001door please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance congratulations to God indivisible with liberty Justice song Jesse Yeah Gladys here okay here Bridget here Lauren here Ralph Louisa here Al Teresa present Michelle here Julie you are esteemed guests and friends um would you like to introduce yourselves for the group in case someone wasn't here last night uh good afternoon and thank you all for having us my name is Brittany Edmondson and I'm in National National Public Schools I started at the Academy coach and attorneys foreign good afternoon my name is Cheryl Mays I am a member of the board of education for Metro Nashville Public Schools and my name is the director of education and talent development guys good evening everyone uh so we've had two days to really enjoy a deep dive into what you
002mean to see what he had me so I just want to give a big thank you and Shout out onto the board of ed for making time to make those learning sessions and also to build City and Community leaders for making times love and big bang guitar and Nashville team um it definitely was a deep dive in all of our sessions to really understand the nuts and folks Miami academies and how to fully sustain it we know that our our national team has a sustainable model with its work they are 17 years in the making we are Danbury and we're looking for ways to make sure that it's sustainable for us and so we've given tons of information today and so as we have this board meeting I do ask that as we finish our
003presentation will take about 15 minutes maybe we do ask kindly that you take notes while we discuss some of these things and hold your questions until they end so that we can get through the presentation when we really address those the things that you want to address so um so yeah please they can't take notes and we'll just open it so uh what we want to do is just let the community know that with this model of course we want student engagement to be top tier of this model impacts the economy it impacts the workforce it also looks at the social aspect of students and also really emphasizes what it means to be a smaller learning community and this is something that we're looking to have with our high school we know that we're probably
004at 3 600 students now and we're gonna have huge 10 plus coming in year after year but we want to bring this model into that we can ensure that our students are not only Workforce ready but when it comes to Social and emotional learning and just being a general citizen you're being the most productive as possible so referring back to this this idea of having the academies I want people to know and I'll refer to Dr Brittany Evanson that this is just not another program that we're bringing today all right this is the transformation and I want people to really understand that this is a transformation of Danbury public school systems and I wanted to kind of talk about the difference between that thank you Brad so I think it's very important when you think
005about transformation to think about the impact and so before I really dive into um the difference between the program that we've had before and how we've tried to approach education or to that comprehensive model how we Implement a program in it it's not something sustained or not all students are engaged or it's not touching um very threat of what you're doing when you think about families and community and the workforce that are involved in every all of your stakeholders I want you to get a glimpse of the impact and so I am going to defer back to Cheryl Mays on this to talk about the impact because I think that it allows me to really talk about transformation in you to see the difference that there's something there yeah okay so overall I want to
006share a quick story with you so that you understand just a quick example of the impact uh in the first year that we implemented the Academy's model and uh one of the high schools that I am a represented that I represent um what we do as a business partner what we did was we developed a program specifically to engage the students in a Workforce Development type of environment we asked them to submit resumes for a particular job that they might be interested in with our organization and from there we would go to the schools and interview these students as though they were going to work directly in our organization before we got to that point we had to make sure that they understood how to write a resume so we sent a team to the
007school and we held a resume writing workshop with each of the students as a result of that what we found out with one of the young ladies who was in that Academy she reached out and she said oh thank you for telling me show me how to write a resume she was one of the first young ladies who went through the entire process her father as a turned out had applied for a job and he needed a resume in order to complete the process because we had gone through that that Workshop process with her she taught him how to write a resume based on her experience and he did get the job that he applied for so the impact is real it is extremely important that we pay attention to the Small Things um because
008we want to make sure that our children that we can see that ongoing impact I could share lots of success stories but I won't take up all of your time I just wanted to share that information with you so kind of going back to this idea of transformation what we're talking about is now with your schools which is the academy model you are involving all stakeholders and so it requires that your business partners are involved it requires such a Community Partners that your parents are at the table that students are part of this the teachers are part administrators your board of education your superintendent all of those people are required to be on the table and um as the transformation happens it is important that during that struggle your thing always you know Student Center
009and that cycle of continuous Improvement and you are thinking about that systems change right is going to have to happen so even this growth minds of pedagogy that's going on in classrooms and how do we support teachers and how do we put structures in place and resources in place to ensure that this model is successful and impacts every student that impacts a community that I keep talking about the threat of your schools and your workforcement and all of those things are impacted when before I'm doing this work and transforming the teaching and the learning that's happening that not only are your students learning their general education but they're learning it through the lens of they're learning it through the land of building we talked about earlier their social capital and position themselves for self-actualization and
010equipping them but we're also positioning teachers to grow something that you can Will as you expand on this model that you all give to that is necessary to train on is that distributive Leadership Model right because you're going to have leaders throughout the school so yes you have your executive principles there and now there are Cathy principles those assistant principles are taking more relationship well and your teachers are agreeing more leaders and your Community Partners are taking leadership role English students now as ambassadors are being leaders in this model so that distributed leadership aspect about the transformation where does it fall you know who's responsible for and we all share some compatibility every single teacher that's on the common planning SLC small learning community has a role and a responsibility you know that may look
