001foreign um foreign we'll call this meeting to order the Orange County Board of Education pledges to its citizens to conduct its business in a courteous and productive manner showing respect for fellow board members staff and citizens the board asks its citizens to connect themselves with the same courtesy towards both School personnel and each other as per uh board policy Roberts Rules of Order will be used to conduct the meetings a moment of silence will be observed before each meeting the board asks that you check your cell phones and other electronic devices to be certain they are either turned off or on vibrate to avoid interruptions of the meeting start with the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one
002nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all um we'll take a moment of silence and I would just like to ask everybody as you're reflecting to remember the tragedies that not only happened in our district but Mebane is well for those families and keep them in your your thoughts as well foreign we'll go ahead and get started Dr Felder well good evening good evening chair Atherton uh good evening Vice chair Purcell uh to the entire board to all of our staff community members and students I see plenty of students in the audience tonight tonight we have a number of recognitions uh and so we are going to begin uh right here on the next slide without students who participated in the North Carolina Governor's School so the photos you see here were shared
003by Sarah Carson a student at Cedar Ridge High School Sarah are you in the audience there she is she shared these pictures uh who attended the governor School of North Carolina this past summer on the campus of the Governor's School West at Winston-Salem State University Sarah's area of focus for the summer was Visual Arts Governor's School of North Carolina is a multi-week summer residential program for gifted and talented high school students integrating academic disciplines the Arts and unique courses on each of the two campuses learning focuses on the exploration of the most recent ideas and Concepts in each discipline and it does not involve credit tests or grades students are selected to attend through a competitive and rigorous process after being nominated by their Public School unit or public school this summer Orange County schools
004had 16 students to be accepted to this very prestigious program of those 12 chose to attend think I have to have a conversation with the other four uh uh and tonight we will recognize each student who was able to be present this evening so at this time uh we will call the name of every student selected even if they did not attend for some reason because it is such a great honor to First be nominated and to be chosen to attend speaks volumes uh on the talents and potential of each student so every student can be recognized and congratulated for this achievement I will now call each Student's name and state the area in which they were chosen to specialize so students when I call your name if you would please stand to be recognized
005all right so from Cedar Ridge High School the following students were selected to attend the governess school Sarah Carson Visual Arts Lillian dicelin math Sarah Fenwick English Lauren Henderson Visual Arts Eden Lee Legion instrumental music Brogan O'Connor selected for choral music Owen theater Cyprus Proctor instrumental music Carter thongs Spanish okay well let's give them a round [Applause] and there's more so and from Orange High School we want to recognize the following students Margaret Hales for Natural Science Calvin Jones for instrumental music Isabel Jones for social science Gabrielle Leonard Spanish Isabel Lynn instrumental music Harper thorst for instrumental music and friendly White instrumental music all right well let's give our Orange High School students [Applause] all right so next month we'll mark the start of the nomination season for staff um to hold interest meetings with
006students and their families and thank you for the families who've joined our students tonight who might be interested in attending the North Carolina governing school for 2023 so interested students should contact a school official such as a school counselor AIG specialist to inquire about local processes for nominations to participate in this extraordinary program let's give the students please stand again another round of course foreign [Music] all right That's so exciting all right so next we'd like to recognize Miss Jones so we want to not only recognize how we want to thank Miss Jones for her service and dedication uh to the learning journeys of students and Orange County Schools who have hearing impairments the impact you make Ms Jones on every child you serve is beyond measure and we are thankful to have you serving
007Orange County Schools families so attending tonight with Miss Jones Miss Jones are you here there she is please stand Miss Jones I understand your mom is with you uh Miss Craddock and so let's give them a round of applause [Applause] so in our district there are many students with hearing impairments and um we are probably not even aware of all the students who actually struggle uh with this so uh here's what to do if you suspect a hearing loss in a student or yourself first Contact your school speech language pathologist he or she can conduct a non-evasive hearing screening and if a student or staff member does not pass the initial screening it is very important to follow up with a primary care provider for an evaluation so again thank you so much Miss Jones
008for what you do for this population of students we appreciate you and your dedication and service so thank you again and at this time I would like to invite um our director executive director of exceptional children in pre-k miss Connie crimmins who would like to say a few words about Miss Jones come on down miss Connie crimmins oh good evening board good evening Dr Felder community and especially to um Mrs Beverly Jones I've known Beverly I think since I stepped foot here in Orange County Schools 10 10 11 years ago a long time ago um Beverly is the consummate professional she moves students when I say move students we have to remember that these are students who have profound hearing loss mild hearing loss and to be able to do what she does enable with
009accommodations with preferential seating but all of these subtle things you do for a student with a hearing impairment Beverly understands and immediately addresses the need and make sure that our students with deafness hard of hearing are taken care of so Ms Jones thank you for your service to Orange County schools and thank you for all you do for the students each and every day so much thank you my students that I serve in our district we have 31 who have IEPs we have many many more who have a five and four plan or who are just acing their school career and we don't even know that they have a hearing loss we have some who started with an IEP and through teaching self-advocacy skills they have just managed to soar and have exited and no
010longer need an IEP and I'm so proud of each and every one of them it is a blessing to get to follow them from age three when they entered with preschool Services until they graduate and each family is such a special gift and I appreciate you sharing your children with me thank you foreign [Applause] so in addition to this month being deaf and hard of hearing month this month is also attendance Awareness Month Hulu well every September is attendance awareness month and it takes place to spread awareness of the fact that maintaining good attendance in school and college is essential for academic success apart from the fact that missing classes can place a student behind in their coursework absenteeism also affects assignments and final exams so attendanceworks.org is the organization that strives to reduce absent
011a chronic absenteeism among students of all grade levels by offering research-based strategies to Educators on reducing absences in classrooms so here's why it matters before the pandemic more than 8 million students Nationwide were missing so many days of school that they were academically at risk today chronic absence has more than doubled chronic absence is missing 10 or more of days of schools due to absence for any reason whether it is excused unexcused or a suspension what we also know from research is that chronic absenteeism can cause students to have difficulty learning to read by third grade and we know the impact of not being able to read by third grade has so to endure hurdles to achieving in middle school and even cause barriers to graduating from high school next slide please so we recently
012learned that the student Support Services team at Al stanback so if you were wondering why uh Dr Rocklin is here tonight well this is why because we understand that the student Support Services team at his school has developed a unique way to promote and reward perfect attendance not just this month but every week this month so each week students with perfect attendance are entered into a random lottery for some fantastic donated prizes from local businesses close by each Friday the team spins a wheel what fun to randomly select one student from each grade level to receive a prize the following Monday the winners are announced as hot as principal Rockland's morning message and they collect their prizes to celebrate so far gift cards have been donated from wits Frozen Custard of Hillsborough fly leaf books
013in Chapel Hill and the Orange County Sportsplex for a day of free ice skating wow so pictured here are the winners from Monday September 19th and do they look happy so students must be engaged to learn so the support team at l stanback Middle School used September to set the bar very high for student attendance I'm Mr Jackson uh Miss McKinney and Miss olks made up this terrific Trio whose efforts around student attendance will continue well into the school year so see it's not just for September uh it's every month of the year so Mr Jackson said the class prizes will be awarded at the end of each quarter to those classes who have the highest attendance rates for that time period so Dr Rocklin is here tonight and at this time I would like
014to give him an opportunity to Enlighten us further about this endeavor at his school so Dr Rocklin come on down foreign thank you Dr Felder board if it's one thing I have learned from the pandemic it's that being in our buildings matter uh and now that we're back in the building I can't tell you what a joy it is each and every day to uh the noise the excitement in the building it just makes it so much more fulfilling coming to work every day having our kids there makes all the difference in the world and so the work that our school support team has done especially in the direction of Mr Jackson has been outstanding on trying to promote attendance I truly appreciate the work that they've done on trying to teach our kids that
015uh coming into school is important and then hopefully the work that we're doing instructionally matters to them in their future so we're continuing this process we'll continue it throughout the year but thank you so much for the support with that and to our business partners that have helped with that as well cannot say thank you enough for just supporting our schools great job all right thank you Dr Rocklin well a couple of more recognitions uh so tonight we want to also acknowledge that Orange County schools has been abundantly blessed with support from several Community entities which have encouraged donations of school supplies to benefit the students of Orange County Schools the Staples store on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill regularly contributes pre-packaged school supply kits that contain some very essential items which are available for
016purchase at every register upon checkout UNC hospitals has supported Orange County schools with its annual stuff the bus supply drive for 12 years now employees and so you see the bus in the picture there employees and visitors are all UNC hospital and UNC health facilities donate enough supplies to benefit six counties wow uh in the triangle area and most recently members of the local branches of the State Employees Credit Union gave generously in their supply Drive which they do every year so we are so grateful for the generosity of the people in our community who care about our children so much we thank them all for helping out kids start this school year with everything they need to succeed in school so thank you all right well if you're wondering why uh Mr Albert is
017here tonight miss Albert come on down and Mr Aubrey and who's coming with you you guys come on down team uh so for the second year in the row staff from nearly every Central Services Department including Franklin you should be up there um spent their mornings providing phone support for Orange County Schools transportation staff and our families whose children ride school buses so for the first two weeks of school that's right two weeks the call center was open from seven to eleven and more than 20 uh different District staff so this is just a small percentage of the staff who participated help field calls for families at various times uh over this two weeks a total of 400 56 calls were logged by the call center teams at this time we want to thank everyone
018including our technology team for setting up the phone lines daily the transportation team for keeping information updated having the call center allows for transportation staff to focus on adjusting routes updating driver route sheets and making necessary route modifications to best serve students and families so at this time I'm going to uh turn things over to Mr abili and to Mr Albert our director for transportation to share a few words before you get your big round of applause thank you Dr Felder members of the board and public again this is a service to our schools and to our families first and foremost the concept for the call center was derived out of a deed we know and we our families experience changes the bus routes that can already have anxiety attached to it but trying to
019get information quickly and making sure that no child was at a bus stop that parents didn't have information about and making sure that we had routes updated and current information back out to our families if we had substitute buses that took place and so there was a host of activities that were taking place in order to field those calls and you can imagine with two people in our transportation Nation Department that handle routing and just a few administrative staff trying to answer 456 phone calls and get back to folks in a timely manner would be very difficult and the work wouldn't be accomplished because they would be trying to respond and so really by separating the work to field the calls coming in and being able to quickly get answers to families allowed them to
020do what they do best which is making sure the routes are running smoothly and being coordinated and getting students to school on time and we talked about you know the launch of the Year being successful certainly there's areas we can improve on but having the call center and having the dedication of all the individuals who work the call center and all the Departments and individuals who gave up their staff time to spend with us was very worthwhile we certainly will continue this this will be something that will be implemented in future years as well we'll continue to build upon the processes so that we are there and available for our families and just wanted to say again thank you for the support and thank you to our parents allowing us the opportunity to serve you
021Mr Albert and uh I'll try to make the shortest way good evening board Dr Felder um thank you Mr obli I mean the first and foremost this is the second year that this uh call center has been utilized first year was good the second year was great um like he said this is precious time in the mornings and afternoons that um the department can focus on putting 600 students on routes in the first two weeks you know we could never have even come close to doing that without having that precious time that the call center gave us so this call center was it was composed of just awesome individuals around the district um these two right here was I think they might have missed a Colin because you should hear him on the phone when
022they asked I mean it was just like who is that guy it um they made they made it fun and they also did a great job um the the parents the feedback that once the call center ended and we would still be following up on on situations they they spoke very highly of the individuals that were answering the phone so thank you to everybody that that helped out in the call center uh I'm still not sure who did it did you do the pizza party had a pizza party fought in of individuals to help but they all didn't show up you know we're all busy you know shocker but uh I tried to get over there so that I could thank everybody you know individually um so maybe this will get out there far enough
023and and everybody will hear it but thank you so much to all the help and that time that was dedicated for it because it really really made a difference so thank you thank you [Applause] foreign well that concludes the recognitions for this evening all right thank you Dr Felder um with that um the next item we have is the agenda adoption and um I do know that one item that's been asked to move to the next agenda to align with the attrition data and the board priorities which is the teachers working survey will be moved if it so passes tonight so do we have an agenda adoption with pulling the teacher working survey from the agenda so moved we have a motion do we have a second all right motion a second all in favor
024I all right motion carries next we have is our public comments the Board of Education welcomes public comments public comments are governed by the board policy on public participation at board meetings specifically policy 2310 and the North Carolina generals assembly statute 143 through three one eight point one seven a person wishing to address the board must sign up prior to the board's meeting comments will be limited to three minutes when the three minutes ends the speaker must uh stop speaking immediately yielding time to another speaker will not be permitted public comments should not address any specific confidential student or Personnel matter if you wish to address a matter that may require identifying either a student or an employee please first direct your inquiry to the superintendent for assistance on the process to address your concern
025here we have first up is David Ogden good evening chair Etherton and fellow board members as you know there are many parents in our district that are concerned about policies that affect their children and I'm definitely one of those parents today I'd like to address a specific concern which is the way that our district leaders and in particular the previous School Board consistently intentionally and systematically work to impede communication by citizens I'd like to take a forward-looking approach to this concern and propose four simple asks from this board number one please listen when we speak in board meetings I realize there's a little irony here since I hope you're listening right now um but for years I've been watching board meetings and attending them and I've seen that citizens making comments were ignored and disrespected
