WSD Board Meeting, Regular, May 24, 2021

001i will call the may 24th 2021 school board meeting to order it is 7 p.m we are in conference room c of the fisher administration building at 1 two one two one west north avenue miss newman please call the world miss braley she's absent dr jessepanger here mr mayor here ms milpell here mr phillips here mr allen here mr gentleman here ellie katie katie here mira garager thank you move on to public comments on non-agenda items members of the wauwatosa school board value the input of students parents staff members and community members the board's regularly scheduled meetings provide an opportunity for opinions and concerns to be expressed publicly the board values all comments and will respectfully consider their input and decision making the board requests that individuals limit their comments on each item to three

002minutes following any comment an individual board member may respond on the issue raised however it is not the intent of the public comment portion of the agenda for the board to enter into the debate with members of the community because non-agenda items are not publicly posted in advance no action will be taken on public comment regarding nod are there any public comments and non-agenda items there are no hands raised virtually thank you we won't comment in the room need your name and address please hi i'm deb faulk palik i live at 7435 west wall street the wisconsin department of public instruction has found the wauwatosa school district to have been in non-compliance with individuals with disabilities education act law i have five comments and suggestions regarding this ruling by dpi number one thank you to

003the school board member who informed me that the school board had not been made aware by school district administration but the ice binding of the district appliance with the individuals with disabilities education act i would like to suggest that the school board is always informed by administration of any non-compliance decisions rendered from the dpi or for that matter any regulatory body number two dpi's decision instructs the student record review be done i would like to suggest that the school district takes proactive measures to inform parents of students in grades 8 9 10 and 11 who participated in the enrichment program through the rec department and were denied extended school year services of their potential right to compensatory education no parent or guardian should have to be initiating content to ask about their child's situation particularly

004if parents have not been informed or know to ask school board members please keep in mind that the district is still within the 30-day time period set by dpi and that period does not expire until next week i respectfully encourage you as board members to follow up on this to ensure this happens for these students and their families number three dpi has instructed our school district to submit to them a corrective action plan within the same 30-day period i would like to suggest that this corrective action plan to be given to dpi is also given by administration to the school board for the board to review and take note of for any further action to prevent harm to any future students from administrative decisions that led to this ruling number four i suggest to the

005board as you have fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers of wauwatosa to review the amount of taxpayer money being spent in special education on attorneys what are the issues necessitating this and how can we make improvements lastly for staff to cite equity as rationale for what really is a practice of policy in place that suppresses opportunity for special education students was one of the most preposterous things i have heard and illustrates that we really need to have further discussion in special education around equity and other issues for those administrators in this district who so strongly defended their inappropriate decision which was substantiated by the dpi is inappropriate this concerning we need to raise children up and must find ways to do so we absolutely must do better for marginalized students in this district which includes those

006with disabilities and i'm hopeful that together we can elevate and expedite this with concrete action items and that we can do better thank you any other public comment please state your name and address barbara sweeney 839 north 67th i'd like to also state that my daughter has been affected by many of these rulings that our experience here in the wauwatosa school district for special education has been a long and hard road after trying to work collegially with many of the staff and school board members it didn't come to something that i'd like to have had for opportunities for my daughter i feel so strongly about it that i'm not going to even exercise or we're not going to exercise our 18 to 21 option in this district because it is was has been arduous and

007i just want better for the students coming behind my daughter after my daughter if it's a legislative body and you need to be made aware i want to be one of the parents that make you aware there is a lot of problems in the wauwatosa special education department thank you thank you any other comments on non-agenda items all right being done move on to recognitions student uh recognition uh one of the most exciting things i think we get to do as a board so thank you all for being here tonight uh at the georgetown jazz festival the following students from east jazz assemble one were recognized as outstanding soloists so as i read off your names miss mufil they're walking across a room will have a certificate for you so if you're here please come

008up and get your certificate stuart goldsmith for tenor saks arthur johnson for piano micah corb for guitar will martin for drum set jacob mosey for trombone arnold ramos for trumpet the trumpet section was also recognized as an outstanding section and those trumpet players are margo nichols colin mccally mckelly arnold ramos again and kaylee shay thank you all for your great work this year we truly appreciate it the next student recognition we have is wisconsin student journalist of the year the board recognizes west senior sarah stanislavski who is named wisconsin student journalist of the year we also have a staff recognition this evening [Music] the board recognizes our own sarah fertitta communications coordinator for the wauwatosa school district was honored by the wisconsin school public relations association with the spectrum award of excellence for the district

009district 2021 school year reopening web page thank you for all of your hard work we will move on to consent agenda are there any items on the consent agenda which board members would like to remove for separate discussion in action yes if i may request mr doman that we remove the buildings and grounds we energy item for separate discussion and separate action thank you mr meyer that item has already been removed oh thank you thank you very much is there any other one we like remove for separate action seeing none might have a motion to approve the consent agenda hey motion say dr josephine mr rowan [Music] are there any comments on the consent [Music] agenda please call the real mr man mr dr jessepanger yes mr mayor yes miss newport yes mr phillips yes

010mr rowland yes mr gentleman yes the motion passes move on to business services action items liability and workers compensation insurance bid mr phillips sure it is recommended the board approved the liability and workers compensation insurance bid from m3 insurance attached and iso moved hi all right dr jessepanger thank you for the second is there any more discussion on this item there's one thing i'd like to to bring up just as a like a proactive thing for us um i thought it was good that um that marta you know put services out for bid but i i think we need a policy and i'd like to ask the board permission to research a policy that sets for some guidelines as to when we review contracts over a certain threshold whether it's every two years every three

011years but just start that process of gathering other other board policies around that um so that we just have something in place um so when you know as as uh mrs kleikowski's here or whomever has a solid pathway to go um to you know has a schedule in place to review those major contracts on behalf of the district ongoing so if that's that's good with you guys i'd like to research that because any thoughts on that yes i i have a comment if i may um it wouldn't be appropriate to include in that research the um conflict of interest policies i note that our current conflict of interest policy for outside contracting does not it has a well we have a policy but it seems rather weak compared to other school board entities there's no

012requirement that the board be noticed for example so if we're going to look at the contracting process maybe we could pull that in as well if you have time mr phillips just in the name of you know transparency and visibility and that like you're saying you know periodic renewal it seems like it could all be combined into one interworking proposal okay point noted thank you mrs newman can help with through wasp for policy services they can give us examples great any other comments on this item or discussion thank you i think we do have controls in place um because we would be audited on that so i mean i just want to point that out but as far as refreshing policies and making sure all of the checks and balances are there i i think

013that is a good idea to do that on a regular basis so i appreciate that that's been brought up but again i mean our processes are always audited every year so i want to be clear that this is something that we do look at every year thank you mr phil any other board comments on this item any public comments on this item there are no hands raised virtually thank you for no further comments miss knowing please call the room dr jessepanger yes mr mayor abstain miss millfelt yes mr phillips yes mr allen yes mr german yes up next is the east high school generator replacement dr josephine it is recommended that the school board approve the project at east high school fully scoped bid results for generator replacement totaling and 519 thousand one hundred and

014forty one dollars which is included in the referendum improvement budget and iso move second i think you must be are filmed any comments on this agenda items seeing none are there any public comments there are no hands raised virtually mr when we call the room doctor jessepanger yes mr mayer yep miss neufeld yes mr phillips yes mr allen yes mr daumann yes okay we will move on to our teaching and learning action item cooperative educational service agency season one service contract miss mufo uh yes thank you it is recommended that the school board approve the service contract for the 2021-2022 school year between season number one and the wauwatosa school district for services and personnel and totaling thousand thirty six dollars and eleven cents and i so move thank you is there a second second

015thank you mr roland any board discussion on this item thank you i would just ask um the administration to comment on are there any changes from prior year and or any suggestions or things you want to point out thank you mrs mutfeld this is a pretty standard contract for us from year to year we do review it to see if there are updates or changes that need to occur every year the majority of the contract goes to support students with disabilities who require an out-of-district placement an alternative placement for programs or services that we cannot provide here there are also a couple of other items on the contract for networks for administrators to engage in collaborative work with other school districts that are part of the cs01 network thank you any other board comments on

016the side any community comment on the side there are no hands raised virtually thank you just doing please call the roll dr jessica banker yes mr mayor yeah miss meufeld yes mr phillips yes mr rowland yes mr doman yes motion passes we'll move on to our teaching and learning report and we will be receiving tonight a teaching and learning update from ms bowers assistant superintendent of teaching and learning and her team which is all gathered here before us we are we're just going to get ourselves situated here we're lucky enough to have some of our coaches and specialists join us tonight thank you all for being here tonight it's fantastic so if i can just start out um just to kind of frame what we're doing tonight i know some of the board has received

