001get started this evening I'm going to call to order the 24th 2023 regular board meeting of the Center Grove Community School Corporation first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance well the crew here for Maple Grove joining us so awesome and I will introduce them and tell you all about them in just a few minutes when we get the spotlight of the United States of America all right the next up is adoption of the agenda Mr President I propose that uh we move uh four and five we flip-flop them so reports will come after recognition and presentations I also propose that we remove under action items 8.1 we have a motion in a second all those in favor of accepting the agenda as amended signifiable saying aye aye next up is Temptations the we'll
002do the CG Spotlight with Maple Grove yeah okay all right absolutely all right so my Maple Grove there you go you want to face out of here thank you for the Direction all right do I stand over here yeah okay all right look at this beautiful group well I'm Greg Phillips I'm the principal at Maple Grove and I'm so excited that tonight is Maple Grove Spotlight at our school board meeting and so we're going to start with our teacher Spotlight first and our teacher that we're honoring tonight is Allison Smiley she is one of our kindergarten teachers at Maple Grove and actually has been with me at Center Grove for 18 years now I had to do a little bit of digging to figure that out but 18 years is pretty impressive so what makes
003Allison so special well she kind of embodies being all in at Maple Grove she's one of those people that no matter what you can count on her so she jumps in as a leader and she will help whenever it is needed she will serve on any committee that's needed she volunteers her time for kindergarten she teaches Ready Set K she does kindergarten screenings she will be the first to volunteer to Pilot she's done esgi and you fly her just a couple of them most recently she writes grants for her classroom really just anything to kind of go above and beyond and serve the students in her classroom and in kindergarten at Maple Grove last year we had a kind of an unexpected medical leave in kindergarten and Allison really stepped up as a leader and
004helped that classroom to make sure that that class was able to stay right up to speed with the rest of kindergarten and not fall behind and we really appreciated her leadership with that as well so I just want you to know that she has a servant's heart and we are so thankful to have her at Maple Grove all right and for our support staff member Spotlight we could not pick one so we chose two but they served similar roles at Maple Grove so we have Luciana alts and Yukio Primus and they are both our English as a new language assistance at Maple Grove and Luciana has been with us for four years yui has been with Maple Grove for three years now in this position for about a year she also works in our cafeteria
005so we were able to win win and have her in both positions at Maple Grove so what makes them special really honestly we couldn't be more fortunate to have them on our team at Maple Grove many of their strengths are very similar they are both a very calm women they are incredibly encouraging not just to students but to their colleagues and they make it a priority to ensure that students feel seen and they're heard and they're getting what they need they're always willing to help wherever it's needed they translate sometimes for us with parents they're easy and apprehensions for new anxious students you may or may not know we often get students to Maple Grove in the program who are not just new to our school but that is their very first experience in our
006country they may have just moved to the United States they enroll in school and and we're the first you know a big group of people that they have met and so they do such a beautiful job with the rest of our Eno staff of making families just feel seen and welcomed and so and they also help with our end of the year walk around the world and they help ensure that that's a success so very fortunate to have them at Maple Grove [Applause] and now our fantastic crew of students that are standing here boys and girls when I say your name if you can kind of give a little wave that would be awesome so our third graders we have Annika we have Emory we have Sloan in fourth grade we have Gage in fifth
007grade we have anyeza and Zoe and so we asked our teachers to nominate students who we've they felt like would be great representatives and our school-wide theme this year is keep shining and our teachers really felt like these students definitely shine in the way that they demonstrate kindness to one another both are essential skills teachers in our general classroom teachers nominated them because they embody compassion and genuine positivity through the friendships that they have formed the connections they have made we know they will carry with them throughout their lives no doubt having lasting impact on how we all have more similarities than differences I'm so proud of these Maple Grove rock stars foreign [Music] a little closer here thank you thank you [Applause] good all right next up for recognition is the cg100 there's a
008cg100 award Dr arkanov thank you this evening we're going to recognize some staff and I'd like to ask Amanda Moore could please come up to the podium for us and she's going to share some great things going on with some of our teachers important good evening I'm Amanda Moore I'm our district Innovation coach and I have been very fortunate that I get to work with our district elementary Tech Lab Perez over the last two years we have been working to integrate more computer science into our tech labs so that means we're doing more things like coding and Robotics digital citizenship and basically a lot of fun and so over the last two years we've been working to integrate more of that with all of our students from kindergarten through fifth grade and recently we've been
