001will be joining us shortly and as you can see with some of our presenters hello Michelle welcome we're just about to get started fith I will turn all right I call the meeting to order can we stand um for the pledge flag is in kind of left hand corner but anyway it's there we know um I pledge allegiance [Music] great um first order of business is a review of the minutes from September 14th 2020 um you've I assume everybody on the committee's had a chance to review um any additions or [Music] corrections I have none thanks nor do I there's Ann maybe no um okay uh seeing none do I have a motion to accept the minutes M chair I have a motion to approve the minutes of the September 14 2020 PR Comm peram
002committee meeting as presented and I second all in favor I I okay um moving to item three informational items we're going to start with a presentation by the state education Resource Center on the um equ uh equity and diversity that is taking shape so um away all right so thank you fate um we have invited Michelle weever and Michelle LeBron Griffin to uh our curriculum committee this evening to tell you a little bit more about the work that our district is undergoing in our um process of learning more about equity and how we attach Public Schools can um move this initiative into the future so I see that Michelle Weaver is on the call Michelle are is Michelle LeBron joining you or if she will she be along Michelle Brun is joining um I thought
003she would beat me here okay well I think we could if you're ready to begin we can begin now or if you would like us to wait I'm sure we could move on to our broadcast room demonstration let's do the broadcast and then come right back to us thanks okay sounds good so I'll now introduce is all right with you f that's fine let's do that in order to keep the meeting going so Scott Conway and Tom leok are here to talk to you a little bit more about the broadcast room good evening I'm Scott Conway and this is Tom leok we the technology integration specialist for Chester public schools and uh as you are aware we're standing here in a classroom at Highland Elementary School which is one of our broadcast rooms and we
004just want to kind of talk to you briefly about the equipment that is installed in this classroom and also give you a chance to kind of witness it firsthand and hear it uh as well as as seeing it so right now we're standing at the front of this classroom there's about one two three three rows of desks and if we move forward we can still be kind of in view of the camera which is ceiling mounted kind of two-thirds of the way back in the classroom to about the first row um and then we have kind of a good width of the classroom up front uh for this class at least it's it's got a good wide angle camera that's giving you this profile shot of this classroom today the teacher uh as you can
005see would have a lavalier mic that just loops around the ne and it allows the teacher to kind of speak in a normal volume even though they have the mask on uh there are ceiling mounted speakers there's four of them in this classroom that is projecting my voice through the amplification system and there are also is a say looks like a hockey puck but it's a small black dis shaped omnidirectional microphone which picks up sound from every corner of this classroom and I'm going to demonstrate that now by turning this microphone off Tom and I can continue to talk and you're going to continue to hear us and I should be able to mute the mic so that if we're going to have a private conversation with a student we might uh conference with them
006at their desk as a teacher I might lean in and quietly just mute the microphone talk with a student but as you can see I'm talking without the laali mic right now and you can still hear me and if you're a student in the classroom the difficulty in the audio is having different components in terms of the length and width of all the different classrooms if I was a student in the front of the room in the far left corner or right corner the audio can be heard from all four corners of the room especially for our students at home I'm moving back and forth to the four corners of the classroom so you can hear the difference in audio as if it was a student in the back of the room raising her hand
007and asking a question Scott from the teaching perspective has the main microphone on but also the audio is picked up without the microphone on the teacher's perspective too so by turning it back on you can now hear that I sound much more projected in my tone and my volume so that you're going to be able to hear me better than the conversations and things that are taking place in the classroom so I really do like to use the lab mic obviously because it saves my voice from having to project through this mask um and I can also turn this up and I can turn it down depending on the environment in the classroom I do have control over that right from the device here but it just allows me to kind of project out over
008all of that so that the students in the classroom can hear me better as well as the students that are at home and that's what you're kind of presenting uh as today the subjects of the student at home and especially from the standpoint from a teachers perspective obviously the difficulty of masks as well as the teacher facing away from the classroom speaker as well as a l might pick up the a so no matter where I'm standing the kids in the or the students in the classroom the students at home even if I happen to be up close against the wall here can still hear me pretty well so you're you're universally uh making it accessible in the classroom for all kids to hear and I think really that's probably the extent of it uh
009it's very minimal in requirements for equipment like I said there's four ceiling mounted speakers One camera and one microphone followed up by the lavalier mic around my neck there any question we just demonstrated fith I have a question Tony go ahead I'll say the audio sounded great even without the uh lavalier mics that's pretty impressive actually yeah the microphones in the ceiling um there are in this CL only one is active so it's not even in the center of this room it's offset I'd say by a third and it still is a really good pick up for an onid directional microphone that picks up from all corners of the classroom that really works well from our perspective hearing you this is exactly like the setup of our students currently at home we have classes where
010students are present as well as students at home just like you are on the different sets of computers and we can hear you loud and clear as if you're presenting or adding information to the conversations and the biggest benefit to having this set up in this classroom is the two-way communication not only between the teacher and the students at home but also the students at home with the students in the classroom it's that two-way communication that they really all benefit from got it uh what has some feedback been from the students uh attending remote good Thumbs Up Down Tom shared with us earlier today kind of off the on the side it's almost a little too good they're hearing everything the wrestling of papers the moving of chairs um so it's it's all been very
011positive and uh you know both from the students and and the teachers perspective and uh one last one you know I I should know this was my daughter Victoria's uh has some remote class at cheser high school but I have not interfered I have not been a helicopter paring over shoulder peeking in on the classroom discussions I know they're going well have the ability to to record this session remotely or or no I'm just curious just in case they have to go back and um maybe double check I understand or is that really up to your control so so the students do not have the ability to record a meeting directly from Google meet the teacher does have that ability so it's up to the teacher to choose to record that me uh and possibly
012post for uh later reflection but it is not built in for the student to do that that is a control feature privacy feature got it that makes sense thank you that sounds great thank you and thank you for being here tonight a long day so very much appreciate and do you have any questions U thanks for oops sorry thanks for asking face I I actually got a really good um demonstration when I went to visit the Elementary School uh Chapman school early I think it was the first week of both full week of classes um but it's really interesting to see it from this view from home what the students are seeing that are who are remote it's quite fascinating IDE right of how it sounds from their end and what they would experience on
013a day-to-day basis being kind of in that remote setting and also I'm teaching that way University one of my classes um where we we use the zoom as the classroom but uh and we have what's called Zoom carts in the classes um so like your Zoom cart is like another student in the class it's very much like this though um and we have to wear masks which is problematic but the um audio is really really easy for the students to understand from what they are telling me with feedback and it's because of the all the um microphones in the ceilings and and such so thanks for the yeah you're very welcome thank you an um just a couple of quick things um I lost you not sure where anybody is um what is the max
014number of students on a screen at a time just curious it does depend to some degree on the size of the screen that you have so the maximum resolution that your monitor uh is capable of achieving will allow you up to 40 9 participants so if you have a 17in monitor chances are you're going to be able to get up to 49 on that screen but if you have a small 11inch monitor you may only be able to get up to 21 22 maybe 30 at the max so it does allow you to slide over all the way to 49 but you might not necessarily get the full 49 depending on your limitations okay the tile view as you see here on the screen these set to have tiles of the different participants if the
015teacher's presenting we're working on additional ways to keep the tile up and viewable while the teacher using a different device to show the presentation in the presentation mode it would actually take up some of the space so that's where Scott and I work with a lot of teachers to have that tile mode viewable for students in the classroom yeah the presentation would take up approximately a third or a quarter to a third of the screen here to the left and then the usable remaining real estate would allow for tile view so it may further restrict the number of tiles you see okay and so um I guess you know people are quite impressed from what I've heard from parents people are very impressed with the technology if there is any problem at all it is
016in the video portion in terms of the clarity of the information PR presented on the screen that um it's sometimes difficult to see and if if and I guess I can see what they're a student sees um it is distant um so the concept is the the students aren't going to be reading off the board you'll see in the future presentations we have tonight the actual presentations are to be sh to your screens the idea of this perspective if a teacher is holding up and manipulative the teacher show something to the students from the classroom kids at home are getting experience so yeah so and Sean thanks for dropping that you can you can pin tabs or tiles and show them larger but yeah the idea is student really wouldn't be utilizing the camera to
017view any of the written work or the classroom work on the board at that point this the teacher would go into presentation mode and what the student sees on their end is almost the entire screen taking up almost the entire entirety of their screen so presentation mode zeros them in and focuses them on the actual presentation which happens to be probably one of these tabs at the top here that you would go through SL show or some other software application uh so the student at home would actually see the bulk of the work in the majority of their screen okay okay thanks that that makes sense all right yeah you're actually going to see that presented later so really the camera is more for interaction between the human to human whereas presentation mode will bring
018up the actual content more clearly to them and you'll see a demonstration of that as well okay thank you thank you [Music] okay so that ends information or Item B under informational items yes okay let me um confess my mistake I missed the public comment item one um I was so eager to get into the next one um for which I'm sorry um so had no um covid-19 emails when we started the meeting thank you hey Faith it's Tony we can check in after the presentation anything's there but don't worry about it I just didn't want to leave it yeah thanks for bringing it up okay well I'm happy to report that um Michelle LeBron Griffin was able to join us we had a little technical difficulty there so I apologize but Michelle LeBron Griffin
019and Michelle Weaver are here from cir to share about the partnership that we will be um endeavoring upon this school year so Michelle and Michelle thank you for being here tonight Michelle I believe you are muted thank you I'm wondering if I'm able to share my screen is that okay yes please of course I myself say Michelle thank you for being here tonight no problem thank you so I'm hoping you can see um it says Service audien's time frame yes yes wonderful um so yes Mich Michelle from cir um we like to either use our last name or um Michelle um Weaver um with an me sound so we're thrilled that chesher has invited cir to partner in the development of the racial Equity capacity of staff and we have this initial um work if
020you will um that is uh grounded here in this Matrix in regards to what we will be working on with both the strategic planning committee as well as with the administrative Council um um both Michelle Michelle Weaver and myself are um trained Consultants at cir in uh not only obviously our racial Equity work but also in what we call um the peg protocol or the courageous conversations protocol and so this is some of the tools that we are going to support your leadership with in establishing not only um some foundational principles and knowledge within the district but also supporting the development of what we call an Equity policy and ultimately an equity plan and so the first part we will be working with that um strategic planning committee or the district Equity leadership team and
021Marlene and deff have been kind enough recognizing that we or you are in a new five cycle of that continuous improvement process they've been kind enough to introduce some community members family voice in perspective some student voice in perspective so it's not just Educators any longer who are part of that process and so that's very exciting for us so that we have all of those voices um the other thing to take into consideration is this is going to be in a virtual space which will be very different um than it would be face Toof face um so sessions are about an hour and a half in length we will have four sessions together um where our learning and our experiences and then we will move into that policy and development simultaneously date wise you'll see
