001and Spencer. Spencer gives credit for that. Okay. Thank you, Spencer, for fixing the screen. Uh, we will begin with roll call beginning with superintendent Todd McKe, superintendent. Alan Grilly, board member Jeff Nielson, board member. Brian Chambers, board member. Jared Black, business administrator. Terry Rhodess, board member. Randall Bagley, board member. Great. Thank you all for being here. Uh we will begin with a pledge. Please rise. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Our mission is to educate students for success in a changing [Music] world. And we will move on to our reports agenda which begins with advanced coursework study results presented by Mr. Mark Dodson. As far as coming up, I'll just give
002the board a little bit of context. Um, we've been working with the analytic solutions center at Utah State this past year on some analytic project uh projects. The intent is to try to become more data informed in what we do. And so they took on two two projects for us. one, the first one was to evaluate a attendance policy at Sky View High School. The second was to do a deep dive in our the patterns of coursework in high school and start to link those with um post high school outcomes, particularly u college, university content. So to bring the board up to kind of up to speed and share some of that information, uh we're pleased to have Mark here from the analytics. Thank you. Swapped his place. Still not working. I should have tried
003before. Let's see actually go to slideshow then just presenter view. Yeah, try pres. We don't want presenter review actually. Come on. Turn presenter view. That's okay. I'll just do um Okay, that one should This is fine. All right. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Um, and thanks to the superintendent and uh, Jeremy Young has been our main point of contact through these projects, but it's been uh, a really great experience for our students, which is our primary objective and I hope useful for for the for the school district. So this this project uh like the superintendent was saying was this is a an investigation of uh advanced coursework specifically what is uh what might be driving students to enroll in advanced courses and then what are the effects of taking advanced courses
004on uh college enrollment and a little bit on graduation. So, by advanced coursework, uh, we're talking about a combination of AP courses, concurrent enrollment, and CTE courses specifically. So, I know I only have a few minutes, so I'll go fast, but please, if you have questions, please uh please ask them as we go along. The process that we went through uh followed these steps. First, we did some some research and data discovery. we uh Jeremy helped us uh survey all of the uh teachers in the school district that teach any of these courses to get some sense from them as the experts as to what might be driving student enrollment and success in these courses. So that was really informative as we considered what data we had, what data we wish we had, what uh
005variables might serve as a proxy for what we wish we had in terms of what might be driving uh student enrollment in these courses. Uh the next step was uh data engineering and cleaning. Uh if you've done any data projects, you know that like 80% of the time that you spend on the project could be spent just in cleaning the data. Uh this was a kind of a monumental task for the students. Uh but the benefit is you have it structured and you have the code available to continue to build this database in the future to investigate similar questions. um the resulting data set has one row per student with all of their information across many many tables and we'll we'll look at an example in just a second with the data in that form
006we're able to do a lot of interesting exploratory data analysis having all the data in one place facilitates uh an investigation that isn't possible otherwise so I'll show you some of those results and then the final thing was modeling uh these two objectives so what are the drivers of advanced coursework enrollment and what are some of the effects of advanced coursework enrollment on on uh college enrollment. So here's uh one slide that represents many months of work but we had uh five years of data. The the blue on the left are years of data that we had. So we had a missing gap of about 3 years it turned out but that was during co times and we're we're happy to consider both a precoid and postcoid period as well as all those five years
007together. We have uh constructed two different data sets. They're largely the same, but for the first one, this is no college information. This is a uh a a construction of all of these different data sets that we had for each of these years pulled from from Power School. So, this includes a student's academic data, uh demographic information, school and teacher data, as well as assessment data. Uh important to note all of the student IDs were anonymized so no FURPA violations were had. Uh for the phase 2 data, it's all of that plus some clearing house data that the the district purchased um which had information for all the most likely schools that students would attend in state including uh Bridgerland and their enrollment courses and graduation. For the second phase of the data, uh given
008the lag in between students finishing high school and when they could enroll for different reasons, uh and then graduating, which takes some time to metriculate, sometimes four years, sometimes much longer. Um that's still a little iffy, but we have it set up so this this analysis can continue in the future for graduation specifically. But you can see in terms of a description of the data, there is actually uh a lot of different variables and over 18,000 students are included in the data set. So we kept students in the data set specifically that have had the chance to take an advanced course. So at some point they will have to have at least made it to being a freshman. and that the code that we set up for the district can be up can be uh
009takes this into account so future years can be added and uh that that number can be expanded. So some just exploratory data analysis what we found so first thing was uh looking at just a distribution of GPA for students who take advanced courses and those are in blue versus those who don't take advanced courses in red. So, as you might expect, those students who take advanced courses on average have a higher GPA. But what's especially interesting to us here is that there is actually this overlap, this uh modality here where there seems to be a whole set of students that aren't taking advanced courses where if we were just basing it off of GPA could very well take advanced courses and be successful. We also looked at uh this wasn't part of the modeling stage.
