School Board Meeting - June 13, 2024

001chair Lee is absent chair aov yes so MO yes Miss bman yes Mr Graham page yes Dr Berlin yes chair a yes motion passes do we have any other motions coming out of closed meeting yes I do chair I move to excuse me I move to affirm the superintendent designes decision on employee a do we have a second second all those in favor I okay do we why don't we do a a roll call vote sorry Dr Berlin yes Mr checkpay yes Miss spilman yes Mr grah Page yes chair Acuff yes some now why don't we do the roll call for everyone up on the Das starting with Dr Kaiser CLA Kaiser assistant superintendent dapan Kaiser assistant superintendent good evening Patrick mlin assistant superintendent Chuck Pace R District Graham paage Miller District kff Jack J

002District Rebecca Berlin whiteall District Allison spilman at large representative Chandra Hayes assistant superintendent Matthew HW superintendent Josiah black School Division councel Al L Admiral cany PD Helen dun public affairs and strategic Communications officer rosin Schmidt Chief Operating Officer Christin King Thompson Clerk of the board thank you now let us stand for the Pledge of [Music] Allegiance the United States of America to the it stands Nation God indivisible we'll now pose for a moment of silence [Music] thank you do we have a motion to approve tonight's agenda I move to approve tonight's agenda second all those in favor I opposed motion passes next we have approval of the consent agenda I move to approve the consent agenda do we have a second I second before we take a vote I have a question on um item

00344 authorization to sign and I think it lists Dr Daphne kaz's name but I think her name was left off of the document I didn't see her name in the list well pending review of that do we and and if we need to make that Amendment does this are we still okay to pass this y as amended by Mr paage thank you um with announcements we have two proclamations tonight [Music] uh Mr Paige do you want to go first can all right uh proclaiming recognizing juneth whereas alal County schools in keeping with the core principles of our great United States of America believe that all persons are created equal and possess unable rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and whereas on June 19th 1865 more than two years after the emancipation Proclamation

004was signed to free all enslaved people enslaved Americans in galvaston Texas were finally told that they were free from the bondage of slavery and were for the first time recognized as citizens of our nation and whereas black Americans came to commemorate this day as juneth with celebrations across the country building new lives and a new tradition that we honor today and whereas the alal County Schools recognize the enduring cultural and historical significance of mancipation acknowledges the universally cherished values of Liberty and Justice and emphasizes our common humanity and whereas almal County Schools encourage all persons in almal County to recommit to our sh shared work to ensure racial Justice and equity and to commemorate the centuries of struggle and progress led by Educators Civil Right Advocates abolitionists activists lawyers trade unions religious leaders public officials

005and every alal County residents who have brought us closer to fulfilling this promise now therefore be it proclaimed that we almal County Schools do hereby recognize June 19 19th 2024 as juneth and celebrate the joy of black people finally being free thank you Mr Paige and I also have an announcement sort of in collaboration I guess with that the 100 black men of Central Virginia whose purpose is to improve the quality of life within the community and Advocate eliminating the achievement gap of African-American male students through mentoring by its members the organization will host 40 Scholars from the alal county schools and Charlottesville City schools for the upcoming 2024 incubed Summer Academy from Monday June 17th through Friday June 28th from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Journey Middle School the mcubed Summer Academy is

006an Altera Readiness program program that supports the group's mission to eliminate the achievement gap of African-American males in grades K through tell 12 the 100 black men of Central Virginia invite the board members and their families to visit our Scholars and their families for the annual juneth Freedom Day in incube community cookout on Wednesday June 20 uh June 19th from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at Dart toal Park in addition we would be honored to have the board board members attend the culminating celebration of achievement ceremony on Frid June Friday June 28th from 12:30 to 2 3:30 p.m. at the Double Tree Hotel on Hilton Heights Road thank you Mr Paige can you send a a email about the end of that yeah okay to the board that would be helpful okay Cher acov yes

007a couple points of order we need to go back and um vote on the um consent agenda as amended um and also do we want to take a vote on this proclamation to make it an official part of the record the let us do both thank you Miss Thompson since we've just read this Proclamation why don't we do that one first um all those in favor of accepting this Proclamation as part of the public record of this school board say I I I opposed it is adopted and back to approval of the consent agenda with the uh amendment to check the signature for Miss Dr Kaiser on uh item 4.4 uh do we have a consensus in terms of adopting the consent agenda all those in favor I opposed thank you Miss Thompson and we

008have have another proclamation to be read by Miss spilman um as the proud parent of a transgender child I am really honored to read acps is Proclamation celebrating lgbtq plus pride month whereas lesbian gay bisexual and transgender pride month lgbtq plus pride month is celebrated annually in June to commemorate the Catalyst event of the 1969 Stonewall RI riots and works to achieve Equal justice and equal opportunity for lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer and questioning lgbtq plus Americans and whereas on April 11th 2020 the Virginia values Act was signed into law making Virginia the first state in the South to protect lgbtq plus people from discrimination in their daily lives including discrimination in housing public and private employment public accommodations and access to credit and whereas Alam Maro County's State mission is to enhance the well-being

009and quality of life for all citizens through the provision of the highest level of Public Service consistent with The Prudent use of public funds Alam Marl County School's mission is working together as a team we will end the predictive value of race class gender and special capacities for our children's Success Through high quality teaching and learning for all we seek to build relationships with families and communities to ensure every student succeeds we will know every student acps values are centered around Equity Excellence family and community and wellness and whereas Alamar County Schools is committed to supporting through their actions and their Partnerships the promotion of an equitable and inclusive abam Maro County that allows all members of our community to grow and Thrive and whereas lgbtq plus individuals have shaped Advanced and enriched the fabric

010of abam Maro County and our nation by making immense contributions to all areas of life including government business arts and Sciences medicine law enforcement technology and the military now therefore be it proclaimed that we the Alam Maro County Schools continue to affirm our commitment to our State admission to enhance the well-being and quality of life of all students and members of our community and recognize with pride the rich cultural diversity and contributions of lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer and questioning lgbtq plus residents to the vibrancy of ala Marl County signed this 13th day of June 2024 a similar Proclamation was presented during the June 5th Alam Marl County Board of Supervisors meeting supervisor Ned Galloway requested that this Proclamation be shared with the school administrators students and families he also stated that the current national

011environment is not accepting of all students particularly transgender students supervisor Galloway wants Alam Marl County students and families to know that they have the Board of Supervisors support in addition he would like students to know that if they feel like they don't have a person to talk to or a place to go they can visit the website of Trevor project.org a National Suicide Prevention and Crisis Intervention Organization for lgbtq plus youth for information on how to connect to chat text or call for support thank you Miss Filman do we have a motion to accept this Mo this Proclamation as part of the official record I move excuse me I move to accept this Proclamation as part of our uh IAL record I second all those in favor I I opposed it is passed with this

012we are now on Section 6.2 of our agenda Spotlight on education uh in terms of the Virginia education Exemplar schools yes Dr aov um before we do that I just wanted to get a quick uh preliminary results update from Dr mlin yeah thanks Dr hos uh and good evening board members i' uh as Dr hos said I'd like to provide you with a a very brief update of some of the initial Trends we're seeing in student achievement as we end the school year and I'll start by saying that all of this information is preliminary and can change prior to our final results being released by The State Department of Education uh but recently we completed our uh spring so testing with nearly 22,000 uh so tests administered to our students uh the state has has

013provided us with a new tool this year to see their preliminary calculations as they come in instead of waiting for the fall release and currently those results indicate that we will have more schools meeting State accreditation targets than we had last year that we are seeing gains for our students uh in our growth adjusted Pass rates across nearly all membership groups in reading and math and that we're seeing slight increases in our unadjusted Pass rates which don't account for student growth in reading math and science additionally we're projecting about a 4.5% reduction in our chronic absenteeism rates uh and we will continue to monitor the vdoe updates uh as more results are returned this summer and provide a more comprehensive update to the board when results become official in the fall thank you Dr mlin

014I I did that just kind of to lay the groundwork for uh this next announcement I am delighted to announce now and that's that's 23 24 data the this next part is based on 20 223 but it's uh for the 2324 school year I am delighted to announce that three of our 24 Public Schools in alal County have been recognized by by the Virginia Board of Education for their outstanding achievements as part of the 2023 24 Exemplar performance School recognition program this prestigious program acknowledges schools that either exceed established Virginia performance that exceed established Virginia performance standards to provide some context Virginia has more than 2,000 public schools out of these only 37 schools were recognized with the Board of Education highest Achievement Award I'm proud to share that three of these exemplary schools are

015right here in Alma County these schools have demonstrated exceptional success across all School quality indicators including making significant strides and narrowing achievement gaps the recognized School are Murray Elementary School who at that time was under the leadership of Ceda delorier who's now principle at Woodbrook Elementary School and now uh is led by Wendy eckerly Ivy Elementary School which is led by principal Jennifer Underwood and I noticed she also has her assistant Laura Morris here with her tonight uh Community lab school which is led by principal Chad Ratliff this recognition is a testament to the hard work dedication and tireless efforts of our Educators staff students families and the entire Community achieving such high standards requires a collective commitment to Excellence and a Relentless pursuit of academic success I'd like to inform the board that we

016have actively promoted these schools achievements through the press and through television releases as well as on social media in addition we visited all three School schools to serve a light breakfast to the school staff and personally share their framed letter from the Virginia school board last week this accomplishment really tells us that uh our parents our families they're the students first teachers are collaborating with school staff and they really have a rock solid commitment and played a crucial role in their remarkable success so in a minute I'm going to uh have our uh the three schools represented come down to the front we have a plaque uh that they can commemorate this uh success back at their school and so I'm going to call them down to come down now and uh uh Dr Dunn

017will get a photo and I'm going to ask uh Dr Hayes to help me out with it as our assistant sup for instruction and uh I'm going to ask them to also come around and shake hands with the board so please join me in congratulating the staff and their students and families for their outstanding [Applause] [Music] accomplishments thank guys what do we do with that I congratulations congratulations conratulations congratulations congratulations [Music] laul where did we put you you have to tell me what year it was and I it it'll come back to me thank you all so this is uh this is a spotlight so it's an opportunity for the board if you have any questions for [Music] staff explain a little bit what what are the criteria for getting the Exemplar Awards or is

018that to Dr H well I could also if I wanted to I could also ask Dr mofin but the the essence of it is is they have to out they have to um show significant progress in closing achievement gaps on all the uh so assessments they they also have several other quality indicators uh including uh chronic absenteeism and other measurements that they have to far exceed um all the other schools in in Virginia and so really just all across the board they have to be at the top to to win these Awards I would point out that um with particularly with the high schools there were just three schools in Virginia with graduating classes that were recognized for this award and they're the same ones that you know the other two are the same you

019always hear about Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax and which is highly selective and um Green Run Collegiate which is a highly selective Charter School in Virginia Beach and as you know the lab school students put in their application by simply saying I would like to attend the school and then it's a random selection of students so it's really a cross-section of our whole community at the school and so for the school to be able to compete at that high level with these these other schools that select their students um really says something about the type of teaching and learning that goes on at the school but they have to exceed in all all the categories that you look at for accreditation they have to be far and above to to win this award there's

020a second tier uh called continuous Improvement schools where they are making progress we didn't have any schools in that tier um you we'd like to see all of our schools getting into the second and first tier as we move forward Dr mlen did you have anything to add no I think you nailed it okay thanks I'd love for you to share kind of the most important strategy each of you used um in closing the achievement Gap what you feel what you feel was the most important in your school BL that year so I will just say um for us at at Ivy um it's really about working together as a team um Laura is uh an amazing assistant principal we work really cohesively together but what's really important is that we collaborate with all of

021the teams at our school um we meet you know periodically with our resource team so we really try to focus and hone in on special education um we're looking at our like with our tdt and trying to use her expertise um and really just looking from a strengths asset lens for students but also for staff so again I'll little I'll add to that a little bit it really is the collaboration in the direct and indirect collaboration of everybody in our school system that really impacts it comes from our our families our students our bus drivers the cafeteria everybody who plays rolling aart and one of the biggest impacts for us is during our PLC work that we do really looking at learning intentions and success criteria and responding to students needs and wants with an

