School Board Meeting - March 28, 2024

001have a roll call starting with Mr Black good evening everyone I'm Josiah black School Division Council Matthew HW superintendent Alison spilman at large representative Ellen Osborne Scottsville representative Rebecca Berlin White Hall representative Judy Lee Rana District Kate aov Jack JT District Graham paage Miller District Chuck Pace R District daffany Kaiser assistant superintendent Pat M and assistant superintendent Christine son Clerk of the board johandra Hayes assistant superintendent CLA Kaiser assistant superintendent Daryl Mish alar thank you very much next we'll rise for the Pledge of [Music] Allegiance United States indivisible [Music] uh next we'll be observing a moment of silence and I wanted to mention the names of two students who have passed Adam Bley a senior at monachello and Jaden wty a nth grader at AHS thank you next we have the approval of the agenda

002do we have a motion I move that we approve the agenda second second moved by Dr aov seconded by miss bman and miss Osborne um do we have any discussion all right all those in favor say I I I not opposed all right agenda is approved next we have approval of consent agenda do we have a motion I move to accept the consent agenda as stated in the agenda second moved by Dr Berlin seconded by Dr a is there any discussion nope all those in favor say I I I all right consent agenda is approved next we have announcements uh from Schoolboard and superintendent business so I just had um a just a couple quick announcements a couple shoutouts one is and uh of course Mr Bond principal at alal is here tonight um Al

003High School is celebrating winning a Virginia music educators as Association Blue Ribbon award for this school year and it is the highest award given to schools music programs in the Commonwealth of Virginia it recognized it recognizes achieved excellence in band Orchestra and coral performance all disciplines in a school must receive a rating of superior at assessment to qualify for this award so that's a really big deal and uh and alal high school has long been known for its outstanding uh arts program and this is just another feather in the cap of the school I also want to give a shout out to broest Wood Elementary School they achieved uh 100% staff attendance on Tuesday this week and they joined uh Journey middle school with Ashby Johnson's here tonight they had 100% attendance earlier in the

004year Holly me has had 100% attendance and recently Brownsville had 100% staff attendance and um again that's a really big deal because we want our employees to take off to take care of their needs and uh to take care of themselves so whenever a school has 100% staff there it's I I wouldn't say it's luck it's just the conditions are right that everybody can be there and uh have have an extra successful day and uh what we've started what we did when um joury perked up earlier in the year we we started bringing out uh bagels and coffee for the staff the very next day and uh so I went when I went out to BR uh BR us wood on Wednesday it was fancy dress day and so um the students were really showing

005up and all their different attire to be fancy that day so when you look at the check-in today uh you'll see Don Nicholson and a couple of students and he's he's dressed he's the teacher and he's dressed very fancy uh to be with the students so um always a lot of good things going on out in the schools but I just wanted to share those two items with the board wonderful thank you um I move cheer Lee I move to accept the following resolution I know that I speak for all members of the school board of Alor County when I say that we are concerned about our students use of social media platforms such as Instagram Facebook Tik Tok Snapchat and others we are concerned that these social media platforms are intentionally using deceptive practices

006to attract and addict our students and are gathering personal data about them that they often sell to third part parties finally we are concerned that habitual use of social media platforms day after day for many hours each day is having long-term detrimental effects on the mental health and well-being of our students as a result the school division is inuring substantial cost to assist and support our students who are suffering from social media inflicted injuries to their mental health based on these concerns I move that the school board of alamer County Virginia joined an effort by school divisions around the country to change and seek redress for the for these deceptive practices by social media platforms I further move that the school board instructs School Division Council Josiah black to engage outside legal council to represent

007the division in this litigation and to act as the divisions Point person in the class action lawsuit second moved by Dr Rin seconded by Miss Spelman is there any discussion I'm really glad to be joining this I I it it feels to me like the beginning of the tobacco lawsuits um it's that type of horrible effect that it has on people so I'm really glad to be joining up thank you all right um could we have a roll call vote on that please Christine Mr Graham page yes Miss Osborne yes Dr Berlin yes Dr aov yes Miss spilman yes Mr Chuck Pace yes chair Lee yes so moved then Christine did you have an announcement you want to take oh yes ma'am um as you may recall during the onset of the covid pandemic when

008we transitioned to Virtual meetings we adapted our public comment sign up process to an online format however it's important to note that this adjustment was not officially reflected in our policy I'm pleased to inform you that starting from this evening's meeting we are reverting to in-person signups for public comments and here's what the public needs to know moving forward online signups um the public still have the option to sign up for public comments online the link will be available starting at 9:00 a.m. on the Monday the week of the meeting um and it will close the Tuesday the day of the meeting alternatively individuals may also call call my office to register to sign up for public common inter advance for those who prefer to sign up in person you can do so on the

009day of the meeting starting at 6: pm. and the signup sheets will be available until the start of public comment we believe this change will better accommodate the diverse preferences of our community and encourage a broader participation in our public meetings thank you thank you very much Christine all right no other um announcements from school board or superintendent next we will have our public comment Miss Osborne all right we invite and actively seek The public's input in matters relevant to Schoolboard governance and provide time in our business meetings to hear from our residents and community members during public comment we expect respectful and on-topic comments disruptive behavior from speakers or from members of the public in attendance will not be tolerated anyone who willfully disrupts this meeting in a manner that prevents or interferes with

010the orderly conduct of the meeting may be ejected by the chair each presenter will be allowed three minutes to speak however the chair with the consent of the board May reduce the time allocated for all individuals to speak to 2 minutes depending on the number of individuals who sign up public testimony guidelines are as follows speakers should adhere to the following protocol state your name and address or your voting district address your comments to the school board as a whole limit your comments to those matters that are relevant to school board governance or School Division operations give written statements and other supporting material to the clerk if you're unable to complete the presentation in the time allotted a copy of supporting materials will be provided to school board members 3 minutes will be allowed for

011each speaker who has signed up to speak on the up on the FY 25 funding request public hearing this evening that would be from last meeting okay we're not doing that today um the chair uh the two-minute thing we went through that the colorcoded light system is used to time presentations the yellow light means the speaker is 2 minutes or one minute if there are more than 10 speakers into the presentation and the red light means the speaker is at 3 minute limit of the presentation and must wrap up in order to maintain respect for all points of view the school board requests no clapping booing or any other audible form of of support or nonsupport be used if members of the public wish to show their support for a speaker they may stand or

012raise their hands when multiple comments on the same topic have been presented the chair May request additional comments on the topic be limited to those who have new information to present debate and dialogue with the school board are not allowed use of the projection system is reserved for the staff scheduled agenda presentation items only all right so um tonight it looks like we have six speakers um no one has signed up in the last I have this same thing I think anybody yes there's a one two three four five six yes we have six okay so we will go in this order uh you Chelsea sachno Mr JB HT Elizabeth Collier let's do those three first okay so chelse such no and correct me if I misspell your name or mispronounce your name good evening

013my name is Chelsea Sno I reside in the White Hall district and I work at Alam maral high school as a literacy specialist I have heard that there is some consideration to narrowly define the role of the high school reading specialist by adopting a model more consistent with that of traditional Elementary intervention this is neither sustainable able nor research based at the high school level this year I have partnered with 12 teachers individually across three departments and within plc's to implement literacy instruction support and classroom based interventions for 834 students if I were asked to pull out students and work with them I could only attend to a fraction of these that would require me to identify which students do and do not receive literacy support services and there is no Equitable way for me

014to do that please note that dibles data identified 70% of our n9th grade students and 90% of our African-American students and the most at risk bands for reading comprehension assuming that data is similar at each grade level this represents 1,400 students in need of literacy support we cannot attend to that with a traditional model of intervention the strongest approach to serve the needs of all of our students is by partnering with teachers to embed literacy instruction and intervention in every every single classroom this is better supported by research too in Virginia elementary teachers are required to receive instruction in teaching foundational literacy skills during their Preparatory programs but secondary Educators receive no such instruction in theirs furthermore a traditional model of intervention is inherently segregatory and rooted in a historically racist um sorry and rooted

015in a historically racist ideology around literacy and language several studies demonstrate that pull out intervention marginalizes our adolescent Learners who have not yet mastered academic English proficiency these are the Learners who have been the most unsuccessful under this model instead research calls for a whole school and CommunityWide model for secondary literacy intervention in which literacy professionals partner with Educators to support curriculum design that embeds supports scaffolds and classroom based interventions to improve literacy and academic outcomes for all learners this is better aligned with our strategic goals as a division and is called for by the Bell weather report ultimately we cannot remediate our way out of a tier one instructional problem we must establish culturally responsive ways of teaching literacy that honor and affirm all of our students linguistic backgrounds we need to stop considering

016intervention from a deficit based mindset what the students lack and start moving towards an asset-based framework we must embed research-based instructional practices to support literacy development in and through content area classrooms this will enable us to serve all of our students more equitably and effectively through our Partnerships with teachers administrators and Community stakeholders with the goal of literacy and justice for all thank you thank you would you like a letter with additional research sure all right Mr hurt hi my name is JB hurt I reside in the Samuel Miller district and I'm here to speak on the agnor HT um school boote tonight um there are a lot of folks I could I've reached out to to be here as an advocate for my dad Ben hurt U but I didn't I didn't want this

017to become contentious um my dad would never have wanted that um Ben hurt was principal of atal high school for 30 years more than 10,000 students graduated during his term there he remembered and had an impact on every one of those students he successfully guided AHS through the integration process peacefully hired the first female High School athletic director uh and uh in the Commonwealth of Virginia and has been inducted into the Virginia High School league hall of fame um I I was I plan to read you all a bunch of quotes from that book I I sent out to you the from the alal Alumni Association but then um you know I'm hoping you've read you've read those um but instead of putting you through those same quotes again uh I I wanted to tell

018you about something I was struck by at the last meeting um I stayed and heard Dr McLaughlin's presentation and he read the the mission statement for alal County Public Schools and it and it really struck me uh the last line really jumped out out at me we will know every student by name um it was uh that common theme that you know that that uh you'll hear me go back to here in just a moment about um knowing every student by name uh my um uh it was quite Pro providential that I that I heard that my dad did know every student by name over the years if you ask anyone um the thing that was first and foremost about him was he did know every student by name he remembered them years later at

019class reunions knew their families knew knew what they were up to um it it was just a phenomenal thing there there has never been anyone in education in alal County who more exemplified we will know every student um than Ben hurt um have a little concerned about the process I know we're not doing the um you know uh surveys and all of that with it anymore or that you all aren't um Matt hos when we met uh a little over three weeks ago uh and he informed me of their recommendation with when I met with him and and miss miss Waters and um Miss Kaiser um he said I have never met anyone who knew your dad who didn't love him I mean that's a quote I have a hard time reconciling that statement with

020this recommendation uh there was some concern at sounds like about the environment at the school during those years I'm curious how many students were spoken to how many of those teachers um I still just keep coming back to um more than anything else my Dad's life and Service as an educator truly embodied that very mission statement of alal County Public Schools he modeled that mission statement for every student he knew them all um I hope that you'll vote against this recommendation and allow his name to remain on agnor hert elementary school thank you thank you right Miss Elizabeth Coler good evening I not Elizabeth ker but I have a statement on her behalf uh because she was not able to make it t night so I will go ahead and read that good evening my

021name is Elizabeth ker I have been a math educator in Virginia for 6 years and was an educator in California for 13 years I want to speak about how impactful it has been for me and my students to partner with a literacy specialist this year I've always considered mathematics as its own unique language however in previous years I have had students struggle with the math content on S exams because of the struggle to read and comprehend the math questions and problems in the course of this school year the literacy specialist at Almar High School have helped to educate and guide me in developing my students abilities to read comprehend and break down the words and symbols and the questions they will face on the so I had not considered how words like evaluate identify or

