001foreign thank you foreign stay stay Friday thank you okay all right and last but not least we want to recognize uh this month November as National Career Development month uh so Career Development month uh is a opportunity for us to recognize uh how this work is in is the process of managing Life Learning and work over a lifetime it applies to everyone and is a great time for students and employees to focus on future career choices our students and staff learn about career development in part from the North Carolina Career Development Association and we are very proud and very thankful for the great work of our Career Development coordinators Mr Nick Montgomery and Mrs Stephanie Smith as well as our amazing school-based CTE teachers dedicated counselors and Central services staff who support students in setting
002the direction for their future careers so a very special thank you to this amazing team of educators that concludes the recognitions for this evening all right thank you Dr Felder next we have the agenda adoption I do know we have one change to move the um School Improvement plan item C to the first agenda item tonight um with that change are there any other change all right can we get a motion to approve the agenda so moved second we have a motion of the second any discussion all in favor aye aye aye opposed all right next we have a public comment okay we have a few just one moment okay the Board of Education welcomes public comment which are governed by board policy 2310 and North Carolina General statute 143-118.17 a person wishing to address
003the board must sign up prior to the board's regular meeting comments will be limited to three minutes when the three minutes ends the speaker must stop speaking immediately yielding time to other speakers will not be permitted all public comments should be civil and non-disruptive per policy board members will listen carefully but will not respond to speakers do we have up first up is Stephanie Bordeaux good evening thank you for this opportunity to share with you about my experience with the New Hope tool language program this is my 19th year at New Hope but I and I'm currently serving as a math coach however I'm also a parent of a first grade Voyager who is enrolled in the DL program at New Hope so I'm going to be sharing through that lens tonight my son Evan
004has benefited greatly from this program he says his favorite parts of being in dual language are learning Spanish good and learning about different countries initially we chose to enroll Evan in this program because we wanted him to have the asset of bilingualism and we wanted the academic challenge of learning another language sorry while he has developed academically and is progressing with Reading Writing and speaking in Spanish I am so impressed by the points that are not typically measured two of his teachers are here tonight and they have done more for my son than I could ever imagine his curiosity about the world and his appreciation for different cultures is amazing to me he has plans to visit Peru Colombia Ecuador Guatemala and Mexico don't know where he's getting his money also This Global worldview has
005made him a better human as he understands that our differences are assets I am deeply appreciative to the whole staff of New Hope Elementary for their dedication and I am so grateful for the opportunities that have been given to my son thank you thank you okay next up is Hillary McKenzie good evening chair Atherton Vice chair Purcell members of the board Dr Felder staff members thank you for the opportunity to address you this evening as the parent of two students in Orange County Schools I appreciate the time to hear from Mr Williams and the equity task force tonight and I want to send a huge thank you to every educator and staff member who works tirelessly to educate the children in this community we need Equity work in Orange County schools because many folks in
006this community have shown us time and time again that they do not fundamentally understand what this work is about or why it's needed we need Equity work because there are folks who are dedicated to organizing and working to dismantle the racial Justice effort in our schools who do not even send their children to school in this District but are so deeply threatened by the idea of educational Justice that they attend these meetings organize around OCS in the community and send emails to the board recreationally we need Equity work so that our children grow up with the capacity to have challenging conversations less defensively and more productively we need Equity work because educational fascism is rampant throughout this country with parents harassing and disrespecting staff members and teachers calling for book Banning threatening violence and spreading
007misinformation we need Equity work because organizations like moms for Liberty the North Carolina Values Coalition Carolina teachers Alliance no left turn in education the Ed first said that one and the Orange County Citizens for integrity through engagement formerly known as OCS truth exist and are not benign to the welfare of the children of this County we need Equity work because there are members of this community who quietly are associated with these organizations who attend these meetings who endorse School Board candidates and who benefit from the status quo we need Equity work because our children deserve to learn accurate and complete history they deserve to learn how to critically evaluate information as a parent I don't worry about what books my children read at school because one I trust the media Specialists who are skilled professionals
008and two I trust my children and offer them the Liberty to engage with difficult Concepts and challenging history so that they develop into informed members of our community we need Equity work because children experience racism homophobia and other bigotry both directly and systemically Orange County Schools student testimony as well as academic and discipline data affirm these facts there are forces in Orange County that are working to convince parents that Equity work is only for the benefit of some students but we know that when school districts create environments where the most marginalized students grow and Thrive that all children will always benefit I look forward to the presentations this evening and appreciate those of you who have the courage to support this work thank you thank you hey Heather ready good evening as an Orange County
009Schools parent I'm here this evening to urge the board to approve the courageous conversations contract with Pacific group which has already actually been funded by the Orange County Commissioners through the one orange initiative I applaud the board for utilizing the expertise of a preeminent National Organization in its professional development offerings and hope that you will not pass up this opportunity to strengthen your commitment to equity training the need for high quality Equity training and educational space is is critical today given the rise of educational fascist groups like moms for Liberty that prioritizes judeo-christian white heteronormative power such groups are actively fighting to remove Equity training and programming from schools they sound the alarm whenever they hear the words diversity equity and inclusion they spread dangerous propaganda about social emotional learning and culturally responsive teaching they
010conflate teaching about gender and sexual identity with child abuse and Grooming they're trying to parent our children based on their regressive beliefs and fear of books and they went to erode policies that physically and emotionally protected transgender non-binary and non-gender conforming students what you as a board can do to counter The Narrative of moms for Liberty and other educational fascist groups is to invest in this professional development opportunity if the racist historical revisionism of the United Daughters of the Confederacy taught us anything it's that bigots use public education to clean the power and shape historical narratives this is what moms for Liberty and their allies are doing today and this is why you must take action to counter attempts to undo progress in racial equity if we are to learn from history then we should
011note that injustices and inequities in our country are never self-correcting it takes movements education acts of resistance advocacy and policy making and even then marginalized communities still have to work for access to resources inequities in education are not self-correcting unless we are proactively working to create anti-racist and inclusive learning spaces we are tolerating and perpetuating inequities the way your board can take action is by at minimum approving the courageous conversations contract and then do more if you want Equity you must invest in it in some I ask that you continue your commitment to racial Equity training in Orange County Schools as dropping that ball on this yields to the educational fascist groups whose only true interest is themselves entertaining power at the end of the day no one wins when inequities persist thank you thank
012you okay up next is spring Dawson McCune hi thanks for the opportunity to talk my name is spring Dawson McClure I'm a psychologist and researcher on educational policy and practice to support children's learning and well-being I'm here tonight primarily as a parent I'm a white parent raising two white kids in this community and I'm here to speak on strong support of our Equity officer the equity plan the task force and the recommendations that you'll hear tonight I'm also here in deep gratitude for the women of color who led the way in sustaining the conversation about equity in our district years and years ago when others would have had it otherwise as one of the brilliant OCS Educators said at a community Forum on race and schools hosted by the Orange County human relations commission a
013couple months ago I guess as long as there are disparities in test scores and educational experiences we must improve our racial education we have major disparities in OCS and we must improve our teachers deserve to be supported in understanding race and racism in their own Journey as students and Educators and in building the muscle to examine their practice on an ongoing basis with love to learn the truth about our history and our present black history is everyone's history because we are all connected this country was founded on enslavement and genocide and the lie that some people are less human than others our children feel this they recognize it when they see it our children can handle hard truths and complexity what they need most from us is to know that we see it too that
014they are not alone we have to be able to have hard conversations about race in our community and our schools and our families lying or hiding doesn't change it as a woman my experience has been that lying and hiding is dangerous and harmful lying and hiding serve to protect those with more power and influence and strikingly I have so often observed that it's other women who protect men and enforce this hierarchy imagine what we could do if we come together to create schools where all of our children thrive where they feel they belong where they are seen heard believed affirmed exactly as they are we have such serious problems in the wake of the pandemic the Mental Health crisis gun violence and the teacher shortage imagine if we joined together and challenge the general assembly
015to stop driving away our teachers creating impossible untenable conditions for the profession I find myself so frustrated by members of the board and members of this community who are seeing so determined to drag us back to avoid these truths rather than moving forward together thank you okay up next is Allison mahaly foreign members of the board and Dr Felder and members of the community I'd like to take this time that you've given me tonight to remind Orange County School Board of some of the history here some recent history when I moved to Hillsborough the school board was embroiled in a controversy at efflon cheeks elementary school because a gay teacher had dared to read a book to a young student called The Prince and the prince and from what I could tell at that time
016the school board ducked and hid from its responsibility to stand up for that teacher to stand up for that administrator who supported that teacher's decision and to invite that conversation into the community so that we could all move forward together to protect the Dignity of all students who identify different who identify as have sexual identity differences that was my first introduction to the Orange County School Board and I was completely shocked the second thing I want to remind you of is the campaign that brought most of this community together and that was a brown Free Speech rights in our schools and why would any school board ever claim that a student's Free Speech rights were to be prioritized above the safety of other students it's absurd I have a master's in school administration I have
017worked as a school administrator and I know that that's not true and yet this board sent a certified letter to a parent telling her that her student safety was less important than another student's Free Speech rights and it took eight months for the board to finally put the issue on the agenda and make a decision about it and oddly that meeting was the was the first meeting they had after the unite the right March in Charlottesville Virginia those forces are Brewing here in Orange County I've been to a Board of Education meeting with proud boys in uniform at it I have heard the rhetoric I have seen it and you all have a responsibility to not let that happen in our community and so the work that you're doing around equity and inclusion is so
018important and I urge you not to back down keep going forward thank you okay Sarah Patterson foreign good evening I'm here tonight to speak about the Dual language program at New Hope Elementary both as the school social worker and as a parent of two children who are in the program I've had the privilege of serving New Hope ads that school social worker for eight years since the Dual language programs Inception I have seen nothing but positive changes within the school to have native English speaking students and Native Spanish-speaking children come together to learn from learn as one from one another excuse me creates a value and respect for one another in a way that is sincere and profound all students experience the role of being the expert and the novice and this creates a culture
019of appreciation for one another and some really deep rooted growth mindset which we're all about when my nine-year-old was in kindergarten he asked in May I if we could go to Mexico as his birthday present I was like awesome cultural awareness and appreciation check Geographic proximity understanding not so much but routinely both of my kids ask if we can go to Columbia and I know that these requests reflect so many of the wonderful things that they have learned from their peers and from their teachers but more than that it reflects the um the relationships that they've built in the program and that's something that is hard to quantify but it's very present the beautiful and meaningful relationships that children and staff have that staff and staff have and among peers um is is truly beautiful
020prior to dual language being at New Hope we had students who were ashamed to be bilingual and that is incredibly sad especially because over half of our students are latinx but no more um there is a reverence for being bicultural and bilingual in our school and the program is really grounded in equity and our students feel not only celebrated for who they are but we see them celebrating one another for differences in a school district that envisions preparing students to be creative constructive thinkers who become healthy productive and responsible members of our community and of the world the Dual language program at New Hope is doing just that and I request that you continue to support it thank you thank you okay uh Sandy Wheelis hi thank you for your time I'm a parent of
021an orange high school student and I think all parents in all groups really that have been mentioned we all want Equity we all want impartial fairness um my concern when I did go over the um program that I'm sorry a little nervous I can't remember my name courageous conversations was that I didn't feel that it was impartial and fair it worried me because I felt as if he was coming across basing it on the outer appearance and one thing I've worked really hard with my children is not to look at outer appearance but rather what's on the inside and when I watched this program it really brought a lot of concern I feel like it was breaking down the things I've worked so hard to teach my children the 200 000 set aside I'm just
022asking that is being recorded I would ask that you consider using that money and using our local resources using um principal Farrington uh he's wonderful I've worked with him I've spoken with him what he's done in his school is amazing I think if you can use him or Equity officers that we already have here in the county our teachers our staff reaching out to some of these um groups that are out there create our own Forum locally where we can reach out to our children we need to look at all aspects of our kids not just the outside but they're suffering right now whether it's the mental illness um being hungry falling behind in school so much has happened with covid but I think we could really use that 200 000 better than using the
023um courageous conversations approach and so that's just what I'm asking you here today as a parent would you please look locally to use that 200 000 to help our children again Equity is important I am not arguing that one bit but we do need to make sure that we are inclusive of everybody um whether or not we all look the same and so forth so thank you for your time and I hope you will consider thank you Sarah Snipes good evening board I'm a parent as well in Orange County and I'm here to raise concerns over the group Pacific education group I want to raise three concerns and yet first I want to ask in regard to paying these organizations was their due diligence done like was there analysis I work in a company where
024we have to do analysis look at the results have a return on investment are we really going to get the results out of spending the money because last night in a few hours I did some research and I found things that are concerning the content that this group teaches includes critical race Theory they call they talk about white privilege white responsibility the pathology of white denial and the science of teaching critical race Theory they say that people shouldn't think they should just feel white supremacy has handicapped Black and Hispanic kids American society is relentlessly oppressive and there was a school board member in Rochester New York that said this company actually promoted a culture where it makes people feel ashamed mainly why it's because of sins and actions of people many many years ago I
025encourage you guys to do your own research and look at this company and what we're spending money on use of the funds is this really the best use of our funds right now we need teachers our students are two to three years behind in grade level we have teachers that are overworked and and have blatant training fatigue additionally there was information about a Seattle School District that was taken to federal court for this specific Peg founder Glenn Singleton's use of his content and the city of Seattle had to pay more than a million dollars so there should be a liability risk with this company and also the overall value per the proposal that was in the agenda The Proposal stated that it was only good through October 28th so I don't know if anybody's looked
026into whether or not that the quote will still be honored but with inflation as high as it is if I was a company owner I'd raise my rates um so what is the real rate that we're paying and back to Value what are the measurable goals how will they help the district achieve educational goals has there been data that's been collected on this company has there been analysis I could not find any we're paying money to this company resulted in improved results um have we talked to any other school districts that have used this company did they see it as a good investment did they see improved results I'm just asking the board to make sure we do diligence on companies that we spend money with shouldn't this company have years of data and evidence
027it's been in business long enough where are the results can we see them have you seen them this company is actively engaged in promoted controversial material with no Real Results I strongly encourage the board to reconsider voting for this company there's other ways we can solve equity in this County without paying for controversial companies thank you thank you uh Tara Stewart good evening board Dr Felder I want to address the potential allocation of equity tax funds of I believe it's 198 thousand dollars and also coveted Federal grant of 500 000 within the Orange County School District it's very fortunate that the district has this large amount of money to spend to improve our schools and as you know Orange County schools are failing and have up to two-year deficits and student um students reading and
028math skills some of this failure can be attributed to Virtual School as a result of the covid pandemic the pandemic thankfully is now over but there is so much work to be done for the students to catch up and to reach minimum educational benchmarks my question is how much latitude do you have with allocation of these funds students and teachers could really benefit right now from this money private tutors could be hired more teacher assistants could be hired teacher bonuses could be given to help compensate for the extra work required these measures will promote Equity immediately knowing that we have failing schools in Orange County will you go back to the Commissioners and negotiate this allocation of funds so that they are used wisely if the funds must be spent for Equity training I believe
029that it is imperative that you choose a vendor that can back up their stated outcomes with data and evidence from Real World Experience before making such a big investment with the community's hard-earned tax dollars there should be bids from different vendors that demonstrate Improvement in failing schools that are backed up with real data and evidence this level of transparency that proves that they have a good product needs to be a requirement before any Equity funding is committed and if that proof of improvement in student outcomes is not available then that vendor should be eliminated from consideration and outcome data should be compared among vendors so we get the best investment possible for our school district have you seen that outcome data from Peg courageous conversations have you compared Peg to other Equity training vendors what
030about local options if so please publish that evaluation process with Equity education student outcome data for the public to see so we know you are being responsible stewards of our tax dollars we can't afford to waste this money when our schools are failing this money needs to be used strategically and wisely to help the children in our County meet required educational standards this opportunity must not be wasted and must be used to benefit children and teachers directly where will our students be two years from now please consider this heavy responsibility that you have to the children for which you have been elected to serve don't take the easy way out but be creative and Frugal with this money so that it will benefit Orange County Schools its teachers and its students to its maximum potential
031thank you thank you Caroline penny good evening my name is Caroline Penny and I'm the mom of two children in the Dual language program at New Hope Elementary and I'm currently the PTSA president my daughter is part of the inaugural class of dual language so this is our fifth year in the program when my daughter enrolled in the program for kindergarten I was excited for her to learn a second language and I was also hoping that she would be part of a community in which she would get to know kids from different language backgrounds and different cultural backgrounds who would all be able to connect with and learn from each other in both native languages these things have all come about and the Dual language experience has been extremely positive for our family I've noticed
032that the friendships in my children's dual language classrooms form just as easily across differences of background and native language as they do between children from similar backgrounds in my experience of public schools in North Carolina this is not typical I attribute it to the fact that in dual language all children's backgrounds are valued equally with no child coming into kindergarten with a sense of being behind because of a lack of Prior exposure to English every dual language teacher we've had has been absolutely wonderful these teachers have opened up the world to my children and their classmates and I couldn't be more grateful I had a very proud moment recently my daughter's fourth grade dual language class is too large for specialist teachers to accommodate them all together so they split up and go to specials