022asset best lens and just really putting our effort forth to make a difference for them socially emotionally and academically thank you all of the above uh and I think the you know we we really try to focus on the student experience uh you know beyond traditional academic measures and and metrics and just think about what what it means to be a Learner in a community and and really try to design school and learning experience around those uh and then focus on the same thing for at the teacher level too what what makes the teaching experience uh pleasurable and creative and um and that's that sort of thing so um yeah that's thank you Chad congratulations again yeah thank you thank you next we have public comment and I'll hand the gabble to you Dr berin

023thank you chair we welcome public import at Schoolboard meetings to sign up to speak during the public comment period you can do it in several ways online sign up is available from 9:00 a.m. on Mon on Monday of the meeting week until 2: p.m. on the meeting Day by phone call the school board clerk's office at 4347 972 4055 to sign up until 2: p.m on the meeting day and in person that is what the clerk just handed me um sign up meeting is available from 6:00 p.m. until the public comment period for in-person meetings only please note that the public comment is not received at a special board meeting unless specified by the agenda each speaker will have 3 minutes to speak I'm just doing quick notes so we have so we have 15

024speakers today I'm going to pause for yep so two minutes I'm just I am just checking to make sure we are all so um generally we give three minutes but because with the addition of what the clerk just handed me we have 15 speakers eight who signed up online and uh and one two three four five six seven who signed up uh right away um we will only have two minutes and I'm just going to make sure all my board is we're all so we is in agreement with that that's okay um we will need we will be resetting the uh timer those who do not have the opportunity to speak at a particular meeting May sign up to speak at subsequent meetings and or may submit written comments for the school board's consideration speakers

025should State their name address or voting district address comments to the full School Board limit comments to Schoolboard governance or School Division operations provide written statements and supporting material to the clerk the board the school board will use a timer to track each speaker's time the speakers are asked to wrap up their comments by the end of the two-minute Mark and the mic will turn off at the end of those two minutes to maintain respect please refrain from clapping or other audible forms of support you may raise your hand instead debate with the school board is not allowed the projection system is for staff presentations only Madam chairman on your website says you don't drop it to 2 minutes until you have 19 [Music] people could you please check that on our sign up where

026you sign up to speak it's 14 I just saw it this morning thank you I'm gonna so let's readjust the timer again Miss Thompson thank you I'm going to I'm I'm going to pause just to confirm so we with our lawyer so we're all in agreement if that's okay thank you for bringing that up thank you for your patience I can't hear it not my sign ADV signed up I believe Dr confirming the names or not duplicated to read them there is a duplicate and a couple people said they signed up online and then didn't have their name okay but you signed up in person here okay 14 um I'm going to read the names real quick of who signed up and if you if your name is not on there and you wanted to

027speak we're going to let you add it just because there was want me read it Miss Filman everyone who signed up online is on the sheet yeah so we have a duplicate so chair a um as you know the board recently amended the rules and operating procedures for public comment under the new new procedures when there are more than when there are 14 or more commenters the time for each commenter is two minutes okay that's what's also on the hard copy of the signup sheet correct and I just double check to the website as well to make sure no so actually we're 13 you haven't change it on your website I just checked the website sir and it says 14 so she didn't check the actually I'm going to so I have just rechecked all

028of the names there are three names that signed up online and also signed up on this piece of paper so with that we are under 14 every speaker will have three minutes those who have already signed up and Miss Thompson can you please re just the clock for 3 minutes yep I'm and I would ask that if people have comments they raise their hand and not just Shout at the school board please I'm going to read the names so you are ready Barbara Fitzgerald Paul kale Dr Randy Fitzgerald Leslie ratton that's a JB hurt Steph Davis Christy Taylor Kate nemt Lori bagera Joel Hamilton Bruce woodzell then there are three duplicates chrisy Taylor Leslie ratton Steph Davis I'm crossing those out and then Adam nemit I will call the first three you will have three

029minutes the mic will end when the three minutes are up Barbara Fitzgerald Paul kale Dr Randy fritzgerald please approach good evening pull the mic up closer to you in a civilized society one assumes that when mistakes are made mistakes are corrected one assumes that amid hundreds of school renamings across this nation mistakes are being made and sure enough mistakes have been made here in Alamar County including the one I'm here to talk to you about the removal of Ben hurt's name from agna hert elementary there are people here tonight who care a lot about the name of that school I don't care one bit about the name of agner hurt I care about Mr ht's good name and if he was honored by the naming then he has been Dishonored by your renaming all of

030us who knew and appreciated Mr hurt for who and what he was want you to know you are wrong an apology as in order my husband and I along with 127 members of an alumni group were told when we first got onto this a month and a half ago that you were inrent and wouldn't want to hear the truth nevertheless we have done all the research your renaming committee failed to do you accused Mr hurt implicitly of racism based on five photos and two-year books published during his three decades as principal so we brought before this board the yearbook advisor for 22 of those years who testified Mr herd had never seen one of those yearbooks before publication you said well he had oversight and he failed to oversee but we found his oversight was

031very limited we found that freedom of the press and speech do extend to high school Publications and we found that Mr her was following standard procedure in allowing his senior editors to do the editing you said Ben hert was a member of the Lions Club that sponsored minstral shows so he was Guilty By Association then guilty too were his associates it's presidents Carter Bush Reagan and Ford all Lions Club members you said he approved menal shows in the school auditorium after hours but we found an old employee from the School Board office downtown who said it was a school board that had to approve use of the auditorium for outside groups not been hurt you said he allowed a picture of a student with a swas sticker armband but Mr hurt was a proud vet

032of World War II who spent as much time in the war as our country did 1941 through 45 from Africa to anio Rose to Sergeant Major the highest rank and enlisted army man could reach benart did not see those yearbooks he did not put on blackface he did not leas the auditorium for minstral shows we don't know if he ever even went to a minstral show your decision is based on destructive speculation with a modest amount of research Dr Randy Fitz found 20 efforts Mr hurt made to achieve a smooth and peaceful integration in 1963 at alal high school this at a time when white parents were clamoring for his hide for enforcing the national law when his black students were Beyond upset at having their school barely shut down when M hurt was getting

033grief in all directions and doing a fantastic job in pioneering educa integration in the process final word your your time for public comment is over to quote a famous quote have please vacate the podium for the next speaker or the meeting so the meeting May proceed thank you thank you Paul Cole Paul excuse me Paul kale I apologize sir my name is Paul kale my sister Suzanne would be here we were here five and a half years ago uh but she can't travel from Florida for 3 minutes I believe the purpose of changing the names of schools is basically a political action frought with limited knowledge of the past and an uneducated mindset concerning the whole picture it undermines the value of the decision makers of the past it undermines the hard work and accomplishments

034of yester Year's leaders it does absolutely nothing to improve the quality of the educational process of the children of Alba Mar County Mr Benjamin hurt principal almore high school for 30 years touched the lives and made an extraordinary difference in the educational success of more students than any of us in this room can imagine the multitudes that he encouraged and the academic Avenues he opened for students needing help a helping hand and little guidance is incomprehensible yes he knew each alaama high school students name which is extraordinary but he continued to remember and follow each one as they grew up and became adults had children and grandchildren of their own he truly cared he did not see color he did see potential he saw a child struggle and hardships he understood and he offered the

035help he used every ounce of his energy to encourage and open doors for each child he had contact with and his efforts of personally reaching out to others continued for his entire life his exemplary life could well be a model for all of us here but I doubt that few of us would find it possible to achieve I know about character I know about the character and achievements of Mr HT because I had the privilege of being not just a student not just an acquaintance not just a casual Observer our families were friends we went to the same church we ate meals together in his home in ours we vacationed together we fished together my sister Suzanne and my parents went to his wedding he was the boss when I returned to alal high school

036for 5 years as a teacher and the counselor he followed with interest the twist and turns of my life just as he did everyone's Mr benhur was truly a remarkable genuine human being you have just chosen to be smch and take down the name of his amazing of this amazing educator and fouryear Veteran of the of the World War II I believe this gentleman accomplished more for the children of Alamar County than any of you on the school board or any of us in this room combined God help us all and I just have one question final question some of you I remember from five years ago and I just wonder how do you sleep at night thank you Mr Dr Randy [Music] Fitzgerald uh good evening um the comments earlier about um Mr har

037being um a racist and uh a patently ridiculous I knew him for 50 years uh he encouraged me at all times uh in my teaching career which included a couple of historically black universities and when he uh knew that I was retiring he asked me what will you do now to help Virginia Union they did so much for you and uh I thought well I haven't been doing much of anything uh but he said you need to do that and you need to uh keep in touch with your former students and I did that I did a little research uh you guys didn't do any uh to see what actually happened in those times of desegregation Mr hurt and Mr kale Paul Kale's father uh were Pioneers while schools were closing all around them they

038managed to keep albam Marl open in fact they worked to get racist members of the board off so that they could proceed with the plan to integrate they integrated two years well before other schools were doing it at a time when schools were closing down they stayed open some of the things he did before the students even came he went over to Burley he talked to the principal he talked to students he went to uh an assembly when he got back to Alam Mar he had his own assembly which he told the students what things would be like and how they should not uh be anything but warm and welcoming and they were uh in the yearbook that your uh investigator turned up pictures that were Unbecoming to you uh there's also a picture of

039three young men uh two black kids and a white kid in the Middle with their arms around one another you failed to mention that particular picture the yearbook itself praised Mr her for what he had done to safely integrate the school when the students got there he added positions on the student government positions on the cheerleading squad which he filled with black students Mr Hart and Mr kale were Pioneers they're some ones to be looked up to not someone to suggest that they were racist they were anything but racist in fact the word the phrase Dei they were doing that long before this board uh you thought you invented the term but the two of them did what was right back then before there even was a term thank you thank you Dr Fitzgerald your

040time has expired the next three Leslie retan JB hurt Steph Davis good evening could we get those numbers larger and more ominous please I understand that this meeting might be a final determination for bus driver uh Lori burja in determining whether she gets to keep her job I can't speak to any details regarding the incident that led to her current situation I can only speak to what I do know about Lori and that's what I came to talk to you about today Lori burga is the most dedicated bus driver I've ever known to say that she takes her job seriously is a massive understatement Lori who loves the children who ride her bus like family knows the profound impact that someone like her can choose to have on a child when I was a student

041I had non- relationships with several of my bus drivers not knowing their names or anything about them and vice versa but Lori chooses to learn their names and talk to them offers hugs and conversation she plays music for them brings treats and celebrates Milestones with her kids dozens of children start their day in a happier brighter place after being delivered to school by her she also shows a Warmness to parents that I'm unaccustomed to receiving from my child's bus driver she shows Grace and she never casts judgment on a parent who may be a minute lead to the bus stop making sure they know how to contact her in case there's ever an issue in the future and she loves her kids the day after Maggie Kaufman died a group of us neighbors mourned quietly

042outside the Kaufman's house Lori showed up and almost collapsed out of her vehicle from sorrow she had also suffered a major loss one of her very favorite students she grieved with us and the other children on her and Lane that Day greeting Maggie's grandparents as they arrived I follow job openings within acps with some regularity and I have noticed was said satisfaction that starting wages for bus drivers have increased dramatically over the past couple of years and I think this is terrific school bus drivers are unsung heroes they carry our most precious cargo I myself have considered if I have it in me to drive a school bus but today's wages much more generous than they've ever been are still not enough to attract me to this job in other words I don't know how

043much you'd have to pay me to drive a school bus but no current offering is enough we have a critical bus driver shortage right now and we also have Lori burga a compassionate kind professional driver who wants to do the job please let Lori do the job thank you thank you uh JB hert next was I wrong apologies can no you go you go hi my name is JB hert I'm uh in the White Hall District of Bal County when Matt hos and Karen Waters initially met with me to inform me that they had already made their decision to recommend taking my dad's name off agnor hert Elementary School I asked Karen about the Merryweather Lewis renaming process actually Dr Kaiser was at that meeting with us as well uh I'd read some things about

044them ignoring the the public um the public comment ignoring the um the results of the committee that had been formed and and so I I actually wanted to hear Karen's side of the story what she told me was at least one member of that committee said that they would have voted differently if they'd known the new information that she' provided them based on her research after their vote that's the case here as well uh I hope you all had the chance to read the research conducted by Barb and Dr Randy Fitzgerald that they've reviewed some tonight that not not only refutes your the her findings Karen's findings but also provides additional instances and examples of my dad and Mr kale helping to advance peaceful integration in almaral County the work done by the fitzgeralds in

