Board of Education - Curriculum Committee Meeting – December 14, 2021 (Webex Upload)

001board president fire joshua here board member anne-marie manny here board member alyssa malaspina here um i am getting miss right on she's having trouble with the link so she'll be in in a minute board member chris haven see chris it's the same how did you go we'll note when he joins okay board member aaron siders here board member courtney winkfield here board member johanna wright not yet yeah and we will know when uh when both boyd members saban and wright arrive uh so good evening everybody um over to you dr friedman thank you very much board president joshua uh good evening everyone um mr preston can we get a confirmation you're good that's not a good sign i don't know principal sanchez sorry we might have to flip-flop mr preston is having a little trouble

002are you sure can you hear me okay i could hear hello chris i can hear you can you hear my feet at all or no we can hear you now uh we can hear you we can hear you okay so mr president is here tonight hold on let me chris let me just introduce you um mr preston's here tonight to give the committee an update uh on the work that we're doing around um amistad curriculum and uh we've been making continued progress and we wanted to bring mr preston back to update everyone on the work that we've been doing give some exemplars of things that have been happening and uh we're really proud of the work that mr preston has been helping the lead in the district so mr preston great thank you very much

003i'm going to pull this up uh my slideshow that you have uh for you now [Music] let me um share my screen here is this audio still okay for you yeah okay yes it um thank you okay all right so uh thank you very much um i just wanted to update you on a few things uh since we last spoke during the summer and as noted here the first two slides are just reminders of what was shared at the time all social studies curriculum is approved and aligned to amistad k-12 grade level proficiencies were created by me in 2019 they are embedded in every curriculum guide by unit i will say that when the amazon curriculum was created it did not allow for any grade level proficiencies uh it allowed districts to go ahead and

004make those particular choices you will see tonight some of those choices and how that rolls out in terms of specific lesson plans by grade level uh but that is one thing that we've taken a step further that the amistad has or the state has provided as well um one other course that i know that i mentioned earlier that we introduced was uh caribbean studies actually mr sanchez and i were in that class watching a fantastic presentation today and another slide too that i wanted to share with you is something that i shared in august deals with the actual units of instruction and how this actually goes beyond uh what was stated in the new jersey standards by addressing topics um with specificity that were afrocentral afrocentric uh atlantic world centric and got away from a

005western dominated narrative and so this begins as early as grade four uh when we look at the peopling of africa and the americas prior to the arrival of the europeans and so the europeans are viewed and portrayed as somebody who come into something in a place that's already pre-existing with their own civilizations ways of life and ways of approaching the world also in grade five which is the second year in a three-year history course in this middle cluster these particular topics and lessons address the standards of massage as well i'm sorry sorry about that hold on just to say um somehow this just came up blurry but you have uh this presentation uh before you unit one in grades four and five are either completed or being taught right at this time and one of

006the things that we've done is given specific attention to as i noted before the empires of west africa and the colombian exchange and then as well as um really teaching i guess what is history and this is an in um an introductory lesson about perspective um whose story is taught the importance of being mindful of uh who is not mentioned in the story um because history or the study of history is a really a construction it's not something that is just is and so that's something that we are introducing to students for the first time in grades four and five i would say this is another talking point as far as you know what do we introduce uh to students in terms of their understanding of history and conceptualization of the world it is that

007one that there's conscious choices that we as educators or viewers of shows realize that this is a constructed narrative and what's left in and what is left out is an important thing to consider i'm not sure how i can make this a little bit better uh sample lessons that we actually are on teachers canvas pages right now in grade six and grade seven and grade eight are visible here one of the things that we try and balance in grades four through uh six in particular which is a three-year history course is balancing these larger events that are taking place either on continents or in regions with the individuals stories of people at the time and also you know with the um the teaching of slavery and enslavement and also balancing that with stories of agency

008and individuality and i will give you a couple of examples of that as well uh one another instance where we kind of take things beyond what is stipulated either in the state standards in particular deals with the absence of individual names and for the history standards you will really only see four specific people mentioned jefferson franklin washington and governor livingston being the four that is it and what we were looking to do uh early on in history is give students names and events and their stories to really teach the larger narrative that we want to portray uh going on here and so the story of abolitionists uh and uh people who are involved in civil rights and both um people of african-american descent african descent and uh whites as well who were fighting for abolition

009is something that we do so harry tubman matt turner um are just a few quick names um that we would uh mention here as well um also you will see here at the bottom the slide show um really looking again at the empires of africa and so one thing that we've sought to do that didn't exist before was you know world history was is largely absent from a good portion of the k5 curriculum and so we wanted to kind of introduce that in four and five students and then revisit that again uh here in grade eight at the high school level these are some of the actual sample lessons from the early units of study that you see here one point of emphasis that we begin to do in high school is um really focusing

010on race as a social construction and delving deeply into issues of race and racism so you can see these topics here since i can't see if there's any questions i'd be happy to stop before i just kind of segue on keep going mr president i'll ask the board members to um use the raise hand teacher and then i will i'll pause and direct questions as i'd see them come in thank you gotcha okay so that's a quick overview of the you know the current units of study that have either just taken place or um took place at the beginning of the year in terms of the actual lessons that we were doing to meet amistad one arab note that there's been a collaboration between our department at the high school now and that's going to

011the elementary schools beginning in the spring deals with a booklet a publication that came out from durant head called slavery in new jersey a troubled past and it really focuses on this [Music] view of to what extent did slavery exist in the state of new jersey and locally and the extent to which abolition uh took place uh in this state as well and so i think in june of uh um the durant hadn't house had a juneteenth celebration where these posters associated with publication were exhibited for the first time to the public and last month at columbia high school in the art gallery uh these posters uh were put up and we created a museum experience for our sophomores um who are studying uh this period in history now and so uh all of the

012teachers of us history receive class sets of the publication and uh those are ready to go to fourth and fifth grade as well so if i could let's see if this will promise out yeah and so if you haven't seen this um i think the link is embedded in your presentation um let's see if it comes up here we really wanted to give students uh an example of what new jersey was like at this time and i'll just scroll down here a little bit and so in this in the state standards it mentions nothing about uh slavery enslavement or abolition in the state of new jersey and we wanted to take something that was typically associated with grade 4 and really turn this focus on as well one of the things that came about as

013a result of this museum experience at the high school was something that you see here are ads for capturing of enslaved people and what teachers in the department did was they took some of these and others from a secondary source and it had students explore to what extent um can we tell about the individual and their agency based on the way that these ads were written and tried to humanize and put a face on these individuals because there really was not a lot of written records of people at the time but not only to see areas of such as newark of which we were part of at one point in time in this area but also to put a humanizing face on these people and try and infer what type of life that they were

014trying to leave when they were trying to escape and so i won't go into more detail here but this is a collaboration we're doing with um grand head um another piece that i wanted to make mention uh is professional development for grades four and five that took place this past month and um what i did was to kind of take the homicide curriculum um provide uh people with access to it but also which was a concern in the past of you know having a space a safe space for teachers to feel comfortable with topics of slavery and how to address that and the curriculum that we had so in the professional development that i offered which was recorded and sent to all of the schools as well an organization known as teaching tolerance which is

015now learning for justice has come up with an instructional framework uh for grades k-12 for the teaching of heart history and so i walked the teachers through this particular publication and how these concepts and the contents within uh relate directly to the units of study that we have and so teachers can get a sense of here's the units that we have and uh here's how recommendations for example of a key concept important teaching points to emphasize uh and then also here's the essential knowledge and so when we talk for example in every place in time enslaved people sought freedom here are six different teaching points that we will be emphasizing in the curriculum and so giving them an example about where are the topics and areas of focus which will be embedded in the lesson

016plans and then it also provides suggestions for all of us of how do i go about teaching this and so when we share with teachers that students will be inspired by stories students should examine historical figures who tried to rebel there's detailed explanations about how to teach this as well and so this is another resource for our department and for the professional development that i had and then i'll be doing for the next unit of study coming up i believe this is in the slideshow but again there were resources that provided for the teachers in terms of learning podcasts for their own that deal with those essential learnings a text library that provides resources of a variety of different texts associated with the topics that they have and an inquiry lesson that they provided that

017actually uh complements very well the work that we started with the duran hedden house and talking about um slavery uh the troubled past in new jersey so those were just a few examples of [Music] i guess the updates that have been occurring across the department let me just see here in just a i guess one quick um example as well in terms of transferring the information found in google drive into canvas and atlas for teachers as well and so uh you know there's a lesson uh in grade five on the haitian revolution and what i started to do for the teachers in every lesson um they wanted a one-stop shop so when they looked at the lesson plan which was listed here then they could go to the resource page which was listed here and