011like you're a secretary or like if you are leading the work when it comes to interdisman planning or interventions or identity you know to your convention or the workforce part of it so that is a part of the transformation I also wanted to speak on leading that change and that is going to require what you who you all understand you know as a board what it looks like to change and think about Community we are now going to be leaning on and empowering equipment our teachers to leave that change and then positioning our students to help elimination can be talking about student boys they are going to be a part of this model and our parents to help you know in leading that change and so that truly is where talk about the transformation it's
012different when it comes to your partners and how they are involved in your school so no longer is it that as a partner and I'm a guest speaker now I'm intentional you know as a guest speaker because I'm in line with this apple in this Academy and I know these students that I'm working with they have a sense of the skills and knowledge that we're talking about they have interest in and so if it's intentional when I'm showing up or if I open my space for a field trip field experience that as it is industry related for the students and I am sure that every single student right has this opportunity to get out of the building that is transforming as a partnership as a business but also I'm going to go back to transforming
013the workforce and thinking about students assets and positioning them with those faculty and credentials and how do we make sure that they have the soft skills that their resumes already that they're interviewing they're a walking away how do we look at teaching and learning I'll be closer to prompted in our classroom supplement that mean that or how I get students engaged to increase that literacy and their members and how is that aligned to us our plan industry as well and so that's why it's so important that every single stakeholder internal and external part of this work is always a part of the conversations and the changes that may happen as you bring them Pathways when you look back at is this pathway still one that is viral when it comes to students being able to
014track into like post-secondary you need to come back to that and all of those people are at the table and then no decision moving forward is made by one group right and so if there's a transformation and reverse is just a program to be implemented and it's a sustainable model to where you think about succession right through those problems going with the board or your teachers or your management groups or even your students that graduated come back and live in Danbury and pour into the education system that they understand the impact because they have those stories and transform the way they show up and you see the benefits thank you for that because I want to let everyone know that this process didn't happen overnight they are again 17 years in the making it they're
015doing great things and so I can prefer to either share an orchard range what was that process like to get started with the academy how many schools did you start with was it all 12 Academy High School what was that like so it was um it was a challenging start because a lot of the the community did not truly understand the process and they didn't understand the the mission uh initially there was a lot of conversations that had to be had with community members of parents Partners about what the impact could be what it could look like and where we were trying to get to it was important for us to have those conversations because we wanted to increase optimums and decrease the overall absenteeism it was important that we had those conversations so it
016was a slow start and just for transparency I I've been a partner with the academies of Nashville for 16 years and I've had my children go through the academics model so I'm speaking to you from several different lens uh that the lens of the parent School Board member and a business partner so I've been heavily involved in the academy for a really long time and as a parent I can tell you it was a cost savings when my son decided to go to college he already knew what he wanted to do he didn't have to guess at it because he had spent time with business partners to learn to get a more of a deep dive into what a particular industry looked like from him and he found out if that was something that he
017really wanted to pursue so it saved me as a parent money from him changing his Majors when he got to college because he knew when he got there what he wanted to do it did not take long before I Community to get on board once the once there was an understanding of what the outcomes the expected outcomes were and what the mission was we wanted to improve academic outcomes for our students across the board and this was the best way that we could do that and it came with increasing our public private Partnerships that assisted in helping us get to that goal so um I can't say no clearly I'm invested and uh it's absolutely going to be um key for your community to be invested as well so um so with this whole process
018you see the numbers you see then and now there had to be some kind where people have to sit back and celebrate sub reflect on current practices that's what I'm doing now effective when I can look at what I'm doing to take it you can see if this if this is going to be effective for the due process it just happened look at your demographic of students look at your community look at your business and take all of them and see what's best take and I want to allow Sharay to talk about that business instructor how they came into play when it came to the academy saying how that structure was now thank you um so what's the business engagement structure and I just want to point out that it's catching up about what Cheryl
019mentioned and what Britney it is truly a collaborative effort um it's a you know when we started the academies of Nashville it it's called academies of Nashville on tonight academies of Metro Mountain Public Schools would all be safe it's for the community and so it requires all of these different Partnerships to make it work and with that we've had a different groups that help support this work it didn't necessarily start with these four different structures necessarily it started out with two and then we ended up building on it as we grew because we started office four high schools in the beginning and now we have 12. and so with that we get a lot more support and resources and I'm gonna go starting with The Advisory Board and now this is a note one and
020we could go I'm just gonna start advising for um The Advisory Board is going to school level and this is a great way for our teacher sister um and I should award it in a way that advisory boards are there to assist I'm in this group we have business partners we have teachers Academy coaches and we have even parents that are engaged in this in supporting what are some of the needs on the ground and then we have so whatever information that normally comes out of that if I do more moving it to partnership Council or partnership Council to advise so with 400 business partners that's a lot of great that's a lot of businesses and so to capture those voices we can be partnership Council about 50 business partners to get their perspective with
021partnership Council it could be them on a quarterly basis we have uh clusters is what we call them so we have Arts Media communication cluster and we had business manufactured Information Technology health and public service hospitality and tourism engineering manufacturing National technology so those five clusters are representative of how our schools are structuring their Pathways to their academies we have 10 to 12 business partners in each of those bring them together and ask them what is happening in your organization what's happening in your industry and how can we help you support take that back to the ground in this group we are also looking at those Workforce instructions um we're looking at what are some of the five tenure Productions and some of those high-wage high demand sectors and that informs the pathways and the
