001e [Music] e e e [Music] e good evening the now is the time is now 6:30 and I'll call our meeting to order Miss brandom do we notify the media we did thank you and I do declare that we have a quorum with all board members present Mr Jenkins is joining us via the telephone we will need approval for our agenda I make a motion to approve the agenda second thank you any questions or comments all those in favor of approving the agenda please say I I I any opposed the motion passes I just want to welcome everyone for being here tonight and um uh those in the audience and online so and now we have a student from Hickory Tavern who is the study body body president Miss Maddie Lawson who is going to
002lead us in our Pledge of Allegiance please stand for the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America into the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you Miss Lawson and now um I'm going to ask Miss Peggy Nance if she will lead us in prayer tonight let us pray our heavenly father we give you all the honor this evening father God we ask that you bless our district this new school year father God I ask that you continue to bless Dr Penland and his staff with all the wisdom that they need to lead this district and father God have your angels surrounding all of them the students and the teachers God let no hurt or harm come between between
003anyone father God we're just grateful for this this district and father we ask blessing on the community as well and father God bless this school board Lord give us the wisdom and the knowledge that we need to make sure we're doing what we need to do and we give you honor we give you glory and we pray in your name amen amen amen thank you Miss Nance we need approval for the minutes for the June 24th July 17th and the August 12th meeting if I could get a motion to approve those minutes I make a motion to approve the minutes for June 24th July 17th and August 12th of the school board meeting second thank you is there any question or discussions about any of those minutes that are listed having none all those in
004favor of approving the minutes for June 24th July 17th and August 12th please say I I any opposed the motion passes and now we will hear from miss Emily Starling from Hickory Tavern Elementary and Middle School good afternoon good afternoon first of all I would like to um thank you for your attention tonight as we celebrate some great things that are happening at Hickory Tavern um we're going to start with um a little bit about conscious discipline um we are one of three schools Miss Darlin would you speak closer to the mic or make sure it's on yes sir yes ma'am is that good thank you yes you're welcome okay so we would like to talk to you a little bit tonight about conscious discipline we are one of three schools that are in our
005second year of conscious discipline working through the brain States um and so those those states are um the survival State emotional state and the executive State survival State talks to us about safety um the emotional state talks to us about connection and then the executive state is problem solving or a space where students are capable of learning so just this year um we have really taken that to heart and so as we've started our school year the survival state says am I safe do I feel do I feel good about where I am um so we're looking at safety and this is a picture on the very first day of school one of our teachers doing some breathing exercises with a 4K baby as we are um making sure she feels comfortable in her new
006setting um the next state is the emotional state this is where students and adults say am I loved do I feel do I feel good about where I am this is the space where we talk about some connection um I loved this activity this is some Middle School school students um one morning early in our cafeteria where we were singing some songs and doing some hand motions and so making those connections early on um with students and staff alike um in our building the last one is the executive State this is where the mind says what can I learn from this am I in a good space to learn um and so we've worked really hard on that um to get most of our students to that space and this is some collective um learning
007here together with our students um um I believe that's an eighth grade group so that was a lot of fun last school year we had lots of celebrating um we out with the old and in with the new this is our playground last year it was pitiful if I'm honest with you it's been there Dr ftner might know more than I do it has been there a long long time so my children played on that playground so I would I can tell you it's probably 19 20 years old old playground so out with the old and in with the new and we love our new playground we have two playgrounds um we have one for the older children the capacity I believe is around 96 children on the playground which is wonderful because some of
008our grade levels um we're not at 96 but there's a lot of students in that one grade level and then there's another one that is much more suited for our younger students and so we we are loving our new playground um this year our um our push is for five star culture of Excellence um and so we've looked at a couple different things this is festar planning from our instructional leadership team um so you'll see some adults on our leadership team that are working um to plan for our teachers and so there's also pictures there of our teachers who are working towards five-star planning so that we can offer the best for our students and then planning leads to amazing five-star student engagement so a variety of grade lels um and ages there um engaged
009in the learning if you will take note of the bottom the two bottom right um pictures those are tables that you can write on and erase um right there on the table and we have thoroughly enjoyed those tables um in our classrooms where students all can have a voice um within the classroom um we have already kicked off our lunch and learns this is one from um Lauren electric we had three um employees there come talk to us about customer service human resources and Al linemen come and share about their careers so that our CDF can push our middle school students into looking at different career options for them especially as they head to the high school we're trying to make sure we introduce them to all of the career clusters that they might be
010interested in okay and then this is our beautiful staff um and so this is what we're looking forward to to continue working through our instructional leadership team cluster learning walks positive Partnerships with parents um we've done a good bit of training with structured literacy letters training of course we hope those outcomes send us to some Student Success with academic achievement um growing teacher leaders um we're in year two of conscious discipline and then also our teachers are participating in the sound ball training so we're looking for great things from our h t Panthers do you guys have any questions thank you very much for your time thank you Miss darling appreciate it next up we have Dr ftner from the lawence Preparatory Academy good evening and thank you for giving I'm sorry I said and
