Orange County Board of Education Regular Meeting - June 24, 2024

001e e e good evening I'd like to call this meeting of the June 24th Board of Education to order please we have uh two members that are uh virtual tonight and um we will Begin by um asking to go into to I'll make motion to go into Clos session for the reason so stated on the agenda do I have um motion to do so motion to go into close session second all in favor I I okay thank you Miss Smiley Miss do yes ma'am I okay all right thank you so much we will move into Clos session and be back shortly thank you e e e everyone I'd like to call this meeting of the Orange County Board of Education to order for uh June the 24th 2024 um I'm sorry it took a long

002and Clos session this evening and we are running a little bit behind but um we are we are here and ready to go we have two board members with us tonight that are virtual so you only get four of us up here um this evening but they are online so we will start with the um public charge and I will read that the Orange County Board of Education pledges to its citizens to conduct its business in a courteous and productive manner showing respect for fellow board members staff and citizens the board ask at citizens to conduct themselves with the same courtesy toward both School personnel and each other a moment of silence will be observed before each meeting in addition to the moment of silence the board will recite the Pledge of Allegiance the board

003asks that you check your cell phones and other electronic devices to be certain that they are either turned off or on vibrate to avoid Interruption of the meeting we will now stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and if you would observe a moment of silence okay thank you very much um for recognitions this evening um as you many of you know and we mentioned at our last board meeting um June is pride month and the board has an updated resolution um I think the first one was ma written about two years ago it has been updated and we would like to read

004that resolution tonight and then we will vote to make that resolution part of um the um agenda tonight couldn't think of the word um so we have um each one of us is going to take part in reading a part of this and we will start with um Mr Atherton yes whereas the Orange County Board of Education acknowledges the dignity and the worth of all students and employees and strives to create a safe caring and responsive School environment to facilitate student learning and achievement and whereas the board prohibits discrimination on the basis of race color national origin sex gender identity sexual orientation disability or age and as noted in policy 1710 the board board will not tolerate any form of discrimination harassment or bullying in any of its educational or employment activities or programs and

005whereas OCS gender Support guideline states that OCS staff play an essential role in creating a supportive C School culture and advocating for the well-being of all students it's important for school staff students and parents to be aware that transgender non-binary and gender non-conforming students may be at a higher risk for peer um where is that ostracism ostracism uh victimization and bullying because of the basis and of and or the possibility of misunderstanding and lack of knowledge about their lives schools must be proactive in creating a school culture that respects and values all students and fosters an understanding of gender identity and expression within the school community and whereas June 2024 ma marks the 54th anniversary of the first Pride Parade which came one year after the Stonewall uprising of 1969 six nights which was six

006nights of riots led by transgender women of color like Mara P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera sparked when LG btq plus people resisted police harassment and brutality during an early morning bar raid it was a historic moment that served as a catalyst for the lgbtq rights movement in the United States and around the world and whereas the decad since one of the where the whereas the decades since have been one of struggle and celebration for the lgbtq plus Community despite increased support and acceptance lgbtq plus young people still face many challenges for example without accepting families that are more likely for example without accepting families they are more likely to experience homelessness and nearly five times more likely to attempt suicide and whereas in June 2024 there are anti-lgbtq plus bills in the US in including

007bills that would limit representation of gender diverse and lgbtq plus people in the curriculum in schools access to Medical Care and participation in sports and whereas the Trevor Project reports in 2024 that quote roughly half of transgender and non non-binary young people found school to be gender affirming and those who did reported lower rates of attempting suicide and whereas the Trevor Project National survey on lgbtq youth mental health in 2001 reported that 75% of lgbtq plus youth had experienced discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity at least once in their lifetime and over half had experienced this form of discrimination in the past year and whereas lgbtq plus people in the United States face disparities in employment Health Care education housing and many other areas Central to the pursuit of happiness in the

008United States and whereas Cornell University's what we know project found that lgbtq plus people of color face disproportionately higher rates of discrimination in the workplace and community at large exceeding discrimination experienced by both white lgbtq plus people and by straight people of color and whereas the Orange County School Board appreciates the many contributions made by lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer lgbtq plus students staff families and community members to the vibrancy of the broader School community and whereas it is imperative that young people in our community regardless of sexual orientation gender identity and expression feel valued safe empowered and supported by their community and now therefore be it resolved that the Orange County School Board does hereby proclaimed the month of June as the lgbtq plus pride month in Orange County schools and be it

009further resolved that the Orange County School Board commits to working with lgbtq plus students families staff and community members to build safe and Equitable schools where all students families and staff members are valued for who they are and where diversity is celebrated and be it further resolved that the Orange County School board encourages Central Services and administrators to support Educators across grade levels and content areas to acknowledge and celebrate lgbtq plus pride month each June and be it further resolved that the Orange County School Board urges all students staff and community members to respect and honor our diverse community and to build a culture of inclusiv inclusivity and Equity not only during lgbtq plus pride month but during the other 11 months of the year as well I would like to ask for a vote

010to adopt this resolution so moved second all in favor I I I I all right motion is adopted this is adopted and it will be signed um and placed with uh other information from tonight thank thank you all for for uh reading that okay we need to move to the um agenda adoption for tonight um is printed before you some Mo second all in favor I I I I thank you okay we have uh public comment I believe we will now hear public comments speakers will be called in the order in which they signed up each speaker will have three minutes yielding time to other speakers is not permitted if a speaker has written materials they would like to share please hand them to our board clerk Franklin mckune and he will distribute them to

011the board the purpose of public comment is for the board to hear from members of the public not to engage in back and forth discussions per our policy board members will not respond to speakers during the public comment session the board greatly values public feedback and welcomes all comments regardless of viewpoint however please be reminded that children are often present at these meetings and that our public comment policy prohibits profanity vulgarity and personal abuse of any person we ask that all comments be civil respectful and free of personal attacks any speaker who violates our public comment period or otherwise exceed the balance of order and decorum will be given a warning continued violations may result in the speaker being ruled out of order at which point we'll move on to the next speaker our one

012and only speaker for tonight is Carrie haml good evening I ask my name is Carrie Hamill I ask that the school board's ethics policy on tonight's agenda have critically important internal control components added before its passage including the requirements for quarterly written disclosures by board members of about all School business dealings as well as their student access including to students pii data Additionally the alarming responses by OCS professional and dedicated teachers which are contained in the 2024 teachers working condition report do not feel adequately reflected in tonight's board slides that I reviewed what is the tangible plan of action for example example at gravley Hills uh for an iMed mediate correction action plan to improve the working conditions notably which is the same educational environment reped relied upon by Wonder the wonderful children of this

013community finally the coercive surveying and the coercive research on human subjects especially fragile populations minor children being one is an area of interest of mind which long predates Panorama education a chosen School official and vendor of OCS a few questions what were the response rate percentages for each of the last three pan Panorama surveys deployed to minor children attending OCS for the entire business relationship between Panorama education and OCS which the board here has approved what survey responses are tied to the identity of a minor child rather than Anonymous third what steps does an OCS Guardian parent need to take with specific to review their child's responses as well as to request that the data be deleted four what is the return on investment or o Roi as we hear a lot about the that

014analysis of Panorama education's contract based upon OCS participation rates and corresponding validity are we paying less for the contract because less people are are responding what is the last time is if ever that the Panorama Ed ation contract with OCS has been audited including a data safety analysis and the actual data accessibility given to G Guardians and parents please explain if able during tonight's presentation how Panorama education surveys are the best gauge of Student Success as well as the safety safest product I have uh forwarded a couple articles for the board's consideration I also ask uh in terms of open government that that um remote participation by board members be limited and really scrutinized and that when it does happen that you look at letting remote participation for the community including for public comment I

015appreciate your service thank you thank you okay um we have our consent agenda um do we have a motion to approve as is so moved second all in favor I I I okay thank you it is approved okay dis discussion action items tonight first we start off with the school nutrition contracts renewals and rebids Miss Pitts how are you tonight I'm good thank you for asking so good evening board chair purcel Vice chair Richmond members of the board superintendent Dr Jones staff members and members of the public who are either in person or viewing tonight I'm here to discuss and obtain approval for the new and renewal contracts of annual School nutrition contracts for food fresh fruits and veggies dairy products supplies and services typically I know this is done via consent but I just

016wanted to be here to answer any questions Orange County Schools School nutrition service participates in the local bid process but also in the North Carolina procurement Alliance which is a voluntary purchasing group organization formed and led by the school nutrition services section of ncdpi the mission is to work in Partnership to procure highquality reasonably priced goods and supplies that will ensure the health well-being and academic Su success of our students the formal bid process is conducted by NPI contracts are entered into for one year and have the ability to renew for four additional one-year terms this year OCS has elected to renew the following bids Foster cavernous for fresh fruits and veggies renewal 304 School nutrition is also asking for the renewal of locally bid contracts including pet milk for dairy products renewal 304 and

017you'll notice that that contract went up in price from last year that's to help provide milk for this year's meal boxes that are going out over the summer uh portion pack SFS pack for safety sanitation training and services and materials again renewal 204 Pepsi Bottling Venture for Beverages and vending services in the middle and high school renewal 24 and K12 Rd for the registered dietician consultant service to run our nutritional analysis to ensure that our menus comply with USDA requirements this year we had to rebid and are proposing to award contracts for the following vendors Cisco Raleigh for food and groceries Riverside paper for supplies and chemicals and Cisco Raleigh and Pepsi Bottling Ventures for beverages sold as supplemental sales to all of our students the superintendent recommends the Board of Education approve the award

018of the new and renewal contracts and services agreements as discussed tonight for school nutrition services for school year 2425 contingent on the board attorney approval of the non-monetary terms and conditions and I can tell you I have her back from Miss Lyn today so she has I believe just two of the contracts left and that's just because they are on um renewals renewal paper that's not orange school's contract so any questions for me tonight Mr a I know you have a question I I do have a question um so typically in our bids we look at their their cost and you know our relationship with them have we started looking at their environmental impact the the amount of recycling material they're used and things like that because I I know that you know shipping us

019stuff there's there's much more e um eco-friendly ways to do it but maybe that is something we can discuss and policy or others but it's just a thought I had as I was looking through the magnitude of what we do and you know we do have the ability to help impact at least in our community other questions Miss Dole Miss Smiley do you have any questions I'll ask one I have one real quick one thank you for this and um and thanks for pointing out because one of the questions I had was are there changes and you said in the pet milk I I didn't quite notice it yes so P renews July 1st and everyone else renews August 1 so we've their bid for their contract from last year as far as price um