017a few emails and there's been some discussion about presentation and relationship to our last meeting as well but i would kind of frame this as a state of the union or state of the district presentation next month will be the state of the union the financial part of it this is really about teaching and learning i think this year we probably learned more than ever what works for kids and what doesn't and going forward we want to double down on the things that are working and i think that's what is going to be shared tonight still our equity plan and our core principles are really what drive and always has um for the last good number of years driven what we do in our school district and there's no major changes we're recommending tonight this

018is the work we've been doing going to continue to do um and just talk about most of the most of all an attentional focus on there so the floor is yours thank you i just have a couple things to say before we start um i know that there's a lot of data in this presentation and a lot of pages with numbers if i could just ask the presenters maybe as we go through the pages just to give a little bit of time for board members if there are questions just to make sure we understand the numbers that are before us i'd ask board members that we don't get into the conversation part of it until we get to the end but if you do have questions on certain slides just about what the data's representing

019let's just make sure we're all clear on that maybe it's just me and others are just fine there's a lot there it was a lot there so i just want to make sure that we're all understanding exactly what we're looking at so thank you please go ahead thank you thank you very much so i'm joined tonight by our directors nicole marble mike perolski teresa boyakowski jessica ebert and nasty rogers and also our district data analyst michelle anderson two of our reading specialists mary metz and melissa myers and two of our instructional math coaches liza weber and andy dimena so tonight the team is going to share what we've learned this year from a systemic view and how we are using what we've learned to identify strategies to propel our students forward and through the curriculum

020while monitoring progress and student success throughout the next year so to do that we have this visual here for you tonight we're going to start by surfacing our current reality our current state and we're going to take a look at that data and analyze both the qualitative and quantitative data look to identify some root causes and learn about additional opportunities for improvement of the student learning experience as we move forward from there we'll create a plan of action throughout the district that's rooted in high leverage strategies to improve instructional practices and accelerate student learning when we talk about student accelerating student learning we mean staying really intentional with meeting students where they are and providing them what they need at that moment to experience academic success and so tonight we'll start off with michelle sharing

021what we know right now from our data and then our directors and our instructional coaches will chime in and talk about what we're doing right now to address those just-in-time learning needs of our students and how we'll continue to use what we've learned this year to create plans to launch the 21-22 school year thank you so much for inviting me back to talk data with you um so school districts are rich in many types of data during a typical school year we collect data about learning from universal screeners formative and summative classroom assessments mastery checks classroom work and project-based learning assignments mastery of skills and subject content is regularly evaluated through course grades and practice standards contextual data about instruction and classroom environment is collected through classroom walkthroughs yourself assessments and observations students also have

022opportunities to set personal goals and reflect on their learning throughout the school year effective high leverage data use is an ongoing multi-dimensional process that occurs every day throughout the school year in our district i'm very happy to start our review of the data with some good news elementary students in the wauwatosa school district did as well or better this school year as they did last year in the areas of math reading speaking listening and writing the data shows fifth grade student achievement by math practice standard pre-pandemic and post-pandemic in the areas of problem solving abstract reasoning constructing arguments and modeling with math students demonstrated a similar level of mastery as fifth grade students last year annual review of our district math data over the past few years led us to identify operations and algebraic thinking

023as a high priority area of need for instructional improvement prior to the pandemic we were beginning to see improvements in operations and algebraic thinking thanks to this important work through the pandemic we have continued to see improvement in students operations and algebraic thinking skills across grade levels among elementary students we also observe positive gains in the area of english language arts this year's fifth grade students demonstrated a high level of mastery in text comprehension and reading accurately with expression is comparable to the prior school year during the 2020-21 school year students also demonstrated growth in mastery from the first term to the second term in these important skill areas across all elementary grade levels subjects and practice standards we examined a similar pattern emerges students overall are performing as well or better than last year

024and the essential standards for their grade level while we may not have a traditional school year our local assessment data shows a lot of good learning occurred in elementary classrooms across the district so as we think about the practice standards data that michelle just shared with us another way that we collect information about student learning in math is through common assessments these common assessments are implemented across all classrooms jk through grade 5 in the district to measure student progress in the major work of the grade the purpose is to identify consistent equitable content goals that reflect our state standards and to ensure high levels of rigor across the district this practice of administering and analyzing common assessments in math has been in place for more than five years and we began formally collecting this data

025district-wide and edis more than three years ago however even before students engage in these common assessments teachers engage in a data cycle around formative assessment this data cycle is not unique to math though we will be specifically speaking to math right now but know that this data cycle is used across all content areas jk through 12. this data cycle at the level excuse me michelle are you sharing your presentation in the zoom session is it not coming through june well we don't see it no you have to go to the zoom window and share screen to bring it into zoom as well there we go we see it now thanks thanks excellent that's all right so this data cycle that you're looking at now that you can see um is the data cycle that is

026used at the classroom level so again it is not unique to math but we're talking about math right now it is a jk through 12 process so this data cycle at the classroom level is a process that occurs many times over the course of a week in grade level planning teams plc's coaching cycles before a common summative assessment is ever given teachers plan for instruction implement those lessons study the results of ongoing formative data and then make adjustments based on the data they're gathering then the process is repeated again once the summative information has been collected so let's look at how this cycle might work as teachers begin planning from the start common assessments inform the planning process by providing a consistent way for all students to demonstrate understanding of the mathematics that reflects the

027major work at their grade level these assessments provide equitable and coherent expectations for learning around standards as well as levels of academic rigor in every classroom teachers then plan lessons that will build students understanding of these identified math concepts while also increasing students level of confidence and strengthening their identities as mathematicians proactively planning this type of instruction for all students includes formative assessment opportunities as well to ensure student progress toward meeting those established learning goals then we move to the do phase what might this look like as teachers implement the math instruction they've designed they pay close attention to the math instruction that's occurring in the classroom and how students are learning day-to-day teachers formative assessment may vary based on the type of information that will be most useful for them to collect this may

028occur through conferencing exit tickets observations quizzes the use of math practices which we just looked at and student contributions to student discussion as teachers collect this data they're responsive to student needs and are making adjustments to their instruction and providing additional practice and challenge for students so that they are well prepared to meet the proficiency expectations on the assessment then once the assessment is given teachers study and reflect on this information so they can better understand what their students know and are able to do related to the goals and the standards in the unit they look for patterns in their class data as well as areas of success and opportunities to strengthen their instruction in those specific content or practice standards after the study phase teachers move to act and adjust this is where they

029determine next steps for their students based on the data they just analyzed this may involve reteaching certain concepts giving students more practice opportunities and differentiating instruction to meet the needs that emerged from that data once these next steps are determined we move right back into the planning phase in order to respond to the data that was collected in this way teachers can ensure that all students are continuing to move forward in their learning and are able to demonstrate proficiency in the goals and the standards in every unit wendy just walked through the data cycle process at the classroom level then on a building or district level we engage in another data cycle to notice trends or patterns across the district as a whole we are able to engage in this process with information from common

030common summative assessments and additional classroom data the past few years our coaching team has gone through this process using discourse data aligned to a goal set at the elementary level common assessment information and math task assessments in grades three through five our team considers a variety of information when determining how to strengthen mathematics teaching and learning for all students typically this process at the systems level begins in the study phase though the data collected in the classrooms is summative for teachers it's actually formative as we look at the data district wide for teachers it's the end result as they use it to plan but for us this information is the starting point as we decide how to respond at a district level the visual on the screen shows the steps of this process as we

031engage in a continuous improvement cycle using a variety of data sources first we collaborate as an instructional coaching team to understand the baseline results and to look for patterns in the data then we determine what might be the most effective ways to engage others in making progress in the identified area next we plan professional learning and develop ways to provide classroom feedback and coaching to support improvement in the area of focus we implement the supports and continue to gather formative assessment data in a variety of ways including classroom walkthroughs teacher feedback coaching conversations and additional student data this information then provides us with the opportunity to once again study and analyze growth this process is ongoing as we continue to strive toward high levels of academic discourse and achievement in all math classrooms and occurs

