001Miss Osborne yes Mr Page yes Mr Mr alcaro is absent Dr Berlin yes Miss Lee Yes chair Carlson yes so moved do we have any emotions coming out of closed meeting yes I have one motion I move that acps provide notice to the Piedmont Regional Education Program joint border control by June 30th 2023 that we are terminating the lease and the operating agreement for the Ivy Creek School on June 30th 2025. second all those in favor or actually any discussion hearing none all those in favor aye aye any opposed that motion passes do we have another motion from Miss Osborne yes I moved to direct staff to enter negotiations for the architect selection for the southern feeder pattern Elementary School and the order presented uh motion by Miss Osborne and seconded by Miss Lee we'll
002say on that one do you have any discussion all those in favor aye any opposed [Music] okay no hearing no opposition that passes we have a third motion from Dr Acuff I moved to direct staff to proceed with design for the high school Center two on the Lambs Lane campus do we have a second second okay moved by Dr Acuff second by Miss seconded by Miss Osborne any discussion [Music] okay um would you like a roll call vote we can go with directions okay all those in favor aye any opposed okay so moved and passed and we have one last motion coming out of closed meeting from Dr Berlin I have one Motion in two parts I move that we appoint candidate a to position a in candidate B to position B I also move
003that we appoint reappoint administers administrators as presented to us second okay moved by Dr Berlin seconded by Dr Acuff any discussion all those in favor aye aye any opposed okay that passes that brings us to our regular agenda so the first thing we'll have is a call to order where we do a roll call of who's present and we'll start with you um Claire sorry Claire Kaiser assistant superintendent excuse me thank you thank you Anthony Bessette uh filling in for Ross Holden schools Council Rebecca Berlin Jewett District Judy leroybanna District Katrina Colson Rio District Grand page Samuel Miller District Ellen Osborne Scottsville District sanuthi Amor singha student representative wayning ding student representative Matthew Haas superintendent Christine Thompson Clerk of the board great now we can stand for the Pledge of Allegiance one nation under our
004indivisible with liberty and justice for all next up is item 2.5 which is a moment of silence I do want to take a moment and dedicate this moment of silence to a employee who unfortunately is no longer with us that would be Avis key Morse I'll read a quick or read a bio Avis key Morse was a budget Grant analyst in our fiscal services department and he unfortunately passed away last week a lifelong resident of Charlottesville and the Charlottesville area Avis begin working for acps on August 20th 1997 at Albemarle High School a highly effective office support staff member Avis put others first especially children and their families during her time I'm sorry I said he earlier after I said I was like wait a minute during her time with acps Avis worked at Albemarle
005High School Western Albemarle High School Brownsville Elementary School and fiscal service fix fiscal Services a constant learner Ava started as an office associate too and was promoted steadily event eventually arriving at management analyst to position I will say in reflecting on our experiences with Avis brandsville principal Jason Crutchfield said that Avis was a committed member to our staff supporting teachers and students and as a parent my children so speaking as if I were him Bennett benefited from her dedicated service at whs where student staff and community members were blessed to see her smile every day so I would like to dedicate this moment of silence to Avis and we can do that now thank you everyone for observing that and I will note that her service is tomorrow so if you want details feel free
006to email if you would like to attend her service after that will be our Spotlight on education and the reason I think probably many of you guys are here tonight it will it's it's after this opening it's our retiree recognition and why we have all those cupcakes out there and um I'm very excited about that I believe Dan Redding is going to step up to okay Miss Kaiser is going to do it good evening everybody tonight is a Bittersweet moment we have in front of us tonight representatives of our 71 Albemarle County Public Schools Employees who are retiring as we close out this school year the the people the employees are just tremendous assets to our students and to our our colleagues and our schools in every part of who we are as Albemarle County
007Public Schools you really represent the mission whether you are retiring after a fairly short service with us or if you are a person who is 40 plus years with us from the very bottom of our hearts we thank you for everything that you have done every single day of your career with us our students thank you and on behalf of all of us on the leadership of Elmore County Schools we very much appreciate your dedication to our students as we call we're going to go through a slideshow momentarily and what we're going to do is we're going to call each person by name we do invite our retirees to come up and shake the hands if you could start over with Dr Haas and work your way around and then Mr Redding will have a
008little gift that's just a token of our appreciation for what you have done during your time here [Music] Betsy Agee Crozet Elementary School Cindy Anderson Stone Robinson Elementary [Music] and thank you all for holding Applause until the end Hannah Bailey Stone Robinson Elementary [Music] gotcha Tanya Bauer special ed Department Teresa Bibb special ed Department [Music] Kristen Billy's Mountain View Elementary [Music] Kim Branham human resources Teresa Burris Child Nutrition [Music] Sunny buyers transportation [Music] transportation [Music] Debbie Collins Deputy superintendent congratulations Elizabeth Cook Meriwether Lewis Elementary [Music] Gene D'antoni Greer Elementary [Music] Elizabeth Donahue Blue Ridge Juvenile Detention Center Frederica dusad Garnier Woodbrook Elementary Kenny Edwards transportation [Music] Elizabeth Evans Lakeside Middle [Music] thank you and fox agner hurt Elementary School Gary Gibson Department of Technology foreign Lakeside Middle Diane Harrison special ed Department [Music] Kim hermesmeyer
009Mountain View Elementary Kelly Huffman Woodbrook Elementary [Music] Louise Hyde Brownsville Elementary School [Music] Anthony Jordan Building Services Walter Lewis Jordan Department of Transportation thank you Beth Keith Mountain View Elementary Charles key Building Services Janet King Murray Elementary School Vicki King Child Nutrition Cheryl Knight Murray Elementary School Elementary Andre Lewis Building Services Donna Lowry Department of Transportation [Music] pH Marsh Department of Child Nutrition [Music] Randall Marshall Building Services Jimmy Martin special education Maricel Martinez Mountain View Elementary [Music] Gilbert Martin Building Services Melissa McReynolds Baker Butler Elementary School Teresa medullo Albemarle High School Deb Murphy Child Nutrition [Music] Gloria Oliver special education Liz Perkins fiscal services [Music] Neil Plum Walton Middle School [Music] police supporter Western Albemarle High School [Music] Pam Powell human resources [Music] thank you so much Lorelei Pulliam Woodbrook Elementary School [Music] Ed Redmond
010Western outlet mall High School Susan reichling Woodbrook Elementary School [Music] Rebecca ruscher Brownsville Elementary Sally Sarah Sapp Red Hill Elementary Carrie Shaffer Albemarle High School [Music] Janice shifflett Department of Transportation Cafe and Shoop Baker Butler Elementary Virginia Smith edep Pam Snyder Building Services Tracy sofa Albemarle High School Eve Solomon Red Hill Elementary School cardstow Scottsville Elementary School Carrie Taylor Western Albemarle High School foreign High School Beverly Upton direct Department of Transportation Rick for hoback human resources [Music] Shirley Waldo Lakeside Middle Edith Walker Woodbrook Elementary School [Music] thank you [Music] David Waters Monticello High School Kristen Williams Woodbrook Elementary [Music] Marie Willis Scottsville Elementary Karen Wood Child Nutrition and Donna Lisa Wright Lakeside Middle again our Heartfield thought congratulations to these wonderful wonderful educators thank you so before you exit which I promise you I'll let
011you exit you don't have to stay for the whole meeting but I do just want to take a quick second to have some comments from the board members I I will kick it off give time to people some time to think of things if they want to say them I will just say I'm I don't consider myself emotional person and it was um it brings me to tears to see you guys here because you have spent so much time with our students and we were just in a conversation in a closed meeting talking about how important it is to keep people in the field because when you stay in the field our students um get so much such a better experience having people who are dedicated to the profession and it's this one's a particularly
012hard one I don't want to say it's my kids but at this point my kid's first grade teacher retired after the first grade year second grade teacher Miss box retire is retiring this year kindergarten teacher first grade and second grade for my other child so if you have my kid you're going to retire the next year is what I learned um and I'm just I can't convey it in words I know I'm not being very eloquent but you have done so much for our community our families my kids and just thank you thank you thank you anybody else have any comments it's hard to beat that Katrina I would just Echo that yeah right I just agree with Miss Carlson and any if any of you would like to come back and drive buses so