022academies that we select for our schools these are a lot more higher level conversations that we're having and again is it specific for those business partners certificate to the advisory boards whereas the teachers from Canada and then we have the 18 so this is even a more again it's not an advisory level but the conversations that we have in the partnership Council and it's safer examples of the engagement for business partners are decreasing and that's something so after covet a team let's get a look at okay how do we create a succession plan for those business partners so that we could if we have one person at Nissan and Cheryl ends up leaving how can we make sure that there's going to be somebody who's going to be just as invested and that we don't
023use that connection so 18 is having that high level conversation and then we have the CEO Champions and they played a larger role in the beginning when we started like captains of Nashville they were an advocate for the school system on a policy level so and CEO Champions we're again the C Level executive so CEOs who are able to bring other business partners to the table because we started out with five Tia PMS but we needed some of those larger organizations to bring in other applicants and so and again it seems like the CEO Champions the role that they've played in National may be different because it seems like you all have a lot of support so the conversation may be different about the role that your CEO to the community today and that group
024played a large role for us in the first five years and then that conversation changed so we now it's been 17 years and they haven't been as active for the last seven years but that's something that we're having a conversation about as this model is changing because our demographic is also changing the needs are different so we're having a conversation about living like that again the structure is dependent on your community so this is really so this is a really strong framework one that I'm not trying to copy but we Danbury had to start at some point uh the goal is to definitely have advisory boards six advice rewards for each of the academies and then in time filled out a structure in which we can look at things through a whole school level to
025see what those needs are so the apartments can jump in the city where it needed so just want to give you an idea of what they do and how we move them to have exposive housing boards so that will happen within a year or two uh and as care puts it we are currently dating with agency partners right now uh we want them to know that this is a coming model and they all have shown an incredible amount of Interest so again we're working with the Education team to make sure that we do have a solid framework of what an Advisory Board looks like and who can sit on that so that we can reach the masses so as we go even further uh we want everybody to really understand that this is I always
026say this is not just the Danbury public schools initiative right you have you have to have an alignment a stakeholders to a series about that this works you need your city leadership right we need to keep the parents and Community we need businesses all the buying because at the end of the day what do we try to do do what's best for the economy right build the workforce and also make sure there are two conservical College and Career ready we want to give our students opportunities and the only way to effectively do that is if you have a strong framework as shown from a previous colleges this is something that's worth going damn period so that we can make sure that our kids are good and ready to go but when we talk about the
027alignment of goals why is it so important to have that 100 why is it so important to have it before I'm gonna start I'm going to talk um speak to you all from the school level when we talk about goals so remember I talk about the straight event leadership and in this space this is where the teachers are coming together because they really truly are getting that water they are working with the students and they are taking the information the baby is given from the business partner as far as you know feedback they're looking at their data they are still held accountable right to those end of course tests they are still held accountable to what the ACT looks like and so we they need to make sure that it's benefiting them and that their
028work is aligning with the goals and so that first thing is that every teacher understands what that North Star is what is our vision for our students and I saw you lost mission and I know that you want to position your students to be College and Career ready but as you all work this model that mission may look different as you start seeing your student and singing in those spaces and what that Vision looks like and then those missionary statements aren't going to be specific to each Academy and how it's aligned to the workforce a thing that the students aren't working for and that's really important when I think about how do I support my student in making sure that they are career in college writing right and how am I address the resources I
029mean how do I make sure that they can pass the certification test I want to make sure that they have the experiences with our students Freshman Academy they have certain experiences that are part of the identity right the career fair and the experience some type of college and then in 10th Grade they actually want to build the experience field trip within the industry of their pathway and they have a college experience where there are Majors right and we think about college different it's not just four years you've got technical colleges you've got the two-year colleges you now have job and better training where I am going may not be having specific classes and so that's happening and of course it look like through my classroom and how am I um teaching through the lens and
030so that's the transformation I've got to make sure again that those goals will have from our students for intervention and for meeting those experiences aligned with the North Star like how we're working toward that so that we can say here's our promise to you community here's our promise to you students that before you leave this High School you're going to have these experiences you're going to have a network of people you're going to have the skill set to actually position yourselves to work have a better opportunities at Workforce or be successful in college so that when we look at persistence so that when we look at post-secondary if you see some success if you see it on a larger scale right but it's not just for a certain group of students right sometimes we call
031them Iceberg students that we're not just targeting those but we're thinking about every single student and we're thinking about how do how does our Workforce how does our leadership we talk about resources and funding into this position in the school and who's positioning with with this particular Academy or pathway what are those needs there and and those are all the things that are going to be important you think about success and that being aligned with students and you really truly see impact and impact is more than just those top 30 students the impact is and nothing else like I said earlier that all of my 10th graders when they graduate they're going to be able to say that at some point in my high school career I left this building and I stepped foot uh