011Miss Yano and Miss Yano Allen you yes um thank you for your time this afternoon board and Dr pendland for giving us an opportunity to sh give you a quick look at what we do at Prep Academy um I am one of the administrators there Miss Allen is the other administrator there and we wear a lot of hats every day so we're going to show you a little bit about that I first need to give credit where credit is due and tell you a little bit about our um logo um Ansley crisp who was a student at the high school Miss Allen gave her the idea and she kind of built that for us and then we had to modify it when we added The CARE program we had to add the elementary schools so
012we kind of modified that just a a few weeks ago didn't we miss Allen um and so that is where our logo comes from and those are all the schools that we serve at lawen Prep Academy this is just a picture the location is at 125 gleam Street sweet B we share a building with gleams Head Start so we're in the lower Hall if you decide to come visit us and get the long version of what we do we work on the lower Hall they work on the upper Hall so we hear three and four year olds crying as they get used to school while our are getting used to school at the same time so please come by and visit when you get an opportunity our student population consists of students in grades K
013through 12 we serve K through 12 in lawen 55 and we serve grades 6 through 12 for Lawrence District 56 so we're a countywide alternative school and we have students from both areas we have one teacher for one through K through five I'm sorry and we have um five teachers for 6 through 12 and then we have a special ed teacher for that population um that we have there all right most of our students are placed to us through a hearing either the hearing officer at lawen 56 or lawrens 55 will place students at lawren Prep Academy we do an intake with them where we go over everything we expect from the time they step foot on the bus or out of the car for to the time they leave our facility every single day
014with and taught with the parents and so forth so we do get some students that come by way of principal sign over at the beginning of a year we really encourage them to look at their students who are overage for the grade level and send them to us so we can move them quickly and and get them through quickly so those that are behind in grade levels it's a great opportunity for us to get them caught up for their grade each year the state department asks us to set goals for the alternative school so in 2324 Miss Allen and I sat down at the end of the year to to fulfill that requirement and we looked at three things we looked at um creating a placement for ninth graders trying to basically move them forward
015quickly as as we could if they were overage so we asked the principles to look at their eighth graders who were overage who should already be at the high school and let us work with them at the beginning of the school year to perhaps get credits to move them to the high school mid semester that did work for several of them last year so it was a success we also um started with our after school program and wanted to hone it in just a little bit better than what we had it a lot of our students because of special ed placement are out of school for a while and so we asked that we be able to bring them into our Twilight program which is an afternoon schedule and get them ready for the uh
016to move back into brick and mortar building um so we we take that population that has been sort of for whatever reason it might have been a medical condition that kept them out of school or it may have been IEP placement that kept them out of school so we try to transition them back through that program and then the third thing that we did is we were allowed to participate in um a school Works cohort there were five schools we were one of five schools to work on um a Dei undertaking which is diversity equity and inclusion we re wrote Our mission our vision statements and with that we really found out a lot of stuff about ourselves about how we treat kids what we expect out of kids or students if you want to
017say it was a great process and um Miss Allen was one of the ones who went to Boston with the group and worked with the other schools so it was a great great opportunity for us but those goals were for 2324 these are the ones that we have for 2425 we were hoping to work work a little bit more with the discipline system um the thing that we share with Dr pendland is we do not want students to be expelled if at all possible so we are working to solidify that within our own building and put some tears in discipline um those habitual students that continually come back we're trying to give them some more opportunities working with some online you know even if it's just for a short time or if it's a long
018time working with Twilight so we're just kind of tearing it within our own building we also Al are trying to um strengthen the Fidelity in our online system there comes times when we have to put students on a homebound situation for two weeks or a week or three weeks and we want more Fidelity in that and and in other words I'm not okay with your mama doing your work so what we've done is we've said that they have to make appointments to come in and take their end of their end of course test take all the tests that they have to take they take within our building um and so that way we watch them so I say to them your girlfriend can do your work but she's not going to be able to sit
019at the desktop with you when you do your test so I we believe that that has put more Fidelity in our system there and then finally our last um objective for this year is to create a more transient middle schoool C curriculum I talked with Dr pendland about this earlier um what happens a lot of times is the middle school students are signed over to us for 45 days we send them back well their class has moved on and they go back into the same class or or they're ahead of their class so they go back in totally lost with the rest of the class but this year we're working more closely with their homeschool teachers to try to stay on Pace with what they're doing in their home schools so those are our goals
020for this year and we will report all of that on the end of um of of our state now miss Allen's going to talk to you she is the master of scheduling I throw it out there and she makes it look beautiful like a puzzle so she's going to talk to you a little bit about the typical day at Prep Academy so as you can see on the slide a typical day consists of six periods that um most of the students have that includes um an elective or ar cake course along with the core courses and then our upper Hall serves the grade 6 through 12 and um my lower H is K through five so of course as Dr fers just talked about we make sure we working on the same pacing guides so
021that the students can transition smoothly when they go back and so right here you see our front office staff of Miss Smith and Mr Smith you see a student working in our garden so miss birchmore takes that on as a project it's our garden of Hope where students get to go out there last year they planted little things with their um goals in it this year those are pumpkins that we hope to see pretty soon in the in the fall and then you see Miss Miller working with the student so we start off with Home Room during home room is when we have our breakfast we have our check-in we have our scrolling announcements you heard um speak of conscious discipline earlier and so we also make sure we try to do that with our