026and otherwise belittled today I'm asking please consider listening to your constituents in a way that is Meaningful number two when you can please respond I realize this is not a collaborative meeting with a back and forth conversation and I don't expect you to respond in this meeting I hope you can respond within a week or two or a month at the most it could be in the form of a short email to whoever made a comment or maybe a short agenda item to acknowledge that you've you've heard your citizens number three please include all written and verbal comments in the official record this is the policy of the Board of Commissioners and of many boards where interaction is encouraged from the community I strongly urge you to bring this idea up for consideration it's yet
027another very simple way to acknowledge those who take the time to express their concerns and number four please do not hold meetings in spaces that are too small for the community to participate there are many safe and available venues in our County where meetings could be held that would not force you to have your consist your constituents to remain outside of what should be a public hearing I believe that these four actions can have a profound effect on the way your constituents feel about you this board and each of your leadership I appreciate your consideration and I look forward to hearing back from you thanks thank you thank you Gretchen Smith good evening chair and board and superintendent all um thank you for some procedures that have been adjusted over I think June July over
028the summer as far as like the process for signing up um that seems more accessible uh to speak for you know anybody who might be busy in their day and just showing up um it's it seems a little bit easier I wanted to share some some thoughts um like were mentioned before there's there's things that have been uh not setting well over the last couple of years in the district the children are our trust for the future and we have all things to show the integral and central place for the parents and the family in the child's life for parents over the last few years in the school district trust for the schools and some teachers some administrators has been broken too often parents are finding out after the fact that their own tax dollars
029paid for the presentation of content to their own child of ideas that are for one on the list of protected topics per this board's policy on survey content and two would be considered adult content either by Community rating systems or in our Public Library shelves in adult spaces parents have asked for the curriculum to be seen that they will be presented ahead of their child's time in a class to do their own due diligence given this pattern that has been happening before mentioned these requests have most often been received with or a directive to submit a public request of Records I'll say that a different way parents are asking to learn and understand ahead of time to see what the offering will be that their tax dollars are paying for and those requests are being
030pushed away ignored or told to make a legal request for those things this pattern is a major piece of the distrust currently living among the community members grandparents and otherwise in any type of relationship when trust has been damaged there are tested and affirmed practices for healing such a relationship those would be transparency accountability and collaboration across this state and in districts Across the Nation there are some instances of efforts being made on this idea of transparency moms for Liberty Orange County is requesting for all curriculum from Early Childhood to 12th grade be posted online easily and accessible for anyone in the community to study and look over videos books anything that will be used in curriculum this is request that will open a window for transparency when items are found here and there and
031questions are not being answered we are all left to fill in the blanks around these concerning ideas and and materials that are coming out in tidbits this is most likely a large undertaking and collaboration was the other important part in in healing this relationship we're not just asking for work to be done we're willing to come around as a community and put in whatever efforts to to relieve teachers time to do whatever needs to be done to be able to make this happen in the district because we know everyone's time is very valuable thank you thank you all right that concludes public comment tonight um the next item is our consent agenda do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda with the modified Personnel report okay we've got a motion with the second
032any discussion all in favor aye opposed all right okay first up for discussion action uh the Child Nutrition services good evening I have with me uh Sarah Pitts our director of Child Nutrition who will talk about the pizza bid that has come in and our request for the contract for services thank you good evening board chair members of the board Dr Feller staff and Community tonight I get to present the Orange County Schools branded Pizza bid for approval Mr Atherton last board meeting you quoted an article from the news of Orange right where a Community member said healthy food is the most important back to school supply right and they're right now not only is healthy food that tastes good important but it's also important that it's what our students want to eat right because
033if it's healthy and they won't eat it it doesn't do us any good so last year our superintendent Dr Felder spent time with our students asking them about their school experience everything from safety to instruction to Child Nutrition services in what the student said is they would like more opportunities to eat the food that they eat when they're outside of school right they want pizza they want Subway they want the things that they're used to eating now the trick is right to take what they want and blend it with a healthy option so that's what we're going to try to do so in the past Child Nutrition had a contract for Branded commercial Pizza I believe it stopped in the school year 1920 due to safety protocol for coven so Child Nutrition Services would like
034to bring that option back to allow a contract for Branded commercial Pizza to be in with our students the contract would allow for middle school students to have an option to purchase branded Pizza as a second entree once a week high school students would have the option to make this a specialty item and be able to purchase purchase it up to two times a week Orange County Schools received bids we took all the nutritional value sent it to our contracted registered dietitian right to make sure that all the ingredients and everything complied with the requirements for a reimbursable meal under the school nutrition program [Music] so tonight the superintendent recommends to the board approve a contract with Tasty Pizza Pizza Hut LLC for the annual or sorry for the option of the 22-23 school year
035and an option of four additional annual noodles after that are there any questions um thank you um I know the kids will be excited about this um I wanted to check that partnership will have the high school volume of options yes and nothing great okay yes so we have it set up to where the middle school and high school get on the same day and then ALS would also get it for the high school on the one day that the high school has the option so yes it's set up in the contract to offer it that way great thank you Sarah and I know that in the past um the elementary schools also had it used to be Domino's um uh so why aren't we doing the elementary school too well we had a conversation
036with our elementary managers and some of the elementary students and it just seemed that they kind of grew tired of that option and they're really liking the option now of having the high school pizza right so we're throwing in the different types of high school Pizza that we have in the contract and we're offering that to our students some Elementary's on Fridays as a specialty item so it honestly talking to our elementary students they just like the 4x6 it tends to be a bigger cell so that's why we went with that option for the elementary okay okay this is why we don't go off of just like my children's opinions about whether they want to order that item so okay perfect so I guess one question I had is um students accessibility to this so
037I know we've had in the past um families that can't afford the food or they're going to be programs that people can apply for so they can get access or so this would be considered an entree as part of the meal so if students are approved for the free or reduced meal option this could be their entree as part of those meal options so yes everyone will have access okay thank you all right any other questions to approve second okay we have a motion and a second any discussion all in favor aye opposed all right thank you thank you for your time all right uh next Let's see we have the River Park School mechanical and facility renovation phase two change order approval yes thank you uh chair uh Atherton so this evening I'm presenting
038on behalf of our facilities and maintenance department a change order request as you know we've been in a multi-phase two-year project at River Park Elementary School we've completed the majority of the phase two work at the school that included mechanical work upgrades on the lower hallways inside Renovations lights and other facility improvements continued work will happen on this project through the fall which includes outside exterior Renovations and windows to the lower hallway we did run into some change orders and we're bringing this before you this evening for the board to approve the change orders to date the original contract amount was 1.946 million dollars there was a change order one for three thousand two hundred sixty six dollars and change order two and three uh we're presenting this evening we had a contingency in the
039project for ninety seven thousand three hundred dollars that was previously approved by the board in February and that brings us um a balance uh for this change order of twenty two thousand five hundred thirty nine dollars and twenty two cents the changes um were a result of media center Renovations with two new small conference rooms being added we secured the technology equipment room and then as part of the upgrades we also added a new ADA Compliant bathroom with the changing area as part of the new nurse's office on the school to meet student needs on the campus some Plumbing changes and concrete changes and then change order three we had emergency work to clean up the building and get the students or the teachers back in their classrooms and the students classrooms ready for the
040first day of school so we had to bring in additional Contract Services on nights and weekends in order to prepare the campus as we were right up against the opening of schools this year and so this would bring our request this evening for 22 539 dollars is the balance of the change order and those would move our contract amount not to exceed uh 2 million sixty five thousand eight hundred forty eight dollars and six cents including the ninety seven thousand uh dollars that was previously approved we would anticipate as we're doing the exterior Renovations there may be an additional change order but we would have that for you once that works completed as we start the exterior Renovations questions or comments about this project and the change order that we're requesting this evening funny yeah
041I'm just I'm just a little curious about what when this Project's going to be done so right now we're still waiting on some of the windows and the exterior components to come in um once those are on site then we'll start scheduling what the contractor and my understanding is um that would be completed prior to the fall semester ending in December the mobilization would be October November and we hope to have all work completed for this phase by the end of uh December by the end of this December and is this December is there a phase that follows no this this would complete the mechanical system upgrades there certainly it's an older School some additional Renovations that this would take place on this campus you could call it a phase three or just the next
042step of renovating the older buildings we have several of our schools designated for plumbing and restroom facility upgrades um going into the next fiscal year and this campus is in need we did the one restroom for ADA compliance but there's not been any major renovations to to restrooms on the campus or additional restrooms with the number of staffed over there compared when the building was first built 70 years ago so we we do anticipate restroom Renovations but we'll bring that project back to the board for approval we have several campuses Orange High School efflon cheeks Elementary School that are in need of restroom Renovations as well and we're going to package all of those schools together for the bids this isn't a question it's just this like minor cosmetic thing that I want to make
043sure that you're aware of which is on the outside facing St Mary's Road one of the walls has been painted like an aqua color and there's like a little section of it that's like not the same color this is not as important as like Plumbing or like the essential stuff but every time I think about how we've talked about like you know physically making the campus more beautiful and and you kind of have this issue of what side of it is sort of facing the road is like the Mechanicals and all that stuff but yeah I just I I didn't know if that was going to get finished painting or something I don't know but I can uh promise superintendent on the campus tomorrow reviewing that it's it's not urgent just mentioning it thank you
044so I just had one question I know uh during the renovation there was a issue in the sink of the media center do you know if that's been resolved and it functional now yeah that should have been part of the plumbing issues um with that line over there that had been an issue for some time so that should have been completed as part of this project excellent thank you any other questions all right do we have a motion to approve the recommendation we have a motion and a second uh any other discussion all in favor aye opposed motion carries thank you all right next we have the additional uh teacher uh Duty stipend when providing instructional uh providing instructional during a planning period it's a lot to say yes it is thank you good evening
045when we presented our budget to you for approval at our last board meeting it was asked about the additional stipend that was being provided to our certified Personnel when we were in the coveted pandemic about continuing that and you asked for a recommendation to be looked at and to be brought back to you so I am here this evening to bring a recommendation as we talked about at our last meeting we had ceased the previous operations for a host of various reasons which were all centered around the coveted pandemic the end of the State of Emergency the change in the quarantine requirements and also the fact that we have expended all of our sr1 and all of our sr2 dollars we are now remaining just with our sr3 every bucket of funds if you also
046recall there is a pretty detailed plan for a the expending of those funds and in order to be able to continue forward with that plan as well as to um not hit our local budget for the additional cost that was associated with the stipend we elected to discontinue it so in reviewing and talking with principals and other staff we have a recommendation and a potential funding source so um just a few uh communication or Clarity issues surrounding this this recommendation would not we would ask that it not be a first go-to for our school building administrators that they utilize the other sources that we have made available to them with their long-term subs and their daily subs and the other additional people that have been placed in their building our teachers have asked us to
047protect their planning periods they have shared with us that that is very valuable time for them and for us to do what we can to protect that for them so we want to do that so uh the recommendation would be a forty dollar per day stipend for certified staff who teach during a planning period the recommendation would be that it would be one stipend per teacher per day so um there are uh cases in certain situations across the district where certain staff may have more than one planning period to protect planning periods as we have been asked to do we would like to um require that this only be available for one period per teacher per day so we would also like to ask that we re-look this in November that this just be a
048um something that we begin now through November the 30th and the reason that I ask that is because of funding as well as we're continuing to recruit and we're continuing to hire so to fund this I would like to recommend that we look at using the lapsed salaries of the 16 classroom core positions that we have had to this point in time that equates to roughly uh one and a half positions for 10 months so if we utilize These funds for that sustainability of course is going to depend upon the vacancies that continue in the district and again that is another reason that I would request that we do re-look it and we want to honor our teachers honor what they're giving up what they're helping us with but we also want to do what
049we can to protect their time to be able to plan and to have that time is there any questions Carrie thank you Miss Rath for bringing this recommendation forward so my main question has to do with um consistency um like I know different schools have had different situations so they've had to have coverage from different teachers and I know we've seen in some personal reports some buildings have had like temporary turn in contracts for teachers regularly covering planning periods but like if for teachers who maybe have been covering and haven't been getting paid extra to date does this something they can go back and um get paid for is it just start now and is it on like the teacher to identify when they're um covering a planning period and getting paid or how do
050we know that it's happening kind of consistently building to building great question so um my recommendation would be that we employ this Avenue versus the temporary terminating contract when we were looking at this before when we were ceasing our recommendation to no longer provide this the temporary terminating contract is an Avenue and the intent was for those long-term absences for example if a teacher is out on a medical leave or maternity leave or other reasons where it's going to be a long-term absence that we are aware of that was the avenue to utilize the temporary terminating contract so that we can ensure that if a teacher is being asked to consistently every day plan grade and provide instruction for a classroom that we wanted to make sure that they received additional compensation for that um
051my recommendation would be that this start now only because we did not um when we were doing this before during the coveted time period we had a process in place where we worked with the schools and with the school bookkeepers where um when a teacher was pulled to teach during their planning period there was an audit Trail where we could be able to identify them and have that audit Trail in our payroll system and it was provided to payroll at each payroll cycle so that we could ensure that they received those stipends I understand the desire to to go backwards um I'm not going to say it's impossible it would be challenging and my recommendation would be that we started now going forward through on November the 30th and um various reasons and also funding
