001Mhm. >> Okay, it's Oh, wow, it's 5:00. I'll call our work session to order. Um, Ms. Brannon, did we notify the media? We did. Thank you. Um, I do declare that we have a quorum with five of seven board members present. And we will need approval for our agenda. I'll make a motion to approve our agenda. Thank you. Do we have a second? I'll second. Any questions? All those in favor of approving our agenda, please say I. I. Any opposed? All right, our agenda is approved. Okay, Dr. Finney and Ms. Leppers. Go ahead. All right, great. So, what I wanted to bring to you tonight was just a little bit of the background for strategic planning and what we've been working on for the past couple months. Um, so you'd have some of that background
002before we get into the board meeting this evening to um look at approving the vision and mission statement as well as getting some feedback from the board on where you would like to see us go with the goals for the strategic plan. So, um, I gave you all copies of the PowerPoint that you'll see tonight um, in the public session, but so right now for the work session, what I'd like to do is let you know the process that we've gone through. So, you're familiar with that. Uh, the vision and the mission that is being proposed by the community and steering committee for your approval, and then talk a little bit about goals for the strategic plan. Uh, we are required by the state of South Carolina to have a district strategic plan that is
003redone every five years. Um, we have certain goals that we have to have. Uh, some for student achievement, some for district climate, uh, some for I'm trying to remember now, teacher quality, and um, there's another one, they're on the back. Um. But, I'll hope Uh. And so, getting your feedback as to where you would like to see the district be five years from now, obviously, is very important as you're the board. So, um, we didn't want to just decide what those goals were going to be without input from the board. So, with that, let me show you a little bit about what we've done so far and how the process has worked. Uh, we started out with a survey all the way back in January, uh, where we surveyed the community. Uh, we had almost
004700 people responding, uh, to that survey, and they gave us feedback on the old vision and mission statement. What did they like about it? Um, what would they like to see changed, um, as well as what are, um, some things that they would like to see maybe that weren't in it before. So, we took all of that feedback and then the steering committee met. Uh we met on February 5th. Um due to the snow, it kind of got bounced around. So, we had some of our steering committee people there that night. Some Some didn't, but we kind of caught them up. Um and what we did is we drafted a new vision and mission statement. That new vision and mission statement really was designed to take the input from the community from the survey and
005start with something. It was never designed to be the final product or anything like that. Um it was designed to be able to send then to additional people and focus groups and things like that to get additional feedback on where the community would like to see Lawrence 55 go in the future. So, with that, we ended up having um additional focus groups. We had three different community sessions. We had, I believe, one on a Tuesday night uh Monday night, and then we had a Saturday morning session, which Mr. Carpenter um attended. So, that was a great session um where we looked at what were the draft vision and mission statements and then took feedback about what did they like, what would they like to change, what do they think is missing, what should be completely
006revamped. All of that feedback from the community sessions as well as every building had staff meetings with the staff to gather their feedback or um feedback processes. They A lot of our schools also took it to school improvement councils and things like that for their feedback. All of that came back um to me and then I presented all of that feedback back to the steering committee on March 3rd. And the steering committee on March 3rd then took that feedback and finalized the vision and mission that is sitting in this slide for you. Um I know that some people were asking about vision and mission and wanting to make sure that we were clear about which one was which and things like that. So, this is based on the Baldrige Institute. They're a uh nonprofit institute
007that focuses on uh organizational development and things like that. So, vision is really about seeing down the future. Where do we want Lawrence 55 to be? What does that look like? Um and the mission is what do we do every day? Um so, that's how we created those. I know there were some questions about that. So, if you take a look at the next slide, it says vision mission statements. Um and so, what the steering committee came up with um there was strong strong uh support for the five stars um to continue that. I know that Dr. Penland brought that in 2 years ago um into the district and people really seemed to latch onto that and to um feel a connection to that. But, there were some things that you know, they thought we
008should we should shift a little bit. Um I think believe we had building a five-star culture of excellence where we want to be a district of excellence, right? We want everything, not just the culture, but everything to be excellent. So, um that was a a great suggestion that came out of one of our focus groups and the steering committee really liked that. So, building a five-star district of excellence is what the um steering committee and community is proposing. And then the vision statement the original vision statement was about twice as long, maybe a little bit more than what this is. Um the draft that we sent out to the community was a little bit shorter than the original one, and then this is even shorter than that because we continued to get from the community
