001[Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] Our Story begins in the 1950s that's when a boy on an Italian vacation with his family brought home as many as 10 Common European wall lizards to his home in Cincinnati Ohio he released them into his backyard and over the years the population in the Cincinnati area exploded the lizards have now made their way to Columbus specifically Columbus downtown high school's parking lot the issue here as an invasive species they could disrupt the ecosystem in Ohio and could have a negative impact on Native wildlife with that happening outside students inside the school jumped at the opportunity to catch and study these lizards working with Ohio Wesleyan University the Ohio State University
002and the Ohio Division of Wildlife Mr hitaski's Junior and senior environmental science classes are taking on the project they were trained by osu's Greg lips and owu's Eric gangloff to master capturing techniques and handling practices this is a unique unique opportunity very rarely do we catch an invasive species before it spreads far out you know once it spreads throughout the city of Columbus we won't be able to do anything about it but here it's just in one little location so it gives us an opportunity to try to capture them all and keep them from spreading throughout Columbus and further what we've done is we've removed all the vegetation from around the parking lot and the lizards were very hard to capture when there was all that vegetation they could hide down in it so now
003it's bearing but we've given them ceramic tiles laid those out all over it through here to give some artificial cover a place for the lizards to hide and that's actually what they like they like rock more than they like vegetation to hide it so we're going to keep doing this and keep checking over and over again until we're certain that we don't have any lizards remaining here and if we accomplish that it'll be one of the very few examples we have of successfully eradicating an invasive species before it takes hold you know lizards you know they're part of the way but then uh you know discovered it was like rare lizards I was like okay this might be might be something that was maybe to do um just to just to learn you know more
004about lizards since you know as you're walking along sort of thinking like a lizard looking at any places where like the sun comes through and makes a nice like bright spot or even in some of the the leaf litter here would be a good spot for them to to go if they weren't necessarily if the tiles weren't warm enough yet or if they just hadn't chosen to go under one quickly into their first search lizards were spotted in their preferred habitat cracks and the walls Dude where's your life [Music] they of course love the crevices between the bricks or any cracks in any walls or Foundation it gives them a nice tight space to feel comfortable to stay warm to avoid elements or Predators the more of those places that we can remove on these
005sites not only put the lizards a bit more out in the open where we can catch them and move them but take away places where they could hibernate and yeah evening everyone I am calling our March 21st business meeting to order please call the roll present excuse me I'm here present here vice president yeah thank you will you all please stand and join me as the colors are presented by our South High School ROTC worked on March March present arms I pledge allegiance order arms Mark Time March right turn March forward and he may be seated I think our Junior ROTC they had a long day of practice [Applause] on ranking third in their recent academic competition um just we are so proud of them excellent work with this program congratulations to all the cadets
006and the advisors of that program okay um so are we our treasurer's not here so the first item on our agenda is to appoint our Treasurer Pro Temp I will make a motion that vice president Christina Vera become our Treasurer Pro Temp for this meeting is there a second a second please call the roll yes Dr Pierce yes is yes yes vice president Bureau yes thank you um and I forgot to mention I thought it was assumed but we are here at South High School today this is uh since before covid um our first time back in the community um I so I want to thank everyone here at South for being very welcoming we had our first open Office hours uh this evening as well I want to thank everyone who helped prepare that
007um this is obviously such a welcoming community and we are so grateful this is something the board is going to be doing uh our next month the first the last meeting this last Tuesday we will be at West High School and in may we are going to go up to the northeast corner and be and we will be at Mifflin so we look forward to seeing you out in our community this is an effort to make sure that we are engaging our community in a way that's more accessible to all of you so please come out and join us when we come to visit your region okay so board members on our agenda this evening we have one speaker here for agenda item we are expecting a report from our superintendent we have no report
008from the internal auditor's office we have a report from our treasurer's office we have several items on board matters we have our consent agenda we do not have an exactly do not have a comment on non-agenda items and we do not have an executive session this evening we will finish up with adjournment agenda there's been a motion like a full second by Pierce through any changes you know objection our agenda has now been adopted so we're going to go ahead and start with public comment on agenda items we have one speaker we have President Nana Watson from the NAACP topic search firm and Law Firm for superintendent and the costs associated with them board action requested give a breakdown of costs for the search good evening president Watson you have three minutes to address the
009board May begin when you're ready so much president Adair members of the board and interim superintendent Chapman thank you so much for responding to the naacp's questions your response is however raise serious concerns regarding the responsible use of funds or shall I say taxpayer dollars in regards to the search for a new superintendent the engagement of a law firm at the tune of 250 000 alongside the procurement dollars which amount hasn't been stipulated to engage a search firm in a crisis Community communication agency are quite excessive needless to say these expenses are coupled with the continued payments the outlay of salaries and benefits for the former and interim superintendents superintendent these allocated procurement dollars are quite excessive wouldn't you say if I'm in error with my assessment of the expenses I stand corrected upon the
010submission of the calculated breakdown excuse me indicating otherwise these expenses questioned the rationale allocation of resources for an example there are school buildings in need of desperate repairs certainly the responsibilities the responsible spend of tax dollars would negate discussions regarding a funding level to cover expenses notwithstanding that there is considerable ambiguity regarding Dr Dixon's role at this time as relates to the former superintendent your response relevant to her duties were she was working virtually in assisting Dr Chapman you all know would you continue to tell me week after week we have contacted those entities and they're not clear excuse me on what she's doing I contacted the superintendent's office last week to speak with her I was informed that Dr Dixon was at a convention last week we requested a meeting when she returns needless
011to say we have not been contacted and is still waiting on those responses in addition public records request was made to the district requesting emails that you the board have sent to the former superintendent and emails to you much to our Supreme there were no responses that emails have been sent that's shameful I just want to end because I have so much to say and time is running now it's not my friend I tell you what to prevent our continuance of asking questions to this form on behalf of the NAACP we are an extending an invitation for you to attend an NAACP executive committee meeting so we can better understand your thought process and decision making relating to all of the questions we have asked thus far thank you looking forward to hearing from you
012and hopefully you will attend NAACP meeting at some point thank you president Watson for those comments in the invitation we appreciate your advocacy all right we're going to go ahead and move on in our agenda to item five the superintendent's report to turn it over to Dr Chapman good afternoon or good evening president Adair vice president Vera members of the board at this time we are going to transition to our highlight video which shares all of the highlights from the last time that we met that we would like to acknowledge the work of our team members across the district and the work that they have been supporting since our last meeting hello and welcome to this week's report from your interim superintendent first off I want to congratulate the Columbus Afrocentric Early College lady Nubians
013who brought the State title back to Columbus the lady Nubians defeated Doylestown Chippewa 75 to 60 2 and the division three state championship game the lady Nubians have now won 5 th and 7 titles this marks the school's eighth girls basketball State title time with Cincinnati Mount Notre Dame for the most ohsaa State title in girls basketball congratulations to the lady Nubians I also want to recognize the Afrocentric Nubians who made it to the final four and played an excellent game which went into double overtime the Nubians were not able to pull off a victory but we are so proud of our Columbus City School student athletes and all that they do on and off the court over the weekend ccs and Community Partners hosted the first ever edu Health mobile Community event at La
014Plaza Tapatia District staff and Community Partners provided many services including academic support Health screenings immunizations and employment resources at our first event we helped more than 130 people the edge of Health Caravan series will continue to travel to more locations across Columbus through these events we hope to help families improve their health and well-being by providing more Equitable access to resources thank you to our partners at Nationwide Children's Hospital primary one Health and Spectrum news for making this possible coming financially literate is an important life skill that will carry on throughout students lives last week Columbus downtown high school students saw this first hand at a National Financial education competition students participated in the Capitol Hill challenge a special edition of the stock market game offered each spring the program pairs Congressional members with students
015teachers and schools in their respective congressional districts Ohio congresswoman Joyce Beatty made a special appearance at the school and talked with students about financial education and answer questions we were honored to have congresswoman Bailey visit our school and meet our amazing students last week students also got the chance to explore stem career Fields as part of the inaugural Middle School stem Days event at Starling the project encouraged middle schoolers to explore stem careers including biomedical Technologies forensics and Engineering this event was hosted in collaboration with the office of congresswoman Joyce Beatty and the pass Foundation there are a few events coming up that you won't want to miss coming up on Saturday March 25th is the summer opportunity communities and engagement Fair students and families will learn about the many different summer programs camps internships
016volunteer hours and employment opportunities for students in grades pre-k through 12. the event will take place from 10 a.m to 1 pm at the Columbus Metropolitan Library main branch Additionally the transition fair is coming up on April 4th here students ages 14 and older and their families will learn more about the transition from high school to adulthood this event will take place from 6 pm to 8 pm at the Fort Hayes career center construction Arts and Technology Building as a reminder registration for the CCS summer experience is now open this year's summer experience is back with all the unique learning opportunities families have come to expect and some new experiences as well the program is free and open to all pre-k through 12th grade Columbus City school students families can register now through the parent
017portal this has been the interim superintendent's report for March 21st thank you for joining me foreign now we will hear from two of our superintendent student ambassadors South High School 10th grade students Anthony Miller and Micaiah mcmudary will present an overview of their school highlighting their great programs and much more the superintendent student ambassador program gives students career and Leadership opportunities students act as Liaisons to their high school and the superintendent's office the program helps set a strong foundation for success in school work and life and now I'll turn it over to Anthony and Micaiah [Applause] to the board members Dr Chapman community members and families I am Micaiah mcmudry and this is Anthony Miller we would like to welcome you to the March 21st Community Columbus City Schools board meeting at South High School
018we are investors who serve on the superintendents Council student council members and proud South High School sophomores we have a short presentation for you tonight starting with the video about the history of South past and present South High School opened in 1900 at 345 East Deshler Avenue by 1920 the school had outgrown the building the construction began on a new location at 1160 Ann Street [Music] South High School distinguished alumni goes from The Brick House to the White House includes United States Air Force General and Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay [Music] legendary Hollywood composer Artie Kane former Columbus mayor Tom Moody [Music] and beloved local news personality Angela pace distinguished South athletic alumni includes major league rookie of the year and World Series champion Frank Howard Buffalo Bills Legend in Ring of Honor honoree Elbert
019devinion and NFL veteran in 1988 comeback Player of the Year Greg Bell principal Christy Nickerson and her Administration preside over one of the most unique academic programs in the city offering not only honors and college credit plus fine and Digital Arts programs including a music and Technology class where students learn to create music and podcasts sergeant zumac and Colonel Lawman lead one of the most decorated ROTC programs in the country the South staff includes six former or current Coach of the Year Award winners including will and Kathy James Patrick bowling Charlotte Keesler eight-time Coach of the Year Ramon Spears and raining City bowling and State football coach of the year George W Yates II as a reigning City champion and girls bowling and the reigning City champion in football tradition is not worshiping the ashes
020sending to the plane on Ann Street our flame is a raging infernal we are [Music] [Applause] our school goals include a focus on improving School culture and increasing student voice our student council sponsored a canned food drive and basket giveaway for Thanksgiving to help families in need [Music] to demonstrate creativity we held a school-wide celebration for Black History Month staff and students decorated doors and bulletin boards with significant achievements by African Americans our creativity shines bright in our newly formed drama club who presented A Midsummer's Night Dream this past Friday right here in the South High School auditorium for relationship we we communicated kindness with daily activities to show our concern for each other we even posted notes on support on over 900 lockers and doors to spread kindness [Music] young women in our lives
021with the school-wide letter writing campaign and creation of collages for the women who Inspire us technology is alive at South High School with our Music Tech students creating podcasts and music while our graphic art students use our new Mac Labs creating amazing Arts [Music] as our school district implemented new safety protocols to keep our school safe our students adapted quickly and we have seen a dramatic decrease in weapons coming in our building our critical thinking is evident when we hold our first annual student Leadership Summit in May over 50 students will be trained in conflict resolution restorative practice community service projects and school culture [Music] use our presentation the board members and in the Chapman for this for the things happening at South High School [Applause] thank you Anthony and Makaya for your presentation and
022also your service on the superintendent student ambassador program throughout the school year we appreciate you president Adair this concludes my first report and if I may all transition to the second report the second report that I have this evening is the fiscal year 24 general fund budget presentation this presentation tonight is a an overview will provide an overview of all of the considerations that we have considered as we have formalized the fy24 budget we will be discussing the process as a whole we'll discuss the calendar and a sample of major spin areas that are aligned to our strategic plan and the priorities in our strategic plan we'll also provide a Personnel budget update and then close out with just a summary slide on our budget totals and a few considerations before we get into the
