September 24, 2025 | BASD School Board Meeting

001minutes. Um I think that there's was a misunderstanding in the minutes regarding approval of some of the policies. Um one of the policies on the consent agenda, um we discussed briefly taking uh gifts and donations off of the consent agenda. And I believe when we discussed it, we said we would leave it there and then take it off if somebody requested it to be taken off. So in the policy, it's still there. So I just wanted to clarify that. Okay. It wasn't actually removed. It was >> Got it. It'll be it can be taken off if someone >> requested that. >> Got it. Okay. Thank you. >> So with that with that change, I move to Okay. Thank you. >> Second that. >> All in favor say I. >> I. >> Opposed. Motion carried. So

002we'll move on to the school board celebrations. >> Go ahead, Mike. Uh, I'd like to um shout out to Bryant for his plans to have these practice ACT tests and the um what what I've seen is his communications about working ACT prep more into the curriculum. I think this is very good. I'm very in favor of and thank you for doing that. I'll piggy back off that just as the whole admin team and their staff whoever helped develop the supreme plan for this year. I know that's a summer project in itself, right? And something we request every year. So I I know there's a lot that goes into appreciate it. I will give a shout out to the coaching staff of the seventh and eighth grade boys football team. Um as last night we had

003a game um away game to where the other team was very questionable on sportsmanship and I would say our team the way they responded and held it together. [clears throat] Uh the coaching staff did a phenomenal job and so did their kids. So shout out to them. >> I'd like to shout out the high school cheerleading squad. It's great to see such a big group. lots of energy and there aren't a ton of students in the stands for away games. They come over and get the adult crowd doing wave and getting some cheers going. So, it's nice. A shout out to Sarah Marquee and the entire elementary um staff for their ice cream um social that they had last night. I thought it was a a great idea. I think they did it last year

004too and it was a really nice fun activity and it was really cool to see all the little kids on the playground um last night. So that was really fun. And also um a shout out um to the two to Zach Kova I think and Sawyer Wester the two teachers down at Clay for their um I think it's an awesome idea they have on their um their tennis shoe drive that they do that that's going on. So, um, to help all the little kiddos that need extra shoes or outrow theirs. So, if any of you want to contribute, if you have any, um, you're want new ones or, um, if you're out and have some, um, gently loved ones you want to bring down to Clay to contribute to their cause. I think it's awesome

005that they're doing that. So, just a little shout out there. So, anyone else? I'll do a shout out as a parent of two high school students now. Um my kids have had a a great time so far. So they come home, they're exhausted because they're in school and sports, but um staff, student body, it's all been really good to them so far. >> Okay. Um then we'll move on to the time to shine. [clears throat] >> I'm going to introduce Ann Reagus, uh our school counselor. She led a trip of travelers to Europe uh this summer in June. Um and so she's here to talk to you about the trip and uh yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. >> Great. Uh so I did ask permission a couple long long time ago, like almost three years ago,

006if we could do this trip. It was a two-year in the making planning of the trip. It was a 12-day trip that some of our uh board members went on, and I hope they had a great time. Kids had a wonderful time. Uh we had 12 days on the trip. We took 86 humans on that trip. It was a very large group. Two buses and the average temperature was at least 90. It was really hot. If you ask anybody, that's the one word they will describe the trip is that it was very hot. [clears throat] And they don't have a lot of air conditioning over there. So that was a struggle. So day one we left, of course, the parking lot um for a trip of a lifetime. We took two buses, two planes. We

007arrived on two buses. So, um, this is bus A. Bus B. Forgot to take a picture. [laughter] Bus showed up. >> And we had a little trouble with the buses that I had planned for two years in the making and they forgot to come. So, that was a little nerve-wracking. Not a great way to start the trip. Um, day two, we landed and we got right to the burrow market. We were all tired, exhausted. Um, the girls couldn't wait to change. They were in the airport and it was like they got their luggage and all this clothes are coming off and putting on their cute outfits because they had to have all of the style in London which was really sweet. Um, we did a walking tour and it was hot that day. So, um,

008but I think the kids really enjoyed it and were surprised by how pretty London was. [clears throat] Uh, day three. So, I'm just going to hit every kind of day that we were there. Um, we did a tour of London and saw St. Paul's Cathedral, changing of the guard, Big Ben and Parliament. The picture to the right, that's all of us. That's all 86 of us on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral. These were we had journals on the bus as well. I had a journal for each bus. And these were just some of the comments on the first couple of days that some of the kids were um kind of thinking about while they were seeing all these new things. Um day four, we got up really early. Um if anybody's ever been on

009the channel, that's the the train that goes from London to Paris. It was chaotic at best. Lots of people, lots of luggage. But we made it and we got to Paris and we did a walking tour of Paris. We saw Notraam. It's finally open, so we could stand in line to get in. Um, and we did an art class in Luxembourg Gardens. Day five, we finally saw the Eiffel Tower. So, day four, you don't see the Eiffel Tower. And I think the kids are like, "Wait a minute, we're in Paris. Where's the Eiffel Tower?" But we finally got to see it on day five. Uh we did the shelles day. We did a boat or a um bus tour that day and um it was hot and we did a lot of eating of food

010and I think they liked the croissants and they liked all the pastries when we were in Paris. So here are some of the thoughts they had on Paris. A lot of crepes, a lot of macaroons. Day six. I think this was the highlight of the trip uh because uh we were in the mountains. So, we ended up at Lake Zoo. And I've been to a lot of alpine kind of lakes, right? Like I've done some traveling. This even was like probably one of the best places I've ever seen. So, we actually swam with that as our backdrop. It was incredible. And so both nights what we were in um in this hotel, we gathered all the kids. It was probably I would you say mile and a half away that we had to walk. Um

011and the kids just had a ball and there was volleyball. And I think this is maybe the highlight of all of the kids trips uh was this this um Switzerland day seven. There's Nick and my son Oliver. They had matching shirts [laughter] underwear. >> He changed intoear. >> What? >> He sees Nick in the morning. He's like, "I have that shirt. I'll be right back." [laughter] Ran and switched shirts which was really cool. So, um, we took this really cool trip up to Mount Platus and it was intense. Okay. A lot of kids were and adults were super nervous because of heights, but it was awesome. And then we took I think was it the steepest um like a trail or a train um going down the mountain >> like a cog train isn't it?

012>> Yeah. Really cool trip of a lifetime on that. And then that day we also took a trip a boat ride across Lake Lassern which was gorgeous. Day eight. This was one of our interactive. We did a couple of interactive things throughout the trip, but we got to stop at the lint chocolate factory and they have an interactive museum which is pretty much unlimited samples of chocolate which was really good. We had we had a lot of fun. We stopped in Likenstein. So that was our fourth country of the trip. And then here are some of the kids uh thoughts on those couple of days. So day nine, we extended our trip. So we um well I guess in a little bit, but day nine and 10 are the last of the normal trip. So

013we did Munich and then we also went to DAO. Um and I think that was a good experience for the kids. They learned a lot, asked lots of good questions. Unfortunately, we didn't I didn't feel like we had enough time there. We could have used a few more hours, but the trip just keeps moving because we have we have to get to the next stop. So, good food but bads. [laughter] At least it wasn't bed bugs. Um, yeah, it was Yeah, it was very hot today. Everybody agreed. And we really didn't get a break from the heat. We got a little break in Lassern, but that was about it. Every day was just as hot. And I like this one. I spent too much time in the Lego store. [laughter] That was cute. So, we

014extended our trip two days. Um, it was an added to our trip. And so, we chose to go to Prague and we did Charles Bridge, um, Old Time Square, you saw the cathedral. And if anybody's been to Prague, it's stunning. So, if you feel like you're in a a fairy tale, you know, open up the book and there it is. So, Prague was beautiful. Um, they had a lot of good food there. isn't as cheap as it used to be, but it's still a little more affordable than Switzerland and Germany. Um, but the architecture and the history, I think the kids really appreciated that was kind of the theme in all of the um journals that they wrote is that they appreciated the the difference of people. They appreciated the difference food and they appreciated

015the architecture and just the history and the richness of it all. So, here are just some of the kids. This is Gil on the left. He was bus 2's tour guide character. Gil was a lot of fun. Um, and then that's Daniel, the one on the right here across from Gil. He was ours. He was from California, so he was our tour guide. And they both did a great job. And they're with us for 12 days. And they worked their tail off for us. So, this meal here that we're um all sweating, we were downstairs in uh like it kind of looks like a cavern, right? Like you would thought maybe you'd be nice and cool. [laughter] >> Oh, we just we could not escape it. It was we were just all dripping with sweat.

016You can have any pizza you want as long as it has onions on it or ham. >> Ham and onions. But the kids, it was a kind of a fun meal. Um, other than the fact that we were all sweating today. Yeah. >> And then of course, Miss Pet on or Mrs. Cwley was our other uh chaperone on my bus and then uh Brett Stefen took care of bus two. So there's just some of our meals together. We we ate we had breakfast. We stayed at every hotel together, which was one of our main goals, and we had dinner together every night, which was really nice. All 86 of us. Here were just some of the meals that we had. That's the pizza up in the left. Ham and onion. Uh the kids didn't really

017like that lower middle one. It was like a beef >> like chicken pot pie >> chicken, but it was beef. Yeah, that wasn't a big hit. So, um, and then this is my last slide. [clears throat] The very last sentence is kind of why we do these types of things. Um, I I think I know who wrote that because this student just took it all in, ate everything, tried everything, experienced it all. and [clears throat] he went, it was a kind of a younger aged boy, which I I think was so cool. And he just kept saying, "Thank you. This is awesome and I love it." And he wouldn't have had this opportunity had we not been able to take the trip. So, I appreciate you guys letting us do it. I thank you for

018that. Um, I would say it was a hit. Somebody said it was 100 out of 10, right? So, it was a really good trip and we didn't have too many blips. We had a couple of little medical things along the way, but nothing we couldn't handle. So, thank you. That's it. [clears throat] Does anyone have any questions? >> Thank you. Okay. So, we're to the opportunity for those in the audience to address the board on any school related issue. I just want to remind everyone that community members are invited to share their comments, but please remember that the use of specific names of district personnel may lead to legal liability. In such instances, please pursue pursue the district formal complaint process by contacting the superintendent office. Thank you, Mike. >> I just stand right here.