013just be aware of that or or substitute right okay I was just gonna say we do want to thank you I also want to recognize and thank our human resources staff for putting this together tonight um and and again you all are welcome to stay for the board meeting but also if you would like to exit it's a great time we will give a moment so that you can make your way out if you would like thank you especially yes this is the Debbie thing just tell me when to go let me see what you got [Music] okay great thank you just kind of keep track of uh yeah hey Katrina yeah she did she do anything Bill gave her this about the retirees so then yes I think we're done we also have because
014I'm sorry yeah um yes and then you were supposed to introduce Dan really I'm sorry I asked I was like yeah sorry okay okay we're holding it together I'm good okay we are moving on now to item 3.0 3.0 approval of the agenda do I have a motion a move we approved tonight's agenda a second any discussion all those in favor aye aye any opposed none the agenda is approved item 4.0 approval of the consent agenda do we have a motion a move that we approve to consent agenda second so moved by Mr Page check into by Miss Lee do we have any discussion or any items to pull the only question I have is how long are we going to continue to do covid-19 status updates knowing that we're out of if covet is
015still occurring but we're out of the the emergency period just knowing that it does take time so I look at Pat running up here let me tell you how I feel about that I'm happy to say this is the last covered on teen update we will have since March of 2019 20 20. any other discussion points questions okay um we have a second all those in favor of approving the consent agenda aye aye aye any opposed okay consent agenda passes there are no items pooled that brings us to announcements I will apologize to sanuthi because I just steamrolled over her announcement that she had for the first Spotlight on education and now we're on a spotlight of Education two and that will be kicked off by Dr Aiko well we've just honored all of our
016retirees but uh we're going to honor another one um now whereas more than 100 years ago president Theodore Roosevelt reminded us that it's not the critic who counts but rather the person who is actually in the arena who strives valiantly who knows great enthusiasms and great devotion who spends themselves in a worthy cause and who at best knows the Triumph of high achievement and at the worst fails what dare while daring greatly and whereas the former president was speaking broadly of citizenship these strong words also speak to us about leadership in vital public Endeavors and whereas such among such Endeavors is the care and nurturing of a community's most cherished Treasures is children and hope within every child and the hope within every child to fulfill their highest Ambitions and whereas there can be no
017greater path to the success than that which is paved with exceptional and Equitable educational opportunities that enable every person to reach their Highest Potential for greatness and whereas transformational educational opportunities only are made possible by The supremely Talented dedicated and influential professionals and whereas just such a professional joined Albemarle County Public Schools 40 years ago as a math teacher at Henley Middle School and whereas this educator immediately demonstrated the ability to make all of those around her lifelong Learners and protect practitioners at the highest levels and whereas while this instinctive leader sought not the spotlight but instead was illuminated by her accomplishments and whereas these included a nationally renowned instructional coaching program now duplicated in school divisions across the country and whereas this program has produced 10 current principles seven current assistant principals and one
018Center Director and whereas in 2016 she was named the curriculum leader of the here for the state of Virginia for her proactive and Innovative educational policies and programs that ensure learning for all and whereas during her service as teacher principal executive director of K-12 education assistant and then Deputy superintendent Albemarle County Public School students earned among the highest on-time graduation rates in the state and nation and where as she continues even to this day to ask the toughest questions insist upon the most exhaustive research and evidence-based practices and into Inspire continuous Improvement now therefore be it resolve that this Albemarle County School Board recognize congratulate and celebrate Deborah Collins for her innumerable contributions to the lives and well-being of those who have educated and have been educated in this school Division and be it further
019resolved that this board expresses its deepest wishes to Debbie Roger and their wonderful extended family for limited Limitless happiness well-being and fulfillment throughout the next important phase of their lives together Deborah can you come up congratulations again if I may just say it's been my pleas pleasure to serve the students and the teachers and principals administrators around my County Public Schools thank you for the opportunity it is just a Bittersweet day today but I'm so happy for all the retirees oh we also have a letter for you Debbie we'll pass it over resolution the resolution I have one additional Spotlight or announcement to make and that is for our wonderful student rep Sanu fee so sanuthi I'm going to read a letter that we wrote for you dearson congratulations to the longest serving student representative
020on the Albemarle County School Board it was a pleasure these six months to count you as a valued Kali and more important it was extraordinarily helpful to have you broaden our understanding of student needs and perspectives and I think getting off script here but I think we can all attest to having listened to your insightful commentary during numerous work sessions and that you're never afraid to to speak up so thank you when our board established the position of student representative in December of 2019 our objective was to create a direct link between students and the elected body that governs their learning experience we also wanted to provide a rewarding opportunity for a dedicated thoughtful public service oriented student leader we wanted to expand opportunities for students to learn more about representative government and to enhance
021our decisions relevant to the best academic social and emotional interests of all students you easily proved to be in an ideal collection for this role this does not of course come as a surprise as an example of your influence we got a glimpse of your leadership skills from the television news coverage of the solar Kiln student project at Community lab school school administrators and staff describe you as being instrumental in making this Innovative environmental success story possible even more impressive than your collaboration skills is the way in which you often take a step back to allow other classmates to Showcase their talents as you complete your junior year please accept our heartfelt gratitude for the contributions you made to our deliberations over the past six months we hope you will not hesitate to share your
022Insight with us during the next school year on significant issues and opportunities impacting students you can always come up and give public comment and come say hi and then we offer our best wishes for a healthy happy and rewarding summer and an exceptional senior year and we will see you at your graduation next year thank you better [Music] and I want to take the moment to just recognize that we have another student next to sanuthi um winning please correct me if I'm mispronouncing that it's waning dig waning ding and she is our alternate who because we extended the length unfortunately the length that our student Representatives served to allow them to have more impact you did not get to to be at as many meetings but we are hoping now that you will be with
023us is it for three meetings awesome and we saw you graduate I remember your name being called because I even to this day and I read a lot of things remember your application for student board or student School rep because it was very impressive so we're excited to have you here please feel free to speak up about whatever you would like thanks yep okay so I know we've had a lot of preliminary matters say this where I have so many papers randomly floating around now we brings us to school board superintendent business and I believe we have one more piece coming from Mr Irizarry Dr Irizarry there's so many doctors around me it's hard to keep track of you know who's good afternoon uh school board board chair Dr Haas congratulations uh to our student
024reps uh yesterday evening the Albemarle Board of Supervisors passed two important proclamations that I'm asking the board to recognize tonight first one is the proclamation celebrating Juneteenth whereas on June 19 1865 more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed to free all enslaved people enslaved Americans in Galveston Texas were firmly told that they were free from the bondage of slavery and were for the first time recognized as citizens of our nation and whereas black Americans came to commemorate this day as Juneteenth with celebrations across the country building new lives and a new tradition that we honor today and whereas the Board of Supervisors recognizes the cultural and historical significance of emancipation and the universally cherished values of Liberty and Justice and whereas the county of Albemarle in keeping with the core principles of