023presentation I would like to share that this is our first path at aligning our budgets to the Strategic priorities and so if you recall in years past when the budget is present was was presented it was presented by a department and so there would essentially be 10 leaders that would come to the podium each representing their respective budgets and so we have shifted that practice this is our first attempt to shift that practice to show a more aligned and coherent presentation of how our resources are supporting our strategies that are aligned in our that are identified in our strategic plan I would like to know that this presentation is only about the fy24 general fund budget we certainly have other resource streams in terms of grant funding Esser funding and this presentation only speaks to
024the fy24 general fund budget this presentation includes reductions from the departmental non-personnel budgets um I want you all to also know that we are not cutting any of our school budgets and we are still waiting for final cut information and Confirmation regarding the state funding formula which may again cause us to revisit this budget and make shifts or adjustments again we want you to know that we will continue to focus on continuous Improvement and this budget alignment that you're seeing here tonight is an effort and a first step in that direction will continue to talk about the process so the budget process again we have worked very diligently to align our budget to the Strategic priorities we have worked to break down budget silos so that all of our department leaders and budget managers are
025working together to make sure that these Investments are aligned to our strategic priorities the budget team has certainly worked with all of our departments to provide increased budget office support So In some cases these are one-on-one meetings where they're sitting down with the department leaders and talking through the budget process and making sure that they have the support that they need to make informed decisions our budget calendar so this calendar really just outlines the entire process again these conversations began last year and this is the culmination of several conversations an entire process district-wide where we have been working on developing the budget and finalizing these decisions before we talk about the actual Investments or areas of investment By Priority we want to just kind of take a look and pause at our student enrollment data
026as you all know that funding is certainly tied to enrollment and as you can see are certainly our enrollment [Music] um is not what it used to be in 2013 but right now for 2022 and 2023 and the next couple of years our enrollment is projected to be fairly stable at about 000 students and so our entire budget that we will be um discussing with you this evening certainly reflects some decreases from FY 23 these decreases are only in departmental budgets and not um non-personnel budgets not personnel and this request to make increases decreases is a response to the treasurer's request to the team to reduce non-personnel Department budgets by 30 percent for the upcoming school year fy24 each department then reviewed current spend and anticipated need aligned to the Strategic priorities um each team
027member identified appropriate non-personnel reductions and then we came together and as a team collectively we have we were able to reduce about 14 of the budget I want to name that we did not meet the budget reduction goal of 30 percent so the treasurer's office said we need you to look at the budget make Cuts or reductions to the tune of 30 percent or non-personnel and the team really leaned in we had some very difficult conversations and this is where we landed we were able to make reductions totaling 14 percent again we have identified strategies that could not go unfunded so um this slide shows all of our expenditures for the entire budget entire District budget that are aligned to our strategic priorities and so if you look at the Personnel budget and if you
028look you can see how much how many of our how much our resources are aligned to each of our strategic prior priorities fall Child Focus Equitable opportunities for all stronger learning communities authentic engagement and foundational systems of support we will talk in Greater detail about each one of these priority areas and the major spin areas for each one of these but and for the non-personnel budget for tonight but I just want you to see overall the bigger picture of how our budget is composed comprised of our Personnel budget and our non-personnel budget which equals the total budget for the organization and again I want to name that this is our first pass as an organization for aligning our budget to our strategic priorities that are outlined in our strategic plan so priority number one this
029is priority number one is our whole Child Focus as you know this priority area um really speaks to the design and implementation of curriculum with the holistic approach so that students find their education more relevant rewarding and rigorous the total budget for whole child of support is 19 that includes personnel and non-personnel but tonight we're going to talk about the non-personnel resources the major spin areas for priority one whole child focus and those areas are textbooks tier two literacy interventions and literacy professional development we think about textbooks as you know our district is on a regular textbook adoption cycle and so the resources that are allocated for next year will include Investments and Ela secondary adoption renewals college credit plus gifted honors and AP textbook resources these resources offer us print as well as digital
030resources for our students and for our staff the tier 2 literacy interventions this speaks to foundations which is a k-3 early literacy resource that we're using in all of our elementary schools um also our Title One teachers and special ed teachers also use this Resource as well and you'll hear more about foundations shortly in another presentation that we have tonight as we are monitoring our early literacy goal and spending more time talking about our interim goal for second grade literacy and then the third area here is literacy professional development and this includes supplies materials to support professional development including instruction and materials and additional support for the implementation of the science of reading priority number two Equitable opportunities for all as you know as a priority number two speaks to our efforts to ensure Equitable
031outcomes for all students and employees in order to create communities that promote Excellence personal and professional growth and a culture of belonging and again the 29 of our budget personnel and non-personnel supports this strategic priority the major spin areas and priority number two the biggest investment is in technology this is the expansion of broadband phone and connectivity Services also Pupil Transportation for our most vulnerable Youth and the Panorama survey this is the survey that's administered three times a year to parents students and staff our the transportation for our most vulnerable youth certainly this is a requirement that we provide certainly transportation to our most vulnerable youth it's a legally required budget investment under McKinney Dental priority number two Equity Equitable opportunities for all on the first slide I talked about the Investments that we are
032making um internally so how we're using the resources internally and then priority number two the second slide these are actually um allocations that are actually going out so these are tuition facility payments as you know tuition is an amount of money paid to a school district to offset the district's costs of educating a student was a legal resident of another school district so the tuition replaces the local tax dollars a school district receives to educate students who reside in that District the Ohio Department of Education annually sets the tuition amount for each school district and so these are the costs that we incur related to that requirement priority number three is strong learning communities in every region and this priority area really pushes us to think about how we strengthen a high quality interdependent set
033of learning communities so that within and among these centers of growth our reliable sources of support identity and Hope and this area speaks to um at some of our contracted services and tuition payments for students in college credit plus so this speaks to our Partnerships with I know I can Communities In Schools and City year and tuition payments for students in college credit plus and board members you do have um a separate handout that I believe is maybe three pages long that includes some artifacts and data on the Investments with these three Partners to date priority number four authentic engagement and speaks to our work around actively engaging all stakeholders to ensure that every experience with the district and Ginger's Mutual trust devotes quality relationships and strengthens Collective support for the benefit of our students
034the major spend areas here are IEP meeting translation services this ensures that every family with ESL needs is able to robustly engage in IEP meetings the total number of families served is about 1300 and we have several vendors that we work with to provide these supports um the building and District family engagement some examples include our back to school resource resource fair that we had in the summer um the summer opportunities engagement fair that will be happening next Saturday this also includes the multiple family Ambassador events that happen at our schools over a hundred events each month and then the family communication tools this helps us with our ability to push out messaging to all of our stakeholders over 45 000 students 9 000 employees with the push of one button so they can receive
035text messages email message or phone phone calls these would be our Robo calls that everyone should be receiving on a regular basis foundational systems of support this is our last priority area but this actually speaks to um really providing the all of the key supports when it speaks to operations business and operations team that they provide to our schools and our district to provide a foundation of support that enables the organization to produce its targeted student outcomes and so the major spin areas here are utilities for electric water sewage gas I would I believe that the gas the the gas expenditure is probably the highest one in that category um Auditor's fees Bank fees and the day-to-day maintenance and buildings and grounds I just want to note that um the day-to-day maintenance for buildings and
036grounds this really speaks to fixing and repairing the the day-to-day maintenance so if a door is broken replacing light bulbs replacing um you know fixtures and this does not speak to the bigger Investments like replacing an HVAC system and the next slide really speaks to this the Personnel budget update there's no changes to our Personnel budget We are continuing to work within the improved the approved five-year Staffing plan so there are no additional positions that will be added to the general line and closing out this is the slide that where we began the conversation where we're showing that this is our strategic priority focused budget so it shows the allocations for each of the priority areas for the Personnel budget non-personnel and the total budget overall we want you all to know that utilizing Esser
037funding we are now working with ERS which is education resource strategies to design a more transparent and Equitable school resourcing and Staffing model aligned to board guardrail number three align resources equitably equitably this model will tie in all funding types not just general fund remember we mentioned we have other funding sources revenues such as title funding School Improvement funding Esser funding that was not mentioned in this presentation and so we just want to reiterate that moving forward alignment to all fun types to strategic priorities board goals and board guard rails that is the work of the team and that is what we'll be focusing on so this concludes the budget presentation for fy24 thank you entertain any questions if you have questions okay we're gonna before we do questions run over to uh remember cool
038who's chair of the finance committee to provide uh some comments and then we will open it to board members for questions first with Dr Pierce uh thank you madam president uh my my comments will be short I really appreciate having the opportunity to kind of done some previous work along with yourself I've been preparing this presentation and having us think a lot more uh strategically about how we have to plan post 2024 right this document is just one of those evidences of how we have to think beyond the Esser shortfall that's coming as of next year in addition to that how we think about the return on investments of vendors that are working directly with us that we don't have or maintain a transactional relationship with our Community Partners but one where we are leveraging
039each other's power and voice in understanding what our return and our own investment are and what our outcomes are are on the impacts of children in the classroom so I think that this budget is a very good start in helping us think through that and I look forward to any questions that may come that I can answer as well thank you thank you start with Dr Pierce um thank you so much for this presentation I echo my colleague board member Cole's responses as well and you've been able to provide this context for our spending I would be interested in future budget reports including just how often our partners do substantial fundraising to actually provide the services for our students so when we look at I know I can communities and schools City year they do
040a substantial amount of fundraising to actually meet the true needs of our students when it comes to the services that they provide so the more that our community understands that and can lean into that fundraising and those efforts I think it will help all of our students thank you board member piers and on that note I am aware that um I do not have that information for all of the partners um that's certainly something that we can ask for but I am aware that um I know I can has helped to raise 4.5 million dollars of the 9.5 million gold to launch the new Columbus promise initiative and in addition to that I know I can as you know award scholarships to our seniors and that's another investment that that they make every year for
041the past over 30 years absolutely that they have invested in our students there any other questions um I just want to say thank you to the treasurer's office and the superintendent's team and everyone that works on these budgets this was a this was a new way of doing it and I think that as we continue to do it it will improve um we will learn and grow through this process and I think it demonstrates to the community how we are accomplishing our goals and showing the a transparent use of money in a way that's really ensuring our student outcomes for our for our students so thank you because this was new different hard and I personally like where it's going um so I just wanted to say that and I would just like to thank
042president Adair um board member Cole as the chair of fac in our treasurer's office our treasurer for engaging in lots of dialogue and giving us lots of feedback along the way it is a shift it is a change for our organization but certainly I think it's where we need to be going in the direction we need to be heading in so thank you for the feedback along the way we appreciate it thank you are there any questions on the first part of the report or any comments we didn't get a chance to comment whether student ambassadors were still here but if any board members would like to comment or ask questions about the executive report so in general I think it was really great to hear our students voice I commend our board for moving
043our meetings into our buildings and giving our community members an opportunity to come into our schools to see our facilities and the office hours earlier to have the opportunity to have direct dialogue with us to the students who brought us specific remarks today they did an absolutely excellent job I love the attire the letter sweaters I want to see all of our students with that I know Beechcroft has them but I want to see all of our students in that type of attire so it was a really a really great opportunity thank you so much thank you those comments um that's any other comments we're going to go ahead and move on thank you Dr Chapman for your reports we do not have a report from our internal auditor so we're going to go ahead
044and turn it to our treasurer's office we have our deputy Jenny who's here today hi hopefully can you hear me better now and Mike was way high and I didn't even pay any attention um I have a brief presentation nothing to involve but I wanted to give board an update on our professional development um plan for this year we took a more proactive approach this year Stan for the first year ever had an all-staff meeting in August we provided some brief trainings at that all staff meeting we had a presentation about generational differences we have a vast array of Ages in our department ranging from mid-20s to I think we have a staff member in her 80s so quite a wide array of Ages so the generational differences was very appropriate and I think very
045well received then we provided a few little like I I did a brief overview on usas coding which gets everybody excited who doesn't want to learn all about accounting and just some procedural things and an introduction an introduction to my department which was the finance there is the finance process Improvement Department since that was fairly new and again this is all kind of stemming from the reorganization trying to bring the team together as a whole following this all staff meeting we had a survey that we sent out to staff asking for suggestions and ideas for professional development going through the course of the year because historically we have not necessarily provided dedicated professional development we've obviously always supported letting staff members go to any professional development that was appropriate but this was a more focused