022seal character ad just getting them in the mindset getting them to that executive state so they learn and making sure they're feeling safe and that we know their love so we try to do this in Home Room in which we go to Home Room in the beginning of the day and the end of the day so we get a good read of far as how their day went we also do mood meters for each class to kind of determine how they're feeling that day so that we can make sure we meet their needs to giving them the education that they need um classroom a goal this year is for each classroom to have a library and each classroom to have like math stations so we don't want to waste any time while we're there we
023want to have a lot of instructional time going on so even if a teacher has kind of finished their lesson but before the exit ticket we want to make sure we're just going back to those foundational skills that a lot of our students need to make sure they can get that under their belt before we transition them back to their home schools and then we also use that time for counseling lessons and R3 R3 again is when we review refine and reinforce whatever um skills that they need so during our second period Dr fer came to me she was like I want this time where we can all get together and the students can be working on reviewing refinement reinforcement but also the teachers can get together especially with the tap Grant to make sure
024we get our clusters in so we came up with a second period p L time or pool time during this time the teachers and the staff along with the administration that's our time where we go over our cluster and have our cluster meetings that's Tuesdays there also time for them to continue having PLC meetings when they get together as a teaching community and talk over different ideas and what's working what's not working and come together to do some coming lessons and then also some time for us to do PD professional development with our staff while we're doing that the students are with our assistants and they're in our three time again this is when they review over the information that they've been learning or work on those foundational skills or they're refining something that they
025may have a little trouble with during class or they reinforcing or getting enrichment so if they're at a higher level we'll just continue to add on to that level personalized learning is also a time where our students fortunately this year Miss Wright asked if she come and help and because she come and be a part of LPA and we gladly accept it so she comes over with our students and she um has art with them and it's every other Thursday and the students are living it you see some of their artwork they had to create their um Utopia and they wrote their words of what that looks like and how does that feel so great great work Miss wri is coming over there doing with them and the students are really enjoying it and being
026very engaged and then we also have a time when we do stem and so we have little robots that they use and so students work on programming those robots um we have different levels and the students and the faculty and staff are really engaged with the robots because you get to see if you um created the program right if you did the pattern right or what happens there so that's a great time for our students there we have a mental health counselor that we share with Lawrence High School she's there Tuesdays and Thursdays right now and she's there from 8 to 12 on those days so she's there in the morning time with us and um for those mental health needs Community engagement we um last year we did a lot with guest speakers and
027culture awareness career days and community service so this is just some pictures of where um we try to make it a point to get the community involved and even if we can't go out we bring them in so that they can listen to what's offered and what resources they have and build new connections fun Friday fun Friday is a time when we have fun and so um students if they meet their ABCs that means they're attendance they came to school that week if they were out they have their medical notes saying while they were out that means their behavior was where we expected it to be which means they did not get any admin discipline referrals and then the curriculum that means they are on Pace and they are passing and if they meet those
028requirements they get to participate in fun Friday so we have cornhole we have Connect 4 we have PlayStation we have um Donuts sweets sometimes we do it at the end of the day so we send them home with that um um different drinks and just things like that to celebrate them to let them know they reach their goal and because I meet with them to do success plans so this making them accountable making sure they aware or where they are it's also a good read for us to know what what we need to work on skill-wise so if they're behind and a student is behind a lot of days we can make sure we working with them during that PL pool time that's all thank you y have any questions look it was right at
02911 I saw it right at 11 thank you if y'all don't have questions any questions thank you Dr ftner thank you Miss Alan we appreciate you being here tonight thank you and now I will turn it over to Dr pendland for the superintendent report all right so um I'm going to go a little bit out of order I'm going to go ahead and start with the booster club um information so we can go ahead and get um board approval on that um as a new law was adopted um by the state legislator which became effective March 11th which says that all booster clubs and PTO that are not that do not fall under our um District Financial kind of Realm so the money is not deposited into one of our accounts um the Board of
030Trustees has to approve those um PTO or booster clubs and so right now we have five of those in the district who have applied um most of the other um booster clubs and um pto's fall under our district accounting system and um as part of this whenever we get their financial officers um we will do background checks to make sure there's nothing fiscally a warning on their background check um if there is then we'll ask them to um assign somebody else to be their treasur or whoever can sign off on their um document so they fill out a form similar to this the outside organization registration form um they give us their name their position their phone number and also if they're Aigner on their checkbook and so of those we have um about 10
031people there's about two per um each of those that we'll be doing background checks on but um as part of the state law we now have to have Board of Trustees to um register those um in the system and basically that just basically says that we have giving them authority to collect funds and expend funds under their name of those booster clubs still have a question um the PTO for the schools that are listed um do the other locations no longer have a PTO or do they already they they have a PTO or a lot of them have pto's but they also run their money through the school versus having their own checkbook outside of the school system got so um a lot of those um for example um hicker Tavern they raise their money