010We were just looking at whether they had enrolled in at least one advanced course. Uh this is a count. So we can see by GPA uh the higher GPA you have, the more likely you are to take not just one advanced course, but many, which is what you would also probably expect. What's interesting to us here is that uh Green Canyon has the greatest proportion of students taking advanced courses of any of the high schools. Um the color coding here is in in dark. we have a postcoid years and then in the light gray that's precoid. So this existed precoid as well. The same pattern continues. It's interesting to see that postcoid we see a greater proportion of students who are taking advanced courses. But something about green canyon first then sky view uh there's
011more students more of the student body is is taking enrolling in advanced course work. Now this could be a number of things like uh we don't have that in the data but we suspect a number of things and I think you do as I had a son who just graduated from Green Canyon. Fun to see many of you again. Um and uh there's definitely a culture there that people take advanced courses like it's not just for kids who perform really well. Um so maybe that's part of it. It could also be a function of the offerings there as well in terms of uh opportunities to take certain courses. This is just a little glimpse at a a further analysis that Jeremy and I have just been working on. So some teachers have s appear to
012have significantly more influence on students. So as part of this uh constructed data set, we have all the students all the teachers that a student has had and certain teachers just have more of an effect or higher correlation with a student taking an advanced course. So obviously stu teachers who teach advanced courses are going to have a high correlation here. Um but even for for teachers who don't uh who don't teach teach an advanced course uh there is definitely a difference in t having certain teachers and then going on and taking an advanced course. And I just uh sent to Jeremy just a list of correlations so that we can do a further analysis and investigate why is that the case? Are there there certain teachers that teach prerequisites for advanced courses or just speak
013about it more, encourage it more? That's a that would be a really helpful additional study. In terms of the modeling, here are some of the main key takeaways. This is first for phase one. So, this is for the drivers of advanced course enrollment. But overall, GPA has the greatest positive association with taking an advanced course. And if you are uh if you have a disability, that has the greatest negative effect. uh specifically here if you are if you are non ELLL with a disability across the board we saw that being an immigrant has a negative effect on uh advanced course enrollment and there's some interesting things here we'll I'll show you some average effects so across uh all the secondary schools and then some interesting breakdowns by school and one one thing we find here
014is that Ridgeline support services for uh students with disabilities seems especially helpful as at getting those students to enroll in advanced courses before you Yeah, please. Did the first box say ELLL, not non ELLL? It's non ELLL. I'll show you ELLL as well. We had a breakdown of a combination of English language learners and their disability status was an important thing we were looking at. I'll show you in just a second. So, here's the average effects. So, these are just uh uh regression coefficients if you cast your mind back to when you ever had a regression course. But you can see here that uh GPA is the highest positive effect. It has a very narrow uh interval estimate. So it's very significant away from zero. Over here is where we see those negative effects. So
015this is the non ELLL with disability. Here's ELLL with disability. Right? They they largely overlap here. But this point estimate draws it a little bit further more negative. We also see that immigrant status as well. Uh middle schools. I think this is probably largely driven by the fact that we have freshmen in here that have a chance technically to take an advanced course but may have not had a chance yet to do so. Um and then uh scores uh don't have a big effect. I think for our initial uh investigation with teachers they would be surprised maybe disappointed to find that there's not a big effect on attendance in uh taking an advanced course. But then again, there's probably a lot of correlation here between that and GPA, which we're using as a proxy to
016capture lots of things about student effort and attention and uh support from home, etc. What is scram membership? Sorry. Scram membership is that's a great question. Uh I think this um has a reference to either getting accommodations or some sort of disability service as well. I don't know if you know. I can look it up. Is that correct? Scr refers to the state reporting we do for those with services. Just as you said, 504. 504. Yeah. Great. Yeah, it's usually the students presenting this. Thank you. Save me. Um, what about the influence? So, this is So, I wanted to dig a little bit deeper. So this is GPA overall, but if we look at GPA's influence across schools, we see that there's actually an interesting difference. So for example, down here, GPA at Grand Canyon
017has the least influence on taking an advanced course of all the high schools. And this is true both in your uh postcoid versus all of the years together. So maybe this indicates that cultural thing where it's it's not just people with high GPA that take advanced courses. Whereas at the other extreme, you see at Ridgeline and at Sky View, there's this the a higher correlation between a high GPA and taking an advanced course. And here we can look at a breakdown of another variable. So this is uh this is for section 504. So part of that scram variable. Um if you are at Ridgeline, their 504 services have a greater positive effect of getting students into um advanced course advanced course work uh out of all the high schools. Okay, so very quickly that was
018the first model. For the second model, again this is looking no longer at advanced coursework uh taking an advanced course as a as the outcome variable. Now, this is one of the predictors and we're looking at college enrollment or college graduation. So, uh, as you might expect or maybe hope, high schools with a higher rate of advanced course participation also tend to have higher college enrollment rates. Those who took a business advanced course specifically were significantly more likely to graduate college. Again, graduation is a little tricky to capture here given the the time scale that we have. Was that me? No, I think it was a system. Sorry. Okay. Um, we also think this is maybe largely driven by uh like a BTech influence. So if you if you take th those concurrent enrollment classes,
019maybe you're more likely to go and to finish them as well. And then finally, students from Ridgeline and Mountain Crest were more likely to graduate from college of of all the years. But again, take college graduation with a little bit of grain salt. So here we see in blue is college gradu uh enrollment and in gray is college graduation. We see the effect of the different schools. Um so middle school going to North Cache is actually the highest but of the high schools we see Mountain Crest and then Ridgeline. And then there's a there's a lot of uncertainty here. Again, this is uh um uh we'll see these effects get smaller if you repeat this study when you have more data over time, especially given that lag in college enrollment and graduation. But here's we've