022time we meet with that strategic planning committee or delt we will also be feeding into the admin Council meetings which is all of your Elementary and secondary um building and District princi uh princip building principles and District administrators and so we will be working with them um obviously in a co- facilitation with some adult members to um transfer some of the knowledge and information so that they can then share information with staff we will use uh student Focus Group in early February to inform obviously both the policy and the plan um it's some a very important aspect of cir's work um that we hear right from the voices of our youth and so that will happen um with select high school students both on a volunteer basis but then also on an invitation basis to
023be sure that we have a slice and a um a good you know perspective of all students um in grades N9 through 12 those sessions will um be complimentary to um like a period structure where we will meet in small groups of 10 to 12 um very informal approximately three to four questions nothing threatening by any means it's very open-ended and what we find is that our youth are very honest so we don't need to um spark or stimulate any specific dialogue it it just happens very naturally so um that's always a pleasure uh in Mar in secur so that if there's any students that under are under eight student participation um Jeff and Marlene I don't know how much you have um oriented the committee in regards to purpose or function of the work
024or the rale for the invitation of C to be part of this work um or there's anything else that you wanted me to elaborate on in regards to the planone sure I could indicate that is part of our ongoing efforts to address equity and Michelle mentioned the fact that we are uh in a place where we're addressing our strategic goals again um now we really have two key focal areas one being social emotional learning and complex thinking as a part of our social emotional learning goal IT addresses Equity uh and cultural awareness in that goal and so this is really building on work that's been done but taking a step forward deeper uh in the processes Michelle said with those two distinct groups in particular to start anyway you want to add there marene no
025I think that that I think that what you said was important I know that we talked about making sure that as we Endeavor into this work that our building leaders understand where we're headed that as a as a group all of us go through this process of learning together and that we bring in folks from across the district um as as a part of this um you know understanding of how our our schools how each of us fits into providing what is best needed to make sure that our students in Chester public schools have everything that they need um and are and are ready to um address Life After High School whether it be in college or the work Etc we want to make sure that they have those social emotional learning skills and those
026Equity Tools in their belts to be able to be successful do any of our committee MERS have any questions yeah I have a couple goad Tony thank you um is the actual training material topics covered at exercises Etc is that available on the C website Future these modules just we have an understanding of what's being delivered um I don't know the the raw content if you will but there's probably some overview material and if you know if that's something that you're interested in we should certainly can put an outline together um but just to share some initial um conversations that we've had with Jeff and marleene um they going to be some key Concepts around racial Equity so we'll be discussing between equity and diversity we'll be discussing um the difference between equity and inclus
027inclusivity and sense of belonging we will be discussing um how um we are affirming students identity and recognizing um the various identities and ways that students and and ourselves certainly identify um in life um and the intersection of our race with those various identities um we'll talk about things um such as stere stype threats um particularly in communities um you know like yourself chure um you know what it means to be different and what it means you know to be not um maybe in in the majority right and so what what is that experience like and so recognizing um that your staff uh will be working with students as marleene suggested on these cultural competencies this first year will be really being sure that your staff um has discovered those things for themselves in their
028own identity um racially and obviously in their own intersectionality um so um those are just you know again broad brush ideas um but those are some of the foundational initial um Concepts Michelle I don't know if you want to add um in that regard the mute button keep hiding on me um I know I think Michelle [Music] with and again the content is going to be um tailored so that it works for Treasure and where treasure is right now got it thank you for that I I I know um and researching the certain material this is really uh geared towards curriculum and Leadership around uh diversity and activ inclusion Etc did does the training or does the discussions get into uh for example I would assume under the professional development aspects will there be training
029sessions that maybe coach teachers or Educators on how to deliver racially sensitive topics because you know I had a um and I'll tell you where this question is coming from they might be watching tonight we have a chure coalition uh of um actually alumni from Treasure public schools that come together to work with schools to actually help move this forward and one of the things uh that we raised speak you know we all realize that it's easier said than done you know we we put our teachers in tough positions today with all kinds of new material that's that's coming out for for for curriculum but some teachers may not have the proper backdrop or come from a perspective to deliver some topics so I was hoping there at least be some some training or coaching
030and the teachers to at least find the appropriate resources and get comfortable having those questions and I see how you get there as you work through the services starting with you know racial identity and and moving on down I'm just kind of curious you go with making teachers comfortable talking about these topics yeah that's such a great question um and obviously the impact of the teacher right in the change of practice in the classroom is where we're going to have the greatest impact so um uh we're going to we'll try to do a two-pronged certainly but you will see more of that aspect of it in the second year right or in the second phase um so right now equi your leadership equipping your strategic planning committee so that everything um within the district is
031moving you know in this direction to support your Staff Inc like you just suggested curriculum development um lesson planning and design uh learning environments that are conducive um to these experiences for our youth and Michelle and I are aware of the work of the F and the student group that came forward and I think that's amazing that alumni coming back and returning and saying um as awesome as teser was we weren't fully prepared in in a Global Perspective our our world view needed to be strengthened and so that is something that will come again in the second phase when we really look at the what you'll move from you'll see in the third row here the school Equity leadership teams so in the second year we work with those School Equity leadership teams if you
032think about Middle School it would be at grade level if you think about a high school it would be at Department level at elementary it could it could mix you know depending on the size of grade levels Etc we might do primary and upper combinations Etc but we really then work with um the leadership teams and of each School building um to then you know drill down into the classroom practices with the teacher so that's a great question Anthony thank you no I just I'm just bring it up and I last one I have I got a ton of them but I think what I'll do is uh just write a few of them down s Marlene and Jeff and they can you know coordinate nothing urgent I just CU is so sir it seems
033like a twoyear two um multiple school years two years to get the folks trained with the practices in place at some point I would imagine you start measuring me in or who measures the effectiveness of what you deler in terms of training and development you come back at the period of time and check in and take a poll how um you know either a curriculum or leadership team is developing or or is at that point it's up to the chest public schools and the Board of Ed to really me measure monitor I guess how guess the question is how do we how you help other school districts measure the effectiveness of this yeah that that's a great question as well so I appreciate your questions Anthony keep them coming um so so two prong in
034that response so the the phas in model is really a systemic approach it's not so much a um you know step cookie has designed as Michelle mentioned it's very tailored and contextualized to the district and so um you know it it could go fast to go slow it could go slow to go fast right but the approximate time frame where we're starting to see some Traction in District has been around that third year and so I say that um hand in glove because as the strategic planning committee is working on their next fiveyear cycle I would anticipate and I don't want to certainly speak for the district or Jeff or Marlene in this case but I would anticipate that within that strategic plan there would be milestones and measures that would be included to demonstrate
035progress in this and the development of this work um so the four pillars that we look for in regards to measures to be defined is Equitable leadership Equitable teaching and learning Equitable family community involvement and Equitable student voice and so those are the four areas of which you know we will ensure that they're incorporated into the plan um and that we're looking obviously for prepost outcome you know um component okay it makes sense I thank you for answering the questions I have more but they're more in the weeds of things that you know right now I said I'm sure the board members when he watches ask my questions we'll compile them for you and but very helpful I like how this TR out thank you great thank you an do you have any questions if
036Ann is talking she's on mute and you are on mute it's trick because it does go away on Google meets it you know it disappears after a bit so that okay um we'll get back to Ann um so I is I I'm I'm sorry I came in with this in in a different frame of mind I was thinking of the actual curriculum that was mandated by the legislation which um Michelle you and I spoke about like probably a century ago now I mean it was preco um so right now you are focusing on the training of the staff The Faculty to um incorporate uh and be for lack of a better word more B more sensitive to and aware of instruction and how and Equity instruction and equity and diversity is that am I reading
037this correctly yes Faith so you and I met I believe in the torington focus group around the black Latino studies yes so um that you know just for the benefit of this group actually will be available for the high school to be implementing in the next school year 2122 but we'll certainly um Al you know high schools will be required to offer in the 2223 school year so the timing of this is perfect right because we want to be certain um that staff as Anthony was suggesting are are prepared and have the Readiness to deliver a course like that to support a course like that so it doesn't sit in olation as an elective you know but is is part of the environment and the entire um school and so um yes building the the
038foundational knowledge building the leadership capacity establishing shared meaning common messaging um so that we could really um support that teacher level or that classroom level work is the first step Bas yes okay and all teachers will be expected to go through this training or is it just those with you know in the uh those who will be teaching the course um how who would be participating in this so that hasn't been determined yet um and that again can be customized districts have done different things right so some districts have um just done it through the work of the district Equity team and the school Equity leadership team and then the school Equity leadership team um facilitates like through staff meetings or department meetings or grade level meetings different convers stations other districts have actually had
039each of the grade level teams or departments rotate through some initial training with Circ in that second year um and so again that hasn't yet been determined in the how but that will be part of the plan with year okay how many school districts are involved with this or or are undergoing training right now um so right now we have a variety of things on so um a um William Gasper uh Foundation Grant which we are actually in a second cycle of so we have four districts in um their third year of the cycle or maybe fourth Michelle I'm I'm not sure on that and we have four districts that are coming on in their first year so in addition to that Grant work we also have multiple contracts or training agreements or Partnerships depending
040on um you know what term or who you're speaking with uh at what level um that we have with District like chesher uh like West Hartford like Avon um Etc um the districts that are in our cohort work um of which certainly maybe that's a future component for Chester um it wasn't something that would work uh within this current year uh although we did explore that um our the initial four are Waterbury Middletown New London and New Haven the new four are New Britain Region 13 which is Durham Middlefield um Southington and Thomas so as you can see Faith there is a nice range of our large districts of our Suburban districts and our very rural districts um in regards to both the grant component um work as well as individual um contracts or um
041training agreement okay um I'm like Tony as well I have a a million questions and so maybe the thing to do is as he said is um get together as a board because I know a number of board members are watching tonight you know the rest of the board is watching and um I'm sure they're you know fur furiously writing down their questions as well um yes we'd be happy we'd be happy to address any and all so if it's easier to you know put a you know those together into an email that's fine okay and you said something interesting the program will be tailored to where chesher is right now what what does that mean and who determines where chesher is right now know student cohort but um so honestly chesher decides where chesher