046intentional effort So within the survey we asked a variety of things what types of methods of training whether you want an in-person virtual online those types of things how often you know monthly quarterly those types as well as we asked what career goals some of our staff had to try to make sure that we were addressing those needs as well the top five requests that came out of that survey included in a specific requests for training which is a little bit more of a challenge when you're talking the entire department so those needs were typically met through paste days days which is a resource that we have available through Tyler Technologies which is our Erp system and let's see here if my thing works which it may not is not current anyway the second highest
047request for training was regarding communication third was Microsoft Office various option you know word so the wrong way there we go okay Microsoft Office again that being something that's again more difficult with a large group because of the fact that you have a variety of levels of understanding and knowledge as it relates to those topics so we've tried to address those on a more one-on-one basis and then the last two of the top five suggestions or requested topics was leadership and Stress Management So based on that information we move forward with a plan for the PD which was um we essentially looked at the dates that were already established by the calendar for the district and we chose three of those dates we were trying to make sure that we accommodated um the needs within
048the department trying not to do it on a processing week for payroll those types of things to to make sure that we could get as many staff members to attend as possible and then we essentially broke the staff into three groups and within each group we made sure we had a cross-section across various departments so we had AP staff we had AR staff budget staff payroll staff area treasurers as well as administrators so that each group had a nice cross-section of the department as a whole and gave people an opportunity to meet staff that they don't necessarily interact with on a regular basis so um as well as give people some faces to puts with names because there are times that especially with our area Treasures that are located out in the buildings they have
049a lot of um conversations and emails with people but they don't necessarily have faces to go with that we have a lot of new staff within the last few years so and then with each training session we broke each day into three anywhere from one and a half hours to I think an hour and 45 minutes was our longest session but we broke them into three even sessions throughout the day and each group rotated through each session so everybody got all three sessions we just rotated them through phone okay up here so so it's a problem my phone goes to sleep and then my app doesn't work so with the topics that we covered again this a lot of this was driven by the survey that we were put out at the beginning of communication
050conflict management and collaboration we had a an agreement with a vendor which was Nyla Jean Daniels and Steve sure Dallas it's a hard name to say um former superintendent and business manager out of Cleveland Heights University Heights that are now certified presenters I think what the name of the company is but they did a session about these three topics and it built on itself through each of the three dates so everybody saw Nyla Jean and Steve at each of the three days the presentation skills are on Dr Rausch and Katie Johnson presented to the group about presentation skills we had Stress Management and self-care we partnered with Aya Fitzgerald through our Wellness team if you've seen some of the wellness Wednesday things I believe she's done several of those she's a very energetic presenter that
051got a lot of a lot of good responses from the staff um we also brought in an trying to think what his name was Steve Edwards I believe was his name that did a disc assessment I know there have been a lot of I know the board did a disc assessment I believe cabinet did a disc assessment we've read a book that's tied to disc assessment in the treasurer's office so it was kind of nice to just be able to tie all of that information in together and then we also brought in a representative from serves all of our staff our contributing members to serve so it was to try to get them as much information as they could get to help them better understand their benefits and their retirement options that one was very
052well received everybody really liked that and cam did an excellent job on his presentation and then in our last training on the 18th of February I believe it was we had Chris liebteg who did some work with us on the opportunity study that sand did several years back and he essentially did a white belt lean Six Sigma training so we now have 39 white belts in our Treasurer's Office so um these were the various topics that we went through to try to again expand the information the understanding and the needs of our staff we did put out a survey after each training and we provided or asked individual questions which were then shared with each of the presenters about each individual session but also as the day as a whole and as you can see
053overwhelmingly the response was very positive we typically received above 50 percent responses on our surveys so I feel like it's fairly indicative of the staff that we had attend I mean we had some dates where the attendance was a little off the last date that we had was a Friday of a Payday so some of the paid the payroll staff made sure to attend the lean Six Sigma training but they didn't always make the other two sessions so the staff survey information was typically pretty positive and very well received and we also in the last one asked for volunteers to serve on a PD committee for the coming year so we have next for next year we have a professional development committee again cross-section from each staff so we have some opsy members we have
054some admin members at varying levels Terry Addison and Eric will be co-facilitating that group um we will have them reviewing and determining how many professional development days they feel is appropriate what dates make sense they may not necessarily align with the predetermined dates that are set for building staff because again payroll needs in terms of processing weeks and paydays don't always align with those pre-scheduled dates so we may use the days that's more accommodating to our staff to get better participation again talk through the length of training and the various topics to continue to provide what things they like what they want to see more of how we want to go through that so that is where we have gone for uh the committee for the coming year and again just kind of kind of
055wrap it up why we feel this is important I mean it's it's to essentially help improve our staff for the goal is to increase the customer service to the community to the staff to the students and grief staff knowledge keep staff morale up and moving give people a career path and not give them the options and the resources they need if they choose and want to advance and obviously just to do our jobs as well as possible so that's all I have to report on our PD plan for this year and coming for the coming school year thank you I see there's a question uh remember Cole uh thank you madam president uh just a quick question that Treasurer can you tell how this these experiences this professional development is enhanced your knowledge of the
056team a sense of your ability to lead the team you can talk just a little bit about that yeah it it's been very interesting especially with the cross section and getting to meet other people especially as given the majority of these trainings were focused in areas of communication collaboration just understanding each other the disc assessment was very insightful because as we all know we all think and learn and respond differently to different things so it was very helpful just personally to be able to know how better to interact with certain people I think it gave the staff the Insight of how maybe better to approach things with certain people maybe they've you know been trying to break through on a you know with on a topic with somebody and and that's been a challenge so
057I think it's been very well received and it was very interesting a lot of people gave a lot of good feedback regarding that so I think a lot of times we get very focused on the day-to-day processing you know and the details of oh this is how I post a receipt and this is how I process a budget transfer it was kind of nice to be able to talk with staff in a more introspective way to unders better understand how we all think and and go from there so great self-evaluation thank you vice president Vera thank you thank you Jenny for providing um this update I just want to commend your team and your department for being so intentional about your PD and I really appreciated the fact that you were even looking at experts
058within the district to be able to facilitate which I think is extremely important as we have so many amazing experts in our district and I would definitely encourage even as we continue or you continue to build out that process even on the building level we have so many amazing teachers that are leading this work in so many different ways so I really just appreciate that you your team has thought about that and I look forward to seeing what other experts within our district that can contribute to the Treasurer's Department so thank you thank you so much thank you go ahead and go into item eight the First on our board matters agenda is our monitoring report for our interim goal 1.3 which is second grade reading where members you received the report it's also in
059your binder this evening as well as on board docs the first thing we need to do is approve the report or accept the report I guess before we can start the monitoring session remember that the questions in this approval are does it cool show what is being monitored does it clearly show data for the three previous reporting periods does it clearly show the target reporting period so clear should the superintendent's evaluation performance does it clearly show supporting documentation that evidences the superintense evaluation and if the district is not on Target or the superintendent's evaluation indicates implementation is not on track does the monitoring report clearly describe any needed next steps in light of all of those questions is there a motion to go ahead and um it's been a motion in the second um please
060call the roll Mr Cole yes Dr Pierce yes Ms Reyes vice president Bureau yes president obser yes Mr Brown motion curious thank you we're gonna go ahead and turn it back over to the superintendent as well as Dr Brown who's joined us at the table um to hear presentation before we begin the session thank you Dr Brown will be um beginning our presentation and then I will close us out seems like we're having a little bit of technical difficulty there we go so while we're resolving that um one good evening good evening always a pleasure to come before the board and in the community to present on the progress of our students again this is the interim gold 1.3 which is tied to second grade reading proficiency or growth I just want to remind everyone
061that this ties to the board's first goal which is strengthening reading proficiency that goal was stated as the percentage of third grade students proficient in reading on the Ohio State task or the OST as it's commonly known will increase from 43 percent or decline in The Benchmark due to covid in the school year of 2018-2019 to 55 in June of 2026. we set a group of interim goals that act as a ladder up to that third grade goal because we all know that third grade reading doesn't happen overnight it's a project of what happens in pre-k kindergarten first second grade and we set goals for for kindergarten first and second grade to be able to monitor students progress as they move towards third grade and we adjusted the calendar for reporting on this goal because
062this like our 11th grade goal is is the one that's closest to the final goal we're looking at our second graders they've got about a year and a half left to be able to meet that third grade goal and so we adjusted and brought this goal forward so we could talk about it while we still have to intervene and do things differently so this goal uh again the interim goal allows us to monitor the progress of the cohort as they move from kindergarten all the way through third grade or pre preschool through third grade and each year that goal that Target has to raise because that third grade goal goes up every single year so last year the target was 39 we wanted 39 percent of our secondary students to either be meeting at grade
063level or to have matter exceeded stretch growth we focus on stretch growth because stretch growth is a reflection of about a year and a half's worth of learning for a student and so students are able to make a year and a half's worth of learning and they can accumulate that over time they close gaps and they move to proficiency over time so we want to acknowledge that movement that learning growth in that case is the most accurate reflection of learning for us and and so we monitor that so last year was 39 this year it's 46 so it's quite a steep climb we went from 39 to 46 the seven percentage Point increase last this time 30.7 percent of our second graders met this goal that was off track and it was well below our
064Target this year 40.3 percent of our second graders met this goal this is an improvement of 9.6 percentage points almost a double-digit gain from last year this however was still off track and Below Target but we're closer we're much closer to our Target than we were in the past and with that I'm superintendent thank you Dr Brown um as Dr Brown mentioned you can see in this Slide the chart and as which shows the progress so again from this time last year to this year there has been our students have shown a nine percent uh increase shown Improvement year over year with our current second graders outpour outperforming second graders at this same time uh last Academic School year and our current second graders have also shown a significant improvement from where they ended their
065first grade year which is about 13 percentage points so despite the fact that the target Rose by seven percentage points our second graders are closer to the goal this year in comparison to last year and not only did we see improvements and growth overall every student group showed improvement from last year every student group there was no exception despite the increase in the Target expectation many student groups are closer to the expected final goal as well and you can see the progress for each student group the change from last year as well as the percent of current year goal their progress towards the current year goal so now we'll talk about our strategies we've shared the data where we are at this point the progress from last year in terms of meeting the the goal
066for this interim goal there are two theories of action and one if we improve attendance there will be an increase in student learning reflected in both improved growth as well as achievement and our second theory of action if students have access to the district adopted common curriculum with its appropriate tiered supports provided with Fidelity Growth will be accelerated and achievement will increase so let's take a look at attendance our current second graders have improved attendance rates in comparison to their peers last year our schools have reduced the rate of severe chronic absenteeism by 6.8 percentage points this year and satisfactory attendance rates which is greater than 95 attendance has increased by six percentage points we attribute this to a strategy that we have outlined to focus on attendance a district-wide strategy to focus on attention
067attendance you are aware of our stay in the game partnership with the Columbus Crew this is an attendance awareness campaign that was initiated this year and certainly has supported our attendance efforts the focus on reducing chronic absenteeism has been integrated into school Improvement plans for certainly the elementary schools which we are focusing on for this particular particular goal but also in all of our school Improvement plans K-12 in addition the PBIS work at every school we have a PBIS team and they develop a site-specific plan to support PBIS and attendance is incorporated into those strategies certainly as we move forward we will be launching an attendance manual to support all of our schools across the district K2 K-12 so we can make sure that we have aligned efforts and we'll be building staff capacity to
068take a data-driven approach to tiered supports for attendance which is an alignment to our mtss work and it's also a board guardrail theory of action number two curriculum implementation this really speaks to for me an equity proposition ensuring that all of our students across the District K-12 have access to um common curriculum District adopted resources that is on grade level and so these are high quality resources we can we're going to talk just a little bit about the Investments that we have made as a district in the last couple of years and where we are in that District adopted curriculum adoption timeline again ensuring that we are Shoring up the core meaning all of our students tier one instruction are provided with opportunities to have access to grade level content and curriculum so that they