009uh that they wanted to see something a little bit more succinct. So, the vision of what uh the community and and steering committee felt was that Lawrence School 50 School District 55 encourages students to be college, career, and/or military ready. That comes from the South Carolina profile of a graduate. Um they have added military to their definition of being um a South Carolina graduate at the state level, and we thought it was important to put that in there. Um and then through learning experiences supported by engaged students, families, and community. Um so, a lot of that we really kind of took a look at what were we getting the most feedback from people on um for uh for the vision statement and made sure that we kept that in order to shorten the vision statement,
010so it wasn't this big wordy thing that by the time you got the to the end of it, you were done reading it and you didn't remember what you read at the front part. So, these are the proposed vision mission statements for Lawrence 55. So, I thought I'd stop right now and see if anybody has any questions or thoughts on the process of how we got here um why some things ended up the way they ended up or or things like that, and then we can I can take you on to what happens next and get your feedback on goals and things. Um how many people were on the steering committee? I mean, about? Right. Okay. About No, no, no. No, no, no. No, there were I think we were at 20. Yes, we were
011at 20. Okay. >> And I'm just saying that cuz some people don't even do those three things. They don't do Which is why they went they settled with the word encourages. Encourages students to be college, career, career. So, she could be in the career category. Yeah. I'm thinking of a 4-year college, but you know, a lot of people like to go to Piedmont Tech or whatever. So, I guess that would fall under career. Well, and I think Piedmont Tech is college. That's college. It's a 2-year college, yeah. Okay. That still falls under college. Okay, great. It's good. So, why don't we move on to the goals piece, and then we can come back and decide so that people can kind of process and think about it. Okay? About whether you want to add that in
012there. Um so, those are the proposals, and we'll look for um approval tonight for those, the vision and the mission. So, that's why we can circle back to that before we're done. Um but, the next steps are for the board to consider input um from the steering committee and create goals. So, I kind of did a little notes page at the end of the slides. Um and from there, the district we're required to create action plans then to accomplish those goals. Okay? Um and we have to submit the plan by the end of April to the um state department. The biggest piece of this is tonight. Is what we've done up till now and then tonight. And then once we get the goals, um our district is pretty adept at creating goals and action plans
013now as you know and then I'll be back up talking about school improvement plans. They're the same thing. They we do the same thing. It's just we take a look at where we are, where do we want to be, set goals and create action plans. So, um we'll be able to to do that from tonight. We'll be able to move forward and get that that accomplished. So, >> So, just clarification, um what you've been doing with school improvement plans are more one-year goals and this one is a five-year goal. >> Correct. Correct. And so, all of our schools also have to do what is called a school renewal plan, um which is their school improvement plan, but they take their goals and stretch them out over five years. So, if they have a goal of
014increasing student proficiency by 10% this year, maybe five years from now they're going to be at 30%, right? So, um and then they need to design action steps that are going to get them there in that five years to get there. So, um this is where that little document that I kind of just laid down and I said, "Don't get too distracted with that right now." Now you can get distracted with that if you'd like. Um the first page is just our list of people that were involved. But we have to do a comprehensive needs assessment as part of the strategic plan. All of this information, specifically that we're going to talk about tonight, I shared with the steering committee as well. And so, they had We had some really rich discussions about where they
015wanted to see the district goal go in reference to the goals and things like that. So, if you look at the last page of the slides and then that document I'm going to show you where it came from. In English language arts, our and these are things that you may recognize because I've shared them with you before. These are our English language arts proficiency progress over the past seven years. And where we stack up when it comes to the rest of the state as well as how we are trending when it comes to reaching the North Star, which is 75% proficiency for the state by 2030, which is five years from now. This plan takes us to 2031. So, keep that in mind. So, the state wants us to 75% by 2030. Um and so,