020there's also reduction in we did not renew the Branded Pizza contract we had some issues last year so that contract has uh been removed and we added that extra funding on to the Cisco so we will be doing in-house pizzas this year and kind of making those um a different variety for our students well that's really interesting thank you for sharing that with problem we'll have to come me pie meet you there okay do I have a motion to approve this motion to approve sorry just as a reminder can we get the motion to approve contingent on attorney review because my colleague's almost done with the review so far so good okay motion to approve contingent on attorney approval second all in favor I I I all right motion passed thank you okay up next

021is our redistricting planning update yes ma'am that would be me good evening chair pcel Vice Sher Richmond members of the board Community um I am going to lead us through this discussion on uh redistricting and reassignment I also have team members here that are able to jump in and answer any questions uh Mr Foster and Miss Joy Tolen so um next slide if we take a look um I want us just to talk through the timeline of of this round of redistricting that started in Fall of 2022 you know one of the main reasons why we went into redistricting was looking at effn cheeks being over capacity um and then having multiple elementary schools that were under capacity so there was some spot reassignments that were done because of construction that was happening at effin

022um we had mobile classrooms added to help with that swing space and that happened in the fall summer of uh 2023 so looking to right now we know that we are still experiencing some growth out in meban but we also have schools um that we saw as overc capacity effin cheeks uh New Hope Elementary School and River Park Elementary School um when we looked at our Orange County School's adjusted capacity which was still kind of trending upward um the mobile classrooms have provided some temporary um relief to to the overcrowding um we still have some high priority needs at each of those schools um and we also have the bond um that is coming up in 2024 next slide next I just want us to walk through C capacity enrollment and utilization and where we

023get each of those numbers from so Wilber came in and they did a facility assessment and some master planning for us they um identify our capacity they measure each room they look at DPI standards as far as how many students can go into a classroom depending on the square of footage and then they also take a look at our class caps um that are mandated by the state and then say so they take a look at building the whole building and decide what our capacity can be what they don't take into consideration is how we use those buildings um ored on the other hand we take those um numbers and they give us projections for enrollment over the next 10 years here in Orange County Schools we had to um consider and figure out the

024discrepancy between the capacity numbers that we were seeing and what wart was um projecting or accounting for us and so we have OCS adjusted capacity um and looking at those numbers we found um the last month or so that we needed to really take a look at how we were utilizing our buildings and establish a process to obtain those numbers next slide so just going back I'm going to talk through capacity um and projections and building utilizations again but using the visuals here on this slide you'll see that this is what we provided as far as our capacity and you'll see effin Cheeks is red all the way across and we have schools that are fluctuating into orange and yellow um which means that they are at 100% or growing into 100% capacity or over

025the next slide you'll see that the three schools that I mentioned previously that we were most concerned about being overc capacity effin cheeks New Hope Elementary and River Park Elementary School this is just a closer look at those three if we go to the next slide I wanted to talk a little bit closer about what these numbers actually mean so we see the capacities in relationship to the three schools that we were mainly focused on when we were um going through redistricting process so we see wilper and those capacities for 2324 and then we see the current enrollment for 2324 and then we see a number that is the OCS adjusted capacity um so OCS adjusted capacity is a number that we um got to by looking at prek and EC separate classrooms because those

026are not included in Wilbert's numbers and so initially we took a look at our um capacity numbers given to us by wilper and across the board we took in into account for prek and um EC separate which didn't actually look at each individual school and what they were actually housing as far as prek and EC um separate classrooms and so that caused a little bit of a discrepancy there next slide we'll take a look at um what we did to get to our building utilization and account for how we are utilizing each space at each school so this first step we um met with our principles and we ask each of them to um walk their buildings and to analyze how they were using each and every space and to document that for us and

027this was for the upcoming 2425 school year year we asked them to account for every core classroom so that excludes um any electives or specials classes and um it included our EC separate because we were able to put a cap there but it also um excluded our prek classrooms but we were able to account for that and we'll show you that on the next slide so on the next slide you'll see um building utilization this is our process to take a look at how we are utilizing each building this is a process where we're able to look at what Wert says is our capacity but also because they don't account for utilization we have to account for that and to figure out where those discrepancies lie so that we can actually see what our true

028capacity is and we're able to determine whether or not we're truly overcapacity and um just being honest when we talk with principles of the three schools that we said were over capacity um they disagreed um and so this initially this is where this came from was would if we're saying that schools are overc capacity and our principles are saying no we actually have some space in some areas um then we needed to take a closer look and that's what we did and so that's where these numbers came from and so these are actual numbers of what we are projecting to use our spaces for for next School school year and so if you look at um New Hope For example you will see that um because and I'm going to use New Hope because they're

029probably the most confusing because they have the Dual language program so I'll walk us through that um section there New Hope um if you go across the line they have five kindergarten classes the class cap for kindergarten is 18 and then in the next section they have three um first grade classes the class cap is is 16 but if you look directly under that New Hope Has Two dual language classes for first grade the class cap for dual language is 24 and so that's where there was some discrepancy with wilart because we're allowed to have higher class caps for dual language because they have two certified teachers that are in those classrooms second and third the class clap is 17 and you can see um our traditional classrooms have five SE and third grade classes

030and um our dual language has four and I can go down the list but um once we tally up all of those numbers with the class caps given to us by the state we're we're able to see a total um utilization as far as the capacity that for the class caps that were able to use the spaces that are identified for next school year is actually 621 and the enrollment going in their current enrollment right now is six I'm sorry 520 and if we go back to the other slide our enrollment for New Hope for next school year is actually projected to be 514 and so when we take a look at that um and we can kind of reconcile some of the discrepancies there we see that there is actually some space in those

031classrooms or in the schools as far as capacity goes next slide so I want us to go back to our four pillars for student assignment um student achievement is you know it's not just about building utilization and capacity and spreading students across schools right it's also about balancing our schools as far as student achievement so when we take a look at reading scores because that's what's utilized and it's not current reading scores but it's reading scores over the historical data over the last 10 years for that area we see that there's a 16-point range the lowest average being 46% at one school and the highest average being 62 um so we do know that there's still some some work to do in those areas um but at the same time we don't have large ranges

032like we don't have schools that are in the low 30s and schools are in the upper 70s as far as historical data but there's still work to do and we don't we don't want to minimize that um we also have a pillar for stability and we're that's where we're focused on right now we have have uh redistricting or I'm sorry we have a bond referendum where we're proposing a new school and we don't want to have to move families multiple times we don't believe that that is going to be fair to our community or the students that are having to move um and then proximity of course and operational um efficiency will be factors that we take in into consideration the the other area where our work is going to have to continue is when

033it comes to diversity and really promoting balance um throughout our schools um and we know that um but again if we go back to the the pillar where we're talking about stability we really do not want to move a student and then we go through this Bond um you know erect a new building and then we have to move that student again next slide so throughout this process you know we had a plan that was approved um I don't know I've only been here five months so it couldn't have been but a month or two ago right um for redistricting and part of that was to um have a advisory Council that represented each school and we had five um members that we were going to select from each school to represent their school community

034and so we went through that process and we had two meetings with the advisory Council here I just wanted to point out some plus um and delas from The Advisory Council um they do know that this recommendation is coming tonight and they were very much in support of it um but what was explained to them is um redistricting is part of policy for us that we will be looking at on annual basis and so we wanted to also collect um plus Deltas so that when we go to go through this process again that we have that feedback and we can move forward from there so just um to sum up recommendations for tonight um our recommendation is to stop redistricting for the 2 5 26 school year given all of the unknowns that are to

035come with the bond that's upcoming and um and looking at the building utilization the process that we went through that is a process that we are going to go through um once if not twice a year because we're going to have to closely monitor how our buildings are being utilized and the capacity and when we begin to to reach that number where we're overc capacity we don't want to have teachers on carts um so we we're going to have to take a look at that and try to get ahead of it so that we can start the conversation again about whatever redistricting needs to look like at that moment um so we will continue to do building utilization once or twice a year once in the fall and once in the spring um also want

036to recommend that we consider you know because of redistricting we closed um schools um for transfers and I know we're past the transfer window but I also want to bring with this recommendation a recommendation to open select schools I think those were Central Elementary and Pathways Elementary because those were automatically closed because of redistricting so I would like to be that to be part of um the recommendation tonight as well and um we're just we're going to focus on the bond um which we know um is in place to reduce the average age of our buildings to address utilization and and to look at more permanent Solutions um we don't want mobile units to be a permanent solution right now they're alleviating the overcrowding in our buildings um but we do recognize that stability is

037important for families it's important for students and there there are too many unknowns at the current moment so at this time I will take any questions or any discussion yes um one question I have is uh thank you for staff and everyone getting together and really looking at the data to address what we were trying to achieve and especially with the short-term and long-term uh issues that are coming up and I think it's important for us to definitely not move families potentially multiple times um the question I had is one of the things that occurred I want to say two three years ago was um some spot redistricting for high school where it puts some strange case of students for Cedar Ridge on the other side of 70 being driven all the way down because

038capacity concerns at Orange High and looking at the data now that doesn't seem to be resonating that that's needed and I wonder if we should revisit that and to improve our transportation and also not to have people that are coming in going why are we you know anyway anyway so I I'd just like us to consider revisiting that we don't have to do it tonight but that's just one thing in the back of my mind of that spot redistricting that we had to do during that time because of uh capacity yep I agree and I will say um Miss Tolen you know coming on in into her role as student director of student assignment has been instrumental in uncovering you know a lot of areas where we can improve um efficiency in transportation and um

039in those same efforts and so we're we're working on some of that as we speak thank you questions just smileing Miss Dole do you have any questions M so just to just to clarify just to make sure I'm understanding that last point so so what we're saying is there may in fact be some small spot redistricting uh movements year-over year in the meantime until we are ready for a larger redistricting is that right yes ma'am we're going to review um our capacity numbers our building utilization every single year so that um we can make those moves that help to increase efficiency and effectiveness of transportation and other operational and and you know just really the bus ride time for some of our students yes we're going to look at redistricting every year per policy M