019Sorry, I just want to make um say two weeks ago a prominent Christian family man who freely spoke his spoke his opinions and welcome debate was assassinated reminding us that there is evil in this world and you may wonder how is this related to school related issues. So the reason I bring it up is because I believe the way we fight this is through education. And I recently read a book um that was written about a man I was a Japanese pilot who later converted to Christianity who wrote something that stuck with me and he said that ignorance breeds m misunderstanding, misunderstanding breeds hatred, hatred breeds fighting. And I I pray that this board administration will combat hatred through effective education practices. Practices that build a solid foundation for our students in readings, math, science,

020and history. And then training them how to use that to reason and use logic to develop their beliefs. I pray they will learn Christian values that promote leaving their loving their neighbor and defending their beliefs with gentleness and respect so that hopefully no student from this school would ever think that it's appropriate to use violence against anyone just because they disagree with them. >> Thank you. Okay. So, we'll move on to the presentation of the continuous improvement plan. And I'm not sure you're starting, >> Adam. We'll get it queued up on the slides. >> We are excited as a team to present our annual uh goals and plans for the year, our group plans. We like it was mentioned earlier, we spend a lot of time as a team and individually and with our school

021teams to prepare for the work of the year. Um our goals and the way that we want to improve our outcomes for students and this is our chance, it's become kind of a tradition. This is our chance at the end of September, our first board meeting in the school year to present to the board and to the public um some of the high level work that we're doing. We know that this is still an overview. the work is deeper yet, but this is our chance to kind of share. And every year we tweak it a little bit. There's some pieces that we're adding this year to kind of give you even more of a kind of a complete sense of our work. And uh I'll highlight those things when we get to the kind of

022new areas. But I think you'll see it in the first part of the actually throughout our presentation. You'll hear from uh each of the principles, myself, from our departments. So Ann, and from Trisha, which is new to make sure we get kind of all of our voices in here. Um, and you'll also hear new this year, we'll talk more about it, but we'll hear from a board member, Nick, who will be presenting the board. So, we're every year we're trying to like reflect a little bit, hey, how do we make this more robust and kind of complete? And so, that's kind of the kickoff. Uh, let's see. [clears throat] Make sure this is not like in presentation mode. Normally it's got the presentation. Why is it not showing you or it's not showing like okay

023somebody else will figure it out. I'm not sure what's the presentation mode. It looks like it's being viewed not within Google like I know how to show within Google or something. >> I don't know. >> That's fine. I guess. Okay. All right. Well, you can see it now on the left where we're going to be doing. So, all right. So, first of all, just a reminder that all of this is based on like our our big picture around all of our work for continuous improvement is based on our strategic plan. So, these first couple slides you've seen before, just a reminder that the board and the district function under a five-year strategic plan. And this year, we'll be working uh later in the year, as you'll hear more, to uh update that strategic plan. So,

024this uh takes us to that on the website. Um you can see um there's a page now that actually talks about our strategic plan, lays out a little bit about continuous improvement, and you can see like the slides below that. So that has our areas, our core beliefs, our key performance objectives and kind of pillars that that um it's based on. We'll refer back to these as we go forward. All right, a reminder that continuous improvement in schools is a cyclical process that helps groups of people such as school department, district, or school board identify ways to improve and evaluate our change. It's a progressive process that doesn't have a fixed end point in sustained end time. So continuous improvement is exactly what the word sounds like. It's continuous and that's kind of our lives

025like our lives. We're continuously learning and growing lifelong learners. But within schools and organizations, kids improvement is a cyclical process. You've seen this before. We set goals and objectives based on data. We create strategies. We evaluate those constantly. We determine who's going to be doing the work and when do we get the work done and what's our next step. We develop our staff and each other so that we have the skills necessary for that improvement effort. And then we have ongoing formative evaluations. I mean formative means is what we're doing working? Is our professional development working for our staff? Um are the strategies we're using implementing [clears throat] um like getting the results we want? Sometimes that happens on an annual basis but sometimes that actually happens throughout the year. um classes and teachers do

026that every day. They're always like, "Hey, did the kids learn the lesson today or do we need to review tomorrow?" So, that's part of our continuous improvement process. So, the way we divide this out each year is we have our district indicators and we pick a few of those to share with you today and then we'll go through each of the three schools. They'll have their chance to kind of talk through their goals and action and priorities. Uh so I'll start out the district ones and will be chiming in in a second and I'll tell you kind of how that works and then at the very end of the district slides Trisha will help with three slides. So um a reminder and the board has seen this but there is a longer document that's called

027the district continuous improvement plan has a bunch of indicators on it. Some of those we'll be showing the slides ahead but the board has access to all of those and it's grounded in the four pillars that I mentioned earlier with strategic plan. It's ground in the pillar of educational quality and culture person uh personnel excellence our staffing business strategy and financial performance and customer care and community engagement. It's important that we have indicators or key uh indicators for each of those areas and we've been building those out over the years. Um, and I think each year we kind of add a couple of new ones to try to get at um, on a regular basis toward making progress in each of the four pillars of the strategic plan. So this year um, and ongoing we've

028had priorities. So at the very beginning of the year when we kicked off the year with our staff, I presented to the teachers like what our key priorities are. These are based on the work that we did as a whole team leadership team with our leadership teams in the buildings and our summer retreat time and our summer work. we got together and said, "Hey, what are our priorities for the year based on our data, based on uh climate surveys, based on student uh outcome data and information?" And these are the priorities that we're focused on for this year. One, and some of these are always going to be a priority, right? Academic proficiency, so how proficient are students at the skills based on the standards of the state? Academic growth, that is, how are individual

029students or cohorts of students growing over time? So even though they may not be proficient, are they growing? Or if they're beyond proficient, are an advanced, are they still growing? So there's a proficiency piece and a growth. There's student self-regulation. That's learner behaviors. So how are students behaviorally, their externalized and internalized behaviors, and that's like a focus on what can we do as educators to help our students um self-regulate better, make better choices, and have better school behaviors. Classroom management, that's about teacher strategies. So, how are teachers organizing their classroom and helping students with their self-regulation? How do they manage the procedures, the routines of their classroom? How do they prepare or set up the classroom in a way that's conducive for learning for all of our students? And how do they react when a

030student may be struggling with that? That's classroom management. Attendance is a big one. We you as a board and public have always heard about attendance but that's particularly been a big issue since co I know we don't always want to talk about co anymore but something changed nationally with attendance around that time that that's indisputable we went from single digits in this country to over 20% in this country of kids who are really struggling with attendance it's both a student issue as well as a family issue as well as societal issue so attendance is one and that to me I put in the premises really is about engagement you can't engage with learning or school if you're not here. And so what are we doing to help with that? And how do we help families

031in the in society and community help with that? How do we rep prioritize school and education? Just like actually, not to refer back to it, but Mike in his comment earlier, education really matters. It matters and we got to get kids here or or wherever they go, whether it be here or in another school or learning environment to engage in the learning process. And then instructional design which is about learning targets. It's about take those standards all the way down to the classroom about what are the learning targets for that classroom and that lesson. So that um through GRR which is gradual release of responsibility. So that gradual process to take um to work towards that learning target and um improvements individual student learning. So those are our big priorities. You're going to hear a

032little bit of all of those from our three school level um administrators as they go through their school. So, why is this important from a board perspective? One thing we've been working on and hearing from you and also hearing like as we've been talking over the last two, three years is we want to make sure there's some continuity across buildings, but also opportunities within each building to use the data that they have to u make it specific for what they need in their building. But these are areas you're going to see across all of our buildings. So um one thing we're doing a little different as Ann's coming over here is one thing to remember with special education that would be the services we provide for kids with disabilities is that special students who are

033receiving special services are regular ed kids first right all of our kids are just kids some of them have different needs some have different programs some have different experiences um and so it's really important that we we don't see it as just silos at the same that being said an one of her jobs is to help make sure that all the legal compliance, the procedural, the accountability there was. Thank you. >> It was Brian. >> Oh, it was a big thanks. Um, see, it's a team effort, right? Um, that that you see that how it dovtales. So, instead of uh Ann coming in saying, we talked about this like, hey, I'm just have like these other priorities, I said, no, like your priorities should dovetail with our district priorities. So she's going to walk through

034how special pupil service and special department dotales with our districts. >> Absolutely. So um some of the things that are most important as we're working as a pupil services and special education team um around academic proficiency and growth is really making sure that the resources we have are really evidence-based and are going to make the growth that we're hoping. So we often times when we have students with IEPs, they receive additional services and additional instruction. If that isn't aligned to the greatest resources that we can use to be able to help them grow, chances are they're not going to grow. So a lot of time goes into making sure that we are assessing our resources, that we have the right resources, that we have a variety of resources um to meet student needs. And we

035also talk about progress monitoring and making decisions based on that. So you've heard a lot of you've heard our buildings talk about the I Ready test. Well, in addition to that, our students with IEPs also are given assessments um shorter assessments but at a um greater frequency to help us be able to look and say like, is this really working? I'm working with Bobby for 20 minutes every day for the last month. Is what I'm doing helping him get better at this skill? and if not, what do we have to do so we're not continuing the pattern of that um gap getting actually even bigger? And then making sure that we have highly effective special education teachers. Um it can be really tricky to find staff at this time. Um so hiring the very best

036and also being willing to grow them and coach them and help develop them to be um the people that our children need in front of them so that they can continue to grow under student self-regulation or there's learning behaviors. Um, this is one of those times where it's really important that we look at this like whole spectrum of things and especially with pupil services and special education. There's a lot of resources and interventions and strategies available in that line between I'm a student in a third grade classroom and my behavior is regulated by the things that my classroom teacher is doing for everybody all the way to having an IEP that really focuses on behaviors. So, it's using this data that we've gathered. It's building a lot of skill sets. It's um also using evidence-based

037behavioral or social emotional interventions to help students build those skills so that they can be successful. Um again, having those highly effective people services professionals. You know, we have counselors and social worker and our school nurse and our school psychologist. making sure that all those people have the tools in their toolbox and also are highly effective at their role so that they can support our students. Um as well as we have a lot of partnerships with um community agencies to ensure that when a student has a need that's beyond what we can meet in the school setting um we can help families bridge that gap to be able to get those resources. when we're talking about being able to see a therapist or we're talking about um some like long-term support things, we have a

038lot of partnerships with the county to help make sure that when children walk in our door, they are ready and able to learn so that we can all those effective instructional strategies work. Under classroom management and teacher strategies, um we work on teaching all teachers really great strategies to help kids learn how to be regulated. Um, we do some verbal deescalation strategies and teach teachers when this happens in the classroom like here are some ways that we can address it better in a way that um really meets where students are at. We talk about um creating behavior plans for some students who uh are struggling in the class and we want to make sure that everybody responds in the same way or that we have clearly articulated here are all the things we're doing to

039support this kid to help them grow and to help them be able to be regulated in that spot. Um, and then we started this year doing a small groupoup learning districtwide. We split up on our professional development days and we have mixed groups of professionals from different buildings in groups together and we're talking about tackling some of these big classroom management things. We're talking about how um as an adult that gets to be in front of students for eight hours of their day, how important it is to feel like you have the tools in your toolbox. and what other tools do you need in your toolbox and how can you feel equipped to be that leader of the classroom because you are a leader and you have really great leadership skills. Um so really focusing

040in on building that skill set for our staff. Um under attendance and student engagement. Um least restrictive environment is kind of like a catchphrase or a hot topic that people talk about. Um, but really what it's saying is if students have the right educational programming, they will be able to experience success. They will want to be at school. They will be able to have the skill sets to do the work that's being asked of them. Um, a lot of times, unfortunately, we see attendance slide when we see kids who are feeling disengaged in their classroom or not connected to their teachers or not connected to their peers. Um, we also work really hard at meeting basic needs. Um, our community is wonderful in also helping donations for our food pantry and our clothing pantry. Um,