042is right now so what we can do is we can offer these are the things that are really important for a district to consider to make sure that the students experience is an equitable experience that all students are having experience is going to prepare them for you know life outside of treasure one day and there are a range of things that we think that are great for us to know as adults and for students to know but where we start and how fast we go it really depends on Treasure so for what some districts we could start talking about you know implicit bias and stereotype threat you know um earlier on than other in other districts you may spend some more time on your own identity because the the really big change and and I
043think Tony said something earlier about you know really feeling comfortable talking about equity and or thinking about Equity as you're getting ready for a class because it's not always talking about Equity but it is doing the things that we do in Equitable fashion um and a lot of that happens when I start thinking about myself as a racial person and understanding what that means for me to be walking around in whatever skin I'm walking around in in in this in the state and and then in your district and what that means and so some of the initial conversations really going to be about that and just having those conversations is a big step towards being being so really testure is going to let us know where they want to start and how quickly they want
044to move through the work that we're doing this initial phase is really kind of figuring out where we are to be honest with you fa and working with um Shir to take a look at ourselves and you know kind of explore stuff and make a decision that's right for us uh in terms of supporting like I said that that goal of culture um and that's really what our kids have said to our graduates you know that it it is a global Multicultural World our community does not necessarily reflect that and it's important that our kids have the skills to be able toate that world so um that's this year is really very exploratory and it's learning process for our administrative team and that um strategic team and then well you know there's a lot of
045work to be done before we can figure out exactly how it subsequent year um okay thanks I I I'm I'm gonna say this it's probably who knows what the reaction is going to be it's a um are we coming at this with the belief that there is just automatically implicit bias implicit bias in everything that's being done and the way we're teaching and the way we're responding no I don't think you can uh I think you're if you do that if you um assume bias that everybody has that and they're not I mean everybody has blind spots Faith you know based on the the way that they were brought up based on who they are white people black people Asian people we all have blind spots this is an opportunity for us to stop look
046in the who we are are is any of this influencing the experience that our kids I said to a young lady that interviewed me as part of the the Coalition for change think she was doing a U class at tffs and I said to her you know I it's good experience for me to step back now I'm the son of an immigrant you know but my experience is much different than a fourth grader who's the only Hispanic child who walks into a classroom with white faces uh this is an opportunity for us to just step back as we espoused you know toward our goal of helping develop cultural understanding for all of our kids and say what are we doing is there anything that we could do better that's what we're doing right now this
047isn't um professional development on implicit bias it may be at some point you know but where first it's and yeah there may be some implicit biases I have I I'm sure there are to be honest I but it it's take a step back and examine who we are individually collectively and how do we make sure we're supporting all kids in an equitable way regardless of their race their religion their you know their sexual orientation their socioeconomic background how do we make sure we're a welcoming an inclusive support for the 4,200 plus students who come to us every day who need that okay that's where we are if I can add something to that I uh I know I know what Fate's what's Fate's saying because there there are folks community that have this inv visceral
048reaction to any uh thought about chure being racist or biased and you know this is not about cheser being racist or biased it's about that General issue um in our world it and in talking with one to the Coalition and even if you listen to Dr derck who's doing a tremendous amount of work in uh racial equity and and living at division it's not even about skin color it's about our differences and I think Jeff hit something that you know Treasure's been known for you know it's not a bad I think and you of our population numbers um is very small when it comes to diversity population and you know I don't know how we change that you know as a town of something we work together to do but in our schools that same
049diversity percentage is represented there and you know how does anybody know if they a teacher educator administrator you know board member that we have inherent biases if we're not aware of them you know we probably some do some don't um but I don't see this as a or a H say anything it's just an evolution I I go back several years um you know we're always evolving curriculum right Common Core came around we whether we like it or not we implemented Common Core that evolved stering ey testing evolved social emotional learning in my opinion was a Lynch pin that moved a number of things forward that took into account more than just student achievement right it was a well-being emotional go back a few years we have um anti-bullying concerns discrimination concerns so this is
050just another step and I think in and I'm trying to grasp here for for an analogy but uh I guess in the 363 degree view of f schools where are we with this and is there improved if there are let's find out I don't know what they are you know I I want to believe we're we are walking in school by large I've heard very few instances of of but you know we know it's okay that discussion and I think the timing of this is really good too because our 10y year strategy plan is up for rual and a lot has changed in the last few years so um I think what Jeff you know stated on Thee I think it's a good good stop good place to assess and plan forward there might be
051something that come out of this maybe there aren't I'd be surprised if we don't do some minor changes but I think you know I'll tell you tell you I'm a lot older than I think some of the folks in the cheser Coalition my my divers experiences go back uh more than 40 years now and and I was fortunate in a way to grow up in a workingclass neighborhood where you know even though I went to a Catholic grammar school um you know we we got the the truth about history you know um unscathed but it was my experience growing up with different families and different cultures that kind of gave me preparation for post school um fast forward to today you know I I'm not sure you know based on what I'm seeing with my
052kids you know they get enough exposure to all uh the possible cultures and and the diversity that's out there so when they hit the job uh scene or even go to college it can be a pretty high opening experience but I think we're getting I I wouldn't I don't look at this as a reaction I think this is just an evolution of what we're doing what comes out of it we'll see okay so so I think um yeah I think all of the responses are are are spot on and um you know just two ideas to think about um so one comment in regards to you know the diversity of treasure and so recognizing that even if you are a predominantly white Community there's still diversity right um our families don't all look the same
053you know it's not a you know a mother and a father you know a son and a daughter and a cat and a dog right and so uh your diversity um you know by your religious beliefs by your family makeup by your um you know cultures and you know as you mentioned Anthony our cultures are are very complex now right because of you know all of the different um marriages and cross um cultural and biracial right and so there's a lot of things that we may not even know on that outside right by appearance in regards to how people identify so that's where some of the bias P faith quote unquote comes in um you know when you look at me you may assume you know different things by my appearance right by the way
054I talk or by the way I communicate or my speech patterns or um just some of the things that I have conveyed to you um but you don't know in regards to my story and so that's what we mean in regards to B so so Faith it's a tricky question um if you asked me that question 15 years ago um you know I would probably you know very I'd be probably be very sensitive to um thinking that I've had bias um now I've come you know to the realization that we all carry bias for for different reasons and for different things and it's actually a natural part of our being as humans to categorize and differentiate distinguish um and so you know that's just spot I I offer um and the other thing is I'm
055going to go really personal um if you don't mind I have three children um my young my oldest is 22 my youngest is 15 um and my oldest when when she was three uh I had an affinity of going to a certain um mall and area for our shopping and you know entertainment and our meals Etc um but another during Mall offered a skating experience um around the holiday days that I wanted my daughter to have because it had not yet Frozen outside and I was a theater as I was young so that was very important to me um and going there we had a wonderful experience and after we're in the food court and um you know my my daughter Whispers over to me and she said Mommy where where did all these people
056come from and I was I'm like what do you mean people it's busy there's a lot of traffic no mommy these people don't look like us you know we're different you know what what what does that mean and so I certainly knew right away and as did my husband that we no longer could have Affinity to the mall that we like because we needed to open her eyes that the world was more than right and and um that's just an offering of we right we it RS in a variety of ways without any intentionality and so this workshell has mention really support our staff obviously as people and our youth to be liberate and intention in um interrupting and dismantling some of the inequities that we have unintentionally and again maybe implicitly have been perpetuating
057for a long time it I appreciate that Michelle and thank you and I um you know I liveed seven years in Asia and certainly um he looks the whole nine yards as did our children um so I know where you're coming from thinking you know there what it is to be different from those around you and I'm just thinking um you know for the community and and ultimately this is for the school Community but you know the the treasure Community as a whole will be watching and I just wonder if you know we could um at least be able to provide them with with definitions and with measurements you know how how do you define equity how do you measure it um you know that's the first thing that comes to mind but there are
058multiple terms that are going to be used I think people you know pull throw up red flags with them um and if we can find a way to inform um we might dispel a lot of whatever um friction might arise um I don't know if you found that with other communities as well that you been working with longer than we have but you know that's just a thought yeah so I could I could take two right out of the gate right so wury which is a very diverse Community um their staff in particular was very triggered by the term white priv um and so we had to really unpack that and understand what that meant because as a Waterberry staff um even though there is more racial diversity they certainly have white educ ators who
059are there you know with purpose and passion and reason um and so we're very offended in regards to what um that term um again with not understanding the term um was you know assumed to imply um neighboring districts and I Nam these districts because they're on either side of Chester right so Waterbury and Southington on your on your other side um the community conversations that held through the uh social justice Coalition that Sou began last year um the white privilege term again um if you look on social media um which could be our friend but also our our greatest enemy right um there was a lot of talk in regards to that term as well um but when people soon learned and realized as you suggested Faith um what is meant by that and um
060the real reflection that was created in that conversation um both districts are in a very different place than when they first began Michelle do you find I I know uh Faith mentioned um friction but is a is a friction is a more uncomfortableness you know when these topics come up I think that's the that's the hurle right getting people to be comfortable talking about it um but I'll look into further in sci in water B I grew up in waterb and I know some War members there so I'll definitely see what their input is but I appreciate that experience with us though yeah so so something to look at Anthony is Waterbury is actually one of the first districts that we've worked with that actually has an equity policy on the books so if you
061go to their website their board ofed policy you can actually see their Equity policy and so as B suggesting there's terms there there's accountability measures in there um they have a transformation plan in place as I mentioned they're in two of their work um I take great pride you know in in the work that they've you know um accomplished thus far um and I'll stop there um Ann I'm sorry you um haven't had a chance do you have a question or a comment or anything that you would like to add she's here I know she is yeah I'm here um I'm good right now I'm just no listening absorbing we have a lot of these same conversations at the college level of course so the conversation is very familiar to me okay um and I've
062just asked Marlene if we have gotten any questions into the covid website and we haven't um so um I I think um Michelle and Michelle are we is there more have you finished with your presentation is there more you'd like to add um it's we're good we thank you for your time um we welcome the questions if you want to put those together um you'll see our first date in the beginning of October we weren't able to hold so we will actually be convening for the first time at the end of the month and we're very excited to be able to do that so thank you very much for your time tonight well thank you both for coming out thank you for hearing us it was great to be here well thank you for your
063time thank you we appreciate your time thank you Michelle and Michelle thank you good night good night night okay um thanks so much for that um next up is the fall data review all right good evening everybody we're going to switch gears a little bit give second I'm just going to pull up a presentation do you want it on your machine I know I have a um so often in the fall we're doing a data review of our performance of student from the previous year often that's related to State standardized testing and so forth we obviously did not take the state standardized test sbac assessment for the ngss this year um but one of the things that I know has been on my mind on teachers minds and administrator Minds on parents Minds is what
