BoE Meeting on 04/11/2022

001[Music] good evening welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the jefferson county board of education on monday april 11 2022 if you please join us for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the god of the united states of america and to your recovery for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice [Music] yesterday um we tragically lost one of our own elena williams elena was a senior at washington high school she was upbeat and always bringing us joy with her laughter she and her smile knew everyone and everyone knew her elena was a resilient student who challenged herself academically and was planning on attending college last july she took her senior pictures with a sign that read on to the next chapter elena's chapter was written too short but she is

002leaving behind a story that has touched many please join me in a moment of silence in remembrance of elena williams washington high school class of 2022 thank you all right this evening we start with a presentation on alternative diploma coursework with mr matthew wink good evening board president skinner board members and dr gibson learn thank you for the opportunity to come to speak to you this evening regarding our alternative diploma for our jefferson county learners next slide please beginning with the class of 2021 west virginia schools were required to offer full implementation of the alternative diploma for our population of learners and all population learners throughout the united states the alternative diploma is a record for the graduate stating that they have met the requirements under the alternative assessment and the alternative achievement standards as

003set forth by wvde as well as local education agencies the standards of graduation must be comparable to that of the standard diploma including four credits of english math and social studies three credits of science one credit of pe health and art followed by four credits under their pep plan all total that would equal 22 minimum credits with regards to graduation participation students are encouraged to be included in their 9th grade cohort as they participate during their 12th grade year let me be clear in saying no student will be denied the option of a standard diploma if a student can meet the criteria of a standard diploma they can graduate with one only students with a significant cognitive disability should be taking the alternative assessment next slide please the alternative diploma is one avenue to allow

004the learner to participate in the high school curriculum until they are 21 years eight of age as determined by their birthday following the students graduation ceremony they may return to the school or specialized program through the school district until they age out at 21 or they meet the requirements set forth by the school district for awarding of their diploma next slide please the standard diploma excuse me the alternative diploma has three requirements that must be met and the school district is responsible for implementing them number one instruction in the alternative academic standards must be crosswalked to general standards it should be noted that this requirement does not directly correlate to a one-to-one relationship standards are established to ensure they mirror the same big idea regarding grade level content standards there must be an alignment with

005the state requirements for the regular high school diploma and the diploma must be obtained during fate period next slide please this slide gives an overview of the current jefferson county school population working towards the alternative diploma keep in mind that only students who have met the iep significant cognitive disability criteria may participate in this program of study this criteria standards are an iep team decision with all members having equal representation for determination it is not a decision that should be done with a broad stroke of the pin currently there are 67 students on the alternative diploma track out of the 1258 students that are served by an iep next slide please once an iep team has made the decision to move the student to an alternate diploma track standards of study are established and are

006fairly straightforward through the ninth grade i will say that our schools who educate alternative diploma students including t.a lowry drisswood elementary and charlestown middle do a phenomenal job of ensuring these students continue to be exposed to activities and educational opportunities alongside their standard diploma friends as a parent of a young man who is on the alternative diploma track it truly makes me proud to work alongside these professionals when the transition iep occurs for the student from 8th grade to 9th grade or 9th grade to 10th grade that priority must continue to be prescriptive to the student and not a one-size-fits-all approach we cannot take the eye out of iep next slide please this slide looks at two fourth grade english standards i chose these standards because the snapshot is pretty similar standard to standard this

007is not the case for all standards though as i stated earlier there is not always a one-to-one match-up but i did want you to see both standards general and alternate and how they mirror the same big idea regarding grade level content standards next slide please in 2017 miss christie horning went to marion county and first saw the unique curriculum working with their students she returned to jefferson county believing that this curriculum needed to be implemented here later that same year she took fellow members of the department back down to see it again and brought it back to jefferson county and implemented it the wbde did not fully endorse the unique curriculum until 2018 but it continues to endorse it currently the strength behind the unique curriculum include the fact that it crosswalks to our wv

008ccr standards it is prescriptive to the individual learner and it can also be aligned easily to the iep goals next slide please unlike some curriculum options the unique curriculum requires the teacher to participate in a foundational course and provide the district with their course with their course certificate before they can even start to utilize it there is also ongoing pd learning options embedded into the curriculum for viewing at the educator's leisure next slide please we encourage and try to support teachers in the process of allowing alternate diploma learners to take related arts classes and vocational classes alongside their typical peers as can be safely done just as we described from the core classes the standards can be crosswalked for these learners at charlestown middle school you can walk into mr barker's computer class and see

009students on both the traditional track as well as the alternate track working together collaboratively on the same project as students move into high school we want to continue to foster this same collaboration while expanding on the specific interest of the student if we have a student who loves plants and loves to get into the dirt then we want to allow them to take classes towards that cte horticulture plan of study if we have a student who loves to sing let's allow them to take course one through four alongside their peers next slide please later tonight i'll be coming back to ask you to approve new courses for jefferson county students that continue to allow this flexibility of learning the iep team will be making a decision in the ninth grade year on which plan of

010study to engage heavy into does the learner need a heavier daily living skills course of study and not focus on workplace skills or is it vice versa or do they want to have a myriad of the two again this is an iep team decision that is going to benefit the student for the next four five or six years next slide please this is one example of a plan of study and again this is simply a sample this is not anything that's locked in but this gives you an example of a plan of study for a student entering high school on the alternate diploma track you can see that this student had five years of high school before the age of 21 in aging out they could see anywhere between five and seven years a maximum

011but we also have a student here who likes chorus needs heavier exposure to daily living skills thus there are two periods a year offered for this but the iep team believes that the student could also benefit from work skills exposure as well next slide please later in the meeting again i will come back to you to talk to you about the alternative diploma standards and ask for your approval so that we can continue to implement these robust ideas for all of our students including our alternative diploma students thank you for your attention at this time i welcome any questions that you may have mr yes ma'am um you're saying that students with severe cognitive deficits will be required to take math one two and three the traditional the same classes that yes well remember we

012take those standards and we crosswalk them so we don't take the west virginia ccr standards those standards are then crosswalked over into the alternative learning assessment standards that the state department has built out and gives us so a student may be working on um solving expressions so in that solving of expressions the teacher may utilize something like here's a bag and we have five red beads and five blue beads and we want to put them together that's the process of meeting the standard for that student what class would they be in would this be self-contained a self-contained yes it is resource class for our for those students and this um chart the pie chart with the different colors um mod id what does that stand for moderate moderate and then so is it just the

013severe that would be in this track no ma'am all of these students so so moderate what is the iq are these broken down by iq or so that comes out when they do the standardized when they take the cognitive test for students there are different levels that talk about whether they're mild moderate or severe notice we also have students that could have autism that are lumped into this alternative track we have students that have other health impairments severe medical impairments that preclude them from learning with their typical peers as well okay so um how are they initially tracked into this program and it sounds like they're tracked as early as elementary school so students so students into the alternative track are not tracked into there before third grade the reason why they're not tracked in