032they um collect it on site they keep it inside the school Finance system um and that was their big fundraiser was their playground for the past several years so that money was um held within the school system okay is there any reason why all the clubs can't do that or is it more work on the schools I'm just car it it takes away some of their flexibility of how they spend their funds if they come under our system because once the money I think I'm saying this correct Jim once it becomes under our system they kind of lose some of their flexibility with the expenditures and then things that they would purchase would fall under procurement and that type of thing that may not be um you know eligible if they purchased it themselves outside
033of the booster but they have to have a board they have to have you know bylaws um to be registered as a PTO or a booster club also that doesn't extend TOS um High School athletics falls under the school um so they um actually deposit their funds at the school level and so those funds run under our um District system also because that was the one that I thought we would have an athletic the booster club there um band booster and their najc are the only two that are outside of the school system finances any other questions regarding this um with that uh Dr pendland has requested board action on this item so we would need a motion to approve to approve the booster club registrations that have been provided to us a motion we
034approve boist thank you is there any other questions or discussion all those in favor of approving the booster club registrations as presented please say any opposed motion passes thank you Dr so couple of other things that I wanted to and this is a little bit slow there we go um couple other things I wanted to make you aware of this week's schedule um we do have parent teacher conferences happening this week um on Thursday it's a half day for students there'll be no lunch um and they'll dismiss three and a half hours early parent teacher conferences will last until 6 p.m. on Thursday and then half a day on Friday with no students in school on Friday and then Monday is also Labor Day so there'll be no school so students will be out half
035day Thursday all day Friday all day Monday um wanted to kind of review U my 30 6090 day accomplishments and goals that um I set forth whenever I did that um interview so a couple of things that um we have already done we did um positive leadership training with all of our admin and um that was a great time with with um looking at John Gordon's um positive leadership um training that he offers we also had the back to school kickoff um where I set the stage for our expectations not only instructionally but also for our district culture and I'll go into that in a little bit more in just a few minutes um we visited all of our schools multiple times um we've met with school leadership teams um with the principls and the
036assisted principls and also our um cluster I mean our ilts our instructional leadership teams throughout the district and we've also reviewed the Strategic plan through our school plans and District instructional leadership teams um to kind of look at our goals look at um what we're striving for in our growth with our um data and also kind of tweak that a little bit to um let that be a little bit more stringent than we've had so also um 3060 90day to-dos um need to continue to expand meetings with additional stakeholder groups um also host additional facility focus groups um one of the things in the 180 days is to work with um you all to finalize our facilities Improvement plan so next year um month we'll have um Ben back um to discuss our facilities kind
037of planned where we were where we've left off kind of our options as we move forward and looking at the growth and addressing the growth that we'll have in our district and also start conducting instructional walkthroughs and continue to U monitor our school culture as we um improve throughout the year um wanted to follow up on our oig report um you know whenever we got the oig report that was um shared with you all back in May you know there were some Financial findings there were some human capital findings that we had to address throughout um our district and um some of those kind of went from credit card usage use of gift cards Refreshments food and then also how we were documenting our um uncertified teachers and how we were doing that with notification
038to our parents so um some of that um came through our you know our IG did not um identify any criminal or implication of any type of fraud however our risk assessment is now moderately High um to High and um part of that um it gives us a road map of how we need to improve so looking at the implications and consequences from that IG report we've had some additional audits through the state department we're um in the middle of our special ed audit right now um they've given us um they've been here about two weeks they left last Friday or Thursday actually um and then we'll be kind of collecting that information and giving us a report on areas that we can still improve um Amanda and I will be meeting with Federal programs
039monitoring team in the next couple of weeks um to address if there are anything things um with Federal programs that we need to um tweak or correct there also the um cognia our accreditation Foundation um reached out since um we had been um had these findings under oig report and they wanted us to report how we had been addressing um these findings um back to our accreditation to ensure that um they still want to accredit us so I've um sent that information in and part of the information that we sent in we've already taken um action on the Travel policy which you approved back in um June the end of June um had to update some forms there um um Chief Financial Officer which is Jim um trained all of our staff on our PE
040card usage and also the expenses and how we are supposed to do that with credit cards um we've um kind of ceased all purchases of gift cards for staff um we have um cut back on the amount of meals and refreshments we've um purchased for our meetings and scheduled those meetings um at times that we did not have to have um meals and we also have hired a procurement officer to address um the contracts um that were addressed in the audit and also to kind of audit some other areas as we look at our expenditures for the human capital side we have looked at our um you know responsibility of who notifies um those um parents um that are being of the kids who are being taught by uncertified um teachers um that is um
041taken head and lead by Miss Madden in our human resource office um we had been pushing that out to schools to say here's your letter here's your sample letter go ahead and push that out but since they kind of manage all those that are non-certified um they will be um pushing that out and then sharing that for the requirements that are needed for federal programs and also we've done some Power School coding fixes in regards to um how we code our um non-certified teachers there um also kind of moving forward we'll continue our policy review and update we'll be um training and developing those um for mandatory um whenever we look at our procurement procedures and how we'll be rolling all that out have some additional trainings on ethical practices and our financial controls and
