001yeah I've already got about one minute all right it's Kurt alright roll call so that four of our board members are present this evening miss Salem is excused from tonight's meeting and we will begin with the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all alright welcome to our board meeting of May 4th and again given the be safer at home orders we American can meet this meeting is posted on YouTube as well as on livestream so signing off the agenda nism it's a communications you'd like to report yes the district received a letter of congratulations from governor eavers to acknowledge that Greendale schools received the NAMM foundation best communities
002for music education award for the district's quality music program this is the sixth consecutive year the district music program has received this distinction I've been working with Todd Michaels at the village to schedule a joint board meeting on May 26th to provide an update on progress towards the welcoming diversity action plan as well as shared technology services life in the village and community communication and possible referendum update initial interviews for the director for equity and instruction position were held last week the team is identifying finalist candidates to bring forth for committee interviews to include teachers administrators community members this week as well as a couple of students a virtual job site tour has been shared with the board to replace the in-person tours that were cancelled with the safer at home order our construction partners
003from C G Schmidt will be creating monthly virtual tours which will be posted on the construction updates page the district website and you can expect to see one later this week or early next week SWS a and other professional organizations have offered some information about possible restrictions based on health guidelines for the return to school administration continues to monitor the recommendations and plan for strategies to maintain health guidelines when we are allowed to return to face-to-face instruction all agree nil summers all Greendale School's summer school will be offered exclusively online this summer and a parent survey to elementary students indicated that there would be interest at that level staff professional development sessions this summer will be completed in a virtual format to meet social distancing expectations and I will share a report on that this
004evening all classes have been shifted to the week of June 1st with some cohorts and sessions offered at a later date to be determined the sophomore class received information on the application process for the student board member position for 2020 through 2022 interviews will be conducted in May with the principal the superintendent the board president and outgoing student board member emmab OD and that concludes my communications all right Thank You Kim any communications for the board that anyone wants to share all right seeing none comments or questions from visitors have we received any this evening no person is wishing to address the board are asked to email the citizens come in said Greendale schools org or call 4 1 4 4 2 3 2701 at least 30 minutes prior to the start of the meeting
005and we received no comments this week all right Thank You Kim then it will continue on with the agenda next item on the agenda is approved teacher appointments so personnel we've a couple of teacher appointments for the upcoming school year anything that administration wants to share no we look forward to welcoming the two teachers there's one part-time in one full-time position all right any questions otherwise I'm looking for a motion to approve I move to approve personnel as outlined in agenda item 3 I second there's been a motion a second to approve personnel any further discussion all right then they call for a roll call vote and Noel yes Kathy so yes and imes motion carries I didn't a.m. 5 policies so these are being brought back for a second reading I did thank you
006so next on the agenda I'm rarely board meeting minutes of April 27th the approval of the board meeting minutes any discussion or questions about that I would just like to note that we are looking to modify how minutes are reported about a year ago we moved to live-streaming all of our board meetings and our previous minutes have been a combination of both action taken as well as a modified almost scripted version given the archive and the consistency of the video meetings we are looking to make the minutes more consistent with typical practices minutes we had with the policy committee about this possibility so these minutes still have some partial scripting in them and we're looking to slowly have Marianne get to the point where we're we're reporting on action taken and specific information about that
007and referring to the video or community members see more details on how the session so that's just for information as you're approving this week's minutes they may begin to look different all right one other thing that kind of ties into that is YouTube also provides a transcription service for free so if you click on the videos there on YouTube you can actually get a transcription line-by-line for every single one of our videos that's been posted so for those that you want to or do need to see the transcription they actually still have that because we are live-streaming our meetings whether they're virtual or in-person very good all right any other comments or questions otherwise I'm looking for a motion to approve I move approval of the regular meeting minutes from April 27th as an outlined
008an agenda item number for a second it's been a motion a second to approve the regular meeting minutes of April 27th 2020 any further discussion all right then I call for a roll call vote Noel yes Kathy yes Thor yes and I am yes motion carries now moving on to agenda item five policy so these policies were brought back for the second reading at tonight's meeting there is we've heard them a couple of times there's some some recommendations that were discussed at the last board meeting so Kim if there's anything if you want to highlight here I think this is what we're now seeing is based on the original reading some community feedback as well as our our other second first reading I guess I'll call it at our last board meeting correct so as
009you look at for 11.2 the last conversation was to align the order of distinguishing characteristics now it reads a little redundant so if you wanted to delete it in one of the paragraphs since the paragraphs are now next to each other as opposed to separated you could delete it otherwise you could adopt it as is and have the redundant listing of distinguishing attributes in the second and third paragraph of the policy but otherwise all of the adjustments have been made that were discussed at the last board meeting around feedback from the community welcoming diversity policy team as well as the policy committee for the school board all right any questions or comments all right then I'm looking for a motion to approve policies as outlined in agenda item 5 I move to approve the policies
