001there we go okay we will call this work session to order and um the first item is our Blue Ribbon facilities update Mr Smith if you wouldn't mind Madam president members aboard Dr Smith construction continues you'll see the West stand a big part there is getting windows up and that'll dry Us in and start eating the inside to finish this section now from the inside looking out that's the new entryway the media center a lot of walls are going up as well as the art and family consumer science areas the new pool we're open next week that the North End walls will start to be erected whether providing and continuing on with other footing that's on the east side of the state or the field house going out to the stadium new walkway and path
002ADA Compliant Ln New Edition again we're moving ahead for the February 13th and actually it's that weekend move into the three-story building again Furniture is in we did have the first floor [Music] checked out for substantial completion so we haven't been moving into the first floor as well the new graphics the family consumer of science we're hoping to get in there and start putting furniture in this space next week Ellen pool continues that's entryway of course the pool itself the concrete a lot of concrete still going in and progressing very well and we continue on with Belzer Middle School just FYI we'll be receiving bids for Belzer Middle School construction tomorrow afternoon and we'll be bringing some of that information uh here to the board in February March and April thank you any questions yes
003it's done I just have one quick question can you remind us who is going on the third floor of Lawrence North students right I'm sorry no I know that there was a freshman when my children were there at Lawrenceville at the Freshman I'm not sure exactly how that'll be building a direction of who goes where yeah that is the authority of the building principal so Mr kuznick I'm not sure Mr krauser has finalized that the whole intent for the three stories core academics go into that building along with any support services like special education but the core Academic Teams and I believe is that World Language also Mr cousin not World Language not World Language at Ln so so and so is that are they still doing the Freshman Wing do we know go ahead
004yeah they're still determining they've got a final plan but as we move in in a week or two they're still determining who's in every single room but um all three floors will be your main couriers of math English science and social studies and I guess as just wondering we the people that are going on the third floor will remain on the third floor and won't have to be impacted to move again now there could be throughout the phasing but okay not necessarily okay thank you and I do have also have a question um a little bit confused who's going in there are is there going to be a time on Tuesday for the students to have an orientation actually the way that's going to be setting up I don't know Dr kuzny Mr acoustie yep
005so just a reminder Tuesday there's no school so Tuesday the 21st there's no school and then Wednesday that's since it's a short week students will have that whole week actually for some orientation into the building oh good and how how will we do that the principal will work with his staff and teachers to make sure they have they've ordered plenty of signage because it's a brand new building no one students or teachers will really know where they're going so they'll have proper signage to to direct people around the building okay and I assume you'll be there absolutely yeah okay we will be there but bored and also the superintendent we will land on Mr krauser and his team who are the experts and as a former High School principal the experts to make sure that
006they schedule all of that because it is a complete turning upside down of their school building right so they have been planning for years for this big change that requires we got to get in and find out where we go and who goes where so it's obviously it's a school day yeah but we will allow time yeah they have time in order to do that that's why we've applied for an a circular stay for the staff for their transition and as well as the school doing the orientation similar to what we did at Lawrence Central High School uh we were not able for new board members we weren't able at Lawrence Central to get in during the summer so we had to do the orientation once school started in the real world you would hope
007that we're not gonna put any pressure on you Roger that we had this summer to do this but that's just not how the project falls out okay and so it was an orientation of every student at Lawrence Central High School and the same for Lawrence North it's going to be all new not only to The Faculty but the students but trust me the kids figured out quicker than the adults we will actually do start the transition on the 13th working in spaces getting them set up early to help minimize the total teacher move on the 18th great thank you so much I have a question and it's concerning Concrete Expansion is great right and so we know that our lovely IU Health is expanding from my understanding that they have first dibs on a lot
008of the concrete so I was wondering are there any concrete concerns for us or are we able to keep our timeline with them also pulling and tugging at it yeah we we have been fortunate because a lot of that was done way prior to some of these other projects so the commitment to our material has been pretty good we've had some slow down but for the most part we're on schedule all right awesome thank you sir there questions or discussion we'll go on to the next item on the agenda the recommendation for the architect for the new lecc project Madam president members board Dr Smith as you well know we send out rfps in January firms four great uh interviews took place and the committee's recommendation was to go with the Schmidt and Associates for
009the new lecc project and I'm on upon approval of that we'll set the stage in the timeline and the schedule for the new lecc building with the scope design plan specifications bid documents on 23 and then Construction in 24. great discussion we do have some Schmidt and Associates Hempstead and Anna Marie Burrell Robin lysine and Craig flandmeyer who we work very close with on other projects and we're looking to forward to working with them on this thank you I I would just add that we've enjoyed our work together and really look forward to what you have to bring for our new building kind of president if I if I could uh I just want to commend you all on a wonderful presentation and also Mr Smith and Mr Miller I'm bringing in some very highly