032at the classroom building and district level here is one example of assessment data we recently gathered and are able to study right now this data is a sampling from one of our grade four math common summative assessments from this year teachers have gathered and are currently using this information in classroom level level data cycles these assessments play a crucial role in providing specific timely data that can immediately inform classroom instruction to support our learners and teachers classroom assessments allow us to be reflective about our instructional practice and responsive to student needs when it matters most on a district level this will be part of the data that we study in order to determine next steps for the school year through an ongoing continuous improvement cycle okay so a lot of these things that math team

033just talked about are also really although we're in a slightly different place in that process um so if you look at the slides here you'll see a lot of the same themes where ideas appear we just don't have the really cool visual that the matthew came up with but um we too want to be engaged in that ongoing living process of assessment and one that allows us to use a lot of different tools and resources and practices to really paint a picture of what our students can do and so again these bullet points just kind of reiterate a lot of what was just talked about it's a driving force for our planning it helps us reflect both at a teacher level at a building level at a district level and it helps us look for

034those patterns and trends and so for us we are just finishing our first year of ela implementation and we are now starting to look at how to fine-tune or adapt our cycles of assessment as well and so what you're going to see in a moment is an example of some baseline information we took during the second trimester looking at third through fifth graders ability to summarize more complex text and so you'll see a little bit of what that baseline looks like and what we have realized as we analyze that data is that has painted a very clear picture of what our next steps are instructionally and this is the type of process we hope to continue to use and refine in not just summarizing but other areas of literacy as well and so you'll see

035these same kinds of stuff that we'll be trying to carry out to to plan to carry out and gather information along the way to study the results and then you know readjust and fine-tune that plan of action to be able to ensure that we're really living out our goals for equity to really walk the walk we want to continue to make sure our kids are college and career ready and that means fine-tuning our and growing our ability to look at assessment beyond those state-wide and district-wide standardized assessments and so we want to grow into those practices of us continuing to assess daily or weekly to help teachers and coaches and staff to be able to look at that information in an ongoing practical way so that we can align instruction to students strengths so that

036we can look at patterns and trends that tell us where the barriers are and ensure that students are getting the opportunities that they deserve and so michelle will pull up that that slide it just shows some of our baseline and again this is before instruction has taken place and so what you're seeing is kind of that pre-instruction level so the data i am presenting is an example of a third grade common assessment in english language arts and while this data may appear discouraging at first it is highly informative and powerful data classroom assessment provides opportunities to grow and support our learners both now and into the next school year while standardized assessments often get the glory it is classroom assessment that really informs and evolves our practice on a day-to-day basis and i can speak

037to some of what we've learned from this assessment data as you can see from the previous slides and the current slide on the common assessments we've implemented have given us a great deal of information for reflecting and planning forward both as a system and in the classroom for a moment pause to consider what perhaps a more traditional single score would tell us about students we would be able to determine which students meet criteria and which ones do not when analyzing samples of student work however clear trends emerge that are guiding our next steps in our planning we have great opportunities to build on the foundation students have already for example generally students were thinking about main ideas and details and access some details to show a general understanding of what most of the texts were

038about across grades three through five more work is needed in preparing teachers and students for the ways of thinking that will be necessary in understanding the rigorous complexities of the text we're asking students to think much more deeply than we had in the past continued work will focus on distinguishing main ideas from details understanding how parts of the text fit together to convey ideas and supporting ideas without evidence this information provides feedback as the reading specialist team dives deeply into district-wide curriculum work and begins to plan for professional development and coaching for the summer and for next year and to better understand the increases in rigor and complexity that our students are called to navigate not only have these assessments been guiding important growth and ela instruction as a district they also provide teachers with

039a great deal of meaningful information for students in the classroom these assessments allow teachers to pinpoint precisely where students are at in their learning and to identify pathways for pathways for learning that will move them forward from there an important step in ensuring that all students can reach their full potential what we learn can inform both whole group small and small group instruction as well as planning for individualized student support these assessments have given us a great deal of valuable baseline information and we look forward to replicating the process in the future to continue to better guide our responsive practices and instruction you can see this gives us so much more greater detail than a single score or a single data point it tells us where we're going and what to work on at both

040the district level and the classroom level we will continue with the cycle of planning implementing collecting information from meaningful assessments and reflecting on it making adjustments and planning forward again for strong and meaningful instruction assessments such as these truly help us understand how our students are doing in relation to the standards and where they need to be while also fostering equitable and responsive practices as we switch our focus to examining course grades at the secondary level it is important to remember that many of the trends we are about to discuss were already in motion prior to the pandemic the pandemic has brought many trends to light and into sharper focus but it did not necessarily cause them it's important to keep this in mind as we work to contextualize this data as we previously explored

041earlier this year the percent of students who received an f in one or more courses did increase from the 2019 school year to the 2020-21 school year the impact of that increase was not felt equally across all student groups students of color were 2.5 to 4 times more likely to receive an app in one or more courses compared to their peers who are white students of color also experienced a larger percent increase in course failure from the prior school year to the current school year it is important to note that achievement gaps are not gaps in student knowledge intelligence or desire to learn achievement gaps are really equity gaps they represent gaps in opportunity gaps in instruction gaps in rigor gaps in welcoming classrooms and gaps in high expectations for all learners as we continue

042to dig deeper into our data we hope to better understand understand the trends we are seeing so that they may help us to improve universal instruction for all students prior to the pandemic high school students with disabilities were twice as likely to receive an f in one or more courses compared to students without disabilities during the pandemic however students with disabilities were slightly less likely to receive an app compared to students without disabilities and students with disabilities did not see as sharp of an increase in the likelihood of receiving enough compared to the prior school year in our initial exploration around this a few observations that may help help explain this pattern have emerged many students with disabilities continue to receive direct special education support one-on-one or in small groups on asynchronous learning days students

043who may be easily distracted struggle with attention or struggle with emotional regulation may have experienced fewer of these challenges when in a virtual environment and students with anxiety who may have difficulty attending school or who are often truant may have felt more comfortable attending school in a virtual environment as well this is a wonderful opportunity to explore whether practices or supports that were utilized by our special education and student services team may be beneficial to all students to truly understand trends and course failure rates we must examine our secondary grade data at the course level a deeper look into our high school english and ela grade data shows higher course failure rates did not occur across the board but tend to be concentrated in certain courses for example in english 10 an upward trend in

044the d's and f's was already present while ap language and composition um saw no impact than the pandemic at all moreover the higher course failure rates are not necessarily a byproduct of the pandemic as i just mentioned in some courses they may be a part of a larger trend that had already been in motion for several years while the pandemic highlighted and in some cases worsened concerns that already existed the root causes of higher course failure rates often existed for pandemic failure to consider these this larger picture could lead us to select the wrong strategies for how we move forward it is important to note that the pandemic did not impact all students equally nor is it necessarily the reason for increasing equity gaps many of these trends existed free pandemic which makes it difficult

045to tease out how much is related to the pandemic and how much is due to unaddressed structural institutional inequities in this english 10 data we can see equity gaps were already present and increasing several years prior to the pandemic in high school algebra 1 we see a similar trend to high school english an upward trend in course failure rates appears in the data several years before the pandemic began the increase in course d's and f's for the 20 20 21 school year is what we would have expected to see with or without the pandemic had the prior trend continued at the same year to year rate of increase equity gaps for students of color were also increasing pre-pandemic as well i would like to take a moment to revisit the idea of achievement gaps really

046representing resource and opportunity gaps the district offers two opportunities for students to take algebra 1. one opportunity allows students to take algebra in middle school typically in the 8th grade the second opportunity allows students to take algebra in high school typically as freshmen between these two eligible pathways there is a substantial difference in the number of instructional minutes students receive across 36 weeks of a school year students who take algebra in high school receive approximately 2 55 fewer classroom instructional minutes compared to students who take algebra in middle school in many ways trends we see in high school are determined by decisions made in middle school michelle can you repeat that number 2556. can you explain particularly for the folks who are watching who may not have middle schoolers and high schoolers why that exists

047why did the difference in instructional minutes exist students in middle school each week receive more minutes of instructional time compared to students in high school and then when we take that amount of time and then multiply it across 36 weeks of the school year we come up with 256 to 256 instructional minutes for difference is that because class periods are shorter because there's more class periods in high school than middle school yes i believe so i was one of our instructional coaches or equity coaches who brought that to my attention as well as an english major so [Music] as we move our discussion from high school data to middle school data um i would like to begin with middle school math in middle school math we tend to see a higher d and f rate