010as outlined in agenda item number five policies for eleven point two eight eight two point one and also eight eight two point one rule is there a second I second it's been a motion a second to approve policies outlined in ten am five any further discussion right then I thought for roll call vote Noel yes Kathy yes door door yes thank you and I am yes the motion carries all right then next time the agenda is we are here to get a an annual report and professional development and staff engagement update so I'll turn it over him yeah so this year we continued with our our professional development schedule we balance both professional development for all staff that's an alignment with division and the new learning that needs to happen there around project-based learning equity
011was an area that we addressed significantly this year even though it wasn't in the vision 2020 plan it is part of the Welcome University action plan and some some spaces that we were really making some progress around our equity within our school work and so over the course of this school year in our six half days of professional development and the sixteen hours of choice professional development from last August we were able to address equity very heavily some project-based learning and which you'll hear a little bit about in the short-cycle report for curriculum as well as some standards work and social-emotional learning work that was linked to our equity so that's how we have used some of our professional learning time this year Phil topically with ink it's very important that teachers have some voice
012and choice in their learning and help guide that voice and choice in alignment with our vision in 2017 with the strategic plan and the strategic priorities we identified Continuum's of learning for teachers moving anywhere from awareness to implementation of a skill and that is included for you with the report I can share my screen to show one of the arrows so that there's a good sense of what it looks like and I will do that now so you can see this continuum of learning of strategies that teachers can use with project-based learning that can help teachers make choices based on where their their self reflecting or feedback that they've seen on observations or conversations with principals they will make some decisions around their own learning about workshops or coaching that help guide them from where
013they are in their strategic learning priorities to from awareness to implementation wherever they fall in order to move a level or move up as we saw with the equity report last week there's an arrow for equity and inclusive practices and what we talked about was that sometimes this process isn't linear sometimes we might visit implementation and then really still be in an understanding phase or an application phase and so teachers have choices in their learning where they can move back and forth within that so this is what we use to help teachers know what the end goal is and how they can advance towards that goal so the Misses flater has worked with teaching staff curriculum facilitators and the administrative team to identify summer learning for this summer and it's included in the board report
014the summer workshop schedule for teachers it is compacted into the week of June 1st and is all of online in terms of professional development it will be synchronous which means real-time video delivered but this set like what we're doing now but the sessions will be recorded if teachers are unable to attend on a certain day that they can follow up but the synchronous delivery the zoom meeting like we're doing now does allow for interaction in some of the the real learning and interaction that that's important to some of the professional development pieces there are there's focus on equity within the schedule there is a focus on project-based learning and then there's focus on some specific content area standards as well as some newly added technology around some of the innovations that teachers have discovered during
015this distance learning period so that they can share with their peers and that can be spread in the event that we need to be online in the future or have just enhanced skills in terms of technology so with that I'll take any questions on the learning staff learning plan any questions from the board members it's one of the questions that I have Kim is so you said that the arrows can you can you clarify do teachers self-assessing where they are or how does the district administration assess and evaluate that learning to see is it being institutionalized and implemented successfully so self assessment is a component and there's reflection opportunities recently we had teachers self assess on equity continuum as we considered the equity agreements and that is helpful for us in addition some of these
016skills and strategies are used for administrator observation and teacher observation of each other so if a principal is observing and they're looking at project-based learning they will use this continuum to give feedback to the teacher on what evidence they're seeing and then use it for coaching as well so it's used in two ways both self-assessment and observation by teachers hired by administrators and what is that assessment by administrators or look like how is that delivered and how often does that happen it's delivered through the educator effectiveness and so it is used as an evidence collection opportunity so what principals are doing is they're collecting evidence that they're seeing these practices in place within the classroom so if it's not there it's not a black mark on the record if you will it is really about
017the them collecting evidence that they're seeing teachers operating in an application phase or an implementation phase of one of the strategies that is outlined there so it's not reported as like a grade book but it is included within the educator effectiveness observations as evidence of effectiveness within those strategies one question that kind of tied into that as well actually two questions is I know some within our scorecard sometimes we have specific numbers that we're looking for so you could almost map that to some of these different arrows is it possible to include that in this document in the future for like where we'd like to be as a district and where we kind of are to give us a baseline and just so we'd have to go back and forth between the documents and figure
018out how that maps and and then the other question I had was around one thing that I've really enjoyed and I really do like this model I think it's healthy to showcase how you can continue to progress one potential additional addition addition to put into this is identifying those exemplars who could serve or kind of step into that role of lead or leader for with their respective areas and I know that you're already doing that but it would be kind of interesting to kind of highlight that somehow to even showcase to staff that there are those opportunities to really kind of step into a leadership role as an exemplar and role model for others within the district on that area yes and some of those you'll see as the ones delivering the staff development the