020categorized all of the different advanced courses and we get this is where we get this interesting effect of business. So overall business looks largely the same. Um taking an advanced business uh course on on enrollment but for graduation we see this movement this interval estimate is farther to the right. So again we could investigate this further but we suspect maybe that's driven by BTech or some other influence. That's a lot in just a few minutes. There's lots of other great results. I don't know if you've shared the full uh presentation, but there's there's a lot of interesting things and hopefully it's packaged in a way that you can continue the analysis moving forward in the future. Wow, that was great. How do we get a hold of the full presentation? We certainly can have that
021sent to you so you can unpack that. Um, let me say this. My experience has been that there are very few districts that have both the bandwidth or nor the expertise to do this kind of analytical work. I think we're really fortunate um to have this um budding relationship with the analytic center and we're looking to continue to grow it and to use it in lots of different ways. We're already starting to talk about projects for this next year. Uh, one in particular the board may be interested in is looking at the impact of possibly DOI um in our district. Um, we certainly want to share the data with you. We can continue to do so. We're intending to do one to two projects a year. Is there any way to tell what parental influence
022has on these advanced courses? That's a really hard one. The data that we have come from Power School. So this is attendance data, grades. Uh there certainly is a chance to do that. So my training comes from marketing and we do a lot of primary data collection. There is definitely a chance and this is something we've discussed that maybe at some point we want to set up some sort of panel so we can survey students, graduates, parents and marry that data with this data so we can get a lot maybe a richer description of these variables that we just don't have currently. Just wondering right now I would say the proxy is I mean probably captured in part by GPA um and a number of other things but you're right that specific thing is is
023not counted for directly in the data. The slide that was really interesting to me was the slide with teachers and advanced course work. Yep. So there's a green canyon and it kind of it kind of slowly leveled out. are those those so the numbers on the side number of advanced course yeah what period of time does this take right yeah so this is across all of the five years that we have so I guess this is not the correlations the correlations are are especially interesting to us um but yeah these are different teachers and how many students they've they've had but either are taking advanced courses because they teach advanced courses or go on to take advanced course work I think stuff like this is super valuable it it gives It gives you a little
024more insight into, you know, what why are students taking these classes from these teachers? What teachers are most effective? Um, I'd be interested too in counselors, like how are counselors helping support these kids in encouraging advanced uh classes? We can only do so much with parents, but you know, counselors have a huge influence on that, too. Love the data. I think it's great. No, I I absolutely agree. like that was something we considered and it's definitely something we're missing like like parental influence like peer influence capturing culture. I think um the the the proxy for counselor influence is really just including the school level effect. So those differences you saw by school you could read that as in part an effect of the counselor's present. Yeah, this is I'll just give you a little glimpse.
025This is the this is what we're you know these are all the teacher IDs so you don't know these but this is uh all teachers this is a correlation between having that teacher and going on and taking advanced course this is just a univaried analysis it wasn't in the model but uh we have that broken down by uh these are the teachers that don't teach any advanced courses and yet there is this general difference in their effect on getting people getting students into advanced courses and then a breakdown by school. So I think the intent is to take these and to go to the schools and to deanonymize those teachers and do an investigation as to why that's the case. But you could do something very similar with counselors if you had that data. Yeah,
026that is great. Good work. Thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. Tell Chris hi. What's that? Chris. Yes. Tell him hi. Yeah, I will tell Chris hi. I was talking to him because I was at the graduation for Green Canyon. He he felt bad that he wasn't there. He's like, I think this is the first Grand Canyon or grad college high school graduation that I haven't been to and I don't know how many years he was on the board, but he definitely was thinking about you guys. I know. So, thank you. Uh, next up we have Positive Behavior Interventions and Student Code of Conduct presented by Stephanie Adams and Alvin Jack. Well, uh, we have been working, uh, well, we're always working to better support our teachers for, um, students that have challenging or disruptive
027behaviors in the classroom. That's something that we hear often as a high need for schools. And we especially see that to be true in our K through two um where there's developmental skill deficits and and interventions needed for kids. And then in uh in our secondary schools, there tends to be just a need for consistency in uh our support actions and responses when we have students who struggle. So uh just wanted to comment on a couple of uh actions we've taken for next year that we're excited about. The first is that we have um in the elementary schools there's been a shift in an RTI facilitator role to be a school support leader and we think that that change in in assignment can help um give additional support to a school principal to uh work
028with students who are struggling especially in that K2 grade level area. We also um implemented what's called safety care training. It's our uh procedures for emergency interventions when we have really aggressive students and um the state um has given some additional guidance about that and we're always watching that and learning how to support. But the the safety care training in the past we used something called Aspen and it had a limit to um the number of procedures taught. Safety care gives a wider variety of or greater spectrum of procedures that can be used by trained staff to intervene with students. And each school now has a a safety care team that's been trained and we're excited about that. Another step uh is we're looking at how to um we uh Jenny B and our specialized
029been able to hire additional school psychologists and we're looking at how the school psychologist can play a greater role in consultation for supporting students rather than just only evaluation. Um and so that's another piece. The last new bit that we're really excited about is a student code of conduct document. The purpose of a student code of conduct is to share with all members of a school community the expectations we have for a school uh climate. And it also is to help us as administrators have consistency in the responses we take when we're looking at support actions. And um school discipline is a piece of a support action and this gives some guidance around that. Um, so Stephanie I think is going to give you just a really quick walkthrough of some of the items you'll