022factors are used in other content areas and make complicate my students understanding of those words in my class I am more attentive to both the language of the words and the language of the symbols used in problems I previously taught in a middle school for four years and the literacy coaches would pull out students to help them but it did not often translate to improve comprehension on learning in the classroom as well some of the Middle School students would be absent on the days that they were to meet the literacy coaches in order to avoid being pulled from class to work with them we have hundreds of students in our school that need literacy support and these students have been benefiting from the guidance and education that our literacy coaches have provided to myself and

023other teachers so that we can reach more students as an educator my ability to identify the language of my content and also support my students in decoding both directions and math problems have improved through my work with Chelsea and my students are more engaged with both the content and the language our students literacy and their s so test taking abilities are both improving our literacy coaches have been doing an amazing job and we need our literacy specialist to continue to function as coaches for myself other teachers and for all of our students thank you thank you all right the next three up will be Colin Thomas Jackie marinucci and John glass hi I'm Colin Thomas uh Rana District um I'm here tonight to ask that you all consider adding to the redistricting um decision you

024made a provision that allows all students with IEPs to stay at their schools um a couple weeks ago I shared about my daughter Kira who has it was autistic has ADHD I won't go into all of her the great things but um she has significant challenges as I shared with um things like work refusal uh eloping uh meltdowns things like that um and caring for her requires a large amount of trust and intuition on her um on her teachers part um and we've we realized that the IEP will transfer to other schools that Stony Point has just as good a special education program as Robinson but what they don't have is the builtup two years of trust and intuition about Kira we my wife and I are in a position to um advocate for her

025to go through the process to get a special dispensation for her but we want to think about the other parents who may not have the same resources we have but whose kids need just as much care in the places where they've grown trust um and just an example of the trust that has been grown in my daughter um today she brought home a thing on a great woman at Stone Robinson Miss Stratus is a great woman at Sr she is a good ab leader she plays board games with me she also helps me get calm she's a great teacher at Sr she wouldn't have written anything like this at the beginning of this year at the anytime last year and it's only because of the trust and I like to say that trust is not

026very fungible you can't just transfer it it will take a lot of time and I'm concerned for all the kids who are like her who I don't think there are that many of um but would be greatly impacted if you were to take on that kind of vision thank you Jackie [Music] marinucci seen you before Jackie I'm not Jackie marinucci but I have a statement from her that uh she requested to be read to the school board so I will go ahead and do that good evening this statement comes from Jackie marinucci of ran District to share firsthand experience with secondary literacy coaches I teach Algebra 1 and AFA at elor high school and I've worked with Chelsea satcho A literacy coach at Al Marl High School throughout the school year the option to play

027instruction with the literacy coach has greatly improved the quality and breadth of my math instruction I now know I cannot assume my students are prepared to identify explain why or predict I take responsibility for my students understanding and implementation of these essential academic skills additionally my students have greatly benefited from pushin literacy support in the mathematics classroom my students are receiving real-time support to unpack and understand both cross-curricular vocabulary as well as the mathematical vocabulary the most obvious antidote anecdotal evidence I have to support the continuance of pushing literacy support is that my students even nth graders in Algebra 1 are now talking about mathematics in the classroom the shift from doing the math to talking about the math has been such a strong indicator of Student Success thank you for bringing literacy coaches right

028into the secondary classroom so all my students can benefit from this crucial level of support thank you and Mr glass all right my name is John glass I live in the r district and I work at Alor high school as a Spanish teacher so I have two things I would like to share with you all today two crucial points that significantly impact uh impact our Lear our educational environment first I want to Pro uh give some gratitude to Chelsea sachno as her exceptional work and support as our literacy specialist um second I also would like to uh highlight the necessity to rigorously enforce sir our could you speak into the microphone please yeah you you can Mo you can move it if you need to so second I would like to uh talk about rigorously

029enforcing our existing cell phone policies across all our schools so first um uh to our instructional coach um over the past 5 years I've been very fortunate to feel very resourced and supported on our department we have lots of collaboration we have very experienced teachers however it was consistently dis disheartening to feel that the academic fate of many of our students was determined day one that they walked in the classroom due to their enormous literacy gaps that are difficult to address uh in a Spanish classroom when they're learning a second language so prior to uh miss sno's work with me use Dynamic engaging fun uh interventions and uh uh activities however it was very teacher centered uh and overly reliant on the student's ability to form context through uh form meaning through context clues which

030hid lots of gaps in their literacy and we were not able to address their deeper understanding and I like how previously they mentioned that uh students are now talking about the language now thanks to her inner Dimensions I'm using tiered vocabulary lists I'm using anticipation guides I am using student turn and talk to make meaning inside the language uh so I would Echo that with math in Spanish the same I hear students talking about language and learning about the language it's hard to teach them Spanish when they don't know when to punctuate or capitalize or quote in their own language so um I have more shout outs for Miss sachno but all the love to you Chelsea so uh secondly the pressing issue of cell phon I would like to keep this short as time

031is against me um it is unreasonable to expect teachers to Monitor and police cell phones in the classroom the current policy is not enforced it is not effective it is known to our kids as a joke it is extremely difficult to consistently uh enforce our cell phone policy our admin our support staff are overworked they're outworn many of our parents support and and engage in the same problems encouraging students to use their phones I know times about to run out but let me say this it is odd that businesses profit on student attention all day during school it is odd that if I may just finish that thought it is odd that businesses that are profiting on student organizations and school organizations are allowed to have their business hours run constantly without restraint thank you

032for your time thank you that concludes public comment thanks very much to everyone who spoke tonight uh next we have our School Division work session starting with the school naming review Miss Waters Community Education good evening I'm Karen Waters director of Community Education and project manager for the school name reviews at your last meeting as the superintendent design I shared that research into the namesakes of agner hert Elementary resulted in a recogn in a presentation H do you need your presentation oh no I don't have a presentation I just have remarks thank you Christine all right sorry it's not flashy I wore the yellow though just to give you guys a little excitement oh gosh okay uh at your last meeting as the superintendent's design I shared that research into the namesakes of agner herd

033Elementary resulted in a recommendation to retain the name agner Elementary effective July 1st 2024 as guy agner Jr has no association or oversight of public remarks or images on the record that are not reflective of acps values or policies since this recommendation is in alignment with provision 3 B1 of policy fa if accepted by the board as outlined in provision 3 B2 of the policy there is no need to move on to provision 3b3 and convene a renaming committee um as someone whose first name has literally become an adjective in recent years I want to just wrap up my remarks by reminding the community that our process does not seek to assess a person's character but rather whether the name and the record Rec are reflective of our current values and as a grandmother to

034two Greer geckos I want to just take this opportunity to commend the board on your Fidelity to our division's values throughout this process which include family community Wellness excellence and Equity as well as your courage to ensure that all means all and I stand ready to carry out whatever the results of your vote are thank you um I'm open to a [Music] motion I move we accept the recommendation second moved by Miss Osborne and seconded by Miss spilman um is there any discussion no discussion okay um Miss Waters I wanted to thank you for all your work on this and also really underline what you said we're not here to judge the character um of any of the namesakes but look to see if they match if the record matches with um what our forward-looking

035values are right now who our students are today um so that is how certainly I will be voting So Christine could we have a roll call vote on that please miss fman yes Miss Osborne yes Dr Berlin yes Mr Graham page yes Dr aov yes Mr Chuck Pace yes chair Lee yes so MO thank you next we have our fy2 budget updates Miss kumazawa from budget and planning good evening I'm Maya kumazawa director of budget and planning and this evening I just wanted to provide a moment uh to give you updates about budget development process um this is a summary of the school board's funding request that was approved on the left we have our anticipated revenues at $29.6 million and our proposed expenditures at thank you feel very silly now um these are the

036anticipated revenues and expenditures that you all have approved uh which leaves a funding gap of about $3.3 million we talked about how we might address the funding Gap to prepare us to adopt a budget later in April um to plan for higher revenues and a new one I added which is technical updates which I'll review this evening as well well as making reductions in our operations and as a reminder the budget that is adopted in April is a plan and that can continue to be amended as needed so the first piece um is plan for higher revenues based on the information we have as of today um the general assembly budget adds about $4.8 million in additional revenue on top of what was presented in the funding request in addition yesterday the Board of Supervisors

037um proposed a budget that would add $2.9 million to our local transfer um they have approved the increase of two tax rates one is the transient occupancy tax rate as well as the personal property tax rate and the 2.9 Million is our direct share of this increase in local revenues in addition um staff recommend a one-time transfer from a special Revenue fund contingency of about $1 million and then an additional use of fund balance of $1 million that's set aside for a reserve um for the next fiscal year the second piece is technical changes and updates to our expenditures and this is a summary of those technical updates um they equal about uh .1 million in additional expenditures um The Reserve is what I mentioned previously of using a one-time fund balance um that we

038might um accumulate at the end of the at the end of this current year set in reserve for next year to provide a flexibility to the school board to use in the way they might want to as well as provide flexibility um with our Revenue should they change the second item is to implement the 23 to 24 redistricting study by updating um Staffing allocations according to the approved Staffing standards this would provide a savings of about $200,000 the third item is to update our staffing standards to set a minimum of a05 FTE for music and a05 FTE for art this would benefit our smallest elementary schools the next item is to update the compensation proposal to include a market base increase um that's just as part of a phased approach to ensure that our acade

039academic leadership Compensation Program uh remains competitive the next one is to update the cost of the social emotional supports proposal that would provide um Savings of about 1 FTE and the next item is to reduce the budgeted payment for the Piedmont Regional Education Program in the budget for next year and then finally um we have some updates with regards to switching vendors for our technology replacement program and other technical changes that would result in savings as well the second part of the technical changes is to update our expenditures based on the general assembly's budget so um in their budget they've approved a different uh Staffing standard for El Staffing that would um require us to enhance our staffing standard at a cost of about $360,000 um in the general assembly budget also includes more funding

040for our VPI Bright Stars program by putting back in place the 0.5 LCA LCI cap that they would um so they would fund more for our program which in turn would allow us to decrease our expenditure which is a transfer into the bright star special Revenue fund and then finally the budget proposes A reduced uh group life insurance rate for our employees who receive that benefit um for the next bym right now that rate is at 1.34% of salaries and that would drop to 1.18% of annual salaries so the final category is reducing our expenditures um I just wanted to point out that these were the this was our planned approach to closing the funding Gap and we have been working um with many iterations of this and being thoughtful about the approach of how

041we might reduce our expenditures and this is the order and their priority by which we went um we've been working on this since December and as you are aware our assumptions have changed every month um so we've been updating our scenarios and looking our different iterations so the proposed uh reduction expenditures tonight is the latest information um with regards to how that would fit with our available revenues so the first category is to defer our replacement Cycles um if we defer the replacement of our K through 2 iPads for one year that would provide Savings of about $700,000 in addition we have a recurring transfer to the vehicle replacement fund which is a fund that um replaces our non-bus Fleet that the division operates um we could pause that transfer of $200,000 in the next

042fiscal year the second category is pause um hiring of vacant positions and these categories include Central office and department-based positions for about $500,000 um reducing uh vacant foreign language and elementary schools positions as at a savings of $250,000 and eliminating the assistant principal intern program for a savings of $200,000 these savings uh total about 1.9 million the final category is to increase student to teer budgeted ratios by 0.5 for school-based positions that would result in overall FTE reductions about 16.3 um this as a scenario we've been working on for quite some time and with the news about the increase in state revenues as well as the news about an increased local transfer as of yesterday we have been able to um reduce the in reduce the reduction by a significant amount um by just adding