019first week of June but it would be nice to highlight more specific behaviors or events one other thing that ties into some of the conversations that we're having and I'm not sure how this fits into it doesn't think I don't think it fits into this specific conversation but potentially future state you know one of the things that and I think it's fitting the staff and teacher appreciation week you know every single year Greendale teachers are recognized as being the best in the state of Wisconsin and this is not something that happens once in awhile it happens every single year so is there are there opportunities for us to potentially think even broader as we build that exempt larvae's of our teachers in these different areas and potentially increase revenue stream by offering training to other
020districts and their teachers around some of these items might provide us some opportunities that are a little bit different than those school districts have that is a great suggestion and what you might note in the PD there are two of those PD sessions that have been opened up to other school districts for a fee and the whole much participation we have but the restorative practices and the AVM are which is an advantage math recovery those two sessions are led by our staff and are opened up for a fee to other districts because we have capacity to take others so that we're going to continue to look for exactly what you're talking about for which is expanding and offering our expertise in other districts at a cost for revenue very nice so the required hours for
021PD are 16 is that correct for the summer that's correct to work days of professional development that are selected by the teacher I just wanted to note I think it's nice that the district is considering giving staff the opportunity to move to their new teaching locations I noticed that they'll have the opportunity to use that as as their PD time I guess if you will to help get their classrooms up and running is that gonna affect a lot of teachers or how many do you foresee that being in some buildings there is the majority of teachers and in other buildings it impacts no teachers and then how I guess that I'm guessing that it's already been taken into account with the whole stay at home and so forth when that's gonna take place and how
022that it will take place I'm all professional development in summer that's choice professional development of the 16 hours the teachers document and determine how they are advanced on a professional learn and in this case we're saying that setting up new learning environments within the spaces that are design by like the contractor that that is an important learning experience since though they will work with the cut with the contractor and make sure that when their spaces are safe to populate that they can get acclimated with that and review their resources and materials and how to organize those within the classroom for the best learning environment so we will not be setting up you must do it this time or you can do it this time it will be in coordination hit the contractors or when their
023room is safe and what what rules we have around social distancing at the time that they are have access to their classrooms okay so we leave it up to their professionalism document their learning gotcha thank you and I think I just think it's good that that opportunity is there for teachers in knowing that there's gonna be so much movement this year all right all right Thank You Kim for sharing then as we continue as we continue on with the agenda we are scheduled to hear the trimester the third quarter trimester reports for the the central office departments equally curriculum pupil services Human Resources business operations communications Jonathan can you share the slideshow do you have screen sharing permissions don't think I've got screen sharing okay there we go you know [Music] there we go we'll
024start with me tonight hello everyone its kitty I'm going to tell you a little bit about how I finished up my work on school safety and emergency communications for this school year we had talked previously about how I work to identify two staff members who could act in support of the communication team should we have an emergency that required us to launch the emergency communication plan so I have also been working with the the Safety Committee to put together the manual for the reunification plan and I've also been working to develop a substitute document if you will um the what I deemed the if kitty goes missing plan we don't think kitty will go missing kitty actually right now is in New Hampshire phoning in to the meeting so kitty can work just about anywhere
025it's need to be and and should we have an emergency where we would need to implement some of these plans I might not be as far away as New Hampshire but I might be at a different location off-site from school district so Jonathan can you advance please so this this particular goal that I'm reporting on is the work that I did around identifying those people to help me out and to train them to make sure that they had all the skills and the tools necessary to be able to be assisting me should we have that emergency so I discovered that the two staff people that we taught that we identified really have have and by design were people selected that had the ability to do what we needed them to do so this past reporting
026period I worked with the tech department and I worked with those two individuals Alex gate and shell Schwarzkopf to remake to make sure that they got the access to the school messenger list that they'd need that they were as I expected well-versed in using some of the social media tools that we would be using in case of an emergency and also some of the design tools so those ladies are well set up with many thanks to the tech department for gaining giving them access to some of those I'm listing things that they needed next steps around this we'll be continuing to work on revisions to a written protocol we have had for quite some time a gallery if you will of sample messages some messages that have existed from our district for different scenarios and
027also that I've been collecting and humilating from other districts so we will continue to do those revisions to that written protocol that continue to develop that catalog of sample messages and then also I'll be working with Alex to see if she can help me create some general use graphics so that we would have ways to call out emergency situations in our social media so that people parents stakeholders everyone would understand okay this is a situation they're reporting at does anybody have any questions for me okay on to HR Thank You kitty so my goal area work is focused around our diversity recruitment and specifically furthering my Learning and Development in that area to increase our recruitment of candidates of color Jonathan if you could go to the next slide so the Milwaukee metropolitan area chamber
028region of choice that the district has signed on with around our goals to increase the diversity of our hires it's a five-year goal plan and we started freek ovid and had a networking event in February that I had the opportunity to be a part of and really saw the benefits that that can offer to the district in terms of networking with other businesses and corporations in terms of what they're doing around diversity recruitment and sharing best practices so I think that it's an area that will be very beneficial for the district as we continue that partnership but with the current closure that's a little bit on hold so I look forward to those future events coming up in the cycle I also attended and completed the YWCA unlearning racism and focused learning around around racism