025the United States of America believes that all persons are created equal and possess the unalienable rights of black life liberty and the pursuit of happiness now therefore it will be proclaimed that we the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors do hereby recognize June 19th 2023 as soon to celebrate the freedom and centuries of struggle and progress for civil rights and to commit towards the ensuring and Equitable and inclusive community for all and I think locally it's important to note that while Liberation came to Charlottesville with the arrival of the Union troops on March 3rd 1865 for many enslaved people in our area including at the University of Virginia emancipation would not come until the end of the Civil War in April 1865. I move the way adopt that resolution a second do we adopted or do
026we endorse it I think either is fine I think it's fine to adopt we can just make a motion to adopt all those in favor adopting and I do encourage everyone uh to celebrate with their Community June uh Juneteenth Day Celebrations at Jeff's school will be from 9 to 3 P.M on June 17th including parade concerts and more also on Saturday June 24th preservation Piedmont organization is sponsoring a tour to learn more about the African-American history in Scots in our Scottsville community and also on Sunday June 25th at Simpson Park the Albemarle County Parks and Rec Division and the office of equity and inclusion are sponsoring a Sunday brunch to celebrate the contributions of Mr James Elias Simpson the Park's namesake uh there was also a another important Proclamation for June it was the Proclamation
027celebrating lgbtq pride month whereas lesbian gay bisexual and transgender pride month lgbtq pride month is celebrated annually in June to commemorate the Catalyst event of the 1969 Stonewall riots and works to achieve Equal justice and equal opportunity for lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer and questioning Americans and whereas on April 11 2020 the Virginia values Act was signed into law making Virginia the first state in the South to protect lgbtq people from discrimination in their daily lives including discrimination in housing public and private employment public accommodations and access to credit and whereas Albemarle County's stated mission is to enhance the well-being and quality of life for all citizens through the provision of the highest level of Public Service consistent with student use of public funds and whereas the Board of Supervisors is committed to supporting through
028its actions and its Partnerships the promotion of Equitable and inclusive Albemarle County that allows all members of our community to grow and Thrive and whereas lgbtq individuals have shaped Advanced and enriched the fabric of Albemarle County and our nation by making immense contributions to all areas of life including government business Arts and Sciences medicine law enforcement technology and Military now therefore be it proclaimed that we the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors continue to affirm our commitment to our State admission to enhance the well-being and quality of life of all members of our community and recognize with pride the rich cultural diversity and contributions of lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer and questioning residents to live in a vibrant Albemarle County I believe pride month helps raise awareness about the ongoing challenges faced by lgbtq individuals
029and to celebrate the humanity accomplishments of our lgbtq individuals it is a time to advocate for equal rights combat discrimination promote the understanding and acceptance and celebrate the Excellence and accomplishments of the lgbtq plus community Through various events and initiatives Pride months Fosters dialogue educates the public and encourages allies to show support for lgbtq rights pride month is also crucial for supporting lgbtq plus youth who may be struggling with their Identity or facing social stigma it sends a powerful message of acceptance and provides a safe space for our young people to explore their sexual orientation or gender identity and or expression visibility positive representation and affirmation during Pride significantly impacts the mental health and well-being over lgbtq plus youth we want acps to be a place where we celebrate and value our lgbtq plus staff
030students and Community encourage them to be open about their identities and allow to be their true authentic selves motivating um so I guess we should follow the same protocol for that one do we have a motion to approve that resolution there's a resolution it's crafted resolution yeah okay do we have a motion to approve to approve that resolution second all those in favor aye aye any opposed awesome thank you thank you so I just had just a couple of announcements real quick um first I want to congratulate all of our retirees again I want to remind everyone that the last day of school is tomorrow so for school board members if you did want to get out and see students at school tomorrow would be your last chance it is a half day I'm hoping
031that the smoke will clear up a bit we um a lot of field days are tomorrow so if everybody could just send out positive feelings about uh changing the weather pattern that would be great for the kids so they could have a great last day of school Monday is the last day of school for teachers and other 10-month employees and then we start our curriculum assessment instruction Institute at Southern at Lakeside Middle School beginning on Tuesday for board members that would like to attend that and check in with the teachers there maybe come by for lunch I know they would appreciate seeing you I do want to congratulate our 1098 graduates who have graduated from the lab school also from Alma High School Western out Mall Monticello and then we also had one graduate from
032the Virginia Institute of autism and then we had six uh postgraduates from post High several board members attended that event and I really want to I really just want to take a moment to thank our board members for attending graduations I know that's a big time commitment and um it means a lot to all the kids and their parents the community as well as staff to see you there and I just want to thank all of our staff in the schools the success of our graduates is brought about by every adult in our system who took time to know each student provide the academic physical and or social emotional support to the student that's needed to be engaged and successful and who held each accountable for high expectations thank you all from pre-kindergarten to edup
033elementary middle and high school Educators assistants office Associates nurses and Specialists all bus drivers Building Services staff Child Nutrition staff central office and Technology staff school and District administrators and supervisors thank you on behalf of our community and those are my announcements thank you thank you for those announcements Dr Haas are there any other school board or business announcements I want to tell you I had a great visit to the edep program at Mountain View yesterday I I don't know if any of you have visited that program it's great we should try it next year awesome very active is that where you sent the photo from yeah awesome okay well then that Ellen actually or Miss Osborne that brings us to you because item eight is public common and I believe you are doing it
034tonight all right so we invite and actively seek The public's input and matters relevant to school board 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 for members of the public in attendance will not be tolerated anyone who willingly disrupts this meeting in a manner that prevents or interferes with the orderly conduct of the meeting may be ejected by the chair individuals and or organizations wishing to speak during public comment must sign in with the clerk sign up is available online beginning at nine o'clock on the Monday of the meeting week until 3 30 pm on the day of the meeting public testimony guidelines are as follows please adhere to the following protocol set
035your name and address or your voting district address comments to the school board as a whole limit 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 are unable to complete the presentation in the time allotted a copy of supporting materials will be provided to school board members three minutes will be allowed for each presenter to speak commenter will be required to discontinue the comments after three minutes a color-coded light system is used to time presentations the yellow light means the speaker is two minutes or one minute if there are more than 10 speakers into the presentation and the red light means the speaker is at the three minute limit of the presentation and must wrap up in
036order to maintain respect for all points of view the school board requests no clapping booing or any other audible form of support or non-support be used and members of the public wish to show their support for a speaker they may stand or raise 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 school board are not allowed use of the projection system is reserved for staff scheduled agenda item presentations only tonight we have five speakers four in person and one on Zoom we would do the zoom one last Miss Thompson this is the order in which you will go uh Miss Christine Putnam is Allison Spillman there's Heidi Gilman Bennett
