects our response and dr huff the schools as we expand to the elementary schools the elementary schools in addition to trauma smart will they also have cultural competency trainings oh yes yes most definitely yes because right now it's optional right no no every building has a cultural competency either team or champion option with the teachers yeah so so all teachers participate yes yeah and so part of what we need to do and the the term unconscious bias comes to mind really no matter what we do we need to make sure that is a component of our training because you mentioned about you know the student who is being uh defined or disrespectful or disrupted or whatever

167but disrespectful probably the biggest one each one of us would define disrespectful in a different manner and a lot of that harkens back to our own unconscious bias and so a lot of what trauma informed him is is trying to get at the adults behavior and thought processes so yeah it's a huge component of who we are and what we do and as a matter of fact one of the things that we're doing with our cultural competency committee is going much deeper into the training this year reflecting back on who we are as a district what are our processes and procedures and again going through that audit process to seeing you know what is our equity like here in the district by going through that equity audit so yeah we're committed to it uh and

168while it's not necessarily a component of this you can think of them as parallel components that really are inseparable because whatever a student brings with themselves they bring their whole selves to the table and we react because of our own culture our own history and we need to first start with ourselves to determine why we react or or respond the way that we do a lot of that is based on our own culture and understanding who we are so we can understand how they are and we can hopefully get the bridge between the two and yeah inseparable when i come in to work in a building i come in to help change a kid's behavior but i never change the kids behavior i'm changing what the adults are doing because i can't change their behavior

169unless the adults change so unless how their thinking changes uh then nothing gets better or changes for that said student thank you everyone i want to get clarity because i thought what we had this uh meeting a while back that uh the teachers are not required to attend cultural competency you have a group in each yeah there's two different things we're talking about there you have the cultural companies committee which is the district-wide we provide direction and you know guidance every one of the buildings has a cultural competency component within their billions and sometimes it's a team sometimes it's a person but all of them have a plan that they've developed of specific things that they're doing and no it's not optional it's like no other pe in our district is optional for teachers uh

170in their plans it is specific for their entire staff so it's required of them too yes okay yes and i can get that when we talk to them so the part that i think where the required comes in um we haven't really gotten to the point where we're requiring all buildings to do this specific thing in cultural competency but they all turn their plans into the committee and we you know look that through and make sure that we're doing something that all makes sense in the same direction now the part that's going to get a little bit more formalized is as we go through this audit and as we go through deeper training with the cultural competency committee uh there will be some more formalized processes that go out to the to the schools but

171yeah everybody's everybody's in it okay you can yes from here i think we'll come back to the board with a formal recommendation that includes the costs timelines etc and recommending what you've heard tonight and then a board can be discussed that not decided that's what they want to do and then whatever we say we're going to do i think i heard it from everybody that you all are going to protect the teacher's time i think i heard the commitment right because we talked about self-care out there and you understand well part of it is that we have to remove some stuff and that's why i said that what can you streamline and that would be part of the recommendation thank you that's right let me figure it out thank you great job thank you that

172was wonderful yeah i didn't remember your name but i especially like your mannerism i especially like the way you say uh coming into that building to work with the teachers and that's awesome because you change the teachers you're going to affect the culture the atmosphere everything is going to be changed so i really really appreciate the presentation i just want to commend you guys for an excellent job we're going to schedule corner time for each board member corner time corner time yeah all right next uh an unfinished business we have a safe return to in-person instruction and continuity of services plan and before we make a motion i wanted steve and brian uh and darlene can speak to kind of where we're at staffing and what's going on because you've gotten a lot of emails

173i know one from staff but you've gotten emails about you know the number of drivers that are absent bones and grounds because of sickness so briefly they're going to speak to that we're at a critical level in regards to our absences on the operations side and i'll just speak to the operations side 25 to 30 percent absentee rate in food service transportation buildings and grounds technology all those departments are facing significant absences it's impacting our ability to operate and function just today we had 12 drivers who were absent which caused us to use everyone in the district who has a cdl and can operate a bus with the exception of one we have one driver left that was waiting in the wings but we are getting calls every morning every night we're having drivers who

174can drive in the morning and then when they get down with their route they're telling kevin hey i won't be back this afternoon uh i'm gonna go get tested because i don't feel good so we're we are getting at a critical we're at a critical level in transportation food service we've reduced services from what used to be breakfast lunch after school meal a la card snacks and we do breakfast to lunch now because that's what we could staff and even there we're getting critically close to being able to provide that point even full menus we have to start reducing menus because of preparation uh technology you know zach's back there he can tell you about the workflow that's increased you know we have computers and systems that go down all the time and we're working

175hard and fighting to provide just those basic function the functionality of our of our technology systems buildings and grounds our maintenance crew our folks who work on work on plumbing electricity hvac we're pulling them off those work orders putting them into buildings to do custodial work and really our custodians right now uh are just pretty much taking care of trash and sweeping floors and our maintenance crew is going in to help them do that and then after hours they're identifying those major work orders that need to be done and they're coming back and getting those major work orders emergency work orders done so i say that to say this from an operational side from an operational side we are facing critical shortages in our staffing and i tell you we are two drivers away from

176starting to reduce routes and so what that means is if we get two more drivers who don't come in and we can't backward this is a long-term issue i mean they're not gone for a day they're gone for 10 days or five days and so currently we have a couple more drivers miss and we can get into that loop and we don't have a backfill for those absences we will have a rotating program of routes that we won't run that day as an example bus 55 on monday is not going to run and so those students uh either one won't come we'll have to go get them later and we'll let parents know exactly the next day it may be plus 45 and the next day will be bus 35 and so the same kids