0430.5 as part of the budgeted ratio so if um in this proposal the proposed student to teacher ratio in terms of how we uh budget would be 1 FTE per 20.05 K through3 student one FTE per 22.25 4 to 5 student and one FTE per 23.5 students in grade 6 6 through 12 the um class size reduction ratios would remain unchanged at 1 FTE per 70 free and reduced lunch students so if you were to combine um those two bullet points the first two bullet points the projected average class sizes for next year would be 18.8 for elementary schools 20.8 for middle schools and 21.9 for high schools um but let me clarify that's an average so it's not a projection for every class it would be the overall average planning for reductions are ongoing

044and various applications for um these reductions would be considered um school by school when we talked about this proposal to um the teacher teachers of the Year this week um they asked about well what does that look like in terms of historical class sizes what is the budgeted class size and compare to the actual class size so this visual um Compares historically what the Elementary class sizes were actually which is the solid um bluish line and then the dotted lines on top of that are the budgeted ratios so as you can see the actual class sizes on average tend to be lower than the budgeted ratios because of that additional um reduced class size ratio that we add as you can see from the chart there's a lot of variability between between the minimum class

045size and the maximum class size and this is U mostly due to the um the numbers of students that are in each grade level so depending on the total number of students in a grade level sometimes you have very low class sizes and sometimes you have high class sizes depending on um how much Staffing that school gets in addition there's variability based on total enrollment so as you can see during the pandemic years our class sizes were lower than what was budgeted U mostly because we saw um lower enrollment that than what we budgeted for so the projection for 24 to 25 is if we meet our exact overall enrollment then the average class size and the uh the numbers of students are spread out in a way that you can accommodate um these average

046class sizes that is the projection for next year this is a similar chart for Middle School class size so the solid line in the blue is what we saw in actual class sizes on average and then the dotted line is the budgeted class size and the same chart for high schools so in summary um this uh includes at a high level the uh summary of the detailed proposals so planning for high revenues that's about a $9.7 million Revenue increase um technical updates and further expenditure reductions further close our original $13.3 million funding Gap is presented as part of the school board's request all the dollar amounts are preliminary estimates for discussion purposes um and they may be subject to change so um I just have um three questions for you if um you have any

047comments on them is what else would you like like to know what do you have any clarifying questions um is there any more information um we should bring back to the next meeting um or is there anything you would like to see differently on April 11th um On The Board of Supervisors are you saying that they agreed to an additional $3 million to get can you go back to that I just y I hadn't heard that um yesterday the Board of Supervisors approved the advertisement for their tax tax rates for the next fiscal year and the advertisement is a maximum rate that they can adopt um on May 1st and so that rate is also part of their um proposed budget which is their next iteration of the budget and my understanding is that unless

048there's different direction given that would continue on into May 1st but May 1st is when um they technically approve Pro any tax rates or the budget so nothing is final until May 1st but that would mean an additional $2.9 million yes us yes good evening um I just have a question about the onetime monies um sorry somebody's on my phone for some reason um yeah just in terms of what what don't we aren't we restricted in how we spend that money and are you talking about the special Revenue fund contingency or the fund balance or both oh I don't know what you're talking about talking about both the special Revenue fund contingency is a special Revenue fund that we have um we set aside some monies in reserve several years ago for situations that may

049arise like this year um so we're proposing and that is onetime money um because it's not an recurring source of Revenue um and then the additional use of fund balance that's from the school fund we do not yet have a projection for how this year might end but um we can go ahead and plan for that use and if we do have a savings we can manage to it uh we can if we do have a savings that we want to use carry forward essentially into the next year and use it for a purpose that may come up later um we can do that so it's a contingency um how much trouble would it be to for the high schools and maybe even for the middle schools to give us a breakdown of class size

050by discipline because looking at the average doesn't really tell the picture like in some classes it probably would be not much of a problem to have a larger class size but in some classes like Sciences for instance um the class size could could vary quite quite a bit so how much trouble would it be for you to give us broken down by discipline the average class size so we each fall we give a class siiz report to the board and Dr mlin I saw him nodding his head he's going to send that out so these are uh projections and we don't know until it all shakes out uh in terms of enrollment at the schools what the actual class sizes will be but in November that's when we provide the report report once once everything

051is settled so he'll send that to you and it gives you 5 years worth of class sizes uh by subject area by level and it'll help you get an idea of what all the different um class sizes are within that range so you'll have a better picture of it okay Y and board members I'm happy to send that now it's also on the October 12th uh ESB site uh where we have the class siiz report if you want it sooner thank you Pat did the teachers when you were talking to the teachers of the year um and they asked about the class sizes espec specifically for elementary school did they give any feedback on what that might look like or how they felt about that the one specific takeaway I had that they said was

052um the average doesn't necessarily mean much for an individual teacher because as you saw there's a pretty big range in what they're actually seeing and what they're dealing with on an individual basis um as a as a budgeting exercise there's not much more we can do Beyond predicting an average um based on our current Staffing standards because we staff based on projected total numbers of students there may be other ways to do it but that is how our current Staffing standard is I don't know if you want add anything that's that's the best way to say it and the other piece is that when the uh principles have their Staffing allocations and I'm looking at several principles so what they do is they come in and they they are required to make a staffing plan

053where they can um show how they're going to use the Staffing and then it it they actually have it broken down by classes the numbers of students in each class and um our staff works with them like Dr Kaiser my uh um Dr Hayes will work with them to ensure that they can use their Staffing to keep uh the class sizes at a minimum to the greatest extent we do uh hold in reserve some staffing so that as the school year gets uh underway or or based on early enrollments for like kindergarten or then as students return in the fall we can add some staffing for areas where they're going to have trouble uh with higher class sizes and uh but yeah the when we report in October or November we break it all out

054because we know that the average uh doesn't communicate what's actually going on in the schools so we do everything we can to ensure that the plan is good they've got a good plan going into the year for class sizes that are going to be helpful and beneficial for kids and teachers and then we catch it on the other side to see what they actually panned out to look like and with regard to onetime money we're making we our effort is is to get the onetime money out of the expenditures to to your point Dr Acuff which is well taken that um an example of that would be having used the um the American Recovery funds for the seal coaches and spending down that money that's a big cost in the budget to move them from

055one time to recurring um it's a great investment but that's what happens when you've been relying on the one time money so as we've gone through these exercises to get uh to do our prioritization Maya keeps reminding us that um the the cut when we're looking at Personnel we've got to also think about the cuts right because Cuts will sustain the um reduction in expenditure from one year to the next whereas a a reduction in onetime spending doesn't do that and we need to avoid the onetime money going into Personnel so um that's why you see things like causing replacement Cycles things like that that's one time um and and it helps us avoid using one time money well I just want to thank you Maya because I know that this vote by the Board

056of Supervisors was last night and you made this presentation at 8:30 this morning and uh I'm very pleased that the additional $3 million $2.9 million has permitted us to only increase class sizes by a half instead of a whole one whole percent one whole child student um so thank you for your work on this the preliminary plans that all the schools have done were based on one uh class size one student increase so now they'll be uh as everything goes through uh and you know we have every reason to think that it will um then we'll be able to return the Staffing back to the schools so they'll have a little more to work with and I just Echo Dr acuff's thanks thank you Maya budget season's almost over Maya Maya Maya this this might

057not be a bright question I don't know but we have a number of open classrooms in the division so I'm assuming that when I look at these ex uh the high numbers uh that we're talking about per teacher really not per classroom depending on how we've organized those classes like we might have a super classroom with two sections in there at the same time is that right I believe it is per teacher okay it's per teacher thank you Mr Pace um just this is not um any difference in prioritization or anything like that but because we have had so many um proposals we've been thinking through um if when we do come back to um to approve it if we could have just like this is what's left and then this is what we ended

058up cutting um because it's just hard to keep track I think for us and for um me I'll say maybe not us but uh and for the public possibly so we know everything that's still in and everything that was cut in terms of the proposals that have been presented to you as new okay thank you just for tonight they are all uh they remain as they are um with the exception of technical changes that we've made okay great anything else I would just like to acknowledge this the uh Board of Supervisors uh working to increase our funding I mean clearly they have some other issues that they want to address but they have helped us close this Gap and I am very appreciative of it so on April 11th um we will continue working on

059the scenarios and um improve it as best we can um we're hoping that you would in concept approve a scenario on April 11th so that we would be prepared to adopt a more detailed Budget on April 25th and as I mentioned uh on May 1st the Board of Supervisors will finalize their tax rates and adopt and appropriate um our budget which is part of the County's larger Budget on July first the fiscal year begins um and as I mentioned um if we have other updates with the state or local or expenditures we will have opportunities to amend the budget and the appropriation thank you thank you very much Maya next we have a 10minute break I'm seeing 7:26 on my computer so we'll be back at 8:27 e [Music] all right we are back to

060order next we have chronic absenteeism starting with um Dr dfan Kaiser community engagement [Music] still makes I I paused and I to think about it to T there we go are you going first I'm going introduction good evening uh chair Lee and Schoolboard members um thank you for the opportunity to to engage with you during this work session uh focused on chronic absenteeism EAB or the education Advisory Board supports over 2,500 organizations from K12 to college to Career EAB works with leaders and practitioners to accelerate progress and drive results on the most important and challenging issues facing education they partner with more than 450 of the world's best known corporations through sount um a corporation focusing on diversity equity and inclusion together EAB and sount provide a unique platform for collaboration among education and corporate

061leaders to address and ultimately close Equity gaps at EAB their mission is to make education smarter and communities stronger there are six core values that power the organization's work including commitment to success approach work work with a spirit of generosity believe in the power of insight think big act with speed and intention and build on connectedness acps has partnered with EAB on several research projects and this past summer the acps strategic planning department contacted EAB and asked for research strategies and support around the issue of chronic absenteeism EAB partnered with acps and during the beginning of the school year Consultants presented to the principals and executive leadership team during the opening leadership meeting throughout the year a few schools have continued work closely with EAB and their chronic absenteeism cohort we are so glad to

062have have Miss Shard young EAB director and K12 partner research engagement and success um with us this evening to share with the board the broad Global landscape and complex complexities that school divisions across the country are facing and working through with regards to the issue Miss Young will also share some research data and best practice strategies that have been found to be successful with their partner schools in dealing with the issue of chronic absenteeism we welcome Miss Young um please join us um we're so glad to have you with us um this evening uh to address the Alamar County School Board um during this work session on chronic absenteeism thank you for that lovely introduction um I feel like I don't have to even say much about EAB now um I in just reintroduce myself

063um like Dr Kaiser said my name is shade young and I serve as director of K12 research and subject matter expert to lovely s to give a lovely summary to what eab's core mission is when it comes to K12 we pride ourselves on using research to tackle the sleepless nights caused by school related issues so whatever is aess issue for a school district Nationwide we vow to research it and find some best practices and solutions to help you all navigate it today we're talking about chronic absenteeism EAB uses the national definition of chronic absenteeism which is missing 10% or more can you hear me if I step over here or more of the Academic Year and that's for any reason and this becomes a common area of misconception the easiest way to put it is

064chronic absenteeism is counted by every day a student is not in seat whether that's excused unexcused sick suspended mental health vacation anything so just so we're clear um particularly the research has grown since we first released it in 2018 18 because the pandemic exacerbated the issue of absenteeism to be beyond the point of chronic today to guide our discussion and I want to start by saying this was a large study even the original deck was over 60 slides so I've reduced it to about 45 minutes so if it feels like there's areas missing I provided the whole Deck with links to the full research you can take a look in additional webinars but this is a highlevel overview so to guide our discussion I want to pinpoint what's changed in chronic absenteeism and what's driving