032in a been a work of business partner's building right or I have someone that I can reach out to and say I need a recommendation or I know how to write a resume or I'm I'm successful in that act or I'm going to college and I know what that looks like and what I need to do before I was taking early class credits or our status credentials and I can support my family immediately right whatever your needs are you now forget to do that and on the flip side teachers are in that position to where they're able to realize right their goals and see themselves teaching in a different way with leadership and the resources you see teachers become team leads and they become administrators you see teachers take the leadership role in the sense
033of I like supporting infilmeric planning and I like you know seeing students read and for me that's a goal and here's what it looks like and they're able to work with the partners um Partners you know just more engaged and that really is is how you start making the transformation in the community you know starts looking like what you like like which is that your students graduate and even if they need to go to college they come back today we'll be ready and I continue to grow and you see them in the future foreign from a business partner perspective uh let's talk about the goal or as we'd like to say to return on investment the goal there is uh could be the future Workforce pipeline as a business partner you're looking at these particular
034Pathways thinking about your future Workforce what is my future Workforce look like and how do I incorporate these students into that that could definitely be the goal creating a pathway for these young people whether it's through field trips or whether it's through internship opportunities and the beautiful thing about internship opportunities for a business partner is that these students already have an experience with your organization and once they make a decision once they leave high school or leave College think about and they think about employment the first thing they are likely thing to think about is who offered me an opportunity before I got to this point and so they will very likely go back to that employer and it's a two-way street as an employer you've already provided an opportunity for these young people to
035get to know you and your teams so when the opportunity presents itself to seek employment post uh college or post high school they will likely go back to that to that business partner that provided an opportunity for them so one of the goals as I said for business partners is definitely the what is the return on investment and let's be clear business partners may love this idea but they're not doing it just because it's good a feel-good situation there has to be a return on their investment what does that look like how many hours have we spent preparing these young people how much time have we spent how much money have we spent what does that look like we want to definitely have a return on our investment when it comes to our young people
036and I can't think of a better one than preparing them for that future Workforce and Industry so this is our last live and in conclusion I just want people to remind you that as we go through this transformation and we develop a curriculum and we develop experience or learning opportunities for students and we just develop these academies as a whole that we really look at our demographic kids and make sure that we target every single last one of those who speak in different languages no matter what culture you come from that we tend to each of those kids because they all deserve to follow the education and so that's what I could say and I've seen impact I've done it with my colleagues of seeing the transformation of work when it comes for all of
037those students exam it can work it can work with us so let's just continue the great things that we're doing here and just make it even better so we don't want to speak the whole night but hopefully this is a pretty good overview for you to understand what it takes to really build strong Academy so if you guys have any questions I'm sorry ladies and gents if you have any questions feel free to jump right a question so what percentage or how do you track students at brn1 Academy so how do you track or what percentage of students that are in a certain Academy when they leave the school and moving the academy going to that actual field so Arts Career and Technical education teachers a part of them demonstrating that they're offering and quality
038program is that the students from SC nurse they take a exit survey and then a year after they graduated those Career and Technical education and teach their part of their job is to reach out and follow up with the students are you working with industry are you using that certification are you in college you know where are you working what sorts do you need so that's a way that we're tracking it and that information was reported back and they have to be above 85 report so this means that we are finding these students to make sure that we get the best contact information that is a part of their graduation survey as well now what's helped now as for an accurate count because with our partnership so we have those Partnerships where students are tracking
039right into Workforce and they let us know oh these students we know apply and they were hired and so there's a way we're tracking it and then post-secondary as being one of our key Partners right especially like a national state and it's a possible Applied Technologies they also keep up with what group of students are going to be as graduates what year did they graduate what programs are they and we know we're able to track it it also helps to advise us on are we offering the right Pathways when we talk about student boys and what indeed so that's how we're tracking our students one way thank you one question uh so how do you know with your business partner how do you get the buy-in from the parking like is it an agreement is
040there an actual contract like how does it just don't shake hands and take their word for it right no absolutely not um it'd be nicer to work that easily but no it does not so we have to talk to from a business partner perspective what I did is I went to the school to find out exactly well what's in it for me what is the bottom line what what do I get out of this uh and the one the first Academy that we partnered with was and we use acronym schemeth the engineering manufacturing and Industrial technology uh Team or Academy because it was a direct correlation to automotive and we had um in having a conversation with the academy coach and with the Educators in that Academy we determined that it was a great fit
041for us because a lot of these students wanted to go down an engineering pathway which was absolutely perfect for us so what we did was talk to the students about what it is they wanted and we built a program around that so that we made sure that they were connected and they were engaged and it as a result we were able to create a six-week summer program that brought them in and they were I don't have time to tell you the whole story but it was a really great um uh internship because it provided an opportunity for these students to help develop a resolution for a problem that we were having that is actually still being utilized today so when you think about high school kids going into an international company and fixing something that
042says a lot about those young people but it it took us making sure that we understood what the students needed before we could get bought into it and we understood that it could potentially build our Workforce develop our Workforce because we had several uh Engineers that were close to retirement and we had to make sure that we were watching those numbers but attrition was real so how do we avoid complete and total attrition without having a backup plan we utilize that program so we had a organization that was not there initially and remember the Cheryl said that she's been there around 16 years so that is initially how Apartments were involved now we have a structure in place for pencil and so the pencil Foundation actually works with the academy coaches and we're keeping up