014before third grade is third grade is when we start to look at grades that's also the first time we start to look at assessments by the west virginia state department of ed those students don't have to be tracked don't have to be placed into there i mean they can stay all the way out until 12th grade year or post-grad 12th grade year there's no there's nowhere along that again it goes back to the iep team to determine where we are and then the state department provides us a rubric that we go through and we follow to say is this really where the student should be this the first guideline is you have to be plus three standard deviations below the average so to be considered to have a learning disability no ma'am to be considered

015to be on the alternative track okay so what is is it based on the iq or is that it's only one component there's there's multiple components there's about six different components that go into the rubric okay so but a severe cognitive disability isn't that based on iq that's one component that's not the only thing we are not allowed to take one data point and determine that that student is going to be on the alternative track so if there are three grades below and a certain d i'm not sure what the rule is here but normally it's uh you know uh to be considered have a learning disability you have uh iq average iq and then standard deviations in achievement is that the way it works here or yes ma'am it's just where this where the

016below the below where the median is is to determine whether you're talking okay i guess i'm trying to decide if you're trying to say that cognitive disability is mentally impaired because it's only 67 so are these the children that are fully self-contained because they have mental handicaps no i cannot put that i cannot lump that into one category i can't lump in and say if they have a mental impairment that they are definitely self-contained and they're going to be on the alternative track i can't say that because we have students that could fall under the mild category that are still out in the general population on a standard diploma track and they don't even look at the alternative employment so i can't i can't lump that all into one one thing i don't think you're

017here it's okay what is the alternative assessment the alternative assessment is a test that's given for all all grades three through eight and as well as grade 11 for the students that are on the alternative track it is state it is state regulated um that that they we administer when we administer the gsa in the spring but what is it consists of it consists of standards and i because i'm not a proctor i can't look at the questions but i can tell you consist of questions that come back that are on grade level that match up to the standards in which the students should have learned as they went throughout the year so if if this is an alternative assessment and it's a child with us a significant cognitive disability and they're a 10th grader

018and you're saying they're giving them a test that's on grade level i'm saying they're giving them a test that is based off of their cognitive level that's based off of the standards that they should have learned in that 10th grade year now remember and there's also different tiers for each standard there's a tier one a tier two and a tier three so then we go back and we look at that to see where did those students score out based off of very some exact same thing that we do for our gsa i i i just have one i feel like the the public should have seen this so that if they wanted to comment you know ahead of time so i just i don't know how it works but okay i couldn't find it and

019i made a mistake and asked somebody else thinking i didn't realize i sent it to the request for it so that i could view it but i i just feel like the public ought to have these kind of things up front so i apologize but all of these things i know that you're new and i don't know enough about it either but i'm just um sure i apologize for that and i can definitely get that to ms harner to put on the agenda which just they won't be able to comment later it's just when um there's a lot of information and special education is very sensitive to everybody i mean it is you know to me i have a lot of i have a degree in special ed so i'm very concerned about it and

020this is i would like to do a lot more research and now i have to like vote so i just that's all thank you so much mr wink i don't want to get into the weeds of the standards themselves because i know we're going to revisit that at the end of the agenda which um and i believe those were attached to the agenda so anybody could look at those ahead of time yes sir um is this diploma different i know currently from signing diplomas we have diplomas and then we have something else i don't know if it's called certificate of completion or west virginia does not have a certificate of completion anymore that was phased out so last year's graduating class was the first year that we went the alternative diploma so you probably did

021not sign those alternative diplomas when you did the big group because those students came back and they weren't awarded their alternative diploma because they had not completed everything they needed to do okay so this is replacing that certificate of completion it's not in addition to yes ma'am correct yes ma'am west virginia only has two methods okay that's that was my question and then the other thing i wanted to know was with some of these life skill things are we going to be able to use the lolly house at all or is that yes ma'am okay perfect thank you any other questions from the board um i just number one say thank you mr wink this is really nice to be able to at least have this laid out and be able to look at it

022and i think that a lot of parents um are going to be really happy to see that you know we're taking those steps because it is so important it's been something that has has been lacking for a while i know we've done some things but it's just really nice to have everybody included in every way possible so especially with the skill sets that they're going to need so i appreciate the extra work that you put in with this um also just how other than the daily living skills that we're adding on the end how is this plan different than say what we have done in the past um do you want to get into that now or do you want to get it later in the presentation when we talk about the courses okay no

023we can wait till the courses if you're coming back that's right that's right okay i appreciate it thank you thank you all right next up we have the deputy superintendent for instructional support update mr banks good evening board members i've also included a copy excuse me a copy of this on your table uh so tonight i'm going to speak to you about two different things mostly just informational and also going to tell you where we are in the process here in jefferson county uh with implementing two of these items i'm going to start off with a story about a student that will kind of hopefully illustrate what we're going to talk about tonight so imagine if you would we have a first grader named emma and emma's having some reading difficulties she's falling behind her

024peers in reading she knows her alphabet however she's not blending letter sounds to make words when emma sees the word bat she says b a t instead of bat she sounds out each letter b a t that's how she sees the word bat so her teacher notices this she also scored well below the benchmark on the last classroom assessment so the teacher begins to ask is the student progressing as expected and as i just explained to you the answer is no the next question the teacher asks is how does the student's progress compare with others in a class she notes that there's a significant gap in progress between emma and other students in the class in fact other students are blending their letter sounds together to make the word backed the next question the teacher

025asks is has the student has emma expressed any concerns even though this is a first grader it's a very important question emma seems frustrated when she's reading and when it's her turn to read she often puts her head down or doesn't want to read so now it's time for the teacher to take the next step to gather some information and some data so she begins to do a one-on-one assessment with phonemic awareness with emma she was able to complete some of the tasks but did not answer some of the others when asked to match letter sounds with letter names she could only identify the sounds of the letters emma likely needs intervention help with letter sounds and phoneme isolation so the next thing that the teacher does is to develop a plan for emma she's

026not responding to strategies implemented at the universal level the universal level is something i'm going to talk about a little bit later it is also called tier one it is the general population of students in a particular classroom in addition to universal universal instruction emma will also be receiving 20 minutes of targeted instruction and that's what we also call as tier 2. she'll be receiving this three times a week on monday wednesday and friday with an interventionist who works at the school she will receive explicit instruction on phonemic awareness emma's caregiver will also be notified to participate in a series of trainings to allow the parent to understand what emma is going through and what she needs to improve upon so after three weeks of this targeted tier two instruction emma is given another one-on-one