009awarded with the cs100 award which is a national award and we are the only recipients in Indiana so this award is presented to schools and luckily we were awarded for our entire district for committing to teach 100 of our elementary students computer science so I would just like to recognize our Tech Lab paraprofessionals for their hard work in teaching some difficult Concepts that a lot of times might see seem somewhat daunting or maybe even a little bit intimidating they do it with ease and with excitement and they do it in a way that really provides great opportunities for our students here in Center Grove so congratulations and thank you so much for your dedication in making wonderful opportunities for our students [Applause] yes all right a couple of housekeeping items for this evening we need
010to reconvene our executive session we had to adjourn it we have an item or two we need to finish up once the meeting wraps up so we'll sign things and then reconvene the exact session next up is reports Dr arkanov for you're gonna turn over doctor turn right over to Dr hooker all right uh it's that time of year for our annual review of student s I'm not feeling great so my voice isn't okay maybe that's it okay okay um so I will spend some time going through um this is kind of just the different topics I want to always run through testing in Indiana and what that means because every year is not always comparable to every other year um and that then we look at comparative CG data so how we're doing in
011the district compared to before and then we also look at our peer School data because it's not just about how we're doing but are we keeping up um stepping ahead or staying static with other groups that we use to compare ourselves with so just a quick um testing changes in Indiana ISTEP went to iLearn back in 2019 so that's really the first year of data we have that we can continue to compare to um ISTEP was was different and it's also caused a shift in how many of our students are proficient and that's always important to note our SAT for all Juniors for all 11th graders just started in 2022 so this is only our second year of data last year it was just that lonely little single piece of data we had um and
012then finally I read this is the test that has stayed similar across all of these years so it's the probably the best piece of longitudinal data we have to note this year I will show you we tested our second graders the doe opened that opportunity last year we decided to do that this year and I have some great information to share with you about how we did not only with third but also with our second graders okay so I'll just go through those that the order of our comparative data so for uh these are our I read three scores for this year um and overall across the district we did go down 0.6 percentage and we're of course not satisfied with that at all um but in that percentage let me say we do have
013some great news one of our schools reached our 99 95 goal passing this year we're really really proud of that school want them to keep that up but overall we do have a drop and we are not satisfied with that we continue to hone in on effective instruction and Remediation practices some of the work we're going to do to support student achievement the first of those is implementing it's called you fly the University of Florida literacy initiative and we are using it's an explicit systematic phonics instruction that was something when we adopted reading last year there was no reading program to have everything you had to kind of piece things together so while we adopted Scholastic last year in this our first year of implementation was last year um we knew we needed phonics and
014so we went with this this year in July we invested training invested in training with you fly experts from Florida um and K through two teachers attended a two-day workshop to prepare for being able to implement that this year our instructional coaches also attended and so they'll be able to continue to support that throughout throughout the buildings and help to be in continual learning alongside of our teachers we're really excited about that and we already have lots of Buzz about things the teachers are seeing in their classrooms another great thing we did was by testing our second graders so you'll see we had 66 percent of our second graders pass which means those students will not take that in third grade and next year when you see 2024 data that percentage is already included as
015passers it will just be the additional students who take it this year added to that percentage to see where we're at what that allows us to do is really hone in on the students who did not pass in second grade um and honestly that just means we have so many kids ahead of grade level which is phenomenal um but the the students many of those are students are on track so we'll just do what we would have normally done to get them ready and through third grade and prepared but those kids who were not on track will get to provide very targeted remediation and instruction to support more growth because that's what they need um and then the other is that just that targeting for instruction um for that percentage that still needs to to