018they're the actual whether it's lecture notes whether it's readings for the students whether it's the slide show presentations all of those are here for them in addition to a lesson bank or i'm sorry a resource bank that's being compiled not only for them as teachers but also students and so teachers had shared that you know where did they go to get this background information so i'm building these uh for um teachers by individual lesson so that when they go to their particular place and say okay so this is lesson four of this particular unit all the things that they will need are kind of attached here in that particular length so um i think i will take questions at this time and refer to anything that you have questions about remember wingfield uh mr president

019thank you so much for the presentation and i really appreciate the information especially you shared about the way that you're using professional development to support um the teachers in teaching some of this really hard history i'm curious how the district is using additional professional learning opportunities such as implicit bias or other cultural competency trainings to ensure that there's a link between what we're expecting our history teachers in particular to teach in the amistad curriculum and how we expect them to utilize the tools in these implicit bias and cultural competency trainings to ensure that they're prepared for what may come up in the classroom and also feel empowered to be able to address some of what the students may bring up so i i think there's two practical examples that just jump into mind about that

020in my middle school department meeting today um i just thought it was opportune time we had about we did a half of that period with newsela and then the other half we actually looked back at our individual lessons uh and the pd that we've kind of done and tied that to as kind of a reflection of so here's the lessons that i had posted on canvas and here's the actual wording of the language by the unit and so how is that that those kind of you know meet and where don't they and then this other aspect that came up especially in um the skills section in terms of the skills for um different perspectives um in terms of um you know what do we include what don't we include that was a particular talking point

021on the slide that i had for fourth and fifth grade but in terms of tying that to the um explicit implicit bias trainings uh that's something that i can follow up with you in the spring as you know i shift i don't wanna say shift my focus but you know sharpen the pencil as far as that that's concerned uh the other piece too in my fifth grade pd this past month revisiting with them before they began about two or three weeks before they begin teaching that unit and really unpacking that unit with the teachers potential pitfalls things when we talk about you know what to include and what not really walking teachers through you know what those areas might be one of the things about the lesson plans that i really try to do is

022provide like a contextual paragraph for teachers and the thought in mind about that was that if i was brand new and was really you looking at this for the first time i have no sense i can follow the lesson plan and execute it but to what extent do i have an understanding of where this fits within a larger picture and kind of where this is going and so that piece within the lesson plans is something that looking to kind of give that attention as well but i'd be happy to follow up with you again you know in the spring with regard to that thank you so much one other peace board member wingfield that um you know mr mr preston i mean all the stuff that he talked about you know is content area specific

023but uh a lot of the work that we've been doing this year kind of restructuring plc's taking the recommendations of dr fergus um implementing the cni department's been implementing protocols into the plc's but the different buildings have been self-selecting topics we've been allowing them to self-select topics and and getting the groups and so a lot of what you mentioned um have been topics at uh at many of the buildings so they're making the connections um to some of the professional development work and how they can tie it into their classroom work as well so it's happening in multiple ways if i could just piggyback real quick on that um so there was a reading group that um i would say about seven social studies teachers and i um conducted last beginning last spring and we

024read cast uh as a department um and so uh once this pl first round of plc work and protocols are done uh doing something within our department with regard to the implications for um us as educators um generally implications for us as educators in this district and implications for our students as learners as it relates to that particular book um and then the next book up slated for january of 2022 is how the word is passed that is our next book and we've actually had members of the english department at the high school and members of middle school social studies department joining so we've probably gone to about 10 members now so just wanted to pay you back on that as well thank you board member mary thank you mr preston i just wanted to

025understand how all this integrates into atlas so that um one we capture all this work in this database and to our parents have access to these resources as well um so i think the work right now is to take the individual lesson plans and put those in atlas and canvas i think the actual what we've agreed to as a district to provide for parents and families and students as atlas is what we have in there in terms of the unit plans themselves but in terms of resources for parents and students i'm happy to kind of um you know take lead on that and make that um a situation that we can you know make available to folks because there's a lot out there for sure but that hasn't been you know decided yet in terms

026of how over the next couple months um we we started some initial meetings um with a internal committee to talk about um a project plan for future um future phases of atlas the next step is going to be as mr preston mentioned uh lesson plan repository so there's going to be a lot of internal resources that are going to be provided to staff members where they'll be able to share ideas and collaborate internally the lessons won't be shared publicly but as mr preston said we can definitely work on different vehicles to get those resources out to community members as well all right thank you uh thank you mr president uh next topic good thing if i can just real quick i'll be two seconds to jump in i believe if you if the public view

027of atlas does show the connections to amistad so if you go in as a public um person and on off of the website each uh unit you should actually see the connections to amistab and we also have lgbtq and holocaust and all of the other state uh mandated uh i guess miss podner that's what i was worried about was that if we've created one static set of resources in atlas yet we've done all this work to provide additional resources to our teachers like somewhere like we can't have duplicate of work because otherwise the whole thing won't be consistent so correct that was just my question okay i have i have a quick question um okay remember right please for one second i see board member cuddles also waving there so it's gonna go to them

028first and just for both as well as all of us just use the hand raised functions it's easy for me to manage appreciate it thanks so much member cuddle and then board member right joshua i have no um hand raised function currently right now i've looked on the whole entire webex platform it's not accessible to me right now so which is if you look under the three dots i looked over the dots i did look under three dots it's not accessible to me so um just one flagging that right if i do under three dots it says switch audio connect to a video copy and there's no option which was not like i previously so i don't know if it's the median setup hover over your hover over your name in the panelist section and

029then you should see a hand however your name a hand should show up [Music] go to list of panelists all right just ask your question in the meantime you can work on it afterwards but yeah well so i understand how this works and it worked previously in our previously meeting i'm just letting you know right now that it's not accessible so um which is why i was using my hand in the feature uh in the window um that being said uh to move forward um uh [Music] tech issues aside um no uh so i mean i i appreciate the presentation it was great uh similar to board member manny's point um around uh ensuring that the curriculum was showing all aspects like we're not we're not taking apartments status here in the future if we

030have aapi it's here the lgbt curriculum in persons with disabilities is here that we there's a clear understanding that there's an even flow and how it interacts with everything that we do is important because that's the intent of all this a curriculum that we are doing that's diverse um that is intersectional so wanting to be mindful of that um and making sure that we are not just um trying to check off benchmarks for curriculum diversity but we are showing true intersectionality so thank you thank you and if you click over you hover over the reactions if you click on that the first one all the way up at the top is raise hand for those who are having trouble finding it uh boy remember right he said all the way at the top because i

031got the same thing no at the bottom you'll see if you click on reactions and you go up to the top there's a raised hand the reactions is the smiley face next to share on the screen was it working at the time president joshua so thank you appreciate it thank you go ahead boy remember right okay um so it's great that the resources are there but how do we uh ensure the staff sure that the staff knows how to use these resources well and and um the other question i have is um i may not have heard you but are the plc's during the week dedicated to this um thank you for the question so with regard to the use of the resources well uh the purpose of my initial pd was to share the

032resources uh with the teachers show how they relate it to the actual units themselves and then show how they would be embedded within the individual lesson plans and so one thing that i didn't mention but i think over the course last month i met with grade level teams at south mountain and i'll be looking to reach out and meet with the teachers a couple of weeks before in grades four and five where they meet um prior to them beginning their second unit to kind of go in the weeds with regard to the resources the lessons the things to teach recommended practices what not to teach so that's really a specific granular way i think to sit there and and really show how to use the resources model some of these learning pieces as well in

033my high school and middle school department meetings of which occur one to two times a month we have those conversations monthly like i mentioned before what we just did with the middle school teachers today one of the things that i believe took place uh i can say explicitly was that you know with the pandemic in grades six and eight and nine and twelve all of those grade level teachers met and shared all of their lessons and ideas on google drive and so yes while they're familiar and use atlas and you know all of their lessons are on canvas you know they are using those google drive shared folders for their lesson plans and discussing that regularly so that's happening more so uh in grades six through eleven the work is really for me in four

034five and i'm happy to follow up with you with that specific question um in the spring with regards to the plc's that's been a district initiative thus far um so thanks thank you the progress and the trends as they self-select the topics if they self-select the topics i just want to make sure i heard yeah if they self-select the topics uh how did how do you monitor the progress or the trends well they that's the doctor from myself i'm sorry thanks for dr friedman uh chris sorry yes remember right uh thank you for that question um we collect the data uh we have a google form that the plc's um are filling out on the topics um we were initially doing to teach them the protocol we were doing an initial book study with them

035so starting this month they're going to be breaking into their building level topics that they have been planning over the past couple months so we're going to be collecting the data of who is in the plc's the topics um the topic that was discussed and the um the results and suggestions that came out of it so we're we by doing that in google forms we're able to collect all of that in a um in a pretty um organized excel spreadsheet and kind of see the trends and in addition to that i meet with the principals once a month and we talk about the different topics uh that the buildings were suggesting i've actually been working with the assistant principals to kind of oversee the plc's and the assistant principals have actually created their own plc