010qualified candidates for this project I'm really excited to work with all of you I think it's going to be really impressive great um I and I just want to interject here that in our work sessions they're mainly for discussion and we rarely have um decisions that we need to make in our work sessions and have vote vote in our work sessions we do today because this is Con construction and construction is very time sensitive so sometimes we push that through a little more quickly so we will have some some votes to take on this okay then um Mr Smith the approval of resolution authorizing a construction manager please Madam president members board Dr Smith by State Statute it is required by the board to approve a resolution the Board of Education authorizing the use of
011the construction manager as a Constructor method for Contracting or con yes Contracting for all of the or portion of the construction and equipping of the new Lawrence education Community Center just uh to recall and remind you over the last 13 projects we have used this method CMC as we know it and upon approval of this resolution we'll also start that process for us to send out an RFP solicit proposals and go through an interview process with potential contractors as a CMC any questions or discussions on the board Mr Smith I'm wondering if you could help the community understand what the role of a construction manager is and why it's important in terms of being able to better manage the finances in the project as a whole absolutely CMC the way I kind of explain it
012is the owner's eyes on the project 24 7. they work very closely with the owner and the architect from the design process all the way through the final build and turning over that project to the owner budgets maintaining a budget change orders are all vested and and really guided through this CMC working with the owners to make sure that the schedules met the budgets are maintained and the product is a high quality of this size yes it is matter of fact and a lot more school districts in the last three to five years have picked up this process as the state has allowed us to do so also with the number of projects that we as a district are going through uh it it helps us manage all of those projects simultaneously so it has
013done very well for board members if you recall especially for new board members the state granted us permission about three years ago to get into this business prior to we had an outstanding construction manager two of them in Roger Smith and Grant nesbeth we oversaw our own projects and we may have hired a construction company but the CMC is a little bit different because as Roger pointed out they're on the finance side looking out for our interests as an owner's rep so that gives us a little bit more flexibility through the process but Roger was a fine the football stadium Schmidt those elementary schools that we renovated you are very closely with Roger Smith to make that happen but this is this is even better great so now we are on to something very exciting
014for our students perhaps a request for proposal for nutrition division colon Pizza Madam president members board Dr Smith we're always looking at ways to give our students different opportunities and options on the food line and we are requesting the board approve an RFP that will allow us to purchase and to utilize a firm's product that will produce individual onto on request seven inch pizzas we're going to start this off we'd like to start it off at the middle school high school McKinsey and see how that goes and we can grow this into all buildings if the products is good as we we know it is Miss Rowe Brown is here as our director of food and nutrition and she's been working on this and they've experienced a product that we feel is going to be
015exciting for students uh basically the ovens are the big things for them it's a production so it goes quicker than just an oven uh commercial or a convectional oven is so upon their request of what type of pizza a student may want it is then cooked right there uh on time and the vendor will be federally and state approved for schools it all meets our federal guidelines for food and nutrition so we feel that it's going to be an exciting adventure for us great thank you where would the funding from this be pulled from uh food service from Food Service just wanted to clarify that for the the record and also with this interfere with the pizza that we've known for over on those how many years there you go a little square box yes
016it has to be student approved now I kind of like those myself I think it'll be a step up from that yes okay all right I don't know way back um well actually two questions one when does the board get to taste the pizza in order to decide just kidding but uh the second question being will these ovens be able to be used for anything other than pizza or is it exclusive to pizza or do we have a potential for expanding our product line in the future I can't answer that no but I think around probably are specialized thank you hello it cannot be used for anything else but the idea is the kids actually get to see the only thing I can that comes to mind is Quiznos how they build your sub they
017put it in the oven and you got to see it come out on the other end that's exactly how this pizza production works so what we're gonna do is we're going to take a whole line and make it a pizzeria so they will be getting their Pizza there will be an all-you-can-eat salad buffet so they can build their salad there will not be any protein on that Buffet because obviously the protein is the pizza the grain is the pizza but they will get an all you can eat salad fresh fruit at the end of the line so it will be a totally reimbursable amount and they are absolutely delicious if the person who makes it was in state I would have asked them to be here tonight so you just said that this is completely
018reimbursable through yes responsible meal has to be so this will not impede on right but there will be no impact in terms of students who are on free or reduced lunch to have access to this tiered lunch like a lot of districts have tiered lunches right I've seen that in many other districts I just wanted to make bring it outside vendors that's not yeah that's good but Roger just our program and I feel like this is the way we can be more like a food court instead of being an institutional it's very creative thank you Mr Smith and Miss Puckett alluded to this but I'll go ahead and just put it out there explain your budget for Food Services the board it's the one area where it is completely self-sustaining is that correct it is