069will be familiar with the standards and have access to high quality resources foreign implementation the curriculum team has certainly worked to revamp our literacy block this is a 120 Minutes 20-minute literacy block for all of our Elementary classrooms this literacy block includes a 90 minutes of whole group instruction that focuses on phonemic awareness phonics um core our core resource which is Holton Mifflin and vocabulary instruction a component of that 120 minute literacy block also includes centers that may also include whole group instruction but this is also an opportunity for students to have a student-led practice to support with all of the areas of the literacy block and at the all of these components are certainly informed by the science of reading so this is again another effort that we are making to ensure that our
070students have access to the quality of instruction that they need to become better readers as a part of literacy our literacy lab so we mentioned before our curriculum implementation this journey for us began in 2020 the 2020-21 school year that was our activation year that's when we made the district-wide adoption and investment in Hope Mifflin Harcourt resources we provided training to all of our teachers at that time and that's when we begun the training for a foundations training and resources for our K-1 teachers um this would also want to note that when we made that huge district-wide adoption that we were during that was during the pandemic so we were participating in remote learning so um it certainly has taken us a little bit longer to really socialize and Implement that investment given that the
071it was launched during the pandemic in 2021 2022 that was last school year we began full implementation of the district adopted Ela curriculum and then we begin providing training to our second grade teachers on foundations and training for K-2 K through two teachers and our resource um called hegarty which teaches our students phonemic awareness and then this is the first year last year was the first year where we began the letters training for our teachers which stands for language Essentials for teachers of reading and spelling which is essentially it teaches our teachers the science of reading this is not a resource this teaches them how to teach reading and then 2022 2023 that is this school year and this is our refinement year so we talked about we introduced the new core resource in 2020
072we started providing some professional development and this year we're actually providing job embedded on-the-job coaching and support for our teachers to implement the core instructional resource hmh we're expanding the foundations training now to grade three for this year and then continuing with the letters training and for next school year sneak preview we will be focusing on implementing all of these Resources with Fidelity and continuing with the letters training and in the 2024-2025 school year we expect to see the full impact of these major Investments over the last five years to come full circle because all of the resources the teachers will will have be provided with professional development and coaching on all of these resources as we launch into the 2024-2025 year it will they will no longer be introducing them and learning them it
073will be implementing those Resources with Fidelity so just this slide really shows that a district-wide curriculum adoption is not a one-time investment it is a journey and it happens over time and it takes time to really adapt not only just adopt the resources but really um implement the resources with Fidelity to provide the teachers with the time needed for coaching professional development and training this slide really shows the components of our literacy program that are informed by the science of reading and intensely Target each of the core skills necessary for students to become successful readers our second grade students made their largest gains in phonics which was 10 percentage points phonological awareness eight percentage points and high frequency words which was seven percentage points there were also additional gains that were made in vocabulary and
074comprehension so this just knows these are the key these are the the key components that every student needs to master in order to become a proficient reader um we and this is what the teachers are receiving training on the science of reading the letters training and so these areas as a result of our focus on providing our teachers with the resources to support instruction in these areas our students are making progress in those areas and in addition to we talked about the 120 minute literacy block um in addition to that we have an intervention block so one of our board guard rails is to support interventions that mtss process we have Incorporated an additional 30-minute literacy block a 30-minute intervention block to support the needs of students in tier 2 and tier three in most
075cases this is individualized instruction um additional support with phonics phonemic awareness small group instruction and as a part of this our i-Ready resources is another resource that we use during this tier 2 support we have increased the time on task within the recommended range of 30 to 49 minutes and we're also seeing passage rates for those lessons remain pretty high with 86 percent passage rate um curriculum implementation moving forward certainly as you saw on the time the slide that showed the timeline we're in the third year of a phased implementation of a district-wide adopted curriculum next year we'll continue to provide the remaining training for the letters curriculum for elementary teachers and having implemented and provided training for all components of the district adopted curriculum the full impact of the curriculum will begin to be
076measurable in 24-25 and closing out um we always end the monitoring Report with reflecting and thinking about the ways in which the board can continue to support this work certainly we have a couple of items that we've listed here which include championing our current attendance campaign all stakeholders championing the importance of early literacy with our parents and partner organizations working to ensure that our guard rails are adequately funded and staying the course and allowing time for our schools and systems to deepen our practices particularly in the area of early literacy we've talked about curriculum adoption mtss the science of reading these are all major shifts or changes for our organization that certainly take time and president Adair this concludes the our report for the monitoring report and at this time we'll entertain any questions okay
077so board members we're going to use the same structure we did last time um so we're going to give us ourselves no more than an hour um I'm not going to monitor the form of your questions but we are going to monitor content we will keep a parking lot list of questions just to ensure that all questions are addressed but some might not be appropriate for the table tonight so I'll go ahead and open the floor to members of the board with questions would like to start Madam president and it's not are we going out of the traditional order of the who what why yeah I'm not going to monitor the form of the question so feel free to ask anything you know it's the point as you know the point of the monitoring session
078is to understand why we are where we are and evaluate whether the strategies in the theory actions that we're presented tonight are going to get us to our goal thank you I have a quick question there uh go ahead first and foremost thank you all for this presentation I I love the fact that we are showing exponential gains uh particularly in the Readiness of our second graders towards the third grade reading guarantee piece so that is this is awesome data so far um uh my question is is when we look at the percentage the targeted percentages that we're trying to reach what do they represent on the state report card assessment what do they represent so what does a a 55 percent represent on the state report card so um when we set these goals
079again we were acknowledging both whether or not students are reading on grade level which is the closest representation of the state report but we also wanted to incentivize growth because we know so many of our students are behind and if they make stretch growth then eventually they're going to close those gaps and we're looking k123 again a year and a half a year and a half a year and a half you all sudden we can close two years of Gap in that window of time if we maintain stretch growth the honest answer is well when we put these together we put together a trajectory off of data that was mixed both pre-pandemic and pandemic data we're now around to post pandemic and we're seeing a new sort of Baseline to what that means so last
080year our students made exceptional growth our third graders came in at 33.5 percent proficient this year our Target for third grade is 35.8 I think for our third graders look like we're pretty close to being on track to hitting that Target this year that being said last year at this time we were saying hey this goal we're our pre-goal was way below where we expected us to be put another year in I think we should revisit those targets because they may be a little high okay so again and I thank you for setting the context for that I think it puts into context in some instances where my question really is about but my question is about the outcome aspect of it in in alignment with a state grade report card of one two three
081four five where does 55 percent our targeted goal where does that put us in terms of a state-appropriated grade so for example you're asking about the third grade report card yes sir the state does not assign a grade or a strong they don't do that anymore sign a number now they now don't we get stars and numbers or something like that there's Nine Stars for overall achievement so that overall number of the performance index number is based on reading math science and all the Intercourse Assessments in high school so for the system as a whole it takes into account every test we take the third grade readings only one piece of that there is no separate bracket so there's no aggregate no disaggregated approach to to this at all no there's no individual star rating
082for any uh grade by subject piece of that or even Enclave like ESL that there's no separation of that that looks at where the state looks at that from a disaggregated kind of standpoint that gets rapid Loosely gets wrapped into Gap closure and we also see that when we start looking at growth and growth measures and again part of why we emphasize growth so much because it shows up in so many places vice president Vera thank you um in regards on page four um we we talked about the growth which is it was just wonderful um do I didn't really hear what we attributed to that that growth are you able to speak more if there was a specific strategy or something we tracked that really quantifies like where did how did we reach that
083seven percent growth are you referring to um yes okay so the growth that we are seeing in literacy um again is again specific to the strategies that we're implementing um we are ensuring again research-based practices that that really speak to the quality of instruction that should happen in the for Literacy for our earliest readers and so all of those components of reading those are the resources that we have invested in over the last couple of years to make sure that all of our students across the district have access to those evidence-based resources as well as strategies to ensure that all of the key components of reading um they have access to the resources and that's what their instruction we make sure that that's aligned okay so I guess and and thank you Dr Chapman I
084guess what I'm trying to you know I guess by a second part of that then is is when we look at individual building needs as it relates to those resources um you know part of what I'm trying to understand with all the resources and what we've invested in are we really looking at on a building level what which one of those resources are actually effective in those spaces like I know we have all of this you know these Investments we've made but I guess I still am missing like what specific do we know what specific um resources or what specific strategies have been working in these buildings or is it just kind of like a generalized like we know these are the resources we've been using but there's nothing building specific as it relates to
085this monitoring so I would say the the goal the rate the way that the goal is written is a district-wide goal for all students and so the strategy is district-wide for all students as it relates to specific buildings all of our buildings have specific goals to meet this early literacy goal so for example as a district we have set our our third grade reading goal to reach 55 by 2026 right so each School has a specific goal by year if there's Baseline is here they have a specific goal for each year so that that school will make the movement that they need to make to help us as a district Reach This goal by 2026 so for the monitoring report this is our district-wide data we're sharing district-wide data district-wide gold district-wide strategies but each
086School in the district 78 elementary schools have individual targets that they need to reach so that they can continue to show progress we do not treat all of our schools equal they they're all starting in different places so some of them have to make more gains some we certainly want them to not only meet the goal but also exceed the goals so we set those goals with each school and then each school is responsible for developing a school specific School Improvement plan and if you'll recall last year I shared that once our goals for the board were finalized then we begin to transition every school Improvement plan across the district to be in alignment with those goals so that was the first time that we had that opportunity because I think last school year the
087goals were developed were finalized after the school Improvement plans so now we're in a really good place system-wide where every school is developing a school Improvement plan with their building leadership team that is aligned to our board goals and so early literacy that's a component for all of our elementary schools and so their strategies they will may choose a particular strategy to really double down on so we think about the components of reading one school may say well we're we've analyzed our results our scores are lower in the area of vocabulary we're going to spend more time on vocabulary we're going to provide professional developmental vocabulary we're going to go deep in this area our scores are really strong in finance or we need to provide more attention to phonemic awareness we're going to bring
088it ask one of our coaches to provide site-based PD on phonemic awareness so that we can improve in this area so there's the liters there's overall literacy achievement but then we also look at the components of reading that need to be addressed not only for you know the district but also the school then you break that down by grade level and then I would say that all of our teachers are experts in knowing what I call the literacy address for each one of their students they know where they are strong what areas of strength they have and areas of weakness and they can develop individualized plans to make sure that they are providing the instruction that they need so they can be successful our tier two intervention um that I I ready that program provides
089an individual learning pathway for each student so my name is Angela I'm in second grade I take the i-Ready assessment at the beginning of the year it identifies what my strengths and weaknesses are as a second grader and then each time that I log into iready I'm assessing an individualized pathway that's providing me with extra practice and res skills and lessons on the areas in reading the bigger umbrella that I need support with and then I have progress checks and then I remember when I said our students are spending the 30 minutes of an intervention time on the the i-Ready resource but they're also passing those i-Ready lessons at an 86 percent passage rate so not only are they going through the lessons and accessing the materials but they're also demonstrating um Mastery of the
090content in that tier two intervention so you have tier one intervention what all students receive and then you also have a tier two Intervention which is an individualized pathway for each student that um that's what the i-Ready platform provides another opportunity thank you Dr Chapman and in regards to a theory of action and improving attendance um part of what I wanted to understand with that is um I know chronic absenteeism is a big part of that and I guess I want to know is you know how are we going about tracking why our students are absent what exactly are we if we are tracking that information and then essentially are there any other strategies so I know we have the campaigns the calls the letters um but I guess for me I'm trying to understand
091how are we really addressing absenteeism if we don't know why they're absent is it transportation is it a health reason and you know how how are we quantifying why they're absent I guess is what I'm so when we think about attendance this is again a holistic approach to looking at attendance prior to us starting this journey of a district-wide strategy to focus on attendance we were really all of our strategies were reactive they were after the students had accumulated 10 or more absences then we would engage in notifying the parents having these team meetings but it was too late and so our district-wide strategy to focus on attendance is all proactive what are we doing before school even starts everyone no one has missed a day yet what are we doing in the summer we're