016we had a lot of conversation at the steering committee about setting a goal either at within five years to be at 70, 75, or 80. And so, let me tell you where those came from, okay? The 70 was, "Well, we're still below the trend line, so are we going to get to 75, right?" However, 2030, the goal is to be at 75, so we're giving ourselves one extra year by picking 75. Or if we were at 75 by 2030, then maybe we should be at 80. So, really >> which line is which here? Sure. The bottom line is um is us. The straight line is the goal line. And the top line is the state average. Thank you. So, the steering committee and and keep in mind we had teachers on the steering committee as
017well as administrators and parents and community members and things like that. Um we are we in the room all felt that 70 or higher is a very lofty goal, but it's doable. It's something we can probably get to um or pretty close. And so, we want to challenge ourselves. We don't want to just say, "Well, we're at you know, what is it? 45% and okay, we'll get to 50 within five years." That's that's not that's not a district of excellence, right? And I mean, that's what we're aiming for as a district of excellence, right? Um and so, they felt 70, 75, or 80. And so, what I was what I would love to do is have some conversation tonight about what would you like to see. What do you think is realistic? Where would you
018like to see the district go when it comes to the achievement for English language arts? Well, I don't think anyone rises to low expectations and if we're going to be a district of excellence, I'm not sure why we wouldn't go anything less than the 80%. I also would like to see the teacher quality teacher retention move to that number one spot. I think that, you know, if you're if you don't keep good quality qualified teachers, you're never going to be able to reach any of those other goals. Yeah, and so, um if you want to talk the teacher quality piece, I did put that in here. So, this is the draft um comprehensive needs assessment that I've been working on for a couple weeks. Um just to pull the different data to get some focus
019on where we want to move to and I believe it is on page 22. Are these goals one through five though in any particular order? Um I believe they're the goals that I think that's the order that I'll have to submit them in. That's just why I have them listed like that. >> that the sole line that we get. >> Okay. Okay. So, it's not as though we're we're saying that teacher quality It's number four. less than any of the other things. No. No. No. No. No, not at all. Um So, it's at the at the very bottom cuz I haven't done page breaks and things. So, the very bottom, the percent of teachers returning from the previous three-year average for Laurens School District 55, the chart is at the top. Okay? And so, that's
020our trend for five years. And our retention rate is around the low 80s and that's where it's been for the past couple years. We were at 85 at one point. Um but top performing schools typically are in the 90th percentile range because you're not constantly reteaching people how to do what you do, right? All these best practices that we're learning through cluster and our instructional coaches and all that support. We have to reinvent the wheel every year if we're replacing 15% of our teachers, right? So, we want to have much less than that. So, there is a definite um connection between student achievement and the retention rate and that's why Dr. Penland and I had a pretty um long conversation back and forth for what, about a week, about what what metric did we want
021to use and we've kind of settled on this because we felt that it has a really direct connection to what we're doing as well as obviously student achievement. So, um you know, the things that seem to have the most impact for teachers as far as retention is they have mentorship, they have targeted support, um and they have feedback. They have coaching, which is our instructional coaching model. So, um if we want to improve that, we need to continue to use that model for our teachers. Um So, what we would do is we I think as far as teacher quality um and the retention piece, I would aim um to be up near 90. Um and that would be I think a reasonable goal, but like I said, we can the board can decide. And by
022Heather, you're right. It it has such a direct connection between the two. So, cuz now when you look at math, math might be a little bit different because yes, we want to be a district of excellence, but I think we also have to be realistic about where we are at this point. And so, math starts at I believe we're on page 17. Um and math is the same thing. The bottom line is Laurens 55. The line that virtually mirrors it, but just a little bit higher is the state average. And then the straight line is the trend line. Um you know, we're down at about 25% in algebra two, I mean in algebra one, um which is on page 19. We're at 36 or 37%. Um to jump all the way to 80% in five
023years, we need to make sure that we're setting goals that are realistic and that we think are are doable. When we look at the rest of the state, I think we're going to have to take a look at that. So, um the the steering committee was looking at either setting it at 50% or setting it setting it to go above the state average. Um I'm not sure where you want to target that math piece. Um but like I said, the the English language arts was was pretty high and even as a district, we've chosen to increase ELA and feel pretty confident that we're doing we're on the right track there and we're just starting with math. And we'll continue to use a lot of the same best practices in the area of math that we