043with our Advisory Board and what students are being offered right like where are the partners and how are they supporting but if we have a new partner maybe that I I know I know I'm going through pencil because there is a document it's an articulation agreement to say this is my capacity as a partner here's how we can support I can be I can help a tutoring you know at the elementary level or I can help a tutoring the entry certification at the high school level I have the space to offer job Shadows or internships and that's where they sign that's also a place where they look they're able to see we don't ask for money um we ask them to be hours if you want to get a branded partner this is the in
044kind that what it looks like from that space and then there's background checks is what we do and pencil is our intermediary for that and so you can have teachers right who have networks but we know as a structure and as a model now that we go through pencil when it comes to soft regulation agreements and of course they've grown like I said those job embedded programs but I'm still making sure that you know pencils at the table even after we've had the conversation specific to maybe that school's programming great things so I will I will just say um employers across the board are having issues filling their child pipeline so it shouldn't be hard selling that to a business partner if they're aware if they're cool in Nashville specifically with a lot of businesses
045when we've had they're realizing that we don't have a lot of Talent that's prepared to grow those positions so there was a need just as much as it was for the school system to be able to work at a weird age and investing in the school system now we've had businesses who have come to us and wanted to start the process right away and say you could see that and then there are some that is more of a high need and it is more of a demand like health care that we've had to approach to our folks and it it had to go back to leaning on some of those tools that really had mentioned that were able to get from those intermediary organizations like those Community investment hours here are some of those business
046es for so much time it translates into this much amount of money so this is how much a business partner is investing and this is a return and their investment this is how many students they were able to hire this is a great way internally that you can sell that most I'm sure even for Nissan we might have Cheryl who's a huge advocate of it but internally it might be hard to sell so we have tools available for our business cards to be able to take that to sell to their Partners but then also just mentioning the importance of having those intermediary organizations are able to take on those onboarding and management and the insurance use of it now if it's something that the district is going to be taken on assuming it'll probably need
047a 10 rent days that will need to be in place to be able to manage some of that relationship aspect especially if we're at Danbury is looking to scale and that's something that natural has to do so if we had to scale it then we had to make sure that we had a middle organization to do not matching activities because all right and we could barely handle one print paper it's recent uh you mentioned that a company called pencil uh are they the ones that kind of put everything together for you or like said read the articulation agreements and is this the code to uh piece it's our go-to now um for what the last maybe 10 years okay so like I was saying initially they were not in in place what happened was that
048this model and the impact that the partner saw and the importance of it was so important you needed a space where it was handled during a background check because we wanted to you know protect our students and protect the employers and make they want to be in the schools they want you know to get in there but also to manage what they were doing to make sure you know sustainable and it was impactful we were intentional when it came to with the work the teachers were doing as we thought about this model long term so pencil was an organization that was already kind of helping the school of the community in the sense of like giving teachers supplies but now they're in a space where they have built out those agreements so um before it
049was more of as a as a business partner I'm coming in and I'm agreeing and I'm showing up right now signing in the front office and here's what we were able to do and it was the school and partner now you have something in place that is consistent at every single school with every single partner and it allows us to track and have a a a way of doing things you know a lack of Good Works moment and it takes the oldest of business partners and I got involved because the school that I'm referring to was the school that my children went to so I had a relationship with the Educators and the administration at that school which allowed them an opportunity to come to me and say hey can your business partner with us
050yeah absolutely I've seen the work that you're doing but it takes the open soft business partners and having to go through identifying and vetting those Partners to make sure that our children remain safe at all times sorry one more thing so how what do we have what do we have in place to get the sound committed from the business partners are we implementing something like like pencil right now we're just being anxious from businesses because we have to create no stressors so that we can go once we get branded at the Academy is a Danbury then we can start having those conversations for the chamberlaining are you suggested me a person of the ages don't know except it's a beautiful name it's very pretty it's obviously was worried about the snacks again the are you
051the point person in your chamber for education is that it or is the whole chamber involved or Europe go-to person so I'm not the go-to person or the only one I do representative Academy so Nashville along with my my colleague I the chamber in our leadership team I just took the importance of Workforce Development and education plain as usual they're hand in hand they're not separate so it does start from the leadership side um we are a team of 10 now we started team of five at the time and when the desert College was part of the chamber when we first started off 17 years ago it's a smaller team but our education team is now a team of the 10 um two of us focusing on specifically the academies of national and two other
052individuals focused on one of the grants and that helps support again but it was not always right it's been such a good job covering all media questions in the presentation great so I have a couple of questions that I thank the board with advice and clarification elements on slide two what this model impacts and talked about I think Brands about benefits of social emotions so how does the model address social emotional development of students maybe Brandy always you actually can you just kind of expand upon that for our board members so they can further understanding I needed to talk about um kind of our teachers kind of cohorted together with the team and they would be available to work together if to have the message such as kids to provide interventions Etc videos so first