092looking at the data of attendance from the previous year and said last school year you missed 10 or more days we're going to reach out to you over the summer time to make sure that we are getting ahead of uh any attendance patterns for the upcoming school year as a part of attendance we're making sure that there's awareness families know how many days their child has been absent as a parent in the district I receive a text message that shows that tells me direct text message your child has missed two days of school this year um so we and we're working to inform our parents so that they know how many days that their student has been absent as it relates to the why so every absence is coded there are attendance codes but majority
093of those absences are unexcused meaning it the the coding requires us to either the parents to notify us why the child was absent or for us to enter an app a code for the absence so for example um if a student is absent because they're sick then how do we know that the parent writes a note or informs the school by email that the child was sick if a student is absent because or tardy let's say for a number of different reasons how do we know that once we receive that information we code it and so in addition to the once we know how the students or why the students are are absent the team worked together every school has an attendance team and so the team worked together to provide case management and support
094to really mitigate the barriers or anything that's interfering with why the students are not coming to school and again this is all proactive before a student gets to chronically absent remember we already had checks and balances in place for truant students and attendance procedures but we're we're wanting to intervene and put all of our effort it's on the front end before our students even get to accumulate 10 or more absences thank you and then my final question is in regards to the literacy block on pages 11 or slide 11 and slide 14. um you know how are we going to ensure that our special education and our ESL students are in fact going to get this level of instruction you know we have I am I'm excited to see you know the the 90 minutes
095breakdown but when we talk about kids that you know need very specific ways of instruction how how are we going to go about tracking to make sure that they are in fact receiving the breakdown of what you just described so this um what's laid out on slide number 11 the literacy block this is core instruction for all students all students should be receiving all of these components of the literacy block this is there's no exceptions to that so some of the services if students qualify for specialized services that would be in addition to or they would be pushing in and supporting this work so for example perhaps during small group instruction that would be a great time to meet with students to provide them with intervention if it's specific to their IEP or Services the
096second language services but in an Ideal World this we would be we're working to move toward a more inclusive co-teaching model that ensures that there is greater increased collaboration between the classroom teacher and special ed yeah thank you and I appreciate you highlighting that because that is something you know as a mother of a kid who's in special education there often seems to be a disconnect between what he is receiving in small group and then when he gets back into the classroom it's something different and so I appreciate you explaining that because I I do want to make sure that all of our kids are really getting these opportunities in the way that you've described them this evening so thank you thank you Dr Pierce um thank you for this report Dr Chapman um and
097Dr Brown so not taking away from the gains that our students have made we still have quite a bit of growth that we need to make to to hit this goal and so I have a number of questions that will hopefully get at how do we need to to make those gains and get there in somewhat of a deeper level so my first question is given what we know about curriculum implementation what are we learning from our teaching staff about the appropriateness of our current goal the appropriateness of our Boulevard yes this goal are our teachers responding to say we need to change it do they want do they we know that anything is feasible are they voicing concern about the feasibility of this goal what what is our teachers what are our teachers saying
098about this goal so I have not received any feedback about specifically about the board goal the rigor of the goal or level setting of the goal I know that um as a district as an organization as Educators we have always looked to our state report card as being the the bar right and so what I appreciate and I know that what we appreciate as a district is that the board is not only looking at proficiency but the board is also looking at growth over time and the interim guard rails which we're monitoring tonight are second grade goal which would not be reflected on a report card but this is leading up to that third grade proficiency which is a high-stakes accountability for um everyone across the state our students and our staff so I would
099say that um again we have not received any feedback from teachers specifically on the board goals or this interim um guardrail but I mean you know it's it's a nice ladder that leads us to looking at that high stakes accountability which is very visible for stakeholders and Educators teachers principals everyone so the scaffolding is there to take place to get us to achieving that goal you're confident that this is still an appropriate level in terms of the goal um yeah well yes but I think that you know now that we are we have a new Baseline remember when we established these goals it was during the pandemic and so we didn't have a Baseline and so we I think as a board collectively we committed to revisiting those goals once we established a new Baseline
100to see if they're still relevant um and make sense for now that we are post pandemic time this question kind of connects with with vice president Vera was getting at earlier in terms of the attendance what is impacting attendance um have we given any thought to how we will merge our plans for social emotional culture climate to support the Fidelity or the implementation of the curriculum with fidelity are you sorry are you asking the interplay between the guard rails um it you could say the interplay between the guard rails and you reframe rephrase that repeat the question doctor so I appreciate the fact that you all talked about implementing our curriculum with Fidelity yes one of the challenges that we're seeing is attendance and there's a number of factors that might influence attendance which vice
101president Vera got it as we think about those factors culture and climate might be one of them social emotional might be another one are we given any thought or consideration to how that might interplay using president adair's term might interplay with the implementation of our curriculum um I would say yes um that that question is is layered um so I want to think about first I want um everyone to know as our schools are working on their school Improvement plan attendance is one factor that they're looking at so our principals are looking at data from multiple sources I mentioned in the budget presentation we talked about the Panorama survey that is a survey that we again are basing each school so they have a culture and climate goal and so they look at the school
102specific data for their Panorama survey and decide which area of this Panorama survey based on feedback from their teachers their parents and their students which one of these areas do we need to focus on or prioritize and then they develop site-specific strategies to help close that Gap or improve the perceptions of their students their staff and their families so the that Panorama survey is another data point again you know I certainly believe that you know when students are actively engaged they have a sense of connectedness a sense of belonging to their school Community it's the same for adults you have a sense of belonging to your workplace then you want to be there and then you want to be engaged you want to be actively involved and so I would say that looking at the
103sense of belonging and that sense of connectedness on those Panorama surveys really gives us an indicator of the work that we need to do to help build those relationships and connect our students to our schools in more deeper and meaningful ways there was another question I think you asked about um social emotional learning and the implementation of our curriculum so um as an educator I have always felt the need to prioritize social emotional learning if you think about the demands of the curriculum the expectations that we set for our students they're pretty high and one of the things that we've learned post-pandemic coming out of a pandemic when our students return to our schools they showed us and told us loud and clear that they needed more supports they needed to we needed those relationships
104that they had with teachers and staff were fractured because of the disruption and so as they returned to us it was very clear to us that we needed to focus more in providing the social emotional learning and supports so that all of our students can be successful they can be actively engaged and they can be ready to embrace and lean into all of these resources that we have supported so for me it's not an either or it's a both and how do we think about social emotional learning and all of the curriculum Investments that we are making to support our students right now we're talking about early literacy but really K through 12. I appreciate that and I appreciate you acknowledging that it's a both and and responding to that layered question um given that
105response are you anticipating is your team anticipating that we will need to make some budget allocations differently this upcoming Academic Year that maybe we will need to approach how we're our ordering cycle for different curriculums and materials differently as a board to support the implementation of the curriculums not at this time we have certainly given a lot of thought to the budget for the upcoming school year but one of the things that we have mentioned in a previous monitoring report was a need to partner with Castle to support our district with coming up with a district-wide framework for social emotional learning so that we can ensure that the practices that we're implementing the strategies that we're suggesting to show the connectedness to our curriculum and research across the district and social emotional prior so we
106can prioritize social emotional learning for our students and our adults that was a need and so we're still in the process of formalizing that partnership and working on that district-wide framework so that was something that we had mentioned in a previous monitoring report as a strategy that we recommend and that's a work in progress it'll be forthcoming yeah soon okay yeah um next question then um how will we support the theory of action specifically related to attendance during the summer given what we've learned from this data particularly I'm interested in the severe and moderate absence for students so one of those strategies is very simple Dr pierce it is Outreach and engagement so we already know the students who are chronically absent or severe have severe chronic absenteeism one of the strategies that suggested or
107recommended by attendance Works attendance Works which is one of the national partners for leading district-wide strategies to support attendance is Outreach and engagement over the summer and so part making sure that our schools are printing the list looking at the students that are incoming and saying looking at last year's data how many students were chronically absent or truant and then making those phone calls connecting with families making sure that they understand that they have a relationship between the home and school and they have a trusted partner at the school who's going to stay in contact with them we have also also partnered with everyday Labs who are also sending messages to families direct Target messages to families so it is again a concerted effort from our attendance teams and our staff to make the Outreach
108necessary so that families can stay engaged even over the summer and then there's also a plan before the student comes back to school the the next year so this is proactive work so that we're looking back at the patterns of behavior for attendance and making sure that we intervene early so that those patterns do not repeat themselves in the next school year just additionally are we encouraging those students to attend the summer experience are they getting up early in enrollment are we saving seats for them absolutely so all of our schools are working on they have targeted lists for enrollment for summer school so there are certain students I call them our VIP students we want to make sure we save a seat for them in our summer programming but specifically for our elementary students
109we certainly want them to be attending our summer experience which will certainly help them again continue to stay focused on all of the resources that they need so that they can be successful in the next grade last question um and this is because we have the calendar on our agenda today to approve the academic calendars as we think about the opportunity to deepen the practices for the implementation of our curriculum and we think about how some of our community members respond to the number of professional development days that we have are those days appropriately allocated do you anticipate are teachers needing more time to learn the curriculum especially for this particular population of students so it's a delicate balance right um as as parents we don't want to lose that instructional time as teachers we
110don't want to lose that instructional time but you know as a district we have made some significant investments in curricular resources those are resources that we don't just drop in the classroom and say to our colleagues figure it out we say we're going to make sure that you have the professional development that is needed so that you can really feel confident and competent in implementing these uh new resources and so I do believe that there was one additional Day added for professional development in the next calendar for next for the next school year but that was a need that was driven by again all of the resources that we talked about that district-wide curriculum adoption over the next five years again spending time connecting the Investments that we've made as a district to our board
111goals it takes time to socialize that work it takes time for our teams to get together and really unpack those resources and learn together so we certainly want to make sure that we have the time allocated to do that work well if we had more time that would be amazing so I'm not going to say that we Don don't need more time but it's not just the professional development days we also have time built into the the district calendar at the school level where there's staff meetings there's the teacher-based teams that meet regularly there's the building leadership teams that are meeting and some staff members and and schools have created additional opportunities above and beyond the PD days so some schools earmarked three or four days in the summer to do a retreat we're going
112to do a deep dive on vocabulary and we're going to you know spend some time talking about vocabulary so there are ways that schools can adapt and customize the schedule to make sure that it meets their needs and go above and beyond what we've allocated district-wide thank you very much uh back to whatever Cole uh I'm actually okay I think my question had been answered okay um I just want to kind of come back to something Dr Pierce started and just to make sure looking at the achievement or growth chart so we you know it's great these these second graders have started to hold 10 points ahead of where our second graders were last year so our current third graders um so that's that's great news we're closer to our goal um we saw that
113last year's second graders this year's third graders saw a little bit of a backslide um so I kind of again re asking I think Dr Pierce is one of her first questions are we confident that we are going to continue to reach this goal um and continue to see this type of growth um also understanding that our reading curriculum is going to be fully implemented in the next two years I've been told to speak more loudly for the folks in the back so I want to reiterate something I said early on to board member Cole which is that these interims were established using data that included pre-pandemic data as well as pandemic data and we knew there come back and revisit them if anything I think they may be a bit ambitious are our students
114last year yes they saw a little bit of decline towards the end of the year but right now they're looking like they're going to come in pretty close to our third grade reading goal so we saw a substantial gain we see this upward trend for two years in a row I think that's very promising I think again indicates that we're moving in the right direction we're beginning to see a consolidation of practice we saw an increase in Fidelity we saw increase in attendance we're beginning to build a little traction on those I do think we may need to revisit this trajectory because it is quite steep it's very Steep and knowing that we're post pandemic um you know I we get this year behind us we have a little bit better sense of the relationship