024did in ELA, but I'm not sure that we'll get to 80% in 5 years. So, not sure where the the board would like us to try to get to. Just cuz we set a goal doesn't mean we're absolutely going to get there, but that's where we're going to try to go. Right. So, am I reading this correctly on page 18 that you said the South Carolina goal is going to be 75%? That is what they have set for them yes, a while but they set that all the way back in 2017. Okay, so that's not that's not new. Okay. >> No, it's not a new goal. And of course our math um Do you think >> standards changed this year. So, a lot of that's going to be different. Algebra 1 they're going to take
025it now after sophomore year instead of after freshman year. Um the other thing to to know is if we end up achieving a goal right? And so say next year SC ready wise for math. I'm not even going to talk about Algebra 1 because the numbers of kids taking Algebra 1 I don't really want it's like apples and peanuts not even oranges so of what will happen next year. But if say SC ready we end up jumping boom and we go all the way to 55% proficiency next year, right? We're all going to be celebrating. This is going to be great, right? We're going to be thrilled. And the following year we keep that, we can come back as a district and set a new goal for the next 3 years. We don't have to
026stick to this down here, but it's always a balance of setting goals. How do we motivate an organization and people in the organization without demoralizing people at the same time, right? So, is it >> So, our numbers right now are 18%? No. No, no, no, no, 20 No, no, no, we're at about 20 4%. >> Yeah, 23, 24%. Okay. Our middle school is lower than our elementary so we're working with that. Um So, really these are notes that on this goal page that I kind of just put down for you to consider. The ELA, the math the teacher quality we kind of talked about. I'll talk to you about college and career ready and then I can throw out some numbers and you let me know if you're comfortable with them, okay? But what I
027do want to talk to you real quickly about is the career and college ready piece um because I think it's important for us to remember that although we might get English language arts proficiency and we might get math proficiency, ultimately when our students walk across the stage the community and the businesses are expecting them to be college, career, or military ready, right? That's what they're expecting and right now if you look at the top of page 21 we have a graduation rate that is about around 83% a little bit higher than that. Um but we have a college or career ready rate of about 58%. So, if our vision is for our students to be college, career, or military ready. And so the word military will now be added to this graph beginning next school
028report card time. That's why you don't see it right now. Um so we're not ignoring it. It's just state hasn't added it yet. If we're saying that our students are going to be that in 5 years, then we're talking about we need to kind of close this gap between the graduation rate and this college or career ready rate. Okay, you'll notice that we've increased it quite a bit since 2024. Um we saw some big jumps. We want to continue to increase that. Um there are some logistics and some kind of funky data things that I don't think we'll ever be even because a student could take the SAT and they score a 1039. They're not college ready. But if they score a 1040 they are. Right? If somebody scores a 1039 they could go to
029college and could be successful and be just fine, right? But according to the state they won't be defined as college ready. So, you know, I wouldn't recommend that our goal is 83%, right? But we want to close that gap a little bit. So, we did talk at the steering committee about shooting for 75%. Um so that got us closer. But >> And for those lines um to kind of make sure you know which one's which. So, the top one is going to be your high school graduation. The um next line will be your college or career. Um line three will be your career ready. Your fourth line will be college ready and the bottom line is college and career ready. But they're two college So, college and college or. Why do we have so many
030variations? So, college or is they're either college I mean I know what they mean, but I'm like why do we have so many to use? >> or they're both. So, that's going to be the highest one. It's the state. The state That's how they define it. >> Okay. To to me I think the two important lines are the top line and the second to the top line. Okay. >> Right. The two top lines are the the important ones. Those are the ones that we're talking about. Right? If our vision is going to be that we graduate students that are college, career, or military ready. So, you can kind of see where they were. >> one of those lines. We do not have to have a goal for any of that, but the steering committee felt
031it was that important if it's going in our vision statement we should have a goal for that. Okay, perfect. I think it's a reasonable goal. I think it's a great thing if we want to be a district of excellence, we're going to target that, right? So, you can decide not to have that goal. That's the one that's on the sheet that we don't have to have. So, we have to have the first two, we have to have number four, and then number five is school climate. Um and so I put two different metrics on there for school climate. Um they're on page 25. Can I Can I say something? Yep. Who are you? There's a lot of conversation about does a college education really matter today? And we have to understand the change that we're