016pass this year and we really believe that those things um on top and being in the second year of our new resources will make the difference to have us trending back upwards towards the 99 95 goal for iLearn data um again uh when you look at individual grades across all the buildings the great news is we're starting to see certain grades in buildings popping up over where we're at in 2019 and that loss that we experienced through covid we're starting to in more and more Pockets each year see kids increase and go meet where we're at and even go above that um but we still have to have steps in place just support increasing our numbers of students who are achieving proficiency again that you fly for those early grade levels we expect that explicit
017phonics instructions to have an impact on our students especially as they matriculate up the more and more exposure and earlier they had to that will be in the next few years we expect to see some big differences the third fourth and fifth graders who've had that early also targeting students for remediation we're creating some very consistent systems across the district to not only support but also measure the intervention efficacy which we believe will also make a difference and then finally utilizing our PLC model when our teachers collaborate they use their students data to provide instruction to meet those needs in additionally colleagues across classrooms and buildings share the strategies that work best just like I said we're seeing those pockets of grade levels in different places in the district the value of PLC is they're
018sharing with each other what they did to make those kind of gains and that's one of the most important parts you're talking about the pockets of grade levels sure for example um at Maple Grove they have two different grade levels who actually were above where they're at in 2019. so you'll see we had that that kind of that coveted dip we're starting to see the you know those two grade levels that Maple Grove there was a grade level uh or two at Center Grove Elementary that are popping back up over where we were look at that I just so I understand what you're saying this current third grade class or the third grade class that's now sixth grade no would it be comparing those third graders to the city thank you I just nope not
019perfect data because every year in each of those grades we know we're testing completely different kids unless we run through it looking at it as a stair step which is which a lot of at the building level they do that a lot particularly when they're doing their school Improvement plans um they'll look at Dana that way too to see what kind of gains they're making or or where kids aren't making the game they need um and that's just a little preview we'll do school Improvement plans next month thank you for asking that question and then our SAT data um so knowing that sat is only one of the options in that third bucket that we call it for meeting graduation requirements every kid that we can get to cross that finish line with this test
020is great but we also know that's not going to happen for all kids so we continue to create and enhance those opportunities for students to meet those this requirement with all the other Pathways and the board has been very um not only um supportive but very unencouraging to creating those Pathways in our district I know when we bring new course requests each fall you see more and more of those coming as we open up more Pathways here in the district so um we're gonna we're gonna need that and to continue those opportunities the next one is looking across iLearn this is our Johnson County data and where we are how we're doing compared to the rest of the county and also the state average there um very proud of our school I know we just
021we just want to keep inching more and more toward that that trend of getting back to and exceeding where we were at um in 2019. and then the last one we always look at our peer schools those schools most like us across the whole state in size and demographics and we continue to stay up in that that top part and honestly the difference between School number two and us is very small there's not a lot of um we're really tight that run in a pretty tight race there right at the at the top so you know are some of the players there they switch positions in it right field they did they did um Plainfield um had been higher last year also and Dune land and Valparaiso have moved up and I know um we're
022already starting to ask questions about that's what you do right what'd you do what's going on differently that big conversation we've had and I appreciate this board's support of saying continually seeking Improvement but also knowing who we are and what we want for our kids and your very whole child centered that um one thing shouldn't be put about some of the other important things for kids in their development and other Opera we offer so many opportunities here that you value and support and say just keep getting keep trying to get better and I think I've heard you say before you know educating the whole child educating you know whatever strengths whatever weaknesses trying to not just focus on test scores but focus on the kind of the holistic approach yeah if I misstated it I'm
023not trying to I'm excited to see more and more what kids are able to do at the minute they walk out our door lots are going to continue to go to four-year colleges to your trade schools but there are so many kids that are going out right now and getting really good jobs um and we're even looking at some more things to bring this year to increase the number of those programs we have I ask a question about you know trying to track a third grade class trying to track you know all the way through eighth is that a table in the future we could see just so that we could see if like year over year each year if that because a couple of these if I'm looking at it right looks like there