030see in a code of conduct document. So our code of conduct uh has three main sections. Um the first section is actually the portion of it that is public facing that will eventually be attached as a procedure to the student discipline policy and it goes over the different levels of behavior that um we typically see in the schools and it separates it into five general categories. And in that section, um, it outlines to to parents, to teachers, to the public, um, what our definitions are of certain types of behaviors and examples of what those could be, examples of interventions, management, documentation, procedures, and also some of the supports that we may implement in those levels. It's not an exhaustive list, but it's meant to give that general idea to help folks understand um kind of
031where certain behaviors fall along that uh along that continuum. So that's what the first section refers to. The second portion of this is really an administrative tool. Um it's a disciplinary framework. And when I began my my career as an administrator, um I received a one-page document from the vice principal who was there before me kind of outlining some of the typical behaviors he saw and some of his responses, which was a huge help for me, but it was the only tool and resource I had. So oftentimes we find ourselves operating independently within our buildings. Uh elementary being the hardest because you don't have other administrators with you in that building, right? But what this does is gives us a framework to operate within that also allows freedom for our school administrators to look at
032individual circumstances to determine what the best possible discipline and support steps are to help students navigate issues that come up. Um, this is also a living document. It's not meant to just be printed and be one and done. Um, I actually will pass this around. We've added a whole another section to this since I printed and made these books for you. and it's it revolves around technology and acceptable use policy violations because we have seen a dramatic uptick in that. Uh special thanks to some of our social media platforms that help to aid students in some of that mischief. Um but as you look through the framework, you see those same five levels represented. The icons that you see in each of those uh columns refer to who is responsible for managing those behaviors. And
033so our level one would be teacher. Level two would be teacher with the possibility of consulting with an admin. Level three would be admin managed with the possibility of calling up to a director for support to bounce ideas off of or to just talk through it. Um level four would be principal and district level handling that issue. And level five just comes straight to a director. And those are our most severe uh issues that we deal with in schools. They're also our most rare and uncommon. Um, so as you go through the tool, you'll see that there's a definition of what these behaviors are and what they look like, as well as a coding to show what levels those behaviors fall in to give admin some general guidance of where they can fall for what
034type of restorative practice or what type of um intervention can be used to support students. And then at the last tab of our book is our supporting documents and our appendix and just giving greater reference to admins for clarification and support. And this is a tool that we screen through with admins yesterday. Um and overall the feeling was that they were very appreciative that they have something that they feel like can guide them better with the choices they make and help them be better aligned with the other schools in our district that operate at their levels. So curious if you have any questions about um you know general purpose of the student code of conduct or other other questions about it. I have a boring question. Um you talked about an RTI um person moving
035to a port of administration. Can you describe how that looks and why you think that will be a better a better fit to help our um uh PBIS issues? I I can take a stab from the behavior angle and then and then Todd may have some other pieces of it, but um traditionally we had a literacy person uh split between two different schools helping to support the tiered literacy uh work in the schools. And then um there was a time when um that person took a role uh one per school rather than split responsibilities like that and they took on some additional uh work with uh math intervention and they so we use the term RTI rather than literacy facilitator. Um the thinking is that in addition to looking at interventions for academics, we also
036need support with interventions for behaviors. And so this um school support leader is someone that would still have that role of supporting academic intervention, but they may also act as a greater support for a school administrator in other responsibilities as assigned. And for me, the really the goal is to to stop thinking about academic and behavior intervention as two separate things and rather that they're actually one and the same. And so that uh a change in that responsibility, a change in that title and role is to make sure we're thinking more holistically about how those two things reinforce each other. I don't know how I did Todd, but that's okay. That explains it well. That answers my question. Thanks. Anybody else have questions for Alvin? All right. Thank you so much. Thanks for your work.
037Um, has this changed from when we were you got it at the leadership meeting? I don't just additional page in the beginning that actually goes over expectations for all of our community members. So, our students, our teachers, our administrators, and our parents. And it's framed just in the things that we hope to see, not not as in the recourse of if we don't see those things. The most important thing in a code of conduct is to understand what that conduct is. Oh, and you do have it in your book. I do have it, but on page four there's a I had a question about one word. Yes. Since Kathy's not there, thank you for representing Kathy because on my copy it says grounds for suspension of expulsion. We picked that up or thank you. We
038we some of our principles helped us catch some of those things as we reviewed it this week. Yeah. Put it through a principal panel and we picked some of our most meticulous admins to go through and review this with us. My copy has the same copy I do. Yeah. And we appreciate that she does. She's welcome to call me, but like if you look in mine, like you'll see all of the edits and things that I'm taking notes on, but yeah, we have updated. Got it. Yeah. Thank you. office. I just want to publicly thank Alvin and Stephanie for this work. It was a monumental task. They pulled together a committee from across the district, represented across the district to put this work together. To me, it's foundational to building out our U support program
039for students that are struggling particularly with behavior. So, thank you. Welcome. Happy to help. Thanks. Thanks. Have a good night. You too. Okay, Dave, are you Oh, Gary is here. I just couldn't see you behind Allan. Okay, next up we have our 990180 report by Gary Thomas and Dave [Music] Swinson. This is the last time. Yeah. Wow. That's true. That's very true. So, as they're coming up, let me just give you some context. Um, the state requires us to report to ensure that students are receiving 180 days of instruction and 990 hours. Uh, this is something that annually we want to report to the board because it impacts um each school's bell schedule. Um, and we wanted to make sure that you're aware of where our schools are at in terms of providing instructional time.