052thank you other questions sir um I'm just wondering if there's any piece in this in the school decision making about coverage um I'm thinking about situations where you know we know a teacher is going to be out for a week maybe covet or whatever um is are schools trying to get consistent you know the same teacher to cover all week or I could sort of Imagine situations of like everyone take a day and that that might be not not as good for student learning as sort of a consistent person across the week so what you just described is the ideal but unfortunately the ideal doesn't always pan out and so um there's something certainly to be said for consistency but sometimes just because of other Dynamics and situations going on in the school that's not
053possible so sometimes it's a series of people who staff who are supporting a classroom in the absence of a teacher yeah that's again not something that um yeah would be the first choice but sometimes that does happen that's right thank you for um bringing this forward um and and thinking creatively about funding sources too funny yeah I also want to thank you for this and um thank I love the idea of funding with lab salaries very creative thank you for that um and I'm hearing you loud and clear that we don't want our teachers giving up their planning time in order to do um to teach so that's clear I so um and that's an administrative on the ground decision if they have to do it more than once cover more than one planning period
054in a day I think they should be paid for it so so and if you see that happening then I think that's a conversation that you could have with the administrator and the teacher but I don't think I I don't want to set a rule here at the board saying we're only going to do One A Day so I'd love to do it I'd like to make it a little bit more flexible and let you all manage it because if it's happening more than once you probably want to know about it so that that I'd like rather see that managed rather than a rule man am I making sense no you you are making sense um I'm just wondering how we can do both I do think we need some guard rails around it and
055so um certainly you know if the situation calls for it and that's what a a school administrator needs to do and can justify that we can consider it but I do think we need some guard rails my intent was to set some type of guard rail where we were protecting those planning periods first and foremost and that I I understand what you're saying and not you know that's an administrator decision and be in the boots on the ground they need to have the flexibility to do that but I I I would just like to we would yeah I would like to have a conversation about it beforehand instead of it I don't want it to become the norm absolutely so the guard rail is we if I'm hearing you correctly we don't really want teachers
056doing this at all we want teachers doing their planning so the guard rail is if they're being reached out to do to cover classes that's you're over the line we're over the line what I what I want to avoid is I don't want if they're over the line I don't want this to be the teacher's problem I want it to be Management's problem understanding so that's yes and it can be it should be yes yeah that makes sense other comments yeah and I'll just say I I agree with Miss Hauser my concern is if a teacher is put in that position all of a sudden she's not getting compensated they are not getting compensated for whatever time they're spending not because something they did but the situation they're in so that's that's the concerning part
057to me is only saying it's once once per day I think there should be some flexibility or an exception process that the school must do to do it but we don't put it on the teacher that now has to say okay I had to do this I've lost my planning and I'm not getting compensated so I I would prefer if we had an exception process for anybody that's more than one day for the schools to reach out and that way we cover it and it's not on the teachers to be in that situation I was just wondering because I I don't know since I wasn't here last year um you said forty dollars a day for the teacher to cover that class is that what it was last year no ma'am what was it last
058year 60. okay and the reason it was higher is because of the uh surface that we had available when we look at an hour look at the rate um of the average of our certified Personnel forty dollars is higher than um across our district what the average is okay more so for some than others but it is higher for everyone okay I agree it needs to be done I was just wondering if they were comparable okay thank you all right any other discussion so would the board be willing to entertain a motion and include this exception process to help move to approve the superintendent's recommendation with the addendum that the staff figure out an exception process for situations where an Administration thinks they need to ask somebody to uh cover more than one planning period
059all right so do we have a second thank you we have a motion in a second uh any further discussion all in favor aye opposed motion carries thank you thank you all right next on the agenda we have the Strategic Plan update thank you Mr Atherton so in uh 2019 the district strategic plan sunsetted uh so in the winter of 2020 and if you all will recall uh what we were up to while Nixon we were up to our next uh in a global pandemic uh but knowing that a plan a goal without a plan is just a wish it was important for the district to move forward despite grappling with a global pandemic uh with developing a new strategic plan so Orange County schools begin an ambitious process to create a new strategic plan
060that will shape the district over the next five years next slide please so a strategic plan is truly our North Star it is our road map uh this slide outlines The Incredible Journey we've been on that began with our listen and learns uh pre-covet listening learns where we asked uh what our communities hopes and dreams are for students what concerns exist and our community what our community already loves about our district we analyze more than a thousand comments from families from students from staff members once we started drafting the Strategic plan we asked for additional input and received hundreds of entries online finally we received feedback from all of you our school board from staff students families from across the community uh per the feedback received our Mission Vision goals and beliefs statements were developed
061and um they would develop with the help of the North Carolina School Board Association which were also approved by the board next we developed what we are now referring to as goals formerly known as leading measures and key performance indicators formerly known as lagging measures we develop key strategies and action steps aligned our schools School Improvement plans to the four strategic plan outcome goals and started sharing the plan with stakeholders so using the continuous Improvement Mike uh continuous Improvement cycle of plan do study act last spring we Revisited and revised a plan based on stakeholder feedback and in response to student achievement and other data such as our teacher working condition survey data so tonight we want to share the revised strategic plan with you and before I get started I want to note that
062not everything in the plan was revised some things have stayed the same next slide so this slide shows the components of our strategic plan that have not changed our mission vision and belief statements remind us every day what it means to learn and work in Orange County Schools a mission statement explains our purpose what it is that we do uh in Orange County Schools the vision statement answers the question if we achieve our mission what will Orange County schools look like in the future the belief statements well those are our non-negotiables those are our core values and they help us prioritize and make the work uh make and work to make the future we want a reality so again these are uh the components about strategic plan that were approved by the board that remain
063unchanged a four overarching outcome goals noted on this slide that the board also approved also remain unchanged again these four goals have not changed so you may be asking well then what changed something changed you guys weren't over there revising but nothing so you're right things have changed uh and so what has changed largely Clarity in language as requested by stakeholders and you so here using outcome goal three as an example Clarity and language that is now present across all four of our outcome goals includes answering the following five questions for each of the four outcome goals so we got questions like so what this is outcome goal mean we are clearly answering that question now for each of the four outcome goals how will Orange County Schools emphasize Equity through this outcome goal we
064have a response a clear response for each of the outcome for outcome goals another question how does this outcome goal align to the Orange County Schools Equity plan so we have an equity plan that's outlined in policy 1030 and so what's the alignment they are each of the four outcome goals are extricably aligned to the equity plan and the details of that for each of the goals is is provided um the fourth question what problem is this outcome goal trying to solve so there are two responses provided and why is this outcome goal important and so for each of the outcome goals these five questions um a response is provided next slide and hopefully greater clarity has been brought and so on this slide it's also important to know that in addition to answering the
065five questions for each outcome goal we also Revisited the goals themselves to ensure that they are not only smart goals meaning they are specific measurable attainable relevant and time-bound but as our new Chief Equity officer pointed out they need to be smart e-goals which means we're ensuring we have goals that are not only specific not only measurable not only attainable relevant and time-bound but also inclusive and equitable so before our outcome goal team leads provide an update on the four revised outcome goals I'd like to introduce someone who's joining us virtually and someone you some of you are familiar with Dr sarfo you met her previously and so she is the director of research for the Council of great City Schools the Council of great City Schools supports and advocates for the nation's 77 largest
066school districts which represent approximately 8 million children a little bit about Dr sarfo she holds years of experience in leading and conducting research and evaluation and educational agencies focusing on experimental and quasi-experimental research design improving Urban education as well as issues of race and Equity teacher quality and school accountability in her role she helps guide and develop the work of research directors across the nation's largest urban school districts prior to joining the Council of great City schools and most significantly Dr sarfo served as Chief performance officer at Guilford County schools here in North Carolina which is the 47th largest school district in the country in this role she led the division of accountability research and planning which is responsible for research evaluation accountability and Grant activities for the district as well as local and state
067assessments planning student information student and school performance analysis and Reporting prior to that so prior to working in Guilford Dr sarfo worked as a research assistant professor at the center of research on education and social policy at the University of Delaware and as a Harvard strategic data project fellow she received her PhD in education evaluation measurement and statistics from the University of Delaware and as an aera dissertation fellow yes she is the real deal and we are very very grateful and fortunate to work with her so at this time I'm going to turn things over to Dr sarfo as she had an opportunity to review the revisions to our strategic plan and provide feedback that informed what you will hear tonight so without further Ado Dr sarfo thank you can you hear me it appears
068I can't show my video um we can hear you but hopefully okay great all right um so good evening everyone thank you Dr Felder for the introduction um a pleasure to be with you all this evening um it's great to hear all of the successes going on in Orange County Schools um again I did a review of the current or the previous strategic plan goals and kpis and just brought my lens to the work um to refine it a bit and um to provide some recommendations for changes if you could I'll go oh thank you thank you um perfect thank you um so just to set the conversation in terms of how I've used uh the identifying and the the plant identifying and setting strategic goals um ideally your strategic goal should be quantifiable um
069they should use metrics that align to the vision of the district and the con and the community for Student Success uh the strategy ideally your strategic Vision should have one to three Associated strategic goals each goal should have several kpis Associated and aligned to those goals goals should be measurable with the ability to track outcomes over time um setting strategic goals and kpis uh require deep analysis of system and school data um they'll require an alignment between instructional with instructional and curricular Investments and then ideally of course you heard that I work with an equity lens I believe uh your strategic goals should be designed to address gaps since in your um district and District program and outcomes and drive overall improvements across the district in terms of setting targets for your strategic goals and
070kpis you want to start with identifying your Baseline so it answers the question where are your students currently at on each measure and then you want to set an overall Target you have a five-year strategic plan here so where do you plan for your students to be in five years how does student performance and growth compare to other students and comparable jurisdictions and what is the average annual growth of the group on each measure so that's how you um decide your overall goal is by looking at comparable to students in comparable districts as well as average annual growth on the group of the group that you're trying to measure um and then you'll need to set the annual incremental targets every year based on what that average annual growth looks like um I a lot
071of what you'll see in terms of recommendations I chat I've made as related to language and how we talk about strategic goals they should be in a format similar to this um where you are where which includes a quantitative measure that can be tracked over time a group of area or focus a baseline or a starting point a Target or ending point and an end of time year end time of year so an example would be increase a particular measure for a particular group of students from 50 to 100 by 2026 that's an example of how I believe strategic goals should be written kpis of course should align to your goals they are a set of targets that track outputs of program efforts um they ideally are demonstrated demonstrate demonstrated progress on your kpis will
072drive change and progress towards meeting your strategic goals um feel free uh to reevaluate adjust the kpis when necessary when your metrics change when terms expire or when the goal is met and kpis are generally used in conversations like these with your board members and Community stakeholders to make sure that the progress towards your overall goals are being are being um are being met lastly addressing inequities um so again your strategic goals and kpis should focus on groups of students to drive focus on improving their performance and experiences in reducing gaps so it it requires you to answer questions like where do gaps exist between student groups which student groups had the most room for improvement and which student groups are not moving foreign so I focused my review of the Strategic plan while I
073looked at it holistically I also looked at focused in on measurement alignment and language and presentation of your your strategic goals so so far so good um I always I know the hard work of strategic planning in school districts um you all have taken a considerable amount of time and effort and thought to really produce the sound strategic plan so I commend you all for the time and investment that you put into the development of your strategic plan I found that there was great alignment between your kpis and goals and your goals to your strategic Vision um there's some establish some measurable goals and kpis you've considered interim goals and targets within those um um as within your strategic goals uh there's alignment so your District's Equity plan I have not seen a lot of
074that in the districts I work with so I commend you all for thinking about making some alignment with uh your Equity plan um there's a focus on inequities and student performance and there's a plan to communicate progress to your stakeholders so so far so good um my recommendations um as it relates to um measurement uh what's what's mostly kind of work you are already doing but just want to put a stronger emphasis on just making sure that you're focused in on the most critical levels of change and have the kpis uh Drive the work towards that change so making sure there's um there's that connection there ensuring that the instructional curricular and program Investments of Orange County schools are in place to drive improvements invoke your strategic goal performance and kpis um again to rewrite
075the goals um some of them were written the right way but just write them in a format that um will will this more measurable and as clearer and and the format that I've provided um include measures that are quantifiable and can be tracked over time um don't don't combine multiple or unrelated measure unrelated measures into one goal or kpi so simplifying the goals to include only one measure within each goal that gives you some ability to track it over time um if you if you isolate them that way and then ensuring that interim goals are incremental and based on average annual growth on each measure again some of this you guys are already doing I just put some stronger emphasis on it um as I provided recommendations in terms of alignment great alignment already my
076recommendations were just to review them again um review the alignment of the kpis or strategic strategic goal remove kpis in some cases where there was a little to no alignment um so you'll see that I have made some recommendations in those places or in places where other kpis were more aligned and then adding kpis to include more specificity on targeting inequities in order to drive overall change and reduce gaps and you'll definitely see some of that as the Group shares their updates and then lastly in terms of language and presentation just using clear succinct and simple language when communicating goals targets kpis um we want to make sure that the community understands where this uh where where Orange County Schools is going in terms of their strategic plan um and then recommendations for just removing