019and a lot of it is federal funds state funds and it's all driven by our number of counts we are very well to do and our food and nutrition accounts and actually as a result of that over the years we've been able to use part of their dollars to actually renovate our kitchens when we go through and renovate that building so in addition to a very sustaining program year to year it's also given us other benefits to our facilities board member done it alluded to those Federal subsidies come in and so we have to have something that's for everyone okay so that needs to be clear to the public that we're not tearing or making something about me everyone will have access to this wonderful Pizza option okay and it's a self-sustaining function of our
020food services so we have to maintain it with our own funds okay and we use none of the other funds that we talk about at this day is to supplement or to support Food Services so that was kind of my question too so the pizza will be at a similar price point as other options okay yes okay thank you so much thank you okay now we need um an Indiana Department of Education dashboard update and uh miss the plant yes Madam president Dr Smith members of the board tonight I'm going to give you some information about the Indiana Department of Education Indiana graduates prepared to succeed dashboard known as the GPS dashboard we're going to start with just a timeline you can see that in April of 2021 House Bill 1514 became law and that
021was to have the State Board of Ed and the Indiana Department of Ed develop a dashboard to display school performance data as you can see since that time committees have worked on the characteristics the headline Matrix Intel just recently in November there was an embargoed release for districts to look at give feedback and actually on December 7th this did go public so here's an example of what Lawrence Township looks like you can see the Benchmark headline indicators if you see the red yellow green those are the trends trend lines to show how the district is trending in those areas you'll see to the left kindergarten Readiness and Pre-K to grade 2 literacy are coming soon those are considered aspirational indicators just meaning that we know we want those to have a part of the GPS
022but they have not decided yet exactly what those measures will be here's another example the dashboard allows you to drill into each headline indicator so this shows attendance and one of the most important things to understand with the GPS dashboard is how they are Computing the data that they're sharing in fact they've added a new button so if you do get on live you'll see an explore button that allows you to drill down even more and it explains the formulas so for attendance we do not have a 41.6 percent attendance rate the way that that is computed is to have the number of students that have 94 percent attendance divided by the total number of students and so that's why that is shown the way it is on this side you can see more examples
023of the indicators and where you can drill down this is showing a drill down into advanced coursework prior to ninth grade something I just want to draw your attention on this slide you'll see that the state has a little green arrow up for 38.2 percent and you'll see for current for Lawrence Township it has 48.5 percent and even though we are doing better than the state because as you can tell on the trend line with the district because from 2020 to 2021 that went down slightly that shows as a red arrow rather than a green even though we are doing much better than the state with this indicator the next slide just shows more examples of headline indicators you can see one interesting thing at the bottom the graduation and Beyond employment and enrollment sustained
024employment medium income per capita these are some new things that districts are being asked to include as a part of their story and then on the last little part here is just looking at our iLearn performance which is probably the data that we're most used to as we tell our story and that will continue to be a part of the dashboard so as we think about the future of the Indiana GPS dashboard the public release took place just in December 7th deeper data drill down so as I shared how you can take one step down they are working to add more layers so that our community continue to drill down deeper and to be able to learn more about how the data is being delivered aspirational indicators I showed examples of that with our kindergarten
025Readiness those will be indicators that will be coming but they're still determining how they want to measure those things locally identified indicators this is one where Lawrence Township would really be able to add some shiny moments in fact the certificate of multilingual proficiency would be an example of something that we would want to put up for our locally identified indicator and school accountability you know as they continue to develop the GPS dashboard this will provide insights as the state continues to discuss how School accountability formulas will be considered and so I just wanted in conclusion tonight to make sure for the record that we had some key terms as we all work to build our common language around this new tool and I'd be happy to answer any questions and I also asked Chris mceloon
026here to answer any questions as well I have a question and maybe a far reach as a state Setter or have they done research as to why they're Statewide I think we kind of know why but what has the state said concerning the attendance decrease if I'm correct because that's what it's showing on the attendance slot what is that slide number apologize yeah I thought it was a number on it I'm sorry the attendance lied I think there are two reasons for the attendance decrease first and foremost we know the impact kovitz had and so we're all working on that but I think another key piece with this slide is the way that they are Computing attendance the formula of the students at 94 percent divided by the total number of students is making for
027this number thank you for this presentation I would like to ask about the graduation and Beyond and so can you talk a little bit about how the state is capturing that data how far back it goes I see here it goes back to 2006 but how are they capturing that data I'm gonna let Mr mcaloon take that one foreign so it's limited which I that's what I my assumption was which makes the data fairly skewed if we think about the number of our graduates who may not be residing here in Indiana anymore video um thank you so much I might make a suggestion for the dashboard that for for every iLearn we reiterate our graduation rate I learned graduation rate I learned graduate just an idea um and and you've talked about attendance um College