033with other fourth grade classes my daughter was in music and the non-dual language class she was with has a new student who is a newcomer to this country and speaks only Spanish when she in her dual language classmates realized this they sat next to him and interpreted for him so he could understand the teacher's instructions and they've continued to do this I've loved hearing about this interaction this bridge that was built as I imagine the possibility of similar similar interactions in the future thanks to dual language my two white children from an English-speaking household are reading and writing and learning and making friends and growing in Spanish as well as English and I hope they'll continue to do so through bilingual education in middle school and Beyond this is so beneficial to their brains and
034their learning and it will give them the ability to connect with and work with befriend and have greater understanding of the many Spanish speakers in our community this will be so valuable but that is not even the greatest value of this program the fact that so many the many Native Spanish speakers Serve by New Hope have the opportunity to come in and feel proficient connect with staff in their own native language and learn in an environment where their background and language is valued and celebrated is what makes dual language so important to our school this program is not only incredibly valuable for our school Community I believe it's an essential in order to best serve new Hope's population and I hope you'll continue to support it thank you so much thank you uh Amy McLean
035hello um I'm Amy McLean I have a first grader enrolled in the Dual language program at New Hope I'm a former public school teacher and taught English abroad in Honduras so I've long since known the benefits of learning a second language but was curious to see what it would look like with my own child two words come to mind empathy and curiosity I asked my daughter in the middle of kindergarten how it felt to go into a room and not speak any Spanish and she said scary I said how do you think someone feels when they moved to a new country and they don't understand anything someone's saying and she said scary she's grown so much in her empathy and understanding of what it feels like to be different and it didn't take long for
036Spanish to not become scary it soon became her favorite class and she'd jump out of the car in the morning and say it's a Spanish day um and um her curiosity is like other parents have said of the world she can't wait to go to Venezuela and Ecuador and Mexico and Spain and she told me she's gonna order soda in Spanish and I can't stop her um and um she's just fascinated by the world for a seven-year-old it's so beautiful to see um and then also something I'm sure every parent can know is that sometimes your kid connects more with a teacher um one year than another right that's natural and something that's really cool about dual language is you have a Spanish teacher and an English teacher so you're exposed to two different personalities
037and two different types of teaching and that's been fantastic because you go to one teacher this day and then the next day it's a different teacher and I think it's kept School fresh for her she can't wait to go back to that teacher if she hasn't seen and you're never gonna have an off year where you don't jive with your teacher when you get that chance to connect with two and that's been wonderful um she's only been in the program a year and two months she can count to 20. she knows um lots of animals she can introduce herself she can tell you what she likes what she doesn't like um and just today in the car we had a little side conversation where I told her that you don't have school tomorrow but your
038little sister does for preschool and it was all in Spanish and we kind of felt like a secret that we could say that um I I could go on I only have three minutes but it has been just the best thing for our family and for our community and um I love the program so much thank you thank you Earl Ty good evening and I I am Earl Ty and I appreciate the chance to speak before you all tonight I'd like to share a few thoughts about the equity plan and proposed training for the board and staff the OCS Equity plan dictates that every student receives what he or she needs to succeed that sounds like a wonderful Pursuit and a worthy Pursuit but the question is what does that entail we've seen in tool
039systems all over the country into a degree here in Orange County that those who drive Equity take great liberties with their approach to race in the OCS Equity plan there are allegations of persistent inequities in education and devastating systemic racism but no examples and no Solutions and I'm not suggesting that racism does not exist it does and it should be dealt with but the typical pattern of those in the equity business and it is a business that generates billions of dollars is to lay claim to deep and wide systems of racism that then require millions of dollars of staff and Consultants to fix and somehow there never seems to be much progress only a need for more staff and consultants in training perhaps the approach to race relations promoted as Equity is actually the problem
040and not the solution what is the possible justification what what justification could there be for labeling some kids oppressors and others victims I cannot think of a more egregious example of bullying than a school staffer addressing a class of children in this manner Thomas Soul a black Economist said have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that have happened before they were born while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today another problem with Equity programs is the hyper focus on gender identity and pronouns targeting children elementary middle school and high school kids are not fully emotionally physically and intellectually developed so to introduce kids to the concept of gender identity and to lead them to pursue transitioning especially without the full
041knowledge of parents in the process is wholly inappropriate and excusable and abusive in fact many young people in their late teens and 20s today are asking where were the adults to protect me from this after they were LED down a path and that has done irreparable harm to them I see a lot of phrases related to race safe spaces and culturally affirming experiences in the equity document what I do not see are the words age appropriate I encourage the board to proceed cautiously with regard to the implementation of any Equity program curriculum or resource decision by insisting on age-appropriate guidelines forgive me for stating the obvious but we're dealing with kids likewise I respectfully submit to the board that the goal of public education should be firmly rooted in the pursuit of academic achievement and
042critical thinking not indoctrination so please choose these programs wisely thank you thank you Jennifer Carson uh good evening Dr Felder chair Atherton Vice chair Purcell and board members my name is Jennifer Carson and I am the media specialist at New Hope Elementary I started working at New Hope in 2021. prior to my current role at New Hope I was a language development specialist at Grady Brown and I worked there for seven years I chose to shift roles and move to New Hope because of the many years I spent teaching and learning alongside multilingual Learners and their families um this work has been the highlight and joy of my teaching career and I knew before making through the transition that New Hope was the right place for me on one of my first days I had
043the privilege to listen in on a conversation between one of our dual language teachers Senora ate or Dua who had to remind me repeat her name so many times before I figured it out of which I was supremely grateful um and her first graders while they waited in the library to be picked up by their parents um as I listened to them talk laugh and share their day going back and forth in Spanish and English I smiled to myself for them it was just the end of their day for me it was a wonderful example of students being seen heard and valued by their teacher Andy shutter and their own language and in the language they were learning all of our students those whose families speak Spanish those whose families speak English those whose families
044in the Dual language program and those in traditional classrooms benefit from having the opportunity to learn grow share and celebrate each other together thank you [Applause] Rachel Royce good evening foreign thank you for the opportunity to speak with the board others have spoken quite eloquently tonight about the benefits of the equity work for all our children and for the Dual language program I wish that when my kids were that age that they could have gone to that program because it sounds fantastic I love to hear the parents glowing with enthusiasm about their program I admire that the schools joined together in 2020 funded by the county to help the school staff get trained in equity issues from experts and I trust but there are measures in place for picking experts that are able to train
045the staff in equity and I want the board to give the equity training for the teachers it's full support and take advantage of the opportunity to learn maybe they'll come away glowing like the parents of the Dual language program and the pa the the program will help amplify people's understanding of a very complex issue I think the name courageous conversations is very apt and that the Board needs to be courageous as well in moving forward and not be afraid of grappling with the complex issues there's not ever going to be a straight line between when you're working on a complex problem that we want to go from the achievement gaps to equity there are a lot of steps in between and you could develop a causal model that gets you from one place to another
046but there's not one simple way so I I don't think that the company will instantly and within one year be able to make a change in outcomes that's not reasonable but I think that the careful work that the schools and the county have done to consider what steps to take to move things forward that we we should trust that and I fully support it thank you thank you Eva Welch good evening I'm here to give you my um my experience in the Dual language program at New Hope my daughter was first introduced to Spanish by an after-school caregiver in preschool and she was very excited about it and enjoyed to learn even just a few words so our family felt truly blessed to have the opportunity to participate in the Dual language program from its
047Inception at New Hope five years ago I know a little bit of Spanish my husband took it in high school I think but her school was the primary source of learning and it has actually refreshed some of my knowledge of the language from years back um the regular exposure has also brought a deeper understanding more than just the once a week special that her brother who's now in high school had experienced um and I love that she's exposed to the cultural aspects and the diversity that being in this close-knit circle of both native English feature speakers and Native Spanish speakers Springs um it's brought interest to her learning about her own family lineage as well after a rough year with the pandemic which I'm sure everybody experienced it was very difficult from the Spanish perspective
048for her so she was very downtrodden coming back into school about her Spanish skills she didn't feel very confident but as the months progressed and she's with her teachers face to face and getting that one-on-one um or small group experiences I hear more and more stories about how she's getting it and how she doesn't really she's realizing how much she actually really does know um one particular incident that just happened recently um she got off the bus and she was so excited and she's mom guess what happened on the bus he said there was a little girl who did not know any English and I was able to translate she asked my little friend a question and I translated in Spanish I got the answer and I got to teach my friend who doesn't know
049Spanish a couple words of Spanish so she was really excited about that and so having all the support we can especially as we're getting more and more classes um is super beneficial as I've seen the assets of it so thank you thank you that's all all right um thanks everyone for coming out to speak tonight um with that we will go to board comments and we'll start with Bonnie thanks thanks Mr Atherton and kind of tough to go after these wonderful comments about the Dual language program thank you so much for that I wanted to just offer a big thank you to Dr Felder Amber Wilson Mariah Morrison Dr rolack for coming out to the effluent cheeks Trunk or Treat with their book monster and you may know as everybody else was giving out candy
050they were handing out books and to have very happy kids and parents who were excited to get them so thank you so much for that was great um I would wonder if there's a way I'd like to ask the board to consider it uh soon um to build on that Goodwill that Dr Felder and her team created by creating a book fund where the public people local businesses Civic and Faith groups anyone can donate money to for the perk for the sole purpose of buying books for and giving them away to our students so it's something I'd love to see us do but Dr Felder and her team inspired it what a great time thank you all right thank you um so real quick I will talk about the community engagement Committee in our first
051meeting a couple of weeks ago I think it was very informative and we have some great ideas and I think we'll we'll have some major success with that committee and we did take a field trip to uh the Gateway Village hub and that is one of our commitments is to go out to the community and visit with our local communities and and uh neighborhoods and families instead of having them come to us so I think we're going to do a lot of work within that Community engagement committee and hopefully bring forth some great ideas for the district um I have done some visiting to schools which is what I like to do I have visited Orange High School I have visited eflin cheeks and I have visited Gravelly Hill just just today and I have
052seen students and seen students in action seeing teachers in action and I love to go in and see see this talk to the principals and hear what wonderful things are going on in their school so I will continue to to get out and visit excellent uh Sarah thank you for everybody who came out to speak tonight I'm looking forward I'm glad that we have the table set up like this to talk with the equity task force um which I just find to be a valuable looking forward to that conversation um uh one event I went to recently is the color of Education conference and I wanted to mention that um Orange County schools had a wonderful presence there particularly we had some really inspiring student speakers some art that was sort of prominently displayed on
053the podium that like these major speakers came in were were speaking at um it was a great event and I just wanted to leave you all with this tidbit there was um Dudley flood who if you don't know is like a hero in North Carolina education and desegregation in particular he um he spoke um and he was I want to leave you with something that he said um so he was talking about um when he was younger how he he saw these people coming out of the Marines officer candidate school and he was like what are they doing to take I don't know six weeks or whatever to like turn these people into leaders like what are they doing over there and so he had the chance to go to see what was different there
054versus anywhere else um and he said you know you're not going to become a leader until you see yourself as one he said there were three things they were doing differently one everyone there spoke to the officer candidates as though they were significant and important so the candidates were significant important too everyone responded to the candidates as though they had something important to say and three they behaved in their presence as though they were in the presence of someone important and he said if we were to Accord that dignity to every human being we would be astonished at what we could accomplish um it was very moving um and sort of one great tidbit from a great conference but I just I I that is a hope that I have for Orange County schools that
055we afford each of our students and staff members but this is really sort of student focused that dignity um and and being in their presence as though they are each significant and important thank you Sarah Carrie um thank you thank you also everyone who came out to speak tonight I wanted to share on two uh events I went to one was the NC shape convention which is for PE and health teachers a number of ocf OCS teachers attended and won ledis session I went to there's a lot of emphasis on movement and learning and how movement helps um memory and it was just a really great event with a speaker named mikezala um who um trains teachers and and provides different approaches to building a movement into classrooms and also I attended the color of
056Education Summit that Sarah mentioned and we really had uh the best turnout as a district we had students as Sarah mentioned we had parents of students we had student alumni including multiple graduation speakers from last year we had teachers supporting their students and we had student speakers speaking to and calling teachers and administrators to be brave when it comes to doing Equity work in our district and so I have some specific words from students that I'll share when we get to that part of the meeting tonight thanks whatever um I also had the opportunity to virtually attend the color of Education conference and it was great to see Orange County Schools represented in such a powerful way I also had the opportunity to serve at Grady Brown Elementary it was really great to interact with
057the students and staff and I look forward to more opportunities to serve thank you all right thanks everyone um so just a few items uh I was able to attend the the fall law conference and was able to share that with the rest of the board lots of great content of things that are evolving and changing in education and uh things that we have to keep in mind um several events in the schools uh Frankenstein from the Orange High School theater was wonderful the Katrina project very close to home and very tragic um the Cedar Ridge band wonderful performance great to see all the families and students all together and various sports activities and the lights on after school which is a program talking about the students and the importance of care and focus and
058seeing all of our talented students and the pumpkins um one thing I just wanted to share was um you know I took a walk to one of the schools for an activity and as I went into the room the building I could hear music and at first I thought hey they're playing music how wonderful you know it's after school and you know so kept walking and then as I got closer I realized that's not they're not playing a radio that's actually people and as I kept walking I got closer and then eventually realized it's a group of the staff members principals assistant principals that had gotten together with the music teacher and was just singing and I I injected myself to listen and um you know listen to it for a while and then they
059noticed I was there and then um you know they they stopped but just shared that you know the one common thing they had was music was you know through all the stress of everything going on at the end of the day they would just get together and sing and I think it's just a wonderful example of you know just some of the ways our teachers and staff are are dealing with the day-to-day they have to do and just wanted to share how wonderful it was to to hear anyway um I am going to fix a mistake that was brought to my attention um we did have another teacher that had signed up to speak and we will give her that moment to speak uh Alexandria yeah that's all I did not no worries good evening
060Board of Education academies were intended I'm here tonight to speak from my perspective as a dual language teacher from day one my commitment our commitment has been to provide our students with a space where there can grow who they are value their roots and feel proud and confident seeing all the students grow culturally and globally throughout these years has been amazing alongside teaching the language and developing by literacy our shared learning also helps to promote cultural awareness just like you heard all parents I'm grateful for being part of New Hope staff all of them are inspiring and amazing just like our students thank you thank you all right uh subord um next is our consent agenda it is not clear to me which ones are getting pulled at this point so I'm just gonna ask
061I just wanted to pull the Enterprise fund number three number three all right I think that'll be a quick question okay any other items board members want to pull all right with that uh with that item it would be right after our um discussion and action from the equity um task force discussions so um it'll be at the end of the meeting that's right okay um do we have a motion to approve the consent with the item pulled so I moved second all right any further discussion all in favor aye aye opposed all right thank you so much um one other thing I I wanted to say before we switch over and invite the equity task force to join us is tonight we will not be actually talking about the Dual language we do know
062that the the meeting is going to run long and so I just wanted to let you all know that if y'all are waiting to hear that that please don't wait we do know that the meeting's going to run pretty long oh I'm sorry it was under the impression we were Oh I thought you texted me and said we are not we are oh okay yes I'm sorry thank you for the clarity thank you I thought you'd said no then okay so we will it'll just be a while so all right uh we'll transition over to the uh Equity task force and would invite the task force to join us I'm sorry Gravelly Hills first sorry Dr Felder feet good evening I believe Dr Relic is with us on the telephone or called in yes terrific
063well welcome good evening everyone we um stand before you virtually and in person to once again bring Gravelly Hill Middle School school Improvement plan back to you tonight with um just a reminder of the process that the school Improvement team went through as well as to address specific questions you all had around District supports for the school so I am looking for the clicker and don't have it thank you so we will get started and I'll ask Dr Relic to begin by just recapping our school-based planning process for you all good evening members of the board and Dr Fielder and thank you for this opportunity to go first and um just do a recap of our school Improvement planning process um we did start by looking at a root cause analysis we reviewed data from
064the teacher working condition survey from our end of grade and end of course assessments um and in doing that we identified um specific challenges that we had and started to think about ways that we might address those we did use the NC Star platform to look at the 12 key indicators and we assessed all 12 indicators and I should say that the we in this particular instance is our school Improvement leadership team so we went through each indicator to assess um where we are what challenges were there and then after we had assessed all of those indicators we did select four indicators that would become our priority objectives for our school Improvement plan for this year here we then looked at action steps for each of those objectives and we put um timelines not all
065of those action steps are set to be completed at the end of the year but we do have interim um steps that should be completed as we are going throughout the school year um so that as we are monitoring um through our um twice per month meetings that we are seeing our progress so we meet on the second and fourth Monday of each month on the first meeting um is about a one hour meeting the second meeting is a two-hour meeting and it gives us an opportunity to look at our data on an ongoing basis to see our progress and to make any changes that we may need to make we do believe in a process of continuous Improvement and so if we need to make changes along the way we are able to do
066that with the plan that we have developed thank you Dr Relic and as a reminder this is the school Improvement plan that that evolves on a continuous Improvement cycle when we look at what is due to North Carolina's Department of Public Instruction it is this plan as it stands in an NC Star that is the only requirement the state has in moving that forward however we heard you loud and clear in your questions to our principal and your questions to us valid questions how are you as a district supporting the school beyond the plan that they have put in place so we wanted to take some time tonight to speak to each of those areas last board meeting you asked her very clearly what else do you need how can we as the Board of