065the problem today we'll discuss three essential conditions for addressing chronic absenteeism and again we'll support your district with next steps we already have a number of District members and school leaders and our parent um Communications cohort for chronic absenteeism and we have another one starting in April that I'm happy to say we'll have additional members in so what is the cost of chronic absenteeism for both students and a district starting with the data highlighted on the left side of your screen we see that chronic absenteeism significantly predicts future difficulties for students they're less likely to read at grade level by third grade they're four times more likely to drop out of high school than their appears and this was the most surprising part of the research for me that chronic absenteeism harms all students I'll

066pause for that if you look on the right the percentage of chronically absent classmates predicts low reading and math achieve achievement for all students present or absent turning to the bottom of the slide there are financial implications to Chronic absenteeism for instance during the pandemic districts in Texas saw a loss of nearly $2 million by just a 2% increase in absenteeism this issue is even more critical in 28 states where school funding directly ties to attendance rate we call that ADA that um Ada states are funded based on average daily attendance that fun funding stream if you follow me on the right leads to for special education meal replacement textbooks transportation and even summer school programs so in summary there's an educational impact and a financial impact to absenteeism the Nationwide data paints a familiar

067but unsettling picture as well as you can see there are roughly twice as many students chronically absent compared to before the pandemic and I know there's a bit of a dip there in 2020 but that's partially due to varying attendance policies during online learning and there are are a couple things to note here there are some states missing from this analysis because they did not have their results in by time of this uh release but if you look at historical data they would Trend down um and not up but we just want to be clear and secondly why is promising to see that marginal Improvement in the 22 to 23 school year chronic absenteeism rates are still almost twice as high as pre pandemic and we still have a long way to go and as

068you see on the right 92% of District leaders report being very or moderately concerned about chronic absenteeism and they came to us to do something about it a lot of the existing research before we did our study would have you believe that chronic absenteeism is a problem specifically pertaining to students of color lowincome special education students and we want to note that while disparities exist um we're seeing significant increases in chronic absenteeism among all income corales ages among all locals every single demographic has had a increase in chronic absenteeism as a result districts are grappling with the challenge of responding to the increase in numbers of students student absent from dayto day despite claims of employing a multi-tier system of strategies it becomes evident that the existing policies are not effective upon closer examination tier

0692 and tier three interventions are essentially onetoone approaches targeting individuals and lacking a genuinely tiered or scalable system this deficiency leads to a metaphorical eruption as you see on the screen as the absence of scalable strategy exacerbates on the right side of the side you see it's impossible to resolve this by simply increasing Staffing levels a significant 45% of districts report being underst staff this year alone and although some have used Esser funds to address the problems temporarily and you all talked about this These funds are set to expire within a few months add to the complexity that while the number for a students decrease the funding to address the issue also decreases if the support plans districts currently use aren't working we need to understand why and through research we identified three main root

070causes one parents are less likely to send their children to school since the pandemic two students reasons for absences go undress un addressed and teachers are under utilized in the fight against absenteeism the research not only highlighted challenges but it also unveiled three vital conditions essential for reducing absenteeism and as one parents need to know why and when to bring their students to school students can and want to show up for school and teachers need to know how to embrace their role in impacting attendance so now let's spend a little time talking about the importance of engaging parents directly when it comes to attendance the fact is we've seen a combination of new and old factors create the perfect storm for increasing the likelihood that parents will just say it's okay you can stay home

071from school if you look at the column on the left these are our traditional reasons right illness housing Mobility threats to safety mental health but if you look towards the middle these are three new reasons that we uncovered in under the research of why parents are more likely to say it's all right you can stay home from school and number one District messaging has wavered on when to keep your kid home over the last few years when they're not feeling well two parents increasingly doubt the value of in-person learning largely to the pandemic and online learning them working from home and finally parents have a historic p pattern of being poor monitors and estimators of their children's absences we've seen research where parents underestimate their absence at students absence by at least 2% this is

072now a situation in which parents are not understanding the benefit of NC attendance and actively fighting against it while we all know that parents are a big part of the equation particularly for young students we know that they're they're their whole they are not the whole piece when we get to the middle school and high school level we know the decision around whe whether to come to school or not it's often left up to the students um if you look on the left these are what we uncover as District's most common strategies we have the carrot in the stick where you have your attendance recognition Awards your donuts for 100% attendance um and these are good for students who are already self-motivated then you have your punitive measures such as detention or suspension um which

073only exacerbates the issue if the student doesn't want to be there anyway making it incapable for them to come is not helpful we also see districts addressing basic needs for students providing free breakfast laundry services even late bu late bus pickup and that's helpful and we're not saying that you should stop that but we're saying it doesn't have the same impact and Rewards as before so if you follow me to the right these are the new reasons why kids are skipping school 2third of kids aren't comfortable telling an adult if they're being bullied one out of two students are unsure about their academic level they actually question the we had Direct quotes that students said they question um even if what they're learning School connects to their future they question if they can even be

074successful at school if they do attend then we see one out of two kids saying they don't belong at school and you see um kids not I'm sorry that was backward you see kids not connecting the classes to the Future so it's a problem it's not just the parents are feeding into it but the students aren't even having the conversations with the parents to create that buy in we're also seeing it with teachers parents feel disconnected from their teachers they want to hear from teachers about their Student Success right now we find that districts have front desk Personnel admin calling and sending letters about their student attendance and they're frankly disengaged with that they feel that those people even leaders do not understand their child and they're not invested in the outcome of their student

075returning and so today we're going to focus on addressing those three groups thinking about building the conditions in schools where parents understand why and when to bring their kids to school where students can and want to be in school and where teachers understand and embrace their the role that they play in the equation before we dive into each category I invite you to pause for a minute and think to yourself what do these three conditions look like in our district today which one have the most for improvement and are we excelling in any area currently so here's our road map like I said this study is a large study with nine practices for the S of time I'll go through and highlight one to two practice for each subgroup parents students and teachers let's talk

076about parents again like I said the parent miscon conception has grown as you see we have 63% of K through sixth grade teachers saying parent misconception is the main cause of absenteeism and 26% of 7th through 12th graders though there's a grade level split almost all agree that parents values around attendance have changed so let's look at the parent beliefs that I shared in the previous uh slide we see that parents are uncertain to send kids to school and we see that District messaging has not caught up we see that parents increasingly doubt the value and districts having corrected the P pandemic error messaging promoting virtual learning as the same as in-person learning there has been no messaging on record to talk about to re-engage students and talk about how post-pandemic in-person learning is even

077more crucial and then like I said parents underestimate the frequency of their child's absence but parents also only hear messaging when their childish Trent they feel that there's a gap between one two and 3 Day messaging and it only comes as a punitive Le letter once it's too late before we talk about the solution let's look at the typical status quo timeline so if if you follow along and this is let me back this is for most districts your District may be different but about at the fifth absent depending on the time of the year parents receive a mandated State warning letter the par is blamed it causes fear denial and then we see this Gap where there's actually no change in Behavior then the student enters tier three they have their state mandated 101

078case management meeting and there's still either no change in Behavior to we have reports of districts um reporting their parents are pulling their student out and homeschooling them and the upper grade students are dropping out this two messaging system is not working what we at EAB propose is a reimagining of that timeline where first we begin with supportive Outreach before the mandated treny letter so this looks like absence triggered automated messaging such as text directly to parents offering parents support to get kids back in school next if absence continue to accumulate and daily attendance fall below 90% we're started early so if it falls below 90% this is where we move to targeted teacher Le Outreach for example a teacher can send an empathetic email saying we miss your child they miss this work can't

079wait to see them back if absences persist we recommend sending a second form of communication such as a phone call or a home visit just another intense engagement to re-engage that child this may happen before or after that state mandated letter on this timeline um we're looking at it throughout the whole year but depending on your district and regulations it may happen before after that letter the good news is that if it happens after the letter they would have had the text message already and it wouldn't come as a shot if things continue to get worse we enter the tier three category this is when the student falls below 80% and again this is for unexcused and excused absences we don't want to wait until we're in truy territory at this point is where we

080recommend the one: one in intervention such as a home visit um Mentor an attendance Mentor a parent resource survey anything that can help alleviate those barriers and get the student back in school on a onetoone level so again all of this is aligned in best practices um this timeline focuses on frequent supportive Outreach not punitive and the more you focus on that movable middle that tier 2 level that's why you see multiple engagements at that point then that frees up resources to move to the tier three level for our students that need higher needs and higher intervention so here's an example of what the text messaging looks like um we pair the message with supportive resources so as you see like hey Avery was out um and then we have and this can look different

081in any school but it's a simple reply where they can request resources request time with their teacher or request mental help this elim eliminates the feeling of shame that parents may have making that first phone call to ask for help it automates the response so each number goes to the actual party that can help address that need and it's automated so you all that the timing that it goes out we recommend 2 to 3 days um of absence excused or unexcused and they receive that as the first message in and this will come well before a trcy letter the field of psychology teaches us that there are four key actions to motivate in behavioral change one is showing understanding without placing blame empowering others to ask for help removing room for interpretation and clarifying the

082cost of the current mindset to motivate parents to change their behavior about allowing their kids to miss school EAB researchers have Incorporated Behavior change Concepts into our communication strategies this strategy such as the text messaging um focuses on what to message utilizing evidence to counter misbeliefs we also explore when to message which is up to the school but early taking into account parent preference for messaging whether that's text or a phone call or email and lastly we talk about how to message by integrating the science of behavior change message tone and utilizing the most effective messenger for communications which we believe are teachers another tactic that we have to offer is an attendance nudge policy and this is a principle as you see outlined in the turquoise that you can post around schools you can

083send the first day a class and this is an immediate quick checklist that parents can look out in the morning and go through to decide if they should send their kid to school so see you in class yes you have a runny nose but you don't have a temperature over 104 um no throwing up no diarrhea um eyes crusty may want to stay home like you can go through quickly because we found that parents do not know where to find attendance uh measures for the district or their individual School especially in the timely manner they are usually not phone accessible or they have been sent in a in a newsletter at the beginning of school and they're far removed from it to have never heard of those um new changes again so this is a

084principle we've seen people put it on magnets for refrigerators um and it's definitely posted around the school we also recommend Graphics we have to keep in mind the different learning levels of our parents the different languages of our parents so anytime you can use Graphics stop lights colors anything that can immediately signal what the parent is to do is always helpful we also as you see at the bottom of the print out you always have to make a push of why this is important for the parent it's not just about not missing school it's about what NC attendance AFF fors your child and that's time management skills problem solving skills collaboration we all when we send any type of attendance material we want to highlight the positive as well as be honest about what the

085consequences may be we also want to provide resources at every turn whether that's the phone number to call for help or if it's the text message that links to the service so this is another template that we offer um you can change it in your school colors you can add your own messaging but we want to take out and I'll show you the screen we want to take out the guess work out of all of our interventions it's not enough to just say what you need to do but we actually walk districts through it and as we mentioned earlier we have a parent communication collaborative in play right now we just completed session three um this is just an outline of the deeper dive we're doing on parent messen so that was a high Lev

086overview but we're actually working on individual plans for distri districts we have a number of people like I said in the session and they go through these workshops with the step-by-step process to tailor um interventions for parents for your District so let's talk about students quickly our question here was what conditions were needed for to make kids feel personally motivated to come to school so EAB has extensive research library on positive School Behavior but when we that was completed in 2018 when the pandemic added the element of student disinterest to absenteeism we went back and re-evaluated how those motivations would lead to this study and this is what we came up with to motivate students to attend school they need to feel confident that success is possible they need to have a connection to peers

087and adults they need to be engaged in school community activities they need to know that their school is there for them and that help is available when needed as you see at the bottom after 3 years of limited progress districts are worse in multiple areas 71% of 13 and 19 year olds now say that school work makes them feel anxious and depressed 4 and 10 students feel less connected to peers or adults in their school and only 39% of students have taken classes or partic participated in programs to explore careers our research the extensive we um for the sake of this I wanted to focus on the two that was most accessible and we saw over a 100 school districts say that they wanted to build relationship connections for schools so um we have a