036to model the protocols and discuss different topics amongst themselves as well so uh we can update you along the way of the different topics that they are um kind of self-selecting um but we we felt it necessary to collect that data from the uh cnr office thank you thank you mr preston um dr freeman uh on this next one is joshua one thing i just wanted to thank you board member for board member cuddle and and the collective board one of the best features of atlas is that we can run reports on where and how often standards are used so we can drill down into particular standards uh you know whether it's amistad or lgbtq standards that are embedded into our curriculum whether it's math or ela science social studies standards and we can run

037reports on where the standards are covered in our curriculum what grade levels uh what content areas if it's cross-curricular and you know by running those reports we're able to look at things like formative and summative assessments state testing um and see where our strengths and weaknesses are but to your points about the you know intersectionality of them we can really look at how often and where standards are covered and if there are gaps that we're finding we can address those from a curricular standpoint with supervisors all right thank you it is seven uh what remember mousevina yes um thank you for the information um dr freeman i i you just stated that you are you can run reports using atlas my concern is that if i'm correct we don't have lesson plans in our atlas

038right now so while you can run reports telling the standards that are being addressed that should be addressed we really don't know if we are actually hitting those standards since we do not have lesson plans in them to know if the teachers are actually teaching the standards just because the standards might be in the curriculum doesn't exactly mean that they're being taught in the classroom and that's true um and to your point as i mentioned uh the lesson plan feature was uh was as we were building out this project plan was always a year two uh feature we needed to work on getting the units to study in a consistent format and into atlas which took a significant amount of time uh the pacing guide you know kind of shows us where the standards and

039and when this you know where and how often and when the standard should be covered but as we drill down to the lesson plan level and one of the things that we need to work on with samea and come to some understanding is that there is no common lesson plan template in the district at current time so we need to come to some sort of consensus and agreement how we're going to put that into atlas and what we're exactly going to be looking for um the framework that we use the ubd framework kind of lends itself to building out lesson plans around those areas but we need to come to some sort of consensus and we started those conversations now so we can work on it during the spring so we can be up and

040running in the fall but i i agree with your point that as we get more granular we'll be able to get a more accurate read how often the standards are covered thank you all right um over to chs yeah dr freeman just quick note is 7 13 so that was 33 minutes just want to tighten it up a little bit so we cannot stay on task absolutely so principal uh we invited principal sanchez this evening he's going to briefly talk about three areas that were brought forward by the curriculum committee talking about student touchstones and whether they students have all met with advisors um and or trusted adults uh that's a follow-up to a question that we had several months ago we're going to briefly dive into first period marking first first grading period results

041and do a brief analysis of that and then we're going to talk briefly about the chs school profile and where we are with that which is also a follow-up to some previous conversations so principal sanchez thank you very much uh dr freeman so i just want to kind of walk you through the presentation um right if we go to the next slide just um gives you uh some information i've actually you stole my uh line here what we're going to be looking at the four uh elements so why don't we go to the next slide actually board member sabin um asked about the caribbean uh studies program when i was last here so i just wanted to add something very quickly um and i popped in two or three times uh um so far this

042this semester i look forward to i'm going to be team teaching a class um in the in that course with miss karis who is doing an incredible job in creating this new program so what you see here uh jillian and katie are uh they're holding information sessions we had three information sessions today and in the second marking period the students in this class um focused on student inquiry and some as as mr preston mentioned right the focus is on agency um and this was a lesson on resistance or a research assignment on resistance if you go to the next slide i just want to break down we have two of these semester courses in our inaugural year this year so there's two sections of fall board member statement and a spring there are about 40

043students in the two sections if you ask for a breakdown black students make up about 64 of the students in this class um mixed race 11 which is what we used in powerschool these definitions white is 11 hispanic is nine percent and asian is six percent so uh the slides will have that broken down in the notes but i just wanted to um to answer that question for you from last time if we go to the next slide um oh i i want to thank uh dr friedman here and uh board member cuddle who uh talked whatever cuddle uh if you recall you brought up a dual enrollment possibilities and you gave an example of something that's happening in newark and so um thanks to your suggestion we are looking into some of these courses

044from the equity lab right so the equity lab is a educational consortium that then works with some incredible colleges and universities if you can see just some from here howard university princeton wharton um stanford so we're going to be looking at bringing these in so to include to add to our dual enrollment that's something dr freeman has really suggested and we are excited about it and so i just wanted to give a shout out to um board member cuddle for for bringing that up to us uh this this possibility and hopefully we we will be moving forward with them la next year so it's very exciting um so now let's get to the specific questions um again talking about our touchstones or when do our um counselors speak with our students um just so you

045know there's the website is right there it's a break it's it's revamped um counseling website really proud of miss ballastone and her counselors and specifically also um miss easton who is our social worker uh who runs our social work intern program and then of course also miss hicks who uh works with mac and other additional programming in the counseling annex so i just wanted to point this out if any board members haven't yet seen it the links are there for the counseling department you can also find a really neat brochure that walks parents through the various um counseling interventions or supports that we have if you go to the next slide ms bondner i can give you an example of the two um initial right these are these this is where our first intervention level

046is right um well obviously first is high school counselors but in addition to our high school counselors we have a team of of um counselors that can help our students in need both academically as well as emotionally so for example here you'll see the high school social work intern program and the student assistant counselor is kind of a description of that also in in the handout you'll see that we have um right there on this website parents can uh receive a list of mental health resources for their students for their child excuse me for their children as well but to get to the meeting of your question in the next slide i just want to remind our our board members that our counselors met with our freshmen in the first week of school um in

047addition to that then they spent much of the fall with our seniors that makes sense of course right because they're focusing on their college and career meetings making sure that they are ready that they have their letters of recommendation they have their um applications set or at least geared up and they also are looking at their grades they work hand in hand also with our assistant principal miss butler who is also a part of that process sophomore and juniors met at the very end of the first marking period in the beginning of the second marking period and now what are they doing they're meeting with freshmen once again so right because the freshmen met in that first week so we're kind of going all the way back uh to the beginning now this is these

048are uh mandatory touches right this is our our counselor is reaching out to them we make sure that it happens in classes so that um those students do appear right um and and we don't have to perhaps go find those students this is all in addition of course to the inrs meetings any other counseling meetings that they have to attend with specific students working with case managers but we're talking about grade level themes and the kind of lessons or plans that they work with miss ballastone to tackle i do want also just to point out that we do have uh this this whole week we have meet and greets not just with our students but with parents so last year we made a great step forward with registration for next year's classes right that we

049invited parents to the process well now we're doing that right here at the end of the first marking period again um a lot more collaboration with our home community and that's what we know uh will be successful for our students so um the parents receive this from the counseling annex parents can click obviously this is a presentation but um those were live links and uh can click on there to get those zoom lessons so i'm sorry zoom um or webex uh links and entrances so we're competing with the fabulous miss renee johnson our brand new counselor as well as miss handler so hopefully this is recorded and and those parents can also come here to watch this so if you look at our next slide uh so i hope that answered those questions about when

050our parents meeting with our sorry our counselors are meeting with our students in addition to that we had a question about the columbia high school uh profile we updated it over the summer we uh miss balistone and myself we we looked at some best practice um school profiles we we added a lot of the s a t a c t scores and ap scores that weren't there previously and definitely also added a sheet of the stellar universities and colleges that our students are accepted to which wasn't in the original school profile um we had a a small group of parents who wanted uh perhaps to have certain language in there about our covid uh process you know i really felt that our profile honestly portrayed that but we i think it's really important always to

051have that communication uh we have uh parent principal forums every other month in fact we had one just last night um and so two months ago we had that i i said to parents if they would like to it'd be great if we could form um some common language that we can all agree to that was done and it has been updated so the columbia high school profile you can always find it right there at that link which is on the school counseling website under the senior college jumpstart section so i just wanted to point out it's it's there and it's updated if uh miss botner you can go to the next page the next slide that's where the specific um website will look like it'll say senior college jumpstart again brand new initiative by

052our counseling department which is a handbook for our students and parents on what students should do during the college application process and so it's right after that and we also i just want to point out one more um initiative that we did for our seniors uh we we thought about it last year we created it this year so it's the first time as butler myself and i give great credit to ms butler for continuing to update it and to be communicating with their senior parents but we have a senior website now where it's a repository of all the important information that seniors need whether it's yearbook whether it's going to be prom college application process graduation so all of it is there and and updated so um i think probably many schools rely on like

053parent facebook pages and things like that but this is uh you know from the school and so we're really excited about that and you can also find that right there on that website so what do we have next uh we're going to talk about first marking period grades so what we have done is if you recall we last time we met we were talking about how the vice principals and myself we meet weekly and we talk about attendance student attendance and that's where the focus was in the beginning of the first marking period vice principals meeting with counselors with case managers with students at risk for attendance so if you for example look at our student information system which is powerschool that we use on the right hand side you'll see a picture right there