067Education support Gravelly Hill Middle School and Dr Relic and the school Improvement team and the the school as a whole responded with some specific asks they asked that you grant them an additional assistant principal position they've also asked for additional classroom teacher positions one of the challenges they are having as a school right now is a continuous cycle of movement around their teachers because of the small school size in classroom teachers having to teach various grade levels and not having the continuity year to year the hiring of these two additional teacher positions teaching positions would allow a strong teaming structure to be put in place which already exists at the rest of our schools in Guilford my goodness in Orange County Schools sorry about that they have also asked for some temporary lunch monitors which
068would alleviate the principle for administrative Duty so that she and her assistant principal can be active in their plc's can be in classrooms observing we have a strong volunteer list at Gravelly Hill 24 of those individuals have indicated an interest in serving as lunch monitors in the meantime however members of both cabinet and extended cabinet have been going into going into Gravelly Hill on a regular basis we did a sign up sheet in order to alleviate the principal so that she can participate in those pieces important pieces of the school day we are also continuing to temporarily reassign some of our central office Personnel to provide targeted support in areas where we have had vacancies I'll move to the column around support the last few board meetings I've talked to about are district support and
069Improvement team members of those teams of that team led by myself and Dr Denise green attend all of the school Improvement leadership team meetings at Gravelly Hill we are then able to bring any needs interest resources resource needs that bubble up to central office and bring them directly to cabinet that looks like people coming back to the meeting to participate and to be able to provide targeted support but it also means that we are able to allocate those resources and get things happening a bit more quickly one example of that is those lunch monitors in one of the meetings the ptso stated that they could start generating a list of volunteers when I brought that back to Cabinet we were immediately able to put that sign in process in place to get the support directly
070out to the school immediately our human capital office is also supporting through continued recruitment screening interviewing support Dr rolick has asked for substitute teacher training we have asked and written into the plan that our cni department is developing common formative Assessments in collaboration with the teachers we have continued instructional coaching and we are looking forward to the prioritization of service by the new mental health coordinator who'll be coming on board to support with some of the specific needs of our students from a long-term perspective we are looking at both tutoring as well as transportation for our students so that they can stay after school for tutoring we are also identifying new positions as I spoke about the two classroom positions that would lead to teeming stability for our professional learning communities finally we are examining
071different funding sources and looking at different possibilities for the supports that we will need at Gravelly Hill for the long term Dr rollick I'm going to ask you to now speak to the current vacancies at the school please yes so right now and you can see this on the slide our greatest need is in the area of math and we've talked about that before right now we have three um vacant math positions um the two seventh grade math teachers as well as one eighth grade math teacher the two seventh grade math teachers um essentially means that all of our seventh graders have a long-term substitute teacher and are receiving the instruction through their ncbps um math teacher who is a certified teacher But the teacher is virtual then we do have a vacancy and this
072is a long-standing vacancy in our exceptional Children's Program I mean it's for our separate setting classroom um that classroom right now with staffed by a couple of teacher assistants and then we are um having our EC grade level EC teachers provide instruction to the students who are in the separate setting classroom and then we are also looking um to hire an additional daily substitute future so that when our teachers do have to be out you know due to illness or caring for a child or a professional development that we have substitutes in the building who can go into those classrooms and provide instruction thank you I do want to open it up to any questions but I do want to emphasize once more that the standing School Improvement plan that is required by North Carolina's
073Department of Public Instruction for schools designated as low performing is simply the plan that is identified and generated by the school's Improvement leadership team that is housed in NC Star at this time the superintendent does recommend that the Board of Education approve the plan as presented but again I'd like to open this up to any questions that you might have this evening fine I'll start first I wanted to thank Dr rolack Miss Carr the um the school Improvement team and I know some of the folks on this team I know that this was a spirited and engaging conversation to develop the plan and it shows in the results so thank you for an excellent School Improvement plan and so and it's important for you all to know that that while I'm I support the plan
074that it's important that we have this the the question has always been do we have the staff in place to execute it so it's never been a question about the plan it's a great job just wanted to to make that clear I have a question about the AP and the new classroom position teachers are they permanent positions the request has been made for them to be permanent positions yes ma'am okay I I would like to also command everyone for working on this plan and I you know I've done many myself and so I know it's a arduous task and I appreciate everyone's time and effort into it I actually went up today and had conversation with Dr Bullock and we talked about the plan and I commended her on on the plan um my one
075concern is the one that I talked about a couple of weeks ago we have two seventh grade classes that have gone a quarter of the year without teachers North Carolina virtual school is great but it is not the end all and be all it will never take the place of a teacher and I am have a very strong feeling that we need to place teachers in that classroom I know that we cannot find teachers right now and and that is not just our problem that is everyone's problem right now I would like to suggest that until we do find a teacher for both of those classrooms that we take two of our coaches from schools that are not low performing schools put them in those positions and if we need to reshuffle somewhere else to
076put more help in the schools that we're removing them from then we do that or we also look at our DLCs because we have some DLCs that are are strong math people I know and there might be one of those that would be interested in going in and working with this these two seventh grade classrooms because I feel like we are doing our students a strong Injustice right now seventh grade math is very important and being in middle school as long as I was I understand that when those students come out of middle school they're going directly into high school math and if they are not prepared it is very hard for them to catch up as they go through high school and I don't want our students to to be unprepared because we didn't
077do what we needed to do to help them when they were in this situation these students didn't ask for this and so I have just been thinking of ways that we can work and try to use the resources that we have in Orange County schools which are very many and do what we need to do to help these students get a teacher consistently in front of them every single day and work with them until we can hire someone and get them in there to work with them and that continuity is key and it is that um currently the DLC at Gravelly Hill has been pushing in on a consistent basis to provide the support and instruction in that one seventh grade classroom and we are we we spoke earlier about having Central Services Personnel that
078have been in and out and our desire to do that and push in on a consistent basis to be able to provide exactly what you're looking for and what we know our students deserve as well that consistent instruction we continue to work hard to recruit and identify qualified math instructors I know that you have graciously provided some supports to be able to provide some some bonuses there we I believe there are some other areas that have been considered in enticing folks into Orange County Schools to support in those positions ends but please be assured that our Central Services team is taking those recommendations very seriously and really identifying ways that we can consistently push into those classrooms so the students have a qualified content expert in front of them daily along with ncvps so to
079provide that re-teaching to provide the activities to provide the guided instruction the thinkpair shares all that come with strong pedagogy and strong instruction well I think that it's very important that they see the same person every day and I don't know that having someone from central office go it's going to be an everyday thing they have other things to do I know and that's why I'm suggesting that we take two coaches and put them there until we have teachers hired I just feel that that consistency and and that every day of this is this is my teacher and in Middle School identifying with somebody is very important for students to have a teacher that they know is their teacher they will most of the time do their very best work if they are have a
080relationship with that teacher and you can't build a relationship if you don't see them every day and that is what I am worried about in these students going another nine weeks without having the same person in front of them every day working with them that's why I'm making this suggestion Sarah Just one thought to add on to that because I agree that the relationship is really important and the consistency um and I wonder if the rest of the seventh grade team has awareness of how those students are doing in math and if through their relationships they can also provide some it's not the same thing as having the consistent math teacher but you know are there other adults in the building who can provide the sort of expectation and sort of accountability um to to
081that level of it um just something to think about appreciate everything that you all are doing and Dr rolack to um yeah to solve a really hard situation Kerry um thank you I just have a question about um the the push-in that we've talked about and the the different staff members coming in from other places is it um one thing I was thinking about this because we had some conversation around this earlier um is it you know this this person is coming in on Mondays and this other person on Tuesdays or is it this person comes in first first period every day this person comes in second period every day so I think having that sort of horizontal consistency rather than um absolutely that's what we're definitely looking at initially as we were pushing in
082the initial plan did have different adults in and we heard loud and clear from the school that and and instinctually knew that that was not going to be a long-term solution our students do need the consistency we have to be sensitive to their needs um social emotional needs as well so we're being very intentional in designing something so that that same group of students has the same consistent adult every period every I'm sorry every day and if I could add Dr roulette please jump in and Miss Carr so one class does have a consistent um a teacher in the classroom it's a long-term substitute with our district mathlete facilitator uh in that classroom providing support the other class had a DLC that's where the the class that had the most inconsistency well the inconsistency had
083a DLC then a long-term substitute was identified that person unfortunately um quit without notice and the so the DLC that the students started with is back with additional support from a math coach that's in the school so um yeah so there's that consistency is back and um and I hear what you're saying with regards to uh pulling math coaches from other schools but as I shared uh previously uh the concern with doing that are the needs in other schools are great around math we have a number of new teachers um new to math new to um new to teaching that need uh support and all of our schools um I don't have a math coach and so um per feedback from Dr rolack the plan that we are um are for second quarter is the
084plan that she believes is best for the school at this time by again Shoring up the consistency in the classrooms and putting in additional uh support and I understand that um but I also understand that students need somebody they can identify with every day and and having having people come in from the central offices all well and good but they may not be there every day because I know how it is working in central office and things happen um and I just feel like that there needs to be that one-on-one this is my teacher and even if they're still using virtual High School um that teacher is certified in math and it's going to be the expert in the classroom right and so the additional support in addition to this um the consistent teacher in
085the classroom would be Central Services coming in to do what we talked about uh of just a little while ago and that was around ensuring that the work that students complete gets entered and that they stay on provide that kind of support so that kind of support is okay to to rotate through it's the consistency of the of the person delivering the instruction and um that we believe will be there through uh effective this uh this marking period and was there in one class in a consistent way as I said started off that way in one class the uh when the long-term substitute came on board put and then went back so that caused that inconsistency that Dr rolack and her team feel really impacted the learning in that classroom it's also about understanding that
086Gravelly Hill has two math coaches but they share a school so they're not there every day right so it's like a day and a half and then two days right so we have two math coaches um supporting three middle schools and the plan is to one of those math coaches to be more uh at Gravely than at the other Middle School that that person supports well as I said I love the plan I think you've done a great job with it but I don't know that we can carry through with piecemealing and and doing what we're doing right now that's my concern I appreciate that and of course as I stated previously it's not the ideal that any of us would want but we do believe again based on uh as uh what the feedback
087from Dr rolack and her team that the plan for this second quarter is one that would provide greater consistency um to to students particularly in the one class and the other classroom has the consistency it's only one uh classroom that does not or classroom with students meet I'll put it that way Sarah well I'll just um Express appreciation for all of the thought that's gone into the plan and the additional thinking about how to best provide some consistency in those classrooms it would be helpful to understand how the data is looking as you do the NC check-ins in the aims web Dr rolock I'm sure that you know that if there's more that you need from the board you should for it um and with that I'm going to motion to approve the school Improvement
088plan a second and just as a point of clarification the is the motion to Encompass the school Improvement plan but also the additional measures that are part of the plan for improvement yeah okay yes 30 for the minute so it's to approve the school Improvement plan and the additional measures that have been outlined in this presentation as part of the plan for improvement overall plan for improvement and I second that all right we have a motion and a second discussion I just want to comment that you know I I still have a concern because um the these seventh graders are now they're now behind they're further behind there's covert as everything else but they are now a quarter behind and if the plan which had it's it's thoughtful but if there's continued problems and moving
089around these these particular kids are going to pay the price so that really concerns me so I'm kind of with you and that I would like to see people dedicated assigned to the school and then will let everybody kind of give in a little bit to make it work for great that's right any other discussion I'll just add since I wasn't able to earlier um that I would as well like to see the consistency and I'm very concerned about where the students are right now I think that the school Improvement team has done an excellent job putting together a plan around how to do it with the right resources and my concern is still around the resources and consistency um so if there are no other comments or suggestions we will go to a vote
090uh so all in favor of the motion say aye aye aye opposed and motion does not carry so um with that um Connie can I make a second motion I'd like to move to proceed with the hiring of the assistant principal in the two additional classroom teachers can we do you've already approved that you approve that under consent oh we proved that okay how would the board like to proceed the only option is to either resolve it now or call a special meeting at another date too actually good news on that front I'm told by staff that DPI has has sort of afforded districts a little additional flexibility on timing um so the the deadline that for submission to the State Board of the plan for improvement which the school Improvement plan can be part
091of is uh not till December 9 that it has to be submitted to the state December 4 would be the deadline DPI said for actually board approval of the plan so in theory you could come back to another regular meeting for another discussion of this you wouldn't necessarily need a special meeting just a question if I can um since the board has rejected the school's School Improvement plan don't we now need to provide specific reasons for rejecting the plan yeah that's an interesting question it's it's a quirk of this that the school Improvement plan is a part of it at all is just because I think DPI has said they would like you to use that same instrument to to develop your plan for improvement really they could they could be separate in my view
092so normally uh if the board does not approve a school Improvement plan in an ordinary cycle where it comes to the board every two years typically the school Improvement team can request a mediation with the board so but I think in this case um what I'm hearing is the board's intent is not to say you reject the school Improvement plan for what it's worth your what Your the majority of the board is not approving it's the plan for improvement to address the low performing School designation of which the school Improvement plan is apart so I know that's this is the ongoing complicated distinction but I think um uh and basically I think if you were to bring this back for a subsequent board meeting whether special meeting or a regular meeting I don't know that
093we would need to view this as a rejection of the school Improvement plan it's just that the majority board said we need more on the districts inside of things another point of clarity do we need to approve Gravelly Hills School Improvement plan do we need to do we need to approve both things well so again this what's the interesting the school Improvement plan itself is not normally up for Board review at this time it's it's sort we're taking it it's being brought to you out of cycle because DPI has said please use this NC Star uh rubric and system for school Improvement plans to develop your plan for improvement um as I said they could be separate in my view legally but DPI is the one that you have to report to so you kind
094of have to report the information the way they suggested um so I'm not sure if I'm answering your question but I don't I don't know that you need to take a vote on the school Improvement plan by itself it's only required by law to be reviewed every two years it's not up for review so the the motion that's failed I interpret it as a rejection of the plan for improvement because the four majority of the board did not think there was enough done on the on the central office side the measures of the central office administration board control as as compared to what the school Improvement team may I interject for just a minute um based on my prior experience in five years with North Carolina's Department of Public Instruction and role as a school
095and District transformation coach working specifically in coaching schools and school school leaders and superintendents in low-performing schools and districts the state requires a vote on the school's Improvement plan as it stands in NC Star any school that has that designation of low performing you vote on that plan if you are saying that we do not think this is the plan in isolation what stands in NC Star as their platform we're saying that plan does not we don't support that then you have to come back with specifics saying this is what's wrong with it expecting us to come back with a different plan District district supports and I'm I'm sorry if I'm out of line and that's that's correct as to the school Improvement plan my point is and this is it gets complicated but really
096what's at issue here is a plan for improvement not the school Improvement plan um and we could maybe have a separate discussion or go back in the closed session I don't want to um derail the conversation but but I do think um you can the bottom line is I believe legally you could come back at another board meeting and have another crack at this whether it's a special meeting or and and still be operating within the deadline and I don't believe the board by its action so far has rejected the school Improvement plan per se it said we don't we haven't seen enough a majority board hasn't seen enough on the plan for improvement we should probably have a separate conversation too yeah I agree the the vote that failed is the same vote that
097failed last time it wasn't a vote to reject the plan it was a motion to approve it that failed not a motion to reject the plan do we have an option to make a set that's focused on I think what we're really asking for is we'd like to see the coaches assigned to the school and right is that what that's what we're looking for I just I haven't go ahead that's not the role of a school board to like dictate specific positions into specific spots in a specific school that's where I'm having trouble here is the school's leadership and the district's leadership has said what they think they need and and you know and you know we can give suggestions but like dictating which positions should move in I just have a real I have
098a real problem if that's what you're hoping to do like that's that's just not the role of a school board so a couple of just quick comments on that one you do have a board policy that that designates that it's the uh responsibility of the superintendent to transfer employees uh to different positions so by board policy that's up to the superintendent you could waive that policy and override it in theory but um you know I I think that the other con consideration one to bring up is that there may be some complicating factors that the administration would be better able to address in terms of who would be willing to take the position uh who would be willing to accept to transfer and not leave the district for example so that may require some conversations
099and some further thought about how to how to organize it so I think in theory you could take action board could say we're going to wave or uh policy and and do this what is normally the superintendent's job in transferring staff but that could have some some unexpected consequences so without identifying where they come from or who they are I think the intent at least mine is would like to see full-time people assigned to these positions with better qualified Math teachers or you know or you know you know not perfect my intent was to say that my feelings were that we needed full-time people in there so that students know who their math teacher is well and they're still on Virtual public school too so that's right and that the plan is to that would