048in math 6 math 7 and math 8 compared to accelerated math courses a higher than expected df rate occurred in math 8 this compared to previous school years however the df rate was not appreciably different in math 6 or math 7 this school year as compared to prior years if we simulate a cohort of students moving from 6th to 7th to 8th grade over the course of three years time we observe another trend that we know existed for pandemic prior data analysis has shown a higher likelihood of not meeting proficiency standards by eighth grade in the standard math pathway as compared to the accelerated math pathway we can also make a quick comparison between algebra taken in high school and algebra taken in middle school the percent of students receiving a d or f in

049algebra is quite a bit higher when taken in high school as compared to when taken in middle school in middle school ela there is mixed evidence for higher d and f rates this school year we have implemented a new ela course sequence this year which makes it a bit difficult to compare this state this year's data to prior years we will of course continue to monitor this data carefully middle school science did quite well given the challenges presented this school year the overall df rate has remained relatively low across middle school grade levels compared to other subject areas in middle school social studies we observed a downward trend in social studies 6 and a slightly upward trend in social studies 7. the course that catches my eye the most is u.s history eight there has

050been a higher than expected df rate in u.s history over the last three years a similar pattern of higher than expected d's and f's has also occurred in math 8 and ela 8 as well in future analyses we will explore possible reasons for why 8th grade appears to be a consistent outlier hello okay can you hear me um so we have some data to obviously study here in a couple of areas so as we have mentioned a number of times already this evening we are going to have a very intentional focus of continuous improvement in three of our core subject areas in middle school this summer those subject areas include english language arts math and social studies we are regrounding ourselves in the standards that those three content areas are founded in by examining how

051they come to life with our current curricular resources we will be studying the standards and our curricular resources to provide more concept-based learning opportunities that foster deep and more transferable connection to skills and content this deep study of standards will allow for us to have purposeful conversations about our common assessments to provide greater alignment to the standards we want to verify that teaching and assess that we are teaching and assessing to the level of expectation of the standards instances in which we find that we are not we will adjust our instructional and assessment practices to address the opportunity gaps that michelle spoke of earlier next i would like to provide the board with an update on our statewide assessments for the 2020-21 school year we officially finished our last statewide assessment on friday yay this

052was a challenging year for statewide assessment but our district did an amazing job at assessing as many students as we could it was a really wonderful example of teamwork we anticipate receiving summative reports with our data in june july and august i do want to remind you that data for some assessments will be embargoed and we cannot release it to the public until fall dpi decides when that date will be and we will find out closer to september when their official de-embargo day will be i also want to give you an accountability update our the us department of education approved a waiver for the state of wisconsin that suspends some federal accountability requirements for the 20 20 21 school year this means that the 95 percent test participation rate will not be enforced this year

053and essa will delay new comprehensive and targeted support identifications for one year we will still receive our idea determinations and state report cards also remain active for the 20 20 21 school year i would anticipate to see state report cards sometime around november i think statewide assessment is only one small aspect of a bigger assessment picture within the district across the school year assessment is a continuous in the moment multi-dimensional process that occurs every day in every classroom throughout the district the foundation of our assessment practice is formative and summative classroom assessments these assessments provide us with timely relevant feedback that allows us to meaningfully shift our instructional approach and practice to ensure we are being responsive to the needs of all learners in the moments when it matters most another important element of assessment

054in the district is universal screening universal screenings screeners are a forward monitoring process in that they help us to identify students who could possibly be at future risk for reading or math difficulties screening allows us to be responsive to students instructional needs before they need intervention and allow us to fine-tune our universal practices which benefits all students if students do need intervention we use progress monitoring assessments to monitor student progress over the course of the intervention intervention progress monitoring may occur over a few weeks a few months or span a school year depending on the student's individual needs statewide summative assessments are our most well known assessments these include forward exam dlm act aspire and act with writing these assessments occur annually in the spring and they help us to monitor our growth from year

055to year finally grades and practice standards are evaluated numerous times throughout the school year though we do not typically think of them as such grades are a summative evaluation of students mastery of learning targets and provide another important data point along our data journey as we move forward we would like to critically rethink the role of assessment and evaluation with the district to ensure we are creating a holistic learner profile that is unique to each student's educational journey at the core of our learner profile is assessment classroom work grades practice standards and teacher observation this data sits within a broader context of valuable information that helps us understand the unique learning journey of each of our students and what helps them to thrive as we think about each student we want to consider other helpful

056pieces of data such as their sense of belonging and teacher support student goal setting exit tickets classroom walkthroughs student focus groups and thought exchanges conferences attendance social emotional learning and so much more by embracing a profile of the whole learner we can approach student data with a more deliberate equity mindset finally in a bit of foreshadowing before i appear before you at the next board meeting i would like to talk very briefly about universal screeners so as you know the district has used the map assessment for many years as our universal screener and over time map has increasingly failed to meet our needs for a strong effective screening tool after a great deal of thought and consideration we would like to propose a new universal screener for the upcoming school year the news grader was

057selected through a careful evaluation process that focused around four primary areas of need when we're thinking about a universal screener and the type of data we need we need data that is more timely and flexible so that we can support students when it matters most we need an assessment that measures both breadth and depth it needs to meet the rigor that we expect both within the district and that we are seeing on our summative assessments statewide we need data that can be easily drilled and explored we need an assessment system that has reports that we can actually access the data it's no good to collect data if you can't actually pull it up and really quickly use it in a meaningful way and we need an assessment that is deeply student and instruction focused and

058with our union universal screener i am going to be very focused on keeping it very student and instruction driven most importantly we want to reimagine our purpose and goals for assessment in the district i really want assessment to be more purposeful actionable and equitable oops you've already advanced me thank you michelle thanks so much to michelle and to our coaches and reading specialists for sharing a little bit about what we've learned in terms of um the data we've gathered this year so the team touched on some of the actions a bit already in the in that data review but we want to share a little bit more around these six buckets that we've identified to organize our planning and support going forward so intentional planning and collaboration that's anchored by standards relevant and responsive teaching

059that is meeting students where they are strategic use of research-based strategies to design rigorous learning experiences for our students reviewing refining and recalibrating around common summative assessments to drive our instruction being really intentional about nurturing our culture of equity that's grounded in our core principles of teaching and learning and then actively supporting the social and emotional learning needs of all of our students so next the team is going to share more about each one of these action areas all right so i will start off by talking a little bit about our plan for learning um grounded by our standards so during the 2017-2018 school year we worked as a district to develop an instructional framework to provide a cohesive approach to daily instruction this was a collaborative effort between administrators teachers and other instructional support

060staff initial drafts were presented at each school building for additional input and refinement starting with the 2018-2019 school year the instructional framework has guided our lesson planning during the flux of models of instruction this past year and a half the instructional framework served as a guidepost on how to flex learning opportunities for students in order to maintain high quality rigorous instruction as we move into the 2021-2020 school year we look to continue to refine our practice and alignment to the framework by centering intentional lesson planning and reflection around it and as we already referenced our work this summer and throughout next school year is really to continue using that cycle of continuous improvement which again includes that thoughtful planning that action and study and being able to always adjust and act on what we are

061learning this is to ensure that our instruction and curriculum foster that deep relevant and rich conceptual based learning experience is again anchored in the standards so it serves all of our students a critical part of teaching and learning has always been and will continue to be on relevant and responsive instruction for every student relevant and responsive instruction is driven by assessments and happens when we know our students well deep relationships with our learners helps make this happen when learning is relevant and we are responsive we can make sure each student receives the skills knowledge tools and habits necessary for their individual success relevant teaching is understanding each student's strength to inform our instruction it's about entering learning spaces with an asset-based lens what can students do their strengths their interests and that their cultures are

062then represented in our instruction in order to be responsive and know where our learners are we must use data to drive instructional decisions as you heard from michelle and our coaches described in great detail already this data helps us know when there is a need to jump forward and who we jump forward with is all students some a few and where do we need to spend time reteaching which students require additional opportunities to practice or be retaught skills again until they solidify mastery [Music] a major focus focus of our work has been and continues to be to strengthen our multi-level systems of supports also known as an mlss system our mlss system ensures the needs of all learners are addressed in the general education classroom this includes but it's not limited to our students with

063disabilities english language learners or a student who may have experienced trauma this mlss system of supports helps us to identify individual goals and pathways to address needs within and beyond the classroom it requires the use of data to monitor progress and revisit and revise students goals the system of support serves as a vehicle for educational equity for all of our students as i already mentioned our instructional our instructional framework actually centers on student-centered learning experiences that require students to engage in complex thinking opportunities to foster these rich learning experiences teachers employ research informed learning strategies in the areas of reading writing inquiry collaboration and organization for example at the elementary level prior to the pandemic our teachers were utilizing a variety of inquiry collaborative and organizational strategies to promote student discourse in the area of