024might have been a significant dip from for instance I'm on Page Six from 2022 into 2023 from like sixth to seventh grade now I know it could be the test was harder it could be a lot of different things but just kind of to track not only how each third grade class but just if we can see anomalies things that and I would say in the data they're looking at that but you also when you look at how fifth graders to sixth graders compare that state average is way different every year unfortunately fewer and fewer kids are at proficiency that's not okay all right but but it's just trying to recognize who they are and having the right instruction for that so when when I look at that trend on slide six is there has
025and obviously this is a problem across the state as you can see the data yeah you know from third grade to eighth grade there's a significant dip in in the uh percentage there is there any hasn't been any study or work on that even at a state level as to why there's such a drop off between third and eighth grade in terms of passing rates do we have any idea as to the I would say you know back when I first got in the business here and came to and I was at the Middle School and we were achieving that was that when it was istabbed there was a little change to the test if you don't need to go back but on the slide I think in like 2014 the test changed a little
026and we got into the 80s slowly getting back up to 90s there's a big difference in our standards from 2019 and this test that we now use with with iLearn it's it's not easy at any grade level and it just keeps getting harder and harder the math that we're asking our students to do and it's not the wrong thing to do it's just it's very um very rigorous gestures written differently every year right um there's four math studies but the format stays the questions are different yes because they the state uses a vendor that bets the questions and it should be pretty consistent from year to year it should be yeah yeah I mean I don't I'm not I'm not a test maker so I can't really yeah know that but um there are you
027know sort of asking the same questions year after year um which wouldn't be helpful which would be fun news have to a fire in places of features it is a um it's not a Norms test it's a Criterion test so it's needing a standard instead of seeing how kids fall so I'm sorry Jack go ahead 100. what is a realistic percentage that we should be hitting I I honestly just want to see Us increasing those numbers every year until we get to the point where we feel like we are really getting all kids there um I mean obviously even when you pointed to Brownsburg they have over 30 percentage points also to get to all right so it's this is not a this is a multi-year decades work to do everyone goes back to No
028Child Left Behind when we were two keeping that percentage closer and closer every year right and States didn't just get people kids there but I'm okay having lofty goals to reach to the nice thing is with the different graduation pathways well if we can continue to keep kids tracking toward being proficient and getting them a little closer to that every year and they get to high school and we do have all these great options a lot of them have very high interest for kids they can meet those Pathways often in you know they get their academic requirements then they get to really get into those courses that they love and so that those Pathways to careers as well as College um are setting kids up have those really high quality of life for high school
029that we want for them and then on the irie data I mean obviously I'm fundamentally concerned about the steady drop in 2021-22 and 23. are we going to are we going to be allowed to continue to test the second graders moving forward is that going to be now and every your thing or is this just uh the state allowed us to do it trying to based on where we were coming out of covet um I assume that they'll want to continue doing this okay um the year before we opted not to honestly um part of it was timing and it was a decision we've had that choice we hadn't even had a chance to have a discussions okay with our teachers before we could have to say yes or no um so we ended up
030not um seeing the data this year though I'm being pretty excited about how well our second graders did and knowing then the impact on what we can do for those kids who aren't there yet I I'm more excited about that than I than anything else and being able to test the second graders I mean you've put a goal of 95 percent in for the third grade do we have have we established a goal for the second grade at this point are we still no no I would almost rather not have one to be honest because that's it's a practice test well I don't have any problems with that either I was just asking I didn't and you have to after her left we get scores back for the second graders and they either passed right
031they're on track or they're not so of that percentage that didn't lots and lots of those kids a high percentages are on track to pass already so we just need to do whatever we were going to do in third grade and they'll get there because we see that we do well with just what we've been doing every year we'll really get to hone in on those kids who aren't on track who need something extra they need to grow more than a grade level this year to be able to pass our kids who are maybe in a special program um uh English not English non-english language speakers um or our special education students that we can have a lot better data to see what we need to do to get them there they're the same for