029as well as the a spa which is the professional association of school personnel administrators diversity summit that was supposed to be an on-site conference but we moved to a virtual environment and heard presentations around diversity equity and inclusion and recruitment strategies to increase our candidates of color and then the fourth item has been taking up a lot of time lately which is around the director of equity and instruction and revising that job description to make sure that it's reflective of our goals and aspirations for that position and going through the recruitment process for that so next I Jonathan we are continuing to work on that and this is a long-range goal it wasn't expected to be completed this year so we'll continue to work on that and increase our candidates of color that are applying
030and coming to work in the district you do you anticipate that we look to bring in is it is it different in terms of what our recruitment efforts would be just in being able to get one of the challenges we face is just in terms of the number of teachers of color that are licensed within the state of Wisconsin ninety-five percent of the licensed teachers in the state of Wisconsin are white and so as we look and as we strategize around that specifically around our teaching staff some of that is going to be how we can entice and increase the number of teachers of color going into teaching and you know part of that is our work around educators rising part of that is our work with the universities and the partnerships that we've created
031to bring student teachers of color into our district and then hopefully hire them from from that point so I think the teaching and administrative recruitment strategies are more pipeline focused and how we can increase the number of qualified candidates one other area is the Department of Workforce grant that we were able to to partner with some other districts around to select some of our peer professionals of color that are pursuing teacher certification we have three three paraprofessionals that are currently in the process in programs to obtain teacher certification and special education and elementary ed so I think it's it's really focused for those license categories and those license candidates working with the pipeline and to ensure that we're we're earlier in the recruitment process different than some of our paraprofessional recruitment or for other positions
032all right thank you very much all right in the in terms of pupil services area what I'm reporting on relates to mental health and social-emotional learning the goal was to increase awareness and develop systems to support student needs around trauma mental health and social-emotional learning a few of the accomplished accomplishments or highlights of this cycle were the development of multi-tiered systems of support teams at the high school and middle school and then also identifying and developing summer PD for district-wide staff to engage in related to trauma and mental health restorative practices and suicide protocols and prevention so you can you can note in the previous board document some of those summer offerings for PD that the pupil service team has worked on and will be delivering we've also identified current pupil service staff he needs
033district-wide to determine staffing structure and FTE part of that process was completing a pupil services work study to help identify roles and responsibilities and what exactly we're spending time on in the pupil services department throughout the course of our work day week and month so the next steps for the pupil services department is to jump back in and review proposals from the RFP RFP process that request for proposals to identify that community-based mental health provider and then once that's identified to develop that mo e Memorandum of Understanding with the community-based mental health provider to start rendering services in the 2020 2021 school year additionally will you following up in the next couple months to deliver that PD that we've developed in June and then also follow up and fall in regards to those topic areas
034and then also continue to work as that MTS s team to develop the referral pathway so that we can help identify and then determine what areas we want to work on in regards to helping our students with to health or social emotional needs thank you Tim I guess are there other districts or I'd say we're probably right in the middle of that my previous district I worked with a community-based partner to provide services at the high school level but there there are a lot of local area schools that are already doing this and implementing it most have been within the last year or two so I think we're probably in the middle of that process in terms of what the state is looking at there's still a bunch of districts that are not engaging in
035this but there are also a large amount that have gone down this path a lot of the presentations that we've gone to like the the board PD that we went to together focused on how can we establish some of these relationships with community-based providers so there's there's great resources out there on what the process should look like and also great examples of different districts that have already traveled down this path that we can learn from in regards to you know what's essential for this to be successful so I feel like we're in a really good spot to have this hit the ground running in fall and provide a great service to our kids it's definitely something that's much needed you bet I just had a Tim along with the mental health services I one of
036the things when I was looking up for legislative update is the the prediction of a shortfall this year will this shortfall that the state is looking at first fools will that impact this ability to get this person or how is that gonna I guess fair you know with with the potential for a shortfall that really should not have an impact on us in terms of using a community-based provider from my perspective typically speaking when we have community-based providers in the school setting students that are accessing that service are using insurance to do so we're basically just providing the venue in which they can provide those services so I'm not envisioning that the budget should have a significant impact on our ability to provide that service so just to clarify Tim the shortfalls will impact our
037budget that the mental health is not a cost item okay the net neutral because they're billing for those hours whether that be through insurance or some other Statesmen correct yep thanks Kim thank you I think yes so one of the goal areas that we focused on is increasing understanding of the district budget and school funding for staff and also the community at large so we've identified some of the areas that we're working to improve that budgetary process I think Tim just mentioned one of them is that process of identifying emerging needs collaboration with our citizen finance team presentation to our community as well as utilizing a district budget team so some of the timelines on that in the month of January in February we spent quite a bit of time meeting by building and talking