027phonemic awareness assessment the teacher finds that emma is showing improvement she is now sounding out cvc words which are consonant vowel consonant with the appropriate phonemes she can add and delete and manipulate the phonemes of these words she demonstrates she can also sort words but with 100 accuracy so now after the teacher has evaluated the plan it's time to evaluate and adjust the plan she seems to be responding well to the targeted instruction emma should be able to continue to progress with universal tier 1 instruction without being pulled out into any intervention group so what you have just seen is wv tss in action a student who starts out in tier one through after assessments may move to tier two and after interventions for a period of three weeks three times three days per week

028may move back to tier one in this case is exactly what emma did in other situations a student may stay in tier two or could progress to tier three which i'm going to talk about here in a few minutes so that is wvtss and you've probably heard of this it's been called a lot of different names over the years rti mtss and now wvtss the biggest difference is that there's been an addition added to the model and that is mental health support so the model that we were used to before had academics and behavioral support but recently mental health support has been added to it so if you could skip to the next one keep going what i have included in your packet is the very presentation that they gave us from the department of

029education i included the same one because this could very likely be one that you might see at a west virginia school board association training so you'll see that the standards for effective schools a clear and focused mission uh and then the next one is you could go to the next slide please frequent monitoring of student progress which is the basis for wbtss whether it be a formative assessment when a teacher is asking particular questions within a classroom or as long as long-term as a end-of-the-year summative assessment so if you could skip to the wvtss overview all right very next slide so this is the this is the diagram that is new this year and uh we studied this for quite a while to figure out what exactly it did mean but you can see in

030the middle the whole child and so that's the one of the big points of emphasis is that this is about the whole child notice that mental health and behavior has been uh are now components of the wvts model so on the outside of that the those words are to encourage that the child is safe engaged supported challenged and healthy the next three on the outside that you see in red blue and green those are the three components of the wbtss mod academics behavior and mental health and then on the very outside those represent the pieces that support those components they include family and community culture and climate leadership and teams and assessment so that's the new diagram for wbtss which encompasses and makes up the entire model okay so the purpose of wvtss is to

031enhance the success of all students across the full spectrum of not only academic but behavioral and mental health it is called a multi-tiered system of support in case you have a hard time remembering the three levels i always just like to call them tier one tier two and tier three they're much easier to remember that way so from the model that used to be on the left to the one on the right you'll see that the pyramid has been changed and the reason that that has been changed from what it looks like three separate blocks there to one is that it used to be separated but now because of the example i gained with emma students will frequently move in and out of tiers so this represents a model that shows that that happens frequently

032students can move in and out of tears all year long one two three and back depending on their progress so the next one is what we were talking about just a little bit ago so if i start down at the bottom the universal support that's instruction for all students and 75 to 80 of our students should be successful in tier one next up you see the targeted supports which is tier two this represents ten to twenty percent of the students who have not demonstrated growth at tier one or the universal level what this could look like would be small groups such as what emma was having could be brief interventions in small group settings could be happening in a regular classroom with the single teacher in the room could be happening with an interventionist that

033is coming into the room tier three is up next in the red and that's intensive supports and that supports five to ten percent of the students who have not shown growth at the targeted level this represents what it looks like is increased individualized attention longer and more frequent sessions of intervention and frequent progress monitoring now you might wonder what happens if a student is not successful in tier three typically at the school level what happens there is that is a referral for a sat meeting to bring the parents in and talk about potential referrals or also other more intensive interventions uh it's important to note that all students whether they have a currently have an iep or not are part of wv tss so if you can move into the next one so those are

034the three domains um again the change from previous times is that mental health is now part of one of the three domains uh the next three slides i just put there for your reference these are the different aspects of each of the three components you'll see academics is first followed by behavior these are just policies that reference each of these and then finally you will see mental health for your reference so an important question here on the next slide reflection what does your school and district offer as processes or programs of support at each tier and with each domain so that's where our work begins we have a framework that's been offered to us by the department of education it's our job to make a jefferson county school specific model and those include what we

035do at tier two or what are what our interventions and resources look like at each of the tiers our process has begun we by reviewing the state's document to help personalize it so our first step is to really dig in as a department and see what we currently have available for resources to help meet the needs of this model then take it to a work group and start filling in the gaps there and hopefully bring this back to you and ask for your approval as a jefferson county schools model for wbtss so what we will be doing is each of those three components at each of the three tiers will be determining the framework and the resources that we need to achieve all those so we go to the next slide please and keep going

036please keep going uh there's a quick quick reference guide that basically uh sums up some of the things that i have uh told you about related to the three tiers so that's a quick reference guide for you another thing that i think was really emphasized while we were in our training was that universal and targeted are not two separate things um oftentimes wvts gets misinterpreted as you're here and you're in the classroom and then when you move to this next level you're not in the classroom whereas universal and targeted as you see in the in the diagram there are overlapped quite a bit teachers comp accomplish that through differentiation and also by having small groups in their classroom the next uh diagram is a pretty good one too it kind of summarizes the process in

037the beginning when i talk to you about emma and what the the process that that teacher followed this is this is it so teacher identified and defined the needs of emma and that can be done by teachers and also i highly encourage that each school has a data team that meets regularly to review student data and make decisions about those tiers and where those students move number two is you're taking the data and you're basically further just disaggregating the data to dive deeper into what the needs were so for emma's example that was she was having reading difficulties but once she dug in she was finding that there were phonemic awareness issues develop a plan just like emma's teacher did implement and monitor the plan and as a student worked through their plan and as

038i said before they may move back and forth between tiers and as you adjust that plan and as emma's teacher uh referenced she was making progress in tier two and they felt she could go back to universal instruction and be successful after her three weeks of intervention so um the rest of the information is for your reference there's a district leadership team that we've been working through responsibilities suggested team members and example process all those things are already in place in jefferson county again many of these things that you're hearing are not new but it is refined a little bit to encompass a few few changes the last thing i'd like to mention is a student support survey if you could go to that's a couple slides down jason so this is one of the

039first things we're going to do we want to have our principals and teachers to assess what resources we currently have in place for each of those tier one tier two and tier three across all three levels i'm sorry areas academics behavior and mental health you may wonder about behavior pbis is a program that is throughout the state of west virginia and it really provides a nice framework to implement the wvts model and at the school level and it really fits those tiers very nicely so um that's really all i have on wvtss again it seems to me like as one of your school board trainings you may be getting a very similar training to what i just shared with you and you may know everything there is to know about wvts but hopefully i was

040able to give you a little additional information one other thing i want to mention and i entertain any questions you have tomorrow morning is our first meeting with a committee dedicated to looking at a new teacher academy uh our folk our focus tomorrow is to first look at the structure of what such a thing should look like is it does it happen during the day does it happen in the summer does it happen after hours is it virtual is it in person all those types of questions and then the fun part begins especially we have some brand new teachers on the committee and also some long-term subs is what do you need to be successful as you know we have new teachers that come out of college but we also have new teachers that are