040do thank you um yeah just to say Dr Jones I appreciate the presentation and and the timeline um thing things have changed and I appreciate the kind of synthesis of how we got to where we were even just even just a year ago at this time we were anxious that we wouldn't even have those um mobile units at effland you know for that for the just the school year we just wrapped up so it it makes such difference that we have that we have some flexibility and also I appreciate the increased understanding um for example with the Dual language um numbers being different and and why that is so I feel like we keep getting closer to a better understanding and I really like the idea of um fall and spring building usage um updates

041and and again it makes sense while we are on hold uh waiting on this Bond um you know the vote in November that so I appreciate the synthesis and the timeline of the situation and I'm supportive of of the requests Miss Howard yeah I just want to say thank you this is you know we've had a lot of presentations with a lot of numbers and these numbers make sense thank you for reconciling lots of different data sets it makes a huge difference and walking us through it um also just so I understand you know and I um I love the way you've um connected redistricting and Facilities right because that had to happen um for lots of reasons um there is a lot more work I guess I just wanted to make sure that no

042one's taking away uh from this meeting that we won't need more school capacity right we just are because of the mobile units because of the way things are being utilized that their they um we're pretty close to capacity on our elementary schools and um but this is really wonderful I thank you so much I'd like to thank everyone who worked on this and I do think as somebody who's been here for a very long time that looking at redistricting every year and what can be done to make it so that it is not such a huge project is better than what we have been doing in the past um it seems we wait four or five years years and then all of a sudden it's a mad scramble and and people are upset and we

043don't want that and so I think this this plan takes it to that level where this is on the table at all times and it is being looked at and by staff and everybody else and I think everybody should benefit from that so thank you so much for that so do we have a motion approve um I I need Clarity on what we are approving there's a list of recommendations one that may conflict with our policy so I just want to just understand what what the motion is if we're motioning just to stop redistricting sure that makes sense but but Dr Jones you had a list and that to open the schools Etc so I just want to make sure we're clear on what we're doing yep so the recomendation is to stop redistricting and

044also to we had two schools that were closed because of redistricting that are under capacity and those are Central Elementary and Pathways Elementary School the others were just recommendations or and next steps that we were going to do okay so the motion is for those two those two School motions are for those two and then to continue the work as prescribed right okay I'm I'm okay I just like I said it's a little different than that so too hard action and to keep keep working to stop the redistricting and opening up the two schools right and to continue working on and to continue to study the building utilization and to continue to work with the bond process so those are just work working steps I'm okay with all four of them yeah I the I

045guess I'll just say it out loud the only one I was concerned with is it says redistricting twice a year and I think the policy says yearly and if that's true we should have that through the policy versus making a board's movement yeah and that should say review um building utilization up to twice a year okay yes okay because that's what got me going back to look to the but once we do that we'll be able to see it really is one and the same once we start looking at building utilization we'll we'll have to start thinking through redistricting but to make a recommendation to redistrict that would only come once per year yes got it so we good we're good good appr uh motion to approve superintendent's recommendations second all in favor I okay

046motion approved thank you very much and again thank you all for your work on that okay the uh policy 7960 the employee on buds first read so I I guess I'll kick it off as the uh the policy chair so um Dr Jones had brought this back to the policy committee um to talk about the UT's role versus a specific um I guess I forgot the original wording what was it the office office and versus role so we went back and uh took that through the policy committee on discussions of the word being rooll versus office and ensuring um that we maintain throughout the policy that this is a person that will be bound confidentially uh ensuring everything that we wanted originally is still in there but there were some minor tweaks and uh evaluation

047I think along with changing out the word office to rooll but I'll turn it over to you Dr Jones just for getting Clarity around that yeah sure um so some of the main updates to the policy was a change from Office of ombuds to a position that can either take on the role of ombuds or even be contracted Services if we needed to go that route um the updated policy allows for me as a superintendent to supervise and evaluate this person if they are if they serve as an OCS employee and um the umb's role will serve as part of their um responsibilities assigned to them uh however the employee will be independent when serving in the role of the UDS uh they will be expected to maintain confidentiality to include me as the superintendent

048and will have direct access to the board attorney and board um there will uh still be an expectation of reporting General Trends and any identified systematic concerns that are um mean to that to provide a means to support organizational change to the superintendent and the board and those will happen I believe it quarterly okay any other changes no I I do want to add one thing I do think um having this type of position and and looking at supporting some of our organizational change will help us with um you know issues across the district and things that we're identifying when we do talk about teacher working condition surveys um that come out every other year um to help support that work Miss um Miss Smiley yes thank you um yeah I mean I just want

049to um uh say you know I think if this Orange County Schools I don't think would justify a full-time UDS position and so the idea of pairing it with something else I understand that as the recommendation I I just I do think it's incredibly important for this person to be um in a role that's as separate as possible from the dayto day um not having ongoing working relationships with other staff members um to the extent possible it it just would need to be a really sort of unique position I think because of the role of the Eds and the importance of that person credibly maintaining uh Independence um from the rest of the organization I think that also would help gain trust and and use the office of the UDS or use that position um

050with trust that is built if that is also the case U Miss Hower yeah so to that point and I just I'll because we talked about in policy and um and it might just be me but but in section B where because of to me the it's critical that the Ombudsman is independent and so but in in policy it says the ud's um uh the the um superintendent and subject to the superintendent General supervision as to non-discretionary duties and obligations such as work hours and leave requests and while it makes sense if the ud is a employee or partially employee I'm not sure why we need to specify this in policy because it um you know it's it just it seems procedural to me but I was it it it may be me but it

051just bothered me a little bit I I would strike it I didn't know what how it adds value I was curious if anyone else has a problem with it maybe not motion to approve second all in favor I okay so um I think I want to do a second motion to wave second reading so you could move forward Dr Jones with discussion on this would that be that would be very helpful so motion to wave second reading second all in favor [Music] I thank you all right thank you all very much we move into our work session with end of year data review planning and Dr dryer my technology is not working but that is okay we improvise good evening everyone I hope everyone is well I want to bring to you this evening a

052end of year data review particularly around our attendance discipline and Panorama information that's in alignment with strategic plan goal for empowering culture so tonight we'll focus on two um from that goal goal 4.1 increasing the average daily attendance rate of each and every student from 89% to 95 5% or greater by 2026 and goal 4.2 reduce the suspension rate of black students from 9% to 3% by 2026 and reduce a suspension rate of multi-racial students from 8% to 3% by 2026 so first we'll take a look at attendance here you see the average daily attendance rate um what we have listed is for OCS in the far left column and then each school this is for the complete 2023 2024 school year according to goal 4.1 um our goal is to reach 95% by 2026

053as mentioned before and we are currently at 91.7% so while it does show that we are on track we know that there is still work to do um in the areas of reducing our absences so that we can increase our attendance rate so next we want to show Daily absences for the school year showing numbers for students that are missing 3 to9 days 10 to 17 days and 18 plus days so as you can see it it's broken down by yearround Ka 8 and 912 um year round have separated out from the elementary schools just based off of the dates of those attendance and how we had to pull those reports um K8 is pulled and then 912 is separate as well uh because of of course their attendance is pulled by period and then

054by daily but what we have here is for their daily attendance so those that you see or 18 plus days that should be a lower number um um those are the students who have missed 10% or more um days during throughout the school year so the numbers that were shown and how they were pulled in that last slide is based off of the model by attendance works and attendance Works um is a model of how to track student attendance data and an effort to uh drill down by individual student to see how we can assist students and provide interventions to them to help to improve their attendance and so you can see here that it mentions truancy versus chronic absences we know that in treny we're only looking at unexcused absences where when we're looking

055at and tracking chronic absences all absences including suspensions um are taken a look at so that we are making sure that they are getting and and not missing days of school missing 10% of schools which equates the two days a month um over a school year can make it harder for students to learn that equals to 18 days which is a sign of chronic absence and so our goal is to reduce that and hopefully U make sure that all of our students are below that 18-day Mark but for those that are um having those conversations with students with parents and with teachers as well to bring some awareness around how do we um how can we help our students and our families to bring some awareness and um provide intervention so that they are able

056to um come to school because we know that that happens for a variety of reasons um and some barriers that can take place for that so from recommendations for continuous Improvement in how we support schools um first thing is having some data review meetings um with our schools on attendance so making sure that schools are pulling that 3 to 9 10 to 17 and 18 plus days again that drills down to the individual student so we can see if Johnny has missed 18 plus days what are those things that we can do how is he missing um school is he missing the bus every day does he not have an alarm clock um are there some negative connotations that they have um with school so how can we help them to um improve that and

057make that better so what we want to do is work with schools to look at um pull that data and review that data so that we can see what students we need to provide intervention for we want to establish a Data Tracking System for attendance again using the attendance Works model and then increasing awareness um I think sometimes we assume um because we are all working in education that everybody understands the importance of attending school um and so making sure that our parents and our caregivers are aware um of knowing that 10% of school is two days a month um they may not know that so bringing that awareness to them bringing some awareness to our students and educating them on the importance as well um and then getting some feedback from our students about

058what makes them want to come to school more um and then our staff and also how we can um help them to to encourage our students and our families to attend school more some professional development opportunities technical difficulties it is my day for that I will continue professional development opportunities I think it's um attendant Works model um and so bringing awareness and teaching our staff about the attendance Works model developing a schoolwide attendance plan and what that can look like for schools best practices Miss and misconceptions around attendance building the homes School relationship because we know when there is a true relationship between school and home um that students are more likely to attend school because they know that if my principal or if my teacher is going to make a phone call home or

059something's going to happen or if my mom is going to find out because they're going to say something um or the reverse if my mom is going to call the school and say something's going on okay thank you that um they're more likely to come to school and then interventions and resources for students and caregivers so providing that development for our staff around what interventions are appropriate um age appropriate for our students um and parents and caregivers when we're trying to approve those attendance models thank you so next we'll go into discipline and sharing some of that information with you today so first we'll talk about the highest frequency of consequences for office referrals so as you can see this is a year-over-year comparison between years 2223 and 2324 in 2223 there were 4,400 53

060total referrals and this all is document is uh data documented in our Educator's handbook which was our incident reporting system in comparison to 2324 where we only had 3,800 total referrals in the graph here you'll see that there are a number of consequences that were mostly uh assigned to uh students when they were referred to the office this is not an exhaustive list of consequences that have been assigned but these are those that were happening most often one that I want to point out um is restorative activities um we see that it is the only one that is increasing and that's positive that's what we want um for that to increase what we want to make sure is that when we are indicating that a restorative activity has taken place um that it is actually