040Very good. I guess you've got a copy of the We do that. Is there any questions or anything that uh I have one question. Um, the high schools all show 124 hours. It's only difference of 12 hours. But I just curious why Mountain Crest is different than the other three high schools. They uh what do you have? I have them all. I updated this just recently. So they have them all at at,024,024. So Mountain Crest is,024 as well. Yes. Because she because last year they weren't they did that they did that difference and so she's decided to go back to what the other high schools are doing. So, she's going to do the same same format. So, I I uh I thought it maybe transferred maybe I I I updated it on when when was
041our first day? Tuesday. Tuesday. So, great. That's all I had. Okay. Often times what you see is when they're on the same um number of class schedules, like we're on a trimester. If there are differences, it's it's typically because of increased passing time or lunchtime. that certificate where you you would see that because that those minutes are not captured in instructional time. Obviously, she had her Mustang success at the end of the day and it kind of five minutes a day, but at the end of the year, it's not a big deal, but it's nice to see that they're all consist. So, they they're they're redoing it and be like the rest of them. Thanks. So, I just had meeting with a parent who is concerned that we only have 180 days. And why are
042we not having more instructional time, more days in the classroom? Just throwing that out there. It was an hour. Typically, it comes down to funding because of it's a seller. It's an increase to contract for every employee. Yeah. Britain told me that like this. How does it compare to other districts? It's legislated by the state. They set our 180. Yeah. So, they change it, we'll change. Yeah. Is there any other districts that do more than the required minimum or everyone pretty much stuck on 180? Not aware of anybody that's over. If the state's requiring that, we can easily tell the parent that's what everybody's doing, at least in Utah. Well, it sounds like um minimum requirements are unacceptable in his family. That's why we at the elementary went with a thousand 13. [Laughter] [Music] Well,
043thanks for going above and beyond. We appreciate that. And I didn't even count the half hour that's on there, too, just in case a little bit more. Very good. That's Gary's part of a show. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you. Thanks for verifying to us that our kids are in class when they're supposed Well, as long as they're supposed to be. I guess they can't verify kids. They're verifying teachers are teachers instructional time provided. Oh, I've been looking forward to this. Uh, next up, we have the credit recovery packet approval request by Britney. Yeah. Um well, as you some of you may know, the state legislature passed a bill this last legislative session requiring that all of our packets are approved by our um through the same process as our curriculum materials for nonredit
044recovery. Um we have a large number of packets at Cash High. All of the packets we are using for credit recovery come through Cash High. Even if a student's not a student at Cash High, we've tried to simplify the process. Well, I don't know if simplify is the right word. Streamline the process so that all students um go through cash high for credit recovery. This ensures that we have consistent um for all students at all schools. So, um, we at the beginning of May met, there was a committee of us that met and reviewed all of the packets that we have available. We have, um, a large number that were developed by our own teachers in our own district and we used COVID monies to do that that um, a few years back. And then
045we have a few that we use from Northridge Learning Center that we purchased also with COVID monies um about the same time. We've we've used Northridge Learning for several years before that even um but one of the things we noticed was that Northridge prices kept increasing and we felt it was really important to create our own. So when we had Esser money, the co monies, we developed a bunch of um credit recovery packets. We had our committee review all of the packets. There were a few things that concerned us. There was a few um copyright things that we were worried about. So, we're going to be fixing those. But otherwise, we felt like the packets were um pretty sufficient to meet the needs of students who are in need of making up lost credits. We
046had two public input meetings. No one came. Um and so we didn't get any public input about the two from those two meetings. Um so what we would like is to get approval for those packets um and ask ask answer any questions that you guys might have if you have any. I think Terry, you and Kathy have seen some of the packets when you were visiting Cash High. Did you guys have any questions or concerns? Uh no, but I appreciate that. Um we now because in the past um for board members who don't know um some several high schools created their own packets um rather than using a standard standardized packet and um we're giving kids uh credit recovery from in-housemade packets and um as Kathy and I talked about But of the counselors at
047individual high schools have a lot of pressure put on them by some students who may not have received the grade that they wanted. And so they want to make up that credit with um with a packet rather than retaking the class. And by I I think that by taking gathering up all the packets, having um uh districtwide uh or a district represented committee approved those p all of the packets and Cash Highs them. So if a student really wants a packet instead of a class, then they've got to go to Cash High to get it. Um I appreciate that new process. Yeah. Um because I think it will be have a lot more uh in integrity. Yeah. And we've been doing that for the most part since co um but we've had a few packets
048that have hung on at a couple of the schools and this um bill actually helped us to kind of say let's not do that anymore. So, it's really it was kind of a nice thing for us so we could make sure we were being really consistent. So, so I'm one that doesn't understand this as well. Is the packet something a kid takes home and can work on it on their own time and they bring it back completed and that gives them credit for that class? Yeah. So, the idea behind a packet is a student has been in a class long enough to learn some of the information but not didn't pass. So, they complete the packet to show that they've learned enough to get a passing grade. They do not get a letter grade when
049they complete a packet. They um complete it and when and there's actually a process through to our packets. I should have explained before they even get a packet, they take a a test that shows if they already know the material, then they don't really need to do a packet. So, they take an assessment and if they pass, then we just uh give them a passing grade and um a credit. Yes, thank you. Not a grade. They get a pass for that um class. If they don't pass the assessment, then we give them a packet and they complete the packet to learn the material and then at the end they can take the assessment and pass the assessment to get the credit. And the problem came to the forefront during the legislative session because there were