115post pandemic between what we're seeing and our third grade outcome we may have to attenuate this downward a little bit we could see that for uh first grade and kindergarten as well but um you know again we knew coming into this we were sort of dealing with apples and oranges we had pre-pandemic we had pandemic data and now we're around to the rest of the fruit salad now that we're in the postman sort of endemic era of this where we're back in in person um as we begin to continue to provide instruction in a more consistent fashion same curriculum in person same testing conditions over time then I think our sense of the reliability of the connection of the data we've become at least I become more confident in that that relationship over time because
116things are stable and the changes that we see then we know we can begin to parse out a little bit better but again two years in a row upward trend close the gap substantially this year these kids are are further ahead than they were when they ended first grade so not only are they doing better than last year's second grade they're doing better than they were at the end of their own first grade year so that business of additive growth is stacking up for them so you know again I I am confident that we're moving in the right direction at this point the question is are the goals a little high possibly but you know truthfully when we set them we wanted to set them high because we want to hit third grade how do
117we know that it's these theories of action that are showing this type of growth or is it just the fact we're we're back at school things are kind of getting more normal where we are starting to implement with Fidelity the things that we've done how do we know that it's these theories of action and not the whole other list of things that Dr Chapman just spoke about I I can take a swing at this from my point of view and I'll follow up okay so it's difficult under a circumstance like this I I often hear the board ask cause and effect questions and it's awfully hard for researchers to answer cause and effect questions in situations when there are multiple things that are being implemented at one time what we do know certainly coming back
118to in-person instruction was helpful we do know that increasing Fidelity of our our implementation around i-Ready was important we know that that's connected to research that says hey if kids do this they're going to show gains and growth we see that so there's a connection there that hey if you do this with Fidelity you're going to see growth we see growth okay we know that it's very important to implement tier one instruction when you're changing a curriculum you often see a dip initially when you change your curriculum and the change for a curriculum intervention often takes three to five years so we're not seeing that debt War instead seeing an upward movement and there are a lot of resources that are intentionally aligned to try to help with the Fidelity of the implementation of that
119curriculum these are the types of things I would look for to explain a change and and you see many of those pieces there that support that there's been a long-standing challenge here with chronic absenteeism we're beginning to see a corner turned on that devoid of any other explanation oh well our intentional effort to raise awareness and begin to intervene in a proactive way seems like a logical explanation and of course that work around chronic absenteeism is absolutely critically aligned to school climate and I think the the superintendent painted that out very clearly Dr Brown can you go back to slide 11. so when we looked at the elements of the literacy block all of these areas these are the key areas of literacy instruction that are key for our early Learners we can actually see
120the progress and the growth that they are making over time in these key areas so I think that was on a later slide where it showed in finance there's significant increases in phonics there's significant increases in vocabulary yeah this slide it shows that our students are making progress in these areas these are the all the components of reading our students have to make progress in these areas in order to be able to really access the the third grade reading um OSD right so if they don't have a strong awareness these are the foundational skills if they don't have a strong awareness of phonics the phonemic awareness vocabulary they're going to struggle and so what we're finding is that we are again intensely aligning the resources and then measuring our progress along the way our students
121are becoming stronger readers uh K through two they're learning how to read and then once they get to third grade they are and Beyond they are using the reading to learn right so they should become independent readers without these skills they will not become independent readers and because we have not made significant investments in these areas before we did not have a strong phonics program like fundations and hegarty we have students in the later grades that are missing these skills right now that's a gap we have to close and we have closed that Gap by making an investment in the resources and investing in our teachers and providing them with professional development and again we're going to have stronger readers they're going to be stronger in literacy and the the foundational skills and we won't
122have to close that Gap later on because we're being very intentional about how we spend our time and our resources uh Dr Pearson miracle um so Dr Brown I appreciate you indicating that there's opportunity to go back and to uh reassess where the goal currently is um as we are approaching so if you go back to slide five and you see that um our mid-year point in 2018 2019 was at 43.6 we're we're approaching that we're getting close to that as we continue to get closer to that point and converge I would really love input from our teachers because my question would be are we stressing teachers and students as they try to achieve this goal that we've set and again these goals are feasible but given what we know about attendance given what we
123know about the implementation of our curriculum given what we know just about the culture and climate in our buildings in our classrooms are is this goal creating additional stressors on our staff and our students I don't think that was a question but yeah a request as we converge all right former vehicle I'm going to try this without making a request I want to be infidelity with with you know our model here um can we go back to the previous slide that showed those key indicators no that is one more right there right there okay so my question is are these different these the specific uh tactics that we're looking that that each individual School is leveraging to build those competencies in the kids for reading yes these are the foundational literacy skills that all of
124our teachers are working to reinforce and support daily in instruction and is it then that our regional superintendents would have a deeper understanding of where our schools are in their particular regions with regards to this yes so our for example our principles that I already flap this data is pulled from our already platform the i-Ready platform provides us it has a robust data dashboard um that includes reports for parents teachers principles our area superintendents and the district and so the data can be disaggregated disaggregated in a variety of formats so that the end user no matter whether you're the student parent teacher principal principal supervisor you can look at the data and run a report and see the bright spots as well as the opportunities for growth okay so if I'm looking at this data
125I can say in the vocabulary space where we have seen a four percent increase overall throughout the entire district with second graders we've seen a four percent increase but that still demonstrates when we're talking about building towards not just the 55 percent but beyond that then shows and helped me with my math that is a 70 some odd percent what is it 77 some odd percent Gap how do I how do I look at the Gap aspect of that so for all of these areas um it shows that there are the students have improved from the previous administration of the assessment but there's still more room for improvement and so this is I almost see this as a ladder the stronger our students are in phonological Awareness high frequency words phonics and vocabulary the stronger
126they will be on comprehension that's like so the the the top four categories are the discrete skills that the students need to know the foundational skills they need those skills in order to be able to comprehend so phonics is the sounds that the letters make putting all that all together when they can pronounce the words and it makes meaning and they don't have to spend too much time trying to figure out what the word is then they can move on from words to phrases to sentences to paragraphs and then develop real meaning from the passages and the literature that they're reading so ideally you want to be really strong in all of those areas in order to improve um that's how you improve that's the latter that you need to go through as a as
127a reader beginning reader to get to that comprehension stage I understood um I'm still not sure about the Gap aspect of it of our lack of being closer to 55 and Beyond percentage of students capable of you know academic capability in these places I think the 55 percent that you're referring to is not in these specific areas no it is not it's um I ready it's on the The Benchmark assessment not in these individual areas these are discrete skills so we're the goal is not for us to be at 55 in any of these areas certainly the goal is for individual students to be at a hundred percent in these areas because these are the foundational skills that they need so they need all of these skills to be able to perform on The Benchmark
128assessment and the state assessment so the goal is to shore all of this up thank you this is what I'm trying to get to in my Colombo kind of way I'm asking you know what I'm looking at aspirationally what we want to see for every child in this District who's a second grader taking I ready and demonstrating it progress and growth that we're actually able to see uh that these students are closing that Gap towards a hundred percent as opposed to just the 55 for third grade they were closing towards the hundred percent yeah and as I look down at vocabulary uh comprehension the lower four that's where I'm the lower three excuse me that's why I'm concerned that's all just what do we what steps are we taking to close that Gap back to
129that question from uh vice president Vera that it helps to know what the idea of specific what we're doing specifically to ensure that we're we're making those gains and distributing those best practices throughout the schools so if a regional superintendent can say oh yeah Region Three we were doing this this and this now we're able to get that because we heard it from recent superintendent of Region Three in addition to that somebody else actually can say oh wow okay yeah we can we can try to leverage those tactics and those those those those targets and tactics the same way that's that's what I'm trying to understand and just get to I think we're getting a little bit and forgive me if I'm getting off track here good conversation and this data was new to us
130um this looking at the this chart so I think it's sparking our brains going do you have something yeah just really quickly um on slide nine it um part of what it one of the theories of action or one of the contributors to that is our PBIS work and I guess my question is how many how many of our schools are actually using PBIS or Elementary specific all of our schools all the winning people okay and so at what point will we be able to see kind of that PBS data as because I want to understand how the PBIS work is directly connected to our attendance theory of action I believe the PBIS data is one of the indicators for one of our guard rails so that should be coming up in one of our
131monitoring reports for one of the guardrails thank you that Dr Pierce did you have something else yeah I just have a clarifying question um and I and I think just to give our community so Dr Chapman this this is just a clarifying question to help our community understand I think the importance of um what this with this data what your presentation is showing us um slide 13 can we go back to slide 13. throughout this presentation you all have um discussed the importance of our students getting that phonics awareness the high work frequency um through curriculum how are you thinking about replicating that for our grades and first kindergarten pre-day so these same strategies are being implemented K through two um so when we do our next monitoring report and we look at the next
132grade level first grade and kindergarten you will see um suddenly the data will be different because there's different progress and growth that the students are making for the different grade level but you will see the same strategies so all of our teachers this is our early literacy goal so these are early literacy strategies but again the data will be different the intensity will be different for different groups based on the data I want you all to know that as we are talking about this at the board table these are the universal supports district-wide strategies we certainly as we're looking at specific schools based on our data we may have to increase the intensity of the intervention we may have to accelerate the progress that one particular school so when we're looking at that data for
133a specific school or groups of schools if the data is glaring it it shows us that we need to Pivot we need to do less or more we're certainly able to do that and we are responsive to looking at the data in real time to making sure that we're providing those supports whether it's individual School a group of schools whether it's by region by neighbor whatever it is we're making sure that we're responsive to that of a [Music] um I'm so used to it Reyes uh thank you Dr Chapman um my I think it's a little combination of a lot of different questions when we looked at um you know this whole practice of trauma informed practices and how we do our work now I just went through a training where they talked about a
134lot of times this would be considered supervision right so how do we get from supervision to support right so you you talked about it might get more intensive in some areas than others so that can heighten that trauma as we're monitoring um I don't know if we talked about any strategies strategies of Engagement from our community members or Partners on um going kind of back to what a board member calls it or somebody said about supporting our staff supporting our students um what what are our strategies to get others to help get our kids there so that we can decrease a little bit of the trauma that might you know now before you were telling me I needed a 29 to 30. so um I don't I didn't see any of that discussed so we
135have um some of one of our district-wide partners so we can talk about the partnership with the United Way we have partnered with them to implement a strategy called success by third grade and so they are working in re two of our regions region one and Region 3 to provide additional supports inside the classroom outside of the classroom to support with our early literacy goals we talked earlier today about City year is one of the partners that we're working with some I think maybe one or two of the schools are elementary schools and they actually start at third grade they typically don't work with students below third grade but they're working with certainly third graders in those elementary schools to support our early literacy goal so I think that as we are continuing to really
136identify what the needs are I would imagine that additional Partnerships to support with early literacy supports early literacy intervention early literacy tutoring um expanding Extended Learning opportunities during the school year whether it's after school or Saturday school but providing those additional supports that would be another area that we will be looking for partners to support us and I appreciate Partners um I guess you know a couple years ago we did the um the Super Readers or the weekend I forget what what that was called where we engaged actually the community and Community organizations uh uh outside the United Way so it could be an NAACP it could be the Hispanic chamber it could be any of those other partners and it seemed to have made some differences and we got some gains so a lot
137of times as board members as a district we get individuals it comes out how can I help um and um I we may have an opportunity uh you know to create some absolutely um great question I told you it was gonna be real it's okay it's um so but I think actually it kind of goes back to what I was talking about about the theories of action yep so Ramona just brought up a completely different theory of action and and we talked about this in the budget right we're investing in those uh three a lot of money in those in those three Partners in particular mentioned some right now but none of that work shows up in the theories of action as present because those resources were for not for this early literacy goal that
138was for our graduation goal a separate board goal yeah right but I think she's talking about could these kind of Partnerships be used in this in this goal the Partnerships that we mentioned that we highlighted um in the budget presentation those organizations Target older students not for the early literacy like Big Brothers Big Sisters I'm talking about all these other partners that we allow come into our schools but I mean just a parent just any organization so I made us go further down the hall but my point was quite inclusive of those the point is it goes back to um you know she brought up some strategies that we used at the early literacy before that had Community engagement right that you just were discussing but that is not one of the theories of action