061a restorative activity and that um it is being done effectively and efficiently with our students um but as we talk more about those restorative practices and also looking into our code of conduct we'll be able to help our um staff to get more of those skills to be able to have those activities with our students next we have year over-year days of out of school suspension by demographic this is also year-over-year comparison between 2223 and 2324 this is listed by days so in 2223 there were 2,66 total days of out of school suspension that were assigned to students in comparison in the year 2324 there were 288 total days of out of school suspension that were assigned to students and just to paint a a bit of a picture because we see that it has

062decreased looking at an average 6-hour instructional day a total of 12,456 hours of instruction were lost due to out of school suspension dur the 2324 school year compared to 15,638 hours lost in the year 2223 that's a difference of 3,180 hours of instructional time time gained back over that over the 23 24 school year um by decreasing the out of school suspension information now we're not saying that we don't want anybody to suspend anybody we do realize that there are incidents and things that take place where that are require for out of school suspension but we also want to make sure that the consequence fits the student it fits the incident it fits the case um and so there are some cases where we have to uh do out of school suspension for our students

063now taking a look here at uh the demographics we see going through each group that they each have decreased but I would like to note that our Hispanic students um as you can see increased between 23 2223 and 2324 and so while our current strategic plan only focuses on our black students and our multi-racial students um we can have some conversations about the possibility of adding our Hispanic students for that goal so that we can decrease those numbers for them as well this next slide notates students repeatedly experiencing out of school suspension so what you have here are students that are repeatedly assigned out of school suspension this is not days and so these are total numbers of students um that have repeat consequences of out of school suspension throughout the year year over-year and

064these are also at a decline um and as noted in the last piece of data also arise only in our Hispanic students now looking at our strategic plan goal for .2 that specifically asks for information around our suspension rate by race and again it follows the trend of decreasing in multiple groups including the two groups that are focused on in that goal and showing our Hispanic students have increased from 5 to 6% additionally we have ISS suspension rate as well in alignment with go 4.2 and as you can see here it's also broken down by group and how those numbers have changed and decreased year overy year as well next wanted to mention information and share some information about boomerang Boomerang is used as our alternative to suspension program and wanted to show information about

065students that are going to that program students that we've refer to those to that program students who are suspended anywhere from 3 to 10 days are eligible to be referred to the boomerang program they attend um that office and receive tutoring social emotional skills um so that they have somewhere to go during their suspension time they're not just at home they're still doing work if they attend the boomerang program um and are successful by completing all of their days there when they return to us um it is the notation is changed from out of school suspension to end school suspension um so they um are able to get that changed so as you can see looking at both 2223 and 22 2324 um based off of the number of referrals of students to the boomerang

066program we have about half of our students um each year who are successfully complete and then we have about half that are Nosh shows are unsuccessful and so there are some reasons um that are notated that we receive from our Boomerang team um that are some barriers to attending the program again this is not an exhaustive list um of reasons for barriers but these are the top five reasons that we see um um from that uh are noted from our Boomerang team on reasons why uh students are not successful or no shows to the program one thing to know about Transportation awareness um is making sure that students are aware um of the availability of Transportation um so that they can still get to that program if their families are unable to get them there

067and we want to make sure that um we are working with our Boomerang team and with our schools um to increase those referrals and that communication and again awareness to our families about the um the positives of attending that Boomerang program so as we look for and look at recommendations for continuous Improvement as we support our schools um implementation of our Revised Code of character conduct in support um which we'll be hearing about soon also in including those data review meetings with schools on behavior and discipline data walkthroughs um of our schools with our social emotional learning and with discipline establishing a Data Tracking System for Behavior so that all schools are pulling consistent information um and even looking down to time of day that incidents are taking place locations of buildings um classroom so

068that we can make sure that we are targeting those areas continued use of our rethink Ed which is our social emotional learning curriculum the grades K through 12 and then our school-based Mental Health Options as they are needed um with those we've had some conversations about um making sure that we are decreasing our weight list um and so we have increased our number of agencies of partner agencies for our Mental Health Services um so that we can keep that weight list as reduced as possible then some professional devel vment opportunities um restorative practices and interventions developing a schoolwide behavior plan best practices Miss and misconceptions social emo social emotional learning practices and interventions and deescalation and just some areas of how staff can support students um and how we can support staff and making sure

069that they have what they need and uh students are getting having getting the skills that they need as well so that we can prevent um and eliminate those behaviors so finally want to review information around our Panorama survey our Panorama surveys are taken to examine student competency measures highlight positives and areas of concern which we'll do today and we want to create a more inclusive and welcoming environment for each of our students and so this survey assesses our students in the areas of social emotional learning so that we are able to um see where they are and what they need and fill in those gaps so 23 24 school year with our Panorama surveys was a little bit different um we know that that that we had some major change to law um which changed

070how we um notified our parents about the Panorama survey so when the Senate Bill 49 or the parent Bill of Rights took place back in August well was implemented was we were required to um have optins for our students so we were no longer able to send notifications to parents that the survey was coming and that we were taking it parents had to give consent um and so quite honestly that decreased our response rate um because we did not have as many students as before who were able to take the survey so in full transparency um just as a comparison in Spring 2023 when the survey was administered 61.3% of our students responded to that survey or 3,448 and just recently taking the survey in Spring 2024 we only had a 7.7% response rate um

071or 428 students now huge huge difference um but what we know is that we we were only able to give the survey to those who returned the optins our model changed so we had to ask for those opt-ins what could have happened it could have got Lost in Translation it could have gotten lost in a book bag the messages may not have gone through technology may not have worked at that time a number of things happened um and so we want to make sure that we are taking the time to reduce those barriers to reduce the concerns um that our parents and families Community have around the Panorama survey and the questions that are asked during that survey time um so we want to provide some um awareness around it and how it is used

072in our schools but before we get into that I want to share some uh response data with you next slide please so what you see here is our elementary survey response rate and as you have seen this before there are students in grades 3 through five um take survey take this survey over five topics emotional regulation which notes how well students regulate their emotions positive feelings which notes how frequently students feel positive emotions self-management how well students manage their emotions thoughts and behaviors in different situations social awareness how well students consider the perspectives of others and emphasize them and finally supportive relationships how supported students feel through their relationships with family friends and adults at school when we're looking at this survey go back one more please when we're looking at this survey um we're

073look at um above 50% and Below 50% as a u positive response and so we see that uh emotion regulation was under 49% but we also know that it ties in with our discipline data um when we are working with our students and how they're able to um regulate their emotions and so that is part of when we're working with restorative practices and providing interventions and hopefully seeing an increase in that number some highlights from the elementary um survey students feel like they have supportive relationships students feel like they listen to others and care about others feelings and students feel they are able to work independently and are prepared for class and generally maintain positive feelings next you see this is the response information for our secondary students grades 6 through 12 they have 11

074topics that they take this survey on first cultural awareness and action how often students learn about discuss and confront issues of race ethnicity and culture in school diversity and inclusion how diverse integrated and fair school is for students from different races ethnicities and cultures emotion regulation how well students regulate their emotions positive feelings how frequently students feel positive emotions School climate perceptions of overall social and learning climate of the school self-management how well students manage their emotions thoughts and behaviors in different situations sense of belonging how much students feel that they are valued members of the school Community social awareness how well students consider the perspective of others and emphasize them social perspective taking the extent to which students consider their perspectives or of their teachers supportive relationships how students how supported students feel through

075their relationships with family friends and adults at school and then teacher student relationships how strong the social connection is between teachers and students within and Beyond the classroom there you see sense of belonging highlighted as that is the uh topic description that uh aligns with our strategic plan and noted in our survey our secondary students feel that adults at school are inclusive and teachers include work they can relate to students feel school is welcoming understanding and kind to students and to parents and caregivers students feel they are prepared and follow directions and students feel a sense of belonging and that they have supportive relationships in and out of school so some recommendations for our Panorama survey and we know we have a long road to go but our goal is to increase participation um and

076increase our optins um for that so we want to make sure that we're gaining parental consent we want to win hearts and minds and we want to make people aware of what we're trying um to do by gaining this information from our students so we want to change the timing of our opans or getting our parental uh consent um that will be completed at the start of each year and at enrollment um but also included with our survey window notification um so that gives multiple opportunities for parents to opt in those consent forms will be available electronically by webbased Form but we will also have it available in print for those who need it there will be notifications sent not just from schools um but from our district as well via email mass communication social

077media blast and web posts so that everyone sees that that is coming um and then our optins are valid for one year um so they're completed annually but we will ensure that again that when notifications are sent out we give multiple opportunities for those optins to take place U So currently working with our technology team and also our Communications team on developing that plan to make sure that we are increasing those opin opportunities a lot of information in a very short time um but I'll take any questions you might have questions Miss Malik um yes I thank you very much Dr Dre for all of that um I have a number of questions I'm wondering maybe we could just go Section by section and see like questions about attendance questions about discipline questions about panorama

078something like that sure uh okay so on the attendance piece I mean um you said that you wanted like a different tracking system for this and I know that the reporting on some of these things is challenging I just like I don't know I don't know if what we're doing is making a difference I don't know if if you know the the strategies that you outlined is the things that we're going to do I feel like those were the things we were going to do this year and so I don't know what strategies make a difference I do think looking at to the extent that we can look at this data over time um that would be very helpful to me um to the extent that we can break it down by various student demographics

079that would be helpful to me um you know the the strategies that you named as strategies make sense to me I just feel like we've been talking about this basically ever since we came back from Co that these are the kinds of things we'd doing and I don't know if if there are certain pockets of the of the district that are doing those things well and you know I just like bigger picture like sort of have questions around that um because they feel like the things we've everybody's supposed to be doing anyway you know that's not sorry I didn't really phrase that as a question um but can like what's your take on that like are PE those are the things that we said we would do like right and I think I'm sorry to

080cut you off I apologize go ahead no I was going to say that I think for for us now that we're taking a look and and drilling down looking whole school looking at um classroom looking at individual students um and those data meetings um and walking with and meeting with principles and meeting with school teams to look at it with them and have those conversations about what is going on and what is doing um or what they're doing um is going to be helpful to see what's working and what's not working um and then uh help us to try to make sure that we're getting strategies that are going to work for them um I think before um we were looking at this is what we're wanting to do and those were being done but