050some there have been students in the past at some high schools who if they can see they're not going to get a good grade out of the class, they drop the class and then go ask for a packet to finish it. And so the the point being that a student should not get original credit um from an weekend's worth of work on a packet, right? But most of the packets that I saw at C within our district couldn't be done finished in a week weekend unless that's all they did and they didn't eat or sleep. Yeah. They're I wouldn't I don't want to use the word rigorous cuz there is an expectation there's been learning that's happened before they get a packet. Um but they're not easy either. So they're they're they're good packets in
051my opinion. So our the teachers who've developed them did a great job. Anyway, thanks for your work to uh create this new process. I think it's a great idea moving forward. Thanks. Okay. Job review policy presented by [Music] Tim. I have two. So, yes, you do to do. So, um just to give you a little context on the job review policy. So, we've been working over the last year and a half to do a job study and develop job descriptions for uh I think we have 195 196 job descriptions at last count. Um for every job category in the school district, um we have just over 3,200 employees. So, uh some of those job descriptions represent a single individual, some of those job descriptions represent 500 individuals. So that would be like our classrooms. Um
052next step in that process is uh while all the employees have been involved in developing their job descriptions is to give an opportunity yearly through policy if anyone's uh job description has grown beyond what was agreed upon uh and they want a job review or a department wants a job review of a job um or HR needs to review a job is to put a policy and procedure in place for accomplishing that. That's basically what this policy does is puts a process in place to review job descriptions. Any questions about policy or procedure? No. Well done. Yeah. Thanks. Jeff, do you ever have somebody ask for a job review? Ask for one. We tell them they're going to have Uh I we usually didn't it wasn't a common practice. People would grow with their job
053and they'd be promoted or shift jobs. But usually if you had a specific role and responsibility, those functions stayed consistent. And if the person grow grew and had more, you know, offered more, you would them into a new you would change the job description. they'd get a new job description because they'd have a new job with greater responsibility. So, great. Well, this um policy takes care of any loopholes and is very clear. I appreciate that. And next we have the shine policy. So, yeah, best acronym should win the best acronym contest. uh give you a little context on this. There's been a program in the state called TSSP. That's the teacher salary supplemental program. It was designed to um compensate teachers who were in the high need areas, who had degrees in those areas, taught
054the requisite courses for those areas, and met the endorsement requirements an additional uh amount on their salary. It's averaged somewhere between $3500 and $4,000 for a full-time equivalent if you had a full schedule in those classes. The state has always uh administered that program while Jared has taken care of the payment in the Cash County School District. So the state would they individual would apply to the state state would check their degrees, check their coursework, check their endorsements and approve those uh through legislation. This year the state uh indicated that the school districts or the LEA uh through this local school board would now control this program and rebranded it uh shine instead of TSSP. What I think is important for the board to understand is that um it's been uniform across the state. So
055every district had the same high need areas. And um I think part of the reason for changing it, a major reason is that districts don't all have the same high needs and rural districts have very different needs than maybe an urban district or an urban district who's competing with six other districts in proximity. Um and so they are putting it into the hands of school boards to decide what the high needs areas are for the school district. And uh the way this policy is written is that you have that opportunity as a school board to look at this annually. So, we'll be back next year um to ask again, but this is our first uh kind of stab at setting up a policy and procedure and determining or recommending to the board what those high
056need areas should be for the Cash County School District. So, um it it will be a lift for the school district to administer this program. Um, but I think we've got the parts and pieces in place with the business office and HR working in concert to be able to accomplish that. I think the the meat of this policy is found in the subject area requirements. You can have up to five highne areas. We are um modifying some of the state high need areas for the school district this year and suggesting we eliminate one high need area from the state and replace it with another highnee area that we we feel is important for the cash county school district. So no changes in the science educator requirements. We continue to have difficulty attracting chemistry, physics, um
057those types of um positions in the school district. So, we are recommending that that stay the same. Uh, secondary mathematics, we've expanded that. Um, mainly we've done, I think, a better job. The state has a hard time identifying courses that match all the way across 41 school districts. So, we've put in the math courses that that match our school district that we're looking for. And the big change here is we added supplemental math because one of the things that our um principles were having a difficult time in was uh teachers only wanted to teach courses that were higher level courses or regular level courses and not supplemental courses for remediation for uh at risk students. and we want them to be able to teach those courses as well so we can attract our best best
058teachers to those areas and still give them a a salary supplement for those. Uh computer science uh again we identified the courses that are taught in our school district for computer science. You can see those on there as well. Um special education we uh expanded that to include school psychologists. We've recruited three or four school psychologists from different places in the country um this year and have had to go far and wide to try to find um educational or school psychologists. Those are difficult. So, we've added that to the special education area. Um and then on the the entire area that we uh eliminated was deaf education. We just didn't we don't have the demand for that. And um and then we added ELLL secondary education requirements and um we're going to fund the sheltered