139that we have chosen to put in this report so while it might be happening uh and it might have impact it's not one that we're monitoring and so that's kind of my struggle with this my personal struggle about what's in the report not in the report for theories of action when we are doing a lot of things I think I just want to highlight that this the strategies that we just discussed they are not district-wide strategies operating in 78 elementary schools they are site-specific and they are happening in a few schools again our goal is a district-wide goal and so we're lifting up what I'm sharing with you at this table are strategies that I can say are happening in every Elementary School hands down no matter which day you go into the school these
140are strategies that have been socialized in every school strategies that teachers have been provided been provided with professional development at every school so that's all of our K-2 teachers okay through through k-3 teachers across the entire District there are some Partnerships that are working at one specific School two schools City years at a few schools communities and schools that a few schools but does not get to 78 schools and so we're not highlighting that as a district-wide strategy because it's more site-specific um so that's why that's not highlighted here but I will say that I think that the direction that I would love for us to go in as we're thinking about our early literacy goal when we originally wrote remember we developed our strategic Plan before we finalized our goals now we are clear
141that we have these early these early literacy goal we are clear as a district remained committed to this early literacy goal I would like to push us to a place that we work with our community and our partners to develop a plan as a community this is an early literacy for a certain group of students this is early literacy for the entire community how do we work together to develop a a plan to support the early early literacy development over time it includes social emotional supports it's a holistic approach it includes our partners after school programming weekend programming connecting the work that we're doing with all of our partners but it's really an intentional Focus where we all come together and say how can we all hands on deck support this goal as a city
142as a community knowing that this is a priority not just for our district but for our community and so I think that for me would be a next step so how we name and honor the work of our partners and community and we can do this work together thank you um we are at we're past our time so that was a good monitoring session we kind of got off sorry my fault on the that was good information um and Next Step so um I don't uh if anybody has any comments we're supposed to do the self-evaluation I'm not going to go through all the little boxes but if anybody has any comments about things that we could improve or where you thought um you know how we did tonight Ashley is uh we don't have
143zoom today but she has been watching us and so she's going to be providing us um feedback tomorrow by email on uh the session so I don't know if anyone has any comments go ahead Dr Pierce um so I think this was a good monitoring session I appreciate our Administration um actually thanking more deeply about the theory of action Beyond attendance I think our board was able to really dig deep in terms of kind of how we can support you all in terms of reevaluating reassessing the goal and where it's at how it's impacting our staff and our students I think as we continue to have these monitoring sessions um where we just kind of went to with the last question from board member Reyes really around kind of when when the data is showing
144us something and and this slide is really telling us that our students need to learn phonics right and we have to Champion that for our community for our families the more they learn phonics and high frequency words the better they'll comprehend they'll catch on to that vocabulary is for us to think about kind of how we can monitor ourselves and say how have we talked to our colleagues outside of the district who are working at these non-profits who are in other positions of influence to help partner and do this work with us so um with that being said just for us to think about how we can move from Simply monitoring our Administration to also monitoring ourselves and taking on some of the accountability to help create these Partnerships so again I appreciate it today's
145session thank you anyone else any thoughts I think there's a really important points Dr Pierce um I've had that overall we did pretty well that you we all did really well um focusing on the data and actually talk about what was in the report I didn't have to parking lot many questions which was good and um I think again we're all learning and growing in this and we're all doing better at it um and you know the point of these again is for the board to evaluate uh you know understand where we are and evaluate the strategies that are being put forth to us to ensure that the growth that we expect is happening and we are seeing growth so I'm very proud of the work that the entire team is doing all of the
146teachers and all the kids and everybody it takes everybody so um you know 10 points is nothing to you know put your nose up at so great job everybody um and we'll just keep on going okay so that will end our monitoring report let's go ahead and move into item 8.2 which is the academic calendar we're going to have a chief Council Barnes come up for a short presentation Maybe important answer your question presentation yeah bless you [Music] good evening we are here today to again talk about the 2023-2024 and the 2024 and 25 school calendars if you if you recall about one one-half a month ago I proposed the calendars too to the board we discussed the the uh we discussed the various the various items regarding the calendar and have some discussion um
147and today the sole objective is for the board to to consider and vote on the on the calendars now if you recall also the on on February 7th we talked about the requirement of the district to negotiate the calendar with with CCA through Collective through collective bargaining we also talked about the minimum number of hours required by the state for our various grade bands 910 for kindergarten through grade six and one thousand and one hours for grades 7 through 12. we also talked a little bit about the length of the school day which is also required to be negotiated with the with the Union what is not on the screen and I believe we talked about it a little on February 7th where the number of hours that we currently have for instruction hours this
148year and for high school that's 1 000 and 30 hours for Middle School 1019 hours for elementary school 996 hours of course for the upcoming school years we don't know the precise numbers because uh the uh the daily schedules are usually not completed until until May we also had during the February 7th meeting some discussion about the about the hours and there was some discussion about the I believe one speaker talked about the number of instructional the number of instructional hours and again part of the there was some discussion between Dr Dr Pierce I believe in in Dr Chapman during the earlier monitoring report regarding the balance that we have to have instruction days versus professional development and pursuant pursuant to the contract we are required to have professional development days we don't have professional
149development days solely because of the contract we have it so that we can teach our teachers how to teach and this year we had eight professional development days for the next two calendar years that number will will go to nine for the very reasons that Dr Chapman mentioned mentioned earlier so again in putting together the the calendar we had an internal group a cross-functional group that group being our office of curriculum and instruction Student Services office Communications and engagement talent management and the office of general counsel we also collaborated with cea as required by the uh by the contract cea also distributed a teacher survey to to its membership CA took that survey into consideration as they were negotiating with us we've also the district has also provided a survey to to families and those
150um those uh the results of those of that survey was distributed to the board members and as you can see through the results and comments I think the comments are more important than the actual statistical data the um the well in fact the statistical data is one might say that it's um it's just and I'm pausing because I can't say that word for some reason statistical data the number one might say that it's meaningless because of the number of responses and that's because the uh the teachers surveys was was was relatively small considering its membership and the responses to our family survey uh were were minimal considering the number of families that we have but the comments were consistent and again they did go to the number of instructional days again we need that balance
151and those are and that's definitely one item that we need to consider during the next negotiation cycle the number of instructional days we um some of the other comments that were made I'd be thinking I believe a board member mentioned uh holidays we are tied to a particular holiday through a contractual agreement with CSEA and again that's something that would need to be negotiated and that's something that we certainly certainly can can do so these are the next few slides are are copies of the calendars color coded that you already have I'm not going to to to go go into much depth with those you you have them um they are in your board docs they are available to the public here's a chart that that that talks about um the first uh the teachers
152uh report day students report day last day of school for both students and teachers and the various the various breaks professional days as I indicated earlier uh those were were increased from eight to eight to nine record days remained the same 23-24 year-round calendar 24-25 calendar again the same chart as the as the traditional as the traditional calendar the different breaks start and last day of school and that was rather Brave because we had already gone over it February 7th but I will entertain any questions that you may have regarding what went into the the calendars the goal today is for the board to consider and vote the calendars out um do we need a motion first before we discuss so um there is a a resolution that we have so we need a motion
153to approve the resolution which I'll turn over to Dr Pierce who has the text for it and then we will answer questions our motion to approve resolution 8.2 the resolution to adopt our 2023 2024 and 2024 2025 academic calendars it's been emotions or second so moved second or second I'm sorry second motion now are there any questions comments for uh the group or for general counsel but do you want to say that the survey results have been published so anyone can view the feedback that we did receive from our parents and families all right hearing I just think in general I'll just make the comment that as we move to approve the academic calendar it will be great for us to also think about our athletic calendar for the next two years so our families
154are also able to um plan accordingly okay there's been a motion in a second please call the roll Dr Pierce yes Ms Reyes yes vice president Vera yes president Adair yes Mr Brown yes thank you our next three items uh deal with legislation the State House legislation different aspects of that so 8.3 we have a resolution recommending an amendment to the Ohio School Board association's legislative platform this is a first reading I will turn it over to a board member Cole but I will acknowledge that we had several board members who have been working on this so I will open it to any of those members as well remember Cole uh thank you madam president I'm not going to read through the entire resolution uh what I want to do is at least just kind
155of level set with the fact that we are members of ospa in our membership of osba osba our Advocate on the state level and even to some extent on a national to Advocate on the best behalf of public schools throughout the state of Ohio with that I will start with I will start with uh the the fourth whereas uh Clause of data in here whereas the 65th osba delegate assembly adopted the 2021 osba legislative platform that added a racism Equity plank to the students and learning section of that platform so in essence what this resolution is designed to do is protect those protected Clauses not only acknowledged by the state and also acknowledged by federal government but also acknowledged by this board of education where we go above and beyond and identify further identify protected
156classes of students and staff second whereas the Planck addresses the racial and socio-economic inequalities and specif and specifically addresses creating an inclusive environment no matter a student's race ethnicity or socioeconomic background you have to forgive me for my messy reading because it's kind of dark in here I don't want to shine in my light on the page uh with that um whereas the Columbus City School Board policies go further oh thank you Lord have mercy This Is 50 y'all um okay uh Columbus City School Board policies go further stating in all stating it will enforce its prohibition against the discriminatory harassment based on race color national origin sex including several sexual orientation and transgender identity disability Age religion military status ancestry genetic information collectively protected classes or any other legally protected category now let me
157go to the last uh be therefore be it resolved therefore be it resolve the language and the OSB a the the language in the osba opposes legislation section includes the following highlighted changes and we are in support of these changes OSB opposes legislation that limits resources or opportunities for students of color and those who are traditionally underserved based on their race ethnicity color national origin sex sexual orientation gender identity gender identity disability Age religion military status ancestry genetic information and any other legally protected category or socioeconomic background with that uh Madam president emotion that this resolution be accepted okay it's just a first reading unless we want to wave second a motion to wave second reading well I was going to have one around heifers but I don't know what to do he have something
158to add to it parliamentarian I have to do his motion he wants to make comments I know but you motion before now the next motion would be board member Pierce's motion on the table which is to wave the second reading which now requires a second okay is there a second to waive the second reading exactly so now we have to vote on that or or without objection you can proceed okay so without objection we will waive the second reading now we can have come the no then we've got to go back to the motion right to actually approve it because this is all right so that's what I'm about to do no but then we have to do motion then comments okay so motion to approve the resolution Now comments important because of the manner
159in which osba does its lobbying osba is made up of a wide variety over 600 school districts and many issues are are divide school districts and various signs and as a result they've got a practice that unless an item is in the legislative platform that has been adopted by the delegate assembly that they will not Lobby officially better this particular item is one that is very important and while I am confident and saying that there should be no controversy whatsoever on these matters the reality is otherwise and on a previous occasion when osba had a chance to expand and that's what we're talking about doing here expanding the plank from race and Equity to include Equitable Equitable protection for all students they failed to do that and this motion is to take another shot at
160expanding protections to cover all of these areas just as we do in Columbus City Schools and I think that it's uh it's very important I had good help from around the states and putting this together and a number of other districts are pursuing this Michael will be our delegate to the delegate assembly when this is heard in the fall but we've learned recently in the last few years that unless we engage this process early before the deadline for submission that we won't be able to get heard at the delegate assembly later so I'm happy to Second this and make sure that we do everything possible to expand protections to everyone thank you other comments I just want to clear clarify just a couple of things for our community and so Beyond while lobbying is important
161this resolution protects students and expands the identities that are acknowledged defined as protected classes in past delegations the classes that were not included related to gender expression specifically for our transgendered students and we know that all of our students are important and valued here within the district but we do need to join our colleagues throughout the state to advocate for all of our students no matter what identities they have because we know individuals have multiple identities and there's interplay between those identities and so as central region president of our osba region I applaud us for putting this piece of legislation together to Advocate on behalf of all the students in the state of Ohio as it relates to protected classes and identities thank you other comments please call the roll Miss Reyes yes vice president