064mathematics through discourse students co-construct new knowledge together while deepening their engagement and belonging in the classroom and the teacher serves as the learning guide on the side we remain committed to these practices that have proven to be so fruitful for student learning with the intention of refining our instructional moves behind the strategies as well as look to utilize these same practices and other content areas additionally for the last two years our high schools have been working on teaching students the organizational skill of purposeful note-taking this learning explicitly teaches students how to make meaning of their thinking while reading writing or actively listening students who then students are also then explicitly taught how to integrate their notes interrogate their notes excuse me to make deeper connections and meaning moving into next year we aim to continue

065to refine and extend these opportunities for students additionally this year we have learned a lot about how to utilize technology to not only provide students with access to learning but to enhance learning with the assistance of technology we have found a variety of ways to foster student collaboration in reading writing and inquiry-based opportunities that we aim to continue to leverage next year and beyond and as michelle and our instructional coaches outlined earlier a strong focus in teaching and learning is to enhance and provide sound assessment alignment across our system this starts with ensuring multiple data points make up each student's learning profile that we are reviewing many different assessments both those formal and informal assessments to understand each individual learner this work also includes making sure common assessments allow students to express their understanding of

066instruction in multiple modalities additionally with our focus on assessment alignment we look to engage in deep collaborative reviews and refinement of our current assessments making sure there is a strong alignment to the standards and that the assessments match the intended learning outcomes these collaborative reviews include multiple stakeholders at the table engaging in that conversation both general education teachers special education teachers coaches administrators and students services staff all coming together additionally during our early release time on wednesdays and during common planning times whether that be grade level or content area teams these educators will calibrate on classroom data that is collected the opportunity to review one another's data and calibrate on assessment measures will assist teachers in eliminating as much subjectivity and bias as possible in the evaluation and feedback process this will help students receive

067the most appropriate grade and feedback to feed their learning forward through this process teachers also receive reflective feedback on the instructional choices that they made to yield the data based on what the classroom data tells them teachers will either respond by re-teaching in a different way or move forward with additional skills or content in other words teachers will engage in their classroom specific continuous improvement cycle where they will study their data act on or adjust their approach plan for the new lesson based on what they need to act on or adjust and then execute the lesson so the next action step is building an intentional culture for equity and so that is really guided by four key main areas the first being um focusing our efforts on the core principles of teaching and learning and

068so really looking into intentionally at our district and building leadership practices so identifying examples and not examples of how those core principles show up in our practice considering our focus with our staff when our why which is equity and doing what's best for each and every kid and then lastly through really effective intentional coaching and support for all of our students in addition to what you see there the questions that we ask are how are those values and beliefs communicated in our buildings how do you know the values and beliefs are shared among adults in your buildings how are you assessing monitoring and nurturing our moral imperative of equity to ensure a strong culture in our organization and our buildings and then lastly what happens when those values and beliefs are violated in our buildings

069how do we engage in correct action plans and how do we heal when a violation occurs uh the second key area there are instructional practices so making sure that we are engaging in asset based practices that affirm and avail the identities of all of our students their voices and then the same thing goes for our teachers and educators as well and then lastly making sure that we are collaborating at really high levels to co-plan and co-serve for inclusive instruction and really good learning experiences for all of our kids and in the last two areas there have been really high points for both assistant superintendent cruz ferran and also kwakowski and looking at how do we engage in really effective hiring practices and then lastly they're making sure our budgeting practices reflect our values and our

070principles which are all centered on equity in regards to social and emotional learning we have two broad mental health goals the first is that we believe we can create safe supportive and accurate learning environments if we enhance staff capacity to support all students social and emotional development the second is that we believe we can increase the sense of belonging for all students and families if we intentionally spend time building relationships we can begin by normalizing active listening taking time to learn about experiences concerns and fears as we've learned through the pandemic we often do not know the extent of which trauma has impacted all of our students our goal is that by offering the broadest possible coverage that this is not going to be seen as just another thing and we are not going to

071overlook unintentionally any of our students our practices will allow us to prevent and mitigate the effects of trauma before they escalate and negatively impact our students well-being and success in school a common theme this evening is this is not new work for us and one piece of data that i wanted to share was what we utilized from our 2019 yrbs and in that report 68 of our students who took it shared that they feel strongly or that they agree or they strongly agree that they belong in school which is overall positive of our students who took the uh report 11 said though they did not feel like they belonged at school which is obviously a an area of growth for us as well how this really ties into mental health is that back in 2019

072part of the pandemic excuse me 86 of our students who self-reported a mental health concern or need so that they do not feel like they belong in their school as we've looked at again the beginning of our return to school we anticipate that there will be continued needs to rise as such our real goal is to continue to support with support and work with our staff and that really goes to our second bullet point on the emphasis of building confidence and working with the growth mindset for our district our plan is over the next two years to add 10 train the trainers from st aids in the seven essential ingredients of travel informed care primarily those ads will be within our student services staff adding training to that as well as within our instructional equity

073coaches we believe again as we said that by doing so it's going to help us to shift perspective and how we work with students while also building um capacity in our adults about how to develop adult-to-student and student-to-student relationships within their classroom we've also realized within our district that this looks different from junior kindergarten to our senior year and with having 16 different schools the increased trainers will allow us to prioritize ways to increase that sense of belonging but also the work about how do we implement seo practices within our normal courses or times within the classroom an example of that from this year that's really been prioritized in the elementary school utilization of the morning meeting and the second step curriculum that is regularly utilized in middle school and high school we want to

074take the work that we're doing within our advisory structure ensure and build in time and space and also adult educator believe that they can veer off of content and to transfer that into their classrooms as well the last part is really for us we also know that this work doesn't happen in a vacuum we've had a lot of very committed professionals within our teaching staff and we know that for our students to do well our adults need to be well and that it's been a difficult year for them and so our goal is that anything that we're looking at as far as a mental health goal for students we also want to model and utilize those practices with our current staff we want to work on coping skills building resiliency looking at supporting work and

075home balance as well understanding that when our adults are in good places with their mental well-being that ultimately is going to have a major impact on our students experiences so in addition to the actions we outline we also have several other components that we still need to do a little work with we are finalizing the facilitation of learning we've been engaged in all spring with our building administrators to support them in a process of continuous improvement as they begin to analyze their school specific data this summer so tonight we gave you kind of the systemic view the schools need that opportunity to dig in and see um what their realities were at the building level after that after that then we'll come back together and and work them through a continuous improvement cycle as part

076of the school perception survey this spring we included a thought exchange question to gather feedback from staff around the needs to better execute our district equity plan so i believe that survey closes tomorrow so we will spend some time synthesizing that feedback and use it to help us design the professional learning calendar for the coming school year those days that we have off where we bring staff together and engage in learning and then finally we'll be working with dr means as he transitions this summer to execute a system for continuous improvement where we're examining and adjusting throughout the year to meet the needs of our students as we engage in a district data cycle all right so bringing us home and closing all of what you've heard tonight from michelle our wonderful instructional coaches my

077fellow directors is that everything we do has to reflect our moral imperative and that's equity and simply that's doing what's best for each and every kid who comes across our doorways we enter our district and who [Music] leave us and go off into the community into career fields and also college and so last year um this governing body decided to um vote on and pass this particular plan around equity and the key things were opportunity making sure everyone has access including kids and families um belonging increasing that sense of belonging making sure that all of our kids and families feel like that school is also an extension of home for them and then lastly achievement what we mean by that is social and academic success do every kid does every kid have an opportunity to

078to experience social and academic success and so some key action steps were identified in that particular plan and what you saw tonight were those actions sort of being realized and really guiding our intentional adult behaviors to answer that key question which guides everything that we do everyone in this room everyone in this district and everyone in the world tells community how do our actions reflect our moral imperative so what we reported on tonight is a plan and just a report an update on how we're going to be fiercely focused on that moral imperative and do what's best for each and every kid thank you appreciate everyone's efforts tonight it's great to have you here with us i'll open it up to board members if there's any comments or questions you'd like to make thanks mr

079allen thank you thank you very much these very comprehensive reports good to see um where we're at um it's great to see the great success of the elementary levels i mean that's like incredible honestly to see um that success at the elementary level should be like a tip of the cap to everybody at the elementary schools that's just outstanding to see so to everybody that's in elementary school like amazing i mean everybody amazing but just those results are should be a relief to many people um for i guess in terms of the presentation i had a couple questions um in terms of the algebra one i'll start there with the instructional minutes with the difference between eighth grade and then right ninth grade in high school i heard that like asserted as an issue but