077the language around leading and lagging goals it's not typically uh understandable among my audiences so those were the recommendations that I made um and I'm happy to answer the questions later after after the updates are made I'll presented thank you okay well thank you Dr sarfo and thank you for your willingness to hang on uh and be available for questions and so uh first up I would like to invite Dr Denise green uh Dr Green is one of the outcome gold team leads for the district and so uh Dr uh green will walk us through the revisions to outcome goal one teaching tomorrow's leaders well good evening and board chair Atherton Vice chair Purcell board members and superintendent Felder pleased to present to you our goal number one on this evening if you recalled last
078time I was before the board I shared with you our school system data and with that we were able to acknowledge and celebrate some good points about the data as well as point out and and identify some areas for growth and so as we look at our school Improvement plan it gives us an opportunity to address what are the areas that we do need to focus on in order to indeed address tomorrow's leaders so with that as well as looking at the suggestions from from Dr sarfo gold team number one identify three major goals before we we get to our goals I want to point out that the five questions that Dr Felder identified that that we want to address again what does this outcome goal mean um we talked about a while back our
079mtss our multi-tiered system of support and with that it speaks to what are the systems what are the structures what's in place to address all students and so when we talk about our goals we're looking at what is it that we are focused on that benefits all of our students while we put in place support structures for students who are not achieving at the rate that we want to as well as what we put in place for students who are at the high end so looking at acceleration as well as indeed filling in the gaps how will OCS emphasize Equity through this outcome goal we look at it through our curriculum we look at it through our resources we look at through building high quality instruction we look at the resources how we are indeed
080supporting students at all levels how does the outcome goal align to the equity plan here you will see in our goals where we have indeed differentiated our data we have goals to address students at different levels not only looking at it through the equity lens of race looking at it through the equity lens of student services but also looking at it through the equity lens of different achievement levels thank you what problem is this outcome goal addressing one it's looking at student achievement increasing our student achievement through medium proficiency as well as growth it's also looking at decreasing the achievement Gap here as well as increasing graduation rate for our students and building staff capacity through high quality research-based curricula and professional development what is this outcome why is this outcome goal important I don't
081have to tell you that it's extremely important it is about our youth that is about tomorrow's leaders it is about not only how well we are teaching our youth but it's also about how we are building capacity of our leaders our teachers it impacts all the other goals that we talk about and the work that we do in our school system so with that I want to speak to our three goals Dr sarfield said we need to reduce and make sure that we are aligned and that we are focused around the important thing so we did reduce from our five goals down to three but we embedded our goals you will see in some of our kpis so goal one increase the percentage of OCS students demonstrating grade level proficiency under that you will see
082on reading end of grade EOG and grades three through eight from 42 and nine tenths percent to eighty percent and in math eogs and grades three through eight from 45 and nine tenths to eighty percent and the grade level proficiency among students in English 2 and end of content from 60 and three tenths percent to eighty percent and grade level proficiency among students on math one and of course from 3 31 and seven tenths percent to eighty percent and grade level proficiency among students on math three and of course from 60 and three tenths percent to 80 percent gold 1.2 is increase the percentage of schools meeting or exceeding growth from 83 percent to a hundred percent by 2026 and our third goal increased the graduation rate from 90 and two tenths percent to a
083minimum of 92 percent by 2026. you will see we have some stretch goals in in our goals because we believe our students can do it we believe our teachers can do it and we believe we have the resources and materials to meet this goal now with that we have some some measures our key performance areas you will see align with our goals so we have broken them down into many different areas to focus on So within each goal you will see a breakdown of the measures that we will monitor each year and and present of the data so when gold 1.1 and in 1.2 we're increasing the percentage of Orange County students demonstrating grade level proficiency and the percentage of students meeting and exceeding growth you will see here the breakdown of the kpis in
084increasing reading and math the grade level proficiency among students and grades three through eight and the breakdown among our black students Hispanic students our our students it economically disadvantaged students our English language and our students with disability and so you will see that breakdown with each of our goals here when you look at the the goal focus on English end of English too end of course map one end of course as well as math three end of course you will also see the kpis break down there by our different groups so you will see the focus there with with our Equity Focus there with different achievement and the focus on indeed closing the achievement Gap and ensuring that we are meeting the needs of our students of all our students foreign did you want me
085to bring up the second group this time or pause for any questions let's bring up the secondary would that be okay and have each group present and then save all questions to the end thank you and what I'm giving you access to the deck that's great again foreign so at this time I invite the co-leads for goal number two the Miss Rhonda Rath Chief finance officer and Mr Patrick aberly Deputy superintendent all right so uh we're here to present goal two and just want to talk through you know the importance of making sure we have excellence and efficiency in all we do although we represent two of the operation in auxiliary service financial service areas it's important that we think about efficiency throughout the organization and as you see what we want to talk about
086is how we're providing safe environments that are both physically safe and socially emotionally safe for our students and that's a key difference in this goal and one of the changes that was made was thinking about school safety not just from a physical standpoint but how we develop relationships and how we address social and emotional health is critical to the Excellence that we provide when we look at the alignment to the equity plan again making sure that our decisions the rationale the inputs and the communication that happens is involving all of our stakeholders as Sarah mentioned earlier with pizza you know how do you know what they like you talk to them how do we know we're developing positive relationships with students and we're meeting our Equity goals we survey we have conversations we review data
087but we make sure what we're doing is aligned and we're we're proud to have an equity plan and making sure that we're aligned to that with the decisions that are being made and again that the problem is simplistic but it's also complex um protecting all the individuals on our campuses but making sure there's continuity not only of operational processes procedures which keeps schools safe but also continuity of knowledge and how we're keeping plans how we're keeping processes and procedures and repositories and in locations so that as there's change over turnover within the district we just don't start anew every time someone comes in the door we have to make sure that the expectations the protocol the procedures the policies are followed but there's also a guide that helps with that with our regulations and so
088that's a goal that we want to to achieve as well and so three main goals we wanted to discuss and present on this evening one is goal one increase teacher satisfaction ratings on school safety the teacher working condition survey although with somewhat positive at 79 percent it's not good enough and I know um our esteemed colleagues and our consultant has recommended you know we think about incremental steps and we use two to three percentage points per year in order to achieve those goals I can't stand before you and say that we don't have a leap we need to make and we need to make it quickly and so our goal is to go from 79 percent to 90 percent we need to understand what it is that's on folks minds and why they feel that
089we're at 79 percent when it comes to school safety we want to increase with Goal two the number of professional development hours that our school leaders have on school safety and that's not physical safety that's also mental health and how we're reaching students and staff members to develop those relationships because it's important that we have positive relationships on our campuses and then third we want to increase that student satisfaction on school safety which is even lower 56 percent now the Panorama survey survey students in grades three through five and it also survey students in grade 6 through 10. I'm a former third grade teacher and I can tell you in my classroom it was common that when someone couldn't find a pencil or couldn't find a crayon someone stole it from them and we'd have
090conversations about that if we're really sure did we misplace it or did I forget to bring it to school Etc so I thought well maybe you know some of this is just obviously I've been there right third graders reporting on a survey so I looked at the sixth through 12th grade survey data it was 60 percent third graders weren't off by much so we have to think about the data we have to look at that but again we want to increase that to 80 and that's a leap but we need to go there we also need to talk to our students and do a deeper data dive of this where where is it that we're having issues because what we don't know from the data is that at school during the school day is it
091in an after-school program is it happening at lunch or recess are there certain areas where we feel more unsafe than others is it happening on a school bus are there things that we can work on and so you know the first part of this will be understanding where that we can make the improvements when we talk about on students and interactions within the school environment so those are our three goals I won't go through all of our kpi indicators they're on the screen but you can see it's the same emphasis of how do we know and how will we get there and you heard how we're going to do that it's having clearly to find goals and kpis that help us achieve that in making sure that we're looking at our attendance when we have
092required training sessions making sure our emergency procedures and protocol are being followed making sure that we have routines that are well established and plans that are documented make sure we have tracking and Reporting systems and that's important and our principals already know that and they're already working on that because we set up a very robust system for reporting every single month this year of what's happening with our school safety reports uh goal two again we want to increase our professional development for our school leaders again not just on physical safety but also in mental health and social emotional safety and again make sure that we're providing opportunities for growth so that it's not a just sitting and talking about information about how we're actually achieving it so that there's practical application to what we're trying
093to address and the goal and then goal three we talk about that student satisfaction on school safety and again making sure that we're addressing the needs that provide robust rich and safe schools for all of our Learners and so with that that's an overview okay so um with that that's the overview of goal two thank you Mr obli and Mrs wrath and so at this time I'd like to invite gold team leads for outcome gold three exemplary staff and that would be Mrs Joyce Hatcher and our chief of human capital and Mr Lee Williams II our chief Equity officer Patrick and Rhonda started something so they go through the side so we can fist bump too right we were going to let them out fist bump us good evening chair Alberton Vice chair for sale
094board members and Dr Felder thank you for this opportunity for us to come before you and to provide an overview of goal three which is exemplary staff as you can see here before what the outcome goal means is that we want to recruit higher support and retain culturally proficient highly qualified staff committed to provide all students with a excellent education in a welcoming environment that is what our goal means then we have an equity emphasis on this goal um and you'll find the equity alignment there we want to hire staff that reflects the diversity of the district mirrors mirrors the demographics of OCS students population and who commit to becoming culturally proficient so if you follow us through this this model here you will see how does the outcome go aligned to our Equity plan
095um this outcome goal is aligned to the equity plan goals three and four goal three says we build the equity leadership capacity of District leaders administrators teachers staff and the OCS board by developing Equity cultural Equity or Equity orientated leadership skills mindsets and knowledge goal four says we recruit higher support and retain teachers and staff again that reflect the racial and language diversity of the student population what support problem is this outcome goal trying to solve glad you asked OCS teachers currently do not mirror the demographic and logistic makeup of our OCS student population we also the problem is we are on the problem um what is a problem outcome goal trying to solve again ensuring that students receive a highly quality instruction instruction from teachers who are culturally proficient and feel supported and valued
096in OCS and why is this outcome goal so important again for reasons that we've already stated before we want our students to feel comfortable in their space and we want them to be able to interact with with staff members that look look and look like them and reflect their diversity and cultural proficiency concerns we also want to model student achievement and it indicates that assignment and there again I just said it their own teach own race teachers certificate significantly increases math and reading achievement of both black and white students um next slide it's one to lift up it's also important to understand Ms Hatcher just said it that having a teacher of color is not only good for the student that may be represented they look like but it's good for all students right it's
097really think about full diversity and full inclusivity to see a person who does not look like you stand in front of you and present information is good for all of us so with that said we want to also also now look at look at our strategic stratity to have three of Mr Williams when you present the first goal sure first goal for Orange County Schools is retention rate we're looking to increase by four percent um to retain our teachers here we have some highly qualified and great teachers we know that right now we are finding ourselves in a place where teachers are are even more valued and more sought out there so our job is to keep our Orange County Teachers here so they can engage with our beautiful young minds that we serve and
098you all will see some of this information and Export maybe when we begin to talk about our attrition rates and our teaching work and condition surveys also staff retention is a big is a big part of our goal staff retention rates for teacher of colors will will increase by three percent every two years to 94.8 percent by 2026. is imperative Across the Nation that we not only find staff of color but also linguistically those staff members were able to speak the language of our students and so here in Orange County we're also looking to increase our staff of color but it's definitely identifying our Hispanic students uh for teachers there and narrowing that Gap by three percent [Music] then we also will get into our kpis and we're just going to kind of hit those
099because it's getting a little late so um for example some of our kpis are around goal one we want to um increase the teacher retention of 81 81.9 percent will increase by four four percentage points on the average every two years in order to be below the state's attrition rate again you always see that data in that next next board meeting um our kpis one of the things is to increase the percentage of agreement on time in the OCS teacher working condition survey um also provide all new OCS with an introductory Equity cultural responsive training as part of the district's District comprehensive onboarding process so I'm just going to hit a couple of these um Mr Williams or you want to sure as well um another part of this retention rate is also for our
100staff of color we're looking to create mentorship and affinity group spaces currently right now we don't have that in our district and we're looking to create that to support and retain our staff of color and we're to increase participation for these Affinity groups and hope we have a very diverse conversation about how we can enhance and support them here in our district and I think that completes our presentation or overview I think we've kind of hit everything I would agree okay thank you very much for your time thank you okay uh thank you Miss Hatcher and Mr Williams II and last but certainly not least I will be Mr Kevin Smith our chief uh public information officer Mr Smith is one of two gold team leads for outcome goal for empowering culture so Mr Smith
101thank you Dr Felder chair Atherton Vice chair Purcell and members of the board thanks for having us do this goal four as Dr Felder said we are we are definitely last in number but as as you've often seen in this presentation Gulf War is sometimes put first these three goals that come after goal one are what Stephen Covey likes to call production capability right goal one is all about the growth and the achievement that we want to see from students and right now we're talking about setting up the conditions that make that growth possible in fact make it more likely and really nudge it along and empowering culture I like to think of as the groundwater that actually feeds all the other goals so I I appreciate that we very often get to go first
102but batting cleanup for this strategic plan is kind of fun tonight for anyone who doesn't already know and I don't know if the TV producers can help us with this these these outcome goals have been sitting behind our members of the board as kind of pillars um backing them up for the past several meetings um thanks to a lot of great work from folks who have helped us put this plan together and it's really inspiring for those of us who sit out here and watch you and watch these things unfold because we see that these are really really important empowering culture though is probably the hardest one for folks to understand until we talk about it and talk through it um I put out a phrase to some of our leadership during the summer Leadership