081the the the closer of that is again having those sit downs and saying have you done this have you done this is this working for you um in in an effort of having that real time conversation instead of waiting for when the data comes out to see if it worked or not I hope that makes sense when I answer that it does yeah I mean I do think like um you know and the data that you broke it down into those different categories of like 18 plus days this is sort of like at the beginning of the school year I asked for a report of it was like a month into school like how many kids have been absent two days so far because those are the kids that are on track for this level

082you know sometimes a kid sick in September but those are the kids that are on track for that right chronic absenteeism and so that's what I hope that at the school level is being done more consistently is understanding who are the specific students with that level of ABS you know catching it as early as possible in a school year or the kids who are chronically absent this school year what are we doing going into next school year um to proactively address that yes absolutely so having this information helps them to start start with those students first and then take a look at those that are missing or that are in that good area that green area of 3 to9 or below um and then looking at those in that warning sign to figure out how

083we can avoid and prevent them from getting to that uh 18 plus area thank you Miss how yeah I just want to piggyback on that thank you so much for that Sarah and um and first you know Dr Dre congratulations on the improvements that you're seeing so that's great and big thank you on improving access to mental health Counseling Services um when we went through the school Improvement plans with our principles they also raised this right big issue for them and they've been working on it um obviously you've been doing some great work together I too am interested in knowing about demograph underlying demographic patterns especially income or economically disadvantaged kids but are is there something about kids that are out a lot and um to Sarah's point about are there best practices across our

084schools that we should be that we should be sharing but I'm also interested I want to add this idea of structural change or structural issues because sometimes we it's the family and sometimes there's something we can do to make it easier for the kid to go to to school I know some of the principls have talked about kids missing the bus and not having an alternative to getting to school you know but just if we understood some of the reasons why kids are absent obviously they're sick you can't do anything about that but is there something that we can do that we might be able to improve this but this is very informative but thank you okay Mr as I I just wanted to Echo thank you for you know all the information breaking it

085down and one thing that you know came to me as we were you know talking through this data is for the average daily attendance rate there is a maximum that you could have right I mean we all want 100% but you know when you think about um when we look at suspensions and there's 2008 88 total that immediately takes your ability to have attendance down and that's you know how we have it broken down by school each one of those then has a maximum right that's not 100 anymore and you know some of my curiosity is you know when we say unexcused well that's un well anyway I just think there's some other ways we can look at this data to try to figure out how do we get students in to get that core

086instruction and making sure that the data we're looking at takes into account of what's realistic right because some of this data I know immediately the highest percentage is not going to be 100 it'll be some other number but that 2,000 days really caught my attention of wow really that puts in perspective of you know some don't get that opportunity so but I just want wanted to highlight that thank you we've got a different way to look at this too yeah we do um Miss Dole thank you chair pcel I have a question on the U when we're ready to talk about the next section with the discipline data so mine's not about attendance I have the last two sections is there any other go okay um so I was noticing with the um the discipline

087data and the office referrals and you know the office referrals going down um and so I was thinking about um my sense is that we've really encouraged the Educator's handbook use but I know that can vary a little bit by teacher and by school and so U office referrals down doesn't mean that um you know entering incidents and Educators handbooks have gone down correct Dr Dr Dreer right so in um at handbook you can list either minor um infractions or major infractions and majors are those office referrals um and so anything that is going from that was referred from the teacher and is going to administrators uh to handle is a office referral and so all of those should be in office referrals those that are classroom managed or handled by the teacher or those

088consequences are handed by the teacher would be entered as a minor um and won't be counted in what we had what I showed today those are just office referrals okay thank you and a little bit more if I can um continue on this topic just a little bit with a couple related um so noticing um as you mentioned that the only thing that's been going up is restorative activities which was which was great um and then you know you explained how Boomerang kind of converts OSS incidents to the ins school suspension incidents and so I'm just wondering what else is is bringing about about the success like what are the other tangible I think we all have a s you we've seen Boomerang presentations we know how positive it could be but what are some

089of the positive like tangibles that are coming out for students who are able to get to Boomerang um and so instead of having that OSS experience one or multiple times they're having something different is that are you seeing other like kind of pivoting that happens when students participate in Boomerang that's impact in some of these other numbers or so our numbers of referrals to boomerang in comparison to all of our suspensions is a very small percentage of those who are being referred um and so we are um and actually just had some conversations with our principles today about making sure that if we have students who fit that eligibility to refer them to Boom rang so they do get that opportunity um and and speaking with our Boomerang team um you know they're having those

090students that are coming there they're working with them they're building relationships and they're doing more than just academics they're doing skill building with them as well in the areas of um behavior and so they're in in partnership with us are handling helping our students to get those skills to prevent them from returning um there and from uh have a recurring suspension okay just one one more and then I'll I'll let go this subject but so like the relationship building they're not I wouldn't expect that they're able to maintain a relationship once students you know are done with being there or are they is it is it like actually ongoing relationship for students or is it just like a positive person on those days it's a person on those days for specifically for the alternative to

091suspension program it's just while they are there um that they're in contact with that person now if they are a part of other boomerang R programs that are not connected to the alternative suspension they may have ongoing relationships at that point thank you okay any other questions this is good information and yeah there's oh miss we're on our next section now I'm sorry I'm not done yeah I'm sorry we do on Section by second so I have a really crazy question uh first I was really appreciative about seeing the repeat offenders or I think we don't like that word where but the the the kids who are um students who have been repeatedly referred repeatedly referred um I was curious if we can get data of how many of our of our incidents are explained

092by them meaning if I took all the incidents by the students who were repeatedly referred would that explain half of our incident would that explain a quarter of our incident do you do you know what I'm saying is like how much of this is um the kids that are repeatedly referred well just as a note so you can see here again it's not by number of students by number of days 23 24 we had 122 students who had repeat um referrals um and so what you're asking me just for clarity is now we're looking at a number of total students who have been referred for OSS alog together to see what that number Compares is that what you're asking actually I wanted to take the total take these the 122 kids take all their incidents

093and say and and I'd like to know what percentage of that is of the 20088 so do do they account for a thousand of them how many of their how many referrals are theirs yeah how many are theirs I just trying to understand how much of um do of um these suspensions are due to the these kids that are are being repeatedly referred the second question this is the really silly one when you show percentages yes like um I'll pull one um black kids are 14% year over the year out of school suspension black students last year 14% this year 133% what is that a percentage of is that a percentage of the total black students or is that a what is what is that a percentage of is that because it's not all the

094suspensions no it's not all the suspensions it's from all all black students all white students of that's the percent of those who have been suspended got it okay thank you you're welcome Miss Molly yeah I just wanted to note it's you know it's nice to see some of these numbers decrease I had the same question as Carrie of like is some of the decrease because people AR aren't using Educator's handbook with Fidelity but it sounds like if they get to the office like surely those would be documented in that way so it it is a true decrease um and um just wanted to note you know we're talking about the teacher working condition survey later and there were some serious improvements in the sort of management of student uh student Behavior safe student what do

095they call it managing student conduct um that really sort of aligns with this so um big increases in questions like students follow the rules for student conduct teachers routinely enforce the rules for student conduct um School leadership routinely enforces the rules for student conduct so I know that there's been effort to you know be more consistent with the code of conduct um and it's nice to see you know that teachers report experiencing those things and and at the same time we're seeing it in the data on the student side too and lots more work to of course yes it's all a work in progress um I happy to see that there is progress being made um but we have lots of room to grow and so we're going to continue working in that effort Mr

096so um I know we modified the code of conduct character policy and we kind of did it midy year and I'm curious you know one of the concerns that y'all had shared was people being educated and the current one you know two people could look at it and interpret it differently and the way we've set it up is really easy clear to see how do we do it consistently uh and know what the consequences are I'm curious to know if you feel like some of this data we're seeing because of that shift we did back in January or no not really we haven't completed all that this is other work we're doing and we expect doing this is going to help as well I'm just curious your feeling on that change plus where we are

097yeah I I think it's the work um that's been done I would say that's that's a piece um of it but of course a bulk of that work will be done when we are able to release the full um code um here in a little bit um but it the work has been put in I I would like to take full credit and say everything but it's it's not me um it's it's the school teams who are really putting the work in and making sure they're looking at students Case by case and they are helping to manage those students um right where they are with what they need um and again it's it's a work in progress we see that it's it's working um and so now we want to add a little bit more

098layer um to that cake and I had one other question around Boomerang which uh you know I really appreciate the barriers and you know seeing seeing those and you know to to ensure students are getting you know class time regardless do you have ideas around you know especially the ones where the families aren't interested or no interest in program it it seems like you know or are people really understanding the purpose like you know hey this is trying to help you you know keep you in school keep not get you behind and you know just kind of what are your thoughts on to how do we help with with improving that experience or or even knowledge of it I guess I think we have to continue the awareness I think sometimes when things start and

099are introduced it's a whole big hey this is what it is it's lovely and then we forget that with Transitions and things changing that we don't reintroduce it each time and so I think it's important for to bring awareness or a refresher um to say this is what the program is this is you know what it does this is how it's offered this is how you can participate in it this is what makes you eligible for it um and I think that might um reduce some of those we're not interested or we don't want to because we know there be some people who are just not interested um and that's okay but understanding that if you're not interested if you don't go here is quote unquote the consequence for making that choice um so it's

100just about raising continuing to eras to raise awareness yeah because I remember when I first got on the board one of the first things that was on that list was Transportation right that people couldn't do it because it was on the other side of Chapel Hill and then we introduced Transportation then it then Boomerang came and and uh Hillsboro and still here and you know reading these I wonder how many of these are looped together like they're not interested because they're not aware of the transportation or they're not interested because you know they weren't they received the referral you know late or anyway I just want to just reemphasize it's it's a great program thank you thank you can I switch move on to Panorama is everybody is that's okay with Dr Dre yeah so

101I just have a question you know Panorama to me when you call it a ser and I'm concerned and I appreciate the cander and and Miss Hamill I appreciate your cander about the participation rates and it's been a chronic problem for us um Panorama has always felt like an assessment tool not a survey you know I think of yrbs and a survey is to get my opinion on something that has nothing to do with educating me it's for an outside purpose and is there a way for us to present Panorama to our parents so that they understand that we're using it as an assessment tool and not you know I mean somehow separated from this big class of things called surveys that are we're being bombarded with all the time um I think again that's