037and Miss Mary McIntyre and then our Zoom will be Marie Scott okay Miss Putnam please join us [Music] hello good afternoon my name is Christine Putnam and I live in the Scottsville magisterial District I'm a retired science teacher I'm the Master Gardener and I also serve on the swac committee we just finished up and I was appointed to the aces committee I have had the pleasure of volunteering in four of our County elementary schools where I was invited to give lessons on the importance of keeping food waste out of the landfill um composting food waste is an important climate action step it protects our Water Resources it helps build healthy soils and I want to recognize the teachers teaching assistants custodians and students at Greer Elementary School Murray Elementary School Mountain View and Holly Mead
038Elementary School all of those individuals who said yes to taking this important action step and I also want to thank Alma County public schools for supporting composting through a contract with black bear composting but there is much more that can and should be done to reduce food waste and to keep Organics out of the landfill here is a short list of further actions I recommend to reduce food waste and expand composting in our schools many of which will require the support of Child Nutrition services for implemented implementation so I'm hoping that in the future that we'll be using washable trays and utensils rather than disposable ones uh implementing and using share tables to keep unopened packaged Foods out of the trash and put those items into the hands of hungry students donate unused food to
039local food banks and provide a stipend for environmental Champions at every school to help organize and oversee composting and recycling efforts so thank you so much for your time thank you thank you next up is Allison Spillman good evening ladies and gentlemen of the school board Dr Haas I'm Allison Spillman I live in the White Hall District I have five kids currently enrolled in acps and I'm also a candidate for the at-large school board seat in just a few minutes we're going to hear the report on the from the Bellwether education Partners which was commissioned by acps to help us understand why our black and brown students are consistently underperforming compared with their white peers here in the county as well as students of color Statewide I'm sure you've already read the report and I
040hope that you are as distressed as I am the report confirms what should be Crystal Clear we are are failing our black and brown students also feel and I hope you agree with me that the Bellwether report highlights the opportunity that we now have to make real changes so that all of our students can learn grow and Thrive a lot of bellwether's recommendations require more resources more time for teachers to meet with parents more high quality professional development more intervention for students who are falling behind more high quality instructional materials and more time for formative assessment we need to Heed These recommendations but we cannot simply dump these additional obligations on our teachers without supporting them with the proper resources and we certainly can expect that we achieve any of the desired results by reducing
041the resources available to them or slashing per pupil funding as some people have suggested teachers and staff our teachers are our front line workers they spend more time during the day with our kids than we do we need to listen to them we also need to listen to our diverse families the report makes clear that acps isn't effectively communicating with parents of students of color and that there's a profound lack of trust parents need to be involved in their children's education and that includes all parents and all students the report also makes clear that despite acps's Focus since 2018 on identifying and correcting systemic racism in our schools we've not done enough to change as an outside Observer Bellwether confirmed that systemic racism is still very real here in our school system we can't have
042excellent schools if we're failing any of our students black brown special needs and otherwise we cannot Implement real solutions if we don't believe that systemic racism is harming our students of color and we cannot make Headway on any initiative or Improvement without supporting our teachers I implore you to act swiftly to implement real meaningful change recommended by the Bellwether report thank you thank you Miss billing next up is Heidi Gilman Bennett [Music] hello my name is Heidi Gilman Bennett I am a parent and active volunteer in the Samuel Miller District my heart is breaking for students and Families who have been systematically deprived of opportunities to learn and thrive I Now understand what systemic racism means in our Public Schools it is the continuation of the Hidden structures and rules that acps central office has
043put in place and actively maintained for decades three points today number one this is a systems failure it is not about our amazing teachers who have clearly been doing everything possible with the poor tools they have been handed I congratulate Bellwether for generating such brutally honest quotes and nothing is surprising it's not just acps should have known there are leaders who did know and were unwilling and or unable to take effective action it is not enough to have good intentions I urge you to use this as an opportunity to consider changes including how to deal with those in positions of power who have failed our Educators and our kids related number two huge decisions need to be made very soon do we trust that the same people who have put this system into place can
044also on their own be the same ones to dismantle it please review whether the task force has a diversity and that expertise needed please consider the value of continuing an independent Organization for expert guidance in project management our Educators need a route to continue to open input particularly without collective bargaining in place number three the Bellwether report is missing key initiatives for reading yes thankfully acps is forced to replace being a reader which clearly hasn't worked but our kids cannot wait a whole year while acps gathers input we need short-term solutions for the overwhelming number of students who require reading intervention at K3 Upper Elementary Middle School and High School our teachers need high quality materials and tier 2 intervention support for this fall our kids deserve high-intensity tutoring in reading and tutors in our
045rural schools and we need to inform families of the very Basics is my child behind is my child on track to attend college what services are available at school in the community and what can I do at home to help in summary I am grateful for this audit truly but please it is beyond time for actual chains thank you Bennett next up is Mary McIntyre I'm Mary McIntyre I'm from the Rio District sometimes with my students we use a focus word for the day the word that I hope you focus on for tonight's meeting is accountability as I read the Bellwether reports I started to make a list of the issues that they highlighted and as it became longer and longer I got more and more angry because so many of the things that they
046are telling you or things that we have already told you I counted around 70 issues and I'm sure that I missed some at the April 27th meeting Dr Haas says he wants more accountability for principals and staff and he wants teacher performance assessments to reflect the Sol results of their students since the accountability door has been opened I'm going to walk through it let's talk about accountability if you want to start holding teachers like me accountable for standardized test results first we need to talk about who is accountable for all the things outside of my control that affected my ability to be successful who is accountable for the fact that my school is understaffed all year with multiple teacher TA or sub positions not being filled including sped and Esau she was accountable for all
047the late or missing buses missed instructional time and students stress that that caused who's accountable for the communications that are sent out from the division that are written at such a high academic level many of our families can't understand them even native speakers who is accountable for purchasing an elementary literacy program that many teachers couldn't Implement with Fidelity because they weren't fully trained and now it will go in the trash because it's not on the state's approved list who's accountable for the fact that we don't have enough planning time to actually plan high quality lessons that align with state standards and email or call parents to build relationships and keep them in the loop about what their child is learning and how to support them and provide meaningful feedback on student work and enter data
048into Ed Insight so we can analyze what's working and what's not and work on our CRT certification who's accountable for the fact that nearly a third of my school needed intervention support in order to count to catch up to their peers and yet we still weren't given any more Specialists to provide that support until next year all of those things affect our success and yet I doubt anyone else's evaluations will accurately reflect those failures so when our Sol scores are released this summer please remember that teachers like me were desperate for help that never came you all use the term stakeholders regularly as if this is some kind of a business but if this was a corporation there would be some accountability of the leadership over the problems that I just mentioned the Gallup poll