103Institute saying that we need to achieve a routine of excellence and I think that that's I'm really glad that that phrase kind of caught fire it inspired some folks to think about it for for people who don't already have a routine of Excellence it can also feel like a bridge too far um and so I like to think that what we're doing in goal four is setting up the routines of empathy that can lead to routines of empowerment which ultimately engender routines of excellence and that's really what this is about for us the Partnerships that undergird this goal the the culture that brings students together that brings students and staff together that brings them together with families and that unites us with our community is really what this is about and so when you look
104at the different pieces that make up go four it's about making sure that kids and staff can be at school they can be productive at school they can be their all-day productive at school and that the people who can make that possible feel empowered to help them with that I mean that's really what this is about and I know that that's what you are all about because we've been talking an awful lot about Community Partnerships and the kind of things that this board has powers to do so what are we trying to solve we are trying to make sure that parents and families are part of the solution and in in making sure that that's possible we rely on Research Dr Dreyer has been very very helpful in compiling a toolkit of incredibly important qualitative
105and quantitative research that demonstrates what we already know to be true the more family engagement you have the longer kids stay in school the better they do the more attainment they have the longer they stay in school and therefore all the things that we want to see we create a virtuous feedback cycle so when families are engaged achievement goes up discipline goes down people feel a sense of belonging again that sense of culture starts with empathy which grows empowerment which feeds Excellence I'll keep recurring returning to that theme as often as I get up to this Podium you'll hear those three words often so the collaboration piece is really what we're talking about and here we go we basically know that we as I said we need to keep kids in school we have a
106fairly strong attendance rate and we want to make sure that it continues to climb because really there's anything short of 100 is something worth attaining we want to keep it pushing that number as far as we can and we'll dig it we'll dig down into the details on this in a moment reducing the suspension rate these numbers don't sound like much reducing suspensions from nine percent to three percent for black students but when you when you stop and ponder that that means that when you when you think of three percent as the average suspension rate for our white students in Orange County Schools it means we're trying to make sure that we can prevent or in other ways you know recover and recoup from in advance two out of three suspensions for some groups of
107our students it's a worthy goal it's an important goal and it doesn't happen automatically there are a lot of things that have to be in place for that to take for that to occur we want to reduce suspensions for multiracial students from eight percent to three percent over the next five years and goal 4.3 brings up an interesting part of our challenge that this team has really wrestled with um the highlighted numbers that don't exist it's because they don't exist at this point we don't have longitudinal data we're setting a baseline it's really important for us to do that and working in Communications and family engagement where I collaborate with schools and achievement where I collaborate with Equity where we collaborate across different disciplines here in the cabinet it's really important for us to learn
108how our families best engage with us it was really good news then as you can see we do reference a survey item since Panorama has been so successful for us on the student-facing side it's really good news that Panorama has a parent-facing survey which we are definitely looking forward to instituting soon and bringing that data back to you later this fall so drilling down into the kpis the key performance indicators that will show us that we're moving towards a goal one of the things we haven't talked about is the fact that there are strategies over the next couple years you're going to hear from us about the strategies we use to move these kpis to get closer to our goals right that's a strategic plan in the in a nutshell so how are we going
109to increase the average daily attendance rate well we're going to start by dealing with the most urgent schools we're going to pick the three lowest performing lowest performing elementary schools to lowest performing middle schools and the lowest performing high school and we're going to start there and work on the things that need the most attention first we're going to deal with subgroups that need the most attention as well statistically our black and multiracial students need more support to continue growing that average daily attendance rate and then as we've heard different goal teams talk about tonight we need to make sure that students feel physically and emotionally safe in order to stay in school culture moves that needle so goal 4.2 reducing the suspension rate obviously we want to increase engagement to make that possible we
110want to reduce referrals or at the very least we want to have more Tools in our tool kit so that when there are referrals we have better Solutions than continuing to attain a nine percent suspension rate and then making sure that there is introductory and comprehensive training well we're starting with the introductory piece but making sure that every single staff member has been introduced to and enculturated with the values that we think are going to help lead us to success if that's not happening then we shouldn't expect the rest of these things to happen as I said we are building up production capability and goal four is really happy to go first or last depending on how you look at it our third and final goal for outcome goal four is to increase the Family
111Partnership and engagement rates especially with our families who who have indicated that they need the support and who show it historically here in Orange County schools and wherever uh wherever we do this work um it's really exciting I was thrilled to come here this summer and start this work knowing how many different things already exist in place and knowing how highly valued the work of our Liaisons and other people who engender family engagement in our schools is and then to learn how many more opportunities there are as we just begin to peel layer after layer after layer back of the different things that we can do and how all of our school staff can be brought into that routine of empathy which leads to the routine of empowerment and ultimately to the routine of Excellence
112it's really exciting to see the number of ways that our schools our Liaisons and all of us who work in Orange County Schools can be put to the service of increasing the number of folks who are logging into Parent Portal we just had an event a few nights ago sadly though you saw in your notes from the update we uh we had to Scuttle one event because of the power outage internet outage um but we know that this drives success the more information families have and the more tools they have for engaging the better chance there is that their students will continue to stay engaged and attain so increasing the number of parent engagement opportunities that are district-led as well as increasing Partnerships within and around the community and ultimately you know growing the number
113of offerings for what Parent Academy or a Family Academy can do there are so many things that we're being asked to do and now it's really I think just largely up to us to respond with capacity so um that's all I have for goal four and as I said we're we're just really excited at the way this creates a virtuous cycle we've seen it work you all have seen it work and it's pretty exciting as we get ready to embark on this um all of us have said we're really talking about the things that we already do every day but being accountable to you to ourselves to our community and ultimately to our students I think is probably the most exciting prospect of this because now once this is in place it really will inform
114and structure our conversations as we go forward thank you thank you so much Mr Smith do not go far to stay yourself right there and if the rest of the team would join Mr Smith if we can move to the next slide please and so before we go into questions I just want to this is a a visual that you've seen before and so how does all of this come together how does it all work together well we know when everything we do is rooted in equity and in Orange County Schools we Define equity as giving all students what they need to succeed and all means all and so when everything we do is rooted in equity to ensure all students receive what they need to succeed and when we stay focused on our strategic
115plan goals and when we use strong core instruction when teachers have the data to personalize support for students and when we keep in mind the social and emotional well-being of not only our students but our staff so we develop them as whole persons then and only then will we impact learning and accelerate growth for every child so with that we open the floor for questions comments questions Sarah we'll go first um well um first I'll start just with a general um reaction and gratitude which is um I all of this um hangs together in a in a much clearer logical way to me now so I just really appreciate the kinds of revisions that you all have done um and Dr sarfo for your input on how to set a quality goal um and and
116all of the feedback that you gave so thank you for that um I guess I have a a broader question around the reporting calendar for the kpi so so I had sort of a um around goal one um the grade level progress um you know that's that's really important um and the in-ear monitoring of progress is so important and so I noticed it didn't have all the details anymore about like M class and aims web and all of those specifics but to me the reporting calendar within a year not the annual reporting and all of those other measures that maybe aren't named specifically those I think are really important for us to nail down and say like at these points in the school year we're going to report to the board on goal one not
117just um grade level proficiency but maybe some other stuff like AP participation right and some of those other things that I think are also part of the aim but maybe aren't named anymore I like the simplification yes uh so I guess what is the plan for the reporting calendar peace that may be broader than gold one but what's the plan for having a reporting calendar do you want so right now they were referring to the assessment calendar here where um different different assessments uh no sorry um uh Dr sarfo said part of this whole process right is having a a calendar of like these are the points at which we'll check in on the Strategic plan using these measures um and so so the next the next phase of this um the improvement process will
118be developing these strategies in planes and part of the strategies will come the monitoring of that and and some of those strategies will speak to for gold team one will be some of those um Benchmark data that will come up throughout the year and that will also lead to reporting um periods that we will present some of the Benchmark data um as they're done throughout the year okay is that smiley just with clarification and uh thank you Dr Green are you referring to how we provided updates last year say in this student achievement committee meeting I'm not sure and are you referring to the um calendar that we've already put together are there other data points that you'd like to to see is that what I'm hearing well I think there are data points here
119it sounds like for each of the goals right not just on the academic side and I can't remember where we landed on the calendar for the academic reporting I guess is is the plan to have a reporting calendar is that part of the agenda planning that you all are doing we do have a reporting calendar that um which was shared I can it does it include for the other goal area it does it does okay so then I must have missed that that's okay okay if it was a very long question with an answer to me again that would be I'm sorry some of those data points um won't necessarily be shared on the board floor so they could be shared by way of a weekly update a report through this um uh the uh
120student achievement committee meeting through the community engagement committee so through committee they could also be shared so um we're happy to share however the board would like for us to share them but there are a variety of ways to to share the data so like the family uh survey that will be going up we're going to bring those data to the board and and not only share what the data show them so whether what are we doing about it yeah that's great yeah I think just um understanding how the timing of that all fits together it sounds like there is already a calendar or somewhere and we'll resend that link to the calendar happy to do that um Carrie then Bonnie okay thank you um thank you so much for this presentation I feel like
121it was really um like as close to complete as we've been able to be so far and um just thinking back to when it felt like the Strategic plan was um you know being built from scratch um it this feels more like authentic to what we've been trying to do and um and now we're continuing to you know build out the details and thinking back to you know just last winter when our Equity audit um named that we had those Equity pillars but that we weren't consistent across the district I just feel like we keep growing in that rootedness and I'm really appreciative of that um I I also wanted to just mention you know there were problems identified and I appreciate the specific examples and um Mr Smith's um reminder you know our call
122to empathy um but I think some of our problem statements were a little bit aspirational of what we're trying to do and um you know we we do have naming the problem um you know for example like having inclusive environments we have been you know students have shared with us we haven't always felt like we've provided inclusive environments or we haven't always had um culturally um responsive classrooms across the board you know so I think we have some problems that we've discussed and some of them were highlighted like with our differential suspension rates and things like that but um just wanted to to point that out that this is responding to a problem of you know these are meeting needs that we haven't always met well um and then just to Echo Sarah's comment on
123this reporting calendar I think we're also if we can continue to capture that's some something that seems like we're still building out too and if we keep capturing this year what we are reporting on when so that next year it can be a fuller reporting calendar it worked well to do this in October and you know there's a lot I think we're trying to do and we're still capturing how we're doing it first I want to thank Dr sarfo because um this iteration of the plan is so much better it's really starting to get more precise and more focused on real metrics that we can hold ourselves accountable for so thank you for that um and then Kevin you get the gold star and the reason you get the gold star is because you took
124each one of you took your metrics and you said but we've got to go down and look by school because the overall end of great performance or and on any of the attrition performance is going to really vary by school and until we and if we want to be have actionable metrics we have got to drill down by school and by subgroup Within school so we need that kind of measurement framework there's a a couple of um metrics that I thought were missing I mean one of the things that's in my mind is the world is measuring us every day the state is measuring us there's all kinds of groups that are measuring us and we can't ignore those metrics and I'm thinking I'll take the efficiency ones transportation is something we're measured on all
125the time we need to have a metric around Transportation school grades nobody likes the school grade metrics but that's probably a metric that we're going to be measured on I don't know that we can leave that out and I want to know how much pizza is being eaten so so we really should have some kind of metrics about how well these things that we're doing are working um uh and [Music] um one other and and by the way Dr sarfo used a phrase that I've not heard and I loved it and I'm called critical levers of change and that is a really interesting concept because I bet if we asked each one of us what those are today it would be really interesting but I think if we if if we look at it in
126two years we're going to learn that those critical levels of change are probably different than we believe they are so um I guess so that um we've got to run these numbers so I'd like to I wish we could I would like to not see a conversation about metrics I'd like to run them we're not going to have all of them let's Baseline let's see where we are we're in year two of the plan I'd love to run the Baseline I'd love to run year one and see where we are won't be perfect there'll be lots of holes in it but we're going to learn a lot just by running numbers so I'll stop there have you Dr sarfo yeah may I just chime in I appreciate um the feedback so far one thing I
127did want to just state is that um again this should be strategic and focused and and so we don't want to have what it doesn't it doesn't minimize the work that we're doing in every pocket of the district and excuse me I'm gonna have a cough drop in my mouth but it doesn't minimize that we're not that weight are still doing the hard work of transportation and we're still doing the hard work um with our children in different spaces but with your strategic plan you really still should stay focused in on those critical levels as I stated before so you don't want to have a measure for every single thing you're doing in your District um if you're working on if you have it all in your plan it doesn't it's not focused in on
128those critical levels so I do want to caution you about adding too much more to your strategic plan because it is a lot um that you have here not too much though it's perfect where I'm where it's at right now I would want to caution you about adding too much more to what you already have foreign I wanted to um zero in on one particular it was um it might have been kpi 4.2 B that's what I wrote down um it was around reducing referrals um and that one you know um we talked about like this isn't what are all the strategies we're going to use to change the numbers it's just what are the what's our goal or our kpi um and this was just a classic example to me of like if you