100be part of the consistency right so that would be a continue to be part of their instruction and um the non-virtual side of it would be to add additional lessons and small groups and everything else that is needed in those classrooms which is happening now now that there is a consistent person in each classroom as I said one classroom has always had the consistency one did not yes we talked about that earlier then if we're going that route I would like to see who's going in these classrooms and and the times and and just know that there is a consistent plan for somebody to be in there every day to help whomever is in the room and know that students have that person that they can identify with so if you have a plan to
101move central office people you know from you know eight o'clock to nine o'clock or whatever just bring the board that Sarah yeah I mean I may just be saying the same thing but it sounds like the thing that a majority of the board would like to see is for period by period who is that person that's going to be there all week um the certified adult so I just have to add I also don't think this is the school board job to oversee exactly what's happening in which classroom and what period I think we're really overstepping and this is now two meetings in a row that we're having this conversation uh I'll I'll disagree based on the scores that we've reviewed earlier that there's significant effort that's needed to support these kids especially given where
102they are right now and I'm I'm willing to step up and say that yes I did due diligence to understand what the plan was who the people were and how we're addressing it so I that's just how I feel about understanding it and knowing that it's going to be consistent and I think it's our job and duty to provide teachers for our students and we have two classrooms who don't have certified teachers in them every day and and we're not serving our kids if we're not doing what we need to do to help them and that that's why I brought this up because I just feel like it's very important or a teacher especially well in any school to be in that classroom every day but if you can bring us who's going to be
103going when and where and we can see that and then we can keep up with how the students are doing through Dr rolack and and Dr Felder and see the test scores that they're going to have uh in December to see how the first semester has gone then we can do that what we really want you know at least I I really do want to see the consistency that happened and not like oh well we changed it and and you know it's unfair to um that you know that Dr rolack is always carrying the order on this right that if there's been absences there's been problems that she is just juggling so many things and you know I think as a member of the board I want to know that she has got the staff
104that she needs to do her job and I want to see names all right with that it sounds like um based on the the comments to come back with this I'll work with Dr Felder and and to find out timing whether we need a different meeting or if it can fit within our next meeting all right any further comments questions before we move on all right with that we will move on to the equity task force and invite the equity task force to come to the tables with us we have four seats on this side as well thank you excuse me well good evening board uh Dr Felder and all of our community folks here this evening I am super thrilled and excited to be sitting before you and with you today um in this
105space I am appreciative that we are approaching this Equity conversation as a conversation and a whole group thing as we all know Equity is all of our works it is imperative that we do this work collectively I would be remissed if I did not show my love and appreciation for the amazing Equity task force that I have the honor and privilege of serving so I want to begin by introducing myself my name is Lee A Williams II I go by the pronouns he him and his and I am the chief Equity officer for Orange County Schools I would like to take a minute if all of the members of equity task force that are here tonight speaking could introduce themselves as well so we can have their names my name is Katie herper I'm the
106parent of two Elementary School age kids my name is latondra strong and my pronouns are she her my name is Valerie Ehrlich my pronouns are she her and I'm the parent of a elementary school student my name is Sandra blevko I'm the family engagement coordinator for Orange County Schools I'm Kara Stewart I'm an enrolled member of the saponi tribe and I am a retired teacher from Orange County Schools Kamar sathy uh pronouns are he him and I am the district's Equity facilitator I am Peter delvecca I have three children and all I've been to Orange County Schools thank you all for coming out and giving us your time so we'll begin tonight um with our Equity task force presentation so the rationale behind tonight is to review the proposal from Equity task force to make
107recommendations to our Board of Education and then have a community dialogue foreign so the purpose of the equity task force um the equity task force was constructed in a place to where we can ensure and engage that equities of the root in the heart of all that we do I'm looking for my confidence monitor there we go um and so we're very comprised of the board and of the racial diverse stakeholders including with our limit two students parents administrators this is part of the policy that was written policy 1030 to make sure that we're engaging in educational Equity here in Orange County Schools so Mr Ryan we want to talk about why Equity is important I could give you all of the words all of my knowledge and information that we have around Equity but
108I think it's far more important when you hear from students who are actually engaging in Orange County Schools every day we have a chance here to watch a beautiful video that was created and I get to the heart of why we have Equity work here in Orange County this is just a suspenseful pause to get you on your toes and get you excited I thought I was the video it's live but also as we're waiting for the video it's it's uh great to point out this was created and done within all of orange counties using our principals teachers and students you can also find this video posted on our website we will have a showing tonight but you'll also find it on our website as well so as they're doing that I think it's imperative
109foreign if you're in need of a shoot I'm just going to take off my shoe and give it to you right now we're equal right now we have shoes but you probably don't wear a size 10. and so yeah I can teach you but why don't I teach you in a way that fits how you learn the best [Music] there are systems that haven't changed for decades and I feel like that is a big part of why we still have inequity in schools because it's always been an issue it hasn't just been an issue in the past two years it's not something new that random people have started talking about on the Internet it's something that's always been an issue throughout the history of the United States that needs to be addressed School fortunately and
110unfortunately is one of those big institutions and whenever you have institutional problems it affects everybody we know from research that schools are basically just microcosms of our larger society and the issues that plague our society are the same issues that present in our Public School Systems issues of marginalization based on class race any differentiating Factor being black myself I've experienced and seen as a student different forms of inequity it affects students in that a lot of my students and I see a great many of them by the time they get to me in eighth grade they really have decided where the school is for them or not and if you look at data you can see that some students are performing well and some students are not and if that's the case then something needs
111to change what can we do differently so that all students are being successful in our schools and so the biggest power that we have to change circumstances for students and to fight the inequities that exist is to increase their academic achievement because that's going to increase their opportunity and their options so I have been a part of the equity team at Orange since freshman year and we have been received with open arms from every single principal that has walked through these Halls our district leadership is doing really big things to make Equity a priority both in policy and in practice it's not a they're the adult and I'm the child they listen to what I have to say and ask me to propose Solutions and then they work with me to try and see those
112things into fruition Equity measures are going to help white students as well as black and brown students they're going to help all students create a more diverse environment and become more successful in their futures so to me what it looks like is somebody that doesn't speak English like give them an ESL class that way they can learn to speak it or like send someone to help translate them that way they can get their like work done and they don't fall behind as a teacher and as a parent you have to understand where your child is coming from and you have to understand how they best learn and what they need to be successful in the classroom you can't just teach every student the same lesson you need to teach students what they need to improve
113personal experience is a great way to send an olive branch and you know tell someone to come over and maybe listen to what I have to say it can really change your perspective if you have nothing in common with the student learn something from them that they love and go learn about it so that you can start to have these conversations and so students can really feel like they're Tethered to their school system my students who did not speak English at all I would take the time to go through and just Google translate my notes because it's worth it getting to know those students and what their experiences are you know it's not a one-size-fits-all curriculum if you're intervening in the ways that students need and if you're meeting students where they are you're going
114to have improved outcomes and your academic achievement will move your school letter grade will move we're invested in getting to know who they are it's an exciting place to be when you know that people are committed to wanting to do what is best for for children we're going to get your student what they need and if you're one of the very lucky parents of students that are at the top of their class are doing everything we're going to find a way to challenge them however in the same vein for students that aren't there we're going to find a way to bring them to that next level we're going to give them what they need you never arrive you're never done there is always an improvement to be made there is always a system to be
115fixed there is always a point to be considered because every single student that walks into our door they have talent and there's something in life that they're going to be really good at and part of our job is to help them see that in themselves there is multiple ways of being successful our definitions aren't the same because we don't learn the same we weren't raised the same we didn't come from the same background but we should all have the chance to be successful in whatever way we get there that's the equity piece foreign I like to lift up that we also have some of the rock stars that help record this video here in our presence tonight so thank you so much for your voice everybody [Applause] and another plug from Dr mirondular language is
116also important to live that the birth of the equity task force was in response to the persistent inequities that were Happening Here in Orange County Schools I want to lift up it's not just an Orange County problem this is a national problem this is the problem that we're facing across the board but it's very important and I applaud the work that Orange County didn't policy 10 30 to ensure that we would meet this head-on so without further Ado you're going to hear from more members of the task force tonight around our recommendations and so I'm going to fall back and allow our voices that have been so instrumental in doing this work step forward and take the way all right thank you um thank you to the board for allocating so much time tonight to
117talk through the work of the task force and thank you for approaching it with sincerity listening with an open mind and hearing the ideas and recommendations that this group of parents and staff and community members feel will help OCS fulfill its full potential for every student so we appreciate that my task tonight um that Lee so graciously extended was to is to hold the container for all of the updates that you're going to hear from all of the various members of the task force and to walk you through kind of the arc and the story of how we came to these recommendations and how they all connect and I'm honored to be entrusted with this task and I feel very conflicted um because women of color have led the work in this community for years
118decades forever you have been doing this and so I am a humble person using my voice and privilege in this space because white people have to join in this work as well we will not make any changes unless we are brave in this work um so I speak to you tonight as a member of this task force um I'm also cisgendered white heterosexual upper middle class um fairly typical Orange County parent I guess in some ways um I'm a scholar of human development a child psychologist by um by training so when we talk about what's appropriate for children we know a lot about that already I'm a former educator I work in the space of leadership Equity diversity and inclusion it does not make millions of dollars I am sad to say um it is
119a long road and a lot of work all of these identities inform the place from which I speak and the way I understand the world but above all of those identities I'm a parent and I'm a Community member who believes in the inherent good of our public education system my mom is a retired assistant school principal of a title one school where she worked for 38 years um so I I know these board rooms and I know these hallways and this work is Paramount and so important um and I believe uh that we hold the highest standards of excellence in equity for our for our schools so I'm sure that your email inboxes are filled with thoughts and opinions uh misconceptions regarding Equity work and I can only imagine the pressure you feel as you
120navigate this and many other issues such as school Improvement plans on a daily basis um my ask is that you remember that we all at the end of the day want the very same thing the best school system we can offer to the students and families in our community what we differ in is how we think we should get there um but we have to remember that progress on these issues is not a zero-sum game while our funding is abysmal um comparatively Nationwide and the teacher shortage is a reality in our district that we and our students feel every day we do have choices um and we meet many needs when we work together so a few weeks ago the equity task force met to prepare for this presentation actually it was probably like two
121months ago that we started this and we had in front of us a list of activities I mean sticky notes Galore it was a productive brainstorming session and our list of activities and ideas things that we knew had happened things that we wish would happen in the future were really generated from this place of wouldn't it be amazing if we could time wouldn't it be amazing if we could do this like we really tried to approach this work with a mindset of generativity and abundance and we also had within our repertoire a list of known problems and challenges um what are the things that we know that we're facing and as we looked over these lists to determine what we should present to you given that we only have a finite amount of time we
122centered in on one question which I know you're all taking copious notes so I would love for you to take a moment and write down this one really important question which is what could this make possible so whenever we stop and we look and we think about Equity work what could this make possible before we jump to what are the risks because this is brave work and it is risk-taking work and when we think about it with an eye of possibility we can get there together so we sat with what could that make possible and this question this generative question allowed us to focus on this big audacious aspirational goal of why this Equity work is so critical and it helped us develop a framework from which our recommendations grow a framework that Above All
123Else focuses on and this is the statement that you see all around you focus is on promoting a culture of belonging within OCS where everyone everyone every single student regardless of their background or their identities everyone feels valued validated and safe and so we can start with big questions and we can dream Big Dreams and we can have big hopes and then the work of the board and the schools and the administration and these task force and parents and everyone else is then to ask the question that helps us to narrow in which is what will it take to do this so you can write that one down too if you want what will it take to do this what will it take to build this culture to engage ourselves and each other in authentic
124vulnerable and imperfect ways so the recommendations that follow our answer to this what will it take to build this culture we're so excited to share with you what we think we're excited to ask you as our board to ground yourself in your firm commitment to serve which you have all demonstrated for years decades your belief in the inherent good of public education um and your desire to do what is best in this community as we see that day in and day out and we ask that you ground yourself and then listen with an open mind a willingness for imperfection and ultimately an urge to lead with bravery so this is our invitation to you so as a reminder when we're asking ourselves what could this make possible and what will it take to do this
125we know that Equity work is challenging and that it is composed of lots of different acts it's really a constellation of efforts it's not going to be any one thing any one program it's it's a ton of small things that Cascade into the change that we hope to see toward larger systemic change so in any sort of change process one of the first steps is to raise awareness and build the capacity to take action so systemic changes start when we all open our eyes and commit to doing better so to that end our first set of recommendations ask for the board to examine and disrupt some of the simple but still profound ways that we may create a culture that does not invite belonging for everyone so I'll hand it over so one of the
126first things we want to look at is what can we disrupt and we'd mis-examine and disrupt so looking at cultural appropriation and using text that supports stereotypes so when thinking of inclusive environments there are vital aspects of students ability to learn and engage with their peers to ensure that we do that the equity task force recommends that we are disrupting and I want to pause frame right here if we'll look we have aligned all of this work to the equity goal and the Strategic plan so this is not work that's just arbitrary out but it aligns to the work that we're doing and we're looking at cultural appropriation and instructional text being harmful so that brings us right back to those really important three words valued validated and safe when a person whether it's a
127student or a faculty member feels valued validated and safe then they feel like they belong and when they feel like they belong then we can engage them effectively challenge them effectively and Inspire them effectively but if they do not feel valued validated and safe we can't get there with them so we have to have that basic foundation in order to challenge them the way Orange County Schools challenges teachers and students so when we're looking at cultural appropriation attire and activities and Heritage of Heritage and cultures um and the American Indians in November is one of the examples that does not feel safe when there are paper headdresses when there are photocopy sheets of stereotypical native people when there are teepees in rooms when there are turkey headdresses because face it that's just a substitute for
128the feather headdress things when there are skits where Nate supposed to be dressing in paper bags like native people that is not safe that you do not feel safe you do not feel validated you do not feel valued as a native person when that is all around you in a school um and then that ties into the instructional text so for instructional text we're talking about classroom libraries book rooms six packs of small small group books classroom library media center books text that is put up for group activities those things also have a great propensity for promoting inaccurate views of native people and stereotypes which is also very you know it's a very unsettling feeling um and it's inaccurate and what we want to do is teach all children and teachers accuracy accurate views of
129native people so we want books that reflect accurate views that that is good for white students that's good for African-American students it's good for Native students we need to be teaching with accuracy so all of these things here that support stereotypes um they they do not value validate and feel safe and I just want to add also that for our Hispanic um families and um and I just thinking about uh the the value and um I'm so glad they we come today to talk about this when we have New Hope as a model the the parents came here and said how important it was for them because they're not only learning the language but they're learning the culture and we are very very the Bears score too um you can see that we have teachers
130foreign from Colombia from Ecuador from other parts and and they represent um also our students they come from different countries and um yes it's very important to have their instructional tests and uh probably involved also our families because they're uh they they bring so much to our school and it's not only language it's more than that and so you see how this is not just these two cultures that that we are speaking about but it would be true of any culture that you apply this to that we need to be accurate we need to be telling kids and adults the truth you know we need to be accurate about things and and not spread misinformation and stereotypes and I think the other thing that we have to do is um do things differently and Fuller
131than the way we've done them in the past typically back when I was younger and and really most recently um when we thought about black history months we would raise up Rosa Parks or we'd raise up Martin Luther King and we miss a whole host of folks that really full out the experience of African-American folks and the same is true for for Latino families and also true for indigenous families in all the cultures and so in the same way we celebrate um the the wins in our culture all year round we need to celebrate these vast cultures all year round and not cheat this process by just calling out a few and just raising up a few but really seeing that when we talk about each other that we we broaden the experiences of all
132of us okay so while the previous recommendations are um really helpful in terms of thinking about some straightforward like immediate things that we can do right now um another critical part of the work is capability building across our community so inequities are rooted in systems that are upheld by personal and often unexamined biases so when we take the time to reflect and seek to understand our own orientation to the world we're better able to connect with those around us including those who are different than us um I think what's important to really for the board to hear tonight and for the community to hear tonight is that shame is not a powerful motivator for change and no one is looking to incite shame it's never really worked all that well and at least not in
133the long term what we are hoping to do is create the basic skill sets for all of our staff and community members that will allow everyone to approach these difficult conversations in structured and supported ways we're seeking the materials and the professional development that will scaffold the entire community in seeking ways to engage students and communities in a more inclusive way so tonight thinking about our Equity goal uh 1.4 and strategic plan goal looking at professional development for our staff one thing I need to lift up is a typo that I have here it says shift outcomes excuse me to ensure that we are helping staff grow and shift outcomes for the historically marginalized I need to reframe my language the language should be historically resilient marginalized meaning a deficit ends historically resilient meaning the
134overcoming act situations that these people have overcome that we have overcome so excuse me for that typo we'll move forward language from historically marginalized to historically resilient some of the professional development that we need and would love to lift up is making sure that we're culturally responsive teaching is happening I love to hear everything from New Hope today it was uplifting it was beautiful I felt excited I felt engaged at the same time my heart felt saddened because I wonder all we have no same cultural experiences at every school there's something we're seeing at every school if it's good for a New Hope which is great for New Hope it's great for everyone it's great for all of our schools so to ensure that we have those aspects in our classroom because we know that