042we'll continue to um ensure and um Insight I mean inspect what we expect with oversight and manage monitoring um through through our procurement officer and through other safeguards we're putting in place um through um our finance department so that was um kind of a quick overview of um IG and our 30690 before I go into our culture of Excellence um any questions on those two sections all right hearing none so um sorry if this is a repeat for you because you came to some of this um for our back to year um building a five-star culture of Excellence um that's kind of where I really have focused our you know Vision over the past sever couple of months as we've kicked off school and and so whenever I met with our district office staff then
043immediately our principls and then turned that into um our presentation to all of our staff as we um started the school year um we wanted to kind of Define what is a f-star culture of excellence and so when we're looking at um what is the definition of even a star um you had to look at what is that um visible energy it's a natural luminous body of visible energy or energy visible in the sky you know if you are the star of a play you're the most prominent or most important role of that play um if you're a star you perform outstandingly you know you you might be of outstanding excellence and if you put a group of stars together it can be a scale of value um so just looking at Webster you can
044kind of come up with a visible energy of outstanding Excellence when you start looking um pulling out words there but then I went into um you know the kids mental health Foundation was something I was reading and they defined a star as a Beacon of Hope um it's a shining light that guides the way it's a symbol of pro um positivity but then also in Genesis 1:14 and um 15 it defines the purpose of a star and it says let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years and let them be the lights and the expanse of the Heavens to give light to the Earth so whenever you put both of these all these definitions together and all these purposes together um we came up um with this defining a
045star is a visible energy of outstanding Excellence by being that Beacon of Hope so whenever we're looking at what our goal is not only for each staff member but also for each student for each um interaction that we have we're trying to make everything we do a star and so I want every person in our facilities to be a star I want every inter action to be a star and um so whenever we're looking at that um we have to try to figure out why do we want you know why don't we want to be a star where are we why why or what we're not doing um is enough so whenever we look at our district you have poverty rates in our district at 78 and A5 per. you know um all the way
046down from higer Tavern and that's 71% um at higer Tavern that's seven out of 10 kids that are in poverty all the way up to Ford which are nine out of 10 kids in poverty so we have um students in a very hard situation of um coming to us in a socioeconomic um kind of kind of card against them you know it's really one of those things that it's not saying they can't but that's one of the struggles that they're coming from and then you have our test scores and whenever Amanda talks about this in a minute these are last um spring 2023 she's going to show 2024's in a few minutes but that Gap is still there 10 to 20% below State average so whenever you look at our poverty rate along with our
047district success rate with test scores the only way to get kids out of here research shows is to help them succeed educationally so if we can't do better on our test scores do better if what we're giving our kids then um we can't help them succeed to get out of this and so we're really trying to focus um on every interaction everything we teach everything that we do every way we plan in every situation are we given that that five-star culture of Excellence um so that we can help our kids be more successful here as they um go so you know I talked a little bit about why but how you know how do we do that you know that star of being a visible energy of outstanding Excellence by being that Beacon of Hope
048how do we get there so we had to kind of discuss um thinking about a five-star rating where do you see things rated you know what qualities are present to rate something a five scar so we in our group groups we started thinking about what does it look like to be a five-star you know classroom what does it look like to be a five-star front office staff what does it look like to be that five-star um you know anything you do you know then we even looked at a definition of what a five-star athlete is um it's defined as the most elite Prospect with exceptional athleticism and talent so if you take that definition of what's already defined as a five-star um athlete how would you translate that into a five our educator so Educators
049then in the room they started kind of putting in and kind of giving feedback of what does that look like and so they kind of come up came up with all these different terms and what does it take to be that five-star educator in those classrooms so we've put all that together and really started defining what that looks like in our buildings in each one of our job descriptions um but also um looking at how do we stop this and you've heard it you may have even said it through the years but how do we stop the mentality of well this is lawence you know what do you expect you're in lawen you know how do we change and create that expectation of lawen is excellence and it is you're in lawen so this is
050what we expect it's not a because you're in lawrens you get less than it's because you're in lawrens you get more than you would get anywhere else and so um through that we're looking at not only being instructionally F or looking at other pieces we're looking at our instructionally focused components and you know our learns Grant has given us a you know a framework to really focus on a lot of this it provides that DT which is District instructional leadership team we meet every um Monday at 10:30 um with our instructional leadership team here at the district level and then we're all assigned a school to go meet with their school level instructional leadership teams um and then those instructional leadership teams lead cluster meetings with prin with teachers to kind of keep growing and
051keep focus and focus our data focus our instruction all back on this how do we get lawen equaling Excellence with that five-star culture of excellence and so one of the things I um challenged our people with is they have two decisions to make each and every day you can decide what their attitude is going to be and what their efforts going to be you know whenever they walk into that building each day they can tell me or tell their administrator you know how much attitude I mean what's my attitude going to be am I going to start off as a poor attitude a one star or are we going to start off with a five star there are going to be situations that change our attitude but if I'm a three how do I get