129just you know what gets measured gets done you know like if you just focus on changing that number it can lead to a lot of um like not the hard culture change work right that like is the sort of good way to get the referrals down where you know teachers are supported to know how to leverage other classroom management strategies and work on instructions so it's more all the things that we know can actually impact the number so um I just it that one in particular of reducing the referrals I just wanted to call out as an example of like what strategies we use matters so much to getting the numbers down the right way because I believe we can get referrals down uh and lead to some different impacts um in the classroom thank
130you for sharing that uh Mrs Smiley so that's exactly the work going forward right so for uh some of these um kpis we have strategies we had strategies that we are already implementing and so we will need to do exactly what you said to avoid um uh to avoid what you also said keep that from happening right because it's very easy to change that number uh and not have really gotten at the core of what we are endeavoring to do so we will be very focused on strategy and the action steps to get to those strategies right Carrie thank you um I don't know if this is similar to what Bonnie was saying but um something Dr sarfo said that caught my attention early on that I'm seeing in here to some extent um I
131think I have this right but that we're we're um we're kind of basing our average annual growth in each metric based on increment of interim growth like when we first did the Strategic plan a year ago it's like well we want to gain about 20 percent here and we're going to do it over five years so that's four percent a year and it just seemed like that was kind of how we approached everything because we had nothing you know we were in that deep level of covet and didn't have anything else but now we have oh well we gained 2.3 so maybe that can be our annual goal it feels more real when we have like real numbers that we're working with and I know we don't have that in every area but um am
132I interpreting what you were saying there correctly Dr sarfo yes ma'am yes thank you other comments I have one more just going back to goal one just appreciating the ambition of the goal of 80 of students will be grade level proficient at the end of this it is ambitious but I I mean I just really believe that it's possible and I think it's going to take a lot of hard work but um just appreciate you all going there and not not going for tiny increments we believe so too thank you so I I want to talk a little bit about my my um detail in the weeds metrics how's that so Transportation um actually School cleanliness is on my list only and because these are problems for us and a lot of our right um
133and um and work order turn around and I'm I'm imagining a dashboard I realize a little bit more than the Strategic plan but in order to know our schools are running efficiently how do we know you know we don't want to hear that there's been an accident playground because there's a work order that somebody didn't handle right we want to know that that if there are work orders affecting the safety of our students that they're being handled efficiently quickly and efficiently and if they're they're not we want that to stand out so how you know part of the goal with the metrics is to design them around our business processes so that if our business processes aren't they should be reporting problems to us and if we have a backlog that's not being addressed we
134want the backlog to you know we want to be able to highlight that so I'm looking for something that looks at work order management some some of those kind of efficiency measures about production operations that knows that our buildings are operating efficiently I also don't know and Dr sarfo I don't know if you have comments about metrics around finances we are fairly um well from a North Carolina perspective we are a well-funded school district in the top five and I was just curious what metrics we should be holding ourselves accountable for in terms of spending benchmarks against other districts anything else yeah I don't know if I would have anything to to weigh in on the financial part at this moment I would have to have a deeper conversation about what you're looking at when
135on when it comes to that um when it comes to the other transportation and not understand that right making sure work orders are being filled all that work can still be reported to the board I I just don't know that it necessarily has to be in your strategic plan so um I would I would say that you know making that request would be something you could ask of the king but I don't know that it should should be in your strategic plan how do you how do we talk more about financial um um goals um outside of this conversation any any other comments so I I have a couple and thank you all for all the herald work on this and as everybody mentioned I really appreciate seeing the evolution of this uh especially you
136know given all the challenges we've had through covid and coming forward um my first comment is more of a concern especially with Goal one uh when I look at the sub bullets like kpi 1.1 and it says increase reading grade level proficiency among students grades three through eight we have specific subgroups which implies where the other subgroups and are they not included especially when we have all of the groups less than proficient and that seems like when we talk about equity and we talk about every child getting what they need every group should be included in there and maybe the point of what y'all may be trying to push is looking at how do we remove the disparities how do we remove race being a factor and determining someone's test outcomes but when I read
137it and don't put any context around it if I was a parent and I'm getting you know seeing what the what the overall school is doing it feels like we're not being very inclusive in that in those statements so I would argue I would actually I would actually argue that it is quite inclusive the overall goal is to address the great lower proficiency for all students the kpis are intended to drive focus on those students who are underperforming the most and so I always used to saying that when you when you focus on all the students all boats rise so you're not reducing any gaps you're not addressing any inequities but if you want to see those inequities and those gaps close in you have to get the bottom up and so but I have
138to do that so does the top though so everybody's the work is being done among all the students but there is definitely a concerted effort so make sure that the students who are who need the most get the most um while addressing a student performance for all students and so that overall goal is addressing all students the kpis are intended to put some focus on students who um who are really um underperforming so that section doesn't have any specific goals I mean it says increase reading so if we do have specific goals for these subgroups we should list them so that's right kpis the kpis um for those goals yep um are specific to the groups right and there is I'm sorry there are specific metrics for each one of the kpis for purposes of
139this presentation we um just identified without the metrics but for um for the board that you will see that there are specific measurable uh metrics for each of the kpis okay I definitely would like to see that because the way it reads is just improve so yeah no I definitely would like to see that one yeah two a front two okay I appreciate the clarity because as it reads it just is I'm just curious Mr Abington because the point you raise um is certainly of um you know concern I would want to ensure that you're clear uh based on what Dr sarfo shared that it is about all children or every single one of these goals is about all children but again that kpi helps us to drill down to the children who are furthest
140behind and when we looked at and we've seen our data uh over Trend data for almost a decade we have a three-tiered system with really none of our students really reaching that 80 Benchmark which is what we want but the students who have been consistently at the bottom are students with disabilities in our El students our English language Learners that next band are our black students our Hispanic students and our economically disadvantaged students uh and so it's we we have to focus on all all students but some kids will need more I I agree yeah I just want you to be clear I appreciate the clarity that there are metrics because this doesn't show it so that that helps out a lot the the other thank you all for the clarity on that the goal
141for um or I guess it wasn't before I guess it was goal three the the the question about the disparities in discipline one of the questions I had is one of the issues that we learned early on was the code of conduct and character and support wasn't being applied consistently and there was a lot of individualization of it and determining how things were applied and so we brought in a company we looked at trying to really get it crisp on how you interpret that and then covet hit and so the document was handed out we didn't do the training and so I'm curious how we go with the training and intent of that and measuring did we get it right with that I know it's I know there are many aspects but I know that
142was one of the key aspects that was in the findings that that wasn't done consistently and so just wanted to hear some thoughts around that as well Mr Lee Williams so you're right you're right do you have the findings that our our student code of conduct was not as restorative as we would like it to be yes we're still working on that we're still doing the trainings with our staff but I also want to lift up it's not just when we get to the code of conduct right because when we're there we're already at sort of a punitive situation agree we're really looking at is also engaging in our social emotional learning so that we get to the place where there is a self-regulation there is the idea of how I show up in space
143so I'm not then confronted with the code of conduct so sort of instead looking at the back end we're actually working towards the front end so actually today we did our trainings for some of our smes um their school level School level leaders who will be training staff around how to be more restorative how to use our social emotional curriculum those pieces will help then engage in the classroom so it becomes part of curriculum it's also part of pedagogical practices engaging in social emotional learning is not just a tool for self-regulation it's also a great way to have pedagogy in your space so ideally those are two of these kind of working together that will then hopefully U.S gold 4 says to reduce that number which keeps kids in the classroom keeps kids learning Keeps
144Us engaging moves our numbers to 80 percent for all of our subgroups it's all connectivity well I greatly appreciate you talking about before that like I I really appreciate it especially with the social emotional parts of it yes sir thank you oh Bonnie yeah that was that was really helpful um is it realistic for us and all of us to ask as we make major Investments and these are investments in time money disruption in new curriculums in the SEL curriculums and these things should we be creating expectations about when and where we're going to move the needle on these metrics and how what kind of what kind of change what kind of impact are the Investments that we're making having and should we be projecting that because I don't things don't happen right away but
145it would you know I mean I've been and Dr Felder knows I've been kind of hammering on having more timelines around what we're trying to do and when we expect things to get done and things like that but should we be creating expectations for ourselves about when we will see Improvement and also using again School level metrics to see hey we're this going really well and this school is not going so well in this school we need to focus our attentions on that but so um yes absolutely I mean we want a return on investment with every investment that we make and um and so uh Mr Lee Williams the second second I can certainly speak to the timeline which you will get an update on that there's a timeline for not only a timeline
146but an implementation plan it's not just to implement roll it out but we want to ensure it's being rolled out with Fidelity that is being leveraged with Fidelity it's only as good as it's how it's being leveraged how it's being implemented and so with that will come data points that we will be monitoring to uh understand how well or not well curriculum is being implemented right and I'm asking the other question of is it working right right so it's not it's been is it implementing well well but is it working because maybe it's not working in certain subgroups or maybe it's not so I think to answer your question you're asking about all of us right yeah I'm not just the social emotional Learners I think anything about the curriculum piece what Dr Felder said
147is key Fidelity and implementation so as much as we can spend we all want an investment return investment but it's not just around that it's how do we move it for our students forward right so I do believe we'll see return on investment I do think that we must be wise and cautious that we do create a baseline year that allows us numbers to see where we currently are because we don't have them and so what we do have some Panorama data survey we should see some changes when it comes towards how our students are seeing themselves how they feel respected in the classroom are they hearing um language of Oppression or not we should see gauges upon that part of what I go back to what you mentioned though was I think it was
148actually you miss Smiley we can reduce some of these numbers but to make sure that we're doing it the correct way so I think in doing that you're right we will have to drill down lower to school levels to make sure I think that's part of all of our working plan is look at all of our schools to ensure that it's working understanding that in some cases we may have to be flexible right what works in one school and that's really Equity what works for one may not work for others and we have to make shifts and adjustments however I think I could stand for my colleagues all of us here and say that I believe you will see return Investments we ask for some time to collect that data first see exactly what we're
149looking at and making those shifts so we can make stronger shifts as our fearless leader often says we have to go slow to go fast yes and I'm just asking you to manage my expectations to say when should I come back and pester you about where are the results listen I'll call the president you can call me anytime you know I mean I honestly um I think that's something we have to get to once we've had the full implementation then we can kind of start see us rolling out but I do believe that our calendar of events of how we're coming back to you to present will at least be able to lend for a strong conversation a tester anytime I think we're good with that okay all right any other comments go ahead if
150I can add to that too Miss Hauser because I think it's important for us as consumers as we're looking at different products and as we're looking at different programs and things that we are also asking the questions to to the person around what should we see what is going to be the impact of this with our students so that we are making wise decisions on on programs and resources that we're just not buying something for the sake of of purchasing something and those are the questions that we that we present that so that we can come back and answer those questions when you when you ask them okay what is the return on this investment so that we know that we are matching the resources and the materials to the needs of our students can
151I just make one quick Point around this too which thank you for sharing that which is because we are making multiple changes simultaneously though we're never going to be able to attribute I don't think um back to one original Source um the Improvement so we are improving the literacy curriculum we are adding professional development around plc's for teachers or you know social emotional there's there's all of these levels so it's not like an experimental design where it's like we'll give this school this and we'll give this school this and now we can see the difference and it made a difference it it's going to be a little tricky to untangle the impact yeah I'm not asking for an Roi on these initiatives I'm asking when when we when we start to see the needle move
152and it's a collection of all of them but when are we going to see the needle move that's really the essence of my question and I think we've seen some with the the growth right I mean that was a significant indicator I mean that's good it's good to see that momentum and carry forward anyone else thank you all so much all right next we have our summer scholar update all right so I'd like to welcome back Dr Denise green our chief academic officer joining her is our executive director for exceptional children in pre-k Mrs Connie crimmins and joining the team as well tonight is Mrs Mariah Morris who is the director for literacy so Dr Felder I apologize uh we had the plans to support all schools and we skipped over that so I just
153I just looked straight down clearly our Smiley was kind enough to point that out all right he's so sorry thank you no no I wasn't paying attention either it's no no worries all right so uh next up then we'll be Miss Laurie Carr Miss Carr is the chief of schools and achievement and she's going to share a bit tonight about uh plans for supporting schools this school year so it's all yours take it away so much good evening um chair Atherton Vice chair Purnell Purcell I'm so sorry board members and Community I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight to provide a high level understanding of the supports that we currently have in place for our 13 schools as well as those that are forthcoming and I've got two things
154to operate here there oh we'll see if we get there I've got one going but not my other just one second I'm sorry at our last board meeting you heard about this District strategic plan you just heard about it in a lot more detail tonight and just as we align all of our work in the district around those four goals behind you which are centered in data our schools are rooting their own School Improvement plans and data as well and that moves from our standardized test data to the Panorama data we've talked about to EO eogs eoc's teacher working conditions surveys all of that and we align those to the district's strategic plan their plans are presented to you every other year and those present presentations that you watched last year and they were shared
155with you in this week's abstract for your reference are much like the Strategic plan they are reviewed annually in light of new data points at the district level goal teams meet regularly to work on specific areas of the plan we come together monthly and cross-collaborative sessions to update each other and similarly at the school level School Improvement teams break their work into smaller goal teams they create plans they monitor their progress and action steps and they assess the impact of their plans on student achievement School Improvement teams meet a minimum of twice a month and they're comprised of teachers at various grades content levels as well as parents it's important to mention right now that many of our schools are still in that recruitment stage for parents some of our schools have a much easier