028and Career credentials for us and for the state how are they how are they Computing that that's around three and four percent that doesn't make sense to me one more and you notice number of students okay just recently pulled out of that um that's what I would think what have they pulled out for example so our our our a plus students are our nursing students none of that counts none of that ours oh that hmm okay I had a question thank you for this data to kind of summarize as Educators what are some key highlights of this new dashboard that you feel really encapsulate a more accurate picture of our district well I feel like there are some additions to this dashboard that will be helpful I think looking at kindergarten Readiness K2 is predominantly
029been grade levels that we haven't had any accountability measures with and so that is good I think that even when you look at College and Career credentials the intent of that is positive but what's going to be important is that we make sure that we educate our public in really understanding how those numbers are being determined one example was attendance and that's part of the reason we wanted that on the public forum is because we don't have an attendance rate of 41 but it's how it's being computed and just as Mr mcaloon shared with the College and Career credentials making sure that there's an understanding of what is and isn't being considered for that data so that's going to be important credentials why are they calling it College and Career credentials if they're not including
030licenses that you earnings have to stay this is an iterative process state board of education is to work and they are in reporting regularly so we're almost on everything yes company and that chain just recently I would guess I would say that the college of being response the goal is to try to get more I have two more questions if you don't mind the first is you had indicated this the plant about educating the public about the dashboard in our attendance rate according to the dashboard what are the plans of the district to educate our stakeholders about the dashboard we actually have an attendance task force that we've put together and so we will be having constant communication to our families not only about attendance in this way but also just about the importance of
031attendance getting back into good healthy habits but in terms of the dashboard as a whole is there any um I think we want to engage the public I think board members as well as Educators this was launched pretty quickly we knew it was coming we didn't know exactly when it was going to be launched so there's still a learning curve for the professional Educators in the state of Indiana so we're going to as we learn more we'll educate the public because this is really new information we felt today extremely important to put it here in front of the board so the community can understand we're having a conversation about this new form of data that's going to be put that's being pushed out from the state is in looking at this on the website I
032see that our 21st century Scholars enrollment is lower than the state average do we know if that's because we have fewer students who qualify for 21st century or is that because we have fewer students who are actually applying I can't answer that I don't know if Mr kuznick would be able to but we could definitely look into that and get you some follow-up perfect thank you it's new how much confidence do we have in this data you know data is squishy and can be yeah Madam board member we're going to say the politically correct ways because we want to be good partners with the Department of Education in the state but trust me my team is deep in it we're learning we will share information we attend the meetings and we're very vocal about what's
033going on but as a board member Dunn just pointed out about the 21st century Scholars as Chris even pointed out they're changing information as we speak so we're having to catch up and learn what it's all about I would caution the state to probably slow down a little bit before you put all this information out allow for the Educators to grasp themselves so we can explain to our parents what it really means there's some information on there that we just learned we're learning as we go along okay I do say that it's very powerful and robust to have a lot of data about our school district because it tells a better story of Who We Are for years we were one or two data points only as to our story our story is much larger
034in Lawrence Township and so this message will certainly indicate the great things that we're doing across the board in all areas of our student achievement is generation for the dashboard the data so they're getting the data from us which I think right I just I'm wondering if there are other call outs though as it relates to how they're Computing the data other than just the attendance piece that we looked at before that could be disproportionately affecting our number compared to those averages on the state I would think that the College and Career is a good example right exactly that's why that's why I'm raising it yeah yeah so you know it would be much to it would be to our benefit if they would include career in college and career yeah absolutely yeah right in
035high school right they should just call it dual credit just dual credit credentials but those are good observation and it's Chris indicated some of these data points are not coming from our data sets and the Department of Education an example brought in about college about youngsters graduating from college and Workforce it's coming from outside agencies so this is going to be new we're all going to learn it it's much different than what we've had in the past and I think it's going to provide like I said earlier a greater picture of really who our kids are in our community so it's a lot more data do we know when they plan to roll this out kind of publicly is there any kind of big media push or anything like that that we need to be
036thinking through in terms of our story it was made public December 7th which was also a very tight turnaround from embargo to to when it was public I don't know if there's a large marketing campaign around it the state has not done it's been very um and I suppose they wanted it for this General Assembly because it was part of State Statute that didn't come up with this thank you Mr macalin thank you yes so this is very exciting we'll have a discussion here about our Equitable student outcomes update this is one of the early updates we've had yes absolutely Dr Smith Madam president board tonight Dr Hoss Brown Miss Bush and I are going to bring an update with our progress on the district's Equitable students outcomes plan we will start as we always