045addition to the multitude of testimonials you've heard in the past few months have shown that the research that went into Karen and Matt's recommendation was subpar and woefully incomplete everyone who knew my father Ben F hert was already aware of that now you all are aware of it too but here's the thing it's okay to change your mind on an issue that's what reasonable people do that's what rational people do any one of you can make a motion tonight to change course on this Matt and Karen you can certainly change your recommendations what kind of example are we setting for the Youth who are the focus of what we should be about you made a decision based on initial information that has been shown to be inaccurate at best lialis at worst you now have

046more more comprehensive information on this you should reconsider your decision that's the example you can set for the students being able to change your mind now that you have a more complete picture of who my father was and his legacy at alal high school and what a legacy the what an impact had a bit of an ephany some time ago what an impact my parents had on so many people you guys have heard this over the last few months um teachers students parents the values that he modeled has shaped Generations in alal County realize how blessed I am to have been raised by by my parents the folks who knew him are aware of that honestly feel bad for the people that didn't know him I feel I feel sorry for you guys um we

047will know every student it's part of your mission keep striving for that standard my dad did it for 30 years at Alam Marl and and and really until this passing I I hope you guys are able to live up to the standard that he modeled for those 30 years and um thank you thank you Mr hurt Steph Davis hi there I'm Steph Davis and a resident of Alamar County I have two children that are thriving in abam maral County Public Schools and I thank you for all that you're doing to make that possible I'm here today to speak on the character of Miss Lori baa a beloved member of our community my children had um the the privilege of briefly riding on her bus during the chaoticness of the pandemic and she loved them like

048she loves the children that she has been taking back and forth to school every day for years not only did she love them she loved us her bus went by my house every day even after my kids weren't on it with a friendly smile and a wave and she goes way above and beyond the call of a bus driver to support and encourage our children she attends their talent shows and brings them a wonderful flower as they finish their performances she is just a really remarkable human and I know that you all are very reasonable people and you I the the burdensome bus driver shortage I can it's I know we we get the messages it's a big deal and it just makes sense that someone who loves her job as much as Miss Lori

049does who the children love as much as they love Miss Lori uh it just makes good sense that she would be back at her back at her post going by my house with a load of wonderful children it just makes sense that she should be back on our acps buses thank you thank you the next three speakers Christy Taylor Kate nemt Lori burga Christy Taylor I'm a parent of four children products of Al County Public Schools uh all four have attended bur Elementary at some point and my oldest just graduated from Community lab school um great school I credit them with her receiving a full academic scholarship to the prestigious um accelerated Masters in engineering program at RIT uh education is very important to our family I'm also uh an adopted parent so one of

050my children is white two are black and one is biracial and we have a very different experience based on our complexion in this County uh this year has been notably challenging at Murray it's been a fantastic place for my family up until then I actually moved from a house on one street to a house two streets down just to stay in this District in that school system and to stay on Miss Lor's bus uh folks here are going to speak to miss Lor's character I'm not going to focus as much of my time on that because I think it speaks for itself uh my concern is uh relating more to a due process and root cause as someone with a unique lens on this situation um in the context of five recent complaints involving parents

051at Murray Elementary School for events that have happened this year with three of those being race-based I think that her termination has to be reconsidered in the lens of unconscious bias and structural racism Miss Lori was set up for failure similarly to how my 7-year-old daughter was when she was threatened with suspension for playing with a Rubik's Cube um meanwhile a child who strangled another child in her classroom who was notably white did not receive significant discipline at all um just along these lines I think Miss lorri has been set up for failure there were other adults present on the bus that day it is notable that they are white and have not gone through the same process that she has so regardless of her character I hope that this board will reconsider what has

052happened under a lens of this information and really question are we treating our kids and are we treating our adults of color fairly or do we let implicit unconscious and covert biases affect the decisions we making thank you thank you Kate nemit hi good evening my name is Caitlyn NT I'm I'm going to seed my time to my husband Adam NT because I'm in the process of losing my voice so he speaks on behalf of me and my two children who are um Murray Elementary School children hi my name is Adam N Sam mil district and I'm the father of two acps students at VL Murray Elementary Jack a rising fifth grader Rose Rising second grader here to offer for my full support to bus driver Lori BGA who's been the primary driver on our

053peacock Hill bus route 23 since my kids started at Murray um my secondhand understanding is that she's currently on suspension uh for an event related to a trip where kids were misbehaving and uh acting dangerously she pulled over to address the situation I can't speak there to uh the specifics I wasn't there but I have full and complete faith that whatever Miss Lori did was appropriate for the situation perhaps there's a learning experience in here somewhere but she's only ever impressed us with her conduct safety compassion and care for our kids and I would implore the board to reinstate her as soon as humanly possible while the profession of school bus driver never gets as much credit or respect as it should we Marvel at what Miss Lori manages on a daily basis and how

054she does it all with a smile on her face and a hug for every student she's also much more than a bus driver to all the parents and students in our neighborhood she's an integral member of the community she regularly hosts a back to school party for the kids at our neighborhood playground nobody asks her to do this she simply loves the kids and it's a way for her to connect and meet the new Elementary School students who are maybe nervous about riding the bus for the first time she also regularly attends our kids extracurriculars and after school events she comes to the Murray talent show and gives every child a rose she just came to my kids Lemonade Stand two weekends ago uh she is an acps adult that my kids unequivocally love trust

055and respect and that's not something I say lightly since the recent and Unexpected death of my daughter's first grade friend and our neighbor Maggie Kaufman who also rode our bus I believe that Miss Lori has been deeply impacted by Maggie's death we've all been reeling from this news and how to guide our children through it and how to support her parents through this devastating time Miss Lori is a vital Touchstone for our kids and neighbors and we as parents uh um and our kids desperate miss seeing her every morning and afternoon it's yet another uh abnormal reminder that something major has changed and it's especially poor timing that Miss Lori suspension occurred at this moment when we kind of need her most I'm happy to provide whatever other support for her I know it's been

056a challenge to hire uh bus drivers I just got a text inviting me to a acps bus driver job fair I have a great candidate for you in Miss Lori bayera she's not only good she is the best and would be devastating to lose her both from the County roster and from our kidss daily lives thank you thank you Lori BGA and if I am mispronouncing your name please correct me when you step to the podium thank you I'm used to that it's barga what you can do with it is fine it's my wish that the board meet with me one on-one because I would like to shed some light on this situation that I truly believe you don't have the details this is so much bigger than the paperwork in front of you and

057I'd like the opportunity if you'll Grant it to me to speak with you oneon-one thank you thank you the next three speakers Joel Hamilton and Bruce woodzell and actually it's just two I'm just going to confirm Christy Taylor was a duplicate Leslie ratton was a duplicate Steph Davis was a duplicate and then Adam neemt you had signed up but it sounds like you you were speaking for your wife so you don't require okay thank you just wanted to clarify that Joel Hamilton this is in regard to Mr hurt um first off this is my first school board meeting I've been in this town for 60 years now and never never been in one of these and I'd like to thank you all for the service you do the national news has lots of Schoolboard troubles

058that clearly are difficult and I presume you have troubles uh there's a reason why Germany has laws against putting up uh statues or public uh memor memorials to Hitler and racism it was our Hitler and I have supported getting rid of the names of US military bases being given to uh traders to the United States who served in the Confederate Army um and so I'm generally in support of the notion that we need to uh remove the traces as much as possible of racism in our country and since I am 81 years old I've seen a lot of casual and also specifically uh focused racism racism when I was young was just absolutely everywhere in White Society um in regard to Mr hurt as we work to eliminate some of the errors and mistakes of

059the past and begin to remove uh known racist uh it's necessary to understand that while we're correcting mistakes we need to correct our own mistakes and I think from what I hear I didn't know Mr hurt uh family members and people I know say he was not a racist he was a very wonderful person um but I think it's necessary to point out that making correcting the mistakes of the past brings with it uh a necessity to begin thinking about correcting our own mistakes and it sounds like this is a mistake to taking Mr her's name off and I would just like to advocate for thinking about that so I hope this is helpful for you good day thank you our last speaker tonight is Bruce woodal good evening thank you for allowing me to

060speak Bruce woodzell I live in the Rio District I was born and raised in this community born in Charlesville raised in Alamar I went to Maryweather Lewis School breaks my heart to know that name is no longer honorable and I went to alar high school entering that school in 19 64 during our moment of silence my thoughts turned to Ben hurt I've never met a more honorable man in my life and you can see from the audiences here tonight that is I think the general consens of this [Music] community I thought your comments were very appropriate let all students come let all students take advantage that's what Mr hurt did we had students come when Burly closed and you will never ever be able to go back and judge him based on what he did

061but that school was 100% able to cover that difficult ground without any violence without any uproar it was a welcome Community I brought some proof tonight I know there's photos in this book that in today's judgment may appear to be inappropriate I can agree but I was one of the students in this book you won't see my picture in some of the photos that today could be interpreted is inappropriate but you've already heard tonight there's a photo right there of a white student between two black students guess who that is that's me that's how well this integration of Almar hus went and how did that happen again it came from Mr her's guidance if I had the ability to have one wish I wish Mr hurt was able to be sitting here tonight and defend

062himself I think it's very inappropriate in our USA Today to go back 30 40 50 years and try to judge someone based on what occurred in that period without a full knowledge of being there and seeing and judging from that point of view I don't know if anyone here knew Mr hurt if you didn't I think it's a very much a grievance to charge him as a racist I think that's offensive to this young man right here and you are saying that word without evidence I hope that you will study this and make the right decision I knew Mr agner thank you sir your time has expired thank you thank you to everyone who shared their viewpoints with us today I'm going to return the gavel to chair aoff yes my Thomas I know I'm

063sorry I'm did not we don't public comment is over well I made a written request but evently too late and I Wasing approach the podium please appro the Pod you we will uh set the clock at 3 minutes just identify yourself and where you're from Roy Thomas for the better part of 35 years I lived in albamar County I'm a native of Charlottesville I now live in waybur after Brown versus Board of Education declared segregated schools unconstitutional in 1954 a racist majority on the Alamar County School Board altered admission policies and used local ordinances Virginia Massive Resistance legislation and lawsuits to prevent the integration of County Schools when their last legal appeal failed and a date for integration was established the school board then banned all clubs Sports and extracurricular activities that fostered social interaction

064between black and white students Ben herd and superintendent Paul kale influenced the Alamar County Board of supervisor ERS to fire the racist on the school board before the start of the new school year the day after the supervisors fired the four segregationists the July 6 1963 Daily Progress reported quote Board of Supervisors chairman John W Billy Williams declared that he had checked with the superintendent of County Schools Paul kale and the principal of alam Marl High School been hurt and had full assurances that in their opinion Athletics and some extracurricular activities should continue close quote Alamar County began integrating public schools for the first time in the fall of 1963 the newly formed School Board rescinded the ban on Sports and clubs the firing of the racist school board members was a pivotal event culminating

065in the full integration of alam Mar County public schools in the fall of 1967 tonight I celebrate the crucial contribution Ben hurt made to the racial integration of Alamar County Public Schools thank you thank you sir that concludes our public comment for tonight uh next on our agenda is a 10-minute break so why don't we come back I can't even see the clock um in 10 minutes 7 we'll come back at 7:46 thank you e e e [Music] my good we're back in session now uh next item on our agenda is presentation on employee engagement all right good evening Schoolboard members Dr hos and members of the community my name is Dan excuse me can can the people who are talking we're back in session now we can't hear the speaker thank [Music] you go

066knock head excuse me we are back in session so can the audience who is who are chatting go out into the lobby thank you all right good evening School board members and Dr HW and members of the Alam maral Community my name is Dan reading I'm with human resources and this evening we're here to talk about Employee Engagement specifically the results of our 2024 Gallup Employee Engagement survey and we're going to tie into that work Human Resources has been doing related to stay interviews with employees as well as exit surveys and exit interviews in our agenda this evening we'll go over how this work aligns to the Strategic plan we'll Define Employee Engagement we'll do uh an overview of our Gallup results for this year and then we'll talk about our process and some of