049results the audit reports and many other things because these results are not accidental multiple Bad Decisions by multiple people led us here whose job is it to hold people accountable that's you I am trying extremely hard to do my job despite all of the problems and I need you to do yours thank you Ms McIntyre the next one will be on Zoom uh Miss Marie Scott [Music] uh we can't hear you hang on um [Music] maybe we can respond to her and chat and let her know that we can't hear her it looks like she's probably wondering what's going on we're working on working on figuring out how we can hear you we don't think it's on your end we think it's on ours I can tell you can hear us [Music] I still can't
050hear okay we're ready for you okay I think we're ready [Music] do we want her to leave and come back [Music] I don't think okay she's gonna try that she's going to come back let's just go come back and welcome to working in 2020. [Music] and she's probably coming back pretty quick [Music] um [Music] okay [Music] okay I think we got a mute that okay foreign [Music] are you able to hear me now one second I'm going to try to join them again okay I'm gonna try to join it off of my phone okay okay one more minute and then otherwise I think we need to I don't even know if she's on [Music] there Marie can you hear us great thank you although I would have liked to let you guys see my face
051my name is Marie Scott and I'm a substitute teacher for acps across the county from Western to journey I would Subs I noticed the sparging gap between certain districts particularly between the schools in the western part of the county and those closer to Charlottesville I believe having a bird's eye view as a sub really helped me understand our school system and its flaws such as academic differences overall morale and financial differences for the margin between the schools would be smaller unique and specific Solutions must be made for each School whether it's monetary academic all for children to thrive as minority myself every child I encountered was time I gave them New Hope it was time I showed them the ability they can go to college when I was in schools in corus it was less
052diversity I felt I showed them New Perspectives as well it's not on the teachers they're trying it's only a system to propel these kids forward these are schools in the different stories immigrants one-parent housing some of these kids might have parents on drugs you never know they're on different paths I observe certain schools have higher concentration of kids with behavioral issues perhaps we can work with us UVA psych department and have therapy for them graduates don't mind having a good resume graduates wouldn't mind hoping at all it's more than council with professional help it's more than passing them through each grade it's about retention of the academics so they can have a viable future for example Jose Murray have a-based classes but Jose has more a-based ones with toys and bigger spaces and one-to-one student
053ratios while Murray has one room and an aide for several students that is not fair journey by far my favorite school I subdat has students who don't believe in themselves I had one young man who never would do his work I would have to take him to the side I found out he was a dancer I found out that if I just talked to him now he believes in himself to open up his own dance school and go to college for business I see potential in all these children they just need individualized help to bring it out they need Flex schedules 81 71 minutes to 81 minutes of a class period is terrible I went to CCS schools I was in their shoes at a public school labeled bad I was acting out because I
054didn't need the help I didn't have the help I needed for my ADHD or skilled counselors to address my outbursts I went to Catholic School in my behavior instantly changed we children don't have that opportunity I uh sorry my apologies you all have the resources if Henry can spend thousands on a playground and their PTO has a huge influx of cash as opposed to a school-like journey or Greer why can't we disburse the money where it should go if you say No Child Left Behind truly mean it with Vindication it broke my heart going to certain schools and coming home every day looking at my child like if I put you in public school with this happen to you too thank you for your time thank you Marie all right that conclude that concludes our
055public comment thank you everyone is my mic on oh no okay let that be the last of our technical difficulties thank you for everyone that gave public comment we are only two minutes behind schedule so so on track it brings us to School Division business we're going to start off with Mr Zimmerman not make him wait until the end with our third quarter financial report thank you [Music] good evening school board members want to present for the board's consideration the third quarter financial report I wanted to say that we do have a very strong financial performance so far this uh this current year our savings are up relative to what we had anticipated in the last quarter's uh Financial reports we do anticipate savings to be greater for particularly for our compensation and benefits section
056we are still analyzing this however we do anticipate ending the fiscal year with a positive balance um we do anticipate being slightly above our two percent fund balance as set by the Board of Supervisors so we we do anticipate meeting that full amount and then perhaps being having other options available at that time if there are any questions I'd be happy to take them [Music] are there any questions for Mr Zimmerman I'm sorry can you refresh my memory we take action on this correctly we would ask that you would receive the report as presented okay a movie we received this report as presented second any discussion just at a future meeting you'll be giving us options for the fund balance access Mr Zimmerman I hope you take it as a testament to the good job
057you're doing that we have very few questions um because you do great with our with our financial reports thank you and that puts us back on schedule thanks Jackson oh sorry all those in favor aye aye any opposed okay this brings us to our meteor subjects we're on to 9.2 which is going to be our Bellwether report I just want to do a quick temperature Checker is anyone feeling like they need a break now and then we do the Bellwether it's just a lot to jump into and we've had a closed meeting since five okay so I'm gonna just adjust the schedule and let's take our break now and then we will jump into the Bellwether report so we will do a 10 minute break returning at 7 47. [Music] we think we had a
058legit do you have a um the date of the meeting it'll have all of the agenda items and so if you come down here and you click on the Bell then it opens it there's um yeah all right thank you [Applause] so we are moving on to item 9.2 the Bellwether report of an instructional audit all right thank you chair Carlson good evening board members assistant superintendent for strategic planning and as you know the mission of Albemarle County Public Schools states that working together as a team we will end the predictive value of race class gender and special capacities on 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 we will know every student a key measure of
059our progress toward meeting that mission are the performance results of our students on state standards of learning tests when looked at holistically Albemarle County Schools equals or outperforms the state of Virginia on a number of key achievement measures historically within the district however our students of color and our economically disadvantaged students demonstrate lower achievement than their peers throughout the state this problem has been persistent for many years in Albemarle County and earlier this school year we contracted with Bellwether a non-profit educational consulting firm to complete a division-wide audit of acps instruct educational programming practices and resources to address this essential question why are the Pass rates of Albemarle County students of color on the Virginia standards of learning tests for K-5 reading K5 math and high school algebra 1 lower than the averages of for
060other students of color in the state and lower than their peers in other demographic groups in Albemarle County tonight we have Anson Jackson and Akisha Craven Howell with us from Bellwether and they'll be sharing an overview of their work and their findings and at this time I'll turn things over to Anson and Akisha foreign thank you for that introduction again I'm Anson Jackson a partner of Bellwether with my partner and colleague Akisha cravenheim also a partner at Bellwether and we're here tonight to share the results of the audit that we partner with you all to do over the last five months um before I jump in just want to say a lot of gratitude to the board to Dr Haas to the leader of the division to the students the families teachers in division who