080then i guess i didn't hear it clarified as and now we'd recommend something to shift that or make that difference is there anything proposed that we're looking at even in draft form to change 2 500 yeah yeah not at this time i think we need to dig into that and and what does what does the instruction look like at the middle school level how deep are they able to go with that um with those additional minutes and so i think that's part of the study we want to do this summer as we're looking at that curriculum uh alignment to the standards and and what we are using instructionally to make sure that kids are getting what they need both at the middle school and high school so it'll be a good study experience for us

081to be able to come back and potentially make a proposal for something in the future okay um see for the universal screener obviously that i mean it sounds like maps is not giving us what we need i would love to hear more about like the why it's not giving us what we need obviously pivoting from one [Music] existing tool that we have all sorts of legacy data benchmarks all that if we moved to a new tool uh would we be able to still benchmark against the old or would that just sort of go away and start fresh with new data somebody can explain that that'd be awesome so benchmarks would be similar but a little bit more rigorous so in some ways would be starting over in other ways it's an upgrade to business as

082usual and we intend to come to the june 14th board meeting with a presentation specifically around our recommendation for the universal screener the process we use to evaluate tools and and exactly that mr rollin why this is our recommendation and we feel that it would help us better make instructional decisions to support student learning okay okay yeah i guess my right the hesitation is losing all of that historic data that's the big thing to me to say like don't we're gonna move away from that and go to the cylinders i just thought that's a very compelling presentation um are there any other data points that we've seen um that might help us to explain the story in terms of like absences or address changes or anything like that that might help to explain the story

083of the year i know there's like one kid i know who's had to move like five different times because of divorce and you know custody change and uh job loss and then job gain and they moved like every single time do we have any sense of like if that was impactful for specific people more than normal um i think our attendance rates this year have held pretty well um compared to prior years we haven't actually looked at mobility for this year that's something that we would typically start to look at after the year is closed but um from what we know previous data analyses mobility for students um does impact their learning or at least it is correlated to [Music] sometimes lower growth from fall to spring and that can be whether it's within district

084moves between school or intra-district or inter-district between us and other districts yeah that's that's definitely a factor it can be a factor yeah i'd just be curious right we've all read the news that domestic you know incidents are on the rise and just i'm sure that has an impact just overall so i'd be curious that those external factors also are showing up in the name of our data uh in a measurable way or meaningful way i would think that um i know that our schools are having those conversations as they're working with students and families and so that would be part of those discussions that they're having um when they're diving into that data this summer and taking a look at that but that is part of the ongoing conversations that i know student services

085has been engaging in with um with the school-based teams to make sure that there's outreach to families who are struggling but uh and my question on the uh the training the trainers it sounds interesting this program you know only read really really good things about it another question about that is just the rationale for why we would train the instructional coaches as opposed to hiring just more social workers or therapists or counselors just to understand that i'm sure it's more efficient probably to do the training versus hiring a person salary and benefits was a friendship yeah that's been part of the i'm sorry go ahead [Music] a little bit of both um i think one of the ways we looked at it is how we do the broadest level of coverage because we're within the

086budget not going to be we'll necessarily add like a social worker to every school i do want to compliment i think dr ertel as well as marta and kristen for also recognizing that there were needs and so we did increase in fact um counseling fpd's in both middle schools so that they they added a 0.5 where they will have three counselors at both middle schools for next year we really thought though with our current partnership with st hayes that it was work that our staff had already started and so that how can we on a more universal level support our teachers in the classroom to bring out those seven essential ingredients or aspects on a more consistent basis our staff the feedback that i get within the student services team is that we're at that

087point where that's what people want help us to do better in these areas we understand the why behind it we want to build our skills and our capacity and by adding more people to that team it allows more intentional work to take place uh individually or within smaller groups okay uh then my last question is and maybe we don't know this yet but do we know the data was all semester one do we have a sense of how semester two is tracking i know you won't have like 10th grade english off the top of your head but in a general sense do you have a sense of where that's headed like same trajectory changing trajectory once the semester closes then we'll pull that data and re-run it okay exactly yeah yeah it's it's not accurate

088enough for us at this point we're not close enough to the end of the semester thank you any other important comments yes thank you um it's good to hear your report this evening it really is thank you team i am i have a couple questions one is around the data itself so when i'm looking at the colors on the charts um am i making correlations to the same colors in the different charts for example not assessed not met met and i think the answer is different in every chart i try to be consistent with saying groups of data so among like the common assessment data i try to see is the same color being within um the the practice standard data i try to use a similar color theme so for example we have slide

089four under elementary and there's pink yellow green and blue i just want to make sure that i understand and that is uh elementary for whatever uh elementary practice standard slide and the red is not yet met two is somewhat met three is mostly met and blue or four is fillet men okay so there's one maybe i don't have the same slide it's um it's after the data what do we collect and maybe it's a little bit changed from what i'm looking at i think it is okay um the only thing that i really added was the arrows and i didn't add a little bit of clarification to the um and it's a great well i'm looking at a slide that says grade 5 math practice standards okay it doesn't look like it's just a bar

090graph so i i think maybe i don't have a current version in my attachment so it's okay um the second thing i want to ask about is the intention and i appreciate the notes on intention and i was for example the intentions for elementary the intentions for middle school and the intentions for high school middle school it was um on our presentation that we we decided on reading math and social studies why did we pick social studies what's the link there michelle are you able to pull up that slide i am looking for it yep so we are going to take a study of social studies because um the the data was we were asking a lot of questions when we were looking at at the data and so we need to ask some more

091questions as we continue to study the the current scope and sequence how is that aligned to our standards what does instruction look like in our middle schools to be able to start putting together some opportunities for us to act and adjust to resolve these trends that we're seeing in the in the data so that is why we are starting with social studies um at this juncture rather than science at this point that's not to say that we aren't going to touch science um but that will come later on but we're going to look at social studies um in the immediate future okay so just help me understand the logic um and we pick the subject based on the assessments or we pick the subjects based on how they could integrate with all of the curriculum

092this is these are just the questions that are coming to my mind so how do and why i'm going in this direction is i'm not sure from this presentation what the intention for elementary is and what the intention for high school is so i just want to make sure that when we're talking a systemic change that we understand the logic and we understand where we think we're going to have the most impact with the students in a short run in a long run so that's that's just my general thinking um and then the i guess third area is uh touch points so for me a sense of urgency and the touch points available with the staff with the students with the parents so we really can make an impact at the right time at the

093right level for every student because that's what i heard in your presentation this evening really making an impact for every student so um and so those are the questions that i have obviously you can't answer them all tonight but when you're going through the process and the plan those are just the thoughts that were coming to me and the board process is my final question when will we come back to this important topic at the board give the admin and the team and the buildings a chance to come up with some of these strategies when can we have this back because to me this is an exciting conversation and a conversation we should always be having every day but absolutely this is the stuff we want to we want to be talking about we're excited

094to be here tonight so mrs mufald we're hoping to have opportunities three times next year to come to the board and give an update around our process of continuous improvement that gives us that opportunity to meet with our building-based teams and to have them reflecting on and adjusting their plans um sharing out with us what's what's working what they're they're needing to readjust so that's our intention for next year but we do want to have conversations with dr means to make sure we're in alignment with what it is he's looking um for us to be providing to you all as well yeah from my seat i don't you know want a lot of time to lapse you know let's get going you have some wonderful um experience you have some wonderful data here let's just

095keep going thank you that questions sure i love that continuous improvement it almost it sounds like an agile methodology what is the um what is the data cycle at the classroom level what's the length of the data cycle at the classroom is it a month that you come back around is it a week i know you mentioned on wednesdays what is the the length of that do we know i think it really isn't yeah it varies okay it really varies it um you know it's driven by different units in math so that unit in math could say unit one could be six weeks in length and thinking about um you know that end result that common summative assessment at the end but then i say that and also know that data is an ongoing cycle

096too so we're collecting more of that informal those exit tickets those quick checks to constantly be looking at so every wednesday teachers are pulling that during their co-planning co-serving times they're engaging in that as well so i think it really it varies in the assessment varies in which um teachers are looking at that's cool does that help yeah it does i know it's not like cookie cutter and then how do those individual classroom data cycles like cross-pollinate or help inform peers like what we learned over here how does that how does that work yeah so i can i can answer that from the secondary perspective as well so just like um mrs ebert was talking about it varies um depending upon what uh depending upon the data that you're looking at but um so to