041coming in as subs who have never taught before in their life so we have to really gear this and personalize our new teacher academy to all those different levels of teachers much like wvtss for students it has to be personalized for our teachers also so i will keep you posted on that we're really excited about that work that we're starting tomorrow morning and i think that's all i'll entertain any questions is this the inventory the student support inventory did you say you're going to do this in all buildings all the way across the county elementary middle and high okay so then we'll have a good idea of what we have who uses what and we can track that data more efficiently we'd also like to get to a point where we have common resources across

042the county you know there's a fine line between the principles and their autonomy to make decisions about what those resources are and the county of making decisions um when each school is kind of doing their has their own resources it costs more money but it also fits the needs of those students so that's going to be a really interesting conversation is how we can still give autonomy to the school as to what resources they may need but also kind of streamline some of those resources at the county level i know sometimes even the ptos or ptas or you know they'll pick up something as well and support something that goes along with that so they have something other school doesn't i mean it's working though it's good to keep track of it so we know

043we can get it in other schools okay thank you um what is the process for identifying a student for special ed if a teacher or parent wants their child to be tested because i know the county used to require an intervention first and you mentioned um this and i'm wondering if the state supports that wink uh maybe you could come up and join me i i know the uh typical answer that comes from the state but each county is a little bit different so maybe we could uh tag team on this one so the question is about how specifically a special ed student would be identified i will say through the model i just shared they would progress through the tears right that's my concern because i believe there's some federal violations with that um

044there's certain federal laws that trump state or local school district i just that's why i ask if the state supports this intervention first when a teacher or a parent requests that their child be tested um absolutely the state does support this model first and i i believe that that is a violation of the federal i think please dr gibson join us yes it's a team effort to dr joy's point in which she is entirely correct if a child is progressing through these tiers of intervention and at some point in an earlier tier they have any reason to believe that there is a disability present they can stop at that point request testing and they go through an eligibility process there is no requirement that someone progressed through every level of these tiers in order to

045be found eligible um certainly we want the least restrictive environment we can serve a child in which is always general education so if a child is showing improvement then that's certainly great but if at any point and any one of these levels in a process the team that's supporting this child feels like there's possibility child has a disability yes they certainly go through testing the schools all need to be aware of that because it's not consistent it hasn't been consistent can i ask the question kind of concerning to that um i'm on the on the circle on the chart identify defined needs and how do you i think you said something about the benchmark or specific assignments what how do we know that little junior would need to be uh at tier one tier two

046like what what specific data because i know we're data driven in education what specific data like targets and says this is one we need to look at for tier two or tier three because you said benchmark assignment i know people have benchmark tests right what what triggers that for for jefferson county so with the tiered model all students when they come in at the beginning of the year have a beginning of the year assessment and sometimes that can drive an intervention but also um much the example of emma um the teacher had started universal instruction and through observation noticed something so like mr wink was telling it's not just one thing it's multiple things that uh lead up to a change in the tier good i think that's a good thing because i think teachers

047have a way of learning and knowing which student could you've seen it before that they have a process saying maybe we need to look into emma's you know emma's what's going on so that we can get her what she needs versus it's got balance between data and that gut feeling as a teacher that you know you've seen this before so i was just trying to see if there was a specific thing that triggers mr brown to say emma's having an issue when he look into the next level it's definitely multiple things one of the things i noted was that uh when she was asked to read she put her head down and was embarrassed so obviously her feelings and how she's feeling about her confidence and reading is a factor there too along with many

048other things benchmark observations how she compares to her peers thank you am i right uh mr banks that sometimes these um things happen and children can be identified before they do the standardized testing because usually don't they they wait like into the first month of school to kind of get kids situated and whatever but sometimes there's even children that are brought forth by staff ahead of time even before that as mr brown was alluding to just for from that gut reaction and then what are we doing or can you speak to the um the dyslexia issue i think before we had not had a program to target that but then last year the year before there was something actually brought on specifically for that that um we hadn't seen in other areas mr wayne might

049respect so we have so in terms of the or we have brought orton gillingham curriculum on board that came on i want to say last year or early the year before um and we are in the process of trying to ensure that all of our elementary teachers or all of our elementary buildings have at least one uh organ gillingham trained teacher which weaves into what mr banks was saying on the wbtss procedure here and i can't i don't want to steal the thunder of of this principle but there was an elementary school principal that caught us and talked to christy just the other day and said that they're finally to the point this year where they're seeing the orton gillingham approach really making a difference for those students in the wbtss process and that's one

050of the big things that we're trying to do and to dr joy's point is to ensure that when students are identified for special education that we've done everything we can to ensure that they are remain with their typical peers as much as we can and we're really seeing a lot of success out of organ gillingham our teachers are are really on board with it and like it so we just we completed one cohort where actually special education is teaming with mr banks to train another set of teachers coming up um this summer so that we can get as many teachers on board that it's really it really has taken off okay okay thank you i guess can i ask you because it's related because miss ogden mentioned dyslexia and i believe the state still doesn't

051recognize dyslexia as a disability is that right or has it recently changed that's a question i would have to go back and research for you to see if if they have that in there i do not believe that that is one of the that is not one of the main even though we know it is but for some reason so you have to label it and call it by a different name does that fall into that other health impaired diagnosis it can fall under other health impaired so it's um usually a language processing it's diagnosed that way i just feel like parents ought to be informed that we don't really have a test for it that i know of here in this county is there a test for dyslexia for dyslexia we do use that

052we do have a test that's an early screener test um we've actually started working with dr fight for all some things as well um so i i personally um and that's a presentation later in the month but i'm very i'm very excited about where we're going with that through the efforts of christy horning as well as our building level principles where we're going with dyslexia again i don't want to steal the thunder from them at the end of the month but i think you'll be very pleased with with the progress that they're making towards dyslexia for our students thank you mr banks a child does not have to go through a certain number of sessions now before they can be through the sat process be tested for special method that's what i asked right but

053i just wanted to be sure that and we were identifying children too late as what was happening when we had a number of sessions and that they had a number of hoops they had to jump through before that clearly was the guidance before that they didn't have to have a certain number never been the federal guidance also uh teachers academy we want to be sure that we have teachers on that committee that have gone through our teachers academy previously so they can bring to the table what teachers academy was like when they went through because a lot of those things that were in our past teachers academy were classroom management things and if you can't manage a classroom you can't teach and those were very valuable so we want to be sure that we have