156time having parent volunteers come forward but even our schools that typically have very high parental participation are struggling right now to identify folks for their PTO board level positions within the schools so that's still a work in progress but the teams and the district monitor their plans for Fidelity of implementation and for impact last year Dr Doyle introduced a really highly effective approach to school Improvement planning providing consistency to all of our schools as you heard at the last board meeting this yielded some fantastic growth chair Atherton just referenced that We are continuing with the foundational elements of this approach but this year we'll be housing our plans in an NC Star platform this year that's something that North Carolina departments public of instruction utilizes across the state School Improvement is a continuous cycle and
157process and per the abstract the development of the plan is focused on assessment creation and monitoring in the assessment stage schools are conducting needs assessments and doing root cause analysis they've already looked at their twcs their fam s reports their data reviews and really done that comprehensive needs assessment to get down to root cause the next stage is creating a plan and that plan is to have common Direction based on and incorporating research-based practices NcStar utilizes the language of key indicators and within this framework which I'll share more about incoming meetings there are 130 best practices or 130 key indicators represented we start at each school by looking at 12 of those key indicators those are directly aligned with the work that we are doing at the district level right now the mtss work this
158social emotional learning work the PLC Works everything that we've referenced and talked about this evening from there schools move into the monitoring stage in which they assess their plans for Fidelity of implementation for impact and for evidence of their impact NC Star is a tool that um is utilized for charting Improvement and for documenting a school's blueprint for Success over time can speak to a personal experience in utilizing that I worked for DPI for several years from 2013 to 2018 and was personally responsible for working with our lowest performing schools and districts throughout the state and coaching the principals and superintendents and Leadership teams in utilization of this framework in order to move their schools forward this um this tool initially can be a little daunting because it does not feel like a Traditional School
159Improvement plan it looks a little bit different but as we've talked it through already with principles and sat through a training and looked at all of the pieces and components we've already begun to identify the um the alignment between the work we're doing and how we can move this in many ways to help us gain success but also to gain greater transparency this tool allows real-time transparency in that all stakeholders are able to log in and view the school Improvement plan at any given time so while these plans will look different than you've seen in the past the content will be can will continue to be rooted in research-based best practices in data specifically aligned to the individual school's needs so as you just spoke about a little bit earlier each school is at a
160different place as whether we're looking at Dr Ms Hauser's Point around operational efficiencies whether we're looking at Panorama data and school safety whether we're looking at social emotional need or individual academic needs each School each of the 13 schools is at a very different place in our district this tool and this framework will allow us to Target where the schools are in moving forward while still aligning them with our District's strategic plan as we look at that I wanted to share a little bit about the layers of support that we have in place at the district support is provided to school leaders and to teams at the school in very different in very different layers from professional development as new curriculum is rolled out to participation in plc's and mtss meetings to serving as thought
161partners with classroom teachers I don't think it's a surprise at all for you to hear that the Mariah Morris is and Connie crimmins and Jennifer Parkers and Emily Myers are in schools all of the time they're supporting teachers they are with principals they are in meetings they are team teaching they are getting resources they are doing all of those things but what you might not realize is that that's happening that level of support is happening in all of our departments at Central Services for example our chief Equity officer right now is in the plan planning process with a high school teacher to do some co-teaching in his classroom his office is also working side by side with teachers to focus on school-based meetings they're supporting our foundational diversity equity and inclusion work at the school
162and classroom level they're sharing resources they're problem solving and building teacher capacity our student services teams offer that operate in the same way with the um horrific tragedy that our district has faced our counseling and student services teams have been deep in the school side by side with our counselors with our teachers with our principals providing those supports providing ears for the students and really hearing what they are needing what they want to do how they need to grieve and how we can help them through this one of the P I think you can see that all of those things are directly and clearly aligned to the work of school Improvement but what you might not think about is I'm going to go back to you again Ms how's your point about the operational pieces
163because we have an example around that as well and so while our schools are developing their school Improvement plans they've got to think about all of the barriers that are in place and that are interfering with their ability to reach their goals I think about an elementary school principal who recognizes the struggle that her students were having and a getting to school on time B just showing up on a consistent basis and then recognizing the challenges post pandemic that her community that their Community is facing the increased price of gasoline the the short time frame to get everybody through the car rider line this principle was incredibly strategic and thinking about that realizing that they there was no way they're going to be able to focus on academics until that barrier was removed reached out
164to the operations department and was very strategic in creating a new traffic pattern so really looking at when buses arrived when they were cleared out how they could keep their parents from turning around to going back home when that line was too long and they knew they couldn't burn up gas for that amount of time she she has been able to decrease her tardies tremendously attendance attendance has improved a great deal and we know as a result of that strategic operational approach that we're going to have a direct impact on achievement as well so I wanted to share that story because I think sometimes operations facilities work operate uh lives in a different place in our head but as as we know it is directly tied I could provide endless examples of all of this
165but I think this gives you a strong picture of the of the flavors as we look at the layer cake of the flavors of support that we have built into Central Services in this proverbial cake in my role as chief of schools and achievement up to 90 and really ninety percent of my time is to be sent bent in schools with principals as I have been working to build relationships with principals with schools with teachers the primary focus of my time has at this point been spent in thought partnership and coaching conversations we're now at a place where we're starting to shift that work and move into a direct support with their school Improvement teams with professional learning communities with mtss multi-tiered systems of support meetings with job embedded approaches to coaching and feedback so
166that will be differentiated based on observations based on the needs of the school a variety of learning walks will also be taking place in partnership with Central Services and across schools As Leaders learn from and with each other my role also includes the facilitation of a district support and monitoring team which both oversees and supports School improvement work as a team we will be able to identify potential barriers to school Improvement early on in order to help remove and address them immediately we will also provide resources be the human fiscal material in a timely manner to be able to support schools work as extended members of their Improvement teams will also play pivotal roles in assuring that school teams have addressed and assessed the right data points and that they've really dug down and identified
167the correct root cause and then that we're helping them to assure that they are identifying the most effective best practices to move their schools forward finally we have heard from principals and over the past year one of the things they've asked for is time with their peers in professional learning communities we are as I work with my colleagues Mr Williams and Dr Greene we are building that into our regular learning leadership team meetings so this Thursday when we meet we have problems of practice that principals have raised and want to share with their colleagues to elicit feedback and suggestions we're using a consultancy protocol we will also be utilizing that time frame moving forward for them to share best practices I've had principals say to me my school really struggles with early literacy but I
168happen to see that I'm going to name the school Grady Brown is doing great with that I want to know what Chris Marks and his team is doing over there that happens all the time across schools they want to learn from each other so we are creating a space for that collaboration to happen so those opportunities will really help us to expand best practices from living in isolation to impacting our schools across the district at the October 10th board meeting you will hear a lot more about school Improvement plans will dig a lot deeper how to access them within the new platform an opportunity to really take a look at all of them um and understand NcStar at a greater and greater level per the abstract and as a reminder the full School Improvement plan
169review occurs every two years which occurred last year but at the October meeting we will dive into their revisions you will also be receiving information at that time about Improvement plans for Gravelly Hill Middle School and with that I'm going to open it up to any questions that you might have um before we get to questions um we're getting close to time and I would recommend us extend especially since we have staff here on some of the material and would not want to have them come back um Dr Felder how long do you think we need okay can we get a motion to extend for 15 minutes after 10. so moved second got a motion in a second all in favor aye opposed all right thank you uh questions go ahead awesome um thank you
170so much for that um a couple of things um one thrilled about the Cross School collaboration and the sort of spread it learning from each other is massive um love that your team is going to be working with school Improvement teams about root cause analysis and really getting to the right things um I just having sat on a school Improvement team I do think there's a piece of this where the culture piece and the ability to be vulnerable there's sort of like the accuracy of your self-assessment and then the willingness to go there especially with District folks also in the mix and parents in the room that I think is really tricky so I just I hope you all are thinking about it absolutely and if I can share one example um Dr Green and
171I sat with the school Improvement team meeting in a school Improvement team meeting just the other day and talked about this process talked about the level of support that the district would be offering and two of the team members actually had were kind coming from different districts in which they utilized this framework and they were at low performing schools one of them in Stanley County one in Guilford they both were at f f designated schools and spoke about the importance of that culture of Candor and being they said we're going to fight but it's going to be that really good fight we're going to debate we're going to talk about it they were really invested and I think to your point about culture a lot of that is about how we set the tone and
172the fact that we are there to roll up our sleeves alongside them and it's building that trust and so knowing that they aren't seeing me just on school Improvement team days but that I'm in the cafeteria I've seen Dr Green in the cafeteria doing lunch duty sitting down in the classroom with students you know that we are in it with them in with it together I think your point is a good one and it's something we need to be really cognizant of but I have no doubt that we can really work through that alongside them Bonnie yeah thank you for this and yeah I love the the um collaboration I know people have been looking there for that for some time um one of the things that we have a have are interested in is
173equity-based resourcing to our schools because it's been like all based on allotments and fun and prescribed funding and we never get feedback so your example was a great one kids don't in some schools the kids just aren't showing up they're not getting on the bus or whatever reason you know are there times where we need to put another counselor another social worker in the schools are there you know we're not hearing that kind of feedback um Behavior we have heard that attendance and behavior are serious problems at some of our schools which how are we measuring that which ones and what res are there supplemental resources that we could put in the schools that would help with that more interventionists for example sure so how do we get that feedback from the school improvement process
174because it's kind of put us to work say hey we need this absolutely I'm glad to hear that you're open to that as well I think having that District level support team there and being present our role is partially to help identify barriers and work actively to remove them so if we are hearing those things now I'm hearing that you are open to hey we might need some additional supports but what happens is that I am the facilitator with that along with my colleagues we come back to Cabinet extended cabinet members other members of Central Services can come in so if it is an issue with facilities we may bring in Nick minsey we may bring somebody in to sit at the the table with us to work through those pieces if it is we
175we really need additional Manpower then we would bring that to Dr Felder and it sounds like there's an openness to taking a look at that but I would defer to to Dr Felder on them if I could just add that sometimes it is how are we using the resources that we have so it's not always you know additional resources but we again it's part of that root cause analysis why does the data look the way that it is we have to um also look at how we are using the resources we have but yeah I'm looking at real numbers in a title one school and there's more behavioral issues than if you have 300 kids in a title one you know and I realize you allotments handle some of that but I don't know again
176you get it you get it but we we really um the board has been asking for more equity-based resourcing for some time and we we don't have the information from you that says this would make a difference and frankly if we want to hold you all accountable and you're we're serious about it then you need to come to us and say you want to hold us accountable for this you're going to need to give us these additional resources that's kind of the we've done that and again as it is called for and needed but we want to be clear about what the needs are yep okay one more quick thing I know we're wanting to move quickly um NC Star I'm glad that everything's going to be moving in there the district used to use
177it and so um uh but like historically ever I don't think that those NC Star like parents haven't known how to access any of that so I hope that that's part of it absolutely and then um the other thing is um I always really liked when I was on a school Improvement team those I just looked up the name of them again those wise ways research summaries of like if you want to work on parent engagement here are research-based strategies and I always thought it was a shame we weren't like tapping into that absolutely and they've expanded well beyond that now there are videos there there's a lot of links in the state um website it's NC Store Weebly um but they have there's a plethora of information resources right there but your points are
178using or so we are starting to explore that so we are at a point right now of we've done a re-introduction to the process and the framework understanding that schools have done a great job developing their school Improvement plan so now it's just transferring the data into a new framework that helps us Propel things forward and utilizing that continuous cycle of improvement and that is a key piece so I've presented some two principals last week I'm doing follow-ups with assistant principals we'll be doing follow-ups and creating some videos and supports for community members and I think the the utilization of the wise ways and those other tools are incredibly powerful I appreciate you bringing those up all right any other comments I just have one um so every time I've reviewed a school Improvement programs
179really academically based and Sarah mentioned looking at Community engagement and one of the things I would challenge us to look at this time around is the community the not so much the community but the culture and climate for the teachers right what can we do because every school is different and we hear that there are unique things that could help in those cases I'd really love to see the schools come back with hear some things specific for the culture and climate that would help improve and if there are things we can do that's great like Bonnie was saying if we can facilitate that I would love to hear it but given that's one of the items we've talked about quite a bit if we can get that that would be fantastic and they have principals
180and school Improvement teams have been charged with utilizing their teacher working condition data which addresses just those points chair Atherton so we will be looking at that and then developing action steps around the areas where each school has prioritized levels of need excellent thank you okay okay thank you a little bit it's a great it's a fantastic point Thank you will just you know the idea of teacher turnover for example you know we've we've talked at the board and obviously it's a huge expense but things like are we do we need to offer special uh stipends for Title One teachers or EC teachers or something but these are the kind of you know is this contributing to um turnover in the school and undermining culture and climate though that's kind of stuff that would be