041but also, you know, sometimes it's a, hey, I don't know where the next place is to go. I don't know where we're going to stay tomorrow because we might be getting evicted. So, working with families through what are the ways that we can ensure that they have a roof over their head, they have food to eat, our children feel safe. Um, and then that process includes a lot of collaboration. Um, our pupil services staff especially spend a lot of time working with families about like what do you need and how can we help you? And it goes beyond just what they're grade in math classes really about how do we get them here ready to learn in front of us. And then the instructional design. As we're talking about learning targets and the gradual release,

042we also have to build up the skill sets of a student who maybe can't do the content yet needs some tools to be able to help them reach that. And so that we don't keep making the gap get bigger and bigger and bigger, we put in some supports. um they utilize like scaffolding from construction as the picture to show that like for a while the building might need a little bit of extra support to be able to get to the end goal but as they build those skills then those supports can be taken away and we have a learner who can stand on their own and is who is really proud in the growth that they're making >> a question. >> Yeah. So, um I'm just curious this this brain state related disciplines. Is this

043is this something that uh is just directed primarily to special education students or is it to everybody? And it when I read about it, it seems the person using it has to be quite skilled in that and and I I wonder what kind of training do they give. Yeah, we typically talk about it for students with IEPs and behavior plans and it's um maybe not as like technical big letters as done in a therapy situation, but it's really around understanding that there are times where our students that are in front of us, their brains feel like they're in that fight orflight mode. And the way we respond to them when they're in that spot is different than the way we respond to them when they are having all of their neurons firing. and they can

044do that thought process and that thinking and problem solving. It really mostly comes up in at like the individual student level as we're talking about like what does Mike look like when he's having a really tough time and he's in crisis and here are some of the strategies we can use. >> So are the regular teachers >> if they're part of that behavior plan? Yeah. >> Is this is this something new or I've never seen this? >> Um it's not a new strategy. It's probably the first time I'm talking to you about it. Um it goes back for quite a while around the idea that um traditional discipline of the like I'm going to hold you accountable for this and accountability is great but I'm going to do it with my stern voice and here's

045what it is and you're just all going to fall in line. But there's a lot more gray area to that and we have to be more adaptable as adults to get to that spot of accountability and regulation. Yes. >> Yeah. Yeah. She'll have an attendance one in a second, too. So, this those goes, these slides um will look very much like in the district continuous improvement plan document. They're laid out the same. So, as I mentioned earlier, attendance is a big priority across all of our buildings. Um each of these slides will be formatted, and you'll see these other so I don't have to walk through this way. They'll have columns going back from 2022 to 23. And then each year as we roll these up, we get rid of one year and add the

046next one. So you can see this is the overall attendance for the district for all of our students. So your your goal as a as most district even pre-COVID was always kind of in that 92 to 94 kind of range. So generally like on a daily basis, our attendance is actually pretty pretty good in there. We want to keep improving it. You always want to improve all of these indicators, but it's kind of in the ballpark. But this is this next slide and this one is a new slide. So last year we just did attendance and then I was like kind of ding at me like well the report cards come from the state look at chronic absenteeism or really what you look at is from a student level on an individual student basis does

047John or Susie like are they chronically absent? Are they showing up regularly and that that indicator has always been about 10% of the year or some say 10 days but it's really 10% of the year that they're not showing up and so we added that in here and you look at those numbers. So over the last four years, that's the percentage of students who missed 10% or more of school. Those numbers there would have been down to single digits before co these are not all that different from the state and not all that different from national trends. >> But we all collectively, I'm saying that from state to national here here in Berlin want better, right? We need to work together to figure that out. But it's not just a Berlin thing. You see there's

048there's kind of like they're hovering that range. We'd love to see that heat going down a percentage or two a year. I think it's be because it's a bigger issue. It's not going to just happen overnight, but we really want to see some trends going back to closer to what it was before. So, this this helps really get at the okay, we got a lot of kids showing up every day, but we have some kids and it's too high a percent that are not showing up too frequently. >> And then I'll just keep this clip there. >> Sounds good. Um so same measure but just looking at our students with disabilities. One of the things that we've been exploring and looking through is how much does attendance impact um the scores and the growth of

049our students with disabilities. As we know if you're not at school you can't be getting that high quality instruction. Um so we have um numbers that have been kind of creeping up and so we're hopeful to with all of the supports and work we're doing around um the teacher behaviors, the learner behaviors, the engagement in school that we can um decrease that number of students with disabilities who are chronically absent. This is these two slides are actually kind of interesting when we pull these out because if you go back here's all students that includes kids with disabilities and this one is just so it is higher. Yep. >> And we predict that like because our kids who have disabilities they also have health needs. They may have to go to the hospital more. They may

050be in therapeutic treatment. So they're going to miss school sometimes. So we expect a little bit and it kind of shows that. Um but it helps you as a board also and us as a school see oh what what exactly are those numbers and that's kind of the difference. So it's it's actually not that dissimilar but there is some difference. All right going on to the next one participation. So this was a measure we started three years ago just going into our fourth year uh regarding what percentage of students K12 are getting involved in extracurricular activities and that had a nice bump last year. There's a lot of evidence, we like to say this every year, but like there's a lot of evidence that there's a high correlation of academic success for students who also

051are involved in other things, athletics, theater, um, robotics, >> that similar state in national particip that um, oh going up. Well, one thing I've read recently, and anybody here can from the team really chime in, but I I've been recent reading recently that there's just in the last year or so a real uptick in kids getting more involved in things again. Uh it kind of had that lull through COVID. They weren't involved because of, you know, COVID, right? And and then they got out of the habit of it. And it's just seems like my my theory is my my belief is we're all desperately needing those opportunities and like just kind of catching in on it's like oh yeah this feels good. If you go to an activity that you're like around peers doing something

052similar that you like doing and your body's feeling good and your mind's feeling good you're more likely to do that again. And I think it's like as you get in that habit. So um I think there is a natural trend now going back um to to more activity and I think that's something we're seeing here. Um, we'd love to see like like like some of the other measures you'll see, we'd love to see 100% of our kids involved in at least one club or activity. In fact, a lot of districts like that's always their goal is like every kid has some activity besides like the school day typical day activities. But boy, if we could keep moving upward, you know, to that even 80 to 90, that would be awesome. So, self-regulation. So this is

053that um percentage of students who had zero or one code of conduct violations. Um and you can see we've showed this with the board before. So those those are our numbers and our goal is to keep inching up. I think it's still based on national trends and percentages. This is not far off from what we'd expect. We want that kind of 83 to 90 in there depending on how you code things. But we we always believe we're a growth mindset. We want to keep growing. So we we want our goal to be a little higher than that. Um this one is a disabilities. >> Yeah. So we also wanted to look into um seeing the impact and how that looks different for our students with disabilities. Some of who have disabilities around or related to

054the behavior and their ability to self-regulate. Um and so this was a measure that last year we took really good data on so that we could report about and keep tabs on. Um, so we're a little bit lower for our students with disabilities of those who had zero or one of those major types of incidents. Um, and so we'd like to continue to grow that as we put all the supports in place and talk through um, making sure everyone has efficient behavior plans that need to um, talk through the teacher behaviors, the learner behaviors um, to help us head that direction. Um this around academic proficiency. You've seen this one before. We we pull out these within the in the district the longer document you have um all the ELA and math by grade level.

055This is like a summary for the purpose of the slides and we we picked these a couple years ago because these are ones that um some of which show up on like the report cards from the state. Um but this also indicates kind of where where we want them to grow. Now there's two different ways of looking at these I want to kind of mention. There's the just looking at different cohorts, but there's like third grade over those years. And there's also like take the third grade cohort, how did they do in fourth grade? How did they do in fifth grade? And so I I tweaked this a little bit. And actually Mike had this question. It's great questions come up every year. So the way I kind of addressed it this time is our

056eighth graders, you can see like so it takes time. Like by third grade, we really can't do it very well because we have different measures before that. But once they have the forward exam, you can actually see them over time. So if you look at the eighth grade ELA and math, I just took a stab at this. I put a little asterisk by those numbers. What that means is if you're just to look at eth grade over time, I increased 3% as the next kind of target. So 3% more than 40% last year for eighth graders would be this year. We want them to be at least 43. However, if we took those that eighth grade as a cohort and looked from third to fourth to fifth to sixth to seventh to 8th, we would

057want and and did 3% every year better than last year. We would actually want them at 61%. So that gives you kind of the indicator. So in this case, we don't we really want that group of eighth graders to not be at 43. We want them to be at 61%. Right? That would be 3% improvement over that group of kids, roughly the same group of kids as they were seventh graders last year. Does that make sense? So this might help you to see apples to apples or whatever or apples to orange you see it on the same slide. So you see for math for eighth grade it would be 47 but actually in that case 47 is the same. So if they if that cohort did 3% better or if just the grade level did

058better by 3% it would actually be the same. So just curious. So um I updated the and board members you you have the other one with the district indicators. Um, I'll make sure to resend that to you, but I updated today with those same asterisks for all the grade levels. Um, and you'll see both of them right next to each other. So, I this is just for the sake of this presentation. The other one has all of them. >> Em, can you just go back to that lesson? I think an important thing to note is that 10th grade and 11th grade are not percentages. >> Oh, right. >> That those are raw scores. So, it's you see the drop off after 8th grade to go to 10th grade. Those are the actual scores and not

059percentages. Yeah. >> Yeah. Because otherwise you'd never get better than like 34, right? >> Right. [laughter] We'd be at 36%. >> 36. >> All right. Thanks. >> Um All right. This is around. >> Yes. So, this is one where um the measure is a little bit different, but to help us keep a pulse on um how our students with disabilities are achieving, um we get reports from the federal government actually about this data. So that is the ones I've used to help us capture this. Um this is comparing our students with disabilities against all of the students with disabilities and that's why we get a percentile rank for it. So um starting in and the unfortunately the indicator is lagged. So we just got the information this past spring for the 23 24 school year.