054some people from our past teachers academies and mr banks just for clarity for everybody the new teacher academy is that a support system for existing teachers or are you solving the national teacher shortage by creating and growing additional teachers well the new teacher academy is to support our newest teachers through hopefully a year one and a year two so we're a little nervous about three that means we have three different things going on and that's a lot to manage so we're going to start off this year with our new teachers and our long-term subs and then hopefully your two folks will you know be better prepared and classroom management and other things that are vital and then we'll start having two groups next year so that's our plan excellent thank you very much all right

055next up we have the approval of minutes is there a motion to approve the minutes from the regular board meeting held march 28 2022 and the special meeting held april 4th 2022. thank you mrs ogden is our second thank you mr osborne any question or discussion hearing none all in favor of approving march 28 2022 and april 4th 2022 minutes say aye opposed thank you next up we have citizens comments first up this evening is a zoom [Music] with judy york followed by karen buck i'm not able to set up my video for some reason but i'll just go ahead and speak if that's okay whenever you're ready miss york okay well i have a question for you a non-zero number of goats each with four legs and a non-zero number of chickens each with

056two legs are living on a farm between all the animals there are three eights as many heads as there are legs assuming that all animals have all their limbs what is the fewest possible number of chickens on the farm this is a question my sixth grader answered correctly as part of his qualifying round for the west virginia state math counts competition we stumbled on this program this year and when he showed up in flatwoods west virginia a few years a few weeks ago for the state competition they were thrilled thrilled to see a student from jefferson county math counts is a national math school challenge and it's included in many west virginia schools as an extracurricular offering the final round of competitions broadcast on on espn each year so this is a really big deal

057it's run by community volunteers who partner with teachers in the school who recognize that there are societal benefits of encouraging kids to tackle complex math and logic questions specifically this program identifies students with engineering talent and we need engineers in west virginia they build our roads and bridges they design solutions for safe drinking and they create sustainable energy sources they even help design our new school buildings and the geothermal loops that will heat and cool it and the network and cyber security systems that allow us to communicate when we received such a warm welcome and learned more about the program i thought why not us why not jefferson county and i made a commitment to the director to stand up a local chapter now tonight i'm sure you'll hear more about the cultural war that

058a small group of citizens seems to want to continue to press into our school system it's a cultural war that's not supportive of meeting the needs of all of our students we have over 9 000 students in our school system students from a diverse set of backgrounds interests and talents and as educators and parents and a community it's our job it's our job to cultivate these kids not pull them and their educational future into the muck of community and fighting and fear mongering when our student skills like skills in math science history writing art music agriculture mechanics business construction or design when those skills are honed and honored kids feel seen and when kids feel seen they thrive and are more apt to stay here in jefferson county and give back to the community that

059supported them we are all in this together and my hope is that next year we will have a full team of jefferson county math counts middle schoolers invited here to the board meeting to tell you how they did in the competition thank you thank you next up is karen buck followed by candace wilson i represent a small group of people in the community who are wondering why it took eight years to finally uh take the special education programs seriously okay and the small group of community members have seen the following millions in federal funding with undisclosed strings attacked the cultural unity and equity department critical race theory black math genius the failed virtual classroom masking kids unnecessarily splatter guards are still in blue ridge lunchroom riot gates are in some of the entry halls of

060the schools banning parents from the schools endorsement of dangerous coveted vaccinations school vaccination competitions vaccine clinics in the schools counseling department failures continually falling grades of students teachers afraid to complain teachers and bus drivers quitting questionable school bus school budget entries google chromebooks for the spy cam responding to foia requests with what the hell is this guy's problem this uh board member is still a member of the national state boards of uh national state boards who labeled parents as terrorists uh pay raises for certain administrators in hiding it from the taxpayers declining enrollment but building three new schools releasing employees social security numbers and making taxpayers pay for identity theft protection half day fridays get to ten dollars pedophiles in the same school same principle same superintendent bullying in the school goes unaddressed dangerous pedagogy

061of amplify ela obsession with funneling kids into colleges and universities obsession with skin color and sex and gender studies preferred pronouns and equity equity clubs grooming our kids may 10th election will allow us to rescue our schools our kids have an incredibly bright future ahead of them if we can just get the old neanderthal thinking out of the way we got to make some changes thank you next up is candace wilson followed by joanne curran i am here as a very frustrated and concerned parent i want you all to just think about getting a phone call that says your child has been involved and has a traumatic injury and we are calling an ambulance to have him transported to the hospital i receive that call on wednesday march 30th at 1 13 pm from washington

062high school i'm here because our staff shortage i know it's national but i don't see much going on as far as advertisement or incentives to get more people in these schools to keep our kids safe my son was a willing participant in a physical altercation which started outside during lunch time no adult saw it it was broken up by other students 21 children then walked into the bathroom and witnessed this fight my son was knocked unconscious and was left laying on the bathroom floor for 15 to 20 seconds before an adult was made aware this is a serious safety concern for not only my child but everyone else's child we have to do a better job of getting people in the schools i've seen resignations of absences constantly our teachers are overworked they're having panic

063attacks they're losing it and we have got to do something to keep our children safe that is what is most important i am a wds-sac certified coach and i am reminded every year in my training that i am legally responsible for not only their physical safety but their mental safety as well my daughter is also a student here at washington and was swarmed by 20 students because of the altercation she can't walk down the hallway without someone pretending to pass out in front of her there were meme cards made of my son and passed out yes the school has handled all of that they've taken care of the meme cards but i'd like to know first what we can do to get more staff in and then what we could do to teach these kids

064that standing around and watching someone be hurt like that is okay they think it's okay and they just go on we need to teach our kids to be better people and have some respect for everyone else that is around them feel free to call me thank you up is joanne curran i must admit it was enjoyable to ask the board a question that they had to at least try to answer at last week's form and also to see some struggle to stay within the allotted buzzer time to follow up the answer to my question about what a teacher's roles to teach academics was correct and the parent's job is to do everything else was also correct raise their children any way they want teach them any values and faith they want discipline them any way

065they believe is right and nobody else needs to like the parent's decision however sadly that's not the way it works in jefferson county many other schools perhaps i should have worded my question differently and ask for a definition of a school rather than a teacher in reality the schools the board the unions the superintendent put push much more than just academics you push many of your own version of what you stated are parental jobs why do you do it and why aren't you transparent about it in fact and in documentation in policies you do many parental jobs your greatest abuse is that you pride yourself on loving your children at school a couple of errors here they're not your they're your students not your children that's a huge difference loving and hugging them is a

066way is way out of the school's lane you generally will have any given child for half of one year you see them between one and five hours per school day and with a room full of others that you also love and then you end your love relationship with them and move on to loving next year's students and on and on calling the temporary group serial kind of relationship love is very detrimental to children perhaps they take that distorted kind of superficial love into adulthood and move from one short-term love relationship to another leaving a broken heart broken marriage broken families in their wake i contend this is one valid possibility that you would never consider stop telling them you love them leave the loving to the parents parents love them for a lifetime and when