097answer your question mr phillips um teachers will often come together during their common planning time to look at those common summative assessments um to have those conversations of oh well in my classroom looks like my students didn't do as well on this particular question as your students did what did you do during your instruction to yield that and those conversations are having during are happening during common planning time during plc time on the early release wednesdays and so we uh by for example when i was talking about our um having that dig into the standards and taking a look at our common summit of assessments and making sure that we are in alignment to the standards we want to really strengthen those conversations that are being brought to the table in our um grade level

098or course alike teams so that's a lot of the work that's in front of us and then our instruction is really guided by that instructional framework that was mentioned as well that's good that's cool and we're continuing to try to figure out um more ways for teachers to be able to collaborate like across content vertically one grade level to the next and so we're looking at what our structure of early release collaboration might look like um we we jumped into a little bit different model right pre pandemic where we had teachers meeting every other week by a designated grade level or a content and then and then two weeks where we said you know the the the expectation is that we're collaborating but as an educator and as a professional what is it that you

099want to engage in and who do you want to do that work with and so we're trying to figure out how to uh continue to be nimble and and flexible so that um teachers are using their professional judgment to determine what it is that they need for their students that's cool i will also add that um so mrs bowers mr rogers and i have been engaging with our um four secondary buildings as well in some reflective conversations and pre-planning for next year and um one of the things that they've also identified that they want to either continue doing or bring back that they were doing pandemic as peer observations and going into each other's classrooms so that again is another opportunity for teachers to go into classrooms that um if i'm a math teacher i

100might go into an english classroom see what some of my colleagues are doing in english and then have some reflective dialogue with my math my math team or the english teacher that i'm observing to see how that might transpire then into my classroom with students in my content area that's cool and is there a thought as to how those localized data loops or data exercises will inform the building and ultimately the district you know what i mean like right there's there's all this stuff happening in the classroom there's all these data cycles happening how do we aggregate and pull those up to be part of the the building right and then how do we then create that mechanism to that all become part of the district one yeah i don't know if you thought about

101it we haven't i'm going to add that to our next steps though because i love that thought and and yeah i think bringing some structure to that would be really great okay and that's why we have material yes she probably had like some data already um percolating in her head we're just capturing so much right and so much continuous improvement and it would be us a sore um thing to have it just kind of fall into the ether if you will yeah so cool and then also i'll just add on to that i think you know just looking at our coaches right here i think they just add such value to our school-based leadership teams they're in all of our classrooms and you know walking in and out of buildings and thinking about what's happening

102in the second grade classroom and how that transfers into fourth grade and then sitting down in building-based leadership teams being able to really engage in that dialogue i i just i can't thank them enough for the work that they do from the resources yeah yeah very nice thank you guys very much i've got a couple questions so i'm curious as a board member i love the kind of the shift of formative as a board member if we were three years down the road what does success look like what is the data what is the information what's the picture and there was i'm intrigued by slide 25 um rethinking assessment and evaluation and tiling type pulling it back to the profile of the learner um the second part of this question is as a parent what

103what do i get that lets me know how is my child learning developing and growing uh at the student level both in certainly parent-teacher conferences but ongoing like how can i go in and look at how is my child learning what can i do as a support mechanism to support their learning and growth i don't think we want to necessarily create high pressure height like meet your potential now but how do we kind of create like where there's partnership between teacher and school and resources so as a parent how do i know my two kids are are learning globally and where are the areas where they're really thriving and where the areas where they need some additional support um and i'm imagining this is a tool that i might looked at to do that and

104then as a board member where we're not looking at the child level but kind of the broader level and i know map i think as i understand it has often been used as a a child level tool and we got into the habit of using it as a district level tool exactly um but again kind of because we didn't have other stuff and i've always been really intrigued by the idea of certainly we want to look at outcome are we hitting all the standards is a child ready to do meeting their potential but i really i've always been intrigued by like what is the what is the growth and if my child isn't consistently hitting their growth targets then i will say there's been some teachers who are like other teachers and it could be

105the teacher it could be third grade she was just angsty um so like it's complex right okay so that's what my two my two dueling questions is what does success look like at the child level how do we leverage this complex picture knowing the teachers don't magically have more time so like what pulls that mr phillips your point is i think really well taken how we start to aggregate all this information and data in this picture a really rich picture and then at the district level how do we know that we're really doing this successfully because i think a question we'll get is um how do we make sure every child is growing to meeting their potential and parents really want all kids to be successful but they really really want their kids right of

106course so how do we hold both of those things um and as a district we we're pretty grounded in what our values are and we want to make sure parents are are along for the right i don't know if that's a question or just uh i'd be intrigued interested when you all come back to talk about that and to do something about that and say what does success look like at the child level so the parent is knowing and thinking about it there's a board kind of broader i have a really micro question that someone can say by punting this isn't the point of this presentation at all but good golly again i almost was a high school english teacher and then i wasn't uh slide 16 secondary grades high school semester 1 english 10.

107what happened in 2012-13 that we started getting better and better and better and then what happened in 17 and 18 that we fell off the cliff i think that's a question that we've all been asking ourselves since we saw this data um and i yeah we'll have to pull our collective historical knowledge together i i do have some wonderings if there's any correlation to the implementation of grading for learning i think that's something we would want to dig into a little bit and ask some questions about yeah all right so at some point i've an email would be fine but if somebody has something deep out there i didn't you know pretty much changed or greater than anything else no curriculum didn't change but i do wonder about the the grading for learning factor and

108uh the fidelity to that i don't have an answer to that i've been living in the elementary world for many years so i got questions i think it relates to that i also think greeting is a monster to try to use to compare yeah anything because they're so as much as we went through looking at grading for learning and trying to bring some objectivity to grading there's still so much subjectivity and it's hard to take it out but and when we do the plc's and we have the collaboration and you have a group of teachers might be the english 10 teachers getting together and looking at assessments there's a possibility their assessments might start looking a little bit differently and start steering toward not as many students being successful to me i look at this

109and say we're we're doing well clearly we're doing something wrong um and it's not getting it's not improving so it's either we're missing the boat on some type of instruction that we're assessing and i don't know it's something we look into and and i look at this now like so grades are one piece right and from the post-secondary lens more and more places are going away from standardized tests i think there's more there's some cons to that as well particularly if students aren't performing well in terms of their grades and i bet if we broke this out we would see that the lower grades are also skewed towards students from most socioeconomic diverse identities and so i'm intrigued to find out do our standardized test scores bolster this of saying okay are grading grading swing

110horse and when when students are testing they're also testing worse than some of these much works i don't know but i mean i'm going to shoot right here so again micro level but if i'm really curious that's a good question and i would say just we can't answer that right now with what we have but historically looking at data there's a strong correlation between achievement data on standardized testing and also outputs with grades and a lot of that has to do with the the expectation gap that exists the climate gap that exists and then just the gaps in our systems in terms of how we are progressing kids through and how we're supporting kids in a variety of ways this is totally different than that but i'm intrigued at what point does technology which would

111have would seem to have an effect on reading and is that the age where suddenly kids at a certain age where reading really becomes key are not reading [Music] someone want to do a dissertation that's really deep it is deep but i'm not stitching my dissertation topic now yeah yeah so i i i don't know but i i between that and my fascination with middle school brain development and technology um so i i the only other thing i would say is i i'm really i think excited several programs have talked about this these are really big important questions about kind of how do you maximize every kid's potential uh i would love to kind of take a look at knowing that kids certainly have experienced a lot of trauma on the individual micro level and

112then generationally have experienced a lot of trauma together uh and but in very different ways each kid is gonna have their own story so anything that we can kind of find out and talk about what supports for social emotional learning what does student motivation look like coming out of the pandemic are they motivated differently are they motivated in different challenges um and what are the things um what's the what are the national stories that are unfolding um to find out how do we i don't want to say get kids back on track but maybe like make sure that they've got a foundation of support underneath them um we are now fully aware and i think the teachers who are in the classroom are have always been fully aware but i think society is aware of

113different ways of what we need to do to bolster kids and their support um and i was really glad to hear about what do we make sure that we can do to bolster staff um everyone's tired parents are tired teachers are tired um and so what can what can we do to do those both things we can't just do more but what are we what do we need to stop doing also that's not actually i think will be an important institution but thanks this is this is energizing and exciting and um look forward to these conversations going forward thank you any other board member comments questions i have a couple um so we talked uh i think dr chesapeanger touched on a little bit but the the parental support and kind of improving that feedback