054that kind of we can click on it and we could find our students who are at risk for attendance and for grades um or high risk which would be a a combination of grades and attendance and so what we we use that to kind of uh tackle certain um issues or try to be proactive with our our students we also get a report on a daily basis from us from our our system manager on attendance uh but now or at least for the since the marking period ended our vice principals myself and the supervisors have been meeting regarding um grades so i do want to thank mr willard who does a great job in mining our power school data for us um and i am uh extremely spoiled that many of our fantastic supervisors are

055are stationed at the high school or at least their offices are so obviously they're they're at the middle school they're at middle schools excuse me in all the elementary schools but having them in the high school allows us to to meet every few weeks every two weeks so we can really discuss how we work with our teachers as well on you know student attendance and student grading so i i do want to just point out for example um mr miss abuddin right jameel has done a great job in using excel to figure out where we have students at risk that would be students with a d and an f and he could when he's broken it down in the stem classes uh by course and then we're also using that as a model for our

056other supervisors but we've what we've done here is kind of had with the supervisors and the vice principals a breakdown of all students with d's and f's we look at percentage points how far they were from passing how far they were from a c uh it's kind of like bubble grades and then we meet and talk with those teachers just talking about grading policies talking about best practices and then at the same time our counselors with case managers if needed or appropriate meet with students and families and of course we have a dialogue between the two groups so that's how we um are tackling our first marking pair of grades and we'll give you a couple of breakdowns in a moment i also just want to add for example supervisor dr b folks who does

057a fabulous job and and she was looking at our star renaissance tests which is just an extra data datum point right it's an extra point that we can look at in addition to grades to see if there are skills intervention that would be necessary but we also added to that the start strong test results which just came out several weeks ago there's nothing really to look at other years unfortunately but it is good because it's the first year right and it's supposed to measure covet gaps or gaps from covid although it's the first year we can look at that and the renaissance test together to see for example if intervention is needed so these are the discussions that are happening at columbia among the supervisors the administrative team and also our teachers if we go

058to the next slide we can kind of break it down so uh the i and we could do this by by grade and so at first when i was looking at some of the scores uh for example the ninth grade 50 51 of the ninth grade had had an a right and then you can see the b c d f uh o means other and that could be pass fail that could be incomplete i'm not really sure how useful this would be without really looking at a comparison from a a previous year so if you go to the next slide is what we've done here to to make this easier we break it down by grade again because we really want um to to work with our vice principals who are by grade level they

059really are instructional leaders they're the secondary um teacher observers as well so just so you can see here i i picked i picked a year that was um obviously uh pre-covered so the last year that we had uh prior to covet and you can see the grade breakdowns um this is in ninth grade um you can see that 63 of grades in 2019 uh were were aids right and right now we're at 49 or 50 um and so you can then go obviously to b c d and f you can see that f went from four percent of all grades were f among our freshmen um last or two years ago right now it's at seven percent so we see a drastic increase there and we see a significant decrease in our a's very similar

060to last year but again last year was a covergirl we didn't think it would make a great comparison we can continue this process if you go to the next year again a drop from um in the a's and then um a doubling of our f's from three percent to seven percent um and this is something that we you know we really do um appreciate feedback from all the different groups that we do have communication with whether it's parent groups the board of education um of course our you know the central uh office but at home in school as well this is something that home in school we were having conversations with uh just last month talking about the freshmen coming in or the sophomores how are they with certain skills that are something that we

061would um you know believe would be middle school skills that say note taking that say listening um being able to listen to lecture and then go to an activity some of those some of those skills that were robbed from them right or they couldn't practice and and work on during covet so those are the things now that we're we're looking to see what skills we really need to embed in our freshmen and and sophomores so it's not again just looking at content but looking at certain skills that students may need uh reinforced um and then if you juniors and seniors actually looks very very similar in in our grades so you can see um our 11th graders um again about 50 of all grades are a's we would like to see that if you go

062to the next slide which is our seniors actually our seniors are actually doing better now at least in the a's um the x when this is really important because it's graduation um you can see that our f's are pretty flat flattened with two percent um two years ago and three percent this year so very important to look at this data but not only of course looking at this now but this is what we're acting on this is where our interventions are on but we also need to think big picture and think about access and equity and you can see um we broke it down as well by ethnicity and you can see for example um eighty percent um uh uh we we look at certain ethnic groups asians eighty percent of their grades were a

063right and then they're the that's the blue and you can see their percentage in bs c's d's and f's you can see percentages black students white students hispanic students and white students and if we can toggle kind of quickly and from miss bodner excuse me from 2021 to 2019 which is the next one i just want to show um in 2019 right um you can see that again obviously as we discussed before with freshmen um there was a drop in a's for example right um and there's a 20 difference um still by ethnicity in in certain groups from two years ago to this year so that disparity has stayed the same but what is different obviously is where one is starting from right so just wanted to point that out um and then of course

064um so we we have this for all our grades but i just wanted to give one example of the freshmen since freshmen and sophomores were very similar and then you can go a couple the next slide um is which is with seniors and if you recall the senior uh grades were better this year uh than they were in 2019 um you can see that there is still obviously an uh a racial disparity but if you toggle quickly we go from here to there you can see um that it it's very similar so i do want to to point that out to let you know that's that's where we are with our first marking period grades we are um just a few weeks into the second marking period but we are working on our interventions and

065again so appreciate the supports that we have when i didn't mention the counseling annex obviously two uh teachers that were brought forth and paid for by our budget and your support of the board of education dr taylor and dr freeman everybody here we're two additional math teach math and science teacher that were added to our slam lab and added to our cougar academy alternative school so we thank you for that um support and at this point that's where we are with the questions that were asked and um be willing to take additional questions for next time or it's up to obviously board president joshua you'll take some questions today excited you can answer it it'll be helpful um uh let's throw red student rep noah morrows hi mr sanchez how are you doing well thank

066you for the presentation uh i just had a quick question i know you were mentioning dual enrollment earlier with some fantastic universities and programs there so if the program is accepted when would that start so right now that we would be looking to begin the programs in the fall right we would be making our presentation to dr freeman and the board of education we did some initial exploration after uh learning about it from board member cuddle actually there are some uh opportunities for the spring but that's a budgetary con consideration because unlike the uh seton hall and most um dual enrollment courses this would be taught by other uh teachers outside of columbia high school we would need though a columbia high school teacher to be present in the room kind of like a distance

067learning lab but that that teacher would be more of a facilitator to ensure that students are um you know completing the assignments um but it's a it's it is a synchronous program and it would be though outside of the school day i guess if you will or outside of their schedule right because if um uh no i hope dr freeman sends it to you to this presentation or i can send it to you you'll see that um some of the programs are really neat and um i must say esoteric but um very specific that wouldn't be part of like the high school graduation um requirement but would be something that you would want in addition again as an elective to kind of demonstrate to colleges uh and universities your interest in a specific topic of

068course um we would probably right if this would be approved or accepted we would then apply the same protocols for dual enrollment and how much it costs it's actually i don't want to get too far because we're just you know exploring it but there's some really great uh opportunities for us but it would start in september or i'm sorry excuse me if students could apply for it if approved in the spring for it to start in september right so you would want to know what class what time things like that awesome thank you no just so you know we're exploring beyond that we're exploring some other um uh agreements as well that principal sanchez and i are looking at so there should be a a vast array of options for students moving into the fall

069awesome thank you thanks board member mal svena and then board member wingfield hi thank you so much for your presentation um i have a few questions i will try to limit them as much as possible but since they were a variety topics um the first one we were talking about um touchstones for graduate fur with counselors and you said that the freshmen are have the freshmen met individually with their counselors or has it just been in like a class setting type of environment well i think the the the whole idea of having um these touchstones is to have them in not want to say class sessions but in small group sessions um so this way they we ensure that we have them as opposed to just setting up individual um appointments where then sometimes unfortunately

070many of our students do not do not go to so the whole idea for the scheduling um the whole idea of having these small group sessions was to um have them that way but of course individual students are constantly in the in the guidance suite and can and can make appointments at any time i i understand my concern is though that we're we're we're not individually meeting with each student to make sure that they are you know getting everything they need and then a uh and an environment uh where sometimes children in a classroom setting don't always like to speak up or or you know deal with some of the issues that might be dealt with in a individual type of setting so um you know that is a little concerning to me but that's

071only for a freshman that you asked for seniors yes so is sophomores and juniors do they meet individuals yes yes they do okay at least but freshmen i as we're seeing with their their grades it might be something we want to look into um so um you mentioned the start strong test um dr freeman have we are we going to be getting results from that at some point soon how were parents informed of the results you must have been watching the us post office they just delivered them today the letters just came in we have until january 13th to get them out so we have to uh put them in envelopes and send them out so we receive the a plethora of boxes we just separated them in our office today in addition once we