067you pit them against their parents you are making them choose that is social emotional child abuse you said teachers just teach academics but that is misinformation you are proud of your social emotional counseling program which is not academics and is the parent's domain stop abusing them about their genitals which is not academics or your domain stop culturally oppressing girls again by awarding great female honors to men who apparently make better women than women these days you're really screwing them up by adding the gender fad into their life this fad falls apart logically on its face for instance if males competing and winning in female sports was really fair you'd see an equal number of women competing in men's sports and winning again far from academics very much a parental issue whether you agree with them

068or not god doesn't make mistakes ever even if we think we're smarter than him and what's with the narrative that crt is about not teaching accurate history crt isn't about history it's about today it's about creating victim ideology all over again kids don't see their friends by race until rate teachers promote racism to combat racism just another exercise in irony hypocrisy fads and mob mentality that is child emotional social abuse please leave them alone and raise their grades thank you next up we have the consent agenda this is lauren are there any changes to the consent agenda oh we do we have a couple minor changes um on the superintendent's recommendations concerning personnel underneath section one uh line item six the individual's first name is isla i-l-s-a that's a correction there it's on the um

069the first attachment the superintendent's recommendations the longer um isla greg number six okay and then on the um superintendent's sign-offs the shorter section um on number six again the bus numbers will be the change and that is bus number to bus number 1201 okay is that it that is yes is there a motion to accept the consent agenda as amended with number six on the superintendent's recommendations and number six on the superintendent sign-offs thank you miss ogden is there a second second thank you mr brown any other questions or comments on the consent agenda yeah i have a question um often there are expenses that are paid to epic and i'm i tried to find out i i just want to know how many positions are we paying epic for so maybe how many boarding

070office employees get paid through epic so that we can have some idea of what i mean when i asked the um person in charge of finance she she gave me a list but you know 150 000 for uh pre-k or or whatever they were but how many actual are these positions or what are these different services is there a way to get a a list of so that we can keep track or get an idea of what we are paying every year three minutes is up yeah apparently yes ma'am um we can certainly break out during our budget presentation when we present our budget to the board we can break out the different um types of services that are offered in those because to your point pre-k is one of those we have a regional

071pre-k program and uh the uh epic is the body that both distributes that hires that they have the head start program they have the pre-k program um we run a number of services where we only buy a certain number of hours for certain services that we need through those rather than hiring full positions but we can do a separate when we have our budget presentation we'll pull a separate section for epic so that we pull those out for you if that would be helpful thank you you're welcome and epic once again that's like the regional group just so everybody understands certainly uh epic is the eastern panhandle instructional cooperative and it's composed of um eight neighboring counties where we pool our resources uh typically in order to be able to lower the cost of services

072and be able to spread them across the county a little bit about it oh yes sir i just want to make sure you understood we're throwing a lot of new stuff at you a lot of acronyms yes sir yes ma'am thank you you're welcome okay thank you dr gibson all right any other questions on the consent agenda all in favor of accepting the consent agenda with the amendments to number six on the first section and number six on the um second section say aye opposed thank you all right unfinished business request action to approve a vendor for the south jefferson roof bond project to share that information with you thank you welcome good evening can you hear me yes ma'am whenever you're ready okay my video is not coming on i apologize for that it

073says it is stopped by the host mr johnson but i will start prior to you making a motion this evening about the south jefferson pro bond project roof bed i'd like to provide you some information which i hope will form your motion and give you more information uh in order to make that motion we did have five bidders attend the mandatory pre-bid meeting and four bidders actually made a bid aar roofing and sheet metal made a total bid of 964 blackstone roofing llc submitted a bid of ninety thousand dollars how services incorporated sir uh submitted a bid for one million ninety six thousand seven hundred dollars reliance roofing and waterproofing submitted a bid for eight hundred and twelve thousand nine hundred dollars when we originally funded this project and with the passage of the bond

074in 2020 this project was designated uh at a hundred and twenty one thousand twenty one dollars and eighty cents so i want to give you some choices this evening for the bids the first um the thing that i will be recommending are is blackstone roofing llc with the bid of 490 000 they submitted a base bid what's included in this base bid is the right portion of the south jefferson elementary school roof this was in the bond the alternate bid we had all bidders been on because with the passage of two years roofs getting worse we have active leaks in the office and cafeteria areas we felt it best that we had one roofer that could address all of the issues at once with this roof so during this fiscal year thanks to the board's

075wisdom due diligence and fiscal responsibility we have budgeted to set aside funds for the eventuality of rising costs and as you know they have gone up and we do have the ability to completely fund this project should you choose the base bid and the alternate bid these are funds that have been set aside expressly for the use of roofs and hvacs in our current budget so your choices in motion this evening are to accept the base bid of 245 000 and designate these funds we've set aside and add one hundred and twenty three thousand nine hundred and seventy eight dollars and twelve cents to this project the second choice is to accept the base bid of 245 thousand dollars plus the alternate bid of 245 thousand dollars this would require 368 978 dollars and 12

076cents more in those funds that we have set aside so i with that i will await your motion and then i'll await discussion that might come after the motion all right at this point i'm just going to ask for a motion to approve a vendor for the south jefferson roof bond project so that we can have a discussion certainly thank you mr osborne is there a second second thank you miss ogden all right um this way can i just ask for some clarification um you went through those numbers you're recommending blackstone roofing correct yes and i am recommending that you accept the base bit and the alternate bid okay and how much money was set aside in the bond project for this roof was there a set amount there was there was a set amount

077of 121 thousand 21 dollars and 88 cents for it 121 thousand dollars right that's correct and we're saying it's gonna cost 490 000 if you accept the total bid right that would completely fix the roof yes why wasn't more set aside i'm just well the cost the costs have risen and i added to the project in order to fix the total roof because i think it's more cost effective if we do it now and do it all at once with one roofer so two years ago when the bond was set uh we've seen prices rise so the price almost doubled for the project that we had intended correct it did okay miss wait one more question does that take away all of the options for the 2022-2023 school year for our budget for fixing roofing

078projects no it does not and you'll see we're going to come back to this on the south jefferson roof as well so we have set aside a million dollars and if we fund this there there's a couple ways we can do it if we fund this we would end up with 675 986 dollars and 88 cents left and that's if we add a little bit to the shepherdstown middle roof so we would carry that over we also have the latitude to use bond funds last year on one of our roofs we saved 161 so we can actually add that to this project um i've talked with beth the senior bond accountant about it and that would bring us down to two hundred and seven thousand thirteen dollars and twelve cents that we would have to