038about what some of those emerging needs would look like that conversation was frequently around pupil services and so that's where we've made some modifications the staffing beyond that community health provider that Tim spoke about the another item was providing a budget development update to the board and community in early March we know a lot has changed in the two months since that early March presentation so on April 14th seeing the landscape change we made the decision to work proactively to communicate with our staff on the things that we did know I'm in the evolving state budget and so we had 90 or so staff members that took part in a zoom webinar that myself and Julie and Kim hosted to give basic updates about what we knew and what our next steps would be invited
039staff members that would be interested in having ongoing conversation and provide advice on areas the district should look at if there would be a significant drop in revenues to bring that team together that's something we've been working on since last week Tuesday our citizen finance team that we've been working with this year got together and took a look at a school finance 101 presentation really thankful for that group giving some really good ideas and insight understanding the focus areas that we should get into and doing that tomorrow night we will of that presentation live via zoom for community members and they can engage in that conversation if for some reason somebody can't make it to that time we're also gonna record that and put that out on the website so that we can continue the
040dialogue I'm an increase that that understanding of the district budget our district budget team met last week and provided really good questions and additional feedback and from that conversation we've seen that there's a need to go in some depth in terms of understanding the mechanics of the budget and understanding some of those school finance items so I think at this point really looking at targeting the time period between now and the middle of June when we would bring that preliminary budget for approval to the board in the middle of June to continue working with that team allowing them to provide some advice on areas we should look at and do some additional surveying with all staff members so appreciate their help and dedication to that work and then as we talked about tomorrow evening we'll
041be that at school finance 101 so we're really trying to make sure that we're getting stakeholders both internally in the system as well as external our whole community to continue the conversation of how we're utilizing resources that's if I could just interject this at school finance tomorrow night or Wednesday night I thought it said the sixth should be tomorrow night okay I was just gonna interject and say that more - more of a comment having work with Jonathan throughout the year and having given feedback on what he's gonna do tomorrow night it's he's done an excellent job and I recommend all the board members if they're able to attend because I think you'll find it very enlightening great school finance is what makes the better we are reacting responding to things so the next couple
042of weeks couple of months we will be approving a budget that will begin on July 1st but are we expecting anything to be known before that is approved or are we going in with what we would expect we're going in there with some you know good information from either any of the state associations I'm just curious as to what so we're anticipating yeah to answer that question I would kind of jump ahead to say that we've looked at various models I would say that none of the models are based off of an actual Legislative Fiscal Bureau projection that is not known at this point and you're correct that it could be some time before we have hard data on what that projection will be so we're using information based off of what's being shared by
043state agencies so the school administrators alliance gave us two scenarios to consider and that's been the base for most of the conversations that we've had we've also heard information about the potential of a two billion dollar shortfall at the state level and we've tried to do some modeling of what that could mean if k12 needed to absorb a proportionate share of that we did see at the the university level and State Department agencies a significant cut typically five percent in those state departments this last week and so it seems feasible that that there's likelihood that the state of Wisconsin rainy day fund is not going to cover losses and revenue so we can expect further information about revenue losses right now we're trying to work with our district budget team looking at ranges of scenarios
044and trying to target items that we would look at depending on what scenario um would come to be but it could be some time even past July 1 where we would get actual hard data on what that that number will be when we bring you projected budget it will be not committing to resources that could potentially be lost so we are going to we will not recommend that you approve a budget that overspends what our revenues may be so we may identify a list of these things will be we're not recommending that you approve at this time if funds become available we'll have an order in which those items can be put back into the budget but it is really important that we when we bring you that preliminary budget that were acting on as
045much accurate information from legislative updates as possible and anticipating some significant shortfalls it which is what we're hearing from the governor's office and other agencies at this time and that two billion dollar loss came from the governor's office all right thank you that Jonathan with that zoom conference tomorrow night that is there I thought I saw an invite but is where it where will the public be able to go to access that as well and where will we go the public can register for the webinar and is posted in a variety of places but if you just go to the main page of the district website www.hs tour school finance 101 yep so tomorrow from 6 to 7 p.m. so next steps we talked about the presentation to the community and then our work with
046the district budget team so we'll work through those different scenarios about the what the revenue impact could look like and provide recommendations to the board of how we would tackle that in the 2021 budget any other questions yep so as a reminder we're looking at our helpdesk system and how we assist all staff and students and and how quickly we're doing that and efficiently so the last time I presented an update to you we only had I believe 14 responses we were hoping to have somewhere in the 50 range to get adequate data back and during a tech committee meeting I presented the results all 14 of them and I asked for suggestions on kind of enticing more feedback and they said oh there's a survey and I said well yes it's sent in the