061we engage with and for you all who allowing us to do this and to do this deep deep challenging work let's Jump Right In so before we share the results of the audit I do want to let you know we had a large team working on this and so some of the folks on our team are not here tonight but they were engaged with with the division uh they were in Charlottesville a number of times that team helped us analyze data interview teachers focus groups observe classrooms and put the reports together cool about Bellwether we are National nonprofit and we have really one main goal and that is to support all students to be successful in particular those students who are on the margins those marginalized students to be successful academically achieve their goals in
062life and eventually support their communities [Music] as we began this journey uh with you all um we were able to look at your strategic plan from 2021 and there are three key goals that stood out you know the goals you wrote the goals around thriving students number one affirming empowered empowering communities an equitable transformative resources and um we think that what led to this audit was really around goal number one thriving students you have a goal to support all students it is very very clear in the work you're doing and have done that aligns very closely to bellweather's goal as well so this goal number one kind of LED was the lens we LED through to this audit leading to that first big question that Pat discussed is around uh why are black and brown
063students in Evermore County not performing as high as white more affluent students also compared to the state among other black and brown students big big question involving K5 reading K5 math everyone the key things to Success reading in mathematics right as we did this audit I want to be clear that this is not just about black and brown kids about all students so you'll see recommendations on root causes that don't only impact black and brown but impact the results of all students young people in in the division so we engage in three phases of the work phase one is getting to know who acps is right so we spent a lot of time analyzing data uh they received from you all public data uh we did a division Health assessment um to see where you
064were on ratings plus his deltas and then we went deep into the work we got into classrooms got into to visit families teachers students community members to really see what is happening instructionally uh in the classrooms how do parents feel how do stakeholders feel how to teach people about their experiences in the county what's working what's not working went to the root cause analysis we took the information phase one and phase two and we went deep into one of the root cause of barriers that we believe are holding back the success of those students and then went into recommendations uh that we believe could address those barriers and support kids I want to speak briefly about phase two because I think this is where I was we were privileged to to go into 11 schools
065uh to visit hundreds of stakeholders community members um to really get an idea of the experiences of people and the students and and the teachers and staff families you all um uh the central office folks of how they're experiencing being in a division and that was critical I think when we think about our time to be very in the most humblest Way We Were Here for a snapshot right Charlottesville has been here for years it's a deep rich history uh in this community in this city in this County we have a wonderful University right Rich history there's also something that aren't so rich about Arbor mall County and the division and that's okay so we're just here for a snapshot but we believe by interviewing so many cycles we've got a good snapshot a comprehensive
066view of what was happening in the division and so when you see the recommendations don't forget that this is over we interviewed 300 something people right right from all walks of life um men women young old black white Spanish speakers uh native speakers students in different grades teachers central office staff to develop this back base so places to do that but also want to know this is a snapshot but a comprehensive snapshot and so from uh those the first two phases we looked at a set of data and um different areas one of those qualitative data which really came from the stakeholder interviews the families the teachers the students central office folks of their experiences in the division the second was observation data this is where we really loved getting into classrooms seeing teachers engaged
067with kids and kids and getting with kids and vice versa talking to principals talking to counselors and getting to see what is happening in the classrooms in regards to instruction and experience of kids and student teachers in the rooms and the third was around quantitative data we analyzed public data that was available for us from you all also with some internal data to understand what's happening on paper when it comes to results of students in the division and the last piece was we looked at Best Practices across the country research-based evidence practices uh things that we've seen from people we've supported across the country to bring to the table and think about recommendations when root causes were identified and so from all of that work we developed three reports you all have these three reports
068um and so I recommend you read all the reports they're pretty detailed and this gives you a good picture of all the work the first report we discussed the experience of students of color and their families and this came from interviews and focus groups the second report looked at Clash observations and this came from again Bingham schools interviewing teachers and seeing instruction firsthand and the third report looked at the role of systems from the central office structures World responsibilities that led to the success or lack of success of students of color traditionally in students all students in the school setting from those two reports we developed some key things and let me just say again this week had a lot of information right and so there's lots of themes I recommend again you read all
069three reports but we wanted to highlight kind of five themes in each report and I'll talk about a few here and these things paint a picture of what's going on in each report and in the division the first I want to talk about is the theme around the experience attunes of color and kind of their families right how do they feel about being in a division in schools I want to say first you should be very proud that in schools we saw great relationships among peers students teachers teachers teaching students there's very positive one feeling that we saw in the engaged each other in the classrooms in the hallways and so the work you've done to develop these strong cultures is clear the second piece is that students have goals right all students have goals
070right what we did see them was that our black and brown goal students goals were usually around trade schools Tech schools and less of going to college right and going to unpack why um as you look further in the root causes um I also wanted to do a little a shift though and say despite that that warm culture families did not feel as valued um as we thought they would I think as you would hope they would be right and there were a couple things that came out they didn't always know what was happening for their students educational like experiences grades there were some things that came out they weren't aware of grade changing systems and so I think there's a a need to really think about one how do we support families to understand
071their experiences better their student experience is better to know what's going on in schools but and how you take it very virtual years to improve improve instruction and this is not easy right again we're working with parents who may have had bad experiences in schools right may not have the best experience in their K-LOVE environment and so the trust we build it's not pointing a finger at the division it's reality there's trust that must be built with some of our families the second um report was around what's happening in the classroom right from our observations and so again we tried to highlight the top five highest themes that bubbled up but again there are other themes in the actual report first I want to share is your commitment to investing in research-based practices um really
072strong theoretical practices is clear you've given teachers some resources some curriculum resources some trainings you have the um the credentialing process for teachers these are all great things and I believe the the outcome should be increasing rigor and equity for all students however it's not it's not seen right we see there's a lack of equity and rigor across classrooms and I'll be my name is very frankly we saw more rigor in tasks provided at more affluent schools and less at more urban black and brown schools when you think about that you can't expect a student who's getting less rigorous tasks performance high on the Sol as someone's getting more rigorous tasks and so I think your what your desires on happening right but you are investing in that the other piece is around professional Learning
073Systems um you have a lot of resources around coaching around professional learning communities at the campus level and division level that are great investments in time energy and money however they're not completely aligned and so we saw a disconnect of where those alignment is happening and the last piece I want to share in this one is just around compliance versus engagement and this is twofold on students and I would also say when it comes to managing adults right we saw a lot of compliance in classrooms kids in misbehave they were learning they were they were answering questions but true engagement was not there right the Deep opening engagement you want to see in a Ritter's classroom was lacking this also could be um led into what we see with the adults um there is a