053like we're talking about a structure of change as well and as a structure changed at some point in time it may not happen right away because you're working on a master schedule they say the principal is and the building and Logistics and all those things but when it does get into a place where those that group of small learning communities are together that means that this group of teachers are all housed in the same area and they're able to see students and there's that basic tier one intervention of how are you doing I know who you are then what happens is that in the space of smaller in communities and common planning time there are the three eyes that you that we work around in the model interventions identity and interdisciplinary that intervention is Keys
054is yes you're addressing attendance and you're addressing Behavior but you're also thinking about interventions in the sense of every student you know what does every student need and so if I am over intervention as a teacher as far as my role I've had a spreadsheet and we're looking at does this student have Flags I want their Flags or has a student been attending class or what's going on with them and at some point time the student as team even if they are just showing up and they're that kid that's always there to turn their work in you still are intentional about spending that time with the student and I'll tell you what it never fails as a student regardless if I'm an age student and I have perfect attendance or I am failing for my
055classes and I'm hardly there to walk into a room there are seven people there seven eight people there who know my name and you've been talking about me and you are thinking about me and you want to be successful but you're also asking me questions what's going on how can we support you what do you need and from that being able to build on what what's going you know can we support at home do you have mental foreign mentors do we need to put extra support in class I mean there are IEPs sometimes that have problems from that there are we use our Community Resources right where you at work later I don't have a job and we're about to lose our house or I really do want to go to college I don't know
056how to but I know that I'm very good in in my advanced classes and what does that look like and so there's that aspect and what you do is you number one let students know in the small community that there are a group of people who care about me and they're thinking about me and the teachers actually have the time to get to know their students and identify right some of those kids who are calling from The Gap but on the flip side would allows for a student to be a quick to be more of a self-advocate for themselves to speak up in this space and say this is what I need and to identify write um their needs Even in our classrooms now with our structure we have a place called the five spots
057because we are a restorative District in the SEL district and so we do training around social emotional learning we'd be trying it with our business partners without Community Partners our leadership our teachers our students our parents and so in my English classroom I have a five spot and we're intentional about that space But students also know that if it's not in my opening opening ticket that we're in this hot spot if I'm having a momentum you can step away I am now aware of my needs and I can go to this last slide just take a break we should school like I said for SEL day and when I say shut down it means that in this moment our learning is centered around social emotional structure and our need but more like I said bounce
058around maybe housing fulfill this moment because some schools work five miles or right across the street from that high school you know everyone at school they had the shooting right or we know that our students in this school you know are seeing a lot more no violence and what does that look like and what do you need to do or are we seeing students who need support around jobs and other houses being you know or just how do I engage and have come to stations with my peers and get to know about them and so that is where it's been very intentional and we are using our partners and like I said the students are engaging so there's that social emotional piece that I keep talking about physically students and there are adults writing and
059having gone to a place of self-actualization but as you will quickly leave that place right that's right thank you could you talk a little bit about like where the Staffing means to be like for us on a community because that's a phrase like I'm familiar with it but in terms of like what kind of Staff like staff to student ratio and also the different years exactly what right so in our small mind communities every one of them has an academy principle that's your assistant principle and now becoming Academy trained on what leadership looks like and that's you have an academy counselor that is assigned to every single Academy and so you know if you're looking at then of course we have your general education teachers right English math history that's basically then you have your
060pathway teachers so what are the pathways that are offered in the Academy of their part of the group then you start thinking about your Global teachers right so are they a part of it Community like I was saying earlier everyone has a role I know it's a possibility so you have a teacher who's a team lead sometimes that's a tte pathway for internal education pathway teacher sometimes it's an English teacher and typically they have more than two years of experience teaching and they are trying you know in that leadership position then you have supports so when I have a meeting I think about what's on my agenda of course I'm dealing with those three of them talk about before in the kitchen not maybe if this is married but also there's a session about parent
061and Community involvement so while there's teachers who's leaving it usually my um [Music] we achieves or Family Resources Center if they're in the school buildings and they are in all of our school devices that are at those meetings or part of the conversation or have engaged with the teacher also we have members from our Special Education team who are supporting with the individualized education plans like I said our Global Teachers Community Partners we really think about the languages and support that I needed there but those are your basic level of the small learning communities and then what you're doing is what are the other needs our students have as we are meeting together and thinking about supporting and aligning our goals around our students today how many students per account again my name is Mr
062generals it's going to be different I'm under part of you but I'm at a school what we're looking at is I was sustain that pathway and it just depends on your involvement so let's talk about a high school maybe I'm going to do a low number if I have a um [Music] foreign classes I want to make sure that I have 50 students and that happened they're broken up so it'll be like 25 in a block and 25 -hour class so that 50 students will allow me to ensure that as they track even if they move through the district that I have enough students to keep that athlete going so I'm going to become a senior it's not to recruit students in the pathway right because they move around or they've changed Pathways at some
063point in time and so that's exports that number students 175 as freshmen and I'm offering 22.3 four Pathways I wanted to be you know 50 maybe a little bit more because we don't want to override because I got to make sure that I do not exceed that 25 or 26 you know range of those pathway classes and I wanted to be able to sustain and interact with our students of course if it's different when you have larger schools right but you really are looking at those numbers in long term 10 11 12th grade health and taking into consideration that we are at a district of mobile accidents oh Brent Carol what's our what's our break 450 to 500 so and don't forget one Academy that has four Pathways the rest of them had three so