047ticket closed email as soon as we resolve an issue and they said oh we don't even open those up we just delete them perhaps change this subject blindness say tell us how we did so we did that and now we have 52 responses so I guess that was good feedback in general were averaging a four point nine six out of five five being sanded extremely satisfied so that is good to see there was an instance where we could have responded faster but what we're doing is keeping a close eye on the survey results as they come in we're also meeting as a department weekly to review active tickets which is helping keeping things moving and if we have any questions it's a good time to review so simply going forward we're going to continue to
048do that continue to listen to the feedback and one other note was to make sure to communicate whenever there's maintenance windows are out known outages and so we will continue to do that thank you any questions for Raymond all right yes I am because I was the one who did the work on this goal so as we look at project-based learning which is the area that we were looking at I can't advance my site there we go so the goal was around increasing the student survey engagement goal from 3.9 to 4.2 that's the scorecard goal that we had here problem is we have not given the survey because in the current climate we weren't sure it was accurate however we have been giving those seven survey questions to students as they complete the PBL unit
049so that we can monitor that perception data specifically addressing this project-based learning experience so there are seven questions here's a couple of them I set goals and reflection my progress my teachers challenged me to think what I'm learning in school excites me so we had students respond to that we had over 800 responses to this which means that let's see 57% of 2nd through 8th grade students have taken the survey on engagement around project-based learning our goal was to have 70% of students engaged in project-based learning so 50% 7% is not quite there we do know that early in the school year not all students who completed a project were in fact engaging in that survey so we are short reported on that so our results are that our overall average is a 3.9 for
050engagement which does not put us at 4.2 however we do know that this is this is where we're at and it gives us some insight there so the question is is this reflective of the whole year or should we abandon this because it's not actually increasing student engagement or do we continue to consider why are there aspects of it that students are not engaging with because that there's aspects of the PBL that's not to fidelity and therefore they're having some they're not getting the level of engagement that would be expected there so what we know is through a survey of teachers in March we completed a survey of teachers in terms of their learning 80% of the teachers in kindergarten through eighth grade have completed a project-based learning with their students that is not reflected
051in the number of surveys so we believe that there is an under-representation of the students there while the engagement scores haven't increased it is a representative sample but it's skewed based on how we collected the sample so we're continuing to make progress the good news here is that we have come close to achieving the goal of 70% of students engaging in at least one project self reporting 80% of them did survey reporting 57 percent of our students have engaged in project-based learning so we are approaching implementation with the number of teachers who are at least in the location phase and engaging students in that project-based learning Kim one of when you think about the different phases do we notice any differences for teachers that identify or are placed into the implementation versus application phase so
052you know those there may be newer to this versus those that are not and where they're kind of achieving engagement with their students I have not done that comparison but that is certainly a good comparison to do because we do know that information on the survey we collect that information so 23 percent of teachers identified themselves in an implementation phase so we could certainly cross-check that and see if there's a disparity in terms of engagement levels that's a good suggestion Kim has there been any feedback from the teachers as to their how they like perhaps doesn't quite the word I'm looking for but how they like doing the PBL or how it's going for them in real real roads yeah there are definitely some teachers that have done three four and five projects this year
053which is an all in mentality and they continue to do that because they believe in it and they see the investment that students are making and so those teachers as you hear them talk they're the champions of project-based learning and certainly are sharing with other teachers and supporting their so given the number of teachers who have implemented a project 80 percent implementation rate is a pretty good for application rate at least is a pretty good indicator that they have bought in because there's no checkbox to say you must it has been a goal and they're being motivated to do so because they're seeing success with it I mean I I really believe in project-based learning so I hope we can continue with it in some level because I think it's a great way to for
054kids all right any other questions for Kim or any of the administration all right thanks everyone for this third does third corner trimester but this is the last time of the year for the get the third yes okay yeah there's there's a holdover question that first question is from another one that I missed when I was revising the questions for tonight so we are taking a look at chapters 9 and 10 with chapter 9 if you all would call being about the rebirth of overt acts of hate and specifically highlighting all of the experiences in Charlottesville in 2017 and how how that experience was and what prompted it around monuments and the push and pull here's how I noted it in my text here the battle over the statue became a window into the broader
055issue of the city whether to cling to the sanitized version of history or wrestle publicly with uncomfortable remnants of white supremacy so that's the area that we're looking at to talk about in Chapter 9 so um what are people's thoughts or reactions to that chapter one a lot of notes so I was trying to pick out the one that I wanted to highlight but one that one item that I really thought was interesting in this chapter was the confronting bias that they talk about and there's a book that I read not too long ago called the character gap by Christian Miller a professor from Wake Forest University and it the entire book talks about and I you know if we think about the center of the Greendale student the attributes of the Greendale Graduate characters
056were at the core of that and and one of the things that his book really pointed out was this confronting bias and that research shows that people tend to grossly overestimate the extent to which they will speak out against prejudice particularly when they are not the target of the offense and that was obviously very well animated throughout the the chapter and so there's a bunch of really good examples of that in Christian Miller's book as well and so I kept kind of circling back to that and thinking about all the research that's been done to showcase that we all say we're going to step in and we're going to help and then when something happens for whatever reason we don't and I think that also gets back to the importance of the things that we're