064has been the impact of potential learning loss from the time that we spent in remote learning in the spring of last year and what impact might that have for our plans this year and last C committee um meeting we shared with you a lot about our professional development and we included in that this notion of acceleration meaning that we're going to really stay focused on really important grade level work for students and working from that premise uh it's still important to kind of know where students are and how they're performing so esac and ndss are not our only data points we do have other data points and early on in the school year one of the uh assessments that we use for um grades we'll say at least the beginning of year two all the
065way throughout to8 rather sorry is uh the reading inventory um we call SRI Scholastic Reading inventory you'll see just reference to reading inventory from here out and that's really a measure of comprehension and vocabulary it's reported out on lexiles you'll see that as a number the higher the Lexile the more complex the text is this is an assessment that we've been given for a long time now it's a valid and reliable assessment of where students are so we thought we'd share with you a little bit of a comparison uh of how our students did on the fall assessment this year and use their fall assessment last year as kind of a point of comparison so I'm going to share with you a couple different data on the left hand side of the screen you will
066see uh our gra or the performance bands rather for the fall administration of the SRI last year we had 39% of students in the advanced band 32 in the gr bubble band 10 in the basic and 18% in invention excuse me so uh about 71% of students last fall performed at or above grade you fast forward to this year's Administration we have 38% in the advanced B 31 in the grade level band 10 in the basic and 20% in the intervention so 69% of students performed at or above great expectations so as we're contemplating this performance result these performance results we see a very strong similarity between how our students entered last year and how entered this year and that's a really good indication that Although our education was disrupted last spring for a period
067of time we really have students that are continuing to perform at high levels uh this particular graph shows um second graders last year is compared to second graders this year fourth graders last year is compared to Fourth Graders this year and so on and so forth we also do like to pay attention to growth so how did the actual students grow from one next so this particular graph indicates again a let's use a second grader for example their fall score from last year is compared to their fall score as a third grader this year and you can see that we actually had some increases in the percent of students who were in the advancing grade level band a reduction of the number percent of students of a big b excuse me good time to lose
068your voice and a slight increase in the percent of students in the intervention but again both looking at the proficiency levels and the growth levels it's a really strong indication that our students on the whole are performing at really high levels and our notion to keep moving forward with great level work and helping support students with just in time supports along the way has been a good approach Contin be a good approach and really our students are doing very well I will note that the one um there is a slight increase in both of these grafts at the students who percent of students who are at the intervention level I would say those results are not unexpected we are paying attention to students who might not have been engaged as engaged last spring or early
069on in the fall and I would say our teacher teams are very much our school counseling teams um our grade level teams our administrators are all very much aware of the students performing those those ways and are working very hard to Learners so on the whole if the question is where are we as a district in terms of our student performance what kind of learning loss might we have experienced from last spring uh I think the some of our initial answers are we're actually in a really good position and although we have certainly have students who are going to need support it's not so different than what we might experience on any given time so we thought these results were very encouraging and give us a strong foundation and our first indication how students are
070doing this year you know that we'll continue to update with other are performance across the year but this was a really good sign for us that um we have a strong curcum in place students were engaged in it and even with A disruption L um they're performing in really good ways and we've got a really good basis and Foundation from which to work this year with that um either any questions from the board or addons from our Le did um an or Tony trying to think of one I uh I I apologize I just had to run to the little boys room and came right back but if you explain the the basic performance standard why there's a difference there between fall of 2019 fall 2020 if you did I missed that I'm not sure
071if that's a good thing or a bad thing that it changed by 9% Changed by 9% where you looking toon I'm look at the basic where it says fall in 2019 19% uh probably a little bit of both it probably me you know Bas we had some students who both moved up in terms of performance few students who moved down so um you know I'm really contemplating a few areas where we're looking at that grade level above for overall performance and overall indicator and we're really paying attention to the students in that low SP who we know going to need some kind of support either direct support with things like reading itself and some cases it's less about the reading and more about the engagement piece of it and those are two areas of focus
072that I know our teachers who are working with students who are performing at that level are very keenly aware of working on a daily basis okay thank you thanks B that's all I have from um that is it it's impressive to see um that you know the um upper level performers um those numbers are growing I you know I I know we're talking percentage points but in terms of percentage of percentage this is a 15 point or 15% differential which is you know it's it's not insignificant but the as you said there are a lot of um things that could go into that um you know I applaud the teachers but I also applaud the parents too um who were with those guys day in and day out um March through June and um you
073know everyone deserves a a pat on the back for that for that performance I think oh absolutely I mean I know in our Reflections on last spring um we have always known the importance of parent Partnerships in education that was not more highlighted than that was more highlighted last spring than any other time in education history and continues to be this year we are not doing this in isolation this full partnership with families and full investment by our students um this is we know to grow in Reading you need to be you need to read you need to be engaged in work it doesn't just happen and it's a good indication that we we had good engagement in that work and that that does take great teaching and I know we have that it does
074take great work and investment by the students and takes great support and investment on the family so it's this is a good indicol all that and I consider um what some of our conversations in different spheres over the course of the spring and the summer what we might have thought this graph could have looked like um and I know there was concern and worry about really some potential learning loss that happened and and while there are certainly some small Pockets where that may be the case on the whole this indicates that we really were able U to maintain um growth and performance of our students which and this is not the only measure but this is a first really good early sign um that we're in a good position to continue in that and to
075continue to engage students in really challenging and meaningful work um and that they did continue to do that work even with the disruptions that have been caused from from March um Kevin if I could just follow up for an elaboration I I think some people you know I just I I just um you know said that it was remarkable work on the part of everybody else but but it really truly was a huge disruption and so are we seeing just how well the instruction was in those first three quarters um you know I think some people would look at this and say how did this happen because it was so wild um we should have seen a bigger discrepancy and then a followup question I don't know how much you've parse this data but are
076you able to break it down into um you know where in the community we saw ex you know kids Excel and we're in the community we saw kids fall behind so I think when you get down to um the student level data um that that right now kind of our our teachers and our Rams and our curricular leaders have building level um that is the work that they're doing right now it's actually not so different than the work that they do every year around this time when we start to take a look at student performance so um taking a look at students who growth we want to make sure is on the right trajectory making sure the right supports are in place the right time for them and that includes supports obviously in the classroom
077with um with our teachers but other additional supports as well so that level of review that level of decisions about how we're supporting students that's happening right now um I would say to you with the percentages where they are there's there aren't any outliers beyond the natural differences that we see at performance at certain grade levels and what I mean by that is uh students in the low lower grade levels often tend to perform uh at lower proficiency levels in the very first few times they take this up until about third grade um we see that every year that's that's an expected outcome um so besides those variables that we see on an annual basis there isn't anything that's wildly discrep from or even noticeably discrepant from anything that we would see on a um
078uh at any given year a small exception would be um there's a small correlation to students who we knew were not quite as engaged we didn't have a ton of those students last spring that us um but we did have a small pocket of them and for those instances that did show show itself here but those were instances that did not surprise any of the teachers who were have been involved and administrators and C leaders been involved in this work coun so there's nothing that was dramatically different or stand out One Direction or another from what we would typically expect okay thank you anything else from anybody think we're good thank you cevin great thank you well thank you I joke that I probably don't need a mic sorry am I too loud or am
079I all right good evening everyone good evening I hope well so thank you for H having me here to talk through um some of the questions that came up regarding the Collegiate hybrid model at the board meeting and through some of the questions that were follow through the co email last week um I just want to start first by echoing what Jeff said I'm going to talk about where we are now and where we're going and what do we do and how can we improve because everything that we do is about making decisions and adapting and being flexible as we know more and as we work through more um so let me talk a little bit about synchronous and asynchronous learning in the Collegiate model and forgive me I keep wanting to look at the
080screen because that's all your faces are so I will look at the camera because that's where you'll be able to hear me um it doesn't seem possible that it was two months ago um almost to the day that I shared with you the first thoughts about and and and how we were going to move forward with a c hybrid model um and that was August 20th and today is October 19 19th went went the blink and I uh since the first day of class on September 11 teachers have been working on health and safety new lunch and building protocols and new daily a new Deli schedule and a new learning model uh all very very heavy lifts uh in our in our um context of the high school and so where are we now um
081in the middle of the first quarter the high school administration started talking a lot about uh how are we doing how do we need to improve where can we go from here uh and we met a number of times and then had a devoted meeting to uh developing plans to move to fully synchronous instruction uh at the start of the second quarter we then met with our instructional leadership team to plan um full implementation and then we administered a faculty survey on the 16th and as of today we have about 90% of respond 90 90% of the faculty responded and at this point 48% of the faculty is teaching synchronously 44% is teaching synchronously some of the time and the remaining 8% represents teachers with some limited use or coures that provide on toone support
082in some contexts especially if you're working with a very small number of students or delivering support uh support instruction that you would only be working oneon-one with a student so that was how they answered the survey so we have in front of us our goals moving forward uh and so what will the transition look like what does asynchronous teaching look like in this model so what are students getting when they're not online learning with their class in real time when they're at home and extending their learning from a previous uh live instruction and by live I mean either in person or um uh remotely so students are working on research and projects which would be extended from what they had done in class to what they have to practice or complete on those opposite days
083uh Skills Practice completing an a piece of art uh reviewing vocabulary reading texts writing onetoone assistance with a teacher is often what our teachers do on the opposite cohort day uh a slide deck might be presented to to students much like we're doing here and but they would review that independently uh to review content and Concepts and also teacher created videos that are focused on content synchronous activity so what some of what teachers have been doing in their synchronous instruction obviously whole class instruction like I been doing now I'm presenting to all of you I'm presenting to those of you who are on remotely uh group work so you can have students who are remote work with students who are present in the class on a project collaborate on a document although I do hear
084that when they collaborate on a document and stay on a meet it can be kind of slow so that's something for us to Think Through of Technology us teachers might be offering a lecture a demonstration engaging in student dialogue discussions analysis of text uh student presentations student collaboration and of course writing workshops work like that this is only a very small fraction of what teachers shared in terms of what they've been doing in their asynchronous time and in the synchronous activities very small subsection so part of our discussion or part of the discussion at the board uh was regarding the schedule itself so so what what what was our schedule and and what is this hybrid schedule now and a question came about it was really related to study halls so I wanted to explain