064there's the balance a little bit skew there um you know we're looking you know where our enrollment is you know we have to kind of a fixed number that we're planning for but um you know once we have some of the selection process there'll be a kind of a give or take um in each pathway as well as the academy and what each can can hold and sustain and I would suspect that over time um and I'm sure you've experienced that some Pathways will be more popular than others and potentially sometimes you expand one right to meet the growing needs but that happens kind of over time it's pretty hard to shift in my understanding uh immediately right all of a sudden we've planned for Staffing around um 450 kids in a particular Academy but
065the demand is higher so you can claim it you know a year after year or two out but or make those ships but um the goal heading in is about 450 to 500 given the size of the academy and how many pathways are in each one okay does anyone else have any more questions foreign two words consistent messaging additionally every single one of your board members needs to have the same message that is going out to the community at all times so you need to make sure that what you are sharing about your Academy's model is being shared at the same at the same way by every single board member every single board member every time and make sure that you are engaging your students and your parents if they're not at the table they
066need to be make sure that they understand the importance of the academy model so that they can share within their own communities as well consistent messaging is the best way that I know to get it out there with that message yes we do we're at the Academy model and preparing their project career but we also have community so we have um we have an event called PC get lifted and it is where we open up and you bring your bring your children and bring the community and the students are going to you know perform and the partners are involved and so we're doing a lot of events like that and we do it um you know on a weekend and there's messaging and practice during the daytime and something else we got giveaways sometimes we
067have events for teachers as well because they are a part of community sometimes we go out like we we had the tornado happen a week before we cut counties at pandemic and it really hit some of our hardest neighborhoods right and so the community came together we were a space in the school where you can drop off your donations but um families do that this is the place I can come to pick up water pick up a hot spot pick up food and diapers and so really opening your school as well um to be a resource you know for your students to know that we are here for learning but we're also here forward to if you are a part of this I'm thinking about the times that you're meeting how being strategic about who
068you're invited like showing up um to those Community meetings as well and and inviting your parents in right to parents we got Pat but they're in advisory committees that support Illinois middle school and high school one thing that I have saw as well at work is as we've you know moved and taken the cabinets to the next level is engaging with the parents of the elementary middle school level so that they are tracking through and there's our kids come into high school they know that this model is going on they understand the importance of being involved and then of course like I said listen to those parents and what their needs are even in the workforce programs that we have in certification programs we had and that really came from the support of our mayor
069you know and his budgeting supporting and support of the director of schools at Nashville State Community College to put some of their budget toward the community and then take advantage of some of the things that we're looking to our students as well thank you okay quickly for us but we have our business partners employers like to learn about the different school systems in our place to actually look forward to that and so they have depend on the business they have days where it can be like a of some practice into place and so that's a great place to go especially if you have your business partners that are looking into Danbury that's a great place to start and going to them and actually telling them about your school system okay so you guys have our
070first step back that there have been a few times the district transformed to meet Community details students um can you talk about you know one of those transitions of what uh signals you saw that that told you you know decide to happen I know you guys are talking also about four times ongoing conversations but I'm wondering if they were you know things that came after those conversations that sort of nudged you to get ahead of what are the next characters so I think uh I'll speak to you and get that slow level and then being a partner in those conversations what we were saying so we have seen grew up in our students who work in this college Learners while that work was happening when they were if they were staying right in the new
071graduate and we're looking at the graduation length and how they affected or what supports they needed and what we needed to change and so do we have enough English language teachers in the building do all of the smaller Community teachers so all of our general consultations continue teachers understand how to support those students what it was the testing um what's the onboarding that families get when they first come into much and I'm responding to is that is that piece of set to all the parents know about it right so now you've got different partners that I can add on you have spaces for you know who we call Vita testing and our students are going through and helping to understand it but also a general content page for like an English teacher I understand we
072get it and they're now supporting making sure the students are testing um send their data get based on their age now they're coming in so that that was a number that you looked at and thought to get ahead of the response when we still are and it is culturally making a change I mean that's like Mexican America is offering Spanish 101 right for our teachers and our leadership to take you know over the course of the month so they have that General conversation so that they can engage with the families and actually call them reach out but also invest in the translation headset so that when parents are activity meetings they don't feel like they're just sitting there so when I have a senior night I know what my senior needs to graduate is having
073a conversation around college and careers that are here directly toward our students who maybe right now they don't have the necessary paperwork or status right to go into your career in college immediately but what are we doing with our post epidering conversation will be happy with the students but they know that you still do have options and here's how to take advantage of that and these are going to be your support systems is the top of the teachers and thinking about what are your um how are you including those students in your instruction so really in our common planning time when we're spending time uh planning around that lessons that we are our conscious of including the student construction and how they're engaged and not just you know having a little expectation there um they're
074just in the back of the classroom and they use it in the parking whereas they truly do are just saying that right onto the funding of the certifications that we take now those certifications are offered in more than one language as soon as I can take advantage of it because you respond to that any other questions in the comment do we have enough money to budget could bring him from Nashville all right the last question is from my panel here knowing that we're environment on this model uh he had one of the ones about board members who've had it with our community members we have parents that are listening if you have any last words if you think of reflect on them Beyond two possibilities of change um also always put your students first find