060But I still think it's important to take note of how we're growing and progressing at it. That 23 24 school year was the first year we broke they broke it out by building level as well for us. Um [clears throat] when we're looking at um the percentile of students, obviously we'd love our kids to be in the 100th percentile. They're like doing the very best and the awesomest in the place. I think what we're looking for though is we want to make sure that we are continually growing. So these numbers continually grow I think is the important part for us. Um we have some um strengths I would say in terms of how they score us and we get points for it specifically in the elementary and middle school with the ELA scores. Um those

061are coming from the Ford exam that they get those. And then I did the same thing for math if you wouldn't mind it forwarding us just so we can see both. Um we same system but just for the math scores alone and it's all students with disabilities compared against other students with disabilities. Um >> so a highlight there would be if we just average so kids our kids with disabilities at the elementary level compared to all kids at the elementary level in the state of Wisconsin we're pretty darn close to that 50% which would be right at >> correct. Yep. So that's a relative strength. Although we want to be higher than that, >> right? Yes. When you're thinking about average strength, >> so these slides are new this new way of kind of looking

062at this and bringing it. Hopefully that's helpful for the board for our teams. We're on to so our priorities in the business services and human resource departments for 2526. Um the first one is maintain a fund balance. I will talk about that because it's an indicator when we go to another slide. We will plan uh for budget reductions as most of you have heard in our finance committee meetings that we have to continue looking at where we can make those reductions. And so we as a team um have been meeting and we will continue to meet to talk about what our needs are, look at our enrollment, how our staffing fits in, where are there other areas that we can make reductions when it comes to supplies, classroom budgets, so forth. That's a continuous over

063the next few years. We'll look for efficiencies. That's part of our systems. and how can we be more efficient as teams, as buildings. We're continuing to look at what are the items that we have that maybe aren't being used and what can we get better at. That's being continuously looked at. Um, no audit findings that would be on a slide. It's one of our indicators. We're also So, those are on the business realm. The last three are for our human resources. So staff their job satisfaction which you will see as one of our indicators. I'll go into that a little bit more. Does our staff recommend our district to other stakeholders? So that means are they talking positively to others? So either people can bring their students here. Um what that means to us though

064if they're talking like that is that they're they're positive. they're having a good experience when they're here. They're being valued. We show that. So, that's part of our school perceptions um surveys that we do in the spring as well. And then our staff compensation, which is your salary and benefits. We know that going into this year, we are going to EMTT and I will be meeting with each employment category twice this year to get feedback from all of them. And then we'll be bringing that feedback to you in our committee meetings. and then as we plan what next year's compensation will look like. So that's an ongoing process as well. So one of our district indicators that I I mentioned was our fund balance. So we as a district do not have a board policy

065around a fund balance. Some schools do districts do have one. Uh we currently do not and it's been fine. We here try to keep um our fund balance between 15 and 20%. And why do we like to do that? It's because um you have less short-term borrowing. It's also a good indicator when you do go for bond ratings if we ever continue to do that. And as you can see, we have been staying in that 2425 still is an estimate um until we get our final uh financial statements from our auditor, but we are saying we're at 19.47 and we would like to keep it between 19 and 20% as we go into 2526. >> [snorts] >> Audit findings is another one of our indicators. And as most of you know here on the board,

066we usually have one audit finding and that's a very general one in a school district of our size because what that finding is is that we have an audit firm who's CPI um certified who puts financial statements together. That's the only finding that we as a district hope that they will find. So we want to work towards keeping that at that one. You will see 24 and 25. 2425 is not filled in yet because the audit isn't complete until December. So that's just why it's like that. And then when we talk about um the indicator of job staff job satis satisfaction goes back to that school per perception spring survey that they take and we picked out the question most days I look forward come to coming to work and you will see over the

067last two we've been consistent at 3.88 88. We would like to get it to four. Um, but that question tells us a lot. It tells us that if people get up every day and they want to be here, that they're satisfied with their compensation package. They feel valued, they want to be here, they feel like their voice is being heard, and collaboratively they can um talk as a team. So that's why we picked that one instead of maybe some of the other questions that we have. But we want to see that grow to four. Does anybody have any questions for me? So the on slide your high school is already at 4.1. So is there when your strategy to help get that better? Is it is it going to be focusing more on middle school

068and elementary to try to get that that score up because high school's already a program? >> I I'll take that. So these are district indicators. So they're going to be for we know every school, every department is a little different in all of these. Um, so when when we're working on all the things that Trisha was just saying, there are good strategies to help our staff or to look indicators within that. Each of our principles and teams are going to be working on that in their own way. Like we work as a team. So yeah, so if somebody's further on than that, whatever, their their goal their their goal is to improve from where they're at. That as a district, their goal is as a collective to get even higher. So they they know their

069own scores and they also know their own strategies, right, to help improve that. Um, but our goal is as a whole district all that all that data and all of these indicators then to combine them. We want that overall like the the water to rise and the the collective boat to flow to a higher. >> Do you have any strategies that you have in mind? Are you going to protect this profile? Well, like like Trisha said, there's this is a very complex one, right? So, both it's a highlevel indicator because I think it's a super good one. Like if you if you like coming to work every day or most days and you have friends at work and you like the you have the resources that you need and you're feeling adequately compensated and all

070of that. So, let's break that down, right? Okay, compensation. That's a that's a critical piece. um making sure that each of our buildings and departments um have good uh opportunities for teacher and staff voice. So, for example, with the board um as you know from the board updates, we're looking at a couple opportunities for some board members to get in front of my staff advisory um council. And so, they were really excited about that today. I didn't share that with the board, but like that's a perfect example, right? they're like, "We have some really good things we'd like to share um with the board about things that you could do to help us and and we'd love for that two-way communication to to happen maybe in a smaller group like that." So, that's another strategy,

071right? >> Um >> we use the strategy when we do our exit interviews. >> Yeah. >> So, we take all of that information back to our team so we all know what we have to work on. >> Yeah. So, I I actually think this there's so many things that our principles do every day that that feed into this. Um, from the way that we are with them to their voice to even having our buildings uh clean and presentable and a great place where you're proud of and those all lead to somebody feeling like this is a place they want to do their work um every day. Uh, most everybody that works in a job, and I speak this to pretty much everybody out there that has a full-time job, they spend more of their life

072during the week in their job than they probably do anywhere else other than sleeping. And so it it there is a lot that goes into getting us as employers to get them into that great place. And so yeah, >> and we also know that the more that people want to be here, their voice is heard amongst our other stakeholders and other communities like what's going on there? I really want to be a part of that. Um, we have a really good example of a new staff member this year in for 25 26 that enjoyed their time with us right away in the summer and voiced it to another family member and has joined our team in a different capacity. And when that new staff member came on board, um, they were not afraid to share

073with us that their relative spoke very highly of us. So, we know that word of mouth is important and we want to keep that going. >> Well, and job satisfaction also correlates to doing a good job and you're putting those people in front of your students. So, you'd like to make the leap that they're going to the students are going to grow. >> Thank you. Anything else for me? If not, I'll turn it over to Sarah Marquee. >> [laughter] >> So the um I already stuff that I added. Can I share my screen? It didn't get uploaded. We forgot that part. >> I think it's uploaded. >> Is it is it because this is the live one, not the PDF. >> So if you're in there, it probably just needs to be refreshed. >> Oh,

074yep. Okay, perfect. And we know how to get back to what we were doing. [laughter] >> And Ann, you have the trick now. Ann, don't you have the trick to get it to the presentation? >> Command, shift, return. [laughter] >> Look at that. >> That was off of the web tool. So, we're good to go. Okay. >> Hello everybody. Another new year is upon us and we're ready to rock it. So, um Oh, go through all of them. Y >> should we just start over? >> Yeah, here we go. All right. All right. Clearly goals. As I prefer talked about at the end of last year, our goals, our first three goals are remaining the same because we didn't meet those goals. So, the only change that we made were to the beginning number of

075where our baseline is. So, um, we're still working on closing the gap between students with disabilities and students without disabilities. On our forward ELA assessment, we want to go from a gap of 35% of students that are proficient in both um, cohorts to 10%. On goal two and three, one is for IA math and one is for reading. We want to raise proficiency from 25% of our students in first grade through fifth grade from 25% to 46% um that are meeting or exceeding their stretch growth goal. And on reading 38% to 52% um on the reading stretch growth goal because we work to those stretch growth goals because then that's what closes the gap and shows that there's growth happening. not just you're ticking away, but in order to make those bigger jumps, you have

076to hit that stretch growth goal. So that's why we focus on that. Um, so we just finished up our fall ready testing. So we were able to include that at the last minute. So on the left hand side of the screen is our current um fall assessment. What's exciting is our tier one is 1% higher than it was last year at this time. Then on the right is our spring where we ended up at the end of last year. So one thing to note on I Ready is when you take it in the fall, the students have not learned the information yet because they are taking the first grade assessment in fall of first grade. So when we look at this and when we talk to the students about it, the yellow means that they're

077one grade level below. So third graders are technically second graders, which they are. So you want to look at, so right now 67% of our students, 45 are where they should be, 22% are above where they should be in the fall. As you get forward, the green becomes more specific to where they should be in the year. So that's an exciting piece to notice too. Um, and we really t that with the students so that they see like you learned what you were supposed to learn the year before and now you can build off of that. So this is the reading information. This is our stretch growth where we ended up last year. The continuum of how many students met or were were close to meeting their stretch growth goals last year. And same thing

078for math. So our action steps to meet those three goals and to raise the achievement on our I already scores are redefining a culture of high expectations. One of the things that um Dr. manager chief prefaced in the beginning of the year also and I know all three of us are talking about high expectations but defining what does that mean and what does that look like for all of us so I'll show share with that with you in a second um we restructured we have 29% of our students with IEPs at Clay that is quite a few students and we had to restructure how we are meeting their needs one thing we are trying this year is rather than doing it by grade levels. So, let's say first grade has probably close to 30% of

079IEPs just in first grade. Um, that can be anywhere from learning support or behavioral support. So, when you're a case manager, you're trying to help students on that continuum along. It's a lot of reactionary pieces. So when we are able to do it based on IEP goals or the needs of the students, the case managers can then focus on the needs of those students specifically compared to where they are in their learning goals or where they are in their behavioral goals. Um so that's a new structure that we have put into place this year to help that. It's the first year. Um our first hiccup was when we have to give assessments. How are we splitting up kids for that? So, we we're working through that, but so far we're it's going pretty well. Um,

080also Ann kind of talked about this. We included it in our action plan as well. How do we build the capacity of the staff then to be able to build those scaffolds and those pieces into the classrooms? Um, another part of that restructuring is students with IEPs used to be pulled during that win time to work with their case managers, which meant that they were not getting any win time in their classroom and following with their I already path and stuff. So, with this new structure, they are now technically getting triple dipped. Um, so we're excited to see what what will happen from this. So the high expectations that the staff came up with, I shared with families and staff shared with students and talked through them are listed here. So an example of what

081this might look like is if a student does not use a complete sentence and they were asked to, they would be redoing the work. If a stu well right there students will redo work that does not meet expectations. So during recess um we have almost all grade levels have three one has four sections. Two of the teachers will take the students out for recess. One room will be held back for students that maybe need to redo expectations. Um practice expectations for example if they're running in the hall when they then they get to practice how to walk in the hall. So um that's how we're holding them accountable to these pieces and in order for us to expect those things we have to raise our level of teaching so that they are able to meet

082those goals. More action steps um through with what Ann is helping us with. We are going to focus specifically on those scaffolds like she said. So when we get more training on that we'll start doing some peer observations so that people can learn from each other the different scaffolds that they're putting into place. um developing a structure for teacher-led data chats. So last year I and I'm still continuing to do it. I visit the classrooms and talk about their I Ready data as a classroom whole classroom. This year 4K through fifth grade just this last money Monday developed a way that they're going to do data chats with each of their students on a onetoone basis where the students have to be involved in collecting the data. So they either have to color in a