088practice that combines a positive relationship mapping and student interest conversations so I want to show you why that's important and then show you the tool so I don't have to tell you that relationships are important we know that it's the Cornerstone of improving student achievement we know that when students have strong relationships with adults in the building they are more likely to be interested in their classes they are less likely to be bullies and they're less likely to feel sad or depressed so for the purpose of this conversation we also know that students with a strong connection to adults are more likely to attend school so one particular School in warshaw County they developed an extension of what we call relationship mapping um they called this the relationship mapping exercise tool and it was actually

089a spreadsheet and if you follow me they put every student in the school name on the left and then they had teachers go through for each student and they had to put a check mark if they recognize the student's name or face they had to put a check mark if they knew the students's academic standing if they had regular regular positive feedback for the student if they had nonacademic facts they knew about the student and if they knew the student's story if they knew the student they would put their initials in that trusted adult category they did this six weeks I'll go through the process they did this the first six weeks of school they gave time for teachers to naturally meet the students speak them in the Halls by the 6 weeks when they

090filled out the spreadsheet they found that I'll go back students that were trending about tier 2 all the way to tier three chronically absent had the least amount of connections with teachers if you see the second row and the third row in the last row they also made correlations to the grade of these students and they found that the students with the least connection also had lower grades I'll go back to what they did next so after they reviewed the gaps they made a plan to fill in the gaps with additional staff they came up with a practice called a two by two so they would have to make two connections if you follow me at the bottom they would have to make two connections with two students twice a day they cannot talk about

091uh they cannot be in the class and they cannot talk about academic stuff they did that for a semester and they saw a 18% growth in the graduation rate as they studied it from 2012 to 2017 so this is a practice that we offer the actual mapping tool and the instructions can be adapted we've seen um school is adapted by adding student pictures to it we've seen them adapted to cover like I said not just attendance but behavior and grades and any area where they believe adult intervention could help improve the student so I just want to share this quickly this is another resource we can provide and lastly teachers our final section is short but nonetheless very crucial like I said parents want to hear from teachers about their student progress and I know

092you may think when I say teachers add another thing to their plate they wear so many hats how will they have the time how will they know what to do and we have two practices to share with you one is a basic checklist or a log and this is where you define one to two actions that a teacher must do every day every week and then you can go every quarter um and these are clear whether it's log attendance um have a personal welcome for students who are out and then weekly they're calling parents we've seen uh teachers send postcards but some type of second touch um for absent students and then every quarter what does that escalate to in the positive in the affirmative whether that's a party or whatever the the Student Activities

093um um the student type of activities they would like to see or if that's an escalation of joining a home visit to further engage but this was helpful for teachers because it was short it was simple they were able to post it in their class it didn't take a lot of prep or think time as they took the role they could go through at the end of the day and say check off each one we know that Elementary looks different than middle school and high school so this is also a checklist that can be given to counselors or um Home Room teachers but whoever has the most engagement with that student we want to make the process easy and simple we did that we have resources we saw success with that but they came back

094and they said okay the checklist is helpful but when teachers reach out to parents they don't know what to say so we came up with a script um this script is not just a read read a long script but it's offers a scenario and then a potential answer so if a parent says this this is how you can answer we found success with this because again teachers don't have time to think of every scenario they want to focus on a positive relationship with the parents so they felt uncomfortable having hard conversations about attendance and re-engagement without knowing the proper words to say in a supportive manner so that's where the checklist I mean the script came in so you see that on the left how did this work we found success when districts gave this

095during faculty meetings or plc's at the beginning of the year before teachers needed it so teachers didn't feel singled out they started the year informed and this paed with the checklist they knew when to make these calls conversations or emails and they had the guide to guide them through and this is again another editable resource that we can provide all of this is to lay the framework but we want districts to color it with their own information and what they know their teachers need to support them so as we close today I want you to leave knowing that you can ensure that parents know why and when to bring their kids to school you can take the guess work out of student connections and have them wanting to come to school and you can Empower

096teachers in the fight against absenteeism so thank you for your time and attention and we're here right okay there you go thank you with this okay all right our agenda for this portion of the work session um includes a review of our oops ah there we go um our agenda for this portion of the work session includes a review of our acps vision mission um definition and discussion of chronic absenteeism um Dr Rusty Carlock uh Equity Education data scientist will present data on the current state of chronic absenteeism and acps um Dr Jesse Turner director of student and family support we'll discuss the division uh plan for supporting schools um School leaders will share specific strategies that they have implemented and found success um this year and lastly at the conclusion of the presentation um

097the team will fill any questions from the board um all of our work and everything we do in acps is centered around our strategic plan learning for all 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 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 that every student succeeds and we will know every student our values include Equity Excellence family and community and wellness and our goals um thriving students affirming and empowering communities and Equitable and transformative resources and although our session touches on all goals the

098primary focus will be around goal one and goal two I'm thriving students and affirming and empowering communities our everyday matters every moment counts attendance campaign this year focuses on enhancing and making our school communities Dynamic positive highly active environments so that all students feel positive connections to their schools where there are strong relationships between students teachers staff families and Community we want students to be eager and excited about coming to school engaging in everyday learning whether an avid field trip schoolwide morning meeting listening session after school club activities steam activities Etc um providing diverse activities that connect students to their interests and passion will support our efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism um in recent years School divisions Across the Nation have been working to reduce chronic absenteeism the pandemic has exacerbated the issue um as

099Miss Young has stated and presented in her presentation um and now School divisions are seeing chronic absentee rates that are double what they have experienced prior to the pandemic in our school division the highest rates of chronic absenteeism had been around 10% however since the pandemic we have been seeing rates of 20 to 25% um prior rates that were once the highest are now the lowest chronic absenteeism is missing more than 10% of school during an academic year including excused and unexcused absences and suspensions considering the Academic Year this equates to about 18 days per year roughly 2 to three days per month um chronic absenteeism is compounded as students miss school during the elementary years um students miss that foundational knowledge which results in anxiety around catching up and the lack of content knowledge

100students continue to miss school and this cycle is just continuous so there are a number of um barriers to regular School attendance and this chart gives you a wide range um from trauma uh poor Transportation housing and food insecurity um to anxiety um uh negga parent having negative experiences in school to um uh lack of challenging culturally responsive instruction um lack of academic and behavioral supports um and then their misconceptions about um absences are only the problem if they're unexcused and missing two days per month doesn't really affect learning um so these are just a a wide array of barriers um the prevalence of chronic absence signals underlying systemic challenges that impede academic and personal well-being reflecting the struggles and stresses faced by students and families in their daily lives schools must therefore play a

101pivotal role in addressing these barriers providing the necessary programmatic I and policy interventions to support families in overcoming these challenges by doing so schools can mitigate the adverse effects on student achievement engagement and mental well-being ensuring a supportive and conducive learning environment for all students um schools families and communities can improve attendance when they work together um families and communities need hope for a better future the confidence in schools that they can help their students to succeed and the resources skills and knowledge needed to actively support students to engage in school and then schools need everybody to have all hands on deck um they need trauma informed and restorative strategies to meet the needs of students and families and they need the district to provide effective policies and systems that support School staff in taking

102and promoting positive problem solving practices so there are a number of reasons why it's important for us to focus on School attendance um and some of this you heard in the previous uh presentation um students living in poverty are two to three times more likely to be chronically absent um the most marginalized groups um Pacific Islander Native American African-American Hispanic students with disabilities and high school students are impacted disproportionately increased student anxiety leads to decisions to skip school um students just an example students in lower grades who are chronically absent um they result in the lack of found ational knowledge as these Concepts get harder throughout the grades the lack of understanding um compounds and anxiety sets in leading to students um in the cycle of skipping school and then you know chronic absenteeism can

103be addressed um by stating expectations to families developing and implementing plans and monitoring to address student barriers um to attendance and increasing positive student engagement and providing training for school administrators and staff so at this time I would like to turn it over to Dr carlot the equity education um data scientists who would discuss the state of chronic absenteeism in acps all right thank you Dr Kaiser thank you Miss Young and thanks to everyone it's a pleasure to be here with everyone tonight to talk about this important issue uh this first chart shows Alama County Public Schools chronic absentee rate back to 2012 and how that rate compares to the state uh you can see the large increase in chronic absenteeism that occurred during the pandemic the spike in the data represents a 96% increase

104in those years of 2020 to 2023 um comparing to the red line that's the State uh average during that time period we can see that prior to the pandemic many of those years we were well below the state average um however that began to change around 2016 and continued during and after the pandemic so that we were then above the the state rate in our most recent data through the middle of March we've seen a 25% decline in our chronic absentee rate from the previous year uh this Improvement is Meaningful as it represents around 800 fewer chronically absent students this year compared to last year and again that's in data from March 14th this is looking at the flip side so what is our positive attendance rate look like and how does that compare to

105our chronic absentee rate so these charts um are comparing q1 and Q2 uh from this school year to last school year and we can see again that there's an increase in attendance in our school district uh this year relative to last year and again that difference is Meaningful so just in those first two quarters those changes which seem somewhat small here represent 14,300 additional days of attendance for students throughout the division so in the next few slides we're going to look at variation in chronic absenteeism within our School Division and we'll start by looking at variation across our school levels uh these charts show that high school students are slightly more likely to be chronically absent than middle and elementary school students uh when we get a little more granular with the data and we

106start looking across grade levels what we see is that on the early side of elementary school so kindergarten first grade chronic absenteeism is higher and on the later side of high school so 11th and 12th graders it's also higher uh it's in the middle of students schooling trajectory through our our K12 system where we have the lowest levels of chronic absenteeism um for our students this slide shows variation in chronic absenteeism across all of our schools in albera county and as we begin to look at variation across schools and groups I want to reiterate the importance of looking at these data from a systems asset-based perspective this is to help us identify how and where we can do a better job of supporting schools students and families it's to help us to see how we

107can facilitate collaboration among schools families and the community to remove the barriers that can lead to Chronic absenteeism we can see that there's a significant variation across schools in terms of their chronic absentee rates systemic factors such as e economic hardship Transportation access to health care and others lead to some of our schools supporting three times as many students facing chronic absenteeism as other schools as you can imagine this means the resources needed to confront these issues also varies across our schools this chart shows chronic absentee rates by membership groups of race and ethnicity and we can see that all membership Ship groups experienced Stark increases during the pandemic and that all groups have seen an improvement since then we can also see disparities in chronic absenteeism with Latino and black students more likely to

108face the challenges that lead to Chronic absenteeism at rates two to two and a half times that of others similarly if we look at our English Learners uh compared to our non-english Learners we see that there's been a rising rate of absenteeism since 2017 uh but this is also true for all of our students it has been increasingly true for our English Learners though for them as well we have also seen an improvement this school year thus far this chart shows the same variation in chronic absent rates between students with special needs in their peers uh the disparities between students with IEPs and those without them has persisted all the way back through 20 2012 and showed similar patterns of increase um during the pandemic and Improvement since while all of these variables School race

109ethnicity English learner status and special needs are important in identifying where we can better support students facing challenges that lead to Chronic absenteeism the variable that was most important in identifying the challenges of chronic absenteeism at the school level was economic hardship this plot shows our elementary schools combined into geographic region their percentage of students receiving free and reduced lunch on the horizontal axis and The Chronic absentee rate for students within that region on the vertical AIS we can see that as the rate of economic hardship experienced by a school Community increases so too does its chronic absentee rate with a very strong correlation this shows the importance of building relationships with families as our previous presenters have discussed partnering with our communities to confront economic hardship while also mitigating its impact on students School