052to a four if I'm a four how do I get to a five and effort is how much work and how much um effort they're going to give us each and every day and I'm always asking for are you going to give us set five stars every day every moment that you can so this was the back of your t-shirt that you got and also the um teachers all received this one and we are Raiders you know was really looking at um how we grow all of our um students all into that focus of becoming a Raider but also becoming a graduate um we were at um the new teacher breakfast and um Louis Compton made a mention of something of you know each bite each little bit that every teacher does in our school
053is getting them ready for to become a Raider but not only getting them ready to become a Raider but becoming getting them ready to be a great graduate how are we PR preparing our kids in kindergarten to be ready to be a graduate how are we preparing them in every situation that we do and so whenever you're looking at this you know it's really a how do we become a star how does everything that we do be a star and be that visible energy of outstanding Excellence by being that Beacon of Hope and whenever um you know I'm not only asking our teachers to do this our staff to do this but I'm also asking our um Community to do this I'd like to ask you to do this so what are you willing to
054do what are you willing to commit to what are you willing to you know really set our stage as Lawrence 55 to become that five-star culture of excellence in everything that we do and how do we create that lawen equals excellence and it's not just well this is lawren but because you're in lawrens this is what you get um want to start on kind of end with this little video um Briant Kirk white um does a fabulous job for us and he created this one for me [Music] what does it take to be a five-star District to strive for the best and nothing less positivity commitment relationships Integrity consistency nothing less to achieve a five-star rating it requires you a star a visible energy of outstanding Excellence by being a Beacon of Hope we all
055must shine we all must accept the challenge together nothing less will we each and every step along the way be the ones to shine brighter each and every day will we shine together work together and grow together to strive for fives in 55 will we accept the challenge to be rated at our best and nothing less in this District We Will lawrens County School District 55 building a five-star culture of Excellence nothing less so we're always striving for fives and everything we do um what questions do you have for me no questions but a statement great job thank you yeah same great job thank you so much all right um now we will move on to miss Laos right good evening um I'm going to talk a little bit about our South Carolina assessment results
056that have been released as of this month so um I thought and after that I will also talk about the learns uh Grant so you've heard a little bit about that everybody's kind of touched on that along the way um the past couple presentations as well as continuous Improvement plans I'm going to do updates on all those and kind of try to weave them all together because they all do connect together and that's why I'm the one talking about them because they're all together so um I'll talk a little bit about explanation of the assessment so that you will know what we're looking at we're talking about um our results and growth over time um our five star culture of excellent highlights because we have some five star performances in these uh assessment scores and
057we can learn from those so um and those that's what we want to build on um I'll talk a little bit about the connection to the report card ratings because those will be released next month um connection to the learns Grant as well as our continuous Improvement plans so I'm going to talk primarily tonight about SC ready which are grades three through eight in English language arts and Mathematics uh so we've received those scores the students take those assessment exams in the spring and then we get the results about a month AG go and then they get released to the public I think about two weeks ago um SC pass is grades four and six in science um but that was a field test last year so there is no data available um to us
058we just had to have our students take it and if we didn't get 95% participation it actually would have cost us points on our report card rating so um we needed to do that and then we have EOC we call it and its end of course exams at the high school English to algebra Biology one and US history and Constitution so um this is something that you I believe have seen before all I did was add an additional row down at the bottom um you'll notice that some of our schools continue to grow in their proficiency this is proficiency ratings in grades three through eight whether we meet or exceed um from the year before you will see them in green um if they're in Orange they actually went down a little and if they're
059in yellow they're pretty much stayed stable um our SC ready I'm sorry that was in English language arts I apologize that was in English language arts um and here we see in math um so we continue to see some of our schools moving forward we see some staying about the same um and uh some falling a little bit back our growth seems to be bigger than our drops but um there are things that we can learn from looking at this data these are really highlevel overviews of um of the data so I'll talk a little bit about them when I get to the five star highlights um when we look at the high school performance in the eocc now this is something that you'll recall they used to do English one at the high school
060and then they moved last year to English two and so we had a line of 49.1 and you'll notice we had a pretty significant jump up to um 56.85 per at the high school for English to so we're really pleased with that growth um Algebra 1 is another one where you saw some significant growth in their EOC scores and biology one also went up if you recall last year our US history and Constitution went up quite a bit it went up almost uh 10 points last year and we did maintain that they didn't continue to increase but they did maintain it so that tells us that what they were doing is working and we need to continue to do that and then now see how we can get moving forward even more so I know
061that's a lot of information and and you have access to that so you can kind of dig into it there are also some career and college ready um reports and things that we receive there's a little bit more detail to them once the report card comes out but I didn't want to not show them to you you'll notice the big piece is the total number of students that we made sure that were counted in College and Career Readiness um last year there were only um from the 2022 23 school year there were 106 so our department spent a significant amount of time figuring out where are those students and why aren't they all being counted here and so um you'll notice that our number more than doubled in um the number of students that are