067the information we've gleaned from our stay interview process we'll talk about exit data Trends and then discuss some of the recommendations and next steps we have based on the information we've rece received so first up how does all of this relate to the Strategic plan of course within our strategic plan Human Resources work is deeply embedded in goal three around Equitable and transformative resources as we're moving out there to support recruit and retain employees that is the basis of the team that's working to achieve the vision and the mission all of that is embedded in Equitable and transformative resources as we work to attract develop and retain our high quality staff and with that um I'm going to turn our presentation over to two amazing members of the HR team Dr Jason Sears who's our

068director of talent and miss Shay Carter schifflet who is our program man manager for retention and diversity equity and inclusion thank you Dan um before I start I just want to uh mention also some of the great work that one of our colleagues uh Dr Sarah Lynn has been working on uh closely with Gallup and um she unfortunately wasn't able to join us here today but I wanted to recognize her work as well Gallup uses uh a nationally normed survey of 12 questions to measure engagement we add to engagement information through exit and stay interview data which is mostly qualitative and provides the stories of our employees to help explain the quantitative measures excuse me the quantitative measurements of Gallup by looking at data informed excuse me by looking at data informed recommendations from Gallup

069Human Resources data and the bellweather report we hope to show a clear path forward to improve acps Employee Engagement Gallup helps us to see that engagement is everyone's responsibility everyone's throughout responsibility throughout the entire division beginning right here with the board through the central office leadership into schools and departments we all have roles and responsibilities each of us as an individual also plays a vital role in staying individually engaged and accountable to all of our teams so we talk a little bit about the uh Gallup q12 engagement data now Gallup provides a variety of data points and comparisons our grand mean score for 2024 is 3.83 this is an increase of .07 from 2023 and an additional increase of 0.02 from our 2022 from excuse me from 2022 showing a larger change in the past

070year than in the prior year um Gallup defines a meaningful change at uh 01 Gallop also maintains other K12 organizations that use engagement survey as a tool compared to the other Gallup K12 organizations we are in the 36th percentile overall which is an increase from the 29th percentile in 2023 Gallup also provides an engagement index showing the relationships among engaged not engaged or neutral and actively disengaged employees currently our ratio is 2.92 engaged employees to every one actively disengaged employee which is up from uh 2.36 to one last year gallup's research includes a ratio excuse me gallup's Research indicates a ratio of four 4:1 provides a positive power to draw individuals out of the actively disengaged category last year most of our movement occurred from not engaged to engaged which is positive this is a

071natural progression and with continued Focus we will see greater movement of our staff out of the actively disengaged category these are the 12 Gallup questions set in the Gallup hierarchy notice from the bottom up we work with individual basic needs the individual's contribution to the organiz ation how teamwork is completed and finally at the top how to grow the individual it is important to develop and maintain a strong base and work towards individual growth notice the column to the far right this is gallup's interpretation of what employees need in order to offer higher scores on each question this chart displays acps is 2024 q12 Gallop engagement scores along with the change from 2023 the four questions that CH uh with changes in bold and up upward pointed triangles shows meaningful positive change there are a

072few additional interesting points to me mention While most of our meaningful change is at the top of the pyramid we feel like we need to continue our efforts to meet the basic needs of Employee Engagement our recognition scores have increased and we still have continued to work to do in all of these areas a deeper dive into this score shows a deep division between those who are regular those who regularly regularly receive recognition and those who do not receive that recognition on a regular basis the division's overall satisfaction increased .12 this is an increase of excuse me this isn't one of the 12 indicators but it is very important Gallup reminds us that overall satisfaction for individuals includes how employees perceive their entire work experience so this includes considerations like their commute their compensation the

073actual work they're doing on a regular basis and even their work life balance the Gallup data analysis team that supports Alamar County Public Schools noted that we have employees that are falling in what they call the danger zone and that is employees that are between three and five years of service this is a danger a danger zone for all organizations with a critical and it's also a critical time period for educators you can see that our brand new employees have the highest engagement and it's slightly above our overall grand mean now there is a downward Trend especially between those employees that are in that 3 to 5e uh service and then it rebounds for those employees remaining after their fifth year Galla provides us with four recommendations first they recommend we need to learn from

074the best we have have pockets of schools and divisions with highly engaged employees and it's our job to identify and share those strategies secondly invest in leadership development we need to continue to teach our leaders to also be coaches and incorporate best practice around Employee Engagement next we should create a culture of idea sharing where principles and leaders intentionally seek each other's ideas and opinions and the ideas and opinions of our staff finally we need to watch out for that vulnerable population of employees in that in that 3 to five year uh in that 3 to five year period during the organization right now I'd like to introduce uh miss Shay Carter shifflet to talk about stay interviews and the exit interview process yeah any good evening I'm going to share a little bit about

075the history of State interviews first this is a process that's taken from industry um with a goal of improving employee retention via feedback about what's working and identifying challenges um acps is modeling this practice for other school divisions in Virginia I want to note that Dr Sarah Lynn and I had the opportunity to share about our process in alar county in March of 2024 at the vaspa Virginia Association of school Personnel conference where there is only one other School Division that we know of who is trying to get started with this process research on best practices for State interview have told us that they should be conducted within three and 8 months of a new hire and closer to the start of the new school year acps begins our process in October it is 100%

076voluntary and confidential the process for stay interviews include planning and scheduling interviews sessions conducting 30 minute confidential interviews 101 which is a shift from the previous year where we offered it to focus groups then the data is coded using 42 themes and um while protecting the anonymity of all of the participants we are able to summarize the data for the development of reports and presentations the product of stay interviews is qualitative over the past two years acps received large amounts of quantitative data such as Gallup exit surveys PEC data data in the form of numbers percents and quartiles this feedback information can help tell the story of these numeric findings as you can see in 2023 there were 137 participants in 2024 there were participants over the course of two years we maintained the process

077and did not change anything we used the same nine questions in both years and we coded um all of the frequencies mentioned using the same 42 categories in 2023 uh we had 1,220 statements collect Ed in 2024 we had 9919 and that reduction was expected with the slight decrease of participants but overall we had about 5% of our division give or take participate and stay interviews so as I mentioned there are 42 categories and this is just a small sample of the two years this data is coded by the number of times a theme is mentioned this data tells us that there are a lot of positives it's not just negative data and we can see the number of positive comments have remained high in addition this data can also help us focus on areas

078to grow when we look at some of our themes that have remained higher and so if you remember from the previous bar graph I just showed you with those themes that's coded I wanted to share some words IR ly from the participants to help you see how multiple things can be in a comment first I really have enjoyed working here I've made lifelong friends here at acps my experience has made me have impact at a national level I would have never thought my capacity would have grown as much but acps needs to commit to the retention of their black teachers kids who have never seen a black educator are asking if I'm someone's parent never experienced ing having a black educator K through 12 that was a participant from 2023 so many positive things about

079working here we have a lot of resources and really do a lot to try to support staff sometimes I wish we could do more efficient times I felt frustrated with open positions on the team but at the same time I feel supported by district and supervisors and it's really hard to get staff and meet everyone's need we need more concrete training for ta that teaches how to do the instruction and support the children also a participant from 2023 so as you can see um as an example of these comments they can be coded for multiple themes because they touch on so many facets of our work now I want to share a little bit about exit data Trends the offboarding process um is conducted immediately upon a person's decision to lead the division uh surveys

080and interviews are offered but they are not always taken by employees within 48 Hours staff receive an on offboarding email which contains information around benefits and applic applicable continuation rights as well as the acps exit survey link and the ability to schedule a 30 minute confidential 10one exit interview with me prior to this new process AC CPS collected and sent a batch of surveys in June roughly July to all staff all staff members that left for that year the survey only went to licens staff and collected minimum data such as gender race and it allowed them the option to choose three reasons for leaving this data could be skewed based off of their choices the re the choices listed go are in the Box around um reasons listed for leaving this year the process has

081expanded this survey now goes to all staff and yes we do collect optional demographic information such as gender race and ethnicity but we are also now monitoring staff exiting by departments and roles when survey participants choose a reason for leaving that choice branches out to a subset of questions which allow us to get more details around their reason for leaving so if they select dis satisfaction with policies and practices a five five separate choices will Branch out and allow them to choose the category that best helps us understand and get a little more details this gets us better data and what's also most important about the new process is it allows for the space um for us to collect anecdotal feedback from them so it is not just multiple choice this year we also worked

082really hard to design the acps exit survey to mirror elements of the Gallup engagement survey over times over time Trends should be able to help us start to predict exits as you can see on the chart the blue dot represents the average rating one being strongly disagree and five strongly agree answered by staff in the acps exit survey the yellow dot represents the average rating answered by staff in the Gallup survey the longer the line distance between the two dots tells us there is more difference um between the exit and the Gallup responses you can see two questions with significant differences between the average of the exit survey and Gallup the acps Mission and recognition however the Green Dot represents where the average rating for both the acps exit survey and Gallup survey are the

083same interestingly despite the difference in averages for most of the questions satisfaction with acps is the exact same for the exit and Gallup survey additional questions on the acps exit survey again align thematically with gallup's recommendations this data represents the average of rating scores one strongly disagree and five strongly agree for each of the questions so for example when we look at communication it is at the top of the chart because it because it is listed as our lowest rating at 2.9 on the bottom side of this chart staff do feel they that they are able to embrace their true identity with that bar being our highest rating at 4.13 when we think about overall satisfaction and employee willingness to return to acps the yellow rectangle for example tells us that staff are genuinely satisfied

084and while 3.71 is closer to the top of the rating scale and at the bottom of the chart it is not our our highest rating therefore there is room to grow in conclusion the acps stay in exit survey data along with Gallup survey results suggests that if we focus our efforts around improving communication developing leadership and offering recognition we can improve Employee Engagement thank you thank you shay uh I just wanted to also give you some uh recommendations from Human Resources uh based on the engagement data we are seeing in stay interviews and exit interviews Human Resources recommendations would focus on four general areas those four areas are aligned with both uh some of our Gallup and bellweather Report recommendations as well first recommendation is communication should in should be integrated throughout all levels all

085departments and all schools this consistent two-way communication the planning of and execution of that communication promotes transparency value and Trust throughout the district the second recommendation we would have is we we should continue to support our leaders to ensure they can con excuse me they can support all of our employees our principles and department leaders play an important role in the development of all of our staff we should continue to develop the skills of our leaders to ensure they support the professional growth of the teams they [Music] lead our third recommendation is while the Department of Instruction oversees the development of adult learning Human Resources recommends the expansion of our Workforce Development programming expanding Workforce Development allows us to expand the professional capacities of all of our staff further ensuring our mission for high quality

086learning for all students finally as the board and Dr ha H have supported over several years we recommend the continued focus of recruiting and retaining a diverse staff Human Resources Works Human Resources work around Affinity groups apprenticeships and the tops program increases our ability to attract and develop and retain the highest quality staff while continuing to promote diversity thank you so much do any my colleagues have questions do okay all right I can go first um I do have a couple of questions first of all thank you for this um first with regards to the exit interviews you gave um some statistics um I'm curious you talked about the new process for exit interviews how does that compare two years past as far as are we seeing an increase in the number of surveys or

087um interviews completed from prior years with the new process so I'll just go back this was the prior year process it was a um survey that was sent out we also did um a survey monkey that was sent out and as you can see just thinking about last year which is I know we just ended a school year but the year before that right there were um 236 classified teachers that includes administrators and classroom teachers that receiv received the survey 120% I mean 120 participants filled that out however when I came on board in November I've enhanced the process and created a um survey that is included in their offboarding term from January until Monday there were 272 classified staff so that number has already increased for just 6 months compared to um the number

088of classroom teachers that left last year I'm also tracking when I send them who opens their emails 78 staff members that left open them which means about 29% of them are at least given us the time of reading it um the exit survey is a link that's embedded in the offboarding package that they get 58 participants since January have filled that out and actually I wrote that down because I had some other terms since Monday we're actually at about 29% but as of the time I created this 21% of our staff that exited had completed the exit survey and then the number of exit interviews is at 12 which actually it's 15 cuz I did some others um so at that time it it was at 4% and so I would say from last year

089to this year the process not only increased the way that the detail and information that we collect it expanded to all of the employees within our district it is more um disaggregated based on by by Department um and it allows both the survey and the interview allows them to have a voice in the process to really give us some feedback around our working environment and and if I could just jump in um and I I just want to thank Shay for the work that she and the others are doing around this the gathering information around Exit interviews is something that has been a challenge at best over the years and that was actually one of the pieces that was the impetus for starting the stay interviews as well um because we know by the time