085to you a little bit and help you have an understanding of what the days look like and and why some students might have a slight shift in how their study halls uh might be working given how they used to work so regular classes when we were in our regular schedule we had six periods each day and a through dday rotation and class periods would shift each day and we teach eight periods but six in a day two of those periods drop so that you can have about 56 minutes of instruction plus you would rotate based on letter day certain Support classes you would rotate physical education class one of our required courses which is healthy balance which we provide to all of our freshmen so I'll get to that in the next slide now we
086have four periods in a block format alternating days so Monday Tuesday same classes Thursday Friday same classes Wednesday teaches all eight and in order to be able to get physical education Labs double period classes which we do have in math you need have you need to find a way to embed that a through dday rotation so that is why in some instances students may have a couple of study balls on one day okay so many of our science classes some of our math classes have what we call a double period or a lab period attached to the class and opposite those extended periods like I mentioned physical education healthy balance Support classes like academic support Reading Writing math and learning maybe scheduled along with healthy balance as I said um and in the new schedule
087on some weeks those drop away which is why you might see a student with multiple study halls also we do use study halls in each semester as a placeholder so in the fall a study home might be a placeholder for a spring elective that a student couldn't take in the fall so it's a rather complex schedule so I wanted to give you a sense if you can see the slide what the impact of the the study hall piece is I'm so that was a question so I went through each of the three weeks when these periods rotate through our schedule and in short we had less than 1% impact for each of the paired days Monday Tuesday and Thursday Friday so week one 56 students so 410 of a percent have two study halls on
088a given day 77 students at the end of that week on week two 85 students and 90 students again less than a percent and on week three 1% of students on Monday Tuesday or Thursday Friday it would have two study halls in one day and of those students who would have three study halls so one each week the five students have backtack study halls on Monday Tuesday and nine have them on Thursday Friday it's a lot of information after an evening of a lot of information so going pause there see if you have any questions Faith you're clutching your your forehead like an understand this complex so can I answer a question um I say keep going I um okay let let's see the whole I'm gonna take it home so the next piece is
089regarding communication I also want to clarify that if you're concerned about your child please contact us if you're worried about well-being or classes or general concerns school counselors are ready and available to talk with you email them if you have issues regarding a class something specific to what and how your child is learning please please talk with your teacher and finally you can always email any of the school administrators at any time we are available we want to hear from you uh and going forward what we thought would be helpful in time of such incredible change was to have um like we did last at the tail end of last year to have some drop in meanings with parents so administrators will make themselves available at flexible times throughout the day and we will let
090you know uh once we've nailed down all of those times for this month and then going forward so that we can hear from you um just drop in and and share some thoughts with us so we thought that's how uh we would go forward we also I I do want to reiterate we he I I know that that folks really want to see more synchronous instruction we are on the road to making that happen we know that that's important we wanted to start slowly ease into these Monumental changes and now time and Mary you also had set up a task force correct oh I I most certainly did yes we have a task force of four teachers who are all earning their own 92 actually who have been examining not only teacher instructional strategies and
091what we are learning in this new model and how we can best share those practices with one another but they've also been looking at how we can accelerate um toward full implementation of synchronous instruction so they've been working together and with their colle and that with the teacher survey that you mentioned and they're also working on a student survey yes yes and when do you expect those um virtual s with you and your team to to started we want to at least have one or two this month and then we would schedule them going forward for next month we would like to to at least try to get one in um in October and and I will say thank you to all the parents who turned out for parent teacher conferences we had a record
092number of attendees and I think that is such an important tool in our quiver so that we can be sure we're providing the support that you need your children need and communicating with you and that was fabulous so so please stay in contact with us we we we gain a lot more we get from you and Mary could you also talk to some of the question that was posed at the Board of Education meeting about how you know like we talked um earlier about the progress that students are making and how some of that gets communicated to parents so each quarter parents get report cards that gets communicated to them certainly parent teacher conferences are a time to communicate that um and we pay very close attention to student progress mid quarter and also prior
093to that if any students are struggling we have multiple supports uh in our srbi um scientific based research and prvention we have groups that meet teachers and administrators to talk through ways we can support students who may be struggling we look at Mid quarter grades to see if any students are in a d or F uh in a course so that we can then provide intervention for them and then of course every quarter we analyze how our students have done over the um so that's how we do it good evening thank you for that Mary or Dr Gad thanks um my question is around not all of our classrooms and and I have a better idea of how this is happening at the elementary level but not all of our classrooms at the high school
094are equipped with the capability to do the synchronous learning if we have some students coming in remote and some not so I guess how is that um how is that handled how is it determined who teaches that way it um and where on the spe spectum which I'm sure is very wide um our our teachers in terms of their comfort level and their ability to teach with this new technology and in this new way so that I just I just asked a lot of questions I realized they're all good but if you can give me if you can just give us some sort of idea of that we're moving in a direction to incorporate more and more of the synchronous learning so about 48% of our faculty are engaging in synchronous learning right now and
095how they're doing that is some have the broadcast systems like the one we're working with tonight some have come up with incredibly ingenious ways to mobilize every tool at their disposal we've had a number of teachers trying out different cameras and microphone systems so that they can recommend those tools and then we talked with central office and we found we were able to then purchase some microphones and some webcams to further facilitate the synchronous instructional piece but teachers are working with um two or three devices sometimes to be able to project on the screen hear their students see their students and then be able to communicate uh learning so for those teachers who are using synchronous learning some of the time they're the group that we want to focus on to help move move toward
096full implementation and some of the tools that we've tried out um we're going to be and we have been bringing to teachers um consistently week by week by week so that people have what they need but um one thing that is for sure and and I need to um just to just celebrate some of some of well all of our incredible teachers their Ingenuity creativity and dedication to making sure that their kids are learning and that they are connected to them has really been remarkable so I'm I'm I'm extremely proud of them and how they collab with one another to share best practices when they discover use this not that do this not that and that's been both a formal and informal um collaboration throughout this process what a process thank you absolutely okay Tony
097that look any questions uh yes and no but I assume Mary you have a little more to to walk us through do I have what you have more to walk us through that's it so you mentioned the important so I do have one Faith so if I can ask one now I want to be rude um so so Dr Gad you mentioned earlier that um that you know parent or stud has any concerns right be it their schedule be it how synchronous is working or not working for synchronist to to hey I think start with a teacher right um at the last for meeting on Thursday you know some Bor got a few emails from a few parents you know it seems mostly some of the issues or concerns that we heard from high school
098parents have been either around the freshman class or the senior class not to say there's no pickups in between sophomore junior but the the two parents I I spoke with and I gave them Dr s's advice after I talked to him um they're saying that you know in a 4-day school week every day two of their four classes study halls and they feel that you know their son or daughter is not engag in enough enough work uh because of so many study halls uh and I think we bought that up Thursday night at the board meeting too and thought there someone added that um St St are here for a reason we went through all that even the board said here's a million dollars go hire a bunch of teachers and steal all the study
099halls of classes not doable not going to find a pallet I think parents understand that so the question is if there's a parent feels there's just too much sty Hall time uh next course of action was tght to the guidance Council and hopefully a change could be made or you know for the better it may not necessarily happen right away because we're in Middle semester um and I might you know maybe get addressed the next semester I guess that'll depend on the situation but worst case if a parent can't make any progress with guance counselor is the next step to contact you Mary yes way to work through it and part of what was so effective about the the the analysis that that Tomy and I went through to look at the data in power
100school regarding how many students actually have two two or more study halls was and this is not to be to to even remote no pun intended um see see that this isn't serious or a concern because every individual who comes comes to us we want to make sure we're addressing what your concerns and your needs are uh but it is a very small number U of students who who may be in that place and some of that is a is that my slide in the earlier part of the presentation showed and some of some of the reason for that is in the shift from One schedule where all of our courses were were assigned and organized and developed and and populated under the previous six period a day rotating ABCD schedule and then we transitioned
101to a block schedule so that made a significant um complexity that has impacted a very a very small number of students but an impact nevertheless and so we have also um and the numbers that I gave you represent a combination of C of cohort one and coh work too and that that's where we are but we can certainly look at a student schedule to see if there's something we can do uh semester one and semester two classes are also part of that mix so if a student has an extra study hall in the fall it could be because they have a course that they can they're going to take in the spring so that can be some of the reason why that's that's the way it is but the best way to know why is
102to have a conversation with us speak in Broad terms is so is so difficult no I understand I know it's not a every situation is a little little different I'm glad you explained about the possibility having EX in the fall because they might have a class to fill that in the spring I it didn't cross my mind so I'll let let parents know that I think you know that and thank you for the explanation of the of the schedule that that that helped a lot that presentation is there a way to make those slides available um um the general somehow absolutely and I'm going to be sending this out to parents too with our schedule for when we can chat awesome and I think that's that's yeah Dr G thank you for the [Music] communication
103by and large the feedback is it's been good more clarity on the schedule I think again I know it's hard to have one-on-one discussions with so many students at the high school and their families um but some the feedback I got again it's it's a handful but you know whe there's a few there's probably some more that not speaking up is that they're missing that Personal Touch that they normally had right when the kids were in school even with the board even we're doing more in person meetings and we have public input you know they're they're missing that I guess um Personal Touch that especially Jeff Marlene and team gave uh during late spring to get feedback from parents I think once you have some of those questions I think it's going to clarify a
104lot of this and and I think put parents at ease in some of their concerns again I can't tell you if it's hundreds or dozens but you know there's there's certainly a few and I'm hopeful the situations will get worked out and clarified soon uh by afford them all to I I gave the advice you all shared talk with a teacher talk with your counselor and all if all else fails you know try to spend some time with with you yeah and talk anyone administrators any one of us you know we are we are that's what we do that's what we're here for got it thank you by good Mary could you also talk about what is available to students um when a student does have have a study hall and the kinds of things
105especially I'm thinking about the learning lab absolutely so this year we have a learning lab where it's staffed by teachers nearly every period of the day students can get remote or in-person help and that's that's hosted in the library students can also get support in every discipline by their teachers and there are learning supports math English oh well writing really which serve it serves both English and social studies science support uh CTE lab support So if you're working on a project in career in technical education you can set up time with your CTE teacher and go down and work through a problem with them get on the computer whatever the tool is that you're working with so again across all of our disciplines we have dropin support but we have specific support in the learning