032going back to the factory. Okay? If you're going back to the factory, do you really need a college education? That's that's the question you may ask And look at they're they're out as far as making money they're making way more way more money than college graduates are. Some of them are, yeah. You know. So, the the the point is what and why? You know. Um military ready ASVAB. Can you pass it to get in the military? Obviously not cuz they're saying a whole lot of kids can't pass it. That's the simplest form of math. But you go to you got a eighth grader that doesn't understand a multiplication table to me that is a school district fault. You shouldn't be in the eighth grade and not know that. But it it boils down to what
033are you doing to rein these kids in? We can't get rid of the cell phones. Spend enormous amount of time on that. You know, you can say where it starts at home. You don't know the home situation. You know, cuz I'm saying if if a child gets up at 8:00 in the morning to go to school when that child get out of school and their parent go to work at 4:00 when that parent get off at 12:00 that child is in the baby. So, the only effective person that has had a chance to make a substantial mark on that child is their school teacher. So, they can say what they want to say about it starts at home. The home don't cut it all the time. No, and and I don't disagree with what you're
034saying. And that's why I think the steering committee chose college, career, or military ready. So, they're not saying you have to be college ready. They're not saying you have to be career ready, but you need to be one of them, right? Or military, right? You need to be one of the three and that's what the vision statement is saying and that's what that chart what we're we're looking at those two top lines are saying that any of those three things we should have more people that are able to do that if they're truly graduating, right? Cuz we have to have a standard like everybody should know their multiplication tables. They should know them long before eighth grade, but >> Yeah, so So why are we saying military ready? We don't have a draft. Cuz the
035state added that. If it was a draft, I could understand that. But it's a choice. Mhm, it is. Cuz people want to say you Well, it's just like college and a career are a choice, too. People can choose whether to go the college route or they can choose to go the career route. And both are successful. So. Yeah, I I think you're right. Um Do you want me to move to the climate one and then we can just go back to the goals and see where you want to land? Uh yeah, we can keep going with that. Okay. So the climate one, I'm sorry, it starts on page 24, where you can see that we have our different schools and where they've been for the past 3 years when it comes to school climate, right?
036Um we have We actually have 11 different ratings for the the South Carolina report card, right? And six of them, so more than 50% percent of them are below average for school climate. And so we can look at school climate as increasing the um the school climate scores. So we go from, say 40-some percent of our schools have average or above ratings in school climate to 80% of our schools, right? That would be a goal that we could have. Um one of the areas that we'll target is attendance. That's why you see a lot of the attendance on the back. Um and so that would be something that we would address. It's also a metric that we would use or we can just send set an attendance goal, but I'm thinking if we're looking and
037we're aiming at the school report card and the overall piece of school climate, I think maybe the the numbers of schools that are performing at at least average or above um is a reasonable attainable goal that's going to turn around and say we're a district of excellence if we're providing this kind of of climate, cuz right now that's not working. Right. And I know it's not working for me. Well Are they Go ahead. Are are these school climate ratings that you have listed here, are they actual These are real? Mhm. Okay. >> Those are real actual school climate ratings for the past 3 years. They pulled them from the report cards. Okay. And that's that's what I'm calling to question. You look at the first two. Below average, below average, below average. That's our job
038to correct that. We going to let that go on and on and on? We hold the superintendent to the fire for that. No school should be 3 years running below average and you still maintain the same principal. Well, I think there's there's a lot of things that I don't know that we have any school that we have one school, but there's a different principal. Say what now? There's only one school that stayed below average for 3 years. And you can see that school also has two different ratings. So the middle school sign was good. >> Yeah, but I'm looking at I'm looking at four that say below average, unsatisfactory and below average. Yeah, and that was a change in principal, too. Yeah, and that was a change in principal, too. So both of those schools
039had a change in principal between 2024 and 2025. Okay. Yeah. 25 You know, I I don't also like seeing that, you know, we're at Waterloo Elementary and we're good good, change of principal and now we're below average. 25 I'm I'm going to argue that this cannot be shouldered The principal cannot shoulder all of this. >> Nope. And and and I'm going to go back to some of my concerns about the master teacher. We have let go of interventionists in lieu of master teacher. And and you you There's no way you can convince me that having teachers, master teachers helping teachers is um better than having a teacher teaching children. I That That math does not compute for me at all. Um and and I think we'll see because we going to have some schools that