090they exit they've already made that decision and so uh really making uh getting the opportunity to hear why people stay can really help us with retention by looking at themes and doing something about what it is that we're seeing I do think that I I think about the stay interviews the one-on-one pieces the the trust that is built in through those excuse me um and I think that over time more and more people may be more open and willing to do an exit interview when because of the the framework that and the foundation that's been set through the uh stay interviews I guess that leads to my next question then using the data and the anecdotal um evidence that you're getting from stay and exit interviews what specific things have we changed um based on

091that information um I want to make sure that we're actually using the data that we're getting and the feedback that we're getting um through this process I was just going to point out that um I spoke about the 42 different categories that we coded we really celebrated um a change based off a feedback we got on the use of Kronos um we saw that um the number of frequencies mentioned for Kronos went down to zero the number of frequencies mentioned around our subs and what they were experiencing or teachers who were needing Subs were experiencing also decrease dramatically and so we're using that um information generating reports that gives that feedback to the necessary departments or roles and then sometimes the feedback in the feedback they tell us how we can improve the working environment

092yeah just to just to add to that Kronos um our H hris Team hris sorry our HRS team uh put together uh in-person trainings and uh and they also had some um kind of just availability so if folks had questions around Kronos or timekeeping they were just available so for uh for our timekeepers and folks like that so that was really uh something that they wanted to do but it was um based on based on some of this information that we saw we like all right well we definitely need to start doing something differently so that's kind of just one of the opportunities we've had to to reflect on that data and then put something in place yeah definitely um and I guess that this my last question kind of sort of relates to that

093um it has more to do with the information from the beginning of the presentation um how are you digging into the findings more um let's say on um employee recognition like if we see that you know that's low or that you know they value that but they don't feel like they're being recognized um how are we like going back and talking to the staff talking to the employees are we asking them like what is it that you know how would you feel recognize what is it that you see value you know um taking that information a step further I guess I'm G I'm going to give it a shot but but Dan will also but so I I really see that as this balance between having the information from from Gallop uh and then taking

094that information that the stories behind that information from uh stay interviews um we've made uh some I believe some U strong strides at specifically recognition um but I for me it is are we listening to our staff members uh when they tell us I I am not recognized so it's how are we recognizing folks are we recognized in a in recognizing them in a way that is uh impactful to them um so we've we've put together additional know we we've had goals for our department around recognition so continuing to to see those places where we need growth um and being impactful and mindful to uh talk to our um principles and our department leaders about doing something different um taking the time and being intentional around that work so when we see um uh some

095of those some of those scores we want to to focus on it's then making that Focus putting that plan in place and then and kind of hope you know not hoping but working toward working toward doing better and and hoping that we'll see those changes in the next administration of that Gallup data um what Jason said but also I think in a lot of our work with Gallup we are highlighting schools and departments where major changes positive changes have occurred um a great example is one school that saw significant growth especially on the recognition indicator the principal shared what she had done over the course of the year what what shift had she made she made a shift of actually asking staff on the back to school questionnaire how do you like to be recognized

096some people love being called up in front of the school board and and given a plaque some people thrive on that some people hate that they would much rather have a Post-It note left on their desk that they find at the end of the day they smile and they keep keep it and that lets them know I did something really great and important it's going to be the sharing of those strategies that really moved the needle in individual schools and departments that I think really moves the division as a whole if I could just do a little anecdotal piece as well um I'm thinking of a a principal who last year when we saw the scores was devastated um around the recognition one because in their school she felt that that was where they had

097really put a lot of efforts and that type of thing and uh what they did is they unpacked this at the beginning of the school year and they really start and throughout the year it's not just a oneandone type of thing but really try to focus on so what does recognition mean so it they it was a step further than the do I how do I like recognition and by having that conversation this was a school also in this area in particular where we saw some significant gains this year as well well and I think it comes back to you know the slide that talks about communication and being a shortcoming you know it's following through on that um on the back end of stuff too and um so this was great thank you so

098much I'm add one more additional anecdotal piece um uh for our for our leader Dan uh we started um at the beginning of each uh of our department departmental meetings you know when we start talking about being intentional about things like recognition he has marked off some time and we know it's coming so now I start thinking about all right now who can I recognize so it's just opportunities for us to uh to thank our our co-workers it doesn't have to be just the folks on our team but anyone in our department so you know there are times when I'm like oh gosh I that I got to remember that for you know for department meeting and that means a lot and you know actually I got recognized uh today um but uh which is

099it's just it's just so cool um that the things that you normally do um you don't think about but then it you think about how impactful it is so yeah definitely yeah thank you yeah um I know you guys have all spent a ton of time on this data so I'm G to I kind of usually we'll ask three questions right um what excited you most you can do this collectively however you want to do it or or um what concerned you the most and what surprised you the most so what excited you the most what concerned you the most and what surprised you the most I'll jump in about the excitement um and for for me it's really uh the the work that we're doing around stay interviews um one of the things that

100I I initially thought would uh occur is that um we would just hear some of those negative things um that I'm angry about this I'm upset about this but you know I I wish everybody could hear those uh the stay interviews because they are they're they're very powerful and they also are very positive um and sometimes when we are listening to folks that are telling us we're first of all we're giving them the opportunity to to to talk to us about why it is they enjoy working here why it is they are staying here um and no place is perfect and um our staff have answers you know they come with some things that are challenges to them um and it's exciting to hear not only their challenges but they've thought about those uh the

101challenges and they are coming with answers so we're having the opportunity to to really focus on what we can do to to again replicate those things that are great and the things that we don't uh we're we're not necessarily um uh right next to those folks are coming to us that now that we're giving them this platform uh they're coming to us with answers that often times we haven't even thought about that um so I'm excited every time I I get to hear from Sarah and Shay about uh things that they've um heard about their uh about their U stay interviews so thank you all right oh I'm going to go with excited as well I guess what really excited me was um I had it then I lost it what excited me most was

102the process for I did not expect to have such vulnerable moments with people um and I also did not expect to have such powerful feedback um and their trust in us to take that feedback and think about next steps um was really impactful for me and pretty much like led a charge for me well and I just want to say thank you for being one of those TR it takes both sides and that trust that they feel that is so important so thank you yes I I would agree um with what they've shared I think what excites me the most is um ah sorry I'm going to go very fast through these slides um but all three of these data sources our Gallup uh surveys our stay and exit interview process and our bellweather report

103all that data is aligning in terms of what it's telling us and and the directions it's pointing Us in and that's nice because sometimes we do this work and we get this information and it's pointing Us in different directions but all of this is saying the same things communication how we're working as Leaders The Learning for our the adults that work here and and our areas of focus that those things will move us forward that's very exciting to me I'm GNA ask add just one concern uh and it's not really a concern it's it's more of a hope um the the what we're seeing from Gallup I think is um is very powerful when we're adding that to the uh the new exit interview process and being able to to kind of align some of

104that data uh I know the work with Gallup is um uh I'll just say it I I think it's expensive um but I I truly believe that it is uh they are funds that are that can really make real difference in the work that we're doing with our um with our staff and I know it's an expense and I know there are always tough budget uh budget years but I'm concerned that if um if we don't continue getting this information um we would lose some of the the the progress that I think we really are making um I mean I I am uh all for a lot of the work that Gallup does and I know that we will continue that and I'm just concerned that you know when we start looking at uh budgetary

105things that it may be something that um may be tough to continue to do so I am I am hopeful uh that we'll continue to use that information yeah well thank you can I give a surprise yes of course sorry I was surprised that there were not a lot of schools conducting stay interviews but I'm honored that alar County was able to represent in a conference that shared that process with other schools and to be able to continue to partner with them and network um and just being at the Forefront with Dr Sarah Lyn I wish she was here cuz she's so passionate about this work that it radiates on to me um being able to stand next to her and represent falar County when it comes to us leading the work in this industry

106process that's now permeating into education so yeah and they totally work that room they did a phenomenal job they did a great job aming thank you thank you app could you go back to the slide that was showing um the summary of exits uh exits yeah this one okay are those uh PL U things that's listed are they in order in other other words was it dis diss satisfication or dissatisfaction with the quality the highest ranked thing no I'm sorry they are not in order they are just listed so that you can see the category of choices that um our staff members can choose okay those also Branch out to a subset of questions to get us more details okay well with that first one that's listed um did any type of picture emerg in

107other words did maybe um how can I put this did maybe any one supervisor or anything start to appear you know did any problems appear to occur in a certain area um I actually rolled down an example just in case you ask me but I did not use that one um I love allers to know but but so for example um if they selected dissatisfaction with policies and practices the subset of questions will ask them to explain clim by choosing is it policies were inconsistently implemented policies focused on students irregardless of the impact on adults policies often started from a place of good intention however their implementation had unintended negative consequences or policies practices conflict with my beliefs and so then I'm able to disaggregate that like is it a personal conflict is it um

108is is it a dissonance between how it's being implemented is not being consistently implemented across the division um and then that leads us to like recommendations around supporting our leadership to make sure it's consistent okay all right thanks Mr P thank you so much for all this this work and um my only comment is you know I found myself sitting here wondering if um we ever consider the gener ation that the individual who we might be surveying or doing ex interviews or stay interviews do do we take that information uh into account because I I feel like um it's like my generation Graham's generation we we we would um have a different outlook on a lot of things than say the uh kids that are coming to us straight out of college college and we

109didn't pull that information but Gallup also disaggregates the data based off of generations so it does give us the data based um based off on how Millennials answered Baby Boomers um Generation X so it's all it's a wonderful tool that disaggregates the data in many ways I think more and more we're going to have to uh cater to the to the younger folks and I want to make sure that we you know what was good for us might not necessarily be good for those folks thank you um do you have a strategy for getting a higher number of people participating in the stay data and targeting different you know teachers new teach you know whatever I do I believe in allowing the data to talk to you and it'll tell you where to go and

110I think this data has told us which departments to really be explicitly targeting next year and offering again their voluntary one-on-one um confidential interviews this year I did go to certain departments in person um that I just assume may have been a little um needed a little help with technology and so to do the stay interview in person on site uh where they will be comfortable was helpful of course stay interviews go from October to December end of October to December so the par number of participants I got was within that time frame uh we have considered not just being explicitly targeting certain departments opening it to everyone but looking at Gallup data and different data points that can tell us where we really need to make sure voices are being heard and I think

111also just relationships and me honoring their anonymity and creating reports and feedback for you all to be able to have that information while protecting their identity really helps with the credibility of the process do you provide participants with feedback in terms of the overall results in a way yes when we update them about changes that have been made because we've heard your voice in stay interviews that is our way of acknowledging um what we've heard every opportunity we get we're also sharing that data with other departments so for example our benefits Department being able to share that data with benefits and human resources and when they Implement a change they may explain why but they also acknowledge that they heard their voices and stay interviews that I think that's a a great point and uh

112having the opportunity uh you all given us the opportunity to um talk to you about the stay interviews I think what it does is it gives uh those folks that have uh have already um uh conducted stay interviews it it it validates the work that they've done uh but we also what we also hope is that um uh when we do this next year uh folks will begin to see that um oh they are listening to us they are making changes um and and it kind kind of builds that ground swell so um the opportunity to uh present this data to you we hope builds trust for from our staff that they'll continue to um want to do that work and and we'll have more every year just one more question for me um communication

113was at the to-do top of the to-do list that's a big topic I mean Comm who's communicating what to whom and when and how is it stickies on your desk is it understanding School Board policy I mean it's a it's a grab bag that includes everything I it is and Gallup advises of course that communication is an issue in just about every organization they work with that is one thing they hear from employees so it's not surprising we see it there we see it on the stay interview data and we see it on our exit data but without more definition it doesn't have any meaning to me right so one uh you asked somebody asked earlier about actions that had been taken uh one of our teacher advisory committee meetings we brought communication because it

114arose as a major issue from stay interviews as a topic to talk with teachers what what do you not get communication about that you need communication about what mode do you want to get it in so we gathered a lot of feedback about it that was provided uh to the communications team at that time and I know they've digested that and done some things with that yeah I I'm it's still sort of an open box for me I mean it's is it information is it policy is it support is it tools is it recognition yes I I think it's probably all of those things and that and that's what that you know that's the piece right now that we need to unpack um Helen and I we're talking about Justice the other day that it