032both second and third grade or are they well hopefully with the second graders taking it now we'll see a bump in the third grade because the second grade's almost a practice test and then we can see where the Gap is yeah they've already they already count that that percentage those kids don't have to they don't take it again in third grade yeah I missed that yeah they're done 34 that practiced good practice yes they've taken it once and there is a lot of value to preview yeah we all know that see what that I can't imagine taking sat for the first time and not know what that was going to look like so as a third grader foreign any other questions no I do I would have just like compliment uh I appreciate that your
033statement of we educate the whole student not just you know that one thing about them we want them graduate is rounded uh educated students so I appreciate that and and I appreciate our uh our uh the doe now has it the graduates prepared to see the dashboard and it does include more data than that it has attendance on there because just showing up every day means something right yeah um and I learn art testing scores but then it also has um they're gonna we're gonna be able to start tracking some of those employability skills too the news about more than just being able to take tests and the dashboard will show where we're at on all of those different measures too and that also is ahead to my action item for later very good right
034thank you Dr Hoover all right next up public comments and I'm assuming we have none wonderful next up is the consent agenda do I have a motion Mr President I move that we approve the consent agenda we have a motion and a second are those any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye motion passes five zero thank you I'll ask Dr Taylor to introduce to you some some of our folks today got uh two administrative appointments the board just approved and we're proud to introduce them Mr Craig Butler is here from Center Grove Elementary I mean he didn't even something else Johnson super excited for that time to come thank you [Applause] Olivia press oh do you have someone with you yeah go ahead I do have somebody with me can I drag
035him along this is my husband Tristan welcome so he will be at all the PTO events all right thank you and I'm also pleased to recognize Olivia Preston she'll stand up Olivia's going to be our new Dean at Middle School Central she's been working as a social studies teacher for us she's starting her 10th year with Center Grove schools we're just going to be more excited to have her and she has a familiar face with her too that I'll let her introduce foreign [Applause] yes thank you okay next up under action items um we as you noticed earlier we took the multi-purpose facility off the agenda we have some logistical things we need to to get resolved in plan to put that back on the agenda next month so we will those issues resolved next
036up is 8.2 employability skills survey Dr arcanov thank receiving I'm recommending that the board approves the employability skills survey and Dr Hoover will provide you with some additional information Indiana these are skills for mindset learning strategies and work ethic and those are mostly developed in the classroom setting there's also social emotional skills that are taught explicitly by our SEL counselors in K-5 and during homeroom for middle school and small groups for high school as well as reinforced by our classroom teachers as the graduates prepare to succeed GPS initiative requires schools to teach and monitor employability skills we need to collect data to ensure that our schools are being responsive to the needs of our students and measuring these indicators in addition to providing an opportunity for student voice Center Grove will no longer be partnering
037with Panorama therefore all assessments will be given via Google forms and is accessible only by Senator Grove staff more importantly and this process keeps our student level data local and provides an Avenue to show proficiency for the state GPS dashboard skills our schools will offer an opt-out choice if approved are Monday on Monday August 28th families would receive District communication that provides information about the employability skills assessments including the student questions that will be available to them and explain the process for opting out parents would submit opt-out requests via a Google form by Friday the 8th of September in order to opt their child out additionally all of our student questions will be available online for parents to preview grade level data will be used to formulate school-wide support from the counseling department in addition
038to providing anticipated state required proficiency student level data will be used for students who may need additional support in tier one or tier 2. and as always if students get those additional supports that would require a parent notification or permission so I'm requesting that I know you've seen a sample of the questions that you would approve those surveys and assessments for our students do we feel confident this year we have the mechanisms in place for those parents who opted out we have that pretty tight would actually be a little bit easier because it's our own system I was excited to hear that by the way I was not a fan of panoramas I stated last year we'll be doing all that in-house you approved at the board last year when we did textbook adoption the