114loop i know we right was it just a year ago we put into place canvas or is that two years ago one year ago yeah yeah that's all it hasn't even been a year mystery hasn't even been a year it hasn't even been a year so i'm curious as we kind of come back to that topic how we help our parents with that process i think i guess i'm speaking as a parent here it's a challenge um i'm not sure i understand it um dr jessica finger asked the question how do we know as parents how our students are doing i'm not sure i have a good question or a good answer for that as apparent i'm struggling with that a bit um i don't think that's the fault of anyone i just think we

115need to do a little bit better assuming that's not just a steve problem but i'm not sure no that that's a conversation we're having i think in every single meeting i've been in the last couple days we've talked about parents as partners and that true authentic partnership between school and home so we we appreciate hearing that and know that that's an area of focus that we want to to have in the future with family engagement and i think i think part of it is our teachers were just trying to keep their head above water this year right and i don't know if they all have the same grasp of our different systems and how to use them and i've had some conversations with teachers you know don't even exactly understand what it looks like to

116me as a parent you know they say you know go out there and look at the grade i send a screenshot i say here's what i see oh my gosh i've never seen that view i don't know what that means you know so it's not a by any means they're trying their best and trying to do it but uh so some improvement there so it's great you guys are talking about i think that's super important mr dolman as well as tom at the end of this family perception survey there was a thought exchange in regards to that exact question um how can we better improve the way in which you receive communication i can't remember the direct questions right but i think being able to really dig into what families have to say and um

117and what kind of support we can really look to i think that will be a nice first step in improving that yeah that's fantastic thank you and i think a big part of supporting our families is understanding our families are all coming from a different place from a different background and things like that so how are we equipping our teachers and our staff to have conversations in different contexts right different cultural contexts different socioeconomic contexts you know all of those things are it's a challenge as a teacher especially your teacher with one experience you might not have the same experience so just some thoughts there [Music] and the last thing i don't know that you'd have an answer tonight but as you come back i'm interested to understand more as we kind of look at

118this evaluation process and looking at grades a different system potentially and things like that what we're doing to account for bias in that system how do we how do we do that what does that look like um one system's not better than the other right we know there's there's bias in testing systems we know there's bias and teacher evaluation because we're all human we all are biased so how are we going to account for that what does that look like so um that was my other thought and and then i'm also good mr allen that you know brought it up really interested in this minutes for the algebra thing and how we do that if i'm trying to wrap my head around this from understanding we track kids into a higher higher math and then

119we give them more help well it seems like that's reversed we should be giving more minutes to the kids that you know that aren't in that higher method and i know we all agree on that but you know what does that look like so kudos one for recognizing that as an issue and a problem um if there's any others like that but i'm super interested i think you know that's just one one issue but i think it's a little bit of a microcosm of how we look at education as a whole so very interested in what you come back with to us i just wrote down here algebra and eighth grade for all students building supports so the ending was known to dr means but well and you know and i think we often hear

120about tracking and how you know kids should be in the higher grade places but when they're when there's not equity around the tracking and what those students receive you know that's a problem um so i can't wait to see what dr means the solution as i know he's giving me the evil from the back no one's in the bag can we bring him up in the solution all right any other final board comments on the presentation tonight all right i feel bad leanne's not here because she would literally probably go on for a while for you to take us another hour i i do believe she took the opportunity to correspond with folks before that as you would have imagined absolutely all right any public comment on this teaching and learning item please step up

121to the microphone give your name and address [Music] my name is todd dahlgren i live at 1647 or 122nd i'm here tonight to uh prizes and thoughts on this topic um i mean the achievement gap and across our country is a critical domestic issue we are trending towards a minority majority population we cannot afford to get this wrong we can't expect to maintain the life we have with significant portions of our minorities populations undereducated it wasn't spoken here tonight but there's concern among parents that relative to this topic and the information that was provided may 5th regarding white supremacy culture that critical race theory is coming i don't claim to be an expert on critical race theory what i've read so far is concerning virginia in california is that there are significant changes to math

122curriculum as it relates to my profession as a product safety engineer math saves your life math prevents you from being shocked every time you interact with the home appliance to touch a low voltage display that isolates blind voltage power in that appliance it prevents that appliance from getting too hot and burning your house down [Music] it allows for safety controls to work properly to keep you safe from dumping unburnt gas from your water heater or furnace into your home i would hope that if this district moves towards the path critical race theory that you provide amply opportunities for public input thank you thank you any other public comments from in the room please state your name and address 4134 north 94. on may 17th i received an email from the wallachos school district about the

1232021 parent survey seven questions down i'm asked to yeah that's what i identify as the next question wants me to describe the races of my children well i identify as american i don't know about you guys now i start thinking what does the district only want to know about races and identity of me and my children i call the district and i'm told it's demographic use so why are you only collecting some demographics and not all like sex income level education level what this tells me is district is looking to divide the community into small groups and only listen to some and not all poor and needing help does not have a skin tone or race remember all politicians like they say politicians always influence one way or the other and somebody has always already

124influenced your vote and yes the district has filled failed my children and the rest of the community's children honestly as well as we've seen i don't know what's wrong with the book with met was that like what 10 percent that's not good thank you any other comments from in the room from the public jamie do we have any online comments yeah we do have one hand raised or two now um the first is somebody that's identified this themselves with the initials lr you have the microphone please state your name and address hi uh this is laura rein 309 north 69th street i just wanted to share my excitement about this data i'm i'm not very well versed in in uh understanding large quantities of data as you presented but i i really like the the

125trend in um or the research and how it's how it's going with uh in the direction of equity and uh and you know getting rid of the uh the gaps so thank you very much thank you you said one more jamie yeah there's one more um this person is identified with the name kirsten kirsten you have the microphone please state your name and address kirsten darling 2520 north 93rd street i take it you can hear me yeah we can hear you perfect thank you never quite sure with these virtual meetings we should all be used to it by now but still you know technology um good evening thank you for your time at a friend and similar to mr dargarin i wanted to speak about the in-service materials that were handed out on may 5th

126which i guess are you being used for potential plans to change our curriculums now there's been a lot of presentations today with a lot of data i don't know if this was used to influence the data you collected or vice versa it was all rather complex and i did my best to understand it and see my questions answered but quite frankly i'm not that much wiser but what i did to do since uh english is my second language um i looked up the word equity since that was the most used word this evening and it is according to the dictionary that i found on google the quality of being fair and impartial and obviously this being wauwatosa who doesn't want equity we all want equal opportunity and laws have been rewritten to guarantee those equal

127opportunities but when i look at the handout from may 5th it includes a 20 year old article titled white supremacy culture how does this title express the quality of being fair and impartial especially since six sentences in the author acknowledges that these damaging characteristics are also demonstrated by people of color so obviously there is a desire to place race one of the characteristics we simply cannot change as focal point and sort of discredit one ethnic group how is this supposed to create unit why focus on things that divide us rather than things that bring us together so i think you need to be very open about how you are going to teach white supremacy culture and when because this is influences conversations that i have with my child and i'd really like to be informed

128about this ahead of time i found it hard to find this information from may 5th i find it hard to detect how you address this today so i look forward to more transparency in the future regarding this issue we can all constantly improve but we will be stronger together and not divided thank you for your time thank you jamie any other comments from online no we have no more hands raised thank you all for being here tonight greatly appreciate it look forward to seeing you again uh superintendent action item legislative advocacy committee representative appointment is recommended that the school board approve the president's appointment of two board members leon furley and eric jessup anger as members of the legislative advocacy committee for a term of june 2021 through may 2022. nice to move yes thank

129you just a point i i i don't think the chair can move so if you want to use meyer's name yes mr meyer moves up i couldn't hear what happened in the room i'm sorry you have officially moved mr meyer and mr roberts cycling off the legislative advocacy committee seconded in eagerness i believe thank you and i would like to thank mr rollins for all his work i know he's done a lot of work for us on the legislative advocacy committee um and we've seen some substantial improvements so thank you very much for your work it's not easy things to do and i look forward to dr jessepanger joining us really moving forward i expect and know we will see great things any comments on this item miss newton please call the girl dr jessica

130banker yes mr mayer yes miss milfeld yes mr phillips yes mr allen yes mr german yes in that motion pass final public comment is there any further public comment on non-agenda items there are no hands raised virtually thank you jamie i don't see you in the room either is there a motion to adjourn oh second thank you dr jessepanger yes mr mayor yes miss mueller yes mr phillips yes mr rowland yes mr gentleman yes our adjourned thank you everyone