083bar graph or they have to track their own something where the students are part of that that they can share with parents then so that they are seeing how their learning is being impacted more specifically rather than just being told. Um on next Monday um some teachers have already started using it. They're going to share out each grade level will share out to the staff how they are doing those teacher le data chats so that others can hear different ideas. I've seen a couple of them so far and it's pretty impressive. We got four carers coloring in their their letters and numbers and doing bar graphs and all the way up to fifth grade who's tracking more specifically and then then reflecting on why they showed growth or why they didn't and what their goals

084will be for the next part of it. Um, but that's just the next step of that continuing with the learning targets that we've already started. We're continuing along that journey with success criteria. One thing that's slowing me down a little bit on that is we have act 20 training that we have to do for reading. Um, so we've started that. We're we're getting through it, but I want to do it pretty specifically. And we could just open it up to the teachers and be like, "Here, watch these modules." But I want to do it together because there is a lot of instructional practices that are embedded in those trainings that speak to everything that we are talking about. So we are doing it rather than just doing it for 4K through third grade, we're doing

085it um all the way through fifth grade because of all the instructional practices embedded. Um weekly meetings basically for the term PLC. We're just kind of using that term um because it's just kind of tired nowadays. But each week the grade level teams are going to develop a structure of how they're going to look at data and act upon it. Um basically we used coaching cycles in the past where coaches would come in and and kind of figure out what's the goal for the next six weeks. We're going to develop a structure like that to for teachers to use on their own. Um, our last goal was one that we had kind of all talked about together. Um, by the end of the 2526 school year, students receiving 0ero to one major referrals will increase

086from 87% to 92%. I know there was some confusion on major referrals. Major referrals are the same thing as office referrals are the same thing as office discipline referrals. Those all include the same piece. So, when we report out on that, that has all of those. they're all the same. Um, how we're going to meet this is we have those high expectations that we're holding students to. Um, we went over how staff and can handle student consist or student discipline in a consistent manner because that was something that also came up on the surveys that the staff didn't feel like as themselves were holding each holding students to the same level of accountability on top of our policies maybe not helping with that. So, we're um we defined as a staff and went through what

087is a major, what is a minor. Um so, people if they're having trouble, they'll ask me now and we'll talk through the different pieces. Um it's it's not hard or different, but when you have a fourker do something the same as a fifth grader, it's a very different, you know, if I have a fourker hit somebody, I'm not going to run to a major, but if I have a fifth grader, right? So, there's a different nuance in an elementary school because of that. um again providing professional development with and helping us for students with IEPs with those behavior plans and pieces that we're getting the um what is it not MBCI safety care safety care training for some deescalation strategy stuff rather than just um special ed teachers we're opening it up to all staff

088um our people's services team meets each week um this year. So, what's nice is we are in a place that we have some people that have already had some experience. So, compared to last year, we were kind of trying to help teach along the way. Um so, we have been able to look very specifically at students and we looked this morning and it was pretty exciting because um we only have like three students that have had multiple um majors right now and we have specific plans for all of them. So we were able to start looking into the minors and also seeing that because the team has some experience we all have we have plans for the students in there too. So it's it feels like a good start to be more re or proactive

089rather than reactive at this point. I don't know what December will bring though. Um and I'm continuing the blue slips to celebrate student accomplishments whether it be through the way or academics. Um I the teachers turn them into me. I announce them on the announcements. I send home emails to the parents and then the students come down, get their blue slips and I read it to them so they know everything and we celebrate that together and the students really like that. Um, and that is it. Do you have any questions for me? >> All right, you're up. >> Thanks, Sarah. >> Y All right, we've got Bur Middle School. [laughter] Um, so very similar to what Sarah was saying about school goals, Burl Middle School also kept um with the goals of last year. Um,

090understanding acknowledging that they are lofty. Um, we are really focused on the growth of every single student. So when we talk about that this year again we're focused on 100% of students will meet their stretch growth goals for I already diagnostic and math and reading um we understand that those are things that are kind of looked at like okay those are how are they attainable um but we are definitely focused in the minds that every single child deserves growth right when you guys or any of our community members send their children into our doors um expectations should be that they're growing and if they're not growing we need to be refocusing our attention and our efforts to that. Um, like Sarah was saying, the stretch growth really is looking at closing the gaps. Um, very

091interesting enough to when you look at stretch growth when it comes to I Ready, it takes kind of like a two-year process to really try to make some of those gains. Um and so we are we had nice celebrations at the end of last year about where we came and our staff looking um at the efforts that put into place and even coming into this year and some of the things that um we are just starting and embarking even this week that we'll get to. Um same thing will be for our third academic goal that we have on here. We have a total of four. Um but the third academic goal is still focusing on 100% of our students with the disability um achieving that average percentile for Ames web um and their reading composite.

092Um our baseline last year last end of school year was 381% which I talked about was um some nice growth. Um we just got done with the I already diagnostic. So Ames web um will begin next week for our students. So we do quite a bit of testing. We want to make sure that we're giving our students some time to be able to breathe before taking that especially on our students disabilities. So, um this is just kind of like what Sarah was talking about too. Um left-hand side is just kind of that reminder of where we landed in terms of reading last year, focusing on um it being a stretch growth goal, right? where we were in terms of placement distribution of where students just kept their achievement scores and then where they met um

093in terms of their stretch growth goals. So our growth data for these um for reading and math won't come until the winter time because it's for an academic year. So what I can provide for you is just where students landed overall in their achievement um just finishing up. So over um we had some nice growth even from let's say fall last year to fall of this year. Um and again like Sarah was saying where they are taking their assessment right is it would be a sixth grade actually be in like fifth grade mindset and where we're at the beginning of the year and so on and so forth. So we have some nice celebrations but also understanding too that we've got um work ahead of us just like with any school year. And then with

094our math to um where we ended last spring, bottom portion is just our stretch growth and kind of the distribution of where students landed in their stretch growth goals. And then um [clears throat] just our current recent data for math where they placed at from last week. All right. So, our action steps, um, how we're going to get to these academic goals, a lot of them still haven't changed. Um, there's a couple new ones that you'll be able to see. So, we are still focusing on our learning targets with our success criteria. Um, looking at the clarity and students understanding and knowing. Um, this actually very much ties into our peer observations tonight. Um, I had rolled out to our staff starting our peer observations. We kind of dabbled in that last end of last

095school year. Um, and it went really well. Our staff really enjoy going in and and seeing and observing what's happening. So, we're not living in those silos. Like, I think we're strengthening our collaboration, strengthening what's happening. And so, how we're um conducting our peer observations this year is we're going to use that instructional design. We're going to hopefully help strengthen our tier one instruction for all of our students. So, starting for the month of October, um, all of our staff are going to see each other and they're going to be focusing on can they see and with clarity those learning targets and success criteria and then what that opener looks like, how does the lesson begin and how does it nicely tie into learning targets and being able to work in that feedback. So, I

096think that'll be um really exciting. It's kind of part of our breakdown. So, we did some relearning about what openers look like, what are some examples, how do we hook in, how do we engage our students at the start of the class, how do we build in the learning targets, the success criteria, and then understanding when we're going to circle back to that towards the end of the year with our instructional design. Um, so I know one thing people are really excited about, they're like, I get to see like everyone's getting observed and everyone's getting to see this even for our new staff. And then it's about really collaboration and transparency. It's not about um making people feel uncomfortable, upset. We're just opening up our doors more and learning from each other and having actual

097conversations about what's happening. Data chats too. Um we establish a system at the beginning of the year with our math and ELA departments. Um what is that tool that they want to use in terms of especially for like diagnostics, but then it'd also be a tool that they could use for like more of those ending unit or summitive assessments. Students are active participants of this. Um they really wanted to focus on students setting goals and having conversations um so that right students are taking that ownership to and understanding and realizing when they started doing some of these pieces last year it gets um students excited about their learning and wanting to be able to reach higher and kind of think about how they can go further. Um, so that's going to be really universal for

098our math and the yellow departments and then that'll be something that they can come back and they have their weekly weekly department meetings and they can talk about too. Um, same thing with our department collaboration. This is something that we started last year. We are definitely continuing this year. We are just changing a little bit our model and adding more in. So right when we talk about PLC's that's been thrown around in education if you're familiar not there's usually leading for set of questions. So we're taking kind of that next step of going not just what we're saying for learning targets and success criteria but what is data telling us. So our teachers looking at and analyzing kind of with some key guiding questions about summit of assessments or engine assessments I should say. Um

099we'll get into more of that formative are there instructional pieces that we need to look at further. How do I have my peers help me identify maybe some areas that we're um struggling in and what do those next steps look like for student outcome? Right? Focusing on that student growth. Um our building leadership team still continuing to plan a lead. We're taking on um some nice work even too helping to bolster some of our achievement with our students with disabilities. Um one of our big focuses that we're looking at right now is attendance. Right? So, we know at the middle school um some of our students with disabilities do struggle with attendance that comes with that engagement. So, how are we going to refocus and re-engage? Um they're creating a really nice tool as well

100as how do we collaboratively like support our students maybe coming back from attendance but something that can transfer to all students. So really thinking about that teaming model. Um, and when we re engage them, bring them back when we find our learners are struggling, how else do we kind of wrap our arms around as professional educators and figure out next steps for them to help um be successful within our building? I talked about the progress monitoring, but we're continuously doing that as a building. We're really building more of that um skill set into the department level, so it becomes um much more ingrained in our practice. Um it's really interesting when you know you send or you go to college and people become educators. There's a lot of skills actually you don't acquire and progress

101monitoring and reading data and information are steps that take a lot of like time. It doesn't just come inately with people. Um so we're definitely still working on those steps which is great right learning together and working together. Um we established a set of expectations of learners at Berlin Middle School. So we talk a lot about like the behavioral expectations um the BMS way um but really trying to take it that step further like if you are a learner here right we have expectations of our staff but learning is a two-way street so there are expectations of our students um so I'll show that to you in a little bit um what we're kind of what we had outlined with our students and then our power hour was kind of our name change from last

102year so about halfway through um listening to what our staff were saying and trying to build an extra time um from some of those skill gaps. Um did a quick transition in February. They did beautifully with it. Um felt really empowered, wanted that more. So power hour is something that's built into every single student's schedule um at Berlin Middle School. Um we based our data took some good time um on our I Ready Diagnostic. And so students are then just starting this week got put into different um skill build skill ability groups so that we can focus in on what they really need. So they get it for 50 some odd minutes every single day. Um if they need math, if they need ELA, if they need both, um our students that would be more

103higher achieving, have opportunities to help re-engage with like some STEM based classes and activities. Um, so we're really just focused on closing the gap with more additional minutes, especially with our middle level learners and really getting focused in on those growth goals. Um, this is just kind of tying back to those four questions that we look at with our PLC's, but like we hit a lot on our standards um, and learning targets. We're focusing on unit planning and tying that all things together. So, what do we want our students to know? How do we know they learn it? our assessment. We spent some time on looking at analyzing our assessment. That's going to be still an evolving process. Like what are the questions that we're using? How are we challenging our students? Um if they