115is really how do we look at communication both at the division strategic level but also Department of Department school to school and so um this is a huge thing that I think we will really work to unpack and and and just like uh Dr Kaiser said because we because we know that we we struggle with that same uh with that same question uh we're taking the information that we the the quantitative uh quantitative information we're getting from Gallup that's talking about U communication the uh Quant uh qualitative data that we're getting from stay interviews and exit interviews and pulling that together so we can more uh more readily Define that you know U uh Dr kaisen kaisen Dr kaisen and I were just talking to some employees and and the same thing came up we're

116like oh yeah it's communication but each each employee had a kind of a different uh concern so every time we hear that we can uh we can begin to narrow and begin to make some some really solid changes around what we're hearing based on uh both anecdotal and on our state interview information I mean even you could hear the bias and how I even Fred the question it was like what do these people need to know what do our staff rather than probably communication was a lot of your was part of your exit interviews I mean that may be more meaningful to individuals um yes that is one of the things that occur but what I would really go to is the stay interviews with that being a theme that um a trend one of

117the the categories for frequencies of mention but I think that to everyone else's point they Define communication for us at what level and what they need in order to feel acknowledged and heard with changes that they suggest um and so while it's a High theme it still includes positives and feedback to carry forward I I was just going to add on to when you were talking about um getting more um participants in stay interviews I'm hopeful that collective bargaining and working with the aea we can really improve that um and using them as um a partner in getting more uh participants in both of those I think that is a really great opportunity um that's presenting to us next year and hopefully we see those numbers up as well thank you Mr breing can I

118just mention something I learned tonight that I thought was really powerful one of the things that's really impressing me about the HR department is your responsiveness and not just using the interviews to collect data and then kind of roll it into a department Improvement plan and let it get dragged out into the next year it I'm I'm really impressed with the way uh you'll hear something you know mentioning things about our timekeeping system and then just go fix it um I mean that's it sounds like sounds simple but I think one of the things we um as a large organization with a lot of moving Parts it' be like almost like a work order well we heard I heard in this interview that um there's an issue around uh timekeeping with Kronos okay well let's

119put that in the process and sometime next year we'll address it I just think it's amazing to employees when you hear something you go fix it they go into it the next day and it's it's fixed or you've got an answer from them why it can't be fixed or where it came from I've just seen a real cultural shift in our HR department over the last couple years of just it's a problem let's fix it let's not wait till tomorrow tomorrow because we could lose an employee or they could become disengaged and stay um and It ultimately Finds Its way to the kids so I I hadn't thought a lot about that until I heard what you were talking about tonight and I just wanted to acknowledge it thank you thank you thank you all

120thank you next on our agenda is uh office of community engagement Equity education update let's go okay okay oh God got this okay let me do something different I can't see okay now we can open it here we are okay good thank you [Music] good evening chair Acuff and school board members um thank you for the opportunity to provide the office for Community engagement annual update um tonight our agenda includes a brief introduction to discuss how the current culturally responsive teaching or CRT program has evolved over the past 2 years um with alterations to the program program that has emerged as the culturally responsive educator or CR program and the rationale for the equity Education team joining forces with instruction I'm second Dr Russell Carlock Equity Education data scientist will share some initial uh CRT

121program results and recommendations from the recent program evaluation uh which provides insights into some of the shifts that were made to the programming this year as well as set the stage for the work the team will be engaged in for the upcoming school year and moving forward third Miss aana Mitchell director of equity education will discuss the CR programming that was launched this year which is consistent with the feedback from teachers and staff as well as some of the recommendations that Dr karks will present uh this data will be utilized to inform further shifts during the transition to instruction and Beyond as the program expands then the team will shift to policy updates um with Dr Eric ireri director of equity School family and community relations who will provide information regarding the abar or anti-bias

122anti-racist instructional supports and Miss aana Mitchell director of Equity education who will discuss the transgender and gender expansive professional development and student support uh lastly Miss Mitchell will detail the culturally responsive educator or CR program moving forward and show the relationship to the policies um during the July school board meeting um our team will come back to you with updates specific to community engagement so everything we do in acps is centered around our strategic plan learning for all um our vision uh Learners are engaged in authentic challenging and relevant learning experiences uh becoming lifelong contributors and leaders in our Dynamic and diverse Society our mission working together as a team we will end the predictive value of race gender and special capacity for our children's Success Through high quality teaching and Lear learning for all

123we seek to build relationships with families and communities to ensure that every student succeeds and we will know every student our values include Equity Excellence family and community and wellness our goals thriving students affirming and empowering communities and Equitable and transformative resources and although our Equity update tonight touches on all three goals the primary focus will be goal one thriving students and goal two affirming and empowering communities over the last two years the current culturally responsive teaching programming or CRT um has undergone shifts to support our overarching mission and strategic plan directly aligning Equity work with the instructional needs of students and teachers moving forward the CRT program will become the culturally responsive educator program the five Equity Specialists who have been a part of the office for Community engagement will transition to three Equity

124cordinators merging with the Department of Instruction the culturally responsive educator programming will continue to support teachers and staff with obtaining their micr credential and certification this move will Foster a stronger alignment and collaboration between the equity Education team and instruction Equity is a part of every aspect of our work and should be interwoven into the instructional fabric visible within all curricular through our various listening sessions we identified several areas within the programming to adjust based on teacher and staff feedback first teachers voiced a need for more diverse options to access the programming we streamlined the program incorporating paced modules to ease teacher and staff access and provide clear expectations and outcomes second teachers stated the importance of having flexibility when progressing through the program requirements teachers and staff can now determine when and at what

125pace they would like to work on their requirements for micr credentialing and certification and third at the division level Central administrators recognize the need to significantly scale up the program to meet the goal of all acps staff members earning their micro credential by 2026 by making these shifts significantly more teachers and staff will be provided with the necessary support to complete the program setting the division up to meet and exceed the 2026 culturally responsive M micr credentialing goal in addition we heard from teachers about the need at the school level to have more individual coaching support mentoring modeling in the classroom co- teing and team teaching co-planning as well as support within professional learning uh Community meetings at the division level we recognize the need for a team to work collaborative ly to develop division

126Pac and guides as well as quarterly assessments across all content areas centering on Equity with this new structure both the equity coordinators and content coordinators will work together to Ure the tools and resources are aligned with the CR framework to ensure we provide rigorous materials to meet the needs of our diverse Learners that will be infused in lessons and implemented in classroom throughout the division we will be able to increase accountability across the division via the team of coordinators continuously analyzing and monitoring data understanding students performance strengths and areas of growth and communicating this information to the organization in addition division coordinators will serve as a touchpoint and direct link with the instructional coaches to provide division level data insights and strategies to the instructional coach team to inform their work address data with teachers

127and staff and assist with the implementation of school action plans at this time I will turn it over to Dr Russel carlot Equity Education data scientist who will talk more about the preliminary data and recommendations from the recent culturally responsive teaching program evaluation thank you Dr Kaiser and thank you everyone I'm really excited to share the findings uh from this report with you all uh this was a collaborative project between alau County Public Schools the University of Virginia's equity center as well as the school of data science at the University of Virginia uh so when we evaluated program and this was an auspicious time to do so as it begins to make some of these changes the program has been around for about eight years uh it's gone from a voluntary program to a mandatory

128program so this is a a really great time to to look deeply at what has worked in the past uh and what we can continue to improve as we move forward uh so we're going to take a moment just to uh to look carefully at what is the the Improvement plan for uh this program what is the theory of improvement around it so the the theory of improvement is when all acps Educators develop the characteristics of culturally responsive Educators all students will improve in their learning growth and groups for whom the education system historically has not worked will experience accelerated learning compared to their peers providing a foundation for district level transformation to better meet the needs of all students and make meaningful sustained progress towards Equity uh so I'd like all of us to

129just hold that in our mind as we talk through the findings and sort of just compare what we found to what this theory of improvement States uh so our our methods were mixed uh we used quantitative as well as qualitative methods we had 161 surveys uh from uh teachers who had completed the program and were in the classroom teaching last school year 2022 to 2023 we also had 17 semi-structured uh uh interviews with a subset of that 161 uh group of teachers and we had over 9,000 uh so value added growth scores from our students in math and in uh in reading and we'll talk a little bit more about what that value added score is uh this is a really great tool to use for program evaluation because it is longitudinal so what it

130does is it takes all of the students previous so scores in the state of Virginia and then it creates a prediction of what they will score in a particular subject area based on that historical record and then it measures the difference between what they actually scored and what that predicted score was so so another way to put that it's it's a measurement of how much more or less a student learned in a particular school year than we would expect or what they had done historically and this is for fourth through eth grade because that's where we have that that robust uh uh value added score because they're taking those tests every year the the reading and the math tests uh so we'll start with the qualitative data this is what our teachers responded about uh

131the program and uh you can see that overall there was a positive uh experience that that teachers had in the program especially with that question 11 when it talks about analyzing your perspectives and potential biases that could influence your work as an educator this was overwhelmingly the one that uh teachers in both the micr credential as well as the full certification said that this had an impact on them you can see as we go down to improving learning outcomes for my students as only about 2third of our teachers said definitively yes I feel like this program led to improved outcomes for my students and so this brings us to an important finding that we had and a difference between the micr credential and the full certification so if we look at the different experiences that

132teachers reported across those two versions of the program the micr credential and the full certification and I want to be clear that the micr credential as it existed in this data set is not the micro credential we have now one of the the important findings um and one of the changes that's been made to the program is the micr credential now uh requires a a deeper understanding of all three characteristics of cultur responsive teaching not just one and so you can see that there's a big difference and we get to close to 80% of our full certification teachers reporting that yes this program did have a direct impact on my students learning versus only a little bit more than half of our micr credential teachers reporting that uh when we ask teachers to report what

133did they feel like was the most important component of the program for impacting student learning uh they said learning Partnerships with families and Community was the the most important and the second most important was culturally responsive instructional strategies and these were not different across the micr credential and full certification um and then we asked them what were the most important factors for you completing the program and being able to engage with it and apply what you learned from it to your classroom the first most important piece was dedicated time during contract hours they reported in the interviews as well that this is a great program and it takes significant time to really do it well and having that time was really important and there were some differences across our schools in terms of principles who

134use some of their school professional development time on this versus others that didn't and we saw some of that difference in the data set as well um another important support were Equity Specialists that was the number two support reported by teachers and they talked a lot about one-on-one coaching in small group uh PLC type sessions with Equity Specialists as being important for them applying what they learned from this program and we're going to talk a little bit about the quantitative findings so uh what this is a just a a really top level finding is that the full certification had a significant positive meaningful uh relationship to student growth in mathematics and so this was a statistically significant finding our data set included uh both teacher and student demographic variables so we were able to control

135for things like uh a teachers's education level we were also able to control for a teachers experience level and we saw that that was important that more experienced teachers did have larger or higher value added scores for their students than less experienced teachers we also found that effect sizes were larger for students of color when I say effect size it's important to note that this is not an experimental study this is observational so this is not about a causal relationship it's about discussing the magnitude of that relationship between fully certified teachers uh and the learning of their students compared to non-certified teachers and the learning of their students uh these relationships were all true the relationships we found which I'll show you really briefly on the next slide uh were also true in the reading

136data set uh but they were lower in terms of their magnitude so it didn't rise to the level of statistical significance uh so this is just a top level finding of looking at the impact um or the relationship between student learning and the different levels of uh certification important finding across both the reading and the math data set is that the micr credential was indistinguishable from not having a credential at all um in both of those data sets now that doesn't mean that microc credential uh wasn't supportive of teachers teachers reported having a positive relationship um with that program but it wasn't substantial enough to lead to significant outcomes uh for students um and we can I'll give you a brief summary of why that might be at the end and this just uh you

137can go through this on your own time uh this is uh just looking across our different demographic groups what those relationships were for for each of those groups I wanted to pull out just if we could put this into like one student hypothetically what would that mean for one student uh so in the Special Education data set we saw that for math there was a 14o difference in value added score between students who were learning with a noncertified teachers versus students who are learning with certified teachers so just to put that in perspective if you had a student that was out a 90 uh one year and they got to learn with a culturally responsive teacher uh and those associations held true that could mean the difference between them being a little bit below grade