110attendance if we use these same variables of free and reduced lunch enrollment and chronic absenteeism but instead plot our individual schools we see the same relationship uh as the rates of poverty and economic hardship increase in the community so does chronic absenteeism however we can also see there is more variation uh there are some schools below this trend line that have lower rates of chronic absenteeism when accounting for the economic hardship that students face this provides us opportunity to identify schools that are leaders in addressing some of these issues and also to find where some of our divisions work to improve these Trends is taking root I'm excited now to pass it over to Dr Kaiser and Dr Turner uh as well as our principles who will discuss the division level supports and school level

111supports to address these issues thank [Music] you um the acps uh district attendance team um establishes a system of aligned District level policies practices and supports to facilitate and sustain improved attendance and engagement and academic achievement and um we strive to do this by um a number of things um capacity building uh building the capacity of our school leaders staff and school teams to implement a multi-tiered approach to support a culture of High attendance um we use actionable research um to provide accurate and timely actionable attendance and absenteeism data to um our district District um leaders and our school leaders um we uh have a notice from Dr mofin every week to check our P powerbi um information um so the schools have access to data to monitor um their attendance um positive engagement uh

112equip schools with the evidence-based strategies to positively engage students and Families and um the schools have um implemented um the EAB strategies um this year and have found them uh helpful um strategic Partnerships um we've mobilized Our Community Partners um to help us address the barriers to attendance um and we had uh business partner breakfast today to talk about our school Champions um and and so we want our partners to be engaged and involved in our work as well um adequate Equitable transformative resources um to ensure that uh resources are sufficient and Equitable equitably allotted uh to schools with the greatest needs um and shared accountability establish systems to hold both the district and the school level um staff accountable for doing their part to reduce chronic absenteeism and so each of um the district

113as well as the schools have attendance teams we also provide compliance support um there are checklists and templates that um are in power school that the schools have access to um there's compliance training and power school training for offices Associates and then um the director of student and family support um Dr Turner he works with um the school level teams um each School level team has set goals and developed um their uh attendance plan and put them in action um they've convened their attendance team they've um progress monitored um they've initiated their tiered response and reported and documented their progress in their strategic School Improvement plan and consistently updated information EMP Power School um we've adopted and implemented the EAB best practices um we uh State attendance expectations and guidelines for families um build School

114incentives so that students will want to come to school ensure that teachers and staff know their responsibilities regarding attendance um and we've used the scripts and um a lot of the supplemental resources that EAB provides um to help engage with our families um we've initiated our division level uh attendance communication um the nudges and we've had videos that have gone out um to our families um we also provide our right eror bright chat text message um support to send uh family frequent messaging regarding attendance and we've implemented the division level incentives and recognition for improved attendance um and and uh have these recognitions each quarter um for um our schools at each level and then we've also provided division level resources and support um the division level attendance team meets monthly to hear um the

115challenges across the division to problem solve um provide supports um to schools um we also work across departments um to get the resources and supports out uh to the schools and address the challenges and then um we've developed and um we've given incentives to the schools and we've gotten their feedback around the incentives for both teachers and students um for um their attendance and now at this time I would like to turn it over to Dr Jesse Turner director of student and family support who will discuss the school level attendance teams and communication and family engagement thank you Dr Kaza good evening up like to talk a little bit about what we are doing at the school level and you've heard uh about the crisis that's going on with chronic absenteeism treny one of the

116things that we wanted to do this year was uh we really wanted to take another look at how um we could really uh beef up what we're doing at the school level uh to help with attendance at the end of the day uh the biggest way for us to get children to come to school is for people in the schools to know the children it's those relationships that that uh that make children want to come to school in the things that go on at school so but in order to do that you you got to have a system of of knowing and and and being in tune with uh student attendance so we wanted to really work on our uh school-based attendance teams started in July uh with conversations uh that I had with principles

117either in leadership meetings or uh during the individual conversation so um we wanted to make sure that each school had an attendance team that would be made up of uh of a school administrator a counselor an OA because often times an OA uh is the person who is uh working with sending out the letters or some form of communication uh school nurse when possible sometimes children are missing school because of an illness and uh the only one who might really know uh about that situation could be the nurse so the nurse can help provide information to the team um in our schools that have the coaches some some coaches are part of those teams um also I would say that uh safety coaches in some schools also will will participate uh and teachers depending on

118the time a day that um the meeting takes place but but but the goal around making sure that our tennis teams were were were filled with people who had a pulse and would know what was going on with the students um so the conversations could be rich and robust and and and based on uh how to improve uh student attendance okay um Dr K said a little bit about what they do but um uh the teams do monitor student attendance student attendance sort of comes in two in two phases okay when you're monitoring um uh a child's attendance one you you you're looking at Chronic absenteeism and and and two truancy okay and they're two different things and sometimes that can be somewhat confusing but but there is a difference okay um and and one

119of the things that we have tried to really focus on is chronic absenteeism because here in the state of Virginia treny is really Guided by a state code it's very very descriptive in what you're supposed to do but we but we don't want to focus on just treny um and if we find that children have multiple unexcused absences which which starts that uh uh kind of race towards being Trent we're we're trying to work on just getting them in school not on getting them in court okay but that's I wanted to say that because there is a difference between kind of monitoring chronic aism and monitoring treny all right but the teams at the schools that's what they do I have the connection with the intake office if we have to go that route I'm

120the one that deals with intake office and works with the school if if that has to happen but other than that I'm working with the schools on chronic aism and and the different strategies that they are employing to try to get children to come to school so um the schools have engaged in calls home and they um the the teachers are calling counselors are calling admin's calling uh um uh it doesn't matter if if someone has a connection with the child we're trying to have them called the principles of doing that so um we do send letters home we obviously know that that's not that can be somewhat impersonal we don't that's that's not the first thing we want to do but but we do um if we run into a into a situation where

121a child has five unexcused absences then we move right into uh calling in the parent and the child and having uh them helped us help us craft an attendance plan so we can get it on paper we can have have children agree and parents agree and try to help them work through that um schools have conferences with parents whether it's at the school or at the parents home um uh our principal have been uh open to doing whatever they possibly can to meet parents where they are in terms of helping their students or or children um and obviously sometimes we do interact with the um with the courts but it's more so the intake office not not actually Court unless there's a student who has some other history with the court but uh to date

122I don't think we've had a student in that situation um so um but when the teams meet the main goal is really to brainstorm ways to make school a place that children want to be and a place where parents feel comfortable sending their child um that's that's the that's the real Focus um of the teams not not to be punitive we want we want children to want to be in school uh and we want parents to feel comfortable in sending their children to us every day um why are we seeing some of these issues uh with student attendance um some of our families are facing some major challenges Transportation work schedules um student illness um Miss doll she has left now but we have been working probably for a week to meet with the parent

123um the parent works from like 7 in the at night to 7: in the morning uh we actually had a meeting schedule for today the parent text me at uh 6:45 and said my boss was going to be late I'm not going to get out of here here till 9:00 she already been there since 7 the night before you know so I mean we have situations like that that uh our families are having a tough time um and and and it trickles down to the children as well as um obviously the school um student illness is another um we've also seen a rise in homelessness um and um in some in some situations a one-bedroom apartment is costing parents $1,800 a month $1,500 a month uh people are moving constantly because they can't pay the

124rent or they're being evicted our our attendance teams are running across all of that uh on a daily basis and it almost doesn't matter which school um so so there there are lot of challenges that families are having now um uh see teams report the strong relationships have formed with parents as result of communication around attendance yes for many of our Schools attendance has been um or attendance issues and having those conversations have been the jump off point for schools to connect with families and I've had principes assistant principal report to me that they have actually been able to um improve their relationship with families especially families that maybe they they were kind of disconnected with uh prior uh that that they because they have constant conversations about attendance and their working with the family

125to try to improve the child's attendance the families are starting to uh have trust in them so although the conversation about attendance or bad attendance might might not be what you want to talk about we we have seen some good come out of those conversations and parents feeling a little bit more connected to schools um and uh you heard earlier about the cohorts we we have um uh Greer and Red Hill and I also attend those sessions it's cohort one um that's facilitated by EAB that um where where we're able to work with uh schools uh and administrators and teachers from around the around the country uh and we're talking about attendance we're talking about uh the the the incentives and interventions and what we have found is that it's it's just it's been really

126positive to to be able to brainstorm with people around the country who are having some similar issues um and we are excited about starting cohort 2 in April um again uh that cohort will include Woodbrook and um Dr hos and Dr kazer U allowed me to to hire a um an hourly person to help with to help with attendance um so uh that that young lady will be uh a part of that cohort as well um but she is working right now working with schools so and then the buyback program uh something that the state has just rolled out and we jumped on it uh our our students have an opportunity to buy back um up to 15 days um uh K through 12 and our our elementary students would need to have um I

127think it's 2 hours it's the two hours of instruction outside of normal school hours for every two hours they will earn back a day and for our secondary students it it's three it's three hours and they will earn back a day so um what's what's exciting about that is that we we we're we're we're able to uh get students back and front of instruction uh and and instruction that they've missed the goal is to hit this really hard right after the break cuz we just got the information I don't know maybe two weeks ago um so we've been working with schools to to try to uh craft that program and uh start up after spring [Music] break and Dr ker mentioned this so I don't know if it's much on here that you haven't already

128heard but um in terms of are communicating with the community yes bright Arrow messages we send out attendance nudges um in some of our Communications uh and those are just um thoughts and ideas about uh and statements about the importance of school and attending school on a daily basis um uh we've had positive video messages uh like a PSA made by uh people in the community that that that we believe many of our students know uh um and those have been popular we We are continuing with those as well uh we do have a website where parents can go to I think one of the things that I want to do though with the website because I think sometimes with some of our parents if they have to click a lot they might not get

129to to what to what we want them to get to so um uh for next year I want to try to make sure that that that on the first page of of the web page that that there's some type of link right to the attendance page um because I think I think that's important and that and and hopefully we can make that happen but um uh we do have a website and I think it's informative but I think if the parents have to click more than two or three times it it it it we we might create a situation where people are not seeing it who we want to see it so um and there was a community session hosted for families and um we we just were able to to purchase uh posters flyers

130and magnets uh the posters have been sent out to the schools um the Flyers are are going to be used for back for backpack mail and they sent they're going to be sent to the elementary school schs and the magnets will be sent to all of the schools for them to use um uh at programs to give out to their families uh they can put them on the front desk when families come in they can take one but but uh each one of those um has a message about about the importance of attendance we're just trying to kind of make attendance and our efforts go viral that's that's the goal so and I think now we have um three of our principles uh first principal who will come up to well Dr C first yes

131so now we get to the best part of the presentation and that's hearing what's going on in the schools um to positively impact this issue um we are happy to Spotlight three of our schools and school leaders here with us this evening to share the great work they have been engaging in um this year around attendance and chronic absenteeism and first we have um Mr Steve Saunders principal of Greer Elementary School and then after um Steve we have Miss Ashby Johnson principal of Journey middle school and then lastly we have Mr Darren Bonham principal of albamar high school good evening I'm Steve saers and I'm proud to be the Principal here at career and I'm happy to talk to you about chronic absenteeism and the things that we've been doing to reduce it and I

132think we're already off the rails here Dr Kaiser is this the slide that you want us to be share go go on to our slide great um we've seen a great reduction um here so we we know that uh reducing absenteeism and and increasing the students attendance at school is something that everybody at our school uh has a PO has a role in um and so we've been doing a lot of things at the whole school level um and so we've been um working with our colleagues in the in the central office as well as with EAB and developing things on our own uh to come up with strategies and things at the whole school level um so some of the things we've been doing as you as they referenced earlier um even little simple