037do with our board policy this policy is truly not only the foundation of our work but it has become the foundation of our district-wide professional development by the end of this school year all instructional and non-instructional staff will have completed activities and thought processing processing around this board policy here's a review of our work over the past two and a half years just to have on record this began with an audit in the 2021 school year by Dr vermita vernita Mayfield that led to a report that had 25 recommendations across 10 themes we had a district Equity committee that met for five evenings and last April the board approved our district Equity plan and just as a review here are the 10 themes that those 25 recommendations were built upon and so we'd like to
038share some of the progress we've made and Madam president board members Dr Smith what you'll see now is just a snippet from our website each month and we have our dashboard updated so that all stakeholders can access monthly updates on our progress and so our process is each of our division leaders or our Liaisons to the equity leadership team input each month ongoing work and once that is inputted then that goes to Mr kuznick and myself where we vet it we edit it and we also assess on the Continuum where that particular recommendation area is and that starts from in the queue to getting started to ongoing to institutionalized which is our goal for each and so each of those items listed in the previous slide are here broken down by sub points and so
039that happens monthly so that and also our superintendent reviews it before it is goes live for all of our stakeholders to review Madam president Dr Smith and members of the board we also had a couple of our action items that we wanted to highlight for you this evening can you go to the slide before thank you one is our district Equity professional development that we have to develop common language and an experience that would include all of our staff members and not be just exclusive to our teachers we have Mr Gavin Alexander who is a fifth grade teacher at Amy beverland Elementary who came through our teacher Leadership Academy and developed this professional development and has been presenting it to many of our divisions that have already already been through this training we also have
040our res our district-wide restorative practice training that is happening as we speak the first semester we had a an overview with peace Learning Center at every school in Lawrence Township of what restorative practices is and what it's not just as an introduction and then just last month we started our district-wide train the trainer opportunity where we have building level teams that are trained we have three days this semester and as you can see day one was January 11th and we have our second day coming up in February followed by a final day this semester in March in addition as a part of the access to resources theme we have gone through a comprehensive review of our elementary high ability program to ensure that students have access to all the resources they need so there was
041a district-wide committee we've had five meetings throughout the year we also offered any Committee Member the opportunity to go the National Association of gifted children conference was luckily was held in Indianapolis this year and we just concluded that work and there will be recommendations coming to the board soon so as for next steps we continue with our monthly meetings for all schools and divisions Dr vernita Mayfield continues to support our work we continue to update the dashboard and we're very proud of the fact that we have been asked to present for the second year in a row at the ascd conference and so we will be doing that in March of 2023. we'd be happy to answer any questions well I'm probably chomping up a bit too too soon um for the high ability review
042do we know because one of my concerns is um Behavior being a source of disadvancing students to higher ability and I use the air quotes because Behavior can be subjective dependent on definition and cultural capital um is that one of the pieces that's a part of it because through some lived experience that's been a barrier our behaviors that yeah Miss Norman did a wonderful job of wrapping up our high ability work last week and just was very clear with the committee that the board is all about eliminating barriers and so I feel that we've got four recommendations that will bring to you that will allow for more opportunity and choice to support students okay so I'll just put a Ellipsis on the end of that yes and to be fair I know that that was
043discussed in our small group yeah right right Miss Norman and I served on that committee last semester in this semester I do have a quick question about the dashboard when I'm on the dashboard which first of all thank you so much because it's very transparent to our stakeholders um and that's much appreciated so when I'm on the dashboard when I click here to learn more it looks like there's a barrier to accessing click here to learn more is that something that we can address because it looks like you have to have a sign in to a Smart sheet and so I'm not sure that our district stakeholders have well there it goes now it wasn't at the very bottom it said that I needed to log in so I don't know it's only my jacket
044because the first one were the last few did not it's asking for a login for smartsheet we're using um Safari Safari on a PC or a Mac but it that for the others the bottom ones did not work so just yes please jail because this is super super helpful and my other comment about the uh maybe I'm not looking in the right place but I had to look around quite a bit on our home page to find our Equity work um and so I wonder if we can make that Equity work a little more of a standout on our front page absolutely so that we don't have to I think I this is what it was under a different heading and the bottom one exactly it's absolutely yeah if we can make that very accessible
045yes I knew I wasn't losing my mind I just wanted to make sure on the record so it's the ones at the bottom when you click on click here to learn more it takes you to a smartsheet thank you part of my ignorance on slide 8 ascd presentation like what's that the association for the supervision of curriculum development thank you it's a very prestigious organization probably one of the finest in education so kudos to the Lawrence Township team for being just invited twice two years in a row is what I understand that is quite an accomplishment because I know that is very difficult so kudos to you okay they're also responsible for a significant amount of educational uh research and most of the books that are written in education they're Primo they're they're top of