079use out of our one million dollars versus the 368 and change sounds and that's actually how i would recommend doing it as we've reconciled bond costs and where once again did that 169 come from that we saved the 161 965 came from the right denny roof last year okay so the right denny roof was under budget 561 000 yes ma'am do you remember who did that roof was that one of these it was it was blackstone it was the vendor we're recommending this evening yes any discussion or thoughts fellow board members i just want to get clarification it sounds like there is a million set aside plus the 121 000 set aside yes the 121 000 is designated for this project right and then go ahead so um that's a total for both projects million

080uh 200 000 roughly yes you add those together um 711 and 490. right but i haven't i haven't yet discussed i think you're adding in the shepherdstown middle roof and i haven't yet discussed um the funds we've set aside for shepherdstown middle school because that will be in the next discussion okay right so we do have money we've set aside for the shepherdstown middle roof and um that's 594 000 so that's a separate discussion but yes okay so it sounds like there's enough money yes so mrs white your recommendation is to go with blackstone roofing for the base bid and the alternate bid to make sure that the school is watertight right and then um use the 121 000 and change that was set aside from the 2020 bond correct and then you're saying that

081we need to supplement it with the um what was it saving 160. okay and then the remainder of that take out of the set aside that we have of the one million dollars for roofs and hvac systems that is correct okay is everybody tracking took a few breadcrumbs but we finally got back there all right so mr osborne would you like to amend your motion to accept blackstone roofing as the um approved vendor for the south jefferson roof fund project for the total bid of 490 000. all right thank you and thank you so there's a motion on the table to approve the vendor for the south jefferson roof bond project to be blackstone roofing for the total bid of 490 000 to fix all the roofs on south jefferson elementary school all in favor

082say hi opposed all right thank you now we have another roof um the rfp for the bid for the shepherdstown middle school respond project i think this one's going to be a little more straightforward so we've set aside 594 thousand dollars for this project it is 711 000 we had four pre-bidders at our mandatory pre-bid meeting and two bidders actually bid we had aar roofing at one million two hundred seventy seven thousand two hundred fifty dollars blackstone roofing at seven hundred and eleven thousand dollars we are recommending blackstone roofing for this project all right is there a motion to approve the rfp bid for shepherdstown middle school roof bond project as blackstone roofing for a total of seven hundred and eleven thousand dollars thank you miss ogden is there a second sure thank you mr

083osborne all right any questions or discussion uh will they be able to complete both of those rules in the summer time yes they completed two last summer blue ridge and right denny does that give us any leeway on fixing the leaking roof at jefferson high that they've mentioned last week no but if it's leaking that's good to know i will tuck that up here and let mr cayton know so he can begin making it watertight until it can be replaced and that if it needs to it'll move up on our roof replacement schedule south jefferson was obviously first so brandon and i will take a hard look at that roof replacement schedule and we'll make sure we adjust it accordingly if necessary i think that may have been more of an hvac system hvac oh

084yeah yeah that's my speaking right yeah which is causing the roof to leak but right okay so focusing back on shepard's town and is this bid going to fix the entire roof or just a portion of the roof or this fix fixes many portions of the roof it fixes the center rear the front rear it fixes many flat sections on the east it fixes the cafeteria and the gym or the not the cafeteria the gem and the eighth grade wings so there are multiple sections to address on this roof is it essentially going to make us watertight is that what we're getting absolutely and we'd be adding an additional 117 thousand dollars from our designated funds to uh to contribute to this project if you accept it without reducing the scope that's right so you're

085saying that even with this project there will still be issues with the roof no i'm not saying okay i just wanted to make it here yeah thank you okay so there's a motion on the floor to accept um blackstone roofing for a total of eleven thousand dollars for the shepherdstown middle school roof bond project all in favor say aye i opposed thank you all right and i believe that's everything for you mrs white thank you very much for joining us you're very welcome next we have the request for proposal for special education contracted services mr wink you just keep coming back don't you keep turning up just say a bad dream but i didn't want to go there good evening again at this time i come before you to ask for your approval to place

086out a request for proposal for contracted services for jefferson county schools special education program if approved we will be seeking bids to provide contracted services including but not limited to occupational therapists speech therapists deaf interpreters and student assigned nurses this time i'll yield the floor back to you president skinner and await questions from the board members all right first we need a motion on the floor is there a motion to request the proposal for special education contracted services as mr wink listed thank you miss ogden is there a second thank you mr brown all right any discussion or question yeah i have a question so um is it because we can't hire these um individuals ourselves like the speech therapist or yes ma'am and um these would be uh organization that employees the various or

087would they be various organizations um the rfp has written that it could be various organizations depending on what the companies come back and are able to offer to us due to the variety we could we could be entertaining multiple different places thank you mr can you repeat those speech therapists it includes speech therapists occupational therapists um deaf interpreters student assigned nurses and we also throw in physical therapists certified occupational therapy assistants there's a more out of different ones that we can that we can ask for from time to time and just as a parent how how are we feeling these needs now through this through this before we got this was there something else that was in place or is this a re-up of what we already have thank you for asking this is a

088renewal so my records of 2018 was the last rfp placed out so we're up for uh to do it again just to see where we can get thank you there's a motion on the floor all in favor of requesting the proposal for special education contracted services say aye opposed thank you next we have action on approval of alternate alternative diploma course standards and this is what you alluded to earlier that was attached to the packet that everybody could look at the details okay so for the final time this evening for me i believe i'm coming to you to ask you for approval for course codes that fall under two different categories the first set of courses are learning strategies one through four and the second set is daily living skills two through four so for

089our learning strategies one through four these were developed out of a need to facilitate the success of our standard diploma of students with an iep these standards will coincide with the goals of the student's iep to offer greater success in the classroom in addition it will allow greater exposure to career interests job-related skills and habits of daily living these standards are an extension of the newly developed wbtss from the state level with regards to the daily living courses wbde currently only has in place daily living skills course one because students are not permitted to repeat the same course for credit and as shown earlier in the new alternative diploma program we have the need to have three additional courses which scaffold on each other for daily living skills the previous mentioned courses learning skills one

090through four daily living skills two through four with your board approval of the content standards will then be forwarded to the state department for final review and approval before we can place them into our program of studies the remaining courses daily living skills 1 career exploration career awareness workplace skills and career prep are locally approved courses which only require you the local board of education approval following that they may be placed in the jefferson county course manual for implementation this time i yield back to you president skinner and await questions from the board all right let's get a motion on the floor is there a motion to approve the alternative diploma course standards so moved here's a motion you want to keep talking oh did we take motion i didn't write down i'm sorry that's

091okay i missed that one all right so any discussion or questions we need a second person a second okay thank you all right it's out there thank you mr brown um yeah some questions so um i i didn't i didn't have time to look real closely skimming through i didn't see is there an opportunity for internships because these are four i guess these are nine through 12 i guess and so there's job skill and then career exploration career prep but i didn't see in those yes ma'am that's a great question so the first thing i just want to make sure i reiterate is these are not grade specific so when students come in and they're on the alternative track or they're in the standard track the learning skills strategies one through four can a student