072collect all the information and get the data files um we'll be able to go through and put together a presentation and we'll be doing that within the next 60 days so either january or february we'll do a report to the to the committee right thank you um i'm about the sorry about i have some concerns about the profile basically that it is missing context i've read through the profile it i was happy to see the inclusion of the coveted information in i think that that's very important especially for our children uh you know compared to other schools uh where they were in school all the time versus our children that were not last year but we're missing a lot of context and and a lot of it is stuff that has been recommended by the

073um nada which is the national association of like and uh college counselors in the college boards and we're we don't have a lot of context around our grading system our gpa stratus um we don't have medium like sats stuff i can go through all of you know i'd be happy to send you sort of all of the things um that are sort of best practices that have been um discussed with um you know that i i have some concerns about i think that we really need to make sure that our profile is comparable to other districts around us and a lot of these districts do have those type of things included and we want our kids this is an opportunity for us to brag about our kids and to really provide context to the um

074colleges as to you know what is going on with our students and so um i'm concerned that while it has improved there's i think a long way that could it needs to go to make it so that it's sort of you know um the best it can be so that colleges can have an understanding of how thing you know what is going on exactly in our schools um so i'm not going to get into all the details because we don't have the time but the you know i i do have some concerns about some of the um the context issues so i'll send you if that's easier i'll just send that over to you guys sort of all the things um i'm concerned about with that um thanks melissa sorry excuse me um that was

075three questions i just want to get some of the others in and if you still have outstanding ones after that we can come back to you also just to remind all of us that you know in terms of directives you know we should be sending information to superintendent well i'm sending it to the superintendent but thank you um board member winkfield and then right and then cuddle um thank you mr sanchez for the presentation and i really appreciate the level of detail in particular that you shared the first marking period performance data with us i think it helped to give us a context not only for who is experiencing what but also that comparable to the last year that students were in person i think was a really helpful context and the way you sort

076of lifted up some of those concerns um i think you know gave gave me at least some confidence that you guys are aware of where some of the hot spots may be my question is around some of the interventions now that you have this data in particular for our students who um you know are getting grades in the d's and the f's um i i appreciate that these children are on the radars of our administrators and our counselors but oftentimes that awareness can be deficient in um in really you know providing the level of intervention that our young people need so my my question is as a parent if i'm a parent of one of these high school students what can i expect class by class um in a coherent way that my child can

077access to improve their grade so so just to give an example okay you know are there certain things that i can expect to be consistent across classrooms like the ability to be able to make up work or to engage in extra credit activities to be able to improve my grade um what are some of those things i'm sorry i'm just writing it down the the questions i want to make sure so first as a parent what we want to make sure is that um it's not just a parent who happens to have um the time the ability to to contact us right so we need to be the ones who are contacting parents first so i think that's that's part of that's that's part of the answer um and we do that with our counseling

078annex so uh yes absolutely of course a parent can go into the counseling attic website and sign their child up for a chief tutoring for the law for um any specific uh slam lab appointments during the day tuesdays we have something called teachable tuesdays where they do executive functioning right wellness wednesdays but then we also have teachers who can do that and sign students up we've been really um adamant um in our discussions right now in the springfield just so you remember wiggles so you're aware too um about the importance of the conference period as our committee we have a scheduling committee that is looking at you know tinkering with the master schedule or at least bringing a proposal to central office and to the board of education the time that we get to play

079with right is lunch and conference and so how do we take advantage of them do we make changes so that's why we're now keeping track of who's going to conference periods and that type of data so then we can say if we want to make a change who who could it hurt who can it help right i mean if we're adding another period of academic opportunity but then what about that um opportunity for uh intervention so to then answer your question in a third way is um with extra credit and making up those are things that that discussion is happening with our fight not i'm sorry it's not with the parent specific but with the vice principal and our teachers to talk specifically about best practices to talk specifically about okay what are the core

080standards that have to be covered that or i don't want to say core assignments because it seems transactional but the core concepts and standards that really have to be covered in this marking period um you know once we have that agreed upon and and we and we think we are ready to go we can then of course go with the parents as well in educating our parents uh on that on on that card i think that's a great suggestion and i appreciate that can i just ask my question again like a really simple way are there certain things as a parent are there certain things that all teachers are expected to provide at like a classroom level including but not limited to allowing students to make up missed work or allowing students to engage in

081extra credit in order to be able to boost their grade are there some of those things or is that that very classroom by classroom and teacher by teacher that would uh very um i would say by department um and that is so it's not inconsistent i would say from one biology class to another biology class right so i think that's that's important um and it's something that we have discussed uh like for example at the end of the first marking period when we talked about not having as many incompletes or other that we have seen in years past and to really have those uh grades in as as an f right to to illustrate to parents and then talk to parents and email that to parents and say listen if if they would like to

082make this up we're allowing this x amount of days after the marking period and we actually extended the marking period uh this year to do that so that was school-wide yes yeah principal sanchez i just want to add in board member wingfield and the rest of the board one of the things that we constantly talk with the supervisors is you know we talk about student engagement we talk about rigorous activities inside the classroom we talk about student agency we really try to de-emphasize the amount of extra credit that goes on inside of classrooms because we're really aiming towards mastery of content so as principal sanchez said and it happens in other buildings as well we're allowing kids more flexibility on making up work but we're also taking hard looks at instructional strategies inside the classroom

083different types of assessments giving kids voice and choice on how they show mastery of content and and while that might not outwardly go out to parents that's what we're working on internally uh with instructional best practices but i can tell you that just touching on the extra credit piece uh there's really been we've been de-emphasizing the amount of extra credit because you know while that might boost grades in certain areas that's really not focusing on building those foundational knowledge skills along the way if kids are if there's deficits from kids so we're letting them go back and and rework assignments and and look at things in different ways to just as i said show mastery thank you board member right and then board member funnel i just have a couple questions thank you so much

084um mr sanchez for your presentation it was wonderful um but i do have a question like what exactly are you doing for students who are struggling you know in terms of the interventions is working and for dr friedman my question is you know we know what's happening at the high school but district-wide how are kids doing and what district-wide interventions are occurring at the the other schools that's it thank you thank you very much thank you board member ray so um the same uh policy and i don't say policies but the same protocols that we followed with attendance is how we're following with grades so on our thursday meeting with the vice principals we have a spreadsheet it's grade by grade and so what you um have seen is just the ag the aggregate information

085of letter grades but we have it by student um with d's and f's and so for example when you when it says that you know eighty percent might be a grade that includes one student right who has eight grades this marking period or seven grades so we'll we'll see each student individually in a class that they have a d or an f in we see the actual number grade so for example is it a 58 is it um a 71 so it's not a c minus but like a 69 or um write a d plus like that we'll see it by teacher and we see it by department this allows me to work right with the assistant principals who then tackle it by by grade we can sort it by department and so when i

086meet with the supervisors every two weeks we can also talk um at that level and then what we then do is you know they go off for that week they start tackling it and then we start to have individual meetings with students we with counselors with teachers about those grades because we really need so we're we're actually doing it at the at the most granular level with with students and their teachers not necessarily looking at it by right now right by ethnic group and by by absentees we're having those larger conversations with parents uh still with our teachers and counselors and stuff but right now we don't have time it's it's the second marking period and so we're trying to intervene um as much as possible and so what does that mean we um board

087member right are are they hungry are our students not have a ride do our students need support tutoring get making sure even though there's a weight perhaps on a certain section that they get in make sure that they uh we find a slam lab we we've created additional programming like ap core for our students who might be struggling in that first ap class that they've taken and so we have paid teachers as mentors uh through miss hicks's program to to help uh guide some of our students as well as to let's say you know run ap us or ap calculus or ap statistics and they run study groups with those students so board member right i just want to jump in and for time purposes i want to expound i'll just give you some examples

088and we can dig deeper if we have more time or i can send the collective committee some more detail on it but we have academic intervention as you know in k to two and in six to eight we use an online program for reading intervention k-12 called freckle which has been implemented across the district led by dr bean folks as you know we have a pretty robust inrs program going on which creates individual plans for students and we meet with students in need uh there's achieved tutoring which is taking place after school in a few minutes we'll um miss bodner and i are going to update you on some of the data that we found in getting some tutoring opportunities in place in the evenings on the in the weekends one of the programs that

089we are putting in place hopefully in the next month or so is a reading intervention program in grades three to five that will be after school uh in the afternoon we're just negotiating with samaya right now on a a dollar amount for those um reading intervention teachers uh and as i mentioned uh you know overall the tutoring opportunities uh we're gonna have tutoring opportunities uh not only heavily at the secondary level but we're looking to do some tutoring at the upper elementary as well so we have a pretty robust uh support system going on k-12 but very specifically also k through eight to really build those executive functioning skills and um the the academic growth that we wanna see to set them up for success in the high school nine through 12. thank you but