102knowledge and awareness um it's called a survey from them because it's it's a questionnaire that we're asking students um sometimes when you hear the word assessment you think standardized test and it's not that um because it's not you know we don't need Proctors it's not a closed room situation where it has to be quiet it's it's not one of those situations um like a test that we would take in a classroom um so that's why it's called a survey but again I think that comes from education on this is why we call it a survey because it's not a standardized test um but here is the information that we're using it for because we are using it to make sure that we are working in helping students individually but it's also classroom wide and schoolwide

103information as well um just like we would use any other assessment score um to help to create uh plans or to assist students okay I was looking and I don't um to see if parents it would be easier for them to opt in so it would at least be a SE question separate from their optin question but even if um I don't know if we could reclass ified as a like I'm thinking more like Dibbles or all the other not just the inte grade test but all the other due to the nature of the questions um it's requires an optin um as we are following the parent Bill of Rights um so in that case we have to do the opin in an effort to get the information that um is helpful for us so

104we want to make sure that we follow the law well thank you we have to figure out something right I wish you good luck with that thank you any other questions um Miss do yes thank you um I had some thoughts similar to Bonnie um I appreciate the Panorama data I have access to from from my students in a different district and similarly I think families might not realize it's it's not um like a random survey um you know it really provides a holistic picture of a of a child in a way that teachers can better understand the the kids in their classroom and know how to support them or if they're already feeling supported by adults um if they are not I mean it really like the word just comes to mind it's like

105kind of like a whole child sense of students and I was wondering as you were thinking about like repitching it for you know the coming year if if like teachers I was thinking you know like we had the um the equ equity you know what is equity and I was thinking you know Mr Gaddy was in one of those little videos and teachers and principal I was just thinking if teachers and principles were pitching to parents like this is really helpful you know to to teachers and supporting kids in their classroom um when students are able to participate in these surveys um just a thought I had about buyin thank you and that would be um extremely helpful um if it's a team eort so it can't just come from me it can't just come

106from Mr Smith in his office it has to come from everybody that this is what we're looking for this is the information that we need this is why it's helpful uh for us to help your students um and so it it has to come from from everyone Miss Molly yes thank you um a couple of things um the first on the response rate thing and I may have signed some form at the beginning of the school year to opt in but I certainly do not remember doing that or being asked to do that so just so you know like I don't think all the parents are opting out by choice like I definitely would have had my kids take that survey um so um you know I think that there's a lot um of this

107that's just sort of like uh that operationally we can solve although I really like that idea of of doing something more tangible um hearing from staff about why it's so valuable um in supporting their children um the um yeah the operationally I mean Orange County Schools until maybe a year before the parents Bill of Rights our school district had an opt-in policy for survey so this is not a new problem for Orange County Schools unfortunately we had just fixed that and made it opt out um before the parents Bill of Rights and so previously I believe what existed um every year preco um in power school we needed to go in and like confirm our registration um right every year not just like as a new student um and confirm our contact information and then

108there was the thing for like do you give permission for photos do you give permission for you know and that like that's how we did it before um and so that I hope that that is part of our regular process I I think we're moving away from Power School to some other system but hopefully we will have some standard you know and that is a good opportunity again by the way to like make sure we have all family members like phone numbers right and stuff like that as well so that just seems like a good practice for us to be doing as a school district um but yeah and that is one of the options in um the plan is to have it with all of that information so it's done all at one time

109but then giving the additional opportunities at survey time if if those were missed yeah yeah I think that's great um I will say I mean just the data that you shared today I mean a 7% response rate when it is so skewed by who happens to get the papers home and and return them to to school and all that I just don't think there's a lot of meaning in that data with that level of response rate um given just like the the the yeah I I don't think that that is is very representative probably of our student population um I'm sure that we can get the response rate well up from there um by putting in some good practices um and when we do I would really love to see this data over time and

110I would really like to see it um broken down like when there are meaningful differences by Identity or something like that I'd like to I'd like to understand that um and then um I really like that you compare you include the Benchmark like where we fall against the national Benchmark I think that's very meaningful um when you have a good response rate um there are places where it says like 80th to 99th percentile and I would really just like us to I would really like to know is that like does that mean we're in the top 20% nationally or bottom 20% because there were some of them where I was like that number is so low there's no way that's in the top 20% of school districts in the country you know what I mean

111so so it it made me a little concerned that maybe 80th percentile meant bad rather than good so um just it it does indicate that it is good it's a good thing so we're at the top in that um but I will also say that not just around North Carolina um but you know we're not the only state who had this recent change um in law and so there are plenty of uh States um that are dealing with this adjustment um not only with Panorama but with other um assessments similar to this or surveys um as well so um it's we're all working together and and and calling others to see what other uh teams and districts and states are doing um to try to um make some improvements in this area um but I

112felt it was important to give this information this is where we are but this is our plan to make sure that we um come back yeah really tackling the response rate thing feels like the big thing right now because there's so much like Carrie was describing like there's so much potential power for school teams to support like the least connected kids um if we really have the information very good information and uh as you said a continual work in progress and um we look forward to having more information is the next year rolls around and we get more information I will also put a plugin for Boomerang I think Boomerang is a fantastic program and I I hope that people are using it more since it's here on this side of the county now and

113uh that make quite a difference in in getting it moved here but it is fantastic program for um getting work done as well as doing some counseling for kids that are out of school and need that okay thank you Dr Dreer are you GNA stand right there and talk about the student code of conduct how did I know that I'm I'm next it's been so long so I'm here to give some updates um to everyone around our student code of character conduct and support um with our 2425 implementation plan so just a brief overview of what we'll take a look at today um why are we revising the code um some professional development opportunities and around implementation our communication plan and then finally a timeline of activities for implementation so historically this document would have

114been called the code of conduct and when we originally went into part partnership with engaging schools back in 2019 um it was then the code of conduct character and support so what we're looking at now um as we move forward and thinking um more restorative we're looking at this document as the code of character conduct and support why will we put character first because we are working with our students to build their character um so that we are reducing those negative behaviors we're increasing those positive behaviors we're building positive relations with them conduct then becomes next um because it is still important for us it helps us to navigate conflict um because it does happen and so how do we conduct ourselves when we are experiencing conflict with others and then support how are we

115resolving and restoring those relationships whether it be student to student student to teacher um and making sure that those things are restored after an incident takes place next slide please so we're revising the code because we know that every couple of years when you have a code of conduct we should review it and bring it up to date make sure that it is still following the laws and that things are um in in a forward movement so in Orange County Schools just to give some a brief history of the revision we started with engaging schools back in about 18 uh school year 1819 um and began working on the revisions and implementation of that and then March 13th 2020 happened um and everything shut down with Co so when there we returned in 2022 uh

116we talked about the revision of the code of conduct there was a revision that was uh published during that time um but there were conversations um about with leadership and uh with our school board about making sure that we were um getting back into that partnership with engaging schools to finish the work that was started back in 2019 so we went into that partner ship and uh last year which was uh the 2324 school year went through revisions and not only revisions of the code but also starting uh professional development for our teams around restorative practices which is a part of the work with engaging schools and then in January 2024 is when policy 4305 was adopted which is our code of conduct um and now we are at the place where it's time time

117to implement and release our code of character conduct and support again we want to make sure that we are in alignment with board policy we want to establish a more restorative mindset um so that we are helping students rebuild relationships um and build those skills to reduce behaviors so some key measurable outcomes making sure that we're increasing capacity and consist consy in a discipline response cycle that serves students so the discipline response cycle goes from when an incident takes place to when a student returns to school it is a full cycle of things that happen and take place from consequences interventions and activities that take place when a student re-enters into the school culture and making sure that we are building relationships reducing behaviors and suspensions and ultimately increasing instructional time so taking a look

118at restorative practices and I know that sometimes there might be a little confusion around what a restorative practice is so I wanted to share um that it's clear communication it's conflict resolution it's some of those things that we have always done things that are in in general communication or in general relationship that we do with each other or with students um setting expectations um and making sure that we are in a good working relationship and then when something happens if there is conflict that we're able to restore that relationship whether it be by conversation um or by activity so we have five RS of restorative practices that very first one me personally I think it's the most important is relationship how are we restoring that relationship um if that relationship is harmed um what are

119the things that we're going to do to take responsibility for the things that we did so that we can repair that relationship next is respect making sure that we're listening to others perspectives whether we agree with it or not and being honest in that and respecting each other's uh perspectives and decisions responsibility is making sure that we're each taking responsibilities for our part in whatever it was that took place repair um is how we work to repair the harm that was caused when there was something that happened within that relationship regaining feelings of respect and then reintegration is how we return into the community um once something has taken place and we have have gone through all of those steps and so again not anything new or out of the ordinary but just how we

120continue through a relationship cycle when something takes place so when we're looking at our code of character conduct and support in in in a comparison to the uh most before the engaging schools changed 1920 um in comparison to the 2024 what's different so we looked at that from a rules-based approach in the old code of conduct the new one has norms and agreements of how we respond the old was a compli in a compliance mindset while the new one is in a restorative mindset again how are we restoring and repairing those relationships the old was um talked kept students in schools separate um almost students against the um the adults or the The Authority now we're looking with the new one at student voice Collective ownership um and a focus on repair and reintegration and

121so going through that process the old uh code had a focus on repeat offenses if you look at how many times the term repeat offense or repeat offender was in the old code it was many times many many to count um but what we're focusing on now in the code is um not repeat but again is restore repair and reintegrate because although we do know that there are sometimes where students repeat behaviors and they have repeat consequences we have to continue that cycle of uh restoring what take what took place so when we're looking at how we're going to communicate this to our parents and caregivers to our staff and to our community because it it is new and we want to make sure that everybody has the information that they need it'll go through

122social media Blast Of course it'll be posted on our website there will be announcements and information sent to our families um given that information our schools will be sharing information with our families about the new code of conduct where they can find it um and how they can use it and what uh their parts are there'll be virtual sessions that are held um for parents to come and get some information from myself and my team um just to hear and to walk through um the new code as well and then again schools will be sharing updates whether through open house or principal's messages um so that it's all a collective message going to our families about this new code for our administrators and staff they will go through an orientation that will introduce them to