104don't learn it, what do we do when we need to go back? Do we have to reexamine the question set? Maybe some of the instructional pieces, relearning prevention, and then if they already know that extension enrichment. So building our systems in just kind of like what is guiding our department collaboration time and our building wide time. Um these were the expectations of learners at BMS. So we had beginning of the year meetings with students just to kind of understand and some of these seem probably like well yes of course those are probably basic understandings but you guys also know working in this community and communities across the state. Um but we do have to be very explicit about what we what we think is necessary to be successful as adult workers and also learners at

105the middle school. So it's just really being prepared, giving your best effort. um your listening skills, how we use our time. Um talked about advocacy. It's a really nice piece that we keep following back to like how do I ask for help, right? Sometimes, as much as everyone thinks teachers can read our students minds, right? You can do a really good job of looking like a learner in a room, but you could be struggling immensely. Um, and then just being participants and how we how we work to problem solve independently when something may come up, how we can just manage what it means to be an adolescent learner. And so this is something that we have within all of our classrooms now so that we can reference back to um, which has been really kind

106of interesting to see when we had a group of kids coming up to the small table with one of our teachers and she's like, "Nope, got to go back because why? How do I problem solve when I need, you know, all of our attention at once?" So just reestablishing a two-way street of learning at B Middle School. And then our fourth goal um like we've been talking about is that we are going to look at our majors in X path and our focus is going from 82.9% to 87% of students at Berlin Middle School have zero or one majors. And how are we doing this? Well, we had started with our building wide um behavioral professional developments. We began this um with Ann and Josh at inservice time just really starting to dive into the

107whole systems that we have strategies looking through behavioral plans and this will be something that will continue on even with our new counselor Miss Castana. Safety care training will be something that will also be ongoing throughout the year for deescalation. So, it's just sometimes when we get into those um right harder months where we've been in school, we're all really really used to each other having those kind of refreshers about how do we best um meet our students needs with the escalation. Same thing for comp, our classroom organized and management plan. Um, this has been going on in the district for a few years and our new staff get um, trained and all of our staff did, but re kind of invigorating some of those really key components that are beneficial as again reminders that

108go throughout the year like, oh yeah, maybe kind of forgot about that key or I've got to maybe reexamine or reanalyze. Um, we have film room slides. been doing this at Burville School um since I began. And it's really just about when students come in in the morning, what are some of those positive um relationships? How do we have a little bit of like some social emotional learning? Getting them ready and sent on to first hour. Um and that way it's building wide. Our students are seeing and hearing and feeling the same um components of positivity starting their academic school day. Same thing with our trusted adults. Um, we've been doing this, this will be our fifth year now, ensuring that all students have at least one trusted adults that they're connected to and I've

109talked about this and we'll continue to talk about this, right? Our students spend so much time with us in your buildings that we want to ensure that they have someone that they can trust in. Um, right, I always say we're like the middle kids. Middle school students have lots of big emotions and um it's really important that they have at least somebody that can spell those big emotions and small emotions and everywhere in between to help them uh through their fun hormonal journey. Um sources of strength and bison minutes. Um so really strengthening what we are utilizing for social emotional learning. So we are focusing on um at least two to three times a month some activities that are tied to sources of strength which we um partner with theta care and providing this. It's

110really focused on just components of positivity and building our students self-esteem and kind of self-awareness and healthy relationships and just active living. Um and so it's been fun that students they made home room posters and just really kind of building that community and that sense of positivity with just like fun um connections to one another and to their adults. We're still continuing on with our students of the month um assemblies and celebrations which is recognize our students for academic attendance being just good overall students and trying to make sure that we can highlight as many students in our school as possible. um our student support team starting with again our new um counselor, Miss Casta. Um she's been fantastic jumping aboard. She's already got small groups of students going kind of based upon our data

111that we finish out the school year with just to make sure that they have really good positive um connections and moving forward into their next year um of middle school. Um our collaborative support framework, this is what we are working on as a leadership team. Um, so we actually like just test ran through this last week and we're like, "This is taking us so high of the crew." So, we got to maybe just refine and tweak this so that we can help utilize that with our all of our staff. I talked about our social emotional small groups just really thinking about could be code of conduct, could be trends, just things going on in the building to make sure that we're educating, retaching, um, and being really more proactive and and connecting to each other

112as well. like, oh, okay, so somebody else is having the same struggles or showing the same types of behaviors, and that's okay. We can learn through this process as well. Um, and then the last bit I just put in here is kind of a little piece. I know there was kind of talk about the sixth grade transition. Probably like most schools, it's can be hard and can be challenging when you go from elementary to middle school. Um, so what did we kind of look at this year? So, first of all, I sent out just all of our sixth grade families again like really explicitly like what what do we have for expectations? So, they've kind of talked through neutrals um prior to sending their sixth grade into our building, right? Our families also need to

113know what we expect of them. Um on the first day of school, we had an alternate schedule. Um for our sixth graders specifically, they spent the entire time with their home room. Um the morning we had six through eight building wide really just talking about like how do we do things here at Berlin Middle School? How do we go to the lunchroom? How do we practice that? What are our expectations? And then the afternoon our sixth graders spent time with our student leaders um in web and really did a lot of engaging community building activities to kind of help work out some of those, you know, nervous jitters that you would get. Um so it's really cool to see. You get your eighth graders who are kind of like nervous about being leaders, leading our

114sixth graders and just spending a good chunk of time and I think helping relax um just that nice transition. And then everyone came back on Friday, ran through a normal schedule. Um so for the first couple weeks of power hour two, our sixth grade team um spent a lot of time on transitional work prior to getting into their ELA and math groups. Um, but they were working on things of like teaching our sixth graders again like how do you use Google Drive in Canvas? How do you navigate that? How do you go into P school and check your grades and check for missing work? Yes. Yes. Yes. They did practice their lockers again and again and again. Um, it was how to use like our online planners and I reading pre-esting and doing conferences, getting

115into that mindset of like data chats, writing a reflective letter to themselves, even focusing on like nitro type games because we're still kind of seeing like with our students and how quickly they can type things. So, they just our sixth team did a really nice job of taking additional time of like what do they need? How do we build those groups? And um by and large we're like we're having a great year with our sixth graders. It's been really fun. It's been fantastic to see. Um I think I credit all that work and how they entered the school year and what their mindset was. So again, just kind of putting that out there since it was a conversation. I wanted you to know what we were kind of working on and helping our graders. So

116any questions? Thank you. Yeah. Kurt. [laughter] >> All right. Uh I'll try to be brief here, but uh we have similar trends in our goals that the other schools have had. Uh so our first one is an academic goal. Um this year we're working on the percentage of students who are um in in the forward test it's called proficient and advanced. Uh it's on the ACT it's called meeting is what the terminology is that they use for the ACT. Um so we're trying to increase the number of students who are meeting that that expectation or that standard. So if you look at and this is broken down by ELA and math. So if you look um uh just for example our class of 2027 on their preac so this is our this year's juniors uh

117in ELA 33.6% 6% were meeting that standard. Now on my next slide I'll talk about like what is that standard um of of meeting or or advanced uh we've chose 7 and a half%. The reason we chose 7 and a half% is because we felt five was maybe a little too easy and 10 was too hard. So we just picked 7 and a half% is a is still I think a rather rigorous um uh goal to increase by. Um I put a little asterisk here um for the freshman group because we are using their percentages from the forward exam and then comparing to pret and we know that forward exam is not timed. The test is kind of apples and oranges. So I don't know that these things are going to really speak to each

118other. Well, we're going to track it. Um but we're really focused on these because we think that this is especially that sophomore group. They're taking the same test from 9th grade to 10th grade. that's a true measure of uh to be able to see that growth or that change in so that's that's what we're looking at um again math and ELA all grades 9 through 11 so on the uh preACT there's different cut scores so if you are in grade nine [clears throat] and you get a 15 as your ELA score and remember ELA is a combination of your English and your reading score they average those two. So now we're talking raw scores again, uh, one through 35 scale on the preac. So if you can get a 15 on ELA as a grade

119nine student, uh, you are meeting expectations. You have hit that that benchmark. And we're using this because this is actually um how uh proficiency is determined on a school report card. So if you are an approaching student, you count for 0.5 points on that scale. If you're an immediate student, you get a full point. If you're an advanced student, you get 1.5. So then what we're going to do is as we're looking at this is we're going to find who are those students who are close to making those jumps to that next level and making sure that we maintain or advance, you know, all of our students, but especially those that are close. If we can jump some students up who are high approaching, maybe those 14 students, and get them to be meeting. All

120right. Now, now we're our report card's also going to reflect uh that change in that group. In grade 10, they take that same preac test, but the cut scores change a little bit. So, you can see that. And then on the uh actual ACT, um they they have cut scores for science, too, but um they have a different [clears throat] uh level there. Again, that this is a different test. These two are the same test. So that's that's how we they determine what's meeting and what's um advanced and we can see that in our wise data and we can calculate that on our own. So the strategies that we're use implementing to uh uh hopefully gain students in the meeting and advanced categories is um as Mike just mentioned uh yesterday we gave our practice

121ACT exam to all students in grades 9 through 11. Uh we it's a true ACT test from ACT. Uh but we administered that on our own with our own kind of scoring. Uh we have a a an iPad app that scores the the bubbles. And so we're working right now. We don't have the data yet, but we'll have that data maybe as soon as Monday for our inservice day to talk um some about. Um but definitely by early October and then as a staff we'll talk about okay and now now that we know the data how do we go back to the students and have those uh like Sarah was talking about those data chats with the students of where their strengths are where their areas of growth need to be um and uh again

122identifying those students who are who are um close and know letting those students know. I think that's motivating for students to know, hey, you know, if with just a little bit of gain in this area, like my my score could could count more for my school or I could be in a different group. Um, and so we're we're going to hopefully use uh that as a motivator as well. Um, so those kind of I spilled into the next one as well. Um we our our staff and we did some work this fall making sure that we have opportunities for our students to see um the stress or the the style of um testing that the ACT is. It's a different test than they see it in on I Ready. It's a different type of test

123than they see at uh in the forward exam. And so our students just need to have repetition on that, right? whether that's uh timing exams or um you know the the multiple choice and and trying to eliminate answers. The one that that students really struggle with is the no change. Sometimes there's an option to just like that that sentence as it's written is actually the best form. Um and so how do you have the confidence to say like nope, I think that looks good. Um that that one always seems to hang students up. So we're um working on in integrating those as like our bell ringers and and things like that. Um, we have a a teacher, Shannon Key, who is uh got a little bit of her day scheduled to prepare for the rest

124of the English department. Um, some added uh true like grammar work in our 911 curriculum. So, we switched curriculums in in ELA. What what was that Sarah? Like three years ago, four years ago. And um one of the things we're realizing is while there's strengths of that curriculum, there's also areas where it's it's not as strong and our English scores in particular have not been um where we want them to be. So we're supplementing and Shannon is diving into that data and creating um materials using some of the ACT stuff that we have uh so that that's being implemented into the classrooms. Um, yeah, we're the the other thing was just we're I'll talk about this kind of on my last slide, but we're making sure that we're aligning what we're doing to the standards

125to the college of career readiness standards that are part of the ACT. Actually, tomorrow is our first day of our peer observations at the high school. Uh so half of our staff will go and see another group uh with three areas of focus. One of them is the instructional design, one of them is the learning targets and success criteria and one of them is on uh some of the comp strategies that we talk about all the time. So the teachers will go and look for two of those three things and I have a sheet where they're taking some notes. uh they'll go back to that teacher and provide them that the the notes and have a a conversation about uh what they saw and ask follow-up questions to it. Um but that will happen here.