135we are a diverse population of people that sit in these spaces together we need culturally responsive teaching courageous conversations there's been a lot of conversation around that tonight so I'm going to put a pin in that one till we come back a little bit later so we can spend some time um there thinking about safe spaces tonight many of us identified our pronouns and I I know for some I was like why are they doing that the idea is to make a safe space so you don't have to assume how I show up in the space I have to assume for you I can ensure that you are fully seen and fully brought into this place and I have a full understanding of full encompassing an inclusive idea of who you are hi um my
136name is Peter dalvakian and just to refresh you I have three kids um one is 32 one's 28 and 15. they have either finished in Orange County schools and I have one that's still going through it there's a little background my 32 year old is um biological my 28 year old is from India and my 15 year old is from Ethiopia so I have a very diverse family and it's always helped me to grow it's a wonderful thing in the world but one day about a year ago when my son started in high school he started his mood started to shift and it was very confusing to me this is a really happy kid he's jumping for joy all the time he loves to play hockey but his whole mood is Shifting and he's getting
137very dour and down on things and very down on school he's very hard to um get him going after an awful lot of time trying to get him to talk um he finally amended me as he walks down the halls in the school he gets called about every variety of racial names that a person could get called and I looked at him I said what's going on over there and he said it's not just me it's everybody who's different everybody gets put down everybody gets made fun of if they're anything different from the mainstream and what people's idea or normal is they're going to get put down well if at first it broke my heart and then of course it turns into nothing but pure anger after that so I called up my daughter 32
138year old and I said this happened when you went to school she said it happened every day it went on Non-Stop as they would walk down the hall and my daughter's light skin she said they picked on the students this way you couldn't be different without having to be picked on and made fun of at this school so of course I call my 28 year old who's got very dark skin and she's Indian and she says oh yeah it was brutal I said how did you deal with it I hid in the library I had to find places to get away from walking down the hall with these other students or else I would be called these names and make fun of me and you know kids used to walk by and pretend to put
139a dot on her head and this was every day it was it was non-stop so I went up to the school and I met with the principal and we had a long talk about this and that's how I ended up on this committee and he said well we don't really have the resources to make these type of changes and yes we know we're going through it so which I pointed out to him that I had a 32 year old and obviously you've done nothing for 15 years nothing has happened to change the way these things are if my 32 year old daughter had to go through this and you're the one who told me to speak from the heart at least so I'm going no then you failed honestly you failed it's 15 years just
140that I have been here that you've been failing at getting the resources necessary to get these children except except and it just you know the mainstream make changes in the school and then the whole way that the school functions and accepts these children and and let's give these children except and moved into mainstream let's get other people's minds to open I mean these children are learning their stuff at home obviously and then there's Social Circles that they develop that supports what they've learned at home they're not going to magically just wake up one morning and say I'm going to accept everybody that has to be at the school so that these children can move on with their lives not feel oppressed and then the oppressors can move on with their lives and maybe start to
141embrace diversity so that they can function in a world that is incredibly diverse and embrace it and have enjoy it and children can not have to feel sad and beaten down like my son did and my daughter did unfortunately that escaped me and I'm what I I'm trying to encourage that the resources be made available for all the stuff that Lee just talked about because this is the last stand It's the Last Stand before they go on to college before they have to go on to life and starting them out on the one foot whether they're the oppressed or the oppressors is just not the way that these children deserve to have an education education and teachers are meant to not just teach Math and Science and reading but they're also designed to open up
142children's eyes and to expose them to an entire world that that's out there for them and not sit there with their hands crossed because it's not the funding to give them educations themselves or to be able to open up safe spaces for children and know and be trained how to have those creative conversations so anyway and when we refer to developing a diverse school and classroom Library that goes right to what Peter was saying you may be familiar with redeemed Sims Bishops mirrors windows and doors referring to the children being able to pull out a book and see themselves reflected in it or children being able to pull out a book and have a wider view of the world the greater diversity that he was referring to so there are a number of professional tools
143and resources that we can use to support and guide classroom teachers and media Specialists and people who are purchasing for book rooms to develop a diverse School library a diverse classroom library that provides those windows mirrors and doors and if why wouldn't we why wouldn't we have our books and our schools reflect the population in the schools when we were asking the question imagine what we could do why wouldn't we want all children to learn about all of the diversities and and have it be the norm why wouldn't all different kinds of people be the norm to read about instead of something to make fun of in the hallways or something to learn about and try to adjust to as you're an adult but you've never been around it so um we can you know
144I think that's a very doable goal is to provide resources and support for diverse School classroom libraries so stay tuned for some amazing professional development led by Lee and myself around uh race and we're going to do some micro courses in all of the schools about race and how to actually have meaningful conversations about race but I want to take a quick moment to address curriculum violence as as part of that there's a lot of accusations um misinformed accusations around conversations about race and Equity being something that divides students along racial lines or calling kids oppressors we don't need to sing to the lowest common denominator when we're talking about tough topics we don't need to make accusations about something we don't really know much about if we're not willing to ask some really hard
145questions about what is actually happening nobody here wants to make kids feel bad or to make kids feel inferior in fact the whole purpose of talking about these tough topics and race is to remind students and everyone listening that that nobody is inherently inferior or Superior to one another so those arguments just it's it's meant to sensationalize and that is not what we're here to do and if anyone is listening to those arguments and being swayed by those arguments I just would appeal to you to trust um teachers trust central office trust the board that's helping make these decisions trust us to do the right thing um and actually listen to those conversations um I I have a conversation constantly um with colleagues and every school that I'm at around colorblindness um and people telling
146me that oh I actually just don't even talk about race I I tell my students um you know they shouldn't even notice race um and I I look at them and I say what is so bad about my skin color that you need to actively tell people to not notice it what what is so bad about it um I actually like my skin color um I think it affords me a different in some ways positive in some ways negative experience of America and I'm willing to talk about what that is um and it the conversation opens some Minds a bit like oh I didn't realize I was thinking about that way and when you think about it in terms of differently abled people um are you telling people that they should ignore the wheelchair that
147they're in um just don't look at that um well for a lot of people that is part of their identity and it is not something we should view as an inherent deficit um so stay tuned for some amazing um conversations that we're going to be having with teachers and training that we're going to be having around uh talking about race in a healthy way on top of that train we're also talking about how we can better inform our our families and our teachers about our American Indians there's a ncdpi actually has a great training that we can utilize and and afford to our our teachers so we're not just coming out of the woodwork for things these are things that are actually very tangible and doable if you haven't had a chance to check out
148this training on um of our American Indians from DPI I urge you to do so or just join with our micro courses and we'll do that space together because we're also asking in the same vein some more quarterly Equity training for our board this is not a one-time one adjust situation or topic there are multiple facets of equity that we we Linda must discuss we do know that though a race is the foundation the pivotal point of this however much of what Kumar was just saying we are easily to see if someone in a wheelchair pulls up to a set of stairs how unjust that is we can quickly see that but yeah we look at some of our data we're still struggling to ask the question why when it's just the same and just
149as obvious as to when the wheelchair coming to a group of stairs trying to figure out how to get up it's the same notion so these quarterly trainings will help provide that lens your skill your will and desire to push the workforward and not to co-opt the term equity say a word about the the course you know when I was saying we do have professional tools at our fingertips here the course um teaching to and about American Indians in North Carolina it's free it's a it's a series of modules for teachers it's professional development we developed it my committee on the North Carolina State advisory Council on Indian education developed it several years ago we presented we presented the release of it to the State Board of Education I think it was 2018 we did
150that and it was a big hit you know they were like oh my goodness and and they stopped this much short of saying all the leas should ask their teachers to take it so we are asking you it's free they get credit for it it's it's available it's approved by DPI it was developed in with Liaisons from DPI we sat there with them from the state advisory Council and it it's again I'm just not sure why why you wouldn't have your teachers learn about that so that they could start to cut down on the stereotypes and educate themselves and give accurate information so I also think about professional development for staff we must think about some curriculum adoption that will help enhance the learning for our students this is not to replace this is not
151to remove this is to enhance to provide what I think I've been hearing is opportunity for rigor and for success if you look there in phases so looking at the history of American Indians in the U.S and then see we're looking to create this course's curriculum for for our students that can be age-appropriate so I think you're expanding from kindergarten first grade second grade third grade all up through the 12th grade understanding age appropriate in HSR I'm so grateful of who we have on our Equity task force to help us achieve that work but thinking about the phase ones in all of this does not mean it rolls out today it starts with uh the option the idea your support and to create this curriculum to start building and pulling our community in to start
152bringing in folks who say you know I want to know more about that what is that going to teach my child please come principals how can I engage in this work what is this like in my classroom please come teachers how do I teach this along with and in a Croatian and collection with social studies and cross-curricular with Ela please come so phase one is a beginning process to start all this work so we're thinking about the history of American Indians in the U.S and especially in NC thinking about all the American Indian tribes that we have here beginning to create a course that not only highlights promotes the teachers truth so phase one means just the beginning we need your support to begin that as well with a Hispanic heritage we like I said
153before we have a diverse group of families that come from different countries and um and not all of them speak Spanish as the first language we have some native they speak they're ought to me and their other languages and I think we had to embrace that in in really help our families to feel welcome by value in their cultures and and their Traditions um so yes this is phase one but we had to continue working on this I remember going through uh Elementary Middle School and High School just waiting for some point at which my culture um and my Heritage would be brought up as part of the curriculum um Asian American history South Asian um anything about India and when it finally came up it was around marginalization it was about Gandhi and non-violent
154resistance um and I remember thinking like that's not all of it um we can't keep going to points at which cultures were marginalized um particularly by colonization as our starting point for talking about history and cultures the 1619 project is is something that we are starting phase one the research of looking into how we can incorporate that phase one involves tying it to particular curriculum standards and really making sure that that alignment is tight um the the project provides a lens to look at his history where the contributions in particular of black Americans are at the very center of the narrative about the United States and I just think about the value of that um and how wonderful it would have been for my students all of my students but particularly my black students to
155have experienced a curriculum that centered um them their Heritage their history as part of our history and their contributions in particular so it definitely provides an Avenue of culturally relevant instruction for them thinking around generous sexual identity we have schools that I've been in and they want their Equity meetings they've asked for this training they've asked for this support because there are students in there that they need support with at our transition now going by different pronouns and teachers will not trained this in our traditional teachers courses what a shocker and so it is our right and our just and our duty to train and to help our teachers navigate and support to make a classroom that is inclusive by no sense is this an indoctrine or some sort of way to force children to
156think differently about their gender and their identity that is not the case but we must also be honest with ourselves that we have students in our classroom spaces that are transitioning and for us to not see and support them is a malpractice in education so we don't have the course for it there is no curriculum around it but why not be the first to help kind of create that space glisten does a great job in providing that support we have safe space Zone here at UNC Chapel Hill but we're looking for the curriculum that we can Infuse and use in our school elementary level middle and high I love that New Hope is here is this what do it to us they do such an amazing job with creating safe space one of the best
157Billboards or things I've seen their their school says love has no gender as beautiful as that is it's also caused some frustration for some of our parents and that's spending time to help navigate and to coach and talk through what that means so this not only will be something good for our schools but also utilize for our families and as a parent thank you as a as a parent I would love to see our district adopt all of these curriculums and as you consider these curriculums I ask you to please go to the source so for the 1619 Project Read The essays themselves and visit the Pulitzer Center website for the lessons don't just read the reviews and listen to reactions but actually go to the source one of the things I've heard from White
158parents who are frightened of or opposed to the 1619 project is that they don't want their way children to feel shame or embarrassment for being white I can understand that concern especially if that was the end of the story and nothing came after but what if what followed the feelings of discomfort was growth parents don't tell their kids to quit sports or music or math homework when it gets hard parents encourage their kids to push past the discomfort and to grow so what if white parents took the same approach when talking about race these curriculums can help build more inclusive schools where students of all Races can see themselves not just represented but respected and valued and validated and safe white students benefit from these curriculums because their education is more well-rounded we can't keep
159lamenting the racial disparities in our subgroup data year after year we have to make changes and these curriculums can help another point that we have at all meetings have interpretation supports without requests um uh as a family engagement coordinator and I work a lot with the interpretation translation requests from families and staff and it is growing the need and I it is not only Spanish it's other languages there we had to look and serve our families and um for uh different meetings not only parent teacher conferences I'm eating like this the parents would like to understand what's happening with the schools so so I'm bi you want to think about how can we support our family that do not speak English as first language or they have they they need extra support just to invest
160a little bit in this I'll add to that families shouldn't Wonder worry about or just assume that interpretation won't happen it needs to be the automatic norm and when it doesn't happen that should be the exception they shouldn't Wonder or worry about that foreign has evolved over time Educators have been tasked with providing Educational Services to the whole child not just reading writing and arithmetic but providing services that not only meet their current needs but prepare them to be successful citizens Beyond matriculation from high school we also know that research says that when schools have relationships between home and the community that we have increased grades the testing Gap decreases behaviors and discipline decreases attendance increases and students have students and families have better attitudes towards School in the educational Journey so as I mentioned
161earlier going in into the community and taking School into the community meeting with our parents having those events and opportunities for parents to come and learn information about equity and other things that they have questions about for school even with board meetings taking them out of this building and into the community so that those who may not be able to get here can come to those meetings if they're at centers and offices and buildings that are closer to their homes listening having opportunities for them to speak and receive responses to their questions attendance at Equity task force meetings and given that feedback and input all of that joining with families building that relationship between home and school and the community will help us all to learn together and will help us to be able to
162build those strong relationships that we need in order to increase achievement with our students so um I've been a part of the equity task force since its beginning um there's only one other person Sandra that that was uh came in and it has been on that long in this room and you know Dr hakiotis was a part of the board when they decided to have Equity task force and to be honest with you many of the things that we talked that we're talking about today I'm really surprised that we're talking about today instead of feeling like we're doing too much we really should be applauding our progress and the things that we have done kids many of the the background and this information here come from real pain and real hurt from children in our
163district as I looked at that um uh the video earlier and I watched those children speak I've had relationships with almost every last one of them and while they look good on the on the film they didn't start there they their their existence was Affirmed whether they were lgbtq whether they had disabilities they were affirmed by adults in this district and now you see them thriving in the same way we I remember when we first talked about dual language and people thought it was too much money to be spending on Dual language and now you hear all the Fantastic stories coming out of the Dual language program we have done amazing things in this District and we don't get the credit for it because other districts say they're more Equitable than we are we're not
164just talking about equity in this District we're doing equity in this District I urge each of you board members to not be the group of people that decide to stop it now to not be the black glass crew but instead take very seriously the harm that has been that has that's happened in this District the growth that's happening in this district and signed on to continued growth I urge you so we know that individual behaviors and mindsets and skill sets are one component of structural change and we've offered up a number of recommendations around how we can raise our awareness as individuals things that we can do within schools and within our community to start towards structural change but none of this matters if we don't improve the systems in which we work and learn
165and so to latendra's point the immense amount of work over the past few years is something to have immense pride in um and the amount of recognition of students experiences and their real world experiences in our schools is is really Paramount and earlier there was conversation about what is the role of the board and a huge part of the role of the board is policy and so this is really where the policy changes become critical to the work because policy can can sustain movements and progress even as individuals such as elected officials come and go so policy when it's done well can provide Clarity and Alignment it can protect those who most need it and guide a shared language and commitment within our systems so when we're thinking back to those big questions I asked
166you to hold when we ask what could this work make possible policy is really what helps us understand what will it take to do that there have been several courageous policies already in place by our previous board we appreciate their hard work and by the work that you all have done it speaks volumes to where we are looking to go in our future in our community so I'm hopeful in that hope that I ask that we continue to protect keep and keep in the Forefront policy 1710 420 72 30. that is our gender support guidelines policy there's a lot of conversations around what does this mean does this mean that we are keeping information from parents it is actually a support plan to keep students safe what I often lift up and have these conversations
167with some of our families by no sense of the term is it ever an idea that we do not want to engage or bring families into this conversation but our very first priority is to ensure the safety of all children and I ought to ask for parents if our children don't feel comfortable talking to you about it then let's ask yourself why let's have a serious courageous conversation around what that looks like we also have that same conversation our counselors and social workers with our students as well the other one is the education and Equity policy policy 1030 upon coming here I read the policy first thing I wrote my mouth was dope I loved it I was super excited that I had a board who was so committed to educational Equity they would call