123the new book they'll be kickoff events of course they will receive emails and updates as well via message um and then quarterly professional development and so like last year as we were preparing for implementation there were uh quarterly professional development opportunities where um staff was able to go through and calibrate um the behavior violations Matrix and also receive information on restorative practices we will continue that um going into the new school year for staff as you'll see here here are some topics um that will take place for professional development there are three um major groups that our staff is split in so our school leaders our teachers and then our student support staff which comprises of our counselors and social workers and these are the topics of discussion that they will go through to learn

124about use of the code of conduct but then also some of those restorative activities that they can do um with students when um behaviors take place and as they're going through that response cycle looking at the PD implementation so again U during the last school year 23 24 as we were going through the revisions there was also quarterly training for building administrators and central office staff and support staff and what they what engaging schools will do in this next iteration of the Year while last year they were the ones the engaging schools team provided the PD virtually to our staff um this year we'll continue in that however they will provide us with the materials um and then myself and team will be the ones to provide the PD to our staff so it will

125be done inhouse we'll train all three of those groups that you saw previously our administrators our principes and APS our student support staff and then then our mtss teams um will be trained our mtss teams will actually get receive a train the trainer well then they will be able to go back and train their staff on those restorative practices and throughout each time we'll be able to monitor when those trainings have taken place um and use of those practices looking at a timeline of what will happen with implementation the week of June 24th which is this week I'm sharing a updated timeline with administrators and Leadership during our this week's Leadership Retreat giving them a um information on our calendar of events as well as timeline for when they will start sharing information with our

126parents the week of July 8th um begin our train the trainer which our with our Hillsboro Elementary admin and staff to prepare for their opening later in July in July and August we'll start our parent and family introduction to the new code and that will be again through various formats um so through virtual opportunities through uh blast and emails and website announcements our principal kickoff event will be the week of August 12th that will help them prepare for openhouse and for implementation and then finally quarterly throughout the 2425 school year will be the professional development for our administrators for our student support staff and for our mtss teams as well as the mtss teams then training our school staff as well again a lot of information at one time any questions that I can answer

127for you this evening mron uh thank you so much um I know this is a a key part of us you know the training the documents uh just a a couple of questions or Curiosities is I I know you had the the various formats but how many languages are we going to provide this in given our large population of various languages we support it is being translated um in Spanish and I'm going to ask Mr Smith for a little bit of help I know that when it's posted um that on our site that they'll be able to change it into different languages is that correct so Spanish speakers cover 90% or more of our foreign language speakers and but the currently the board's policy manual is not translatable into some of the languages spoken by

128our families and so there are some issues and sandre bfco and her team usually work on that this will be an imp it's a periodic process and we'll be working with schools to Target those populations that might need some extra support I remember I remember that when that came up in the 2022 version as well yeah and you you hit on the the other question I had is although I didn't explicitly see it I I assume the family Liaisons are going to be key in helping with this especially with all the the schools and amilies and questions that may come up uh after your principles and assistant principales and support staff in schools the Liaisons are right there and are keenly aware of which families are going to need support fantastic thank you m al

129sometimes the um the uh behavior issues happen with Subs that kids so are we going to be providing training for Subs I will be completely transparent with you Miss Hower that um they were not included in that information but we can absolutely provide that for them as well so that they are aware of um how to use that code um but they're not a part of the restorative um plan for those three groups um but we can go through with them about the code itself so that they are aware of how to refer and um how to get to um when incidents take place how to report them appropriately great thank you I go ahead Miss Molly sure thanks um yeah I mean um I'm glad to see this progress I will say you know

130the district I know that some staff in the district have received restorative practices training since before I was on the school board and I've been on the school board for six years so it's like there's and that the original plan with engaging schools I like just look back and found it was to have a restorative practices oriented code of conduct in the original version that we got and so it's it's tough you know um to see that you know the road has been so long to get to a version that we feel is truly restorative and to be training our staff um adequately and how to use those practices it's frustrating to me somebody who's been watching it for since I was before I was on the board um uh but hopefully we make continue

131to make some progress um I am wondering uh in the olden days um families received a printed version of the code of contact like they got a copy of it um uh and um when we first signed the contract with engaging schools way back when they showed us a really beautiful I've brought this up so many times over the years they showed us a really beautiful code of conduct um and support and character that they had created for Syracuse City schools that was part of the expectation that I had as a board member originally preo was that what would be what we would receive was sort of a engaging document tangible for families um and uh I'm curious whether like whether we're going to get something printed or not and and whether or not what

132families receive will be um like nice to engage with versus I think in the past few years we've had something that's a bit more like Google doish um partially that was because that work got interrupted by Co in the middle yes so the plan was to print at request um and not to print a copy for everyone just in an effort to save some money because toint for all of those um and of course you know when you print you always got to print more and then they're just sitting around and we want to save some trees and some money um and so they will be electronic and posted and uh shared with our families um but will be available to print if if that is the request per family not a mass print um

133of that just again in an effort to um to save a little bit and does it like does it look nice are the tables it was there were the version they showed us originally when we signed this contract there were like pictures of children and it was it was like a NIC looking document is it I don't think we got help with that the finishing touches are putting on the graphic design um of it um but it it will be graphically designed to be aesthetically pleasing um to those who are reading it okay thank you and at least like at minimum not confusing which I think is what we ended up with for a while there no honestly I mean I think the the what I thought we were going to get was something beautiful

134and then we got something where the tables didn't even line up and part of that was Co so yes and I think also um that we have to for us we are responsible for the design of how it looks um and so like the graphs and things we have but then we have to make sure that when it is printed and when it is put in that very nice and beautiful document um that it is graphically placed that way um and so I uh I think it was honestly Aesthetics and making sure that it looked um presentable um and so we we will make sure that that happens but it does the the graph that you were speaking of and the new graph are night and day I can promise you that great okay thank

135you yes sir so so one followup to that is um since we are a on toone County it seems like we would want to have this pushed and on every laptop whether it's just the link so when a student has it they have it right there available it's not where's the link how do I get to it since it's so import important part of this just having it there as a um um a link or HTML link would be so beneficial so they wouldn't have to say oh I don't know where it is well it's on every laptop [Music] so thank you for that recommendation thank you and I think that has happened before but I'm not 100% sure that prior code of conduct way back in the olden days as you said was um

136uh put on LA on the on the laptops when we first got them or right after we got them um one question I had just in thinking about this was when you're giving out the the new um character and code of conduct uh information do you link Crews at the high school ever work with the kids that are coming in that they're working with to go through some of this with them because again peer-to peer sometimes is a better way of doing things and I was thinking about how important those link crews are to those younger students coming in and that that might be um and you may be doing that I don't know um just using them to help spread the word about this talk about this with them go through it with them

137introduce it to them um I know that we are and I just kind of connected to what you were saying doing some work on um revitalizing our midal Health teams um at our schools and then we have some other um clubs I'll call them um with anous reporting and things and so I think this would be great to to incorporate into those activities okay just a just a thought I had any other questions comments okay thank you very much Dr Dr you may go sit down I know you're ready to thank [Music] you okay ladies teacher working conditions survey we are going to need to go into an extended time here at 10 at 10: um or okay we'll wait till 10: I was going to go ahead and do it not introduce these two

138uh not interrupt these two and introduce them yes but not um but ladies come forward your time well good evening Board of Education Dr Jones and our public uh Miss Morris and I are really glad to come back and be able to respond to your requested from last board meeting to hear more about the 2004 North Carolina working conditions survey so as you know the survey collects the ninous voices of uh certified staff across the state and those results are used to help determine strengths and Improvement opportunities for schools and districts all classroom teachers and licens based School based Educators in the state are invited and encouraged to participate the teaching work and condition survey collects and analyzes data around five critical sets of school conditions that research strongly suggests as are related to teacher

139retention outcomes they are the effective allocation of time in schools the availability and quality of professional development for teachers the effectiveness and supportiv supportiveness of school leadership opportunities for teachers to have a voice in the decision making process and the AC adequacy of school facilities and resources so this year the state did make some significant changes to the survey all aimed at proving the effective and Effectiveness and the efficiency of the survey so I'm just going to tell highlight a few of the changes the first was that um in 2022 we had 199 questions so the state Ned it down to 100 100 questions um to make it more manageable and less time consuming for participants some of our data points will reflect that in that in that there were questions asked in 2022 that

140weren't asked in 2024 and vice versa another significant change is that the 2024 survey did not include principles and insistent principles um in the past they have had a section to their own and we were it was reported out by the the administrators who took uh the survey DPI is working on a new survey for just for principles and assisted principles and the last I heard it would be it was they were hoping to roll it out in the fall so we want to say thank you to all the Orange County staff that participate participated in the survey you can see our response rate was 89. 66 and we're going to give a special shout out to Pathways and New Hope who had 100% participation and Grady Brown and Hillsboro staff who had 95 and

141above participation um overall the OCS data has shown significant improvements from 2024 in key areas such as professional development Equity retention and we have continued to close the gap between our uh the state averages and our district results the next few slides will highlight the areas of growth as well as opportunities for improvement just keep in mind that you're seeing District results our school individual results may be higher or lower in a particular area and all School results are visible on the State website so I'm now going to turn the podium over to Miss Morris who will go into our results in more days good evening we are excited to be able to share with you some of the actual specific results before we get started we do want to note that the way the

142questions read is Teachers agree strongly agree disagree or strongly disagree with statements that pertain to their specific School so they're not answering questions about Orange County schools at large even though that's how we're presenting the data today so they're answering about their beliefs about their school um so we're going to start this evening by talking about some highlights and some positive trends that we think are significant um and reflective of some work that we have done intentionally in the district um the first category has to do with retention statements statement such as overall my school is a good place to work and learn um we saw our numbers in this category go up by over 12 percentage points um up to 91.9 6% of teachers agreeing or disagreeing with that statement so that is a

143huge accomplishment um there's an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect in this school we went from 60.4 3% of teachers agreeing in 2022 to 78 8.5% of teachers with over an 18 um percentage Point increase I feel comfortable raising issues and concerns that are important to me here we saw this rate grow um of over 15 percentage points another category that we saw jumps that we think are significant is the professional learning and support statements this was the focus of the superintendent teacher of the year round table last year um so that this data is particularly um important to us as we're measuring the effectiveness of that strategy um statements that have to do with how much time is allotted for professional development we saw an increase to 68.3 6 6% um which is over