040are going to go I think they're going to fall through because we don't have those especially third graders cuz correct me if I'm wrong, if I and hold don't I may get things confused here, but I thought the interventionists that we did either moved to a you know, do in a different role were the typically third graders. They were the upper grades, yeah. Yeah, the upper grades. So we're going to see what happens, but I would not put this all on the shoulders of a principal. Uh there's a whole lot more things going on here, the intricacies and the complexities of teaching kids that that um And And again, I'm going to I'm just throwing it out there that you know, I've Since we introduced the the master teacher program, I was always like, well,
041wouldn't it be better to put teachers in the classroom, make smaller classrooms? Uh especially with classrooms where we have students that are behind and we know they're behind. [snorts] Um and So you got master teachers, shouldn't they be shouldn't they be able to bring them up? You saying that master teachers Well, no, but the the role of the master teacher in our school district is not to work with students, but it's to work with teachers in order to improve their skill set so that they can help those students that are behind. They're not Their goal is not to teach students. Now, I know some of them are probably doing that, but but the objective of the master teacher is to supervise and um work with other teachers in the And correct [snorts] me if I'm
042wrong on this. Coach and train. Yeah, coach and train. That's why they have weekly meetings and the cluster groups are still happening and Well, I Well, I've always questioned the concept of the master teacher cuz only thing master teacher does is take a test to be qualified as a master teacher. Yeah. So If other teachers don't decide to go through that, that's their choice. That don't mean they're less effective. But under under this context, though, the master teacher is part of the program. Right? Correct me if I'm wrong. It's not They're not They're more instructional coaches. Yeah, um master teachers um kind of autonomous term, so they're not assigned to students or a classroom. Right. So can you say Can you pick a particular master teacher and say that that group of teachers under her
043are performing masterfully? Yes. No. Yes. We have data to support that when we started using instructional coaches in Lawrence 55, the increase in the overall proficiency rate Yeah, that there is data that supports that. The other thing we talked a little bit about teacher um retention and the top things that will help our teacher retention rate cuz we're talking about setting that at 90%, right? is mentorship, targeted support, and evaluative feedback. All three of those things are things that our instructional coaches do. That's what their whole role centers around. So if we want to keep teacher retention and the teacher retention we know is directly correlated to student achievement. We just talked about that. If we have We're constantly replacing teachers because they're not feeling supported and they're not getting what they need to be
044effective, they go somewhere else or they change Is that >> You know, professions completely. What's that? That what they saying? The teachers are leaving? On the exit survey? Oh, on the exit survey? Why they're leaving. I'm not privy to exit surveys. I don't know what they said here. I know nationally what's said and yes, that is what's said. So I don't know specifically here. But I want to make sure I I understood correctly. Because you were talking about that there are scores that show that this master teacher program works, Mhm. but we don't have those numbers yet. Yes, sure we do. Our No, we don't because the interventionists we Last year, did we not have a full school school interventionist? >> Oh, oh, I see. Yeah, we don't have the data to show where we
045had to cut and we cut on both sides. So we cut several master teachers and we cut several instructional >> Yeah. Right. I mean, interventionists last year. >> Right. So we have data to show that instructional coaching works. We do not have data to show what happens with the drop of interventionists. No, we don't have that yet. You're correct. >> Okay. It seems like to me um those master teachers did benefit us to have them. And we're concerned about our kids' education, making sure they get from A to B. And it's our job to make sure they do that. But instead, I think we let a lot of teachers go or whatever. And I I think our focus should be trying to maintain good teachers at whatever cost. At whatever cost, you do not let
046a good teacher leave. I think that's one of our problems. We let good teachers leave us and go somewhere else. We ought to do everything we can money wise. If you have to cut somewhere else to keep this teacher, you should keep them. And I think that you know, if we're striving to be a five-star culture of excellence, this should be anywhere from average or above and nothing below. Right. So, let me circle back to the goal areas then. Right? So, this is what what I'm hearing and then you tell me no, right? Or if you want something different. So, I'm hearing English language arts is 80%. So, we're targeting 80%. Math, I didn't hear that one. I I know 50, but that's low for me. I don't know if you want to go higher.