062testing in um all three subjects that we can we can count towards their career and our College ready so but I think the biggest piece is if we're going to talk about the five-star culture it's really about being those visible um I like say think BS of energy I feel like I'm talking about Lion King energy um but in that Beacon of Hope so here are our beacons of Hope right now and in the purpose of beacons of Hope are not to sit here and say look at all these great things that these people did these beacons of Hope hope are exactly that they're beacons of hope for us to build on and for us to learn from and for us to have models so that others can follow along um I'm going to flip
063real quickly back to if you look at waterl elementary school in they're in the middle column they're to the left of the gray and if you look back in 2002 they had 27.2% of their students were proficient in English language arts they actually were the second lowest proficiency rating and within a year they went to 44% and then this past year they went up to 60% so this is possible this is a Beacon of Hope and what that does is it gives everybody that is represented on that chart hope that this can be done because if I flipped all the way back to Dr penland's slides you will notice that our second highest poverty School is Water Elementary so we have to stop saying it can't be done it can be done and if we
064look at our math in 20122 waterl was at 19.6% they went to 47.4 and this past year they're at 56 and a half so they continue to increase and that's because they figured out how to make this work and so I'm trying to find where my cing is there we go okay um so let's look at waterl in third grade not only did they move up but they were 7 and a half% higher than the state average if you go all the way back to Dr penland's original slide every single one of our grade levels was either 10 to 18 per or 10 to 20 some percent below the state average last year we now have third grade is 7 and a half per higher than the state average fourth and fifth grade are within
065less than 4% of the state average in English language arts in math both third and fourth grade are above the state average fourth grade is 19% higher than the state average they had a 70% proficiency rate in fourth grade math so this can be done that is a Beacon of Hope it is also a model for others to build upon and for us to use Hickory Tavern fourth grade was above the state average in both English Language Art English language arts and in math and then at Elementary School who was one of our turnaround schools last year we had an increase of 4 to 5% Proficiency in both English language arts and math schoolwide and if you recall they were our quote unsatisfactory school last year so um their turnaround plan is working okay and
066we didn't really start those until about January the high school was also a turnaround school and you'll notice that their Algebra 1 was up 133% a little over 133 % our English to more than half of the students showed proficient more than half of the students showed proficiency so we're well above 50% in English too um biology was up six plus percent and um US History maintained the growth from the previous year so those are our pockets and so then we have to ask oursel well what did we do for that to happen and we do feel that we have some really clear understandings of what happened in those grade levels what is it that they were doing and fortunately those strategies and those approaches line directly up to what we are doing with the
067learns Grant um when we wrote the turnaround plans last year and then we started talking about learns I would say well keep in mind the reason we put these things in our turnaround plan is because this is what school Improvement research says works well the learns Grant is based on school Improvement research and that's why they line up so we have opportunities Educators to take on teacher leadership roles and responsibilities we have hired 18 Master Teachers we have 36 teaching Specialists they have all been trained they spent four to seven days depending on their level of training coming in um this past summer getting additional training so that they were ready to help lead their colleagues um we have job embedded professional learning where our Master Teachers and our teaching Specialists they provide professional learning
068during the school day in clusters and so you saw some pictures at um Hickory Tavern as well as at LPA with the teachers grouping together and working together that's that uh job embedded professional development our teacher leaders determine what they're going to do during their cluster meetings based on our instructional leadership team meetings and our district instructional leadership team meetings where we look at student data we look at our assessment data we ident by where we're doing well where we need to work on where others have done well what did they do in order to get them there and then how can we model that how can we make sure that others understand how to do that and do that as um just as well we also have all of our staff after next week
069um we just have some makeup training but 98% of our teacher leaders as well as administrators are all trained in the 4.0 South Carolina evaluation rubric and they will be conducting evaluations on all Educators this year it's not just if it's your year um everybody will receive evaluations and those evaluations are primarily respons or the purpose of those is primarily for feedback for growth so if right now your evaluation says you're at about a two star well how can you become a three star and let's help you get there and we provide the professional learning and the modeling and the coaching and the supporting to be able to move from that two star to a three star that three to a four um and then finally of course we have our uh salaries and our
070bonuses that are tied to the results that we should see as a result of implementing these other three things so I'll get a little bit more detailed in our our next steps for that um our primary activities that are coming up are to coordinate all of our school improvement work to align with our school plans so we will have report card ratings if we have to do turnaround plans um again because of report card ratings you you will see school goals those school goals have already been written and they were written by our instructional leadership teams because they dug into the data during our meetings so it won't be something that we have to start from scratch with and then we will use those and and send those out to the community for feedback so
071we can design some additional activities and things to really Target those goals um but they're all based on our student achievement data um we'll continue to train and support our administrators and teacher leaders we're going to conduct the weekly cluster meetings they started about two weeks ago um we sit in our instructional leadership teams at each of the buildings for example I was at Fords meeting this afternoon each district administrator is assigned a school um that they attend the instructional leadership team meetings on a weekly basis whenever they were in District um and I also um serve with great court on Wednesdays so um it's just a way for us to make sure that we're all on the same page we're all headed in the same direction and we can Target the resources and the