181more important points to look at management anyway thank you for the point great Point all right thank you thank you very much thank you and since we had such a great practice uh can we have the summer Scholars update well good evening again and I'm very delighted I always love to come forth and bring my team to share information with you so I'm going to turn it over to the two best Miss crimmins and Miss Morris we're going to talk about summer Scholars and read to achieve program good evening again um we will make our 15 minutes um so hi I'm Connie crimmins I'm here to present on summer Scholars as you know that is the overarching um sorry the overarching name for all of the programs that you see read to achieve Credit Recovery
182grades four through eight Camp extended school year and compensatory services and then when we talk about summer scholars in our summer programming we really had um three overarching purposes to work on closing the learning gaps accelerating our students into the next school year building and fostering those relationships as we know that they are so important and then keeping students motivated to learn um I just noted that during the presentation there were a couple items we wanted to keep that eagerness to learn I heard that in one of the presentations and then Improvement of attendance and so we know that students who sometimes stay in that learning space want to continue that learning space so we want to keep that motivation going throughout all of the summer Scholars programming we wanted to highlight that there was
183a site coordinator teacher and teacher assistant support staff and then Assessors for RTA Camp because of the State Testing requirement that is connected with RTA camp and under teachers I do want to highlight that there was ESL teachers special education teachers all of those uh specialty teachers there to support the learning needs of students and now I'm going to turn this over to Mariah Morris director of literacy who's going to give the update on RTA camp thank you so the RTA summer reading Camp is a subsection of the larger summer Scholars Program that Miss crimmins was just referring to it is legislated and it's the only program that serves our youngest students in the district as a legislative reading Camp option under Senate Bill 387 specifies that reading Camp shall be offered to any third
184grade student who is below grade level in Reading at the end of their third grade year as well as any second grader who demonstrates difficulty with reading development it leaves it open as to whether districts provide reading instruction to students younger than grade two Orange County Schools did make the decision to offer it to our first grade students last summer as well under Senate Bill 387 we are legislated to provide 72 hours of reading instruction during the summer months we can go beyond that with other instruction adding in math and other SEL components however we do have to include 72 hours so let me share with you a little bit of our summer reading Camp facts and figures we opened summer reading camp at four sites across Orange County Schools one at Hillsboro Elementary one
185at Pathways Elementary one at Grady Brown and one at New Hope Elementary School we had four phenomenal site administrators our site administrators came to us from a variety of different schools to serving as literacy coaches during the regular school year one as an EC facilitator and one is a classroom teacher who also has his degree in school administration this was very important to us so that we determined the importance of maintaining instructional leadership alongside all the operational leadership that comes with running a summer reading camp we have 33 classrooms open across the district for grades one two and three we had a total of 42 teachers DLCs and media Specialists serving our students we had 104 hours at each Camp location we had 318 eligible students who chose to attend our phenomenal camp and we
186had countless Smiles high fives aha moments and books read across our summer months during our summer reading camp we made sure to maintain our high level of research-backed Science of reading aligned instruction utilizing the Core Curriculum that we found so impactful over the school year for phonemic awareness we focused on our Hagerty instruction for phonics we did Letterland and from phonics to reading for fluency we encouraged our teachers to use fluency passages as well as readers theaters and then for our vocabulary background knowledge and comprehension we piloted the use of the achieve the core read-aloud project which we had purchased for our K2 teachers to implement this school year across the district in addition to this we challenged our teachers to make sure that our students were engaged with their instruction in multi-sensory interactive capacities
187we had very small classroom to teacher ratios this summer maxing out at the max of 12 students for each teacher and oftentimes fewer students in each classroom we told our teachers the importance of using this opportunity to build instruction that engaged our children and got them up and moving and brought literacy and phonics to life you'll see a few of our pictures of students riding with shaving cream on desks teachers bringing in different Hands-On activities to build background knowledge and vocabulary one teacher having her students build little mini monster robots and then write about it after reading as well as countless other ways to bring interaction to life so I would like to just take a moment to thank our teachers for for embracing this Challenge and during their summer months making sure that learning
188really came to life for our little ones when we take a look at our read to achieve reading Camp data we will see that our attendance did have 318 students breaking that down across our grade levels we had 63 percent of our eligible first graders attend 55.2 percent of our eligible second graders and 48.4 percentage of our eligible third graders attend at the end of our summer reading camp we had 32 total students reach grade level proficiency this is not indicating growth this is indicating that after four weeks of instruction they were actually able to reach grade level proficiency when they were not able to Across the school year prior this is a significant jump from last year so we are very proud of that we had 10 first grade students reach proficiency 14 second
189grade students reach proficiency and eight third grade students reach proficiency as measured by either the read to achieve assessment in third grade or m-class Devil's 8th Edition Assessments in K3 I will now turn it over to miss crimmins to share our summer Scholars data right so just a little bit about the 4A Camp it echoes the same premises that Miss Moore shared about the RTA Camp engaging lessons and if you look here six hours of Camp each day that's quite a bit it was broken down Monday through whoops that should be Thursday pardon me it was Monday through Thursday um although there was Aftercare Friday care provided there were 160 students served at two sites Gravelly Hill Middle School and Al stand back during the school year and I was remiss I did not put
190that we did offer Hillsboro there were 12 students that did attend during the Hillsborough grades for Camp um three subjects were covered math literacy and Science and each um there's a rotation and they each got or each student got an hour of that a day and the curriculum and the activities were constructed around the areas of need that was most identified so in math it was fractions and decimals and reading it was summarizing and um comprehension and in science it really was stem activities to continue to engage students in that love of learning they all had one session of physical education today and total there were 96 staff members teachers teacher assistants EC staff digital learning coaches counselors in front office if you look a little bit at the data 70 of students mass or
191increase their oral reading fluency from the beginning of Camp to end of camp and oral reading fluency is that ability to read what it is read fluently so their word calling got better their porosity the ability to just um read more quickly and what that does is it has an impact on comprehension because you're not trying to word call as you're trying to understand the meaning of words and then the next measure we used was our aims web data so Ames web was given at the end of the 21-22 school year and we compared that to the Boi um the beginning of the year aims web data that was um just uh the window just closed for that in math 46 of students um that we were able to assess on both measures demonstrated growth
192and 57 of the students in Reading demonstrated growth just as an aside will we we will be digging deeper because that just says that there was a change in their growth what we really need to dig into and we couldn't do it uh because the window just closed for the beginning of your aims web but what I want to do is to be able to see did a student move from a red or at risk into green meaning that they are they have gained those skills another part of the summer Scholars was High School Credit Recovery and here we have the numbers a lot of students attended and I think that's a really great number that 187 students attended and I know that our site administrators really were calling kind of pounding the pavement to
193get kids in um a lot of credits were recovered more than a hundred that is a significant amount if you think about the motivation of students to come and work on this during the summer and again for all of our sites it's important to know that transportation and nutrition breakfast lunch and a snack were provided and again just these additional details that I think are important as we um think about summer programming as a whole um again that Aftercare and Friday care is so important for parents to be able to have an option a full day option and a Friday option so that they do have child care available transportation for students who are who do not have that option to have a parent bring them especially as it's been noted throughout the meeting the
194um the gas prices all of those things that make it difficult for parents to to be the transporter and then it's important for our students with disabilities their extended school year and anyone who received compensatory compensatory education services that was integrated into our summer Scholars Program and just some photos and feedback um my favorite from the over these were from all of these were seen students smile while learning that reading can be fun and that's just a testament to the summer scholar staff on how hard they work to engage students to connect with students and to instill that love of learning we do have a few next steps that we'd like to share in October we're going to start a complete a start stop and continue debrief with all of the Departments that have a
195hand in a summer Scholars programming and then we're going to start to begin we're going to begin planning for next year and that will involve staff that participated will send out a parent survey just to make sure that we are providing the most comprehensive program that we um can and then again the further examination of data oh and any questions so board can we get a five minute extension [Music] all in favor aye opposed motion carries all right thank you uh questions Bonnie thank you for this um you all are having way too much fun and thank you for having fun teaching our kids so in the summer um I have a question about participation because you know could we do more to get more kids to enroll by involving them earlier that's really that's
196good feedback and um I know that with three to achieve they're under some constraints because it really is based on whether or not a student passes the end of grade test but with our 4A camp we certainly need to look at our our kids who need this the most because our funding Again part of this is Esser funding so we need to look at how we can budget effectively and get the students who need it the most in but you bring up a really good point is how can we make that all work together so if I might suggest because I I get this Center that teachers have a pretty good idea of how their kids are doing and if you know um could we use let the in rather than waiting for the test
197scores because that what I what I understood to decorated made it so late that parents had already found alternatives and we missed an opportunity yes Miss Hauser that is a great point this school year what we decided to do to increase attendance from the previous summer was we sent out a preliminary note after middle of the Year testing in February that said due to your child's middle of the Year assessment score your child may be eligible here are the dates please reserve dates do you need Transportation Friday care after school care and that really drove our planning of teacher allotments materials School sites um and so that was one thing that we did put in place so that parents could understand as they plan vacations and other summer um camp opportunities and I think to
198your point we need to look at what is the missing link between signing up and then necessarily attending one reason for starting in October this year with the planning to address some of those factors Sarah um just appreciate all the work you all do um and one um what I would love for us to get to a place where we have sort of a consistent set of measures of success of the summer program that we can then look at year over year so Ms Morris you mentioned that the number of students who reached grade level proficiency was sort of an improvement over last year and something to be proud of um and that's awesome so yay um but you know being able to see a trend line over time I think would be so helpful
199and especially in the in the read to achieve I think especially what I'm especially curious about is what percentage of students grew and by how much because reaching the grade level proficiency is awesome and probably there are limits to how much you can do in the summer but if everybody's sort of on a different trajectory then that's good information sure and we can provide that data if you would like that we do have the m-class data that we can measure from their end of year m-class assessment to the end of the summer and what we did this Summer that was different from years prior where we hired an assessment team for a team to go in and they were only literacy coaches or reading interventionists so that we could have consistent m-class data because M
200class is one to one and so anytime you have that one to one you do bring in a level of subjectivity that an EOG or RTA test doesn't have and so we did have a consistent set of eight assessors who assess all students I'm so we're happy to provide that data here um thanks just real quick because I know this was a really great presentation I appreciate all the detail um I did notice with uh RTA that it's interesting that um you mentioned Miss Morris that we're really only required to to do the third grade and you know the emerging second grade students with those challenges but we had the highest percentage of eligible students who were first grade and then that dropped from 63 to 55 per second and for 48 for third and
201so what what is the lack of appeal for third are they maybe they're doing Sports Camps and they don't want to do redoachieve or maybe they're discouraged and they don't want to do another summer of it so I'm curious what got more first graders to fam or families to have them show up and and what happens by third grade yeah I think that's a wonderful question we don't know at this point what has led to the differences in attendance rights but I think going a little bit deeper into why would be time well spent and asking our students and our families to provide some of that feedback for us to help us know how to Target them for next year any other questions uh just one for me so how do parents find out the
202progress of their students over the the summer do they actually get a report back or anything to say hey your student has gained this much or hey they they're now proficient what what do they get as feedback from the program from the RTA side the third grade students who take their read to achieve tests should receive a print off from their School site with the read to achieve test score so if parents have not received that they can reach out to their test coordinator to receive that information and so that they they'll get that over the summer so after they do the summer you mentioned they some of them so we sent them out I believe it was the day after they assessed we sent them home with students and for the students who didn't
203attend we mailed them okay all right thank you any other questions Dr Felder so um just wanted to note that there was an additional item on the agenda Student Assignment reassignment and planning process update so I suspect we will um jettison that agenda item especially given we have yes we're looking at a retreat to discuss that can I ask one one last question on the read this summer camp I'm sorry I don't mean to behave you you know we talk a lot about academics and we tell ourselves that behavior and attendance is really critical to academics and I was curious how Behavior factored into getting selected for this and how how the camps that helped to improve behavior for kids so we we didn't we don't use behaviors or attendance as a metrics metric um
204because if those things are impeding or are a problem you would think that they would impact the academics um to to address Behavior throughout the um Camp the PE sessions are not just go out and play it's not free play it is structured play so kids are learning how to interact with one another and I think it goes to the small ratio of student to teacher and creating those relationships there are not a lot of discipline like discipline problems there are kids who have Behavior but it's not it doesn't rise to um the level of a disciplinary action yeah good all right uh with that um we we have one other item I believe the consensus is to remove that from the agenda and uh have a motion to adjourn is that I mean is
205that workable for staff to move this to the next agenda or the student reassigned quite late but so I'm sorry is the question uh Ms Smiler was asking if if it makes sense to do that I just wanted to make sure we weren't going to be holding up anything uh super time so I think Mr I believe would be the best person to answer that question Mr obley did you have the question no I was just going to respond to the urgency um again the timeline that's what we're up against is a timeline we have a need we've identified steps in order to do that through a potential reassignment plan that would come back to the board in about 16 months now and so we talked about the retreat I guess we'll have an upcoming
206Retreat and we'll continue the discussion there are intermediate steps that we'll discuss that could also be implemented to assist with that so that that would be the urgency great I guess I'd just say if like if if this is it doesn't it sounds like if we move this to the next meeting that would be fine um or the retreat that's correct or the retreat okay or works I'm sorry work session or however it's being all right so do we have a motion to move this off this agenda and adjourn so moved uh we have a motion in a second all in favor aye aye opposed this meeting is attracted