106lab in the library for really for Organization for planning uh and then um discipline specific Remediation in ma uh writing and reading thank you absolutely I have a I have a question about that if I may sure by means go so Dr Gad is that um those supports that they can can get during their study hall has how are how many students either percentage wise or number-wise are taking advantage of that is it increasing do they know more about what they can do during study halls and how they can access those supports and Dr re do you want to share a little bit she sitting right here in room actually would I really enjoy that can you hear me yes okay you know I just wanted to touch face with this because and to address
107what Tony was talking about I spent about an hour on the phone with a parent who had sent an email in um to the board of it uh today and called a couple others which I really enjoyed the conversation and I think the parent did too and as we got into it and I'm looking at the student schedule this student happens to have a couple of study halls um and there is some struggle you know it's a it's it's a a younger student and so I made a connection for her to this whole idea that we have for the learning lab and um I'm going to speak with I spoke with her counselor today and the student is speaking with the counselor tomorrow anyway and so these study halls all of a sudden are now
108going to be filled with the learning lab and um you know English and I think science lab so we're able to put her in a place where she's going to get the support she needs which I think is really important so you know I just wanted to make sure to tack that on to what Dr gab was speaking about but also as far as the percentages this learning lab is a New Concept this year so in addition to being a New Concept which takes you know the process of of students understanding what it is and parents um we also have the fact that we're partially remote so that makes it challenging to you know get kids to really understand what it is but we have um Tom Le walk has um set up the student
109portal so that students can fill out a Google form and do like a drop in support or the school counselors or teachers if they see that they're struggling will actually schedule theud stud into the labs for um structured support during their study halls so right now the numbers are not um you know huge of the students that are in there but as the year goes on we start to see kids that struggle they go through our srbi process and we start to assign them to these study HS and we also are trying to advertise the whole idea about this um Google form drop in support too so we're hoping to see the numbers increase is my point and especially now that we know with our schedule this year the study hall is being a little
110bit and how many students have we hope to start to fill them with these supports that they may need thank you thank you for that Moren because uh that really helps um if I thought this was a new a new thing and and always these new supports or these new activities that students can do it t it take some time for the parents and the students to realize they can work those supports to their advantage so I'm glad to hear it thank you and thank you the course specific supports have always been there learning lab is the new piece yeah um if I could thanks for um Moren thanks for that because that one my questions is how many kids are using these learning labs and um you know I I think without trying to
111be rude maybe we've got I'm just wondering if there's any way to be a little bit more proactive especially when I think of those freshmen and sophomore kids um who are probably struggling with organization um but also struggling with some pretty heavy material as well and if we could you know just somehow communicate especially kids who are in trouble um teachers make that effort to push the learning Labs with the parents you know just here you've got to get your child into this and these are the hours so whatever it takes to get these numbers up would probably allay a lot some of the concerns that are out there keep losing people um but the one thing I'm hearing um from other board members from people from parents who are talking to me is just
112a question of consistency um with instruction you know some some teachers are using the entire 80 minutes and uh with their remote cohort and others are checking them in and saying you're on your own um you know a senior that might work with um who's had three years of time management and understands what the process is but um boy I just think of a freshman who was in do this time last year um that's a lot that's a big ho for a kid who's 14 years old and um I don't it are you looking at ways to ensure consistency with and accountability with all teachers our our collaborative days are days when teachers are discussing exactly where they are and what they're implementing uh th those those those early release collaborative days but also so
113every Tuesday our teachers meet in department or meet as a school and we talk through um Innovations and teachers then in their departments have time to talk with one another in fact just last week in department meetings in in one Department uh four teachers showed their entire department here's how we're doing this work here are the tools we're using for uh pulling together both remote Learners and inperson Learners and that that came through a number of departments not just one we all go and and and sit in on our um on our department meetings to hear how teachers are doing and how we can support them uh additionally teachers every time they meet with students they're giving them Direction um for what to do and how to navigate the work that they need to do
114and and and we talk through ways to to do that the mo most effectively and that's what teachers share in their collaborative time with one another every week and that's wonderful and I'm glad that there is that level of sharing and not asking for a police date but um you know there it what if someone just doesn't do it I mean and how do you find that and how do we correct that well that's that's part of our that is part of the nature of our work first we work with our teachers and we provide them time and professionals to collaborate with one another if there is an issue then we handle it we talk it through and and we develop a process to ensure that whatever change needs to occur has occurred and our
115department leaders are are extremely helpful in ensuring that each of their department members is delivering instruction both in a in a collaborative way in other words you're you're you're working in consultation and in on task with your peers or on Pace with your peers but also another piece that's vitally important for us is that we are individualizing it to the extent that we can to support every learner so you know yes everyone needs needs to be doing the the large work kind of the the broad goals in a similar Pace but day-to-day teachers might need to respond to specific student needs um and and so that's where sometimes there is variation especially when you're trying to be responsive to a particular set of Learners okay um okay another some other questions I have gotten um
116regarding the synchronous learning you've you've set 1110 as your date for full-on synchronous learning is that correct well we we are setting that as our goal to be to to to have as as many of our teachers fully synchronous as we can and we really that's the start of second quarter so that's where we really want to see our 44% of folks who are doing it some of the time really move to most if not all of the time do I'm G I'm gonna push a little do you have a specific goal like I we want 89% of our yes I want my 44% to move to to more synchronous learning yes okay all right and um uh is the goal to create as much as possible in this very bizarre time that we're living
117in a normal school year because I think ultimately um that's hardest it is that's I think that's what we're looking for and if I could do that tomorrow I would because a single person sitting in this room who if we could do everything that we want to do in in in as normal a way as possible we would but we have certain constraints that are real uh regarding health and safety and so in order for the high school to be able to use mitigation strategies Beyond a mask we can't have our entire population at this time while while numbers are where they are and I we could how I wish we could I understand I'm not talking even Allin full day all the time I I am just saying using a combination of synchronous and
118inperson learning oh gosh yes to get us to something that looks like 2019 if that's possible we will our our teachers all want to give as much time and to have as much access to their kids so that they can be as absolutely successful as they possibly can be and so it's that that that is our ultimate goal I I don't know if this helps in sort of framing this or in thinking it through but when we think about pre March 2019 we had all inperson Learners um but they were given some instruction and then they were Rel Le on on their own to do some of that work without the teacher um you know directing that and so while while if you think of that as the asynchronous piece although that doesn't meet the
119definition there's always going to be some level of asynchronous work to to the day and there's always going to be in this hybrid model a component of a synchronous work where students will be reading or processing um collaborating is that writing is that what yeah that's exactly that's exactly right and one of our performance standards is in fact self-directed learning U and so we want to provide them the tools that they need to be able to be independent in those moments when they need to be independent but we certainly want to provide as much synchronous instructions we can to support that and so so the the ideal is that we want to increase that synchronous learning and we want to make sure that on those those when students are remote that they have the most
120access to that in classroom experience as possible and that on those Wednesdays maybe it would help too if you explained even what that Wednesday looks like Wednesday is every single class meets everyone is remote and teachers are delivering instruction they are checking skills and then at the end of the day for a large chunk of time almost two hours teachers are logging on with their students for oneon-one support and that's been very effective uh for our students and for our teachers that time okay and I understand that there are asynchronous components to every day where the students are working independently in the classroom but um but the the teachers always there um you know as you call them the say you know the guide on the side and that guide is always there they're not
121there now and I think that's what's kind of concerning parents is that especially when you're dealing with younger kids they you know it's it's I don't know that you can ask a 14-year-old to figure it out on his own or even a 15 yearold that and so that's I think that's where yeah and they're never entirely alone because they they do they do have contact with their teachers and their teachers are accessible and they can email and teachers will get right right to them so I think it's just um it's a everything is quite new and you know we we need to continue to work with our students to communicate with their teachers and with their parents okay and then just one last Point that's been raised is just um I I know that there's
122a concern I think at one time it was expressed to me that um you know parents won't be instructing their children but um their parents are concerned that they don't know where their kids are and I guess there was a comfort level there was an assumption that things were under control when when and and objectives were being met um when the kids were in class with the teacher now they're not and the parents are saying I don't know what the objectives are the learning are objectives learning objectives are for my kids I want some kind of guide now we've been asked to tell parents you know check power school um or go to your counselors but but Power School is an after the fact you see that a grade wasn't turned in you see that
123or assignment wasn't turned in or that that the grade is low and there is whether it's a syllabus or whether there is some kind of statement of objective for classes parents are asking let us help our children um and is there any way to do this daily students are given the objective for the day sometimes the objective for the week and how each class is going to move those students toward accomplishing that objective and teachers are assessing and monitoring their students precisely to meet the expectations of the objectives they set in their lesson in their unit for the year so that that is that is precisely what teachers are focused on doing every day with their students and they utilize classroom Google Classroom is a tool that houses that information and students access that daily
124if a te if a par has a a concern about what is expected this week and where where is my child going they can certainly reach out to their teacher and we could talk about how they could access that information the teacher give them that information about going on that week excellent go quick question so listen I understand all teachers work off lesson plans units have broken down the objectives etc etc is what's preventing us from providing a an objective sheet paper and Google class that says hey for this course for this semester these already 12 or 15 objectives that you're going to be working on is it because we just don't have that documented somewhere or we just hes to give that to parents I I get that every day they get their objectives
125and I think parents understand that but neur scheme of thing they look like a broader picture if this is objective five of a 10 you kind of have an idea where the kid is on that um I I don't see that with my my daughter Junior at high school I don't see that in Google Classroom I'm not seeing out the entire you know teachers um course outline guide but we don't have a condensed summary objective is that why we can't make that available there rule of th we have the program of study and then we have the curriculum which is written from the teachers perview with the standards so all of our curriculum is written based on the standards and those are are specifically really objectives that will be covered within the course within the
126semester and are broken down in in that way so is there a list somewhere with just like a on line for each objective for the semester for the course it is it is it is written in those are our internal curriculum guides so the answer is no for parents if they want they would talk to the teacher but existing today Tony no is that something we could work on going forward I I can't I I just think it would be a valuable tool we're not asking the parents to teach the children but it would give them some peace of mind it would allow them to step in and be able to say hey my kid is missing this particular Point um help me help you and vice versa I I hear where you're going How