133Flyers of that we've created in English and Spanish on when to come to school uh We've created magnets uh to our families with our phone numbers on it uh the times of day that we are in school we uh send out every Sunday a highlight of the week when days we do have school what events are going on we send out um events to families kind of highlighting things that are coming up uh we send those out as digital copies to families on Sunday as well um one of the other things we this year was uh we created a letter and for all 530 students in their building we uh calculated their current attendance rate and we sent that to families and just said here's where you are right now and talked about um the

134supports that we had in place that we could provide to them uh we also do have an attendance team that meets weekly it's about eight of us um we go line by line uh for students and looking at patterns and things that we need to do to support them um one of the things that uh the division did two years ago that we continue to benefit in this area for chronic absenteeism is the use of the school Vans and so I feel like daily we're driving two to three shuttle services out to go pick up kids who've either missed buses or parents don't have transportation or some other life event has happened that they didn't um ride the bus and so we go and get kids and bring them to school and also take them

135home um and so we do that we talk about that in the attendance team meetings about uh which kids we need to be supporting that way one of the things that we're particularly proud of is that we've seen uh decreases in our chronic absenteeism rate overall and we see that that's only going to get better through the state's um flexible buyback construction program um so what we did was we identified about 80 students out of our 530 that are sitting in one of two categories one uh they are already over the threshold for chronic absenteeism for the school year so they've already hit 18 days or more but they statistically are sitting in an area where we can buyback the time so for me I cut that off at 30 days because we can buy

136back 15 so we can get them to 17 so under 18 so they're sitting in that group or they're sitting in a um they're sitting at 13 absences 14 absences they're sitting in a group that were trying to proactively bank time for them in case something happens they get really sick and they tip over in April or May and it's too late to catch them up we've already banked the time to that's about 80 students for us that we're trying to either catch U to buy back the time for or proactively Bank time towards we're doing that through an an incentive program we're starting right after Spring Break um free clubs for enrichment and activities after school for kids where we're going to be providing them for this group we we started the attendance for

137this group here to try and get them to do one of two things one come back and certainly buy back school but more importantly we're trying to give them yet another incentive to come to school would they find a hook would they be excited about coming and doing Ceramics with the art teacher after school um would they be excited about doing a math club would they be doing some of these things that get them a hook to come to school and want to come even more than they've been doing um and so we're really excited about that um as we go into uh into the spring break and into the the rest of the school year so we're we're we're we're seeing some good movement um with our school we're not all the way where

138we want to be certainly but we've seen some really good Improvement um we're already capturing um some kids that we know that were chronically absent last year that we've already caught back that they aren't uh and we know that the real reason behind this is that we have to give them the opportunity to learn and we have to get them in the building so that we can have those relationships with them and also have them get get to learn we know that that only at the elementary level is critical to send them uh set them up for success and that also it it um compounds over time and we also um are trying to do our best to set up our students as they transition into middle school so with that I'm going to turn

139it over to Ashby Johnson all right good evening my name is Ashby Johnson I'm the principal at Journey Middle School um and just like Steve I'm going to just share uh a few highlights of things that we've been doing we really started off strong in July with um our attendants team um viewing the EAB presentation much of what you just saw today and then we actually developed from that we developed 20-day uh cycle plans that we've been using and so literally when we got to pre-service week um we had laid out week one of what we're doing we were going to present we presented to the whole staff around chronic absenteeism and provided um updates and ways that we were going to tie into the relationship mapping work that you all heard about earlier so

140we're in year two of doing that with our home room students this year our growl teacher which is home room um is making the first Contact or was making the first Contact uh with all of their students and so they called home the first week of school just welcoming students back to school um Ted about how excited they were to see them um we uh the again the after school tutoring and Saturday school for buyback is in the works we actually started our first Saturday school this past Saturday our attendance team is uh fabulous they um have been a huge part of the the presentations that we've done the development of our 20-day plan Cycles our weekly data reviews calls home and home visits we're doing a lot of celebrations that are quarterly and weekly

141uh with pizza lunches and certificates we're incentivizing we're interviewing kids or we we at the beginning of the year we interviewed a lot of kids who were chronically absent last year and they're not this year so we're talking about what's different this year so we can learn from them and and expand that one of the uh best things that we were doing this year is we implemented fun Friday lunches which any of you all are welcome to come to uh the teachers uh don't have any lunch duty on Fridays so the administrators and the counselors do all the lunch duties on Fridays and we have music playing we have a a treat for the week it could be a student has no tardies for the week or they have had perfect attendance for the week

142or for the month they actually come up on on the stage um myself and two of our counselors are sitting there and we check their uh record in power school give them uh some kind of Jaguar swag or Oreos or free pass to the dance and and they really really love it uh they love the recognition uh they love that they get that we're celebrating their growth but also um just just how they're doing with attendance so we're adding tardies in there as well as the uh daily um daily attendance and the weekly attendance and monthly attendance so that has some been something that has been a pretty big hit for us this year that we're super excited about so those are just some things that we're doing um again the 20-day Cycles we are

143just every 20 days we're re-evaluating our data we're celebrating the things that we have been really successful with we're making adjustments to our plans based on that data so it's really uh kind of progressing throughout the year um we are seeing uh we are making really good progress um we actually have some of our students who are chronically absent last year that have perfect attendance this year which is amazing so we're just celebrating them and lifting them up um and and we're really excited about the work that we've done so thank you and dar is going to talk about the high school [Music] thank you ashb good evening everybody I'm Daron principal at alar High School uh I think one of the critical parts that's been mentioned a lot this evening is obviously the teamw

144work that's required from the teacher side uh want to talk a little bit about the kind of the practical sense from um how we operate at the high school level uh with over 2,000 students obviously there a lot of students to navigate through and figure out the support that they need we do run the weekly uh we call them Student Success meetings they happen every week uh typically Mondays uh and that will be a team of similar what Dr Turner had mentioned with counselors administrators secl uh social workers um we also have home Community School intervention coordinators that both work uh some specifically on the uh El side but also some that work um with all of our students and those are critical people as well I think uh important part of those meetings cuz

145we do it by grade level so we'll have 9th grade one week 10th grade 11th 12th Etc is that the old notion that you can't change which you can't measure and I think that's looking at data every single time to ensure what that looks like uh and those folks are really critical because they really dive into a lot of what the data looks like but data is only one piece to it um the one position mentioned our home Community School coordinators uh they will go and do home visits we've done hundreds of home visits throughout the course of the year uh and they and I like to use the word um partnership versus Outreach you know Outreach feels kind of a one-way uh type of Direction Where partnership really looks at trying to meet both

146ways in terms of where we're looking at student attendance and so what we've tried to do as well is what you'll see in the one column to the left is identify through all these meetings what are some commonalities that exist uh when we go through treny there's a barriers worksheet that we all go through and that barriers worksheet has a lot of questions that we ask and it really tries to dig into the why because I think that's end of the day um that's really the the most important question is the why why are students in my case at the high school level not connecting to school right why are they not coming to school and some of that really isn't always about all day absences sometimes it's about period absences sometimes it's about morning

147absence and sometimes it's afternoon and so there are a lot of competing factors especially and we've noticed that um coming off of covid there's a lot of Maslow that gets into what needs families and kids have and so some of the things on the left that we identified um through a lot of just of this work is um there's a lot of mental health components that we've seen that require quite a bit of support in terms of what that looks like for students to feel comfortable back in school on a regular basis uh a lot of medical diagnosis for different reasons uh getting to school and that could be Transportation it could be walking to school it could be just how perhaps they have other obligations at home they're not getting up in time they're

148missing buses things of that nature and and and getting to school is a pretty important part obviously of the school day um some of that's getting there later than they need to be so some of that's maybe period attendance related uh I think a critical part at the high school level especially is the poor academic performance uh because I think these we look at these through the symptomatic piece they're all symptoms right attendance is a symptom um or something's a symptom of attendance and poor attendance and the academic side I think is critical because if you think about it if you missed three weeks of your trigonometry or your algebra 1 class it's not something you can just roll back in and then feel comfortable so while we do all the work to get a

149student back in I think that's just the start then the next part is what do we do to get them to be academically successful again and feel success within the classroom which is just critical uh other factors looking at things like team parenting has increased um and team parenting looks at two things one is I'm watching a sibling and others is we've had more uh young people that are having their own children and that's been an increase in the last couple years as well and those are a lot of factors that we have to navigate through uh the family work obligations uh poor connection to school you know the surveys we do through Panorama talk about sense of belonging that's a piece we always try to connect with and why do some students feel like

150they're not as connected and sometimes that's an academic connection sometimes that's an athletic connection or sometimes that's a band connection whatever it happens to be I look at some of the things that we did with our inner mural program we started for the first time at album raw last year where um we used to cut on soccer and we ended up taking uh close to 50 students that normally would have gotten cut many of those were students that uh were in our English language program and they ended up uh becoming part of a program and become a part of school and they were become part of the community and they had incentive to be back back in school so what are other ways to make connection to school certainly academically and Beyond um the piece

151that uh I'll leave with is the the buyback which is part of what the state has put in recently to say that if you have meet this criteria you can earn back your chronic absentee days so to speak um we've done buyback at all three high schools since the last couple years and buyback is related at the high school level because the principal and this is all in policy has the discretion to deny credit if you've missed more than 10 school days or 10 periods I should say within a class period And while that's kind of been in the policy for quite some time it's just recently become en forced because we realized the correlation between attendance and coming and academic performance and within that um students realize that when they're missing 10 12 15

15220 uh class periods that has an impact on their grade so we started buyback sessions again last year we've increased them this year uh we we hold them Thursday afternoons 4:00 to 6 and we hold them Saturday mornings 9:00 to noon we've held um about 16 or so so far and the key to that is not just you're coming in earning time you know I've missed a bunch of days so I'm going to earn time um but we want that to be purposeful so there is a a pretty strong correlation for the students who were coming and what their academics look like as well cuz many of them are behind it can need some support so we've paired them with tutors we pair them with UVA tutors uh Miss early I think who was here

153earlier she has her nesby uh tutors that work with us we have peer tutoring programs with with teenagers working with other their peers uh we've had over 200 students have already attended U many of those are repeat students that will come in and then they recover absences right that allow them uh to get under the radar of the requirement of the 10 but they also uh along the way get academic support and get I I call it resuscitation right like you get to a point you've missed 3 weeks of Algebra 1 we have to get you back into Algebra 1 so when you go back into class you're feeling successful and then feeling the accomplishment which gets back to one of the reasons why students are coming so I think it's an overall process there's

154a lot of people in the mix in doing that but I think having some of these um opportunities beyond the classroom as well supports getting students back and I think we've seen that to help uh decrease some of the chronic absenteeism that we had the school so thank you all right and thanks to um Steve and Ashby and Dara for your presentation and all of the great work that you do with your students your staff and your families each and every day so thank you we appreciate you um the office for Community engagement um our strategic initiatives aim to enhance um School administration Effectiveness Foster equity and expand Community engagement we will bolster School administrators by providing additional support and facilitating teacher Communications I'm addressing chronic absenteeism with families um collaboratively we will engage with

155the equity center and other key Health Partners to determine ways in which we as a community can better meet the health needs of our students and families and then we intend to implement um and go after community and schools programming um add addressing social issues and enhancing educational and enrichment opportunities for our students and families and then furthermore we plan to apply for um 21st century Community Learning Center grants um aiming to broaden access to after school and enrichment programmingsoftware to identify and engage business and Community Partners willing to contribute their talent time and treasure or resources as school Champions um the school Champion initiative will not only provide in valuable support to our schools but also strengthen the bond between our educational institutions and the community and that is our presentation and we are