047I I don't know. >> I I definitely think it should be higher. I know that I mean, you said right now we're at 23 24. I don't know how much higher >> [snorts] >> we want >> 65 is is something we can aim at. Yeah. >> With without knowing what the standards are and how we're going to perform again, we can always come back. It's something I should be standing here next year at this time reporting out on every single one of these goals. And when I stand here in October, right? With the new report card, say, "Okay, we didn't we weren't instituting all of this action plan last year, but here's where we are in reference to what we set last spring, right? So, at least we kind of have our baseline. Every year
048or every 6 months really, we should be updating where we're at. Okay? So, we can always adjust. So, college and career ready is um the steering committee recommended 75% so that we we close that gap by half between those two top lines. Okay? Teacher quality, we were aiming at 90% retention as a three-year average. Okay? And then district school climate ratings. Thank you. I think Heather was saying 100%. >> 100%. >> I think average or above. Okay, that's fine. That's what I would like to see. I I think it's really important for all of us to be on the same page. We might not always agree on where we're going to be, but at least we all know where we're going, right? And now we can go back, we can set the goals based on
049those thresholds you just gave us and develop action plans and that's on us to come up with an action plan to get us to those goals. Now, will we be approving goals tonight or just the vision mission statement? Uh just the vision and mission statement. You don't have to approve the goals and things like that. We actually have to. I just like the board to be involved in setting the thresholds. So, the last thing I think we we need to talk about is are we circling back to the vision and adding life in there or not? After explaining some of this other, I'm good with leaving it like it is. You're what? >> I'm good with how it is. Okay. After you explain some of the other parts. All right. So, we have um So,
050what we'll be talking about tonight is and asking for approval and I think I have the recommended motion in the memo, um building a five-star district of excellence. Um so, Lawrence School District 55 encourages students to be college, career, and or military ready through learning experiences supported by engaged staff, families, and community. We didn't really talk about that engaged staff, families, and community, but that was big. That was very big. Um I think the only thing that had more positive support to making sure that that was in there was the five-star piece. So. And I believe that five-star district of excellence came from Mr. Kerper. Do you remember that? All right. Well, I'm good. Anybody else have anything? I wasn't here for the first half. Can you go over it again? >> [laughter] >> Just
051kidding. I can. I would like to thank Amanda for all of her work on this since we're hitting this um you've done an amazing job. So, thank you for that. All right. Thank you, Ms. LaCroix. Uh with no further business on our agenda, I'll go ahead and start. This is the exact thing that people have been asking for forever that we do not do. We don't get together to discuss the things we need to discuss. This should be a start. Because that's the only way we're going to get it done. Cuz if we don't, we're going to stay after one another. And that's that's just my opinion. I agree. What about about the um I said thank you. I agree. facilities and all of that? When we going to discuss that as a board before
052we bring it for this realignment puck? Um we had our um other town hall meetings or our facility meetings with um the Sanders group and then it's coming to the board for um approval today. But why we don't discuss it as a board before we bring it Yeah. Like we did this vision statement. >> Right. And we did not put that as a um work session agenda item today. So. I think we need it as a work session before we bring it to a vote. Well, and I think tonight um during our regular meeting, we have the opportunity to have this same conversation even tonight in our regular meeting about the Sanders Lawrence matter. Realignment, I know it was on there, but Yeah, I'll present it as a proposal, but I mean, we can still
053have the discussion and everything um before it's voted on or anything like that. All right. Anything else? All right. With no further business on our agenda, I will adjourn our work session. Thank you and thank you, Ms. LaCroix.