168out the systems of Oppression that were constantly plaguing the historically resilient [Music] upon the work as we start to move I hear more questions more people deliberating do we really need that policy for the sheer fact that we asked the question do we need the policy answer this question by itself yes short story I take my son living to school every day one day Linda said Daddy I want to be an equity Chief Equity police officer like you he's eight he doesn't understand he knows Chief it's in there for him and I said well son I don't want that for you he said well you don't think I can do it I said no I just hope you don't have to do it using these policies these guidelines the things that we're recommending would ensure
169that we're reaching the future that I believe that we all truthfully want I mentioned earlier it's just how do we get there we believe that these are ways to get to this space I also asked the board to continue I'm very happy and excited to use an equity toolkit as you look to make decisions we talked about it we utilized it the other day we're thinking about equity and funds I ask that we continue to use that toolkit I do want to urge and push a little bit as that is my nature that we maybe make a shift to the racial Equity impact assessment the racial Equity impact assessment consists of 10 questions one of the very first questions the first question asked is who are the folks mostly um and do it or hindered
170or affected by this decision are they at the table if our answer is no then as we're building the plan we need to Halt make sure we have the historically resilient folks and it digs deep not just to race but also deals on social economics it deals within gender it deals within language we drill deep to make sure that we are being resilient and courageous as we're making decisions so Kudos a shout out to you much love for using a equity toolkit I want us to continue that but also potentially think about moving to the racial Equity impact assessment I was also very excited to see on our board that we have land acknowledgments we fought for this years ago in Chapel Hill and was excited to see it come to fruition it is on
171our meeting agenda it is on our our things to do as a board yet I've been here since July 18th and I've heard one land acknowledgment that was indigenous people's day on October 10th remember Miss Doyle I ask that we continue that it is part of Education only to our community there's education to our students it's also the right thing to do as we realize that we are on Stolen land past a simple idea of just the acknowledgments I need us to go one step further you can acknowledge harm you can acknowledge pain and if you just acknowledge it and it sits there then you've done nothing but just predicate the idea that it was there I asked you to go a step further as we do the land acknowledgments let's lift up texts and
172actually utilize and talk about our indigenous brothers and sisters let's figure out how we can put in more funds and all the acknowledgments towards our indigenous brothers and sisters let's not just make it an idea something that we read a quick statement that we put to the side let's hold the values true to as we just do when we stand under the Pledge of Allegiance at the same level of commitment there are many ways land acknowledgments are good they are a good start um there are a lot of concrete ways that that you can make things be more than a nod you can make them meaningful um even saying at meetings um I know a music teacher contacted me asking me to read over land acknowledgment and I suggested to her okay well how about
173you go into our book room and you pull some of those great books by native authors that I ordered to make sure that we have them have them right there on the stand hold them up and say look these are written by contemporary native authors check these out at your local library or ask your kids to get them here that's one way to make it meaningful instead of just a nod to historic people who have long since died making it meaningful to today's living breathing thriving native cultures you could even say something like and we encourage everybody to contact your commission of Indian Affairs look at their website and you'll see a map of all eight tribes of North Carolina even even encouraging that makes a meaningful impact on people who are living today and
174is more than a nod my favorite part let's discuss folks so we present a lot of information a lot of our recommendations I opened the floor now for us to not answer questions but have a discussion um Sarah well I just want to acknowledge and thank you all for the very good work you've done so far and I'm really excited for the work that you're going to continue to do um just sharing something that really resonated with me and um I think is a good grounding place is this um this framework for the recommendation [Music] um promoting a culture of belonging by ensuring everyone feels valued validated and safe so that they can be engaged challenged and inspired um really spoke to me um and um so did many of the recommendations um I'm excited
175for us to explore those further one question I had um was around curriculum and um you know I do have a concern about sort of curriculum overload and did wonder about better integrating finding those opportunities you know if in X you know fourth grade math in October you're covering these standards are there ways to weave in you know activities for Hispanic that is that's a poor example but you understand what I'm saying rather than the separate curriculum so I did sort of have a question about that one and and wondered if you all had discussed that at all yeah we discussed it not being separate curriculum actually highlight truth in curriculum right so I think it's right now I use the words of my teammate um Kumar's curriculum violence we're overlooking those aspects what does
176it look like to talk about angles when talking about a young black boy and his hair being a 90 degree angle because of the edge up line that he has culturally relevance and can be brought into this space as true educational moments so I think it's really looking at how we can bring it in as a cross-curricular right as a place to get dig deeper being more rigorous but also not replacing just as a part to help intertwine with most definitely yeah activities and lenses as opposed to replacement supplement the building up around the places where we know the core is absolutely you know I just want to Echo that I think it's a really important point and just the background for the group I'm a holocaust educator I have been for a long time
177worked with North Carolina Council for the Holocaust and after many many years and we work with um English teachers social studies all you know and um we bring content to classes when we're invited but after many many years we got the North Carolina we got BPI to actually make Holocaust Education required in the curriculum and so now it fits now with all of that and that was quite an accomplishment took many many years um it is tough on the teachers the hardest part is curriculum overload did you said somebody in the term curriculum overload big big problem how did how do the teachers you know so we don't we want to make sure that the teachers are able to get the work get it done because it's so important now the other point that because
178I I was expecting I've been looking for this and I'm not an educator I have to be careful what terminology I use but I've been looking for a culturally relevant pedagogy and um I when you started talking because you talked there's some language that we use there's some images that we use that that are subtly bigoted right we don't realize it you know I decided that you know I don't know if you know there's there's issues that are subtly um biased I don't like the word they're subtly biased and I wondered are we looking at that and and it looks different by subject it looks different by grade and and you know Carl when you spoke about putting featuring certain cultures in the library great idea I know our libraries if I understand correctly our
179libraries have been cleaned up pretty much and thank everybody for that work um and uh anyway um so so um how do we how do we as a board since we've done the policy we've done you know we've done that work and if anything people are criticizing us and saying what are you really doing right because you guys are up in the fluff world what are we really doing you have can help us to say what changes really need to be made to our curriculum work what changes need to be made to the language we use to each other that kind of stuff because we're in culture I call it cultural Collision the good news is we're call we're talking to each other cross-culturally but we're on a collision course because we use we inadvertently
180use words um differently and we need a space where we can a safe space to make those mistakes and stuff like that so I'm rambling thank you all for this great presentation but I guess I'm asking if you can help us by digging a little deeper into the things that where we're really um we have bias in the work and we need to pull it out I really yeah that would help me in about five minutes I got something for you okay okay sorry um so I wanted to address the the curriculum overload part and um so in in my professional experience I've seen a number of professional development programs with K-12 Educators um and uh one of the things that I think is really powerful is when we get to the um root skills
181of teacher student interaction so we know that that's what can build up a sense of belonging for students we talked about consistency things like that and um I've seen the transfer of um basic like ways to be more facilitative in the classroom ways to handle difficult conversations really have um a kind of exponential impact in that they end up equipping teachers to do um diversity and inclusion and Equity work as well like because because I think we all know like what teachers do in the classroom is Magic right I mean it's day to day right and so it's not um this is why the courageous conversations piece that's going to come up I think is so critical because those types of professional development are really about taking um I think what what teachers and what
182we all value which is the relationship that they form with their students and saying how can we make sure that it's the most inclusive and most belonging and that you feel equipped to handle you know I mean when I was a high school teacher I had the classroom the lunchroom where the kids came when they didn't want to be in the lunchroom um and I didn't know how to handle those conversations that's why I went to graduate school to understand adolescence right but like we can equip teachers with these with um with you know skills that they inherently have but could use more supports around and then the gains are really exponential and so I think when we talk about how you know Equity working you've got these four things behind you these banners with
183the outcomes and and I think that if you're strategic about it investing in professional development like courageous conversations or something similar if we don't like the outcomes but I'm also evaluator and it's tough to get out comes from that stuff so that's a whole other conversation but you can look for um what you can see immediately in terms of students sense of belonging the Panorama survey the engagement survey and stuff like that and um I think you'll find that a smart focused investment on the nuts and bolts of human relationship has has exponential gains that will then feed into all of those other outcomes and you probably have to make a motion to extend your time yes you're a mind reader just to respond and thank you for that I think you know and and
184if you ask this board I think if you looked at our priorities the number one priority is culture and climate and that's right there yes and that's what you're talking about um and and that's really important part of it is how we talk to kids and how we talk to each other it's a big big deal um different but when you talk about so the curriculum overload is like standard North Carolina standard course of study and and what are we going to put what's in that and what our teachers are required the content they're required to teach then there's a style and then there's a question that we have to deal with at the board is what kind of environment are we creating for our teachers to make it so that they can be inclusive
185and safe and create that environment for their kids so and I don't think we're saying to add on more to the oh wait sorry thank you um so we have 55 more minutes of content as well on the agenda so we I just want to put perspective on how we're going to extend the meeting this is not cutting you off it's just talking about what we're doing next so please just bear with me uh support what is the pleasure of the board to extend the meeting by how much duration and um I I move that we initially extend for 30 minutes second uh any any discussion all right all in favor aye aye opposed all right sorry go ahead sorry about that just to give a quick example um when you're looking at the math
186standards certain things have to be taught right geometry all that uh right angles every all of those things need to be taught but teachers can be shown different tools to teach those for instance all eight North Carolina tribes are heavily into quilting it's a big cultural thing any native person knows that quilts are like a thing so you can use the shapes the geometric shapes to teach that same standard you don't have to you know we're not asking to add on in that respect we're saying to educate the teachers to use different tools to teach the same standards Carrie um I really appreciate all the work that this group has put together and how you're modeling having hard conversations and sharing hard personal experiences and knowing most of you having heard some of the hard
187personal experiences and so I just really appreciate the respect and honesty that you're showing each other and I think number one we just again have to renew our commitment that that this is the reality and we can't make progress um in our Equity work if we want to turn a blind eye and just to um I've been Gathering statements from students made to our board um a student who was in the equity video had written an article in the news of orange about a racial Equity Forum needed for current and past students and um there's a lot of good things she says but this was a year and a half ago she wrote some may say I'm entering the conversation too late because Orange County Schools is currently making strides towards racial Equity meeting and
188is no longer an issue to those people I ask is it truly that racial Equity is no longer an issue in our school system or is it that discrimination among students of color and schools does not affect you directly so you are unaware of the work that remains to be done and I think we really have to hold that because we still have a tendency some people default to you know racial slurs in the hallway are only used between students of color that's not true or that it's always called out on the playground that's not true kids are experiencing this day in and day out and to speak to what latondra said with the hurt and the growth we have to keep going with the growth but we have to acknowledge the hurt and we
189also had a student who spoke to our board and we all embraced her about a month ago and she went on and spoke to the um the color of Education um Summit that a number of us went to and she spoke to how the only African-Americans who were celebrated in her school through Middle School were Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King and that she was just so excited to reach high school and have a broader representation and knowledge base of her Heritage and she called out Educators and administrators and I'm calling out us as a board um in her talk to teachers to see a positive change in society we must first push for change within our classroom and she called all of us to be brave and we had another student who spoke with
190her who said I have the power to question Society but I cannot fix it alone um and one of our teachers said we have an opportunity to transform education into something new a system built for everyone so we have to acknowledge this board these that this is where we're still starting that we still have a lot of students who are experience um racism and bigoted comments day to day other comments questions Bonnie thanks Juan hi I didn't hear much from you about disciplined disparities what and there's and obviously as you know behavior is a big issue in our schools there's lots of noise that says lots of things and I'm just curious where you think and there are disparities obviously so I actually did we talked a whole lot about it it's all around the
191curriculum so I'll be honest to lift up I don't think that discipline is the problem I think it's a symptom of a sickness and I think the symptom of the sickness that we're seeing is a lack of cultural representation in our curriculum so I addressed the discipline by actually getting at the root cause which is students not seeing themselves not being seen not feeling validated in our classrooms when I engage with kids in the spaces I'll be honest I don't think there's one kid that comes to school and says I'm just going to cut up today it's going to have a bad I'm just gonna be able to it doesn't work that way when you don't feel engaged we don't feel empowered you don't feel seen then you will find a way to be seen
192what we looked at what we talked about was actually why do we always approach the lens with students of color and inequities when looking at a deficit lens of discipline why not look at the powers and abilities in which they can do and figure out how we uplift that and so inadvertently it is for us around curriculum it is around the spaces of of our board and us having those conversations with those families it's not just centered around what we can do to penalize but actually how can we have a true understanding of the issue and for us that you understanding of what we've seen from students and heard from students is they don't feel seen in the school if we keep this this framework as our North Star it will address the discipline issue
193in in quite a significant way feeling valued validated safe engaged challenged and inspired it it will make great strides in in the discipline disparity I guess what I was wondering is have you noticed um biases in our code of conduct um our SEL proposed new SEL curriculum and will it help in bringing Equity will help in in helping um our teachers and staff more Equity better understand Behavior you know most definitely that's why we brought it I think back when that was in June July um around the code of conduct and revamping it because it was punitive we were looking at restorative practices so uh yeah of course that's been the framework since Dr Dre and I got together and this beautiful District was to begin that work the SEO curriculum is to help engage
194with that so yeah those things will help to Aid in in fixing the sickness but the real root cause for us to center around the representation but when we do see discipline issues that do occur because they will they're kids then how do we engage as a staff to remove those disparities is where we have more work um as we do with engaging schools for restorative practices work I think it's about building capacity so while we're building capacity in our staff to be able to understand a little bit more to be able to work with all of our students we're also at the same time using the SEO curriculum and the other things that we're doing to build capacity in our students to learn those skills so that they won't make those choices it's also
195important to remember that um if we talk about discipline when we talk about equity then we're only addressing a small set of students in our schools and so what happened so often when we have conversations about Equity we don't talk about the greater number of students of color or the greater numbers of students who are suffering with gender gender identity or the greater number of students that are suffering um with ableism we go to the one area that's easy to fix and easy to talk about and we leave out a whole you know big group of students so what I would like us to do is to think about how we can have a net that captures more students when we talk about these inequities and we do that by affirming the lives of people
196who have been here so that those students see themselves in those lives and so I think this is talking about addressing like Lee said these issues from lifting up our our different cultures rather than going to the five percent of students that represent the discipline numbers does that make sense does that does that speak to anyone on the board Sarah yep yes it does yeah just to be clear to the whole board you don't have to wait for me to call on you it's a discussion I just plow and just I mean there was a recent conversation about HRC where we were talking about students of color and somebody represented the students of color in the back of the room acting like they're in the mall why the white students are properly set up and
197doing living up to the standard that students should be living up those are the very close to the words and when I heard that I thought we have to stop representing students of color or students in marginalized groups in that way because most of our students are amazing students that haven't been poured into so they can Thrive and what we can do as adults is to figure out what to pour and how to pour into students so they thrive I don't know if it helps because right now the conversation is more around Behavior it's not like in-school suspensions or which are agree or really low numbers it's about Behavior which seems to be uh an issue in many of our schools and I don't have a sense about where it is where racial disparities are
198on it but it's partly some people say it's because kids are back in the classroom for the first time but and I think you know Dr Dreyer's your response made sense that it's about learning you know and and we have a code of conduct that's Progressive and we have a uh the states and we have and building capacity so people understand how we work together is important it's kind of um Valerie's version of discipline not you know what I mean it's not it's not the in-school suspension it's the big the big picture Behavior right so I appreciate that you're making progress I'd be very interested about getting a progress report on how that work was going so wondering I have is um last year we started uh discussing about um the special needs advisory Council
199and I think when we talk about Equity we can't have different groups at different times we need to look at this holistically so how are y'all looking at the special needs advisory committee how does it pull together and we get a holistic View and their voices as well that's something we'll have to work work towards so I will take the lead on that to make that connection excellent thank you um one other question I have is and it's a wondering um so when uh the task force originally started um there was a lot of storming forming about it and the board was very excited to attend or learn and we were told no you should not people will not feel comfortable to speak if you're there so I'm curious now um what has changed that
200you're you're willing to do that because I know that there was discussions about rotating and you know all of the different and it was like step back take a breath your person of power you know anyway so I think in this space a lot of it may begin the inceptions right wanting to build space without being direct ability being actually authentic in its space but I would dare say I think you've heard the voices in this room no one's not going to speak their mind when you or our vice chair attend so I am very excited that one of you if not both will be attending because then at this pace we can really move the work forward because as you would say hey you got the positional power so let's move the workforward so
201I'm excited to have you there I'm sorry I just have to say this and I I just I feel like um on this issue in this community which I love so much that we need leaders to stand up and and be a part of this work too in a way that says you don't have to be afraid we don't have to be afraid look what happened in our dual language program when we open that up and look how white families benefited too it's I think it's I think it's important for leaders to lead and to and to to to make the tough decisions stand behind them and support them and so in this way for this particular work you can say I took courageous conversations and my white kids are okay or I took courageous
202conversations and I had a conversation with somebody in a way that it helped me to realize how I was making them feel uncomfortable I didn't used to use the pronouns because that I'm old school and that was hard for me but I use them now because I realized that when I affirmed that I get to to have a conversation about my own identity it teaches kids that they can do that too and they can do that safely so I think when we when we learn together this very well um seasoned program that's been taught all across the United States then then we then as Leaders you can say this was beneficial and and you can continue to have deeper conversations about how we have how we experience Equity not as you said earlier as a