138level to being on grade level um also thinking about the cumulative effect of this so if you just have a one-off of a teacher that has a effect but imagine if you have it year after year after year you can begin to see more substantial differences in student learning uh so quick summary recommendations evidence supports the program's Epic especially for full certification however the micr credential showed much less efficacy indicating that all three of those components may be necessary for us to see those really significant positive uh impacts on student learning um that the these three characteristics of culturally responsive teaching may work synergistically together to uh create the kind of learning experience that we want for our students uh we also saw that teachers were very clear as we move from this being a

139voluntary to more and more of a mandatory in terms of the the people who are coming on board now into the program it's going to be really important to pay attention to what teachers are saying in terms of what they need to complete the program and apply it and adequate time and Equity coaching in their schedules is what they're saying is most important uh and then finally to impact student learning we have to make sure that the family and Community Partnerships are happening and that the application of the new instructional strategies are occurring um as a part of this program as well thank you thank you so where are we now so as you've heard we changed our program this year to the culturally responsive educator program for 2324 and we did restructure there were

140some of the things that I already kind of knew and they were already named like we need to know all three characteristics in order to really see outcomes for students um so we definitely have changed some of the things we're doing by working closer in partnership with our schools we have um thought partners and checkin connects with our administrators and our candidates who are in the program we do co-planning and we provide staff professional learning we use strategic PLC support um during dplc days as well as during the regular school day where Equity Specialists are working directly with plc's at specific schools we support the school and climate family family engagement nights so they go to those family engagement nights and they support the planning of with the teams and the administrators and Equity Specialists

141support the guidance towards credentialing so the restructure looks like a book study as the foundational text so we know that Zetta Hammond's text is the foundation of our culturally responsive teaching program so there is a 10 session no six session uh book study that happens throughout the year of which we I will go through those numbers soon but we have that is the foundation then they move into the microc credentials so it is mandatory to understand the foundational um context of zaretta Hammond's culturally responsive teaching programming and then when they go into the micr credential it is actually just the learning so that is their opportunity to learn how it it is associated with the culturally responsive teaching framework and that is where they start to really apply and start reflecting on the learning ultimately

142we would like to get them to certification so the micr credential does go through all three Chara characteristics and all of the indicators so that they learn about the full 360 view of being a culturally responsive educator but certification now becomes where they're applying it to a problem of practice and actually analyzing how they've made changes based on what they've done so basically it becomes an action research project this year with our new programming we've had 161 Educators to date complete the micr credential or certification which was the highest number that we have had since we've had our program we have 311 Educators who were involved in our culturally responsive um teaching and the Brain book study across School Division and we have 510 people who have recorded progress towards completion um because they do

143not have to do it all in one year they can take one this year one the following year and one the next year and still get to a micro credential as opposed to what they used to have to do which was if they didn't do it all in one year they have to start all over and that was part of the feedback we got of why it was so difficult so we really just broke it up so that once they learn what they learned they just move on to the next module so at this point 43% our of our staff has a at least a micr credential which is about 528 staff members across the School Division 351 currently have completed the book study and are ready to start and have not entered the microc

144credential program and 300 38 still have to at this point start from last year who have not across the division even begun and you can see here we added the breakdown so you can see by school where they were and where they are and what their increase was from last year to this so our 24 to 26 Target in order to reach our close to 100% completion next year we would need to have 338 additional um Educators enter the book study to set them up to complete their microc credential or certification we would and we are anticipating 3 to 600 people going through the micr credential next year as you can see 520 have already started along with an additional three who are ready to get started so we're talking like 800 people and we

145have uh we would like to get 20 certification candidates or more but based on funding we're trying to really balance out what we can do because it would be something that would be past where past the work that they would have to be that is mandatory within the school day so funding is something we're going to need to be thinking about um and how we can in incentivized certification because that would be more work outside of the school day um 25 to 26 we're thinking that at that point we just focusing on new hires and we are going to be working on a new teacher program that will integrate the micr credential programming as well as the book study as part of their learning as they're coming in so they won't so this program is

146specifically set up for the people who are currently in the school system because as new uh teacher come in they will start right away into integrated learning about culturally responsive teaching as part of our merger so just so that we can see visually how that's going to look right now we are working with Dr Kaiser and um myself and Eric and Rusty work with the five Equity Specialists 32 school-based diversity resource teachers which we call our school-based uh Equity Specialists and we have um some school-based Equity teams based on the administrator next year we will be working with Dr Chandra Hayes and the instructional department and I'll be working with the three Equity coordinators as well as having three instructional coaches who will be assigned to working with us directly to support the programming and

147it will be the launch of the new well it will be the continuation of the new culturally responsive educator programming supports um which they will need to be taught so that's going to be a little bit of a learning curve just on they they all have their cert their either microc credential or certification those coaches but teaching it and supporting it and coaching it is a little different than going through the program so we'll have to work with them to teach them how to do that and we will be looking to have 25 school-based diversity resource teachers as well as creating a um a job description for Equity teams that's going to really support our drts and buildings to develop Equity teams so next year we will be looking to the people within our schools

148to really support the programming and the consistency of the programming because as I named 800 candidates and three people is a little bit daunting so we were thinking about thinking of ways outside of the box to really not only support Educators through the program because as Rusty named the the direct coaching is so important to the programming but it really adds value for the candidates to have somebody that they can think these things through sorry you're good we're give uh just some quick updates on uh some of our policies uh policy ACC or anti-racism policy uh as you know when we adopted this policy one of the components was implementing an anti-racism curriculum into uh into our middle schools through the middle school advisory uh lessons um this has continued to grow and uh the

149purpose of the Middle School advisory lessons there's a sequence that I'll go over in a second but the purpose is to support the whole Child by building skills that Empower students to fulfill their Highest Potential as collaborative thoughtful caring and successful individual and contributors to their school and larger communities and we do this by engaging students in experiences that help them gain awareness of their identities and other identities become more aware of the issues that are impacting our communities affirm their own and other identities interest strengths and passions and then to exercise their agency to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to achieve their individual goals and you can see the sequence here in sixth grade they understand their own identities they trace Injustice to the Past um in seventh grade they start to understand

150other identities by exploring narratives and challenge the single stories to develop action research skills and this year in the eth grade they started their Yar lessons and Yar is youth participatory action research projects and they're very similar to the C projects that we have so now we're in the process we're still working with uh Dr jari Harris who is uh working right now with a focused group of teachers to figure out what went well this year what we need to improve on so we can and uh make some adjustments to the programming over the summer uh the Middle School advisory lessons um you can see right there the sixth grade has 11 lessons seventh has nine and then the eighth grade lessons the Y part lessons have nine lessons as well so last year uh

151Dr Harris looked at student input to figure out what we could do to improve those uh lessons and this year she's working with like I said that focus group of teachers uh for feedback to improve these lessons as well so you will see some adjust to that and we're looking forward to the work we're continuing to do with our Middle School advisory lessons and before I name what has happened with the transgender policy I want to thank this board for keeping the transgender policy that we currently have policy jba and not making any changes because you understand the importance of what the students said when they said please help us make this policy and and you heard them and you are supporting them so before I get into that I want to say thank you

152um on behalf of the students and behalf of our team so um we did continue moving forward with supporting the um expectations and the deliverables for our um transgender gender expansive policy um where we really worked with our committee who even when there was a little bit of downtime and we were trying to see where we were going going we just kept moving forward as was requested so we have a committee that worked on a student support plan which is now being implemented with guidance counselors so if a student has any specific needs or if they have any specific questions or concerns within the building they can go to the guidance counselor and that is something that it's a checklist that they go through so that everyone's on the same page around the expectations of

153What kinds of things we can or can't ask and it's clear what parents need when parents need to be involved and when parents don't need to be involved in a conversation as well as when um there are things within the school that can happen but things outside of the school that cannot happen so it makes it very clear what that looks like um then we also implemented our o training which is the county training that goes out electronically through HR that updates policy um the community around policies and reminds them of their expectations so that has gone forward and that is something that was part of this year's oach training and then we have an asynchronous training that actually is a deep dive training into the policy that we have already shared with the executive

154leadership team um for their feedback and we are still Gathering that so that we can make adjustments going into next year and that will be shared with our staff going into next year um so that they can have a deeper understanding so as far as the actual policy and how we're supporting students and the staff in understanding the policy we have those particular categories completed but then when you start thinking about what do um students need as a human not just this is what you need to do um we really found it important to have training so we partnered with inclusive VA and side by side who have offered trainings uh for our our staff across the division with um making connections as one of the touch points we had a few sessions that were

155available that departments and schools could use so there are some departments and schools that took advantage of Just Having side by side come and do a onetoone training with their staff and we did a committee training um where we all as a committee did a complete training with our cabinet members who were able to attend so that we were all on the same page and um and came to an agreement as to what was going to be shared and that was a very exciting time because we all got to learn together and then finally we uh have a GSA sponsor leison Megan wasburn who works directly with the sponsors so that they can do uh evaluations on what they need to support the students in the schools and how to keep the program moving forward

156um and really identify what students consistently are asking for and through student Senate GSA found a voice as well so it gave them an opportunity to be part of a larger community of affinity groups to be able to advocate for themselves so thank you drer for that so as we move forward into the 2426 26 act 28 after now we don't have to worry about did they complete their credential we're really spending a lot of time as an equity team thinking about this idea of a portrait of a culturally responsive educator which really is an acps educator because one of the ways that an acps educator is that you're culturally responsive so we're really thinking about what that realignment of culturally responsive practices look like as we integrate with instruction and think about curriculum and

157instruction that's embedded with culturally responsive and anti-bias anti-racist um practices as part of the instructional core so we are working on a leadership framework and professional learning workshops because even though teachers have to be culturally respons responsive and we're talking about what does that mean to be a culturally responsive and that's why the switch to educator I might be a culturally responsive teacher but it takes all of us as Educators to make this work so culturally responsive leadership is pretty important and we know that um if we don't have culturally responsive leaders who understand what it means to lead from a culturally responsive lens it always feels like you're going up the down escalator as an educator um we are making um some adjustments to a micr credential program by having cohorts because one of

158the things we heard from the feedback this year is that they really love the asynchronous sessions but they felt alone so that we wanted to give them opportunities to be able to work with others and we wanted to capitalize on those opportunities of the book studies and the cohorts they had there and be able to continue to work with their cohort through their micr credential we also know that when people are working together they hold each other accountable and they feel more supported and then they move through it together instead of falling off and feeling like they don't have anybody to work with and then um we are also redesigning our culturally respon educator certification program and that is going to as mentioned before become a much more robust opportunity with clear protocols and we're

159looking to have that switch to becoming a portfolio with an executive summary so that they can work through different components of how to what they doing what is the problem based on their data what are they doing to make changes did it work didn't it and then um trying something new to really see outcomes for students for opportunity access and achievement gaps to close so this will give them an opportunity to not be on the you did it you didn't do it but really thinking about how do we support them to make the change they want to make rather than you didn't make it which is another thing that we heard over and over I put in years all this time for work and it was so much work and hours and then at the

160end of the day I didn't I failed and we don't want anybody to feel like they failed because when they put in that kind of work it's intentional and they did make some progress and we want to celebrate them and support them for the change they want to make and finally the tools that we are really um focused on working um with instruction to U move forward with are some walkthrough tools so that leaders and peers can do some walkthroughs and see culturally responsive practices you could walk into a room with the tool and be able to name a culturally responsive practice when you see it because of that walk tool and there will be checklists and different resources that we're continuing to um develop and give to teachers so that they can sit in

161a PLC without a equity coordinator and still be culturally responsive cuz we want to make sure that they too are independent Learners so that is where we are with that so our 10th Annual Equity education conference Better Together will be at monachello high school on June 7th 2025 from 9:30 to 2:30 and I want you to put it on your calendar from now because I can't wait to see you there because we plan to have a great time together questions do you have questions I just have two um what are the incentives that we have for micr credentialing or um certification if any right now right now they get professional development points for it and they get a certificate and they got a keychain that said micr credential 2024 this year t-shirt a t-shirt too