046the line okay and if you go to their website you can find some of their books many of which I'm sure the titles would Fascinate you certainly some of your books that you've been receiving before that's correct or published correct so what made up of Educators with uh K-12 education but also higher education so okay thank you so much for that great update and I look forward to more updates uh I'm hoping that we can have an update on this quite often just as we as we were negotiating this policy we had updates quite often so I would hope we'd have continued updates and this how's the staff responding to the PDS wonderful wonderful the I'll speak to the the um our support groups our Operations Security division the training that's been been presented by
047Mr Alexander has been very well received they want more as you know it can be difficult to gather those groups that aren't that are that are non-classroom teachers for this and so they're happy to have the opportunity and and it's been very very well received fantastic Madam president I do have one other question as it relates to the professional development this is not outside of their working hours so they're still getting compensated for being in the development it is they are it is a net benefit to this um to our to our staff absolutely and I do have a question echoing what Madam president said about updates I see now that I'm drilling down it's very exciting about the great work that's happening but I see for example that there was a panorama survey that
048was given so are those the type of updates too that we can expect to see are um the just how the families are feeling in terms of voices being heard and updates in a more granular level yes because I would really like to see that especially Benchmark data like how are we doing with Panorama surveys because I know we were utilizing them previously compared to now so we can see if the efforts are working yes we we just did our first family survey just this past fall and we have another one coming up this spring so absolutely look for an update with those results to compare the fall to the spring it's excellent fantastic thank you board great questions how about just uh one comment I just want to say thank you so much for
049this work because every time I hear the word Equity it just reminds me of the ability to lean into humanness and to be seen and so I thank you for this work that Equity literally means just to humanize and just thank you for this this makes my heart smile that's my comment thank you okay well we will move on to the next agenda item which is the board goal mid-year update which is also very exciting and that would be Mr kuzik and Dr Brown again Madam president Dr Smith members of the boards never bring you our 2022 2023 board goals mid-year update each division will update where they are so far through the school year on reaching their goals up first under equity and anti-racism our director of student services Michelle bush and as we
050just shared with our update on Equitable student outcomes we we are proud to lead with this work and with this board goal we are implementing our action plans and updating the progress to the dashboard which is updated monthly and we look forward to the feedback from community and just to continuing the work and and implementing the plan up next we have student Chief now turn it over to our chief of programs Miss Stephanie Laplante yes um we only have one small update for graduation rate we're still working on what that 2023 graduation rate will be our rigor diagnostic we did do the beginning of the year so we'll be eager to share with you at the end of the year the growth that we've seen in the schools as we look at the goal for
051the growth of 10 percent meeting our Benchmark math and reading we do have a semester update that overall there was a four percent growth in English language arts and a three percent growth in math and then for iLearn we do not take that until end of April early May and so we'll have more data for you again on that at the end of the year up next is our strategic plan Dr House Brown will present that update sorry can I just have one question on the student achievement yes well the um will the work with the higher ability the review coming back from that I'm assuming that the changes or the adaptations to that will further change the numbers for academic honors diplomas therefore just tying the work together so people can understand and see
052the bridge for some of the work that we absolutely and that's the whole goal that's why it was under the access to resources is because it starts with Elementary High ability to ensure that students can get where they need to be for those honors diplomas I just want to highlight that bridge thank you one other question about the academics and that is when you are talking about the graduation rate of 30 or 93 percent and then an increase in the honors and Technical Honors do we have Baseline data for that because I've seen a disproportionate number of students who are getting General diplomas that are Black and Hispanic and so do we know what those numbers were for Baseline data I believe we do Mr kuznick can you answer that November from last year so
053we have a copy of that we can cheer them it has the breakdown absolutely okay perfect thank you I I have a comment but I'll save it till the end moving on to our strategic plan we've been hard at work over the months of November December and January 29 focus groups met and data was collected from stakeholders of all sorts and we've been working with Dr Kramer's and strategic consulting firm and she took that information helped us organize it into seven main topics and we had our first community-wide meeting for our committee on February 1st it was very well attended over 120 stakeholders attended and and we looked at those seven areas and our cabinet members as well as some directors served as facilitators that evening and we want to thank both Miss Norman and
054Miss Lawrence for being a part of that evening we next meet on March the 1st and next I'll ask Miss Johnson to update us on our people goals good evening Madam president Dr Smith and members of the board we proudly bring you our human resource goals and in our first area that all employees will participate in common District develop PD for all job classifications we're glad to report that all of our new staff members went through our Equity training in their summer new hire orientation and a hundred percent of our staff in buildings and divisions are participating in ongoing Equity trainings monthly and our safe schools modules that's a kind of a year-round process but we have about 93 completion rate and embedded into those safe schools modules our work on our Equity goals our