126Again, the first wave is tomorrow and the next one uh is I think the second week of October or actually it's the third week. I think we didn't I don't think it's during homecoming week. Um and then the last thing and this is a pretty big change. So we used to have three meetings after school a month. One was um just like a true staff meeting here. Here's the updates that you need to have. One was um professional development around a certain topic. And one was with my leadership team. Um what we've done is we're keeping the staff meeting the the nuts and bolts of operational stuff that we need to check in on on a monthly basis. The second meeting of the month, the departments are meeting with a pre-made agenda that looks a

127lot like those four questions that Colleen had put up with DEOR's uh PLC model. Uh what do we want students to know? How are we going to measure it? What do we do if they learn haven't learned it? What do we do if they have? Um it's a little more detailed than that and it's aligned to over the next four-week cycle. Um what are we going to measure? How are we going to measure it? What do we plan to do in advance uh if students know it and what do we plan to do in advance if they don't? And then there's two other steps starting in the next cycle which is to review what happened. Um so it's it's a cyclical process. Um so that's happening one night a month. Um if departments have coaches

128and things that aren't able to meet on that the expectation is they find an alternative time uh that they they will do that whether that's you know for our core core departments they have a common prep time so they can do that during their prep time and then the after school meeting just turned into their prep time. So they the requirement is that they are together as a full department to have that conversation. Then that leadership team meeting is now gone and one representative from each of my departments and I've combined some of my one-off departments to be a a new department are coming together and then we're talking and sharing those data and what what school level trends are we seeing? Um what things do we need to evaluate and and put into place

129if we're if we're seeing those trends? um or what what successes are other departments having with either particular students or um certain pieces of curriculum that we can then apply to our other departments. So um that's kind of the structure that we put into place for this year. Um so it starts with at at the individual classroom level, they share that and combine that at the department level and we share and combine that at the school level and then we go back to um reset that the next month. All right. Our second goal uh is upon behavioral uh referrals and we were at about 92% last year for students who received zero to one referrals. In my opinion, anything over 90% is is good. And uh if you I think keep going on that like

130then maybe you're you're fooling yourself by just not taking care of the behaviors that are happening in your school. Um so I've just said uh this year our goal is to keep it above 90%. Um I I think on the surface you might read into that like well Brian if you go to uh you know 90.2 you actually went down that's not good enough. Well that's going to be the difference of like two kids. And again I think anything you're I think you're always going to have that that 10% or that 5%. It's what we do with them. Hopefully uh it's two referrals and not nine referrals uh with those students. Um but I I'm happy with where that data point is and I think it's important that we keep that data point at that

131level. So again uh as I mentioned in that peer observation part of it is on class management. What are we doing in a proactive way to make sure that um our students are following our expectations? Are we clearly communicating them? Do we have uh all of the needs met? All of those things. Uh are we engaging students in things that are constructive? Otherwise they're going to find unconstructive things to be engaged with. Uh so all of those things are are important and we're we're measuring that um in those peer observations. Um like all the other schools, we're doing some of that comp PD and the things that we're doing in those small group breakouts around classroom management. Um Kurt and I have uh put into place that when we go in into a classroom, you

132know, we're going to look for uh all things on on the teacher effectiveness piece, but we're always going to get feedback on class management, even if that's just reinforcing something positive that we saw um that au that a teacher has in place. Um and and that can happen formally or informally. And then just to kind of measure uh where we're at on um how our staff are feeling about our especially Kurt and my uh reactions to um behavior referrals when they come. And so that's kind of tying into the next uh slide, but we want to make sure that our staff are feeling supported, that um our systems in place are working, and um we think that that's also going to help make sure that our our staff are feeling like they can write referrals

133because they're going to have an impact. And our last goal um is around our staff perceptual data. And um so there's two statements that we're focusing in on. Our staff handles discipline in a consistent manner. Uh 52% of our staff agreed with that statement. Uh which is a we're in the 61st percentile of all schools who did that survey. So that's it's actually uh we're doing okay on it, but I feel like if only 52% feel that way, I I still feel like we can be better and that could be higher. And then the other statement, our school student discipline practices and policies are effective. Uh twothirds agree and we're in the 73rd percentile for that statement. But again, I still think uh in order to have a a a collective uh belief that these

134systems are in place and they're working allows us to stop thinking about that, stop spending time on that. Um make trust the systems. They're in place. We all believe in it. We're all doing those things. And then we can spend that time uh that instead of on the behavioral things, on the academic things, which is why we're here in the first place. Um we talked a little bit in our fall in service about um the the discipline data. We spent a whole morning on all sorts of data, but we talked about the discipline data. Uh what are the the main factors that uh result in uh office referrals? Um and and we spent time looking at the perceptual surveys as well. And um I think I would love you to give this the the cell

135phone piece or the the there are some questions that I think our staff are like give us that survey again right now. Like let's go. Like we want to we want to change that data and and I'm glad that my staff is fired up and and excited to um make some some impact on those those data points. Um Kurt and I did a little bit of work um with the whole group on just how um the process works when it falls into our hands and what are our go-to um moves and strategies to to try to change behavior. Um but it's also happening kind of at an organic level. I mean, just even today, Kurt was following up with two teachers after school today on a student discipline piece to talk about, you know, where

136his role is and what the teacher's role is and and um uh making sure that we're aligned in that and and again making sure teachers are feeling supported in that. So, that's that's been great. Um talk about peer observations. Again, we're doing it on on all three goals there. um making sure that our staff see the data throughout the year that we're just not talking about it in in the fall and then talking about it in the spring. So making sure that they see that that data um throughout the course of the year and and that we're we're talking about that. Um and then again that midyear kind of assessment of how are our staff feeling about those things. So those are our three goals. This last slide um is really confusing and messy, but

137this is something I shared with my staff and it may look better on your screens if if you have it up. Um this is something I put together for my staff because when I was in in a teacher role, one of the things that frustrated me the most was the one-off PD. Hey, we brought in so and so. They came and showed us the shiny thing. They left. It died in a few months and then we moved on to the next thing. And I tried to take some time and show our staff that all the things that we're doing actually right now do connect together and that there is meaning behind the time that we're going to spend this upcoming Monday or the time that we spent this fall. Um that it does tie into

138all of those things. So this is I'll give you just the 30 second overview of how this works, but we spent years looking at state standards and and talking about them. We have to go back to that occasionally because new standards are adopted and um we have to go back and and check to make sure that we're still in alignment with things. Um but there are so many standards we can't actually teach them all to to fidelity and so we have to select which ones have the highest impact. So we call those priority standards. So as departments we make professional decisions about these are the highest impact that we have to make sure basically when you say a guaranteed and viable curriculum these are the guarantees when a student takes my class algebra 1 uh

139they're going to leave here knowing these things and I I said 8 to 10 with a semester with a question mark it's different for every subject based on the how the standards are written some standards are written very complex with substandards in them and Some uh standards are very specific. So the number of standards is going to vary. But once we've selected like these are the the the guaranteed priority standards for a class, we have to really understand what do they what they mean. So we've done that for a couple years. We talked about teacher clarity. The clarity means what is in the standard and how are we going to measure that. So our our staff has spent time unpacking those priority standards uh down to the individual word and selecting the nouns and the

140verbs that are in that standard. And then from there we develop an assessment. We do backwards planning. We say okay that's what it means to do this standard. How do we make a tool that measures it? So if it says to compare and contrast something um like we probably can't do that on a multiple choice test. So what tool are we going to use for the students to be able to compare contrast blah blah blah. So we we write the assessment. We're in this progress right now. We're doing some of this work. Um so we write the summit of assessment and then we have to okay how do we get our students to that bar? How do we train our students where from where they're at? And that changes every year. That's different with every

141student. How do we get our kids to meet that that goal? Um, and that's how we develop a progression. And the progression then determines what's our daily lessons, how do we get them there, how long does that take, right? Um, so this green stuff is really by department. We do this collaboratively. Um, and maybe even it falls into like the lesson creation. If you're teaching the same class, we like that's done collaboratively. But this red stuff here is is a lot on the teacher. This is what they do. So they create their daily lessons. Again, we have learning targets and success criteria to kind of do a mini version of what we just said at the standard. This is what we're doing today to get us there so we know that we've moved on. Um,

142success criteria has to do with usually formative assessment. This is summitative assessment. This is formative assessment. And we're collecting student data every day hopefully or every couple days to make sure that our students are advancing so we can climb that learning progression ladder. Right? And we're doing this at the same time implementing the instructional design because we know that that's um researchbased and it's it's high leverage tool and we're reflecting on our practices by that department PLC piece. So while we're formally meeting once a month to collect and look at data um that we're collecting, this happens almost all the time just again kind of organically with the department. So the department of PLC is going to say, "Hey, we're we have to go back to the drawing board on something like our kids aren't

143getting it. So we may have to add some steps to that learning progression in the future or um we're going to have to uh you know, our kids are getting it. So like let's move on. We can go deeper. We might even be able to add a priority standard uh to that class because we're going to have the time because we're we're hitting on all of those things." Um, and then all of this, and this isn't on this slide, but is on my next slide that I showed staff, is encompassed within class management because you can't do any of these things. You can't execute your lesson. You can't um measure student learning if your class is out of control and chaotic. So, all the work that we're doing on class management really ties into all

144of that. So, this was my way to try to put a bow on like all these different initiatives that we have, it it actually does work together. it does make sense. Um, and that we just have to keep the course and and know that it's going to take time. So, yeah, that's what I got. Any questions? >> Thank you, Brian. >> Thank you. >> You know, we've hammered admin for years on these goals. I'm surprised they never shot back and said like, "Where are yours?" like you know cliche. Uh so new this year we've got our own board goals just kind of reinforce the point that there's room for improvement throughout the district and that obviously includes us as a board as well. Um so you'll see what the specific goals are but at the

145end of the day most of them have to do with communication and specifically communic I think more direct communication uh to these to these three areas direct communication from the board and direct feedback from them to the board. Uh so you'll see this first goal is parent focused and our metric uses a school perception survey. School board is doing what it takes to make the district successful. So we have a goal of 80% this year that agree to that. Last year that was 55% which was a decrease of almost 10 from the other year. So how will we try to include those numbers? Uh we're going to occasionally maybe every other month have an actual you know message from the board of education in the monthly newsletters that come out from the principles at each

146school so we can speak directly you know from us. We'll also maybe include some poll surveys, you know, one or two questions throughout the year on very specific topics in those newsletters so we can gather some feedback directly from parents also sidly at a later date, but whether we include parents in a new newsletter that's coming up in the next or maybe the third goal. Um but then again you then you have these soft ones you [clears throat] know make make an effort to go to school functions also review key policies that continually be brought up at meetings each time and then you know encourage board members to come to the monthly meeting at least one celebration we're really I mean we're as a society giant companies built on negativity social media is driven off

147that right so we have to be better we have to be positive there's a ton of good stuff happening uh that we need to celebrate sort of thing we have to say about so second goal staff focus so same thing school board's doing what it takes to make the district successful goal of 80% this past year we had a 61% agree which was also a decrease of almost 15% so the action steps around that include I think again occasional messages directly from the school board you know not going to super going through the superintendent not going through the princip where we can ask questions that are very specific to, you know, the where our lane is, right? Knowing that full well that we have lanes here, but you know, how do you feel about compensation?