14412 percentage Point change professional development is differentiated to meet the individual needs of teachers we went up from only 38% of teachers agreeing with that statement in 2022 to over 52% of teachers that number is still not where we want it to be or need it to be um however that is a very significant jump there um professional development enhances teachers ability to implement instructional strategies that meet diverse student learning we saw an increase to 72.3 percentage of teachers agreeing with that when we look at managing student conduct coming on the heels of Dr Jr's very uh thorough and in-depth presentation we'll see that this data aligns with some of those positive trends that she noted um teachers believe that students are following the rules more in 2024 than in 2022 which is excellent news

145um teachers routinely enforcing the rules for student conduct jumped all the way up to over 80% of teachers agreeing or strongly agreeing with that statement um I think this is a really important measure to look at because teachers being able to positively affirm that they believe um all of their staff is following that is very important School leadership supporting teachers e efforts to maintain discipline in the classroom Rose by almost 10 percentage points and then School leadership routinely enforcing the rules of student conduct um Rose over 17 percentage points we also saw some highlights with our intentional work to include our community um and involve our families and our schools so with the statement that parents and Guardians support teachers contrib contributing to their success with students we saw that number increase to 77.6 2%

146and then community members support teachers contributing to their success with students um Rose to 73 percentage points when we look at Equity we have more teachers believing that students are treated equitably in the schools um with 74.75 per of teachers agreeing or strongly agreeing with that statement so as we look and celebrate the positives we also know that we still have work to do with teacher retention in Orange County schools and Miss Brimmer and I were able to share some of the strategies that the district is taking with the round table um but there are many more strategies that we're looking at through the human resource department as well as all of our district support um this next section illustrate some of those areas that we still need to look at critically um and look

147at why our teachers are not responding as favorably as we would like in these situations so this first category reflects a new section on the teacher working conditions survey these statements are from a longer list of statements that ask teachers to rate their beliefs of the school leadership in their building and how much they agree or disagree with the statements about their school leadership team so the first one the school leadership team sets clear expectations for instruction we see that um we are below the state average by a little over 6 percentage points um we do not have any comparative data between 2024 to 2022 since this is a new section um but we do have how we rank against schools across North Carolina with the statement that our school leadership teams know what's going

148on in their classroom we saw a gap between how uh School leadership teams are rated across the state versus Orange County schools by a little over 10 percentage points um School leadership helps teachers set clear and actionable goals for improving student learning another gap of about 10 percentage points and then we saw um a gap with the statement that our school leadership creates a culture of trust in the building by over six percentage points so a lot of these questions are really illustrating that instructional leadership capacity that is a focus for the next school year um today was our first day of our Leadership Retreat um where Dr Jones and and District staff really set um the pace for next year and how we are going to be working to build those insur structional leadership

149capacities um that is integral to the types of questions that we just looked at the second category you'll note that we celebrated it um with our growth opportunities but we're also still behind um the state averages and that's the area of professional learning so although we did have some sizable gaps we also see that we're still behind um where schools across the state are being um rated so I'm not going to read through each and every one of these but you'll see that this will remain to be a focus um as we make sure that our schools are offering professional development that meets the needs of our students again there's that alignment of that instructional leadership piece the third category we went into um in a lot of depth last was it last week two

150weeks ago it's all running together it's a great time um and that is the area of time that is what the round table is focusing on and more specifically that first statement the non-instructional time provide of for teachers is sufficient at my school um and so this is that area where we put forth the recommendations the partnership with the human resources team with specific strategies that we hope to build on with the team coming in next year in the equity category um our first statement on the screen teacher require all students to work hard that is a new statement so we don't have that comparative data from 2022 but we do see about a 10% um difference here with how schools across the state are rated again that through line is this is a more

151instructionally focused Equity question so as we saw increases on all students are treated equitably notice the Nuance here teachers require all students to work hard that gets more to that instructional piece um and then the second statement here school programs and resources are adequate to support special populations such as students with disabilities academically and intellectually gifted students multilingual Learners and Foster students um we actually saw two negative Trends here that we really want to dig into one is um over 11 percentage point gap between the state but we actually backslid here so whereas we were increasing on almost every other statement this one we did um go backwards from the 2022 data and I do know that we are making intentional steps there um to increase those supports so at this point that is just

152a very quick look at the data and Miss brimer will come back um to share some of our next steps as we continue this work forward okay before you um Carry On we need to go over um 10 minutes by so we've got a Clos session and we've got a Clos session too after this so how much time we want to put it all into one and if you're going to extend time again you'll need to come back in to open to extend it so I would give yourselves enough time to get through what you anticipate talking about in close uh 45 minutes and that way we hope we don't need it and we'll but we'll have it and we won't have to come back into open motion to expend extend 45 minutes so all

153in favor I I I all right thank you I'm Sorry Miss burmer go ahead so we do have I want to point you point you back to our strategic plan and goal three our goal three was it is to recruit higher support and retain culturally proficient and high quality staff committed to providing all students with an excellent education in a welcome environment so just a little bit of good news our uh we know that uh the strategies that we put in place at 2022 both in our in all of our goals in our strategic plan are showing up in our data and so one of the things I wanted to say is that our state attrition rate has uh has decreased which means our retention rate has increased um so that's good news for for

154our district and we will continue to work all of these strategies to we're retaining uh staff so um just in terms of the vehicles that we use to get there uh so we know we have the data but we don't have the we don't have all our map yet for our new data and let me say that up front because we need time for our principls and our administrators to go through the data but what we do have is the vehicles so as you see tonight the data presented tonight is District data school officials will be looking at their own individual data and uh sorting through their data and coming up with strategies to work at that school and you should be hearing about those strategies in the school Improvement plans which will be presented

155to you in the fall our district and our departments will also be working with schools on how how can we support that how can we support them with the strategies how can we support them with talking with staff about about the data that's provided to them uh we will also continue to use leadership team meetings and the superintendent's round table which You Heard lots of strategies to two weeks ago to have meaningful discussions about now the 2024 data and we want those discussions to lead to actable changes that are that support positive outcomes for our staff so not just discussion but discussion and changes and last in our effort to continue to monitor the effectiveness of our strategies we are going to use popup surveys throughout the year um and we have the questions we

156know what the questions are we can use the same questions to measure even at the individual School level if strategies are making a difference so in saying that um we will take any questions you have at this time Mr Aon so thank you both for bringing this data and I really appreciate the first explanation of hey These Are by school this is how it's done and we're taking as a district because it really helps put it in context uh I had a really basic question which is what was the day this was actually taken like when did it you know start finish because I'm trying to determine when you know at what point did the did we start pulling in this data so teachers uh the survey opened the first day in March and closed

157the last day in March and so teachers um this year we did and if anybody knows anything been in schools in the past you got a code and you had to go enter the code uh we actually this year the state sent emails and reminder emails we actually work with the teacher Round Table to come up with plans at schools for participation um but March 1st to March 31st and do we have an idea of why um some may choose not to participate is it concerned that it's not Anonymous I've saw on the website that it says everywhere this is anonymous but is that kind of a fear that it's not you know we remind remind remind but some people do not choose to participate I will say there is a little Nuance in the

158data because sometimes there are people are at multiple schools so they participate in one school and not the other um and and so there's some some nuances to the data oh yeah or at their own leave um so they will show up as not taking the survey but but there are little some nuances to the data to answer your question though I think it's just time reminders um we'd love to have 100% we'll keep trying thank you uh Miss Molly yes thank you um just briefly thank you for sharing all of this and the the strategies that you all are pursuing and it's great to see the areas of growth um even though we have a bunch to work on um a couple of things that I just wanted to note that I also saw

159in the data um that were interesting and I I I like looked at some other local districts to see how we kind of staed up and one I will say I was just excited to see compared to local districts in the state that we um had done better on as well is a question that says I usually look forward to each working day at this school um like that's really nice to know that our teachers feel more positively than the state average and um some surrounding school districts um and then on the other end one of the ones where we're lower than the state average and and um you mentioned that teachers require all students to work hard but it's also um teachers take responsibility for all students learning um is another one um sort

160of similar theme um so just wanted to like Elevate those two on the on the positive and challenging side um um I didn't realize that they had uh included demographics questions so if there are any like meaningful Trends by demographics um I'd be interested to know that you know teacher tenure gender or you know what have you not tonight as a followup um and then I would love to see us I know we want to do sort of popup spot surveys and I think that makes sense to see targeted improvements but I also would love for us to like have some sort of standardized survey in the off years um so that we could um just for the sense of like goal tracking and stuff to be able to like consistently do something um at

161some point time but thank you all for this and Miss Smiley you can't see us but we're shaking our head because the the um the demographic data has not been released if we get that information we'll let you know um but we haven't received it yet and typically it's also broken down by beginning teachers but we haven't received that yet yeah great thanks Miss how yeah I know um thank you for this um it was very and I feel like we were set up because you gave us the end answered two weeks ago and now here's the question so thank you great job um I just I'm sure you work on a lot of things including the differences between schools but I was kind of surprised about the school progam the equity question about programs

162and resources adequate to support special populations I was curious what you're how you're looking at that and what you're doing and so I will say again we haven't gotten a chance to go through our all of our data points with our principles in our departments um so that is on the table for the school for uh planning processes and school Improvement processes so I as a ex principal will tell you the conversation is more valuable sometimes in the data and it points Us in the right direction so I don't know that we have a complete answer to that yeah I just want to add the Nuance of taking that question with the question about um teachers requiring all students to work hard and then the question that Miss Smiley pointed out um I think in

163some of the work that we're rolling out the question is how does every teacher take responsibility for every student so it's not always another teacher coming in to provide the service and I think when you look at that question through that lens um there might be changes that emerge in teachers response to that question when we realize as a classroom teacher it is equally my responsibility to serve my student who might have other exceptionalities um and I think that's work that we're doing as we roll out professional learning communities being datadriven but recognizing that no one's going to come in and necessarily do that one task or that one job without that full partnership so hopefully um we can look at that question through that really multifaceted lens yeah I might add because one of

164the things that's come up a lot it's come up in the equity discussion questions has come up in the equity task force about service disparities across schools right and really just taking a look at that and and what's contributing to that so it's it's a little it's a little structural but yeah it would it would be I was it was interesting to see that it came up like that so thank you great great work anyone else thank you all I'm sorry you had to stay so late yeah am but thank you for your great work all right we need to return to close session we have about a half an hour I think motion to return to close session per prior motion earlier agenda all in favor I all right we will return e e

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