055second goal a new goal for us is the intentional focus on recruiting hiring and retaining bilingual staff so we are in the process of building a type of tracking system to figure that out so I look forward to bringing you a further update our goal of increasing our racial and ethnic certified staff diversity by three percent you can see through the years in our current reality for the 22-23 school year we're at 47 percent which means we've hired 169 um staff members certified staff members of which 47 percent are meeting that racial ethnic diversity cult and then to recruit and retain 90 percent of our district effective and highly effective teachers will bring you that at the end of the school season once we've gone through the evaluation process to determine that percentage I would
056just ask for a clarification certainly um 47 of our new hires yes are diverse um so it says increase our racial and ethnic certified staff diversity three percent I thought that would be total help to get to 54 pardon we hope to get to 54 yes by the end of the year by the end of the year okay so that that the the reality is just our new staff this is not our entire staff because that number was um a little frightening to me like backwards on that goal but okay so we're looking for 54 by the end of the year okay thank you Miss Johnson and now we'll ask Mr miles to update us on the finance goals thank you madam president members of the board Dr Smith update on our three financial goals
057that we had for the year uh again our cash balance of 12 million dollar in our education fund we went through that at our last board meeting we met that goal at the end of the calendar year so happy to report there as well as the positive balance and all taxing funds at the end of the year again another check mark in the right column there our minority spend increased by three percent was our third Financial goal and we are on track we've met that so far and we'll continue to monitor that throughout the rest of the school year thank you and finally Mr Smith with our Safety and Security Madam president Dr Smith members of the award Safety and Security being a high priority for msdlt we continue to look at the requirements per
058Indiana code all plans are in place and we continue to do our monthly and semester drills pre and post tests security checklist that continues on throughout the year we review that on a regular basis review and update board policies as a state legislation makes changes so do we and we continue to do that each and every year expand and update our internal School plan including new equipment and personnel as you well know during Renovations we address our Safety and Security of our buildings and any other equipment as we are in right now with the updating of the cameras and door access I have a question I only realize this question is interesting when you go through stuff is that you realize when I had crutches the question made me realize how often do we go
059through our buildings to make sure that everything is properly accessible now we look at that constantly for that reason ADA compliance it's a state requirement in law so our elevators or stairs or walkways are all free clear and hopefully uh in good shape for all of our patrons coming in or not and if there is a concern who would they go to it would be operations we address that from a facility standpoint and we try to react fairly quickly on that and correct it as needed one of the great things about our district board is you have a lot of renovated and up-to-date facilities that is critical to that topic um having elevators at our stadium and handicap accessible at our public venues and our auditoriums all of that will make a difference so for
060the new projects at Valley and Belzer in their school those renovation times will be crucial to update those facilities Miss Puckett and so Mr Smith and his team is well on top of that as well as our regular and our partners and Architects to help us design and to make sure that we're up to date and thank you to each and every member of the cabinet who's worked on this these board goals are are Paramount and how we address the school year and my promise to the cabinet and to our administrators is that we will have board goals prepared at the beginning of the new year this year and as such I do want to we we do get a lot of help from you in preparing these what's possible what's not possible what's achievable
061because we don't want to set standards that we cannot achieve and but we want to make them we want to set the standard high as high as we can and I'm looking at slide number four student achievement and I just want us to think about this a little bit in light of our Equity work we know that we have an achievement Gap in Lawrence Township and we're doing everything we can to eliminate that achievement Gap but if you look at the wording on these it um the last the last of the line says this the same growth in every racial subgroup and if we have the same growth in every racial subgroup does that institutionalize an achievement Gap um I would assure our public that we want each and every one of our students to
062have rigorous curriculum and to achieve at their highest level we want nothing less for any of our students but I want us as we move forward can we look at that language and give it some thought to what that to what that means if the if the language inadvertently cements uh an achievement Gap s we'll take a look at it and as well as more remember we want these goals to be easy and understandable for our school leaders right most importantly for our classrooms who are making it happen every day in the classroom to meet the goals and research absolutely and I don't think there's one educator in our Township that looks at this goal and says well I have to make sure to keep that achievement Gap in my classroom right I don't think
063that's the case I just want to make sure that our words mean what we say and we say what we mean thank you all right well I guess then we move on to the approve I guess we're in our action items did we get the action items already yeah okay we'll get to that we'll get to that Miss Lawrence um the approval of an architect for the new lecc project Mr Smith Mr President members aboard Dr Smith I recommend the board of proofs met and Associates as the architect for the new lecc project as submitted so moved second is there any discussion no discussion all in favor aye aye aye any opposed unanimously the eyes have it Schmidt Association Schmidt thank you very much thank you always have a great presentation we appreciate your work