203curriculum or as a sidebar thing but as a part of my life and how I live every day yeah one one thing I'll recommend is I don't think it should be the chair or the vice chair I think everyone on the board should get the opportunity to attend because we're we're individuals and I'm not I wouldn't be going to represent the board in the sense that every board member should get the opportunity to understand the conversations and understand the issues because I would not do it justice and no offense I would well I think it would mean something different to everybody yes and and everybody should be a participant so what I hear you saying is that everybody's coming so we need to put out more chairs I agree I think I think there should
204be more opportunities than just the the chair and the vice chair he's an open door so I will make sure what I'll do is send that was when and where you'll get the invites tomorrow so I really do appreciate your voice and wanting to be there we'll because I can speak with the top Force task force we're excited to have you because it speaks volumes as to where we lie in the work and where the true work is going to begin thank you thank you thank you anything else from anybody I'd just like to thank them for everything they've done thus far and look forward to working with you on this yeah so I I'm up next I know we're drawing now for time as my grandmother would say should I just continue on at
205this space I'm going to move rather at the speed of light so I can get we can get to New Hope and I apologize to my New Hope Family um please take tomorrow and Friday off on me um so I want to do talk about the equity plan and update um we have a great Equity plan that actually began in 2019 as we look into 2020 we ran into covid so we were not able to really fully enact and move through that Equity plan I am here to say that we are not changing anything Equity is the root and the ground and the foundation of the work that we are in so I know I'm kind of moving at the speed of light because I want to get to the greatest conversations portion um we're
206thinking about our Equity plan and update it comes from and we've gone over this on February 2019 the board adopted the policy 1030 under the persistent inequities that we saw in education I love quotes um but you all have this on your side x you can read it at your at your leisure I think it's safe to lift up that this work continues because as we're looking at our data and I apologize that the I'm the key for the day to sort of jammed in that space we tried to move it several times a day but could not um we looked at inequities continue to be persistent um a lot of us want to blame covet but covet was just a unveiling of what we've been saying from the beginning um the inequities persistent and
207it just exacerbated those things so the equity plan is engaged so that we can be in a space it's where it does affect it it helps all students it helps with this idea of a stereotype threat and lift The Stereotype lift that our white affluent students um those who don't have any experience of ableism are at a higher a hierarchical place and our students um under that are are not there so we're moving stereotype threat and lift if we think about the pillars in which the equity um educational Equity lives in as are Equity plan we have education experience embedded Equity leadership Equity guided decision making and Collective responsibility one thing to lift up that came up earlier was the equity embedded leadership really does lend itself to talk about being culturally responsive culturally responsive
208leaders and having cultural relevant pedagogy in our classroom spaces so I know I'm a little off of the five minutes but we will see those things come to fruition as we continue to uplift and utilize and do our Equity plan our Equity plan does not live in isolation it lives embedded and girded and all within our strategic plan so if we look at all of the six Equity goals you can look up under there and see where each one of them live some live in multiple spaces within our Equity our school Improvement our school plan strategic plan so just want to lift that up that it does not sit by itself this is work that we see continually now on to the good stuff our board Equity training so if we look at policy 1038
209you can tell I love this policy um it really speaks to our commitment to equity and education but also if we move down to the board commitment and I will take a minute to read this it says the board has a body it will attend racial Equity training within one year of the establishment of this policy within one year of the election of the new board member board members will commit to attending subsequent Equity trainings of their choosing offered at the local state and National level Mrs imperative work for us as we continue to do the work so we can really understand what Equity is how it shows up in your role as a board and how it moves to God the work for each and every one of our students in Orange County I
210need to go back to 2019 when the one orange initiative when I was in Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools I wrote The One Orange Initiative for child Carrboro and for Orange County Schools It Was Written in conjunction that we would do a training because we literally share a community together that we would do this training as one orange to look to move inequities forward we began to work at Chapel Hill it was written with the understanding we would use courageous conversations we would use reia we would bring in guest speakers like Dr Christopher emden and Bettina love this was all written in 2019. in 2019 Orange County did not have a chief Equity officer shortly thereafter Dr Keelan came and began the work I've heard a lot of our communities say we need the use
211of money for something else I must be transparent and say when it was written and it was given to us it was given with the understanding it will be done to use to outdone to lift up Equity work in both counties it was to be a joint effort once again the pandemic hit no one was prepared to go virtual at that time none of these courses not us not students no one so the equity work halted I'm not the training's halted right I should say nothing would work excuse me I when I came to Orange County I was very surprised to get an email from my dear friend Rhonda to say we get an email from the County Commissioners you have these Equity Funds do you still want to use them yes without a shadow
212of a doubt no questions so also to hear and learn that the greatest conversations work had already started because I knew that we were planning together meant we needed to continue the work I've heard do we have other districts that have done this work yeah our neighbors up the street we've seen it come to fruition we've seen it happen here tonight and I still hope they're awake and they're on the call I'm so sorry we have three principles and an equity facilitator a librarian who has done this work and are here to speak about their engagement that they've had in Orange County schools with courageous conversations principal Jessica Dodge are you still awake on the call um it is past my bedtime but yes I am still here I appreciate you I owe you do
213you mind speaking into your experience about courageous conversations I I don't mind at all I um I I just wanted to say that um you know I was able to participate in 2019 and what I gleaned from that experience is that having these conversations is really just about having productive and respectful dialogue with people and that it it's something that takes practice and intentionality and that my takeaway was that building our capacity to have this discourse is similar to developing and building a muscle it isn't a one and done like we've heard so many times tonight it's something that we have to work at over time and um through that training I was given the opportunity to have multiple meaningful conversations using the courageous conversations framework within a supportive environment alongside my colleagues and I
214found these conversations to be really valuable and they instigated a lot of self-reflection on my own behalf and um just to share that I I believe that what a leader brings into a room is what's allowed in the room and that our leadership teams were given a framework and tools for having these conversations that we could bring back to our staff and not just share we learned but use it to actually engage in deep and thoughtful dialogue so that we can all work together to continue to to build that muscle and grow as people and grow as Educators so um thank you for your time and your consideration thank you do I have Miss Kenisha Smith are you still awake yes I'm here I owe you two do you mind speaking about your experience that
215creates conversations um yes sir um I attended one of the trainings um pre-covet where we learned about the courageous conversations protocol and we then were instructed to train the trainer and we used it with our school-based Equity meetings the protocol is a really powerful in that it number one what I love about it is one of the main things we say is we are in this space and we are listening to learn and we're listening to understand but we're not judging each other and I think I need to say the protocols correct wording but in summary that's what it is and that's something that I think is really powerful as an educator as we do this work that when we are even having these conversations about race about poverty levels about student achievement that we're
216listening to learn from each other and listening to understand each other thank you so much um Mr Tony Witter are you still with us nope because Tony sent me what to read for him so I know he's not with us um Mr Jeff Rocklin are you with us yes sir do you mind engaging with us around your experience and crazy conversations uh not at all and I also experienced the administrative team going through courageous conversations uh some of the work was brought back to the schools the equity teams leads had training in that um I think you know what courageous conversations or or the work behind courageous conversations what it's trying to offer is the opportunity to create spaces where um communication can occur effectively and it needs to be not that it's a conference
217that we go to but that it's woven into everything that we do if you look at um our district as a whole understanding how we connect with each other is really where the work is going to happen in all of our subjects in all of our areas and all of our needs and this is part of that work on how to allow I think uh Kenisha talked about it where we are not judged but listen to each other so that all of these things can overlap and connect so it is a part of that process for moving us forward and I looked at the words of Mr Tony Whitter he said courageous conversations Beyond diversity professional development is a powerful training to equip and Empower teachers and school leaders to deeply engage in racial discourse
218this training has helped me to become a stronger leader and has helped me to better lead and facilitate critical conversations this PD can be beneficial to both new and experienced Equity driven Educators so when looking at what this looks like courageous conversations lifts up um for us and attached to in our assembly sort of what they're offering for us is a virtual stage setting right to give us a framework and idea of what we're going to engage into what these Fearless leaders spoke about was the Beyond diversity it's a two-day consecutive training that is life-changing and impactful it really focuses on a idea of a compass being able to understand where you are when you begin in these courageous conversations you will find yourself according to Glenn Singleton in one of these places either thinking
219believing doing or acting what's important is to understand what got you to that compass that place in the compass and then what it takes to get you back to Center oftentimes when I see pictures of Trayvon Martin I go into the position of thinking how do we get to this place how do we get here what was it called I think my brain runs and then I have to realize what does it helped me to get back to Center so I can move the work forward while I think about Brianna Taylor I move into the space of acting I want to do something what does that look like could my doing actually be more detrimental because I'm not against me I moved back to Center so to help guide us in that work we also
220think about that it has The Four Agreements we can utilize these four agreements in all of our facets and conversations they're good classroom practices so nothing to lift up this work from courageous conversations is good pedagogy something about culturally relevant pedagogical practices what we're talking about is being able to use this framework in those classroom spaces and part of The Four Agreements is to stay engaged my engagement may look different than everybody else's experience discomfort whatever that may look like for you speak your truth you can't speak for me what you can do is ask me questions around my experience I can ask you questions around yours that is how we move the work forward not by yelling and blaming and accusing but by having critical conversations this gives us that protocol and then also
221to expect to accept non-closure if I had all the answers to fixing racial issues I would not be sitting here today I'd be rich we don't have them no one in this room has them what we do have is at least a heart and a will and hopefully a drive to get that done so that's what you'll see in the two day course what we're looking to do is dig deeper the work began and the worst thing that we can do is start something let it sit and just fall I'm asking for us to pick up where we left off and continue so we started with Beyond diversity we need to continue that and I was promised that there's some new things that have been added per since coven which I think would be beneficial
222for us then we're looking at what we can do for our board and part of their board leadership is the district Equity leadership development what this looks at is is a way that you engage within policies your skill your will your desire to move Equity work forward what does that look like for Orange County but I appreciate about courageous conversations in the Pacific education group is they're not going to give us some sort of scripted roadmap that they give to everyone else if you'll notice they also meet with you individually to have conversations around your personal drive towards equity they will come and talk to us around Equity work here in Orange County so it's not this just prescriptive idea it's differentiated and then for being truthful that is what we want in our classrooms
223correct it's differentiate instruction so why not model that here so excited to bring this back forward um to you what we are looking at is to enhance who all was trained here in in Orange County we know our leadership team our principals were trained we're wanting to do more train our principals train our facilitators train our coaches everyone who works and impacts teachers so then we do get to those spaces of discipline we can actually do what create this conversations this teaches us is to isolate race are we seeing this to be an issue with mostly our females of color we think about the dress code policy then we need to have a conversation if that two worst thing is being uplifted but if we don't have the skills and desire and the tools to
224have that critical conversation have that courageous conversation we're going to predicate the same Notions and be here next year having the same conversations so I do believe that courageous conversations will help lend us there once again this is not a new plan this is what was already began one minute time I got you I'm no no I need the board to extend the meeting I think 30 minute Mark I agree we can extend thank you what what 15 minutes but I know there's another this because we also have the Dual language and um Dr Mayer in her staff have been here I just I know I'm concerned that if I extend it for half an hour it's going to take the whole half hour I I don't you know I I yeah um so I'm
225gonna start with 15 I'm gonna motion for 15 more minutes I'm hoping we can um move speedily and actually yeah we have a motion for 15. absolutely check it okay we have a motion from Sarah a second from and we have uh any discussion all in favor aye opposed all right please continue that's actually it so thank you um I love this quote by James Bond says not everything that his face could be changed but nothing can be changed until this face so I'm asking us to be courageous to continue with the contract um once again this comes from Orange County um County Commissioners they've already allocated those funds for us we must use it for Equity work so why not continue where we started I just first one I think a lot of people
226have been waiting for courageous conversations to come back because they were really happy with them before I heard great great reviews before covet and that people go after they were gone people were going that was really great where are they so what's confusing about the proposal is who actually gets trained so can you clarify that sure so my partner and I actually looked at it we're able to offer training for like again our leadership team so that means principals cabinet extended cabinet along with our equity facilitators and the instructional coaches um we even looked at a particularly librarian so anyone who is engaging with teachers and leading teachers also our board as well so well last time there was the equity task forces at each school was right they worked with the equity task forces
227at the school they called them that I forgot what they call them so there are Equity task force that schools from what I've understood they didn't get to all the schools because of I don't know why so they are included in that because they do support schools teachers Equity team s booty teams yeah thank you so they are included in our plan Jennifer um I just have a couple of comments um after listening to our students speak on equity and prior meetings and emails over the last year or so I think it's effective um for boards to be dedicated to equity and Excellence as stewards of our communities educational system we should keep abreast of changes in the education field in their potential impact on the community by adopting professional development like courageous conversations I
228think the conversations will give a better understanding about educational equity and closed gaps and barriers and I also want to thank each of you for speaking tonight these type of conversations they are needed to engage mindsets to help promote cultural culturally relevant learning communities I thank you all for your hard work and I look forward to engaging and learning with you all in the future thank you thank you Dr Moore Sarah um just very quickly I have from an earlier presentation the groups that went to the training in 2019 and I just I would encourage us um to you know think about how to expand that further because I think a lot of the folks that you're talking about coaches facilitators there were a lot of these folks went through it then and why while
229it is always good to do it again if we could reach even more people I think that would be really beneficial yeah we'll work to that yes ma'am I just wanna know that you you know and four half days for the board when it's two days for the staff and I'm not sure that the leaders that this all the schools are covered that's I'm wondering if we could play tweak the balance because matter of fact as a board member I'd be really interesting to sit in some of the school sessions rather than do all these sessions with each other so you actually will do the school sessions that's the first part so you do the Beyond diversity is your first one then from there delt is designed for the district Equity leadership so that's designed
230for you so the schools will then go into different professional development this was for for you and your end when I looked at the proposal it said about 70 000 of the 190 was for the board and so I just wondered if that's proportional I'm I wonder if if we would do if we could do um less you know something more basic I mean four half days for this board and I'm not the the work is is important but four half days for the board is um I just think that's going to be a tough one and I I would rather see more in our schools um you know I don't want the board the the spending money on the board to shortchange the support to our schools that's my concern sure so just to
231look up again it does not it's two separate pieces so there will be more training for schools what we're talking about for you those four half days are not in consecutive spaces this goes back to the answering to your policy now what we can do is I can also bring back to you more Equity training that we will provide the schools along with our micro courses so we can always do more in schools um but I would offer that we do not look to shift and counteract because of days and funds because it's not the same and we're making two things sort of be the same that are not so your four half days are for your train to help leading guide which I think are are vital I can and I promise you I
232will be glad to come back with more training for our staff I move that we um accept the or approve the recommended action we have a motion and a second discussion so I do have a couple of questions um so the first question I have is I know that um we have used this company before and definitely positive results we didn't hear anything from staff from those educations of any kind um have you have we looked at other companies or have we you know one of the things I know from the board education when we've we've had multiple different companies and you know we shared the feedback of hey this is great but it doesn't address the board level right it doesn't talk about looking at it from a policy standpoint and I know those
233changes are being made for this I saw it in the proposal but I'm just curious of what other companies did we look at across or we're basing this based on our prior experience and positive feedback as we want to build on that I'm just curious on that so A lot of it was based off of Prior work that we had done so we're not starting from the beginning and costing us more trying to be financially responsible but also knowing the work and thinking about work that was designed for the board as we engaged in looking dealt was the one that was designed specifically for for board so it did meet the need it happened to meet the need automatically but also like I said being good stewards of the fun so we can do more
234it made sense to continue where we were moving in the right place from the beginning and the second question I had was I know I've heard from lots of different teachers and staff that are put in situations that they're Unsure how to handle those is part of this education to help them have those conversations and be meaningful and respectful to make sure they're addressing them versus ignoring issues when they arise yes sir so there's actually not to give it away so hold it too close to you there's a protocol that you'll go through called the need to knee and it's actually a good listening strategy so what happens is we engage I speak first about my experience you cannot ask or change my experience all you can really do is say what I heard you
235say or can you expand upon this helps for you to understand this is my lived experience and for you to grow into understanding that I then afford you the same opportunities what we call Anita knee listening activity around courageous conversations with race so it does provide toolkits for our teachers to utilize when these things occur because they're going to occur so they could create those safe spaces and move into a better more racial and Equitable environment and then the last question I have is how do we measure the efficacy of the results so we go through the training and different people will take away different parts right depending on where you are what what's the thoughts around learning from that and determining what needs to be be in place to help right what are the
236next steps sure so I appreciate having my teammate Kumar here with me because what's going to happen from there is it's not just training I think that Mr Dr Rocklin spoke to it just falls off we're actually been in schools following up with the participants seeing how they engage those spaces using a 27 Equitable classroom checklist to ensure that we are being Equitable and continuing those conversations and this toolkit of how to have a more Equitable space and have more creative conversations so from there that sets the foundation we then continue with our micro courses for example I'm starting with how to have healthy conversations around race um what does the world look like when addressing um I think you have students who have are snack of special needs so it just composes the builds