090which have the most impact and for what grades and skills and students well i i mean i i'm kind of biased i think everything that we have in place is uh been pretty impactful and the freckle has been very popular as i mentioned that's an online reading intervention the active academic intervention teachers are wonderful in our district the to two program and the six to eight program are very successful we're seeing growth in both of those areas uh as you notice we don't have academic intervention teachers in three to five so that's why we're building this reading intervention after school program to really target those students so there's not a gap in support there uh i feel the work that we did previously with dr allegria to really revamp our inrs process i hear very

091positive things from the irs teams at all the buildings um and when i meet with achieve and miss bodner and i meet with achieve they tell us that their numbers are some of the highest they've had in years for uh after school tutoring so if students keep coming back i would have to make the assumption that they enjoy it and it's been pretty successful for them so everything that i mentioned i i think always has room for growth but i feel that i you know i don't have any specific data in front of me right now i didn't know that question was going to come up but i'm pretty confident that all of those are helping our students learn and grow dr freeman thank you if i may say i understand what's in place but

092how is it working and popular is different from impactful and i was hoping to hear specifics uh than general data but thank you i was just gonna add from the high school perspective uh miss right uh and i don't know what it's what it was before because it was started uh last year and thanks to the support of dr taylor and our board of education but adding a social worker to the guidance staff adds obviously the value-added element of of social interns because it's a capacity issue for us at the high school for us to have that extra person to um ensure that that student is i know it might sound silly but walked from one class to slam lab or to ensure that that student um gets the support that they need and checked

093in in addition of course to the case managers this the the guidance counselors the the teachers who are doing that and their extra time and help i mean everybody is working you know tirelessly but that i will say is a tremendous tremendous addition that we've had at the high school and i i i so appreciate it even with for example um our cougar academy um program we have a special intern just dedicated to that program it's incredible and a great service so um you know i i just want to thank you for for that and thank the board for that support because that is something that we can honestly say um of course everything's honestly here but the fact that came out weird uh we could say that it's a tremendous tremendous impact for for

094us in supporting the great work of our teachers and counselors great thank you uh board member and thank you president joshua i will be brief in the matter of time um i just want to thank principal sanchez for the presentation um and also uh thank uh principal sanchez dr friedman and bonder for their commitment to do enrollment um and exploring these options for students i think this is a a wonderful opportunity so thank you so much for that um and i hope in the future we also explore additional opportunities um not just beyond dual enrollment uh within those traditional sense of potential new partnerships with um state colleges and hbcus um but other um vo-tech opportunities so thank you for that i think these are wonderful opportunities to move our district forward towards 21st century

095learning um so thank you um i you know i just wanted to also just comment not a question but if i may comment um within the presentation um on the breakdown as well um and just kind of pause and reflect for us as a district it is wonderful that we expand additional ap opportunities and expand our portfolio for students to achieve additional higher levels of attainment um but also be mindful that we're excessive opportunities for students of all levels and making sure we keep that in the forefront at the same time because i think that's really important because all students have promise um all students have the ability to thrive if we give them the opportunity inside and outside the classroom i believe wholeheartedly that all of our students um have the potential to be

096their best selves and uh we don't have students who are one or the other and so i say that because when we are talking about investing in our students whether the tutoring programs or updating our curricula that we're looking at expanding all of our students needs to the future with a guide and a lens towards letting all of our students be their best selves where they are at and helping them move forward because we all of our students matter and so i just wanted to make a comment about that but thank you so much for the presentation and our continued commitment for all of our students thank you wait thank you um your hand is down are you good i know wait one second wait one second sorry uh oh oh good i wasn't muted

097i didn't know if i was muted or not sorry about that my computer screen moves now um i i have just one more um thing which is to reiterate i think what miss um uh right was saying which is that i i really am concerned that we haven't we we've seen one school but we haven't seen the data for all the schools and i just want to make sure that we're doing we get an idea of how all of our children are doing and not just our high school students um in terms of grades and that we're making sure that we are not falling back into the pattern of making this an individualized school issue where you know i'm happy to hear mr sanchez is doing all these great things at chs to help with

098the children but i want to make sure that we as a whole are are doing this and not at just being you know like one school's doing one set of interventions in other schools doing another set of interventions that there's some commonality that is occurring so that our children are getting what they need to succeed and that we don't have as many kids failing moving forward and you know that we catch it early instead of us being reactive instead of proactive i i can just tell you in brief that um probably the the biggest thing that i focus on on a daily basis is keeping equitable practices happening across all the elementary buildings and the middle middle level buildings you know since i since i came to the district i could you know there was

099definitely inconsistencies and i think we've made great strides and we can bring some data forward uh on how students are doing uh you know the examples that i shared tonight of how we're supporting students um that might be struggling or you know just to to elevate them to higher levels uh you know i think we have a lot of good things in place but i can tell you uh and you can confirm this i mean with the building principles we have these conversations uh on a weekly basis about maintaining uh consistent programming across the buildings and the supervisors have those marching orders almost on a daily basis from us so i can assure you that great strides have been made and will continue to be made for consistent practices things like atlas just where now

100there is um a you know a common portal for everyone to just look at similar curriculum we have common resources at buildings so your point is well taken and we will share some of those things in the future but i can assure you that we're making progress every day to to get the consistency all right thank you um it is 808 and we are now getting on topic uh number three so let's move with a little more haste everybody crisper presentations and crisper questions and back to you dr friedman thank you uh these will be quick uh there's some approvals that you have in the share drive for approval there's some curricula um humanities grade nine creative writing for grades nine through twelve and poetry for grade nine through twelve there is um approval for

101[Music] the chs band trip which is taking place later this year and was vetted by slt and nurse porter so we really made sure that all the protocols and all the guidelines were met before bringing this forward there's also two new class proposals uh intro to biotechnology and honor statistics which are stem courses which um uh we're bringing forward for approval as well so um that's it for approvals for december great thanks all the tutoring sure and would you mind bringing up the presentation so miss bodner and i wanted to um just update the board and kind of circle back from um the discussion last month because i know there was some a little bit of hesitation and then it carried over to a board meeting um discussion from some of us so man members

102but if you remember one of the things that we mentioned to you is that we were going to reach out and survey the the middle school and high school staff to see the of their interest in tutoring in the evenings and weekends so these slides i know that you have this presentation but we just want to briefly go through these and kind of overview the data that we collected one of the suggestions from many board members was instead of using a third party uh to really use our own staff and while we agree with that and completely welcome that because our teachers know our students best you know we felt it necessary to go out and collect this data to kind of see where we were with middle school and high school teachers at this

103current time for tutoring opportunities we wanted to assure that all days of the week um sunday through saturday that we are providing tutoring opportunities at various times throughout the day not only after school but if students have extracurriculars that we want to provide evening and weekend hours so the survey collection uh we sent out a survey uh through the building principals who shared with the staff members it was a google form so myself and miss bodnar were able to collect the data uh it went right back to us it was open from november 17th through december 2nd 297 teachers received the survey we collected 151 responses of those responses 102 indicated to us 102 teachers between both middle schools and the high school indicated they were not interested in tutoring opportunities um with our students

104and there were 49 that were interested in tutoring there are when we broke it down and ms bodnar can touch on this briefly um there are 266 time slots and 68 subject areas in classes four sessions throughout an evening um to cover all time slots in all content areas and subjects for middle school and high school so this is the breakdown and you want to jump in real fast and just talk about this i think you're muted if you're trying to talk i'm trying to unmute myself so we went through um everything i think something to bear in mind is when we asked teachers for their um availability they could check off all the different times during the week that they were available but they could also check off all the subjects that they could

105uh possibly tutor in so unless we created a schedule for each student uh each teacher we wouldn't be able to match that up so the amount of subject or amount of sessions is a bit more than what would be actual if we gave somebody a schedule so we just took um all the different classes that we would need tutoring in ask teachers what they would do we have the number of sessions per week of what teachers could possibly do during in math um we at this point we do not have any one for ap calculus or ap stats um for ela we have no one for eighth grade ela but we have you know significant especially in the high school level we have quite a few um for four sessions so it's four hour long

106sessions or each one of these is an hour long um social studies there's a significant amount but there are also some people who could do any social studies support sciences we have some key areas for science in the high school this tends to be a huge area of math and sciences tend to be a huge area that needs support especially um or finding that in the slam lab um world languages uh there are many um but i had to use a second slide to just show the areas that we're still in need so we have a lot of foreign language classes um and do need some um support in certain areas that are a bit outside of the box and that is that's all the subjects and all the slides that we have so the

107reason we the reason we wanted to show all of you this evening you know we won the a we won the follow up on what we told you we were going to do from last month and we kind of wanted to give you a visual of where we stood you know one of the one of the proposals that we're going to bring forward next month uh in really talking to slt and specifically dr taylor about this is that you know with the overarching need to try to fill in these gaps um you know we're hopeful now we're encouraged by this data that we have a few more teachers than we expected so we're going to be able to use a blend of not only our teachers but um use that in conjunction with a a