162Vera yes president Adair yes Mr Brown yes Mr Cole yes Dr yes motion Kerry thank you um we have a second resolution um 8.4 resolution to properly fund public education I'm going to turn this over to board member Brown thank you uh just as the 8.3 resolution has been discussed around the state by a number of school districts and school board members there's been an effort Statewide to adopt a resolution for school districts to adopt a resolution that deals with school funding in a comprehensive way there are many legislative challenges facing us and it's perhaps worse than uh than it's been in many years there are great opportunities and we want to be able to support the good opportunities uh as well as to help direct and state our views of housing other kinds of
163things the resolution is is pretty straightforward um it's an idle resolution to ex express our view that we want to fulfill Ohio's constitutional mandate to fund a thorough and efficient public school system and it's just that simple because there are a number of bills pending this comments on those bills that directly affect funding for example deals with the fair school funding plan that was finally initiated a few years back and has to be fully phased in the legislature seems willing to phase it in but they want to go back and use uh 2018 data for important state of use in up-to-date data and this encourages them to do otherwise this resolution also takes a strong position posing both House Bill 11 and Senate Bill 11 and any funding program voucher educational savings account or other
164plan that has the effect of diverting public tax dollars from public schools to private parochial schools and that's important there is a concerted effort by many in the legislature and and others around the state to expand and increase the voucher programs to have dollars go with students from us into these other kinds of schools non-public schools and it's contrary to the Constitution because States required to prioritize and fund us not the others and because it hurts public education vouchers hurt Ohio House Bill one is another bill that is discussed in this resolution at length and this is a bill that would create a what what the legislature is calling a property tax relief program the reality is that it wants to shift the tax burden to school districts to the local communities and away from
165uh those who are wealthier and more affluent and it's a bad idea I I am hoping that it goes nowhere but I view House Bill one as an existential problem for public education in Ohio that if it were to pass we would decline rapidly and then finally uh we generally ask the Ohio general assembly and the governor to commit to fully fund the fair school funding plan pattersonville that was worked out a huge compromise and after a lot of work but to fully fund that plan as it was initially recommended including current inputs conducting the proposed study to determine the cost of educating economically disadvantaged students which has been dropped so with that I would move passage of this resolution I was going to turn to chair Cole as chair of the finance committee so
166it's only first reading so we just messed up again again so can you just draw all that and then we can do it motion to wave the okay emotions and I was wrong emotional wave the second reading okay there's been a motion to waive the second reading is there a second second uh without objection it is waived now do you now I move that we adopt this resolution to express our support to fulfill Ohio's constitutional mandate to fund a thorough and efficient public school system it's been emotions or a second second okay now discussion uh thank you madam president um I just want to say in short that what our current legislature is attempting to do is unnecessarily shift burden financially further to a community to local communities to uh unfairly carry a tax burden
167that should be fairly distributed between Commerce and the community it must be fairly distributed um they've already passed legislation that has further shifted economic burden to local communities and this is not necessarily about Urban school districts this is about the 600 plus school districts throughout the state of Ohio who knowingly or unknowingly whether they believe in small business or big business are bearing the greater tax share burden of funding public education and it's still an underfunded model it is still a underfunded model it does not answer the question that the Ohio Supreme Court mandated for it to answer fairly on behalf of the citizens residents and Children of the state of Ohio so that's why I am I am in vehement support of this legislation so that we as a board and appreciate the support
168of you all as a board to take a strong stance to our legislature on behalf of not just Columbus City Schools but all of the public schools in the state of Ohio uh Dr Pierce I would just add that it's also important for our community and stakeholders to really pay attention to the governor's proposed budget and how it will impact not only our district but public education in the state of Ohio um 90 percent of Ohio's children are educated in public schools right 90 percent we still do not have a funding formula or funding mechanism in Ohio that adequately supports those students yet our legislature and those leaders are intent on moving that money to support not uh private and uh you know non-charter School non-public schools we have to fund the 90 percent before
169we can even talk about the others and it's not about Choice parents absolutely have a choice in where they send their children and we at CCS want to be that choice and that's why we're working really hard uh to show our community uh and really improve our student outcomes but when we talk about funding and we talk about on one hand we we have the the funding formula and then we have the governor's budget and then we have the backpack Bill and then we have it all adds up and we all need to be paying attention to it so I want to commend my colleagues and those other colleagues around the state who are putting these resolutions together to demonstrate the story the full story the full impact tying in all of it into resolutions
170like this so that the community can really understand what's happening uh you know in Downtown Columbus in the state house right now and this is just you know the funding piece is just one of the things we're going to talk in a second about some other things that we talked about um that are not in particular about funding but kind of are as well um so I definitely support this I think again my colleagues thank you very much for the efforts that you did to put this together and helping us Advocate to be strong advocates for our students and public education students other comments all right please call the roll vice president Vera yes president Adair yes Mr Brown yes Mr Cole yes Dr Pierce yes Ms Reyes yes motion carries thank you um item
1718.5 is uh just a general legislative update we want to do that more as you just heard we had a discussion to last about Finance um there's a lot more going on um and so we want to make sure the community is understanding uh because we we say public education is under attack but we don't always tell you why that is and so we want to try to do a better job as your leader is educating you about what is going on so today several of us attended including some of our staff attended the osba legislative conference where we heard from the governor we heard from our leaders in the house in the Senate and we heard from those on the education committee and then there was opportunity to go and meet and speak with
172legislators as well luckily we live here in the capital city so we get to go down all the time to see them and so we have a lot of great access here as the as the capital city school district but I wanted to give an opportunity for some of my colleagues to share some of the other pieces of legislation and some of the work that we are doing I'm not just around school funding um but we taught Dr Pierce brought up the budget there's a lot of other pieces in that budget around a Career Tech around Wellness dollars there's also around school resource officers we have of course the backpack bill which was talked about in the funding that we just spoke about we have several different types of the vouchers we also have Senate
173bill one and House Bill 12 which are the restructures of the Ohio State School Board as well as the Department of Education which we have already sent testimony in opposing and then we have some things that you know we brought up and I know um I'm going to ask vice president Vera to talk a little bit about how spell um 110 which was from the last General Assembly but still very applicable to us and things that we are working on but you know again it's really important that our community understands the impact that is happening by these policy decisions that are being made about us with uh you know us not necessarily always being represented and so we are trying very hard to ensure that our voices are heard and that's part of amending the
174legislative platform with the osba that's part of us going uh and doing more advocacy down at the state house and building those relationships and we ask you to do that as well because your voices and your stories um really are what will help make this change and our legislators asked that too they say Where's the where the people what's the story what's the impact so we ask you to do that too if you hear something write letters not just to us write to the people making these decisions so I'm going to stop talking and I'm going to let my colleagues who attended the conference with me share some thoughts about other pieces of legislation um or just other things that you'd like to talk about in the space we're going to make this a more
175formal part of our agenda with um a little bit more formal reports later but today since we attended the conference I just wanted to have an open dialogue so I'll serve vice president Vera thank you president Adair um as president Adair mentioned you know I think a big part of what we want to do as you know you're a continued servant in this capacity is advocate for what our students need and you know House Bill 110 is legislation that was approved back in June of 2021 and it's a transportation penalty so the Ohio Department of Education you know is finding our district and in other districts up into almost 160 thousand dollars per day as it relates to you know if we are late 30 minutes or any kind of prolong um you know non-compliance
176in terms of picking up students and as we know it is a not just a Columbus City Schools issue this is a national issue and not only are we providing transportation for you know well over 30 000 of our own students but also looking at the charter non-public schools we also provide transportation for so House Bill 110 is something that we as a district need to continue to advocate for our students you know penalizing us by taking funds away from Transportation when that's how our kids get to school and what we're all trying to work towards is not the solution and so being able to have opportunities to go down and to provide testimony having families provide testimony essentially our district is working really hard in collaboration with other districts against House Bill 110 but
177it is something that we need to continue to look at ways to advocate for our our district advocate for our transportation department um finding us is not the solution and and that's something that I was able just to get some additional um at least pose the question and finding out what our partners around the state are doing and I was happy to hear that there is more conversation around House Bill 110 but I think that we as a district need to continue to push that forward and really advocating to make sure that this funding is not taken away from our district and certainly not taken away from our students thank you for that one more piece about that is remember that we did we are in litigation over it um and that's important another we're
178using all of our vehicles that we have as a district to ensure that we are maintaining our funds um and so just remember that as well I'm just we're just tying things together to demonstrate how we continue to fight for every dollar that we have for our students another thing in this current uh cycle that they didn't reallocate was the money for the bird replacement buses and so that money is not in the budget right now and so that's something they brought up in the conference today about how we need to really be thinking about that and um you know we need to be advocating to get that money back in um and so that's something that I didn't know about today what I learned today so we need to kind of put that on
179our radar as well are there any other board members that would like to share some thoughts about uh the experience today at the legislative conference or talk about a piece of legislation that we haven't yet wherever sure um I thought it was a very good legislative conference and the number one thing that impressed me was not only that there was a very strong sold out turnout of school board members from all over the state and staff from various school districts but the fact that Not only was the governor there in person to address us but the speaker of the house and the president of the Senate were there in person to address us I think that's that's impressive it means that we've got their attention and they're thinking about us I'm not sure entirely what
180the message is and you know I could be cynical very easily but the reality is that they were there and they were there to show us that they were listed and uh how these things will all shake out in this General Assembly remains to be seen but I think you know it was it was noteworthy um and a number of our Franklin County Columbus City School District representatives and senators were also present and Asian conversation about some of these bills in a way that in ways that we need some help and uh hopefully uh some of our relationships and some of our communities advocacy will help us get there uh one other item that uh I hadn't focused on but heard about today in the governor's budget uh proposal was the funding of sros and
181there's a proposal in the governor's budget to provide at least funding for one Sr one SRO per school building I asked the question and I got an answer that I really didn't care for and that is for those of us who no longer use sros we've got our own Security Department are we going to have access to the same level of funding and the immediate answer was no um it's something that we can work on I don't know if it's going to happen but it would be nice to to get that to happen so that you know other school districts also work with other sros they may have other arrangements with their local law enforcement but uh they too are going to be left out unless they actually go with formally designated sros we decided
182for a number of good reasons that we would move on from that so that was that I thought was net Worthy there are a few bills pending legislature that are positive and that we can support and that's also good news that's true we should talk about those two to have people make sure that those bills go through so we'll do that next time great very Trail all right well thank you all for that um let's go ahead and move into item nine which is our consent agenda this evening our consent agenda consists of items 10.1 to 25.9 through the items a board member would like to pull for separate consideration seeing none is there a motion to approve our consent agenda so moved is there a second second any discussion on any items um 13.4
183I'm sorry 13 13.4 I think that is related to approval of Addison School of out of state travel um so this particular resolution focuses on particular schools I want to lift up that there are a number of our schools that are sponsoring trips to our hbcus but we also have individual students that are interested in visiting those schools as well and so um just for our community members our stakeholders if if you get an email or invitation from an individual student needing support needing a donation to help them on those tours please consider giving that donation not all of our students attend the schools that are taking the official visit but we do know that we have a number of students that are interested in attending those tours I mean that's just an issue of
184equity why couldn't we just do a district tour we used to have some of our partners in in churches would sponsor those and we still may have that happening so yeah good point um yes so uh because I did some inquiry into this too um you know some some of that heavy lifting has done is it has been done in support of boosters I know as of recent they're still uh you know churches members of our faith community that are in support of trying to raise dollars what specific school could be is Linda McKinley where folks have stepped in to make individual donations for you know sponsoring a specific student but I would like us to as we move forward really think of identifying some ways in which we can set aside dollars um for
185students for these particular reasons I know my sister colleague here is working diligently with some other members to create a foundation and quite possibly and we've discussed this in the past but quite possibly that might be an opportunity uh for our students but I'd like us to very seriously where we can plausibly do so figure out how we set aside dollars if that's the right terminology to use to provide for our students and maintain our other important operations at the same time other items anyone would like to discuss seeing none please call the roll president over there yes Mr Brown yes Mr Cole yes Dr Pierce yes with the exception of 13.8 23.1 and 23.2 of which I abstain Ms Reyes yes vice president Vera yes special caring thank you we have no um speakers
186for non-agenda items we have no executive sessions the last item on our agenda is a motion to return motion to return emotions are second motion a second we are done