237upon but it comes from us being in the classrooms being in the schools engaging with wonderful leaders like Dr Mayer Who are telling us this is more of what we need we also will see I believe um to see how this works close to fruition with our um Panorama data as well because what we're hoping to see and what I believe we'll see is that we're engaging in deeper and better conversations that will then manifest in a classroom which then should also increase student engagement and lower discipline so I'm offering up an increase and a lower at the same time all right that's the questions I have is there any other discussion I just I just could get give us a list of the attack you know it's a patient across the district again I'm
238still just a little I'm happy to bring on courageous conversations I think they have the track record and relationships um I'm just a little concerned about proportionally um spending too much time with the board and not giving our schools what they need and you know I don't know that there's more money our budget's very tight it's great to have this money I want to make it go as far as it can yes but I'll do that I'll send you the list of teachers and folks that we have for that thank you as well all right any further discussion all right with that we have a motion in a second all in favor aye aye aye opposed motion carries thank you thank you all right and while we're transitioning I just want to take this opportunity
239to thank the equity task force for its commitment to creating a vision for continuous uh Improvement and closing opportunity and access gaps in improving uh outcomes for all of our children so thank you all for your work and commitment okay and so next up we have last but certainly not least um and your team if we could have just a moment uh I'm gonna I'm just gonna motion to extend another 15 minutes the second uh any discussion all in favor aye so that will that will bring us to 11 p.m wow all right we'll be worth the wait do I need an introduction or can I just you need no introduction you just jump right on okay I didn't want to jump I didn't want to jump anybody's line but I know we're we're late
240and the best is for last um so thank you good evening members of the board superintendent Dr Felder I am so thrilled to be here and even though it is about to be 11 P.M I'm very excited to have the opportunity to speak in front of all of you today and all of our community before I start I want to acknowledge the individuals in this room who have sat commented worked diligently very hard to help me both prepare this presentation and also Daily in New Hope day in and day out to support our dual language program and every single student that we have in our building so if you are here to support New Hope in any capacity today please stand all right so here among us we have um dual language teachers both Spanish
241um and English side because Mr Leon is here um and we also have instructional coaches parents and community members can y'all hear me I'm I'm wrestling with this mic okay um and I just want to make clear that we are here today to showcase our program um and discuss in detail an overview of our current dual language program at New Hope to Define it for you all because I know it's been a while since we have had a review and an update and to go over our impact on student achievement within our dual language program as well as the impact that it is having um and has been demonstrated through our public comment on our school culture so we're also going to present some programmatic realities and challenges as it relates to dual language and
242I say we again are presenting because I am standing here today before you but I could not do anything without the wonderful team behind me we are a true community at New Hope I'm very proud of it if I talked too long about it I'm going to get emotional because it's 11 o'clock and I love them but we have the best staff in Orange County Schools I would say North Carolina I will say in the world and I will see him 10 toes down on that every single time um I am thrilled honored blessed to work with our coaches our dual language teachers all of our teachers our students our families every single day and through all of their work this is a truly a community effort the slides that are before you the data
243that is before you this was a compilation effort so this is not just me I am spokesperson only um so I do want to mention we had 13 total people here tonight a few of them had to leave just for some family obligations and things like that but we um hopefully were well represented in our public comment as well that was written um tonight I believe we are joined also by Amber Wilson virtually amazing so she is on standby for questions as you all may know she was the principal who on boarded dual language in its year of inception and so she is here to answer any and all historical questions and we are very grateful for her collaboration as well good evening everybody all right so dual language programs are programs within schools which
244focus on explicitly teaching language along with grade level content so you are learning language along with your grade level standards at the same time most program models follow two different patterns either a full immersion or the target language or 50 50 models where English is a target language English and the target language are taught in tandem So currently DPI thanks to Patrick evely um gave me the statistic that currently DPI is reporting 136 dual language programs in North Carolina and New Hope is one of those 136 and one of 65 of those 136 that are running a 50 50 model in our case that 50 50 model is between Spanish and English and both of those languages are taught alongside each other our program at New Hope began with our inaugural kindergarten cohort who are
245now in the fourth grade this year and there has been and continues to be sustained interest and support each year that we are continuing the program of course Equity is at the base of all we do at New Hope and we appreciate all the shout outs today from our Equity task force and our team and so dual language our New Hope is really interesting because it was specifically created to serve the needs and the population of our specific School um our community is around 50 very consistently Hispanic latinx students and students who speak Spanish at home um and so our new our excuse me our dual language program was created specifically to serve and support biculturalism and bilingualism within our school only so we you will note that we're not a magnet program we serve
246the students that are zoned for New Hope for that reason and our model is a true 50 50 model in every single sense of the word so all of our classrooms are 50 native English speakers and 50 native Spanish speakers which directly reflect our demographics and 50 of the students time as well is spent in both English and Spanish so students are learning um half of their their studies in English and half of their studies in Spanish lessons do not repeat so for the sake of explanation if you have an A Day b day rotation they will see a Spanish and English teacher on a rotating basis let's say on Monday I am in my Spanish class I start with lesson one on Monday on Tuesday I do not repeat that lesson I go to
247the opposite language and I continue that lesson two on Wednesday I flip back for lesson three and so it is a continuance of that learning not a repetition of um the program was initially approved to span K5 at New Hope and we have plans to continue our growth to the fifth grade next year to take it all the way through fifth grade so this is our fifth year in the Dual language program as the program has grown each year with our inaugural cohort as they had advanced in age and our program is run on that two teacher model as I mentioned for grades k-3 with one English teacher and one Spanish teacher for grades K3 our fourth grade cohort has combined and has one teacher Mr Leon who is here who speaks both Spanish and
248English and instructs in both languages and he still flips in his aw day model to keep that model intact um so ideally all teachers should be native speakers of that language for the full immersion experience and Native Spanish speakers and teachers have been historically recruited via participate learning program the first year of the program was an exception to that where New Hope had an existing native Spanish-speaking teacher who was interested in the role for that inaugural class English-speaking teachers are sourced from existing New Hope staff who are interested and or who are asked lovingly to become part of the program or through posted vacancies this program has grown strategically from attrition only throughout these years existing yearly vacancies have been leveraged and organized to allow the program to advance year by year instruction again alternates
249on an A Day b day schedule for grades k-4 and Tas work in the language of the classroom in which they are assigned and so we have several Spanish-speaking Tas who will serve the Spanish side as well as several bilingual Tas who may serve both or English because dual language class caps are higher as you can see on the screen um then State caps for traditional classrooms full-time Tas are assigned to Grits K through two in those classrooms to support those higher rosters and third grade receives floating ta support as we can organize while the K2 teachers are on their planning those Tas will float up to third grade to pull small groups and fourth grade has their own ta designated due to their larger combined classes please so we're going to dip into the
250data very quickly this is a snapshot of our data dual language at New Hope is trending generally higher across reading and literacy as measured by m-class which is our literacy monitoring our literacy progress monitoring testing tool and so if you as you can see we have around a 20 point difference between our beginning of year measurements between dual language grade level proficiency and traditional proficiency we have around a 24 Point difference at our middle of year mark and we have around a 30 point difference at our end of year mark um the second box is where we are at snapshot wise with our beginning of your data for this year so the first box shows our m-class data for last year for our third grade cohort who is now in fourth grade so if you'll
251follow me those are current fourth graders that is their year-long data for lit last year that makes sense second box is a snapshot for our current first second and third grade students who have M class at the beginning of this this year for their beginning of year and that's the differences between our traditional and dual language classrooms so if you'll note the last row our third grade jumps pretty significantly we have a four point difference a two-point difference in first and second grade and then we have a 27 point difference and this is because typically third grade is where research tells us that we'll begin to see the dividends and the gains from our bilingual instruction so literally if you want to get into a little brain science we'll save that for another day because
252it's 11 pm that is when those synapses are really starting to solidify around learning content and language at the same time and this data is reflecting a jump that we were hoping to see and that was fairly predictable but somewhat interrupted by covid um so all these data points that you're about to see are based on english-based testing um and English assessments and the reason for that is because we measure Student Success in Orange County by how well they do on English tests we do have tests that monitor Spanish proficiency typically we see our Spanish proficiency tipping in a little lower across reading um for students and native speakers of both languages English and Spanish because we see traditionally at New Hope across the board low levels of access for all of our incoming kindergartners
253but especially low levels of access for students who are native speakers of Spanish who are seeking you know access to Spanish Pre-K Spanish books Spanish content and so that is a struggle and typically results in a little lower Spanish proficiency as compared to grade level Proficiency in English um so it may be tempting to attribute these massive growth comparisons to the amazing work of our dual language teachers and it is right but it is also um we know that data can never be separated by the context that surrounds it right and so to be good stewards of that story we want to make sure that we're also telling you that New Hope and reminding you that New Hope Has a population of around um a third a little bit over a third of our students
254are ESL students are designated as English language Learners or multilingual Learners and we have an amazing group of ESL teachers an amazing group of traditional teachers who are supporting students in a second language in the equivalent or what I would encourage you to think about the equivalent of an immersion English setting and so we have students who have backgrounds in different languages who are sitting in full English classrooms with support but if you compare it directly to a dual language scenario if you're getting half the instruction in the language that you speak then you're going to have something a little more something to grab onto versus a student who is in a full English immersion program if that makes sense explain who's the students who are just describing the English language learned are they in
255the traditional group or are they in the Dual language they're in both so our program is open without restriction to any person who is interested and so we have classified students and designated students in EC in multilingual Learners in both our traditional and our dual language classrooms um great question um so I'm gonna flip to some math data so I'm going to take you from a snapshot look in our lit data to a more longitudinal look in our math data and so this really follows our first inaugural cohort through every single year of their instruction so it starts with their kindergartner year and you can really follow and kind of see one cohort's growth through their third grade and of course they're in fourth grade now so we don't have that data yet and you
256can see that those jumps are still being reflected throughout the year and we are logging 16 point differences 22 Point differences and 20 point differences as they still increase and continue their growth um and so I wanted to highlight that they are performing higher in both the first and second data points um the beginning and um they are excuse in the middle and the end of the year and that this data is coming from the Ames web assessment which is a progress monitoring assessment for math this is our last data slide and this is just a quick snapshot of our very first EOG um run with our dual language and so because eogs start in the third grade our students reach the third grade last year and we had our inaugural cohort take their eogs
257and again you can see that our progress monitoring data is tracking and relaying to our EOG data as well in terms of dual language proficiency versus traditional classroom proficiency and so now we have a short video of our student perspectives so we're all here as adults to discuss this um but we have also heard you know from so many parents families staff members tonight um via public comment and through the written comment which I hope you will read um and it is now time to hear from our most important stakeholders who are our students and so this brief video features A Day in the Life um so you're gonna see some vignettes with some subtitles and then you're gonna see you're gonna hear directly the views of dual language from students foreign [Music] ha [Music]
258learning a language helps grow your brain so I'm really glad that I'm in the elf um and I really like it because it'll help you get great jobs in the future you'll be able to interpret and understand how I can talk to my friends both English and Spanish Amigos I like how I can help people who only know Spanish know what other people are talking about I mean me gusta [Music] um Espanol [Applause] [Music] um [Music] all right um and so I hope that video brought you as much joy as it does for us to see it every day um we would love to see you A New Hope do you need to extend the time motion to extend by five minutes I got you second any discussion all in favor aye opposed it's all
259yours all right um so we would love to have you at New Hope we invite you to come to New Hope so that you can see all of this magic for yourself um we would love to send a group invitation for as many of you to visit as possible um and so just stay tuned for that we're working with cni to schedule something that makes sense for everybody but I did want to take advantage of this time before you today to discuss some of the challenges that we face at New Hope within our dual language program and some of the future conversations that we would love to have eventually with cabinet and with our board and so some of them are listed here our staffing is dependent upon naturally occurring vacancies to grow the program
260along with interested and or recruited pre-existing staff members and so we have wonderful wonderful teachers I cannot underscore that enough and we have incredibly strong teams and phenomenal internal support um because but because of our participate learning contract um and the visa requirements that come with that some of our teachers many of whom are here today who come from other countries and who make a home here and who are very invested in our community then have to move away in three to five years um so the terms of the Visa are an initial three-year contract and then they have an option to extend for five but only if it's approved sometimes it's not approved sometimes it is and so it sort of creates a guaranteed attrition rate every three years and we will have to
261retrain and kind of reprogram and restart a little bit on a very uh repetitive cycle which kind of hurts our consistency with our program especially because we have so many wonderful folks with us now that we would love to keep um we also um are really want to shout out and really Express gratitude for our new hmh reading curriculum it has been phenomenal and Incredibly impactful for our dual language teachers specifically for all of our teachers but specifically our dual language teacher teams it is very difficult and it requires an increased level of planning to teach dual language because of the sequential rotation teachers have to speak every single day about what was covered and what was not and how to plan for the next day and so having reciprocal resources in English and Spanish
262is invaluable it erases so much of that planning time which is spent searching for resources in either target language that match each other that are still addressing similar grade level standards and content and so hmh has been a very wonderful purchase for us and has been very useful that said we are still have a need to build classroom libraries with high interest text and leveled texts for Spanish Spanish books are really expensive sometimes they're hard to find oftentimes they're old they're sold out or back ordered our media specialist is really amazing at getting us all the titles that she can possibly get her hands on and then is sometimes is coming up short and so we would love to expand our title selection and also get some decodables for some older students that are geared
263more towards older students visuals so that they can read and feel included if their Spanish levels are not quite up to par um the last two that I mentioned here are that um due to our historically kind of low levels of access in kindergarten and pre-kindergarten I know that it has been on continuation budgets and expansion um dockets for previous years prior to the pandemic to include an immersion spanish-based Pre-K at New Hope and so that would be really wonderful given our challenge of the combating those low levels of entry for our students and then of course we would love to talk eventually about what program expansion is going to look like we have such a supportive community and we have families and parents and teachers who would love to see this program grow sustainably
264at New Hope for many years to come and then also to see what that might look like in middle and high school and that is all I have for you thank you so much for your time I hope I squeeze that into five minutes and if you have any questions let me know so we do need an extension because we have comments and we do have one more agenda item that was pulled from consent that we still have to cover so um move that we extend 10 minutes doesn't mean we have to fix it okay we have a motion second any discussion all in favor aye opposed we are up to uh 20 after thank you Sarah very briefly thank you to everyone for being here so late I'm sorry that this um is how
265that played out um and very very grateful for all of this information um it's a great program thank you for sharing some of these needs I'd just like to read reiterate um we appreciate you being here so late tonight and I'm glad you have tomorrow off um but I would love to come I have I was you know working here when when this program started and I remember getting it started and all that everybody went through to get it going and I've never seen it in action so when you send your invitation I will be there same thing thank you so much for being here tonight Bonnie yeah it's the same it's great great information you guys are doing great and I'll be there I have um a question I lost your slide but some
266of the things have you worked with Dr Felder in terms of actually and and Miss Parr about putting a real a plan together for those additional resources and also do you have space for uh Pre-K we have a current Pre-K now um we would have to explore what that looked like in terms of um either replacing that Pre-K and changing it out or adding another Pre-K space because that comes with different licensure and different space requirements um and to answer your first question yes we have been in talks with Dr Felder and cabinet and we have plans to continue that discussion in the very near future we'll see a plan I hope to yes great Carrie um I just want to say thank you such an informative presentation and so thankful to see this um
267this uh outpouring of enthusiasm for your program and I can't wait to come visit thank you we're excited so I'd just like to say thank you I have visited the program and definitely am looking forward to coming and seeing how it's progressed um I think the idea earlier discussion about the book fund this would be a good opportunity for that as well you know we would just need the chair of the budget committee to bring that for discussion just saying um but uh thank you so much thank you all for coming so late and I am definitely looking forward to seeing the progress and being there and listening and learning thank y'all thank you [Applause] all right with that we have one item left we have the Enterprise fund uh that was full and so
268with that uh okay I pulled it very quickly okay so in the school community relations fund expenditures are exceeding uh revenues I think that's because we um increased hourly wages because we were not competitive there um I just want to know like it seems like the grant funding is covering it right now and what is our plan to get that back in the black or green or whatever color Finance people use um after the grant Runs Out good evening again um yes the grant runs out in December of 2023 we have transitioned to new leadership in the program at this time so I'm working closely with Wayne to explore additional grant opportunities and to begin to pursue plans moving forward to for the continuation of the plan of the program sorry tired I will say
269that the fees for our after school program have are well below Market rates as reported by DSS and a comparison of area programs we haven't raised the fees in five years so that's of consideration as well yeah okay great thank you that was my only question so I do remember us raising the fees Within [Music] I thought we were keeping them flat like maybe we can read yeah I need to look into that that's what I was told it was before my time but I I will look back at that I know yeah the the only thing I would like to add to that is I am very concerned with us making a shift that would be impactful to the community you know such a large change in fees if that was what was going
270to happen I would I would just suggest that we look at some gradient scale so it's not all of a sudden you're all of a sudden double the fee or you know whatever that number is but some gradual way to get there and also have those discussions with the most impacted people to understand um you know what their what their impacts would be because a lot of people depend on that uh after school and a lot of people utilize it so I just want to make sure we're thoughtful before just saying oh we need the money to do that so anyway thank you adequate any other questions or comments motion to approve approval is not needed it's not presented for information okay uh motion to adjourn okay second of someone else okay so we have
271a motion a second any any discussion all in favor aye