074coaching there's a walk room tool it's very compliance driven it doesn't get deep into what Excellence looks like so it's like a check box when you think about that are you are you driving for engagement or compliance so this is a trend that came up in this in this second report and the third report was around the role of systems instructors really focused on on the on the central office right house essential office impact engagement and learning for students of color in particular with all students on the campuses and so again I want to have a couple things here um the first one is around equality versus Equity again you should be proud right again celebrate the work you've done to really Drive Equity as the as the peace not equality for the division it
075is clear that teachers central office staff leaders understand Equity is is the way forward right and that means every kid gets what they need that is clear you've put systems in place you've put trains in place to help people understand biases um unpack anti-racism and that is happening however it is unclear of who owns what when it comes to the campus responsibilities right what is what is standard across the campus as far as expectations um there's the central office own it as a campus own it um is there an autonomy for the campus to do a versus b or is the district maintaining that and that's just some clarity needs to be fixed um the other piece is around inclusive decision making um I think this process is a huge start to get voices of
076those the teachers staff students involved but there is a disconnect between how decisions are made and how inclusive those decisions are being made that impact students teachers and and schools I would also want to add one more I think he paints a good picture as well that kind of tags on to number three and I don't want to spend too long I want to get the root causes but that fifth one around collaboration alignment again you have done a lot of Investments to support students in schools where we see a gap is that um the relationships are strong right they're strong across adults but the Gap is how are they truly collaborating to make sure they're aligned right the alignment and so we don't we have the left hand the right hand walking together leading
077together they're not conflicting I you know ideas or conflicting Pathways but how do we make sure that every team individual is working towards the same goal uh maybe a different vehicle but going the same direction and right now you have a lot of great things but not always aligned for that direction [Music] so from these three reports um we didn't took them to identify the root causes and the recommendations and that's the report you have I think most of you have seen But outlines uh those root causes recommendations and again these recommendations for you all to take um to decide upon with the task force the way forward their recommendations and we think that once the task force identifies what where to go you will have some um hopefully traction I'm going to now pause
078and give this to my teammate to really talk about the root causes and the recommendations [Music] thank you Anson and good evening board members and Dr Haas again just want to express our appreciation for being able to partner in this incredibly important work with you as we think about kind of naming the root causes um that really get at what is driving some of those themes and those observations that Anson just walked through one of the things that we wanted to be consistent with is the division's focus on Research informed and evidence-based practices in order to remain consistent with that with that Focus we have really anchored our root causes and recommendations in two evidence-based Frameworks the first framework is elmore's instructional core the instructional core is incredibly important in that it talks to us
079about the relationship between teachers students and content and it tells us some really important things about this relationship one of the things it tells us is that no matter what your investment is If It ultimately isn't evident in the instructional core it will not result in improved outcomes for students the instructional Court also tells us that these three components students teachers and content are very much interrelated and if you make an investment or a change in one you must make a comparable change in the other two what that means is that it's not sufficient to make investments in high quality content because without the comparable investment in the knowledge and skill of teachers for example what will happen is low level teaching of high level content without the investment to ensure a culture where students
080are valued for their authentic identities and where they experience high expectations you will get low-level student interactions with high quality content one of the the third thing that this framework tells us is that at the center of the interaction between students teachers and content is the instructional task and the instructional task is the greatest predictor of student performance and so if students are most often asked to struggle with tasks that are not aligned to standards and are below grade level that is the performance we can expect of students so when we think about our recommendations and root causes related to instruction we will ground it in elmore's instructional core framework the second framework is the pelp coherence framework and you see at the center of this framework is the instructional core but you see several
081rings around it and what those rings represent are enabling conditions you see theory of change which really speaks to how do decisions that are made at the central office level make it down to the classroom level where teachers and students and content are interacting how does feedback from that interaction get back up to the central office to inform what resources professional learning and tools are needed you see a ring around strategy again a necessary enabler but on its own insufficient and then you see the final ring around the coherence amongst culture systems and structures resources and stakeholders so we will talk about some root causes today aligned to this framework as well our first set of root causes there are five root causes that we Elevate the first three are related to the instructional core
082root cause number one contributing to Why students of color are not experiencing the same level of success as their white asian and more affluent peers is that instructional tasks do not consistently reflect the same level of rigor required by the sols so as we were in classrooms we saw a range of instructional tasks and more frequently instructional tasks that white and more affluent students were asked to perform tended to be more standards aligned and more grade on grade level if not above grade level we also saw differences in how students were being asked to respond to instruction where students asked to engage with one another in critical thinking and problem solving or where responses more rote our second root cause that we highlight is around adult learning I want to point out here that we
083very intentionally say adult learning and not teacher learning because while the knowledge and skill of teachers is critical the knowledge and skill of the adults meant to support teachers in building their practice is also critical this extends to instructional coaches it extends to interventionists and specialists at the schools and it extends to central office leaders charged with making instructional decisions that are then implemented district-wide and then finally around curricular resources we want to acknowledge the division's efforts to invest in high quality instructional materials especially at the K5 reading and math levels however we observed gaps in curricular materials at the elementary level related to interventions and so what tools and resources do teachers have when students are not able to access core instruction we also saw gaps related to secondary math which is a significant
084contributor to 9th grade algebra 1 performance second set of root causes these are more related to the pelp coherence framework so again those enablers of a strong instructional core that are necessary but insufficient on their own to improve student outcomes the first root cause is around strategic alignment we really want to acknowledge just the thoughtful strategic plan that the district has in place what we observe are opportunities for more coherence across departments in the division tighter coherence between decisions that are made at the division and how those are ultimately implemented and experienced at the school and classroom level and a real opportunity to clarify the district's theory of change that being the role of every individual in this District especially those on the academic side to ultimately improve the instructional core and then finally around
085stakeholder engagement internal and external stakeholders are not experiencing engagement in ways that feel authentic and meaningful to them we acknowledge and applaud the district's efforts around task forces and committees and surveys to get input what we heard from teachers in particular is they want their expertise to be leveraged as part of the solution they are ready to engage with the division in that way we also heard from families that they want greater visibility into what their students are learning and greater tools and resources that Empower them to be a part of their students learning as well when you read the full report what you will see for each of these root causes is a summary of things that we observed and measured during the current state assessment that contributed and informed that particular root cause