177aren't missing every day so that keeps the system running to the best of our ability it's better than shutting down the entire the entire transportation department so that's just one example uh marlene she's gonna spoke a little bit more globally about her absenteeism right i um i monitor every day what the essence is every day the principals get a report that says unfilled positions by date and so i monitored that every day and and basically right now we are probably at the worst um we've ever been with positives we're not only pop because of the new variant we're not just positive of people that don't aren't vaccinated we actually have more people now that are we have a lot of people that are positive now that are vaccinated so that's raised that and i i

178told steve i was trying to figure out like i don't have hard numbers for you but it's around 25 more um we had last friday we had over 200 people absent and you know two years ago that was just unheard of like we wouldn't know you know that was a friday so we have more of that and that's everyone that's not just certified so we met with principals last week and said you know how close are you to needing to shut down a classroom or whatever and you know they didn't say him a lot tony brought up you know the principals don't don't want to say we're going to shut down classrooms they make it work how are we making it work well we have hired two building subs for per building they are being

179used every day even if they're not being used at that building the principals get together and text and move them to other buildings so that's one of the ways the other thing we're doing is we have some ias that if they can um or or we try not to take the sped ias but if we have reg at aias or like the library clerks uh office clerks that have sub certification they are paid sub pay and they go into a classroom the other thing we're doing is we're putting on occasion counselors in there we're putting title one reading teachers tying one math um that sort of thing aps are going in admin interns are going in principles are going in at times there's kind of rotating and then we even have a rotation administrators have

180i sent out a google form and they sign up for days so we do not shut down classrooms unless we absolutely have to we did have a situation and you know about i i think you always inform the board if we have to shut down the classroom not the latest when we've had some sped classroom shipping we had two bedroom classes i was on a text on sunday and we every every teacher and ia was gone and those are kids we can't keep safe unless we have enough people so we did shut down those two classrooms we got those parents called on sunday student attendance over the last four days has been 84.85 82.21 85.19 and today it was 88.51 and we're generally around 95 somewhere in there 96. if you look at some of

181the elementary schools um i'm looking forward to robinson traditionally is around 95 96 attendance and they're at 86 89 90. uh it's it's hitting them hard this that's just students so that being said that's why we're bringing this back to you and asking you to make a motion to uh for this board to require masking in our district i buildings that's a no-brainer i think it's a no-brainer and i do have a question because um when we voted about having the masking based on following our guidelines and everything else from seeing this um if this i don't think this is going to happen but if this would change in a few weeks or whatever my concern is just with the level of anxiety of our um our staff you know like our teachers and everything

182else is there any way within this recommendation to address that and i'm not sure if i'm making myself clear enough yeah i think we already did what's that i think we already did well this is the ordinance for as long as right here okay so right there bus is until february okay so that's what i went to i put that on the 15th the the the motion says mine up i'm asking indoors all facilities and buses until february 15th because you're meeting okay that's why you're meeting on the 14th and this board every month needs to come and decide whether or not they want that whether there's an ordinance or not yeah there's an ordinance in place but this is the board making this decision to have mass not because of what jackson came though

183you're going to follow orders this is you saying we're going to have matches thank you for that clara that's what i appreciate the change because my concern last time was letting one politician have say in all of our buildings when they don't have authority there at least we're going on record as the board making the decision for our kids our employees our buildings so i appreciate having you statutes and board policy supports that they can do that thank you for declaring that that was my concern as well that we can make decisions for raytown based on our staff's needs and their safety and you know what in two weeks if it looks like this thing is complete reversal and you want to end this thing prior to the 15th okay let's say the third the

184mayor's ordinance runs out on the third okay but yours is still going if by the seventh okay we're looking good you can you can have an emergency meeting and then move the next if that's what you want and i'm guessing we would do that still based on your recommendation all right i think the indication here is that we need to make the recommendation because uh else we will not have school right potentially that's why we're probably making this recommendation in this budget mr president i mean that the board of education will require masking indoors at all facilities and buses until february 15 2022. most of may is seconded we'll see you guys when will that be affected immediately starting tomorrow we'll send out the notice tonight all right how many uh just talking to your

185boys were most of the students still wearing masks seth and seth and luke would tell you that the majority of the high school students at right town high are wearing their match that's what my daughter heard the same thing in south high too and middle schools yeah i had a teacher tell me out of 100 students he had four not wearing them really we had i'm not going to mention the name but asked didn't have to ask her students they did it for her yeah i've been hearing the same same stories it's a wonderful you know kids are taking the kids are on it and they are until that pain maybe all right thank you how many students do how many students do we have vaccinated now quite a few of them i couldn't tell

186you the exact number uh i do know the clinic they had this last the second shot they had they had several kids come back into the second we had actually more people walk in off the street to get the boosters and we're going to start we've got another clinic here we're trying to set up we are we are done with clinics um quite honestly we're not seeing very much of a response and the jackson county clinics are so easy to get into yeah yeah that we didn't show up the clinic's over on pal or yeah it's not powerful yep so we had a number of students at the um the one at the library that was on the 30th there were just quickly with the library got are this ready for a motion everybody watch

187the game i moved the board during the regular board meeting cap second what's your name