064with us and um it's nice to have someone who people who live in the township working with us as well so thank you so much congratulations um all right the approval of the school board authorization of the use of the construction manager Mr Smith and president members board Dr Smith I recommend a board approve a resolution of the school board authorizing the use of construction manager as contractor method for the new lecc project as submitted so moved second properly moved and seconded is there any discussion all those in favor aye aye any opposed the eyes have it Madam president just Roger Smith he wasn't by reminding the board since they approved that resolution what would this allow for us to do next month Roger actually we will start immediately to send out an RFP that
065will solicit our uh proposals for the CMC contractor and this whole process will take us through the month of February and we'll present a recommendation to the board in March well prior to March Roger it's the important assignment for the board and I what do we need to do the board will actually be part of the committee thank you Roger there you will interview these uh potential candidates contractors for our project directly from there to the approval of a request for nutrition division Pizza Madam president members aboard Dr Smith I recommend the board approve the requests for proposal for the pizza production equipment as submitted so moved second any discussion any requests for a slice oh wait all right all those in favor aye aye aye any opposed all right we the kiddos you're gonna
066have pizza coming up all right um we do have um the the Personnel report we need to approve the Personnel report we have a motion Madam president Dr Smith and members of the board approval is sought for the Personnel reports presented this evening so moved or do we have a second second in properly moved and seconded um any discussion we'll go to a vote all those in favor of approving the Personnel report aye aye any opposed board great meeting I wanted I want to say to you that I appreciate all of your questions um I really feel that that this board is dedicated to getting into the heart of our issues as it relates to our students and our families so I appreciate you all so very much for your Insight and your wisdom absolutely
067um so now we're on to board and administrator comments and we might start on Crystal's side sweet um why don't hold all comments or the parks what are we doing comments comments okay I just want to say um trying to focus on gratitude this season so I thank everybody like sincerely I appreciate all of your work um this year has been interesting from a parental point of view so I can only imagine um I sincerely say thank you from the bottom of of my heart for all the work that you do and so I am grateful to be able to work alongside of you and I'm excited I really am so thank you that's my comment great and Miss Norman very well said um I was thinking about the month there's a lot of celebrations
068things to reflect on this month it's Black History Month the kids are doing a lot of great exciting uh things at school in regards to famous um individuals and also it is school counselor Appreciation Week my mother served as a guidance counselor for a good part of her education career so pre-computers so I I appreciate the work that goes into all the scheduling and planning as as a parent too so thank you counselors and also good luck to the lady Wildcats on Saturday well I got stuff to sign and I've got things to say and I agree with you miss Norman um I was going to call out that it's Black History Month it's our first meeting of the month and it's really exciting and I wanted to commend Dr Altmeyer and the communications staff
069for the great work that they're doing to publicize the Excellence that we see not just here on the Deus but also within our administrative staff and within our teaching staff and our professional staff celebrating black history we have a incredibly diverse and Incredibly um professional and uh just an exceptional group of Educators that are here and so I just want to thank all of you especially for sharing your stories foreign second to last is really tough when I have these amazing women that are going before me and said it also eloquently so I just second third um all that has been said and just also want to express the gratitude for all the work that each and every one of you doing are doing as I sit here and listen and I ask questions it's
070not because I don't believe that you all are doing tremendous work um it's because as a district of Distinction I know that we can do even better for those students like my own daughter who is African-American and so when you talk about that Equity Gap that is hard that is really really top of mind for me um as a mother of Gabriella visa and so I just want to name that um it's not questioning is not anything other than trying to learn more so that we can do do more for the students that are interested to us so thank you for that work well Dr Smith I would like to reiterate for uh for our stakeholders that we attended a board retreat and just as the just as here in this room you know the
071board members are asking the right questions and digging in the right places and are in it entirely for our children and I appreciate you so much I did attend one of the Lawrence North games I believe I attended um Tuesday night and the front of our girls and um was so excited to see Jayla Smith and a friend come to the game right I was also excited to see a little note on the internet the Lawrence Central basketball coach his coach came his high school coach came to one of the games his mentor and I was so moved Dr altemeyer by your remarks about Dr Smith and on on Whose shoulders he stands uh get making sure that you when you interview you know our staff for the Black History Month postings you get to
072the heart of who we are and we all stand on very very sturdy shoulders we all do the girls the girls team standing on jayla's shoulders and the our coaches standing on their coaches shoulders and um I'm so proud to work with this District so Madam president I'll keep the sharp Grant nesbeth one's a regional game so we can go collect our trophy at Decatur Central so we are all Wildcat this weekend as we're down to one team they are the sectional Champs and so we will call out to everyone to make sure you come out Saturday to support our girls at one o'clock and Miss Blankenship will work with the board and I have make sure we get tickets and make sure we head over to the West Side to uh root on the
073Wildcats and that's all I have today Madam president that's all I have I usually I have a lot to say but I don't have much to say today well we've been busy boy we've been busy we've been together a lot yeah we were together yeah you were with me all day on Friday that's right they were learning yeah so um that being said um would I don't do we need do we need a motion for the okay okay do we have a motion to adjourn so moved exactly looked at me at seconds all night second okay properly moved and seconded we are agenda Amy's taking that job yep we got it board