059courses that we teach for ELLL kids whether that be a um English language development course, a co-taught course, a tutorial course, or um a core content courses. Sometimes we'll set up courses uh in science or mathematics that's designed to focus on the ELELLL students and uh the teachers that teach that will be um receive a salary supplement if they meet the requirements for that. And that's just secondary. Yes. Yep. Yeah. And it it says that on the title ELLL secondary educator. So are there any questions about the recommendations? Are we are we short teachers in math and science and computers? Uh computers definitely the science the areas that we identified here definitely um mathematics um it is a little bit different in those supplemental courses that I mentioned. So definitely getting teachers to teach in
060those areas is difficult. I would say it's a yes and no on the math. Um yeah, it's it's just a yes and no on the math. So with the extra 3500 to 4,000 that makes a difference. It does. We're able to bring in and you have to consider another aspect of this is not only recruitment but retention. retention, right? And when they know they get an extra on their salary, it's it's hard to tell how many we're retaining because of that as well. And that was really the the idea behind merit pay, which was the part of it that we did not object to, is the idea that we can retain teachers by giving them a higher salary. It's just how we measure that metric um was the difficult part. So, the only math classes
061that are listed for this are in middle school. Did I miss them? You might be right. So, there are no high school No, there are there are all the high school courses as well and I missed them. Okay. So, so then next year will we add sixth grade math as well to this secondary? You know, um Britney and I have been um talking about that and discussing it. We decided not to do it this year, but discussed maybe the pros and cons of doing it the following year. Um it our our workforce is interesting coming in because you get teachers that are moving from the elementary to the middle school who may have an elementary endorsement. Therefore, they would not qualify to teach the math course versus teachers who maybe have the endorsement in the
062major. And and we're just talking about the pros and cons of uh putting an incentive in place for that at that level. So, but thank you. And when you see this in uh is it a week or two weeks that we come back next week? I'll I'll fix the math. So, thank you for pointing that out. Did something change since when we saw it at the leadership leadership meeting because Yeah, I added some courses. There were high school classes. Well, there were they were um truncated. Oh. Uhhuh. Just into like three categories. And I wanted to put specific courses so I could add the remedial. Okay. And so I asked for the courses from the Stacy from the power school folks and I probably just missed a cut and paste and grab the middle and
063not the high school. So okay. So yeah and that would have come out become evident later. So thank you for catching it. Well prove it. Yes. There. You're missing an H on the very last line. That's probably where my cut and paste crashed. Thank you, Tim. This is awesome. Thanks, Tim. Thank you. Because I've heard teachers talking about TSSP going away and that um they're not going to get TSSP anymore, which they aren't. They won't. They'll get shine. That's right. They'll get something else. That's right. I I will mention, and you may get questions about this as a board, um that by adding some of these categories, it's going to reduce the amount that teachers get that have been getting the program because we've expanded just a little bit, which will mean there are more
064more teachers that qualify, fewer pieces of pie because the pie doesn't change. The pie stays the same. So when you do something like this as a board, um some teachers are going to recognize a salary cut um for this next year when you consider the supplement. Not know how much of a cut that would be. I don't yet because it's hard to tell how many are going to qualify and how many are going to apply based on master schedules. Yeah. Well, and in the past, hasn't the application been kind of um automatically done by the state? They've had to apply for it, and if they've applied, it gets renewed automatically every year. But it's hard for the very reason the superintendent just said is uh master schedules shift so much um in a year. So,
065you get new teachers. How will the business office and HR manage this additional load? So once once the positions are identified and approved, we can run a report showing what we would expect as far as qualified teachers and then we'll take the funding amount that the state sent and prorate that out and that will give us our amount. So this is So is this an a quantity of work that's going to take another person in the business department or is it just another report to as simple as another report to write? His job doesn't change fundamentally from what it's been because he's still paying the teachers. It really lands on HR. Okay. and um it's really one office in HR which is our licensing specialist and her and I have been working together to work
066through the how we're going to pull this off. I think we have it designed so that it's not going to be a huge lift. It'll definitely be an extra duty. So, she'll be coming back for a job review from the first policy I talked about. But um no, we it'll be an extra task for her, but I think it's within the parameters of what she has the bandwidth to accomplish. Anyone else have questions for Tim? All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate that. Coincidentally, the superintendent has the last three policies. All right, we saved the fun for the end. Um so first is the school closure and boundary change. Um this is taken straight from state statute and modeled after USBA's model policy and it simply provides us guidance as we are currently
067in the midst of looking at boundary changes. In there you'll find um there's expectations for public hearings. Uh public hearings prior to presentation to the board, prior to a final vote notification. A lot of it's It's timeline driven uh just so that we are giving families in the community proper notice of any changes that may be coming. It also applies to in the in the event somewhere down the line we ever considering closing either a school or a program. So special programs are fall under this as well. Um again it's modeled it's taken from the state's model policy. Questions on that first. So the boundary change of 30 days that's state statute. It's really by state straight from statute. Okay. And just to keep the board uh informed, we're moving through that process with our