108tutoring company and you know we're going to continue to explore we've uh since we've last spoken we've looked at two or three other tutoring companies to really get a a wider range of comparisons of what they offer and don't offer but this data i think you know accurately shows you the need to kind of fill in gaps uh where there are subject areas that we really don't have any teachers and and don't have any interest so i think we're in a much better place than we were last month in terms of interest and we'll continue to update you moving forward as we move in uh moving to next month uh probably seeking approval for some type some type of partnership with um a tutoring company and uh if there is an update on any of

109the data there's increased interest we'll let you know but we are anxious to get this started and to provide that support to teacher uh to students in the middle school and high school level um the next phase once we get that up and running we want to look at support at the upper elementaries as well but we want to kind of gauge how well received the middle school and high school tutoring are first hey santa freeman uh board member mouse financial um i looked at the questions that you asked on the survey it didn't show anywhere about pay did we mention that they would be paid did we give them a range of what pay would be because you know teachers so might you know like to know what they're going was yes that well

110i'll be complete i'll be completely transparent um the feedback that we received so i can tell you that uh patrick carrick is continuing to negotiate with samaya on a um on a price for tutoring that's ongoing that's ongoing but what what i guess the question was i understand there's ongoing negotiations related to the amount but when we i didn't see anywhere in those questions that you gave the teachers like hey we will be paying you a this amount or above type of thing so i think i'll just think i think the general expectation is that anything outside of their standard duty results in some sort of in yeah in the email to the building principles uh that was clearly stated which they all shared with the um with the teachers and we couldn't put a

111pay range because it's uh being negotiated right now okay i just remember cuddle and then boy remember right then joshua um so dr friedman i guess my i guess my um i thank you for the presentation that i guess um my question slash comment is um the return response seemed low to me um and i don't know if it was because during the time frame the season of the year so to speak um or there was something more involved in that and if so will there be a repeat maybe um you know uh throwing out the questionnaire again uh within a different type of seasonal time frame to see the responses and how that maybe captures a different purview and then the other part of that would be [Music] you know under 50 uh educators

112based upon the presentation that were potentially interested in the program i don't work in the district i can't speak for that but um just uh hearing from our uh vast community there is support for a um internal community based tutoring program and so perhaps i don't know if we've looked into if we're going to potentially do a second round um in the new year of questions we'll look at how we're framing the questions differently how we are really seeking that out i'm just sending that out via email and then perhaps asking principals or other leaders to emphasize that i don't know how well we encourage them to do that and how well they encouraged people to participate in this type of you know survey um [Music] i think that has a lot to do with

113that too uh surveys are only as good as how they're written but also the responses that they receive so that's something for us i think to look at um i know it there are other opportunities for us to seek additional support for tutoring um but to be fair um and i really appreciate the effort and work on this um i you know i'd like to believe there's more than less than 50 potential interest interested um parties that may want to be involved so maybe it's a matter of advertising other things but um i just wanted to throw that out there it's um even before my tenure on the board and during my tenure on the board uh internally and externally i know that there's been a big support around two dream i just maybe there's

114a different way of capturing that or trying to figure out how we last with that uh to get people interested in that um so just wanted to flag that but i thank you for that um uh trying to do that outreach but this is something that's been ongoing before my time and i'll be post my time currently um but there really is um a large swath of our community internally externally i really want to try to help with this process so i just wanted to flag that and thank you yeah i i i appreciate that feedback um you know we can take a look at um some alternate ways i i can tell you that um myself and miss bodnar met with the three principles in addition to sending out the you know the survey

115link and we really made sure that there was a common message going out and i can just tell you from from the two middle school principals and high school principal uh and you know all three they're very hands-on with their staff and they encouraged them to fill it out they gave them time to fill it out we actually extended the deadline um to try to get more responses um but we can't mandate um them filling out a a survey so we encouraged as much as we could we gave time uh it was a pretty short survey to you know it was collecting crucial information on um not only interest but content area that they could tutor and and availability you know would give us a framework of what we had and the direction we needed

116to go i think they're um you know i listen i'm like you i wish uh the numbers are higher um i think it's going to be dependent on how negotiations go in terms of and monetary which we talked about earlier but we'll see you know and we're going to keep trying i mean it's not going to be a one-and-done attempt i mean it's going to be an ongoing process of of trying to get people uh to the table to to build our pool of tutors internally so you know while at first we might need to supplement with you know an outside source i i can assure you that um you know my preference like yours and many others is to um you know and have have internal stakeholders working with our students that know our

117students the best but we'll keep trying and uh we'll continue to see how it goes thank you board member right thank you listen uh tutoring works for those who attend what are we actively doing for those who are in class and don't or can't attend tutoring the other thing is we keep bringing programs and not developing teachers this capacity to work well with each other to work with students especially those of color and which strategies work for for those groups and and and the grade and the skill we keep hearing about collecting surveys and letting teachers choose topics in december to then do that in their plc's after january so what are we doing during the day for the kids now and how is it working it's december and we should really know these things

118thank you i i think for time purposes you know we can reach out to uh the board um board member rights uh you know i think that a lot of most of the conversations uh through professional development opportunities and instructional strategies and what the different principles have shared i think we're working on a daily basis to meet the needs of the learners in in front of our teachers so that has been a huge emphasis uh in terms of um instruction in our district but you know we can we can share more information in not only future meetings but in written form as well to you thanks um i believe next topic is where's my agenda uh policies policies so there are four policies um up tonight um i'm just going through my notes because i

119can't remember if their first or second reads to be honest with you alternative education dating violence every student succeeds and title one parent involvement miss baldner do you have i can't remember i'm going to let fallacy chair board member bergen jump in i was just going to say board member bergen thank you i just wanted to clarify that the dating violence policy isn't up this month um we didn't discuss it it wasn't on we didn't have a copy of it last night for our policy meeting and it's not in the drive here um we would like to see the um feedback from the task force um i don't know if the task force is still meeting but the people who are on the task force to get that feedback before we moved it forward um

120but the other three we would like to have for first read um and they're in the drive so if anyone has any um comments on them this would be a good time to share them seeing none um thank you board member cuddles on hand or wave or yeah that's a hand thank you uh thank you president joshua uh uh thank you uh board member birkin um so no i mean you addressed it that was my concern in regards to the dating violence policy and getting the feedback i just want to make a comment since i uh this is my last meeting with us at cni that as we are looking at the dating advice policy this is something that has been very um that i've championed during my time before and after now on the

121board um and uh i'm very proud of the fact that we have taken a step to make sure this is an important policy that we're looking at in depth i'm not just on surface i'd like to thank all my colleagues and cni committee and district leadership for your work on this uh trying to move it forward it's very important and um within our doing the district task force thanking my colleagues for being able to pass that as well um that led up to this point um implore us as we're looking at these policies from an inclusive lens of course um not just dating violence including lgbtq plus persons but also from a lens of intervention prevention crisis prevention and resources so as we move that forward so thank you board member cider hello um okay

122so we have a couple of policies that are up for secondly uh the policy committee met last night and we had some uh follow-up uh one item that's up for second lead is the career and technical education policy uh discussion that we've had in the policy committee for the last night and and the previous month was around whether or not we as a district should be promoting this uh technical and vocational education programs within our district meaning uh the secrets of union county vote tech school where we have a shared time relationship with there is also the exes county protect school program and right now and and currently not even just right now in the past we've always been always kind of at a need to know um practice within the district that certain families

123knew about these programs and and other families didn't and whether or not that's something that we want to promote and so based on our conversation last night i want to bring that up to the rest of the board to just have a you know quick conversation about what our feelings are regarding promoting these programs there is a financial cost to using these programs and what do we want our practices to be going forward uh thank you guys my question is if i know those financial crosses district if how much if any of that is passed on to families i know dr taylor had to run to another meeting so i understand it but i just you know the questions for doctors just before we go deep into the frame like there are questions that we

124can't answer here that's fine we'll just get them down and send them over but you know in terms of discussion that that's the question i have yeah um the answer is not there is the answer is no there's none the district covers the transportation the tuition okay great thank you um boy remember right i saw your hand before so i suspect it is not about this topic so i just want to wrap up this conversation first and then we'll come to you is all right oh yes i just wanted to talk about the weapons policy okay we will get to that um foreign is your comment related to this it is uh it is something that um i personally believe that we should be promoting um this option and um it is all of our

125it is not utilized as much as it should be or and it's not promoted very well within our district um i can speak from personal experience when my son was looking into to uh possibly going into votech it was very hard to find information within the district about it um and there are many who didn't have information about it and and um while we you know are promoting aps and all of that that's not always for all of our students but but also votech is also there are many options within votec for our best and brightest students too and we we talk about making it college you know college and career ready but we we seem to be addressing a lot of the college ready we don't talk as much about being as career ready