057doing in the district to you know practice makes perfect in some ways right if we just you know believe that we will because we're good people that's not enough we actually have to go through and practice this and see what we would do so when the situation arises you know that muscle memory kicks in and we actually do the things that we say we're going to do so that was just something I thought was really interesting kind of wove throughout the story and was animated in multiple times in this chapter I it's interesting going through chapter 9 was going back and watching some of the documentaries that existed of Charlottesville and just the intensity of that situation and you think about that maybe being isolated in recent times but watching the news the last couple
058days some of the imagery that we're getting from the state of Michigan in terms of the protests that have been going on at the Statehouse and you have people with automatic weapons and the the lieutenant governor who's the first African American and Michigan to hold that role talking about having those weapons and having Confederate flag apparel on I'm kind of storming into that that capital beyond where they were supposed to be and it's interesting to look at that with the backdrop of coronavirus disease that the data that is coming out says that it's disproportionately impacting on those that are black so that lieutenant governor in Michigan said 40 percent of their deaths are for those that are black but they only make up 14% of the state population so for the work that we are
059doing locally here what we've identified in Milwaukee County racism as a health crisis and that there is that active work to identify those cases of coronavirus right now by race and make that public and talk about policies and practices that we need to have in place to address it that our continued responsibility is to do the work every day and so just like our public health officials we have that responsibility to create that safe environment but I do go to the chapter and just the the imagery and the intensity of that situation is what is it going to take for us as leaders to create those safe environments but also be acknowledging of data that we receive that shows challenges in the equity of opportunities for our students and what strategies we're going to put
060to continue to provide those opportunities I thought it was interesting you know she talks about how Jefferson was the one who built UVA where this all took place and used slaves to do so which sort of reminded me of a book that I read many years ago by Joseph Ellis which was called founding fathers and thinking about that and thinking the book really promised of all the things that they left us with everybody thinks the founding fathers were so great but they really left us with a lot of holes one of them being building bias and racism within our country by not including groups of people like african-americans and in this in the slaves as whole people and farm owners and all that so I thought I kind of went back to that book and
061and throw the jack participated chapter I thought of my own bias and and what am i doing and what actions can I take to make it better for everybody it's been some time reflecting on how this chapter is how and how greendell is reflective of this chapter and as we talked about the equity work we said that it's been four years since we started talking about our data and the disparities and our outcomes and in 2016 we were looking at a strategic plan in which data wise equity was right at rising to the surface but from a community perspective there was not an interest in addressing that as one of the strategic priorities and just to write at the beginning of the chapter she says for more than twenty years I had been studying the
062kind of unconscious bias that operates so quietly that social scientists have to prove that it exists and that's kind of how I felt as we were presenting data in 2016 and trying to focus on this when it wasn't there and then here it is it rises up and the things that we used to have to prove to exist were televised and lifted out of the history books and so this idea that we we were trying to address things subtly we were looking at systems of unconscious quiet hidden bias and now it's rising up and it's much more much more in-your-face acts and how we have to address them and how we're hesitant to do that so as we think about the speak up at school which Thor you referenced a little bit this idea that
063we need to practice how to confront both quiet subtle racism but also overt acts of racism that are happening within our schools and communities and and it's happening in Greendale that we're not immune to what's happening in the world around us so as you talk about Charlottesville as you think about what's happening in Michigan that Jonathan referenced Greendale is one of the communities that's experiencing this and we're part of the society there was a kind of tying into both your comments no no well and Kim on page 245 there was a statement that really kind of made me think about Greendale when I was reading this where it talked about kind of this reality for different parents and how you approach teaching your kids and you know there is a comment that talks about how
064under normal circumstances for many white parents the interesting to show your child that race doesn't matter by not talking about it and by showcasing you know being colorblind as being a good parent and then it talks about how that is exactly the opposite for black parents to help children understand how race does matter and show them how to move among people who might be biased you know and that and that perspective you know being able to even just step back and think about that and and realize that the approach is that different people take obviously are very different and what does that mean what does that look like and then it also hit home with that uh the statement the author made on 250 which kind of came back and pulled forward the fact that
065this the mistakes we keep making the mistakes we all keep making is in making earnest in thinking that our work is done and I thought that gonna resonate it to it the piece that you just mentioned Kim you know it's just like anything you know the ability to sustain ability if you will in any action that we we try to take is one's ability to successfully navigate the waters of continuous improvement and so what are we doing as it relates to equity and putting that into play what are we doing we just got done talking about project-based learning right I mean you can't we can't settle for four good enough how do we continuously improve and kind of challenge ourself to always be better and everything that we do so yeah just kind of took
066it out of my mouth I had the two same two pages marked off the idea that moving forward is gonna require continued vigilance not that you're just gonna have an endpoint and I think the part that stuck out to me too is where it says that it requires us to constantly attend to who we are how we got that way in all the selves we have the capability or the capacity to be so I think it's important that we each evaluate where we're at but understand that this work is ongoing and it's not something that necessarily has a definitive end point but that we're going to continue to work at it yeah I think of it as one step forward two steps backwards five steps forward two steps backward it's always a little but if