068facilities advisory committee. Um they reviewed initial uh um look at elementary boundaries last night. Uh we're we've been asked to do some tweaking with those. We'll take it back to the committee the beginning of August. Um our plan is um to make sure that we're really fully informing our community and giving them a chance to look at the boundaries of any change in those boundaries. Uh once the committee um finalizes a proposal, we'll take it to the community for just an open comment to let them just give us feedback um what their concerns are, things that we may have missed. there may be something that comes out of that process that would be really beneficial for us to consider. So, we want to make sure that um we engage them uh in that and that
069would precede an actual a public hearing where we're actually zeroing in getting firmer on what the boundaries will be and then they can step in and uh voice their opinion at them. We intend to have this to the board no later than the January meeting. We'd like to do it sooner because there is some concern about registration. Um although much of that has been alleviated with um the decision of the committee not to touch secondary boundaries, secondary um classes register kids sooner and there's a lot of concern with counselors about that. But the committee looked at um the demographers report, looked at our data and right now there there's the thinking that we will not touch secondary boundaries um for at least the next five five years maybe 10 years. So, so when you say
070secondary boundaries, does that assume that the new middle schools will have the same boundaries as the two high schools? Yes. So, going back to our commitment to the the community during the bond process, one of our um campaign points was to ensure that we had clean feeders from middle to high. And so uh all the middle school boundaries will reflect their their high school boundary. So Ridgeline will be all right capacitywise for 10 years. it it will be right to the ceiling but u looking at the capacities the physical capacity and then looking at the trend we believe there we're experiencing a bit of a bubble and we'll see a reduction and what's helpful in that is also um there with the choice policy that was passed by the board last year we have the
071ability now to to limit outside attendance Any other questions? I'm just grateful we're not closing schools much deal with with building and crowding than closing schools because I have although I hear you can turn them into apartments but that's board member friends who are do having to do that and it's miserable. Uh this moving on to the next policy. It's a commitment to planning. This is simply a statement to our community that we as a district are committed to long-term planning. Uh specific you thinking specifically about a strategic plan, our facilities master plan. We want to make sure that we're being thoughtful looking forward and we're committed to a planning process and that we um then turn around and are reporting that. And it goes hand inhand with this the following uh policy which is
072reporting and transparency. We want to get into the habit of reporting to the board annually on a number of plans that we continue to develop. We've had these plans informally. Uh but this now says that we are going to develop a technology plan, strategic plan, professional development plan, and that we'll report to you every year on those plans, where we're at, what what needs we may have uh so that you are fully aware. Um, I hope to bring to the board in our retreat at the end of the month a master planning calendar where you can see when and where we will we will report all of these to you so that you you can look ahead to this next year and and know what's coming when we would it be good to um I
073know that the reporting is important but um is it possible that as a board we could see um like the report this year compared to last year like what what was accomplished this year versus what was accomplished. Absolutely. Is that possible with this type of plan? Um we certainly can build that in and you'll see it as it evolves and um we certainly can make sure that you're seeing year-to-year growth. Okay, that's great. Yeah. For instance, we have I'll just give you kind of a glimpse right now. Um our our technology director is working on a five-year technology plan um that has a number of items that are listed in uh a procedure we've developed and that's something we'll report to you every year. Speaking of the technology plan, what can you explain to me
074and how that affects our district? I will you not can you? I know you can, but I'll do my best. So, is I would consider it uh federal funding there. There's a organization that manages funds and uh school districts and uh other entities can apply for funds. There's a specific process for it. you have you can only apply for certain types of technology equipment or supplies and you go through a a specific bidding process uh for those and then the - organization either approves or doesn't approve uh those purchases but essentially for a school district it's it's one more funding mechanism for technology equipment and supplies u I would say it's not the easiest program to it's not the easiest grant application process. It's really complex. So, most districts, including ours, uh we we have
075a third party that we use to to help manage the application process. Uh but that in a nutshell, that's what it is. Okay. So, it's federal funds for um technology needs. Yep. All right. Computers and software typically it's like routers and switches. Yeah, it's networking gear. Yeah, not personal items, but just the the network gear. Okay. Am I off there, Spencer? Sorry, what you say? Network gear, switches, and servers. The expensive stuff. Yeah, the expensive stuff. All right. So do you consider that you already talked about the reporting transparency policy? Yes. So that that's the commitment annually to come to bring to the board those those plans listed in policy. All right. The last thing on the agenda is the 2526 board meeting schedule. any concerns or issues with that that you can see? Emily
076did such a great job putting that together with all of the changes that we have to make in our board meetings um based on our uh professional development commitments and all of those kinds of things and spring break and etc etc. Thanks Emily. All right. Anyone else have anything else? This will be the shortest study session on record. Great job with graduations last year. Schools did an amazing job, didn't they? I've got a question. Okay. How come Allan has a fancy Apple computer and all the rest of us have? You'll have to take that up as Spencer because I don't know how to do a PC. They gave me an Apple that I'm used to. Okay. It's not any fancy preferential treatment here. Yeah. So, it's just that I knew an apple. No. So, you
077can just say you have the Apple disability as well and they'll give you an apple. I wouldn't want one. I barely know how to run this one. Sorry. All right. All right. Any other moans?