148Something we said, right? How do we feel about X, Y, and Z? So, we can ask those questions directly to staff members and get some feedback that way. We've talked about doing two or three listening sessions with the superintendent's advisory council, getting feedback face to face from from staff members. Again, much like the last one, actively try to get in the schools, see what's going on. Uh review key policies [clears throat] so that they they know that we're reactive uh and making changes where it's necessary. And then again, coming with that one celebration because I think quite a few watch on Wednesday. So, and then goal number three, community focus. Uh, again, the board's doing what it takes to get the district successful. Unfortunately, we have to set a baseline for that this year. We

149don't send out a communitywide school perception survey, and I don't see us doing that for financial reasons right now. So, that's part of this goal is determining how we're going to get that data. But again, I think a goal of 60%, you know, that's a shot of dark and we're gonna we're gonna see where that ends up. But the biggest one out of this one is developing a kind of like a quarterly [clears throat] newsletter directly from the board to anyone in the community. I guess anyone anywhere that's kind of curious about what's going on from the board's [snorts] from the board standpoint. I think we'll include obviously some school information from the other ones that are it's germanine or if it's fun helps tell a story but I think the gist of it will

150be what's going on at this level. So I know we've had meetings already talking about how that would go out, you know, what kind of medium that would be what kind of media that would be used there. And again, we could ask direct questions basically to any resident in the school district, any resident in the school district or beyond, I guess. Again, then for the ones that maybe don't get emailed or check their emails, uh we're going to look at doing one or two mailers. We did that with the referendum, something similar, something where we're not asking for money on money or explaining why we're asking for money. Maybe we'll come across nicely, right, to the residents and then it's going to that'll do a better job of making sure any taxpayer of the district

151is getting some information directly from the district. Again, we talked well this was if community reaches out to the board. We had a discussion on this. Make sure that there's a feedback loop and that it's closed. and then again come to the monthly meeting with at least one celebration and to continue some positive discussion about the district. So did I miss anything? >> No. >> Are there any corrections from what I just said? >> Anybody have any questions for Nick? >> Okay. Thank you. >> Good then. >> Yeah. I I just want to thank everyone that presented the the leadership team, our assistant principles for being here and supporting uh your schools, Nick. It it was really fun to watch this and kind of be a part of it, too. But I think every year

152we collectively have gotten better at this and have kind of taken the board's feedback or processes as a team. I love that we ended with the board goals. I don't know how everybody else feels, but I just think it's a step in the right direction, right, to kind of we're all in this together, right? And I think that set the tone. So anyway, thanks to Lord and thanks for our team. Do you mind if we dismiss anybody want to go home? They're free to stay, but you're free to go. So at this point, thanks again for being here so long with your families and your other lives. >> Okay. So we'll move on to number nine, the approval of the revised superintendent contract for the 20 25 time period. It is an action item. So,

153I need motion. >> I'll move to approve. >> Any discussion? I I'd like to bring up that uh I I think that um I I don't just I don't agree with the um portion of the contract that the board is losing its option to um make the raise that the teachers get and that the superintendent get that they're linked together. that I think that the board should still have an option to be able to treat those separately. And uh I think that that everything else on that I I'm agreeable to, but I that's a key item that uh if if the board gives up that that um option um it's it's going to be in that contract forever and we you lose that that option to treat treat them them separately. I I I can

154see that as this year it was the same and it would probably be the same, but the board I think has a responsibility to um address that and decide what what that uh raise would be and I'm against keeping linking those together. >> I mean, are you suggesting that the the superintendent would not get the same as with the staff? So, I'm I'm suggesting that we have the option to say what what it would be. I I would see it's probably going to be the same, but I I I think the board is giving up the option if if you if you see a a a time where um teacher salaries around the area suddenly go up and we have to make a a bigger raise in the teacher salaries and and it can be

155separate from the the superintendent. We have that option. um if if other things change, we have we have an option and and I think that uh the board has a chance to discuss in our uh evaluation of the superintendent and and and make sure that that u we we address that and and responsibly decide what that uh what that would be that that raise. So, so I I I feel that that um my my understanding that's a new part in that um contract that that they're linking the staff, the teachers and and the superintendent language. >> Um I got to find the compensation part is in the salary paragraph. >> It was discussed at the end. >> It was it was >> discussed already. >> We we we talked about this back in June and

156>> it was part of the negotiations added in the performance recognition compensation piece so they're tied [clears throat] together. Okay. Well, we we got the chance to see this. I I didn't know that that was we we had seen this before. >> We talked about it in June >> in close session. [clears throat] >> Okay. I don't I remember that. But um Okay. Well, I I think I think it's it's um I think that in my I I I like the uh the compensation um um motivation um part of it and and all that, but I I don't >> That's the next piece. >> Okay. >> So, I think we just call for a vote and We can go from there unless somebody else has something to say. So, should I do I would suggest

157that? >> Okay, we're going to do a roll. >> Beth, I'm voting. Yes or no? >> Yes. >> Sarah, >> yes. >> Rick, >> uh, yes. >> Mike, >> no. >> Alison, >> yes. >> Snick, >> yes. >> Jim, >> yes. Okay, motion carried. >> Okay, so now we'll go on to the approval of the superintendent performance compensation plan and that is what or Mike was kind of alluding to. So I'll need a motion for that. Does anybody have any Well, let's do the motion first. And this again we >> Nothing's changed from that from what was discussed in close session. I'll make the motion. >> I'll second. >> Any discussion? >> All in favor say I. >> I. I. >> Opposed. Motion carried. Okay. Then we're going to look at the annual review process

158and that we had to um I think did I send and then I'll Okay. So, if you could open that up. So this is a Do you want me to say do you want to just say that this is a document that already? >> Yeah, we Yeah, we reviewed it like last year and never like formally approved it. It's followed the guidelines, but this is just making it an actually approved document for the board. >> So So it didn't it didn't change. thing. >> I Well, I think there is I mean I added like the two things we just passed that there's preference to that now, but there's nothing else I would call Germaine to anything big that changed as far as >> So Nick and I essentially updated it to make sure it matched

159what we're doing already. >> Correct. >> Second. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I. >> Opposed. Motion carried. Okay. So, we'll move on to the financial update which you did already. >> Yeah. I don't have anything new except for um just to re-emphasize that our annual meeting is attached to um the regular meeting October 29th. So, annual meeting will be at 6 o'clock. Regular meeting will be about standard practice. >> Great. Emma, do you have anything? >> Just two really quick things. First of all, um, thanks for being here for a long meeting. Um, and again, just a big shout out to everybody, um, team, you guys, for all the work that goes into this this meeting. Um, and I just wanted to say that it's been a really great start to the school

160year. I think I love the celebrations you guys gave, the board gave at the beginning. Um, I think there's been a lot of really positive energy. I've heard that from my principal team, leaders just as they get into classrooms, staff, students are looking really good and uh, yeah, it's just been a really good start from that perspective. Um, second thing, just wanted to give it as a public kind of update on the petition to reduce board members. So, we did certify that on Monday. We had 112 signatures. We needed 100. Um Sarah Pedole, we put together a letter. Sarah signed it to she went through address by address make sure they're they were legit enough to account for the petition. Um so what that means back to our annual meeting piece that was just mentioned

161a second ago. So now there'll be a resolution at the annual meeting um for everybody that attends that are lectures that attend the annual meeting. Just as a reminder, we're going to do something kind of exciting and new this year for the annual meeting. So, a lot of districts keep the annual meeting very physically different from the board meeting that night. And we traditionally, or at least the last while, just kind of like we start the board meeting with the annual meeting and then switch over. But this year, we're going to go to the auditorium for the annual meeting so that it feels truly like a different meeting. So, the public will be invited just like we always do and we'll probably have a few um you know, usually we don't have a lot, but

162then the board will sit actually with all the public because that's really you guys are electors and not like board members in in that meeting and then whoever's running it will be running the meeting um as an annual meeting and then we'll move up. >> What? >> Where is it? Here. >> Here in the auditorium. Yep. >> No. Oh, okay. >> Yep. And then we'll move over to the to the middle school. >> Middle school. >> Okay. So we want to make sure it was across the parking lot, but we wanted to be different though physically. Um and a lot of districts do that so that it feels like hey this is a different meeting reminding everybody and that's where um among the other resolutions like the tax related ones the petition or the resolution

163around board member reduction will occur. And then lastly, one thing I neglected to put in the agenda, so I'm just going to use part of my superintendent update, is in the future, we're going to have a a running item at the bottom of the agenda that's about community partner updates. And um I think Nick and Katherine kind of came up with this idea. I think it's a great idea, which is like um some of you participate in community groups like Nick represents Boys and Girls Club on the board or um Katrina is on the city council, others of you are on other groups. But um the corporation around scholarships might appear on that one, right? I don't know if anybody else sees. So those are the types of groups. So we won't go group by

164group, but like that will just be a standing spot. So if anybody on the board is a part of these other groups wants to give something school related, like hey, there's an update on this. It gives us a little spot for that. It's an effort to also show the community that hey, we are a part of you and like there might be an update worthy of that affects our schools. So Nick, you want >> Well, I can give one. He stole like he's still [laughter] but I did ask so I'm on the boys and girls club book club board this as well. Um so just a quick update on that. So Berlin hit a record attendance of 116 kids in one day since the start of the school year. They're averaging about 103 kids. So

165just an FYI of how many of our students are continuing over there. And then the other piece of information, they're having like a scholarship, but I think it's scholarship probably financial aid meeting to be held at the club next Monday from noon to 3 for all registered club members. So I think that's kind of just a very introductory meeting into this is what you can expect and this is what it's going to look like. So but yeah, what kind of I was sitting in a board meeting and they were talking about this stuff and then even the president was like Does the school board know about this? I was like, I don't think so, but they should. So, and I know there's a lot of other clubs and organizations that have to do this. So,

166[snorts] give it a whirl. >> I think it kind of dubtales back to your goals, too, which is another avenue to kind of make those connections, show how the work that you do as a board, we do as a school district impacts the community and vice versa. Just another shout out. >> Okay. Thank you. Do you have any other update? >> What? >> On that? >> No. No. On your >> No. >> Okay. Um EMTT stole mine. So I would like a motion to adjurnn. >> I move to adjourn. >> Second. All in favor say I. >> Thank you everyone. That's amazing.