092in 12th grade can take learning skills strategy one alternative track a student can take them anywhere along the course that they need to um so as far as internship yesterday that would actually come under the work expiration program which was previously in our in our school district already which allows students on the alternative track to go out and work at certain businesses um for one or two hours a day maybe folding pizza boxes or you know greeting people or stocking shelves that type of thing that's where the internship comes in for our alternative diploma students but is it listed in here as so work exploration has already been approved by the board it's an existing program so we don't have to bring that back for approval to the board so it's it's it's part of

093the requirements that it is not part of the requirements it is a recommendation for good practice for our students i noticed overlap with some of these like in these classes for the career prep career exploration you will notice some you will notice some because saying what to do with them up through yes ma'am yes ma'am but put it but then you said that they're not um based on grade level so you could be taking a class you said it scaffolded you could take one that you've already taken the more difficult one so what so if we're talking about job interviews the first time that they take the course depending on the student they may simply be walking in and greeting a person for year one and that might be what they work on all of

094year one when we come back the second year for job interview we may introduce ourselves and sit down and introduce their name and start answering a few questions so it really has to be tailored specific to the student and that's where it's guided out of the student's iep as well for what they believe is needed okay thank you so go ahead can't wait i was just gonna say are all of these classes do they take place here at washington or jefferson or i mean i see some of these would really overlap with what the lolly house does as far as you know like grocery shopping and learning how to do home maintenance and you know just all of these life skills they will to an extent but the lolly house is limited to on the

095students that attend there lolly house currently is only limited to six students post-graduate post 12th grade year that actually attend there so you saw the numbers that were supporting on our alternative diploma we have a larger group of students that we need to allow that same exposure to to have their same skills built in so would they be physically at the high school for five years or that last year would they go to they could be at the lolly house they could also their their part of our our restructuring plan is to really develop those last two years or three years out more for alternative diploma students to really get work exploration to a deeper level as well so excellent thank you that was actually the question that i had is i know currently with

096workforce west virginia and that connection it doesn't typically start until senior year which i i really don't understand why i know that's not a choice that we make but um is there a way to add that into the plan that with the alternative diploma i was wondering about making sure that that stuff just for parents as well because i think that's the step that parents don't understand i know personally with my own child i physically called them and said i need you to come junior year i'll drive up there if i have to but senior year is not acceptable and then of course they have so much turnover that they end up losing their person and they didn't end up being reseeded until april of my child's senior year so had i waited i would

097have had no help and so i know that that happens right it's it's just the nature of the business that they work in but if we can do everything on our part to head that off let them know maybe have them come in as part of that assessment to do you know more engagements um in a different different way and handing out that information so parents know because they do provide so much of that work training as well in many ways um that was the only other thing i saw on that part is that and that and then maybe if we can add in as well or just an idea of um taking some of those parents that we know you know are very engaged very involved um and creating a cohort of them to

098come in and just say hey i know that you probably started that um and i like i said i definitely appreciate the fact that you put so much effort into this it's just been really nice to see um so that would be my only other just made of thoughts yesterday and how are students assessed with these skills because i'm just curious because it sounds like there's no order to these classes for the ones that aren't uh they can take it at any time and then so how do you um assess like for example list the steps involved in handling conflict at the workplace is there a portfolio where a checklist that yes they've mastered or it's just everybody's in this class and we're going to cover this and that's a great question so that's really

099going to be individualized by the student some students are going to have a higher level where they can create a portfolio like you said that they showed mastery other ones are going to be that formative assessment approach that we're seeing back and forth some of them you know we don't want to say it has to be a portfolio we don't want to say it has to be a written paper we really want the teacher to have the flexibility to work with the student and engage them to show the mastery of which that they that we want them to have so that so there's a lot of autonomy and flexibility for how the teacher wants to gauge that so there's no standard um there's no rubric or any way to verify so you go into an

100iep meeting maybe meeting for transition services and the special ed teachers they do this is that so our special education our special education teachers do keep the anecdotal records they do keep data that shows you know a certain number of trials or if we're talking about how do you show that the job interview skills skills were met those are things that they do they do create work portfolios it all depends on what what degree that looks like though based off of the student um and and these once these standards are approved then we will come back to our teachers our teachers have taken a look at this they have looked at it one of the things that they really wanted to go was they wanted to go heavier into the daily living skills they wanted

101more of that for their students because they felt like that's where their need was right now so again at the iep team meeting they can decide how much of that career they want to put in or how much that daily living skills they want to put in and how do you assess that for that student what does it look like thank you so will these things be used for this coming school year we have to send them to the state i know they have to be approved and i know the schedules are oh yeah the good news is the students that we're talking about for the alternative diploma standards are a much lower number um so it's not that we have to fix 1200 1200 schedules which is a good thing um so if you

102approve these tonight they will be sent over to washington jefferson to be scheduled now the ones that have to go to the state level we will have to wait on them to turn those back to us with approval or changes and then we work through that process what about how many is that how many can go back and how many have to go to the state um the learning all the learning strategies courses go down to the state okay um and then the daily living skills two three and four so the good thing about that is daily living skills one for us we can put right in there as soon as you approve these standards for daily business one we can push them right in all the careers we can push right in because those

103are already created classes and the state says you do what you want you create the standards to what your board and your local education feels like is good but because we're creating new courses over here those do have to be sent down i have one more i guess questions this 67 i think is what you said the number yes ma'am currently yes mates is that over the three schools um opportunity learning that is third grade all the way through their 21 years of age oh okay so it's not just high school that is all of our interests and these are just the ones that you're adding for high school yes ma'am yes okay i'm just trying to get an idea of how many students are in each class with these um i can get that

104data for you i don't have the exact breakdown but i can definitely provide you with those numbers well how many self-contained classes are at the high schools so self-contained classes on the alternative track yeah we have three at jefferson we do not have any alternative track self-contained classes at washington high okay so would students be required to go to jefferson if they needed they would not know what we want to do is we want so there are students we want to branch their students out and keep them in their home feeder patterns better than what we've done in the past because that's where they they came up through so we would be looking at integrating these classes at washington high as well and figuring out how we educate so you're just saying you just don't

105need to yet you haven't had the need that's why you don't have them at this time correct yes ma'am yes i would be remiss if i said that wasn't going to happen okay thank you all right so there's a motion on the floor to approve the alternative diploma course standards all in favor say aye aye opposed thank you mr wayne all right superintendent's comments superintendent do you have anything this evening [Music] and there's no executive session so 8 36 meeting adjourned [Music] you