126and there are some really good programs within the botap department and i'm not asking us to go insane but i feel i do feel like we should have a you know meeting or something just oh outlining what is available to to our teacher our parents so that they can make an informed decision and i and i think you remember yes i was gonna say i i 100 agree with you um you know it's always been my past practice and in any district i've been part of you know i always take the approach you don't know what you don't know and yeah and it shouldn't be just the people that either have an interest or stumble across it or you know randomly find information so we don't have to go crazy about it but just having

127informational evenings um you know i've done everything in the past from uh having um now this is other districts but having all of our eighth graders tour uh the you know the vo tech school and many came out of that experience saying i didn't know this existed you know i'm really interested in x uh to providing uh you know parent nights where we provide information we build those partnerships and i agree with you the focus really is on college and career readiness i i mean the trend for the past three or four years i've sat in conference after conference where uh the different trades different businesses have gotten up and said we're begging we're begging students to look into these trades so i i know the importance of it and there are many opportunities for

128our top students i agree and the enter the intersection of all the the stem focused courses that we offer in our schools are a great connection to a lot of the traits and so i could not agree more and you will you will see um more information and that partnership grow because i think it's i think it's important um it's an important partnership to have so thank you maybe yeah that's what i was going to say oh thank you i know i just wanted to point out that um we did receive some written comments on this policy that um slt was going to be sent after yesterday's meeting to slt to address some edits to it before the second read this week um and i also wanted to i know board member wright wanted to

129talk about the weapons policy which is a policy a secondary policy that i've asked for feedback on by email last week um it's not the agenda tonight but i welcome you know getting feedback by email we can talk about it if the board president wants to bring that in tonight but um at the meeting last night in policy we did discuss asking um joanne butler to review the policy just in response to some questions that board member malespina raised so it will be reviewed by legal before second read yeah and since we have crossed the two hour mark i do want to keep it moving any other questions on the policies that are on the agenda for tonight uh board member manny yeah i i think some of the votech questions and i appreciate you

130bringing it up board member siders or centered around some of my feedback on the policy and i do think administration needs to think about how we're limiting our students when we're only offering these half-day programs and some of the very exciting full-day programs that newark vo-tech offers as well as union um you know our students don't seem to have access to so um that also needs to be part of this conversation thank you can i i'd like to clarify for sort of uh based on our conversation and policy that we received we discussed that but received a little pushback from administration on codifying it within the policy so i that was why we decided to bring it up throughout the at through cni committee to see if that is something we wanted to move forward

131with addressing um i think we should that might be something we from the policy committee effect that we can take that back to the superintendent and get that you know sort of our play versus the administration's take on that and then decide where we go from there remember cuddle just um a quick follow-up on to that you know in all of our talk of otech now and through the years has been as um and or one or the other and i really don't feel that that's true uh votec is not and or or something that is the other votech should it be part of our institutionalized commitment to serving our diverse student body and including all of our students at all levels not some levels not just certain levels or certain abilities that we may

132seem to think that we need to put them into a pipeline that can only maybe do low tech versus ap course credit so i would really implore us as we're moving forward um as a board that we look at votec that we look at these opportunities as the expansion of our full student body as opportunities as we would include opportunities in the portfolio to all of our students at every level and it not and or students or other um and the importance of that is impactful because students should be able to see themselves and have opportunities where they see themselves have see themselves and the future they want to have at all levels and it's not less than it um it is equal to all of our curriculum so thank you all right thank you

133um dr freeman onto the special services okay i'm going to turn it over to mrs b dean special services uh so i'll be brief because i know we're at the tail end here so all of our students who are receiving this i'm so we're very hi sorry has anyone else having trouble with mr time okay i didn't know if it was um you know maybe it looks like you're having a bandwidth issue so we know it's if you turn the camera off i might help you talk better speed through this try that okay any better no still having bandwidth to choose no better now let's try better okay so um what i was just saying that um we're you know very happy to say that all of our students who um are in our ebr

134program are receiving services now um everybody's running we are still continuing to look for an additional ebr teacher because we do want to make sure that we get those missed sessions taken care of um you know we don't want to forget that so we are still looking for someone to come and just work on compensatory services so i'll keep you updated on that as we go i also had the opportunity oh yes i think we lost her [Music] sorry um we are now having trouble hearing you we haven't heard anything about i think you're going to talk about attending the cpac meeting but we haven't heard anything uh on that yet so if you can rejoin maybe we can come back to that um okay wait let's try one more time and then we might

135need to move one and then come back maybe maybe calling in might help yeah uh mr ponce can you help mr down with that yep awesome the informal great thank you um let's move on to i guess the equity would be dr perez yes all right so and we'll come back to finish up with mr dye good evening everyone my update will also be a brief eyes just to inform every everyone that next week i will be working presenting the ap enrollment data for middle school and high school courses and that has been a work that has been done in the collaboration of the tech department mr keith bonds benji basra along with the support of cni so stay tuned and hopefully it won't be too long come next week great thank you um let's

136go back to miss madan okay any luck hearing me now yes yes okay i'm gonna talk really fast i got to meet with cpac we did a meet the assistant superintendent of special services evening it was a great um it was a great evening we had an opportunity to talk about some of the parents concerns and areas that they were looking for information and we had a really nice meeting so um i just wanted to make you aware of that done did you get it all it all thank you so much mr dye oh thank you doc freeman believe that's it that's all i see on the agenda uh well last thing um and this is kind of new to the agenda but this is one of the pieces of feedback i think is great

137just a preview of some topics we're working on for january uh we're going to be doing we're inviting miss bean our k-8 stem supervisor to talk about some of the math updates uh specifically around singapore math and our partnership with greg tang we're going to inviting dr bean folks to talk about some ela updates and some happenings around tc and some diverse reading opportunities that we are embedding into our curriculum k through 12 and we are also inviting dr roblace who is going to give us an ell update along with some um world language um changes that are on the horizon and um any inputs that we uh glean throughout the month um from um from the committee as well on things that they would like to see and discuss uh thank you president joshua

138uh so uh and thank you dr freeman um uh it wasn't announced on that we have new business but i'm assuming this is the new business portion of our meeting um and so that under uh the new business portion of our meeting um i did uh previously flag uh the concern of bathrooms access um to uh ec and cni committee and i just wanted to bring it up tonight um in regards to uh bathrooms and facilities and concerns that have been raised from the community from community members students parents in regards to potential alleged facilities that might not be accessible to all students not just trans non-binary students during the day and students allegedly that may not have been able to have access to gender neutral restrooms or facilities that align with their gender identity

139or in all students should have access to that not just trans and non-binary students because all of our students should be able to have access to restrooms and facilities at any point of the day it's a health and wellness issue it's also a student [Music] health and wellness and safety issue um and i know there's been concerns with that i know there's been dialogue um that have where um perhaps there's been a difference of opinion um through on the school levels uh if that access has been restricted or not i'm trying to be delicate in my conversation um and mindful and respectful um but it's important and um maybe that's not one for this full discussion here right now but i look forward uh during monday's meeting to be able to hear about how we

140as a district are addressing these concerns where those types of concerns go to in the portals we know that in students and parents or caregivers have concerns um how they are addressed and this is not just about taking the concerns um and uh it's not just a yes or no issue um but really are we how are you truly within our best practices ensuring that our school administration our school staff as a whole at all levels um have a clear understanding about the protocols and opportunities not just following the law of the state of new jersey and our board policies to allow all of our students not just turns a non-binary all of our students access restrooms and facilities and how they choose best fits their needs and then how are we reporting capturing that

141information and ensuring that the ongoing understanding training and development of our district is happening um so i appreciate uh under new business allowing this opportunity to raise this and i look forward to monday's meeting where potentially we could hear more about this and i thank the administration in advance for your hard work on our trans and uns binary student policy implementation and also our district commitment not just for ensuring equal access until 109 but ensuring all of our students have access to facilities so thank you thank you board member mouse fina yes um i have um concerns uh yet again about how this meeting is um being run uh i would love to see us reduce the amount of presentations and move more towards making sure we are meeting the board goals and district goals

142and reviewing that and reviewing data points that um are needed and um i am also yet again bringing up the fact that we do not publish an agenda prior to the meeting for the public and others to see um i really think that that is important that we do that so that everybody has an understanding of what is going to be occurring i mean i didn't get the agenda until like rather sort of late uh it wasn't until like friday or monday that friday or saturday that i saw the agenda itself um thank you um boy member bergen thank you um i just wanted to add to board member cuddle's request um to ask about the status of the regulations that would be implementing the transgender policy um to see if they've if the regulations

143have been written or revised and if they're available on the website and being implemented in the schools okay thank you anything else all right uh 8 52 p.m tuesday december 14th uh this meeting is adjourned we'll see you i'll see some of you tomorrow and all of you on monday enjoy stay safe have a wonderful evening take care good night thank you