127would wouldn't I I'm curious about I'm thinking this through I'm curious why we don't think that the teacher would know if and when a child was making progress towards these objectives given that they are the one responsible and behold to ensuring that students are are doing that that's not the question question the teacher is capable of doing that I'm sorry I'm getting a lot of resistance on this between the last this meeting either we don't either we just don't want to give parents that ask for at the very least a summary a one-page summary of what the objectives are for the course for the semester either we just don't want to give it out um if that's the case let's just say it either we don't have it that's fine too and I understand that
128trying to go back through the through the through the course plan and trying to consolidate that this it's going to be a lot of work I'm not questioning no one's question the teachers intent but I think because we have remote Learners because parents y are you know want to make sure the kids on top of things I don't think it's a bad thing for parents at least that asked for it to have some access to it so they can help the right help the kids stay on top of things that's all we're we're saying if it's a case where the teacher is adjusting the objectives week by week based on what the class is doing I can't understand why me there isn't any hard static plan I just feel like there's a lot of resent
129to this I can't understand why I I don't I I certainly not from you Mar in particular it just seems like it's I'm certainly not to that Tony that's not something that I could say here let me grab that and give that to the parent now that's not saying that the teacher doesn't have that readily available but as a district that's not something that we have seeing that that is a need and that is a want that is something that we could engage in could could engage our department leaders in could certainly put significant time and energy into creating and getting that for folks um that that is definitely not out of the realm of possibility I think that but it is work and I I think you just said it it doesn't exist today
130in a fashion that you know would be easily diges by parent it's GNA take some work to compile I get that and I I assume that's what you know the issue is yeah I just you know we can certainly direct parents to the teachers to ask for that yes um so it sounds like it's and again I don't know if it's all let's just hard number uh thousand parents that are asking this it's 10 or 20 it sounds like based on what you what you're both saying is let the parents talk the teacher about that if the teacher needs to produce it on a one-off basis see how it goes but to stop everything at this point and go through all the cour work and develop that it's not an easy Fe and I understand
131why I know so that's all that's and and I would just concur with that there's there's no way that this could be put together tomorrow or next week or um perhap I don't even know if you could do it by years end given all that we're juggling I would say um it's I I would suggest that going forward into the next year this is something that we should consider doing for parents and meanwhile what we will do is encourage parents if they do want to know the objectives is to go directly to the teachers and say okay what should my student be learning this week but I would like to you know I um of course the teacher knows if the child is meeting the objective the problem is the parent doesn't know and I
132think it's just creating a ton of anxiety in an already anxious time and I'm not looking to kind of you know create this little um you know safe environment but but they are concerned that under this new model their kids are simply falling behind and faith if I just add to that I think um it's I I guess with parents listen I'm one of them um look I have a daughter junor Tre High School I I see what she's working on I I get it I really in the past even during full in person learning I never really said okay hey we're we're issuing the overall scheme of things of this course for the semester um because we're just assume that the work's being done in the class is always the same work year over-
133year teacher adjust as necessary and parents have really more direct immediate feedback here in this learning model you know there's a perception and you know the perception becomes a reality I guess but the perception that because We're Half remote or you know two out of five days a week home or three or some argue that we are missing out an objectives that we normally would have the in person and there's no way to measure that if you're a parent um so I think that's where of frustration is I I don't think people are saying that they're definitely missing out they just they want to quantify it and you know justify it right so there's that part second though I think um I'll go back to the communication I think if parents are comfortable reaching out
134to their teachers and having those discussions say Hey where's my kid at uh that'll help and yes list I will tell you you know I would get heads up if um not to put my daughter on the spot but she if if an assignments late um or you know um have have to have a parent conference that's always you know that that does happen it's not like you know teachers call the parents and say hey I know this so and so is behind this objective can you tell them if they need help to call me you know they're not they're not going to proactive reach child to do that uh all the time so I think there no back to communication so I'm gonna I guess I'll go back to what you said earlier is
135try to have a discussion with a teacher first if there's a question uh I just worry that you know some teachers will get like inundated with parent questions and show me the objectives and doing that same conversation you know 30 times over for a class and I'm also kind of of their times that's all we're just trying to find ways to that brid g that's all I think when Kevin was presenting that data earlier um and and point was made that this is a partnership that we cannot do this work without parents and that parents need need to reach out to us for that information I don't think there's any teacher out there who wouldn't want to provide this information to a parent that asks I I i' really be hard pressed to think that
136and once you have shared that syllabus with a with a parent once it's easy to to share that with with with others I I think thank you Tony for encouraging parents to to continue to work directly with the teacher I I liken it to um if I if there's something wrong with my car I really need to bring it to the mechanic because the mechanic is the one who knows my car and and and can fix it um sometimes just seeing the manual really doesn't always help me but if I can talk to the mechanic and figure it out so we can make sure that our to reiterate this with our teachers as well and and one of the department leaders put in the chat that um teachers do give out at the high school
137a syllabus at the beginning of every year so that does condense what their goals are for the course yeah and and certainly you know we we all understand War members parents commun like that this you know somewhat Uncharted Territory so it's GNA evolve I I will say this based on some of the feedback I got from a few parents I think what's what's what's causing the question about am I are my kids falling behind um content because of remote learning is there have been you know a couple parents that have seen their kids go into a to a meeting and be dismissed three minutes later you know in that class where it's only be a full class session and so they're saying okay well by nature of being a three or five minute or 10-minute
138class or my students dismissed are they missing out I think that's causing some of the questions so that goes back to a fate sity about consistency across um you know the education so if there's a 40 minute remote session are the teachers required to be online 40 minutes the entire class or do they have flexibility and I and I Al often wonder if teachers are cutting a little short not saying it could be just a handful but hand are cutting it short either because they feel the class got the content objective that's a great thing and they probably to the next thing or are they cutting it short because teachers need that time to prepare for something else that they don't have you know to get ready for next lesson I don't know no if
139if a student is in for a remote class and they check in the teacher says okay here's your assignment for the day remote Learners you're going to collaborate you three kids on this work you three kids on that work I'm going to leave the meet open you guys go and do that work now I'm going to talk to the SN to the students in front of me and the the the remote Learners who part of that cohort they're teaching the other cohort while the remote Learners are doing asynchronous or independent work so they're not I keep looking down at my computer to see you and I keep forgetting you're up there so forgive me um that's that's how the work goes they're they're not leaving to go do something else because they're teaching a class
140full of kids and remote Learners who are part of the first cowork so let's say it's cohort one I have my cohort one kids my cohort 2 kids join the meet I give them work to do I check in I say okay you're going to go do that assignment I gave you we're going to catch up this next period and that's how it goes so they're not they're not um going off to do something else they're they're working with the other group of students and many are are ensuring that the kids who are working asynchronously can can get in contact with them so there's a mix of how teachers are handling both pieces yeah I I I worry this is they're they're I I pretty sure that's the case in across the board I just
141hope we don't have Educators that are um you know feel like they don't have enough prep time or you know things are a little you know nuts because of the synch or asynchronous but as you said earlier that should be coming out during the routine meetings with department heads and Etc so again that's I think that's what's causing The Angst from some parents and I saw in a note in the chat Faith from Leslie that um the beginning of school year you know teachers give out students a syllabus um it could be that it's out there in Google Drive and the student has to share with a parent or maybe it's missing simple thing is just check to see if it's there right and that might help Elevate some of the hey where am I
142this year my student in light of the syllabus and thank you for that's what's all about right we're trying to help each other so yeah thank you for listening if if I could just say with regard to just I again I don't want a police state and and my hope is to that the teacher in dismissing the kids are saying hey you know I expect you to be working in this cohort and this cohort and I'm here as if it is you know that classroom um asynchronous experience that Marlene explained um I don't want a big eye in the sky but I just would like to know that all teachers truly are doing that as opposed to you know just saying have a great afternoon we'll see you next class that's all um so um
143there was one other thing I was gonna ask but I think I'm I can't remember I'm sorry um question from the covid-19 email yes that's where I want to go are there questions there yes so Adam Grio has sent in a message for Dr Gad what is the why is it the goal to raise synchronous learning at CHS to some percentage under 100% by by November 10th is it not possible to do equipment restrictions or some other reason what would happen if the whole system needed to go hybrid would the Assumption be that 100% synchronous learning is not possible systemwide I don't think 100% synchronous learning is not possible system wide uh I think what we're talking about is some teachers for some classes in some circumstances might need to have some students working asynchronously
144on occasion while they're working synchronously with other students so when I'm thinking of 100% synchronous I'm thinking you aren't sending students off to maybe go do some asynchronous work so that's that's maybe where my um TR the word I'm looking for as I'm talking about I'm saying maybe not 100% it's because within the instruction sometimes you will have asynchronous parts of that synchronous experience does that make sense yes I so you're just saying that as if we were in a classroom the teacher gets next to the student that she's working he's working with oneon-one and she says okay class yeah you have a writing assignment let's go exactly while I'm talking so and so we this small group I need all of you to do this that's exactly what I'm talking about um and just
145make sure that hey I am on and if you have a question come back in and pull me away um okay um another question pleas go for it okay I would like to say I have a freshman and when we first saw her schedule we were thrown by the study hall because power school was a mess and it looked like two or three the way Power School showed it it is actually only one this semester and one next semester we reached out to guidance and it was clarified and I feel my daughter uses it wisely so freshmen can be organized and independent Learners the hardest thing for me as a parent has been to step back and realize she will rise to the challenge without my hovering so I don't think any one age should
146be viewed as able or not able to be self directed based on age some teachers have given grading policies or syllabuses to the parents some have not but all of her teachers have communicated with the students as to what is expected thank you to all who are working so hard to make a less than ideal situation work that's great that is it yeah I think that that was an awesome email I think that hits the nail on the head I think at the end of the day just ensuring that that experience is consistent and I know I know the team's trying to work towards that so or sent the email and thank you for sharing that experience it's very positive I agree any more questions I think we're done thank you thank you Mary [Music]
147um the program of study changes for yeah okay are you showing that hello how are you I'm looking that way so Marlene is just pulling up the um Google sheet that shares with you the changes to the program of studies and um I'm actually going to start at the bottom if you could scroll down Marlene to the bottom and you can also open this on your own with the link but I wanted to start with um the um the course level changes we have three business courses and I'm going to grab my computer sorry so I wanted to start at the bottom because those are actually um the three that are fairly easily explained um we have Leslie care and Sean M with us who are going to further explain their newer courses that they