156open to questions [Music] that was a lot of material um thank you all um I I guess for the principles I mean Ashby you said um you talked to students about why they've come back I mean we we've pretty um clearly diagnosed all the range of reasons why kids don't want to come or can't come but why have what have you done what do they say when you ask them why they've come back and um I guess when we reach do the reach out and this is for everybody the reach out to the students do we put together I mean if they're not coming because of academic failures and or challenges and I think Dara talked to this or emotional you know bullying or emotional issues do you put together a package I yeah I

157guess your team works on that I'm not even sure what I'm asking but I think you probably know what I'm asking even if I don't articulate it well yeah I think I think I know um so the students have shared a variety of things in terms of why their attendance has improved so some has just been that they feel more connected to the school some has been that they did have mental health issues that have been resolved um or not resolved but supported uh through counseling or through trusted adults trusted relationships with adults at the school um some of them feel like they have uh connected to an activity at school that they can be involved in so it just kind of depended on the on the student um but we did kind of divide

158out based on our data we did divide out the kids that had uh shown a lot of growth in their attendance and just interviewed them oneon-one so we could see if we could get some Trends or find some things that were really working and and what we learned was that it just really varied depending on the kid did which we thought going into that but we weren't you know we weren't 100% sure but um it those are some of the things that they came up with um in terms of your second question I think really creating a a very individual and specific plan for a student based on where they are kind of me meeting them where they are and thinking about growth and progress and where where they need to go um and so

159those plans look different it could be a check and checkout with a student it could be that they need a break halfway through third period it could be that they need a a weekly goal setting meeting with a counselor you know just just depends so those are really individualized and I think that's when we can get pretty creative um and again it's different for each student based on what they need but it really it really um helps us get to know the student find out what they need the students are able to share with us too what what they feel like they need to be successful so they really have a voice in that plan too and then getting the families involved with that with the planning does that help very much so thank you

160y um thank you this was a lot of information um and definitely really insightful I do have um a few notes and questions um one is kind of centered around uh the messaging and I know that um the first presentation talked about you know guilt and blame and things like that and I and we do get a lot of emails especially when those nudges go out um the texts um that often times they seem to correlate I don't even know if it's planned but when there's a um teacher work day or something like that and so we'll send out an email saying how important attendance is and then schools Clos the next day and so then it it seems contradictory even though that's not our intention um and so I know we've gotten a couple

161of emails from people who have been frustrated by that cuz I feel like it's opposite messaging um so I'm just throwing that out there that if we're trying to um really communicate how important attendance is maybe the timing of some of those but also I do think that some of the letters that have gone home I have two kids in full transparency that um are chronically absent um and so the letters that come home have felt very blamey for lack of a better word um um which can be frustrating when trying to get our kids to school so um I it might be helpful to um maybe talk to some parents too about how that messaging is coming across and how it might encourage them to send their you know what would be more helpful

162in in the wording of that message um but speaking of my two chronically absent kids one um is my senior um at Western and so his freshman year was um covid year so he never had the buyin and that's what we were talking about um it was never there he was you know doing virtual learning and so that has had implications for the last four years um so I do think that that is really important and that's something that I've talked a lot about um and it leads me to think that you know um really catching the freshmen especially when they're starting high school and maybe the sixth graders too and really focusing on those kids um at the very beginning of starting those schools and getting that buy in right away because I think

163um Jackson's teachers tried for the last couple of years but once you got through that freshman year and they were you know it was really hard to catch them on the back end of high school and so I tell you from personal experience as much as my husband and I fought to have Jackson you know involved in school or whatever um not having that initial buyin from his freshman year made it really difficult to have buyin for those all four years so um my other kid who was chronically absent this year was kind of a fluke thing he had um a concussion from football and then he had strep and so he missed two weeks of 5 days each and then we had a family vacation planned post elction to kind of reset as a

164family and we knew that he was going to miss 5 days so that was 15 days in the first semester already um so he's been doing buyback at Henley which has been great um and he signs up that he's able to do it during sting um because he's in algebra and Spanish and so he's buying back those classes um but what's frustrating about it is we just this week got a letter home um saying that he has his absences and he has no buyback he hasn't done any buyback days but he said that he's even banked days and he's done more than the 10 and so there's um some inconsistency in that communication so if we weren't so on top of things as parents and knowing that he had bought those back I would get

165this letter and think oh my gosh you know he's got all these days to miss up make up he hasn't done it but in reality he's actually banked days so I say that too that you know it can um if if we're wanting this to work effectively we need to make sure that that how we're tracking that buyback um how we're tracking these absences is consistent um and so that that messaging really resonates with the parents because um that could be incredibly frustrating for a parent um if it's not accurate and and it was very frustrating for him because he's like Mom I've done it I've done it i' I've gone to all my stings and you know he's a straight A student and so um those are just two things that I wanted to

166um bring up on the communication side I didn't know if you wanted to and I one other comment after appreciate the feedback and we'll definitely take your suggestions um this uh was the first year of our implementation of the nudges and um the widespread communication so we'll work with the communications team and we will look at these issues and make some adjustments again thank you yeah no I think all of this is really important and I think that you know we're it's all steps in the right direction and um I I do see a lot of positive change my last question had to do with the van that um they brought up about Greer and then I think Journey um and maybe Alamar said they had one too um I'm curious if that is something

167that's available to all of our schools and how we're using that with absenteeism because in all honesty I'd never realized that that was an option for getting kids to school um especially in light of chronic absenteeism and and um how we're using that and how we communicate I'm just curious about it cuz that seems like it could be super helpful um and also how we're communicating with families that maybe don't speak English or or aren't um easily accessible um I'm thinking a lot of our like English Second Language Learners um and things like that that how we can get those kids to school yeah well um yes each school has a b um and I'm probably one of the administrators that works the very closely with the schools in terms of the attendance and for

168uh some of our schools um kind of the the the number of times that the van will go out really depends on who they might have available to leave work to drive so some schools that have more staff they may have a few more people free at certain times to make those runs but but the van is there um and it is available and are families of aware of this because I mean I I you know not that my kids would necessarily need to use that resource but as a whole acps parents are and and what is the process for a parent or somebody to say hey I can't get my kid to school can you come pick them up or they miss the bus like do we have an operating procedure in place for

169each of those schools and how are we making sure that we're catching is it an equitable resource to all of our families the principles have made those connections with the school Community but in terms of how frequent um there's no standard operating procedure around it because the principles don't want to promise something that they can't deliver um and we have some children uh for instance I used to be the principal at monachello family lives at the base of afon it's pretty difficult for for the principal to have someone leave school for for an hour right or hour and a half so they just don't want to tell families something that they can't follow through yeah with so but um as much as the schools can um as when they have someone free they're they're they're

170trying to do it it's it's it's a little easier for the schools in the in the urban ring M um uh but it's not something that's been promised because they don't want to say something that that they can't deliver that was um just just a quick followup but the the Vans were purchased from uh pandemic relief funds that was one of the onetime purchases that we made for all the elementary and middle schools and the initial request was around being able to uh have students stay after school for extra time and support and uh it perked up from elementary schools and um as Dr Turner pointed out the principles have it as a resource in the past they might have gone out in their own car or uh had a staff member go out in

171a car uh to pick up students that had missed the bus or maybe they were chronically absent and just not coming in and um um we've had a lot of positive feedback from the schools around the Vans as a tool to build relationships U and also a stronger connection with the families I'm sure Steve has mentioned he's been out driving the van you know all of them get out there and use it so right yep um in terms of uh we we do we work with um uh with the Esau Department in terms of getting the letters um translated and I mean everything that we come out with we try we we try to get over to them as fast as we can um um so that's that's that's that's what we're doing real you

172know the the interesting thing too with the EAB one of the things I I went to the uh round table that they do uh last spring and this was the topic but the the one of the things the EAB talked about was it wasn't even necessarily a phone call from uh the teacher that if the teacher could text them they actually prefer texting and so um one of the things they've provided is they provided like a little script that you can use with your text messaging and parents you know it's just um we miss uh John today uh it'd be really great you know please reach out let us know what's going on and just trying to get in the there's the official letters they're going to happen because a lot of are are required

173by code but it's what you do proactively before that letter before the first negative uh as you know you you mentioned it's very formal it doesn't feel great to get these attendance letters but if we can have teachers use the technology uh tools that'll that'll translate you know like our the bright hour messages and some of the other technology that they use to get in the that interim the gap between the attendance issue and those first official not ifications come out there's a great return on investment with that and so that requires extra effort but texting is that as much as texting can be um I guess irritating uh parents actually do prefer in in lie of phone calls and teachers find it easier to do too because it's making cold phone calls to families

174that you don't haven't talked to before is difficult and uh so I'm glad we're able to do that they've got and all our teachers have access to the technology to do that they can they text from their computers okay so yeah they that's what they do that's they when they're sending out bright hour they they would use their computer to do the text so I I just want to thank um sure can you come to the mic yeah and while you're coming up I just really want to thank our EAB Partners this was this is like how it should work that we go we learn about uh the research we they they really do National landscape research find out what the best practices are and this is how it should work you go to the

175sessions you learn about it they run these these cohorts that you've talked about which I think were are great because we're all learning as we go and then hits the schools they're practicing it and then you saw in every slide that Dr carock showed the dip how it's starting to come back down again and um I just think this is an example of why we want to use best practices and find out what's working in other places the quick note I wanted to make about the text messaging we're finding that parents can copy the text into their translator because it's kind of impossible to translate for every language our parents are speaking so that's a good way for through the they're doing it with the emails and the text messaging and then schools are automating

176the text message so you have that preset it will fill the students's name in we have a set you could have it set for two days again at four days so that cuts down on the time and the language barrier plus um adding Graphics so the the green light red light thumbs up thumbs down all of that is helping with the language barriers as well so I just want to add that I had a quick question around Special Education data and I may might have missed it did we do we did we have include Special Education data on absenteeism in the presentation yes yeah we did okay yeah apologies I also really wanted to thank all of you for your work and also for all this information I'm the one who asked for the absenteeism

177um work session and so I really appreciated all this information a couple of takeaways that I have um are you know you're talking a lot about teamwork and it seems like it's not Silo is a lot of parts of the school working together a lot of departments working together and you know that is great I feel like we have been siloed for a long time and this is really great working together to really put supports around the children so I I really appreciate that and seeing the progress that it's made um part of that progress or I I don't know if our huge Spike we had a little bigger Spike than the state did last year and that also was a time when we had a lot of Transportation issues so I don't know if

178that correlates or if that's causal or whatever but it just reminds us that you know all of the parts of our division are really important to educating the kids so Transportation all the work that you're doing too and that's also a plug for bus drivers um we were at theity any breakfast this morning and Dr ha made a plug for anyone who wanted to apply to become a bus driver it's a really good way to um you know do a good thing in your community so plug for that um I also uh wanted to note that I think for me my a takeaway is I've always sort of thought of excused and unexcused absences differently but they both affect learning so that's something that you know Dar you said well you know we're coming to

179realize that it seems obvious but we're coming to realize the effects and um I think that's something that's important for parents to hear too uh and important for our community to he and certainly myself as a parent I was learning that here in this presentation so I really appreciate that so I just thank you very much for all of your work on this and all this information and for staying so late and for staying so late thank you thank you thank you okay that wraps us up for school division work session um we do have one bit of other business we were LAX in coming out of close session we had a motion to make so Dr aov yes um I move that the board accept the um RF I'm sorry reduction and force protocol

180as presented to the board in close session a second moved by Dr Acuff and seconded by Mr Paige um can we have a roll call V on that please miss Filman yes Dr Berlin yes Mr Graham page yes Dr aov yes Mr Chuck Pace yes Miss alen o BN yes M uh chair Lee yes so moved okay and with that with no other business we are out thank you very much