039really Bill program for our middle schools our teachers are loving that by the way they're doing that in their homeroom classes and then connect and I was able to sit in and see that happening in a classroom and there's some really great videos teacher conversations with students and those actually come with their own assessments embedded that will also give via Google form but it's part of the curriculum booster Miss Hoover I love that you went local I love that you give 10 days for the parents to opt out this year and I went through every question and uh I appreciate the transparency and everything and again it's a doe mandated thing but I think we're doing the right things by keeping it local so thank you for your transparency notification to the teachers has to
040be in such a way because I know that's a problem where yep they didn't quite read write it right a survey that we're supposed to so I'm sure in-house will be able to correct those those two yes and that opt out is really easy and it's good there's two assessments there's a fall and a spring and when you opt out it's for the whole year so yeah so you only have to do it one time once correct can a parent just make me think of this they opt out in the fall find out it's a good survey decide to come back yes that would be an email but they would email probably a Chrissy Berger the director of School counseling and mental health and we could get them back on the list to take it
041if they wanted do I have a motion do I have a second we have a motion in a second any additional questions or comments are those in favor signify by saying aye aye motion passes five zero thank you all right we have some announcements September 4th Labor Day no school didn't we just start September 21st we have an executive session begins at 5 p.m here at the ESC followed by a regular board meeting and that same evening we will have our third good for the Grove work session immediately following the board meeting um next up board member superintendent comments Dr Hoover I believe there is an award and a trophy down here Imagination Library Johnson County who funds the Dolly Parton project here for schools they have never been able to offer that to the
042two Greenwood zip codes because of it would have doubled the expense because it's just so we're so densely populated and last year they did some initiatives um to be able to do that and one of those is they had to read Across America um challenge where they asked all the schools to um do whether dress up days or you know funny sake or whatever and have kids donate a dollar and by doing that um really helped them to get that going and our school was awarded the trophy for this year for having the highest participation in the county so Scott said earlier we just need to leave that stay here yeah I guess we can put that in superintendence conference room so you can see it there you go that'll work awesome it's a big
043trophy it is yes I think they're going to promote it more in a little more competition so we're going to hang on to it all right um I'll let you talk about that last okay uh Mr Russell any comments or updates sir friends were working on a couple of things one of them is a project of digitizing the yearbooks we're just getting started on that project but once done it'll be a great access or access and be accessible to everyone because right now all of your books are in the library and we have a bunch down here in the basement and it's been wonderful of CT graduates have been donating items and things like that so it's project just beginning and we're working again on the Alumni Hall of Fame many moving parts to get
044to that final thing there did I miss anything Mrs Raco so we're busy Mrs couch Mr Robinson yeah Mr Silver I'm excited about 66 percent already in the second grade passing and I I think we're going to improve but there's a lot of reasons you guys ask on other things but all I know is being a seventh grade teacher for 43 years I could talk about testing for about five hours but reading's important and I feel good that we're taking the steps to show the improvements I really was excited about some of the scores there and everything nothing this evening for me thank you um the last two Johnson County Redevelopment commissioner meetings the August meeting was canceled and then I just reserved forward today that the September meeting has been canceled so there's nothing
045new uh going on with the Johns County Redevelopment commission uh my I hear uh I'm sorry the July meeting was canceled the August meeting was canceled we'll have a meeting again in September there's a couple new projects on the horizon sorry I had the months backwards that's the program Dr arkanov thank you well let's end on a high note tonight we were recognized by the United Way of Johnson County for the most outstanding employee campaign in the in the education division during the 22-23 campaign so fantastic work oh we've got great staff that are very giving to our community love our partnership with United Way special thank you to Stacy Conrad who oversees that and works with all of our folks in each building to put together a great campaign so congratulations Center Grove for
046that and we are told by the executive director that where that we're their best best group in raising money so they were at Fast Track which they Supply the things for the fast track backpacks and they were very complimentary all day the amount of volunteers we get it's phenomenal how that program works but because of them's how we can do it that's right um just a reminder we need to reconvene the executive session when we're done there's nothing else