148want to propose but three of the courses that Leslie has um worked very hard with tonas University to create a dual enrollment situation so they have articulated our curriculum with their curriculum and um Leslie and her department members have worked very hard for that and so three of the courses that already exist in the business department the advanced personal finance the accounting course and the computer essential word processing course those are all going to be they're being proposed to be de which is dual enrollment meaning the students will get the credit from the high school as they always have but they will also be able to get college credit so that's the first thing that I just wanted to review for course level changes if you move up to the next section it's the deleted
149courses and I'm going to explain these um in conjunction with what our new courses are we have two business courses business ownership and international business and we are going to remove them from the program of studies because of a new course we're creating which will cover that material and again will be a dual enrollment course of tungus so we'll get to that when we move up and the other course that we will be deleting from the program of studies is research and design and this is a course in the CTE Department which again be removed based on the fact that Sean is proposing two more courses which um will cover content area that's similar and also by proposing those new courses he really needs to instruct them and work through them with the students um
150and so he can explain that further so if we go up to the new courses and this is the fun part when we're always proposing new things for our students um the first one I'm just going to review briefly it's the AP seminar Capstone course this is going to be offered to our 11th graders and it is a course that will satisfy the Mastery based performance assessment graduation requirement so we're putting it out there for we'll probably be able to see at the most like 25 students who would like to participate in that next year and it would satisfy that graduation requirement it would allow them to receive AP credit and I pulled the course description because it is a new course for us and I'll just go through what that would mean um you
151can read through the description there but I'll add to pieces of it too so the course is a seminar course that is cross-curricular offers cross-curricular conversations about academics and real world topics it's based on five Big Ideas which include questioning and exploring understanding and analyzing evaluating multiple perspectives synthesizing ideas and team transformation and um working on team environment So based on those five Big Ideas the students will research topics and themes and work together to create projects that will be the course for the year and then they will also present for their mvpa um graduation requirement during the presentation time so that's one course we would like to propose as one of our seven options to satisfy that um graduation requirement and I'm just going to briefly introduce Leslie and Sean's just um they have
152Leslie has one course coming forward she can explain it further it's the introduction to business and it's again the dual enrollment with tungus and then Sean has two courses on here the manufacturing CAD Cam and the manufacturing fundamentals and I'd rather they speak to them because they've done so much work with the colleges to make this du enrollment possible that I think they would do it much more justce than I can um before I turn it to them are there any questions so far in terms of the AP cstone or the courses that we change levels on uh I do so um we this will be offered in addition to the Capstone that CH program that Chester's already developed correct you mean the AP cap I'm sorry yes yeah we have so we're develop um
153there's probably some confusion in terms of the term the actual words we're using we've developed the Mastery based performance assessment like program where the students have to choose of about seven different options and they choose one of those to um complete the graduation requirement for that Mastery based performance um this is you know we chose not to call that the Capstone project it's the Mastery based performance perance assessment because that's what the state really calls it through that one of these options is this tapstone seminar AP course so I don't know if I've explained that Faith to satisfy your question um I I think yeah um that's fine maybe what I could do is email you and we could just kind of go back and forth because I I am a little well how about
154if I email you okay that sounds great sounds great okay what can I I don't know if this helps but one is specifically for the AP level which would be the AP cstone and the other is for everyone yes this is just one option that you know approximately 25 kids could elect to take if they met the requirement the prerequisite to take an AP course okay so it's only and it's only 25 kids do you expect to fill it um I don't expect the first year we will fill it to be honest with you I think again it's something it's new and they have to um you know hear about it learn about it and then it might catch on further beyond [Music] that um right so I don't know Leslie do you want to
155jump in and talk about the business course sure um love to so we are working and uh we start oh can you hear me y yes can you guys hear me you now yeah we hear you oh okay okay great thank you so last January we met with um some of the people from tungas Community College and we talked about our course offerings and their course offerings we actually have one of our business teachers Terry morau who is an Adjunct professor at tungus and uh we were able to come up with four courses four of our business courses that we could articulate with um and for tungus Community or community college credit um this uh the introd ction to business class is um really going to give our kids kind of a nice overview of
156all different aspects of business and what we decided to do as a department is roll two of our current courses our business ownership so that was business ownership and international business those are the courses that we're going to roll into the introduction to business business class so we really feel this is going to be a a win-win for our students um to have this great course and to um to earn three college credits so that's the introduction to business class does anybody have any questions about that oh and she she left the meeting on the of the heads no I'm sure she'll pop back in but it looks like you're you're satisfied with her explanation um and then Tony go ahead no I was gonna say no I'm glad to see this being offered I
157assume uh the popularity of earning college credits uh is still strong s high schools I I think this will get a lot of enrollment because it's one of those courses that you know a you get the credit and B if you're in the going through the business major it's something that that helps you so I assume the early college credits are still very popular this year yes excellent um and then Sean do you want to discuss your couple of courses yeah sure um so this evening I'm introducing uh two courses uh to hopefully be put into the books to begin for next year and these would be sequential courses um in the ideal situation I have the same cohort of students who are starting in the first group in the first semester and finishing the
158second semester um but the first the first class in the sequence of courses um that we're Desiring for the manufacturing pathway um would be an advanced um computer a drafting and computer a manufacturing course where it's not the same CAD class that we're teaching right now but a cad class that's really geared towards what happens with that drawing after you leave that drawing um program um working essentially into our our machine lab that we're currently building and you can probably see behind me so that class would focus um you know on industry standard practices and also um uh essentially going into a simulated Machining environment by the time that they leave the course so they have an idea of like why they're drawing what they're drawing and eventually what the machines are going to be
159doing when they eventually get into the lab to use the machines so that's the first of the two the courses and the second of the two classes would be your manufacturing fundamentals course um and this is really like your foundational class that CAD class could be um you know it can transcend to different different types of students um but again I IDE like to have the same cohort or kids because they are this class uh you would need to take that CAD class in order to uh be enrolled in this course so this that that class is a prerequisite for this one and this is uh really kind of a um manufacturing mathematics um a precise measuring Metrology class and um and looking at the actual processes that when we turn raw materials into useful
160Commodities so this this class right here is the the one that's really getting the students into um the Manufacturing Academy and looking at the you know their future of earning more college credits through future courses which we'll talk about at later times and as we mentioned earlier I we we have to take one of we have to make room there's only so many people that can teach and will teach these courses and there's only so many periods in the day um I I will dearly miss the research and design class um it's something I've taught for over 10 years and matter of fact it's a funny story about that a former research and design um student who really bought into the the concept of the class contacted me last week to ask if he can
161borrow one of my tools and he came over today in one of his old cars and we we talked in the driveway for a half hour I gave him one of my vacuum pumps so he can do composite work because he works in the um he's an aircraft mechanic so he one of their aircrafts broke and he needed to borrow my tools and also the knowledge that he gained in my class and he was the people were very surprised that he was working with composits in high school but this removing that course will allow us to build a much stronger um pathway associated with n Talk Valley Community College is it I just I I think these courses look great um and clearly you put a lot of thought into um you know streamlining them
162uh I'm sorry you're losing your course but um it looks like they're great kids so thank you appreciate it um sorry my timing could not have been worse being dropped from the uh dropped from the meat but um if anybody has any questions for um for me regarding the courses um I will say that um at this point if all four courses are articulated our students and this is just in the business department will be able to earn 12 college credits and then if they're interested in Shan and the CTE classes you know and that's in addition to all of the other um areas where students can earn college credit as well that's awesome Sean's maining courses uh if I read the notes correctly taking those those design coures can also lead to a degree
163they can read lead towards industry certification yes yeah goal um would would be to have a deeper discussion at a later time with a larger uh Forum of you and to discuss my larger Vision that I introduced at a meeting last right before right before we got sent away we remember this and you know you can look behind me you can see some of the machines that are that are here from that gr um but those these courses here aren't necessarily using those machines yet uh they're preparing you to have the the foundational skills to to to be proficient in those machines Sean we're looking forward to lot of discussion there's been a lot of interest in what you're doing there and I also think to what the mization committee is working on which is
164also a part of you know where where the committee TR to look at you know how to improve the schools renovate expand Etc a number of options not sure what they are yet in back of my mind is always this program that you're building there and when we had a discussion with us if you can have bring some ideas to the table of like if you had more space yeah um what else could you possibly add to help you know grow your program if it's not space it's equipment you just but I'm glad you're expanding I know a lot of students are very excited about uh manufacturing what you're doing so thank you um I have to pause the I'm in the school and the alarm system is going off so I have to go
165code my stuff so give me one moment here hi Sean textbook recommendations if you're ready do we need to um have a motion for the program of study changes I think we do don't we no we do not okay all right then moving on let's hope I don't get kicked out um so uh we have three these are all in the business department the course the um course that's being articulated um our computer Essentials Microsoft Office Word course um will be using the Microsoft Word uh book and that is a book that we will have to purchase with um funds from from the district so that's one thing I want to point out uh we probably need two sets for two um for two classrooms so that that'll be 40 40 of those books so
166there's definitely a cost involved there um having said that the other two textbooks that are um that we're uh looking for approval on uh the first one is for the introduction to business class and these are going to be purchased by tungus through their Perkins Grant so this is not going to cost ch Public Schools any money for the first version of this textbook and this should last us for many years um Michael Kelly who's going to be teaching that class has reviewed the textbook um he likes what he sees um so I I think that's um that's a a a good thing there uh the third Tech textbook on the list is the um textbook that is also being purched Pur through tungus community colleges Perkins Grant again this is at no cost to
167chesher public schools and that's going to be used um along with the advanced personal finance course um with that course there are also just the nature of personal finance there's a lot of great online resources that will also be using but this this will be the textbook for that class does anybody have any questions on any of those I think we're good okay okay and I had to run away does anyone have any questions I know there are some comments but is there any clarifying questions you guys have on anything that I discussed I think we're covered okay great oh everyone has their mute on so looks good um thank you you guys good work um and that brings us darn to the end of our agenda Ann do your thing yeah I moved to
168a journ before you move to a we do need an approval on the texbooks to move that forward to the full okay all right so do I hear a [Music] movement I move to send the uh new textbook purchases on to the full board for approval do I hear I second second all in favor I unanimous thank you very much okay now and yes Faith let your people go thank you every move to thank you thanks for your patience the on favor hi sorry it's my Robert's Rules of uh you know all right years of following that I know OCD sorry