072support that we have um throughout the district all going in the same direction we'll work to complete our observations and evaluations to provide quality feedback to our Educators the year one so in our minds year one was last school year but we are on a uh Federal us Doe fedal grant that goes from October 1st to September 30th so we had the first part of our performance-based compensation bonus was distributed in January and that was based on student growth um the second part of that bonus will be distributed in September we just have to wait for the student growth scores to come out from the state in the state report card then our year two and our year three performance-based compensation will be based upon the model that the Performance Based compensation committee developed last
073year um in the in the winter um and then so I will be communicating the performance-based compensation model that will be used for October 1st to September 30th of 20 26 all the way till 26 um that that's pretty much our Focus for the next quarter um I think I'll stop right there for a minute to see if there's any questions and then I'll go into school Improvement plans okay and then maybe um so if you recall School Improvement we were required to write turnaround plans for four of our schools because they were either below average or unsatisfactory last year um and so we did these steps one two three four and really were at five Monitor and evaluate we have done we monitored and evaluated our plans at 30 days at 60 days and
074at 90 days um and now we're at the point where we're revising them and so we're looking at them how did we do how do we need to change these so that we can continue to grow and to continue to progress so first up is the turnaround plans are on our website so if you go into the Lauren 55 you will see um their turnaround plans is a link it's in my department um I think there's a couple other ways to get to it as well but the 30-day update is on there for every school the 60-day update is on there for every school and the 90 days is up there um I think based on the data that we received two weeks ago I can tell you that um Lauren's District High School met
075all of their academic goals because of the significant growth that we saw in their EOC performance Lauren Elementary School who was our unsatisfactory School also met both of their academic goals with the increase that they saw in English language arts and math proficiency so that was really exciting to see um both Ford and Gray Court were aiming at 4% and they almost got there Ford in math and Gray Court in English language arts um but we have some changes that we have made at fora GRE Court specifically to um Target some of those um those things that we think need to work we need to work on um for example I was just at board today as I mentioned those are my two schools that I work with for um learns there's a reason those
076are my two schools because I also knew School Improvement and they're the ones that we knew were not coming in at the level that um that we thought they might need to and so there's some additional things that we want to do and support we want to give them um as far as the other areas for the turnaround plan most of them focused on climate and so we're waiting for the climate surveys to be released from the state and we do not have that data yet um and then the high school has what are called upbeat surveys that are primarily from the staff and they give feedback about Administration and that will be done in the fall so we just don't have the data yet on those anybody have any questions thank you Miss Lac
077Rose I appreciate that Dr P Y so the um South con boards um school boards Association developed the board mhip Institute to recognize trustees who have attained different levels of their service The Institute that offers year- round training and um have six levels of achievement these trainings focus on leadership skills State and National issues and trustees earn points based on the number of trainings they attend tonight we are recognizing three of our trustees who have achieved their level one certificate and those will be Miss Peggy N Miss Heather elders and Miss Tabitha kit if y'all will join me up here and we'll give you your certificates you all right now we will move on to finance and operations um with Mr Jim lais good evening good evening you should have uh received a copy of
078the financial report for July 2024 the balance for the treasurer's office at the end of July was 10,135 63 with revenues year-to date for the one first month 2,755 $589 in expenditures of $1,250,000 one and the July tax collections were $445,000 any question about the monthly financial report okay uh the model procurement code that the district adopted effective July 1 of 2023 three requires for the district to develop a minority business Enterprise utilization plan you should have received a copy of the district's MBE plan in your packet this month the plan details the district's goal to ensure minority businesses are offered the opportunity to participate uh fully in the procurement process of the district as well as the types of actions that the district will undertake to encourage that participation in large part that'll consist
079of reaching out to businesses that have been certified by the South Carolina division of small and minority business Contracting and certific and certification when the district is seeking quotes or bids um plan does not guarantee to utilize any particular business just that we will make the effort to solicit quotes and bids from Minority businesses the awards will still go to the lowest uh responsive quote if two or more vendors are tied for the lowest quote the minority ownership interest would serve as a tiebreaking factor in awarding a contract uh the district uh board is required to approve the plan annually and the administration will update the districts I mean the board every six months on our efforts and the results of those efforts uh so I'm requesting at this time that the board approve the
080minority business utilization plan that has been presented um this uh particular plan was in our board packet does anyone have any questions for Mr Wallace um having no questions if we could have a a motion to approve the minority business utilization plan I will make a I make the motion I'll second it any questions or concerns discussion all those in favor of approving the minority business util utilization plan please say I I any any opposed the motion carries thank you Mr Lis thank you and we did not receive any public participation is that correct all right and now we do have executive session listed on our agenda tonight for certified employment contract recommendations and also to receive update and Counsel on legal matters so we will need a motion to go into executive session s
081I'll second any questions all in favor say I iOS we're now going to Executive session e e e [Music] okay we are are it's 901 we're back in uh public excuse me open session we do have one item to take action on from executive session and that is to approve cert certified Employment contract recommendations for the 2425 school year if we could have a motion for that please I make a motion to approve the certified contracts for the 2425 school year I'll second thank you any questions or discussion all those in favor of approving the certified Employment contract recommendations please say I I any opposed motion carries and having no further business on our agenda we are now adjourned thank you thank you e e e