162and they got a t-shirt yeah um but that's what we that's what we offer and it's um it is offered during the school during school day year so we have our um time when they can meet with a um Equity specialist during their school hours and during dplc days um it's a small amount of time if they're able to make it they do and they get support from their Equity Specialists there or in their plc's if they're able to have as well so what happens if they don't meet the criteria by the deadline do we we have anything have we determined what happens if a teacher doesn't become certified or where isn't there anymore I don't know um at this point we haven't made any decisions about that I think that you know it's it's

163directly aligned to standard six in the EPA yeah so I think at that what we're really thinking about is are you meeting the standard or not is it effective or ineffective and I think that's where we can really see um whether or not they're using it they learned it and I think it's really up to the building administrator at this point to determine what they're going to do but the program is set up so that they can have access to continued learning so you know there's a six we module for each um characteristic so they have the time to do it and we support them to continue working on it we're even offering sessions during the summer and things like that gotcha yeah I think um from what I've seen the people that have the

164buyin are the ones that are already getting um the certifications and the ones that don't have the buyin to it or the ones that are pushing it off um and when you know we're talking about gsas and when I met with students um at alaro from their GSA one thing they mentioned was um the teachers that are certified or have their micr credentialing are the ones that are using the correct pronouns and that are um making those students feel safe and welcome in the classrooms and they could really tell the teachers that didn't really really have the Buy in and we're intentionally not using the right pronouns and things like that so I'm wondering kind of how we align um that as we go into the next two years towards this deadline and really encouraging

165those those um staff members and teachers that don't necessarily have the Buy in how do we get them to be excited about um the way that our division is moving and and what we expect out of our teachers and our staff so I love that comment for a lot of reasons one because when teachers see their colleagues doing well they want to know why even if they didn't have that buy in because they want to they want their students to do well either um also because all Educators want their students to continue to be successful regardless of their political or religious or whatever views so I think that's one thing that I've noticed is that they're as they're understanding the why and they're seeing success and they're seeing their colleagues go through the programming and

166understanding more about it um is the more that they're going forward which is I think attributed to how we have 500 people who started working on um doing this and moving forward with it um as far as the pronouns part or any of those AAR parts of it anti-racist or anti-bias practices um we have multiple ways in which we address that so it's not just through the culturally responsive teaching programming so those different experiences also allow them to engage in understanding and learning and then finally because we're moving into instruction there's a lot of that that will be embedded into the work that they're already doing whether they knew it or not because it's just part of the way we roll here because that's what we do we're a culturally responsive organization and that's how

167it is and I think again when it comes to whether or not people are going to honor the policies we have that starts to be become some responsibility and accountability from the administrators yeah no I totally agree um and then just in brief um talking about the gsas I you know know from personal experience how important those are um to the students so one I want to commend you guys um and Dr aari and I have discussed wanting to even expand the gsas um further in our our middle school and our high schools and have a more collaborative um environment where they're working within the schools together um to create that community so I'm excited to um see where we go in the next year so thank you thank you do you have anything I

168don't really have a question but I'm just really glad to see that we are uh implementing again the Middle School advisory program that was really important so I'm glad to see that that's being implemented again yes I was I was interested in a slide that you guys moved off pretty quickly um it was um the one that had all the schools listed and where their progress was and this goes a little bit back to what Allison was saying um because it seems like I got down to Alor and I look like things are moving pretty slow over there as compared to a lot of other schools alar high school well um they had a pretty large cohort that participated in the book study this year and the book study is the prerequisite prerequisite yeah so

169they needed to do that before they could get into the micr credential so that's a year-long program itself so we anticipate a higher number and but again this is something that's you know you have to kind of move along and the other thing is we have this great opportunity with all of the learning that our elementary schools have to do next year and um sixth grade that we can really focus too on secondary because the program um when again even when it's only six Equity Specialists there's a lot of people at alamara high school and trying to get to all of those spaces with just a few people um also becomes a little bit of a task so this allows us to spend some more concentrated time in specific places because that coaching is very

170very important when it comes to doing this work if you are resistant or you don't really understand what it means to be culturally responsive and you're engaging in those modules there's a lot of dissonance and it requires someone who you can sit with and talk it out and un get a deeper understanding cuz if not then it just becomes I did it I filled out the form and check and I'm moving on and that's not what we really want and our Educators don't want that either we have many Educators who started off saying I don't want to do anything with that and now they're excited to move on and want to know what's next for certification so um it's a slow moving thing and this new programming um has the highest number of Educators participating

171so that makes it hopeful that we'll keep scaling up at a pretty rapid rate good to hear um and one more thing um it came on the board in January so I'm I'm not familiar exactly with the difference between micr credentialing and a full credential but what's what's the difference so what we so um our new programming has a setup so that the micr credential is actually three six we modules that goes through um asynchronous learning videos reflective articles and then a reflection or a product that is uploaded that we review and give feedback on so that's the micr credential as of now um this year this is the first year we've done it that way where they're really applying and learning learning and it's really about the learning the certification is not about learning

172anymore now it's about application so certification is where they take what they've learned from the book study in the micr credential they recognize an area of um problem of practice a gap that they need to change and they see oh if I do this thing it's probably going to change it like if I call my families and set up something that's more um consistent and have student L conferences because these are the things I learned now I have a new outcome so that's what that is that's really thinking about how do you apply what you've learned so that you can get an outcome previously it was um there was a book study that was mandatory but not really monitored and then there was a micr credential that was a five-page paper for one characteristic and

173then certification meant you did a 10-page paper on all three characteristics with a presentation so those were the differences in the previous model that Dr Carlock was referencing and now that's the new model is the one with the asynchronous modules but but going from micro to full we made a huge difference in practice it seems based on the numbers yes and um I'm hoping so when you scale up you always gain and lose some things so one of the things that we've done with scaling up in the way we have is we now have the micr credential set up so that you learn all three characteristics which is something that wasn't required before which I believe attributed greatly to why it is we did not see the games that we will see now that they

174understand all three characteristics deeply um where before if we just needed to know one thing and that was it and then I wrote a paper about it and it might have been deep and meaningful but that doesn't necessarily mean I have a full view on what to do so the problem is now with our micr credential program you don't associate with student outcomes and then you did so that's a little bit of a piece that we've lost but we're going to put that that's the heavy Focus for certification really it's about incentivizing people to go for certification and helping them see the um importance of how do I apply this and what am I doing with it not just I learned it okay move on thank you I I wanted to oh I'm sorry g

175go ahead go ahead yeah could could you go back to the list again of schools do you see the same Trend occurring at Western that you mentioned at almau like an increase in the number of people in the book study or anything like that there was a significant increase in uh western western album marrow Western album marrow also has a team of Educators that were awarded this year for their um their Equity team got a educator Equity uh of the Year award because of the work that team is doing not just to support the candidates within their building but to support their students so that's a place that's primed for some really big um changes and we didn't have a Hu did we Rusty actually would know that answer better about the book study it

176was one of our [Music] larger so yes we saw a big change in Western with their book study and again that's the Baseline so we're ready to move forward with some big outcomes next year and there full administrative team will be going through the program the micr credential program during the summer for the administrative cohort um I was just noticing the correlation um of our lowest uh micr credentialed and certified schools and our so scores and also it seems that those are also a lot of the schools that have the most um turnover when it comes to teachers and is it correct that they can't become certified in their first year of teaching no there's a book study first there's a book study first right so um you know that correlation is noticeable I think

177um if we're having a lot of turnover in those specific schools then automatically their CRT numbers or are going to be a lot lower so you know I think that there is a um something to be said about that um but I also wanted to bring up one more thing just um you were talking about the extra time that it takes to do this and that they're given it during school but is that that during planning time um and does that take away from teachers planning time in order to do this you have been asking all the right questions okay so when you do the um program it's actually structured to align with what should be happening in your PLC and it's designed to use products that are directly associated with your classroom experience so

178my learning does not take more than the hour that it um that is given during dplc time so I should be able to get through the actual reading or the or the videos or whatever that part should take an hour um but the actual what do I do with it and to be able to get the product should be happening during your actual that's your job stuff to do so if I'm thinking about I did this lesson how did I build relationships with my students that's part of what I do as an educator is build relationships with students all you're doing is putting the product in of what I did to build relationships with my students and those are the types of things we ask them to um use so the products we're trying to

179really align it with what they're already doing so if they're looking at data during their PLC whatever they did to look at their data and their PLC to disaggregate their data should be um an equity audit that's going directly into the and are we sure that it is only taking that hour well different people read at a different rate and different people process at a different rate so I can't speak to how long each individual is going to take but that is the goal is that we're trying to keep that component of it and if you haven't done the book study first and that's one of the things we've seen people who did the book study just last year and went into the program this year had a significant difference from people who maybe did

180the book study a few years ago where they did some of the book study at some point in time and now they're trying to learn the text and the understanding of what to do and now apply it to the microc credential Wing program and there's been a pretty direct correlation between those who did the book study just last year and how they've been able to move through the program and those who maybe haven't done it in a long time but that's that's part of the learning and it was structured that way intentionally so that you can literally go straight from the book study and what you've learned in the book study and there's actually parts that you learn within the book study and you're exposed to that go directly into the micr credential products right

181so this year was a bit of an anomaly just because we didn't want to make everyone go through the book study all over again and we didn't want and we wanted to honor when people said I've done the book study already I don't need to do it again to let them say that and not prove a point you know by saying well show me and tell me when did you do it and where's the where's the receipts so we wanted them to be able to to say yes that's what I did and be okay with that but there that that that structure has been made so that it can go from the book study directly to microc credential and it's a direct Association and correlation directly into certification because what they did in the book

182study sets them up for the microc credential what they did in the microc credential sets them up for success for the certification gotcha thank you one statement um I just feel like I have to say this first of all a huge thank you for the team for all the work they're doing on this but I have to think about like I know we don't live in a perfect Equitable World obviously but here we are these are all certified teachers right wouldn't it be wonderful if they went to higher education programs that included this in their teaching and state certification Pro you know we certified in states that included this as requirements so I just I just have to make that statement like I'm so proud for the fact that we're making this commitment and we're

183we're putting budget behind this um I just wish these students were getting this when they were going through the programs and so I'm hoping that I mean one of the things I ask of you is you know how as we go forward are we kind of sharing this up down I'm trying to think which way we push you know pushing it into higher ad me I and I think I'm hopeful that in the future future as students are coming out of highered in the future maybe we will have them have some of these experiences so I would actually like to say that part of why we are able to structure the new the new teacher program around the pro around the credentialing the way we can is because they do come from University with a

184lot of learning because that's something that I have noticed a lot more teachers are coming from University with that background with some baseline understand about culturally responsive practices or at least Equity focused practices so when they come to us they have a little bit of something they're already drawing from and we can move them directly into the book study and we can move them directly through um the learning as it's embedded into their new teacher programming as opposed to only go for a year and now and now that you learned how to be a teacher now you can do that what we really want to do is just this is what we do so as you're learning to be a teacher this is part of what you're doing and we know you're coming with some

185with a wealth of knowledge already and we can grow from that together as a cohort wonderful thank you most of my questions have been answered it's been a terrific uh presentation and I really am proud of all of you and I think the work of the division on these areas um I Graeme and I were just writing down that next year's uh CRT conference because I think we've been to everyone everyone but uh so it was a good one this year but thank you all thank you and um you are invited to participate in our credentialing program so please let me know if you're interested in joining my book study is a little rusty so I may have to go back and reread it thank you very much thank you thank you you is there

186any more school board or division business so I just had one quick announcement uh just I had had a me I had my monthly check in with the uh County Executive today and you just wanted me to give a quick update to the school board on the employee health clinic um just a reminder the purpose of the health clinic is to enhance overall health of employees and their families provide dedicated Quality Health and Wellness services to employees and their families and manage Rising health care costs uh some examples of services will be offered include Primary Care Occupational Health Urgent Care Pharmacy dispensary Behavioral Health Physical Therapy preventive exams and sports physicals and the current status of the project is that a vendor was selected after an extensive RFP process they're sourcing two separate locations right

187now one on 29 North and the other one at Pantops Human Resources will play a significant role in the clinic implementation along with key stakeholders including partner entities and the School Division and and the uh county executive staff is working with their vendor to determine the type and number of medical personnel to be housed at each Clinic starting this fall employees so that's all of us will receive regular updates and information about Clinic services and resources so it's just an update from County Executive on that project thank you Dr hos is there any other business with that this meeting is adjourned thank you interesting