067we keep going so that you've pointed out about being colorblind and that that white people perceive that colorblind means that I'm accepting of all I've heard it said that to be blind to color is to be blind to the impact of color and so this idea that to recognize and see bias and hate you have to also recognize that the difference in color does have an impact and to talk about that and not be blind to it and so that leads us into chapter 10 which does align pretty well with the Julie's goal that you heard an update on today around this idea of seeking to hire candidates of color and that we there's four there's many studies that talk about how comparable resumes for jobs that white sounding names are pulled and so that
068we start to see is is you'd insist they're coming out of college and applying trying to fit in by making their names someone more white and looking at that so they call it they talked about it as an assimilation technique so how do they fit in and so what you'll hear in a lot of interview processes is it's the right fit and sometimes that's coded language so how do we get past that did anyone have any other thoughts and on that within chapter ten that was relevant to some of the work that the MMAC shared with regards to affinity groups and focus is more so around retention that it was candidates of color or employees of color saying that they felt like they had to be someone else at work and they couldn't show them
069true their true selves because they felt like they had to assimilate or be more white at work and so thinking about that even just from a retention and isolation perspective as we increase our staff of color how we can continue to support them and make sure that that we create a welcoming environment and and supportive environment for them as they begin to work in our schools so that they aren't so isolated or feeling so alone if they're one of only a few faces of color in the district yeah there was a couple pieces I think that tied into that too and I just think that whole construct you know there's you can kind of go on two ends of the spectrum you can just pretend like nothing's different or there's also the salience effect where
070it's you know you make them feel awkward by you know if someone is I think what the author calls an out-group bias so if it's you know anyone who doesn't fit in with everyone else that's in the room the other other potential issues that you pay too much attention to that one person where all of a sudden you make them feel equally uncomfortable then when you ignore their presence altogether and so what is that kind of balance where you're really truly building that belonging like you said Julie and not trying to create kind of a fictitious like connection so I think you know those are those are things that obviously are are easier said and done and I think one of the authors comment just around you know we could have this analysis paralysis issue
071and the most important thing is to just act and and try and showcase you know have that that sense of caring and keep moving forward on this work one other thing that I thought was really interesting was even the call-out of some of the research findings Brunn experiences and how people react to things like affirmative action from the students perspective when they weren't getting scholarships and so then they were they were like the white students weren't eligible for a lot of the different scholarships that the minority students or the representative groups were eligible for and so all of a sudden that became a kind of counter impact for that subgroup and so they talked a little bit about how playing field so that minorities have an advantage on everything the feeling that some students have
072in these different areas white people are losing ground economically because the societies in infatuation with diversity and so just that comment I thought was in christena so the radical juxtaposition to all the things that we were talking about in this book and how you know but but it was it's a real feeling feeling that people they're finding through this research in people and so not ignoring that that people feel that way and how do you respond to that and help them see the bigger picture when they're when they're struggling with those types of things when one thing popped out in the chapter for me was when she was talking about her niece Tanisha who was a nurse in a nursing home and how she talked about page 27 she said when they get to the
073state race religion go out the window and at the end of life and at the beginning of life we don't have a bias because it really doesn't matter who's holding your hand at the end and it kept whirling through my head about how this whole thing with the corona virus the virus doesn't itself care who you are it's going to attack you and when you're being cared for it's not going to matter who's holding your hand at the end because your family can't be there they're gonna hold your hand and be there as a compassionate human being so it really struck me that just sort of really struck me in everything that's been sown and that at the end there is no bias and in the beginning of your life your baby you have no
074bias it's all thought one other thing I was just going to highlight which I thought was kind of guess she closes out this chapter she talked about the willing willingness to tolerate the discomfort as we learn to communicate and there's a you know if you think about kind of the foundations of communications you know that's all built on trust and I think that's that's something that is so important as we think about you know how do we connect how do we open up and engage with one another across this community to make sure that we can continue to build that trust and allow us to have those that healthy conflict in conversation where we feel comfortable enough to actually bring up the things that are bothering one another that we're struggling with and when we
075can create that that healthy conflict all of a sudden the discomfort goes away pretty quickly because you know that everyone has those good intentions and is reaching towards having positive impact so I think we're making strides but there's definitely a lot more work that I think we can do when we think about how to be okay with that discomfort and communication thank you I think that this using this book had a profound impact on me thinking at some of the pieces beyond the academic study and be the covert bias that has really been part of the sociological study that I've done as a PhD student to really shift focus to what is happening overtly and and how we can manage and I think it's quite relevant for some of the struggles we've faced as a
076community over the last year and a half so thank you next board meeting is that scheduled for two weeks on May 18th 2020 and again it'll be a zoom meeting at that time but we are adjourned so have a good night everyone thank you take care see you tomorrow many of you