075out what they need and do your best to accommodate those needs and your students that's the best of us I can give anybody I always drive on the community effort in the truly collaborative initiative and I've seen that just by you know you all being in stages and just me and everyone people speak to the Academy's model and it's a great start I mean just having to be you know in Nashville and learned about it can't find us that's where it starts it seems like the advice that will give you each have already taken so uh best of luck and you'll already do it with the foundation will work to say that as you start seeing the impact of students you know just showing up my classroom and I think initially just this this big
076group that's going to happen right is curiosity isn't going to happen it has a part of teaching and as a teacher or someone in the classroom you want your student to be curious and you want them to be engaged and show up and so for that they're going to show up but then really thinking about that transformation right taking a learning or how they're involved there is nothing better than seeing that student that gets it or and make a connection or they have their first time out the building they reach back out to because now they have a job or they scored higher on the test or they pass a certification and you know to succeed I think about students you know in 10th Grade and they have this when they get their certification is
077hashtag certified and they understand the sagging of it and so in 11th grade they know like they just keep posting it on their social media you know now you're changing the conversations at home like you know something that's basically a CPR that he was able like but also hey parents now we have this community class for CPR but again my students now and 11th grade have two certifications and then I'm going to be a senior and I've got three and I'll take them to college classes and so we didn't really see and take pride in it as well for me um it's huge and I think that you will see just the investment and impact that keeps my impact students but then to see like that never continue to grow it really does put a
078ripple in um what used to be right and the stagnation that sometimes can happen as we do things the whole way and to see the possibility and choices just kind of people grow and the elevation that happens here it was truly like I said a transformation on office I cannot write it to see what you guys do we need to hear back from you so I wish you all the luck and that's where okay I just want to say thank you so much for uh you know immense our great at getting your point of course and the passion that you guys you know show is just it's something that we're really looking forward to we have a great team here and uh we do a lot of support from like you said City officials and
079stuff like that and at the end of that day school in some kids Community I mean I mean you know it's it is in this District but like our size um I just wish that we had more Community involvement I think something like this will definitely bring that I just want to thank you for all the time and come out there like I said I hope next time I make the cut to make it down to Nashville um I just thank you so much for for uh you know sharing your thoughts with us and I I would just like to add um for a new show I'm sure thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to come up to visit and see what they are very we truly and generally do appreciate
080you coming up I know I can have a relationship with that Brandon previously like we as a beneficiary group we really want to thank him because uh I heard it mentioned earlier there was a conversation about it's important for the district to identify it's not a stock okay so I I want to share with you a couple of years ago I think you'll be pleased to hear this a couple of years ago we improved our fortunately we're advocate and uh maybe a year later around the same time it was the vehicle to help reach this North Star for students grades 9 through 12 was this Academy model and we had bought into this transformational model in every way and to Rob's point when he was talking about trying to find ways to mobilize this community
081around this community around this work that that has started and so I'm I'm really happy and excited and quite frankly proud of this community in a way folks are beginning to come together however right now we're in a safe folks are still trying to learn and understand the model and so I appreciate your guidance your support in this journey that we are in right now um to Ross Point we have an amazing team here we didn't hear all about your why why you um Financial Public Schools entered into the model in the first place I did share with the board previously some time ago your high school graduation rate uh two of those people 60 percent I just want to applaud you all of you for whatever role you may have played in the success
082of that District I understand you're an 80 plus range in graduation now actually that's on the running backs of a lot of hard work in that school community and I think we're talking about outcomes in terms of successes of the program we have a little different reasons for answering it but it's important for us in terms of Engagement we're having considerable concerns around finding absenteeism right now um considerable concerns around just overall engagement in school and so that's playing itself out as kids get into trouble in school particularly post pandemic when we really feel like this level of Engagement that's going to be often to kids who's been truly going to make a difference but again to our report cheers point the fact that we're going to be able to have the opportunity to mobilize
083our school Community around this we are really excited about it but thank you for your kids your guidance and your support throughout this process and hopefully we can lean on you again really soon in the future so thank you and thank you thank you thank you so man would you like to say something oh no okay so thank you very much Mr chairman thank you very much for the word of Ed I would just again again thank you very much for being here and doing this with the knowledge and the wisdom that you've uh you've learned in the past with your garage schools uh it's just a matter for you to be here I'd also like to take up this opportunity to give you some news that I got just recently for me it's it's
084huge there was a statement released this afternoon by the governor of Connecticut Ned Lamont hosting that Danbury it's been selected as one of the top cities in the country to live in in the country the reality is that that doesn't happen by accident and I'm just so happy I was here tonight to be able to share that with you the board event our superintendent our assistant superintendents and our whole staff and especially our teachers and the staff of the city because it doesn't happen by accident it's uh we all know the first thing people say when they want to move to your city house day education right we are good and I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you thank everyone in this room for all the efforts that you put forth to
085put us in that position and the future is now this educational system is now we move forward thank you [Applause] all right thank you everyone have a great night Kevin I just want to clarify my man John says I didn't say top 100. did I pronounce it top 100 yeah