086you will also see a summary of research that we've referenced to develop the recommendation and then you see an overview of the recommendation and then a highlight of one to two initiatives per recommendation with very specific action steps we will not go through all of that content for each of the recommendations this evening but instead we will go through kind of that that middle slide you see there which are the high level recommendations aligned to each of the five root causes as we do so I also just want to highlight that there are lots of things that we could have recommended what we have decided to do here are recommend what we feel are the highest leverage and highest return efforts the district can take and the most important first next steps so I'll turn
087it back to my colleague Anson to walk us through the first three recommendations [Music] thanks Akeisha um so we're going to walk through uh the recommendations that align to each root cause and before I go through um these three the first three I want to say like these are not in isolation as Akisha said those that must be coherence right coherence when you change one factor the other factors change I was a math teacher so like things change right it's a one-to-one correlation you cannot change without changing the other and so when you think about these these these these actions think of them as a holistic picture of support to drive forward they may be tabled in different priorities of when this begins a b or c begins but they all must be connected right
088in each recommendation so the first one is going to address the first root cause run instructional tasks do not system reflect the same level of rigor required by the sols right the recommendation at a high level is organized instructional instruction around rigorous tasks so if we're not having those tasks in classes consistently let's make instruction focused on tasks right that allows all students in particular black and latinx students to deeply engage in challenging authentic standards aligned instruction right every single day in authentic ways and so this looks like a number of ways again these should not be thought of in isolation the first is around increasing the frequency utility of formative assessments right meaning Assessments in class real-time checks for understanding for students right including common instructional tasks to inform both both things inform the
089student needs so real time to just kind of address student needs real time and also address instructional practices is the teacher not doing this enough or as a resource needs to be fixed we can do that real time with more formative assessments and what we saw was there was a lack of those happening in classrooms the I would say is around professional learning opportunities for teachers so as you think about that first that coherence and the um the instructional core you cannot have a great task without great training so we have here PPD for teachers right supporting teachers with the right PD that's right for them at their level to make sure they understand the standards the sols and how to use those instructions to move those tasks forward in the classroom right so how
090does the curriculum training in the PD align to those tasks for teachers third is around adopting a K5 Ela a secondary math and Algebra 1 curriculum right there's a gap in curriculum we see this we know this there is a need to adopt this curriculum as you know does not happen overnight so this can be a longer term process but we do know there is a need and an action to think about thoughtfully about what curriculum you have for K5 Ela for secondary math and algebra one and making sure those those curriculum really have high rigorous tasks and the last piece again thinking about this holistic picture of this recommendation is thinking about having principles do walk-throughs and share their themes with each other in a collaborative way so structuring principle plcs where they go
091deep with instruction not just the task of managing the school but how do you think about instruction across the division across schools so having them come together to identify what did you see in your math classrooms and your Ela classrooms what do you see happening around task in science and math and reading or whatever and then discuss that together it helps them grow as a team also helps you all the division see where the gaps across across schools and across classes the second root cause was around adults not being equipped with Knowledge and Skills to meet instructional needs of all students and again as a Keisha said we mean adults holistically saying all the adults in the division not just teachers and so the recommendation high level is develop a systematic approach to adult learning
092that combines Workshop PD job embedded coaching and professional learning communities plcs at this support all staff at the division level the campus level and all these things together will improve all adult skills to support learning at the campus and again we're thinking about all the adults and so what this could look like at a high level again before getting into the nitty-gritty it could look like hey having a unified vision for adult learning what does the division think adult learning looks like what is the theory of change for adult learning how what do you believe is the best way to approach adult learning if we have these inputs we get these outputs what does that look like what does it mean to have principal walkthroughs of instructional coaching the PDS the p LCS all moving
093towards the same direction in an aligned way again having different different um uh different maybe different like support structures but all moving towards the same goal as supporting students and practices in the classroom second is build capacity of individuals in central office and school-based roles so thinking about again all adults the interventionists right are essentially supporting kids every day in a different way how are they supported and developed the reading specialist what does their PD look like in other support roles that may not be teachers what does their PD structures look like and what is their adult learning look like to support them to grow in their skills third revamp the classroom walkthrough tool I discussed this slightly earlier you have a walkthrough tool great start but it is very very much at a high
094level it does not get into the nuances of what it means to have great instruction again it is a great checklist it's great for compliance and it gets principals and leaders in classrooms how can you tweak that a classroom or gray student engagement a great great students on task and then going into that last one which kind of combines this person as well what if you thought about using the walkthrough form as a leveraging tool to support PD for adults right so meaning that not just principles but principles Specialists coaches all do walk-throughs together to understand what's happening in classrooms at a high level and those observations are a way to grow the adults but also identify gaps in classrooms and the third root cause and the instructional core was around gaps in content specifically
095in secondary math K5 interventions that create bears for teachers and students right they lack the curriculum or resource to do their job best as teachers to support students really in the tier two instruction um and so the idea here higher recommendation is to invest in high quality trucks and materials to fill content gaps right fill those gaps in content including consistent math curriculum really at the secondary level algebra one level Middle grades a comprehensive for RTI means response to intervention what does that look like to really go and tear deep tier two instruction that has a system curriculum resources for teachers and those interventionists and then thinking about adopting a Statewide curriculum for literacy right um that is a state recommended as you think about the next iteration of literature and reading look like curriculum
096is a hard thing it is hard to adopt it is hard to engage it is a two-year process so this is broken up into kind of a long-term short term right the short term is you have students right now going into algebra as Freshmen for right now who needs support right so we say don't wait for them we got to figure something for them right now so the short term is a diagnostic to support those students going into ninth grade identifying more of the gaps that they might have then possibly create a summer intervention a summer camp to help them close some of those gaps before the school begins you get them ready for ninth grade and in the summer transition Camp you could talk about you could grow skills in Mathematics algebra and just
097High School skills right getting ready for high school so an auction there to support those students right now real time the second piece is high intensity tutoring some call sometimes called high impact tutoring um with interventionists and so this is where you have small group instruction over a Cadence of three to two to three times a week 45 minutes per session and it's deep deep response to the students needs over time hopefully they grow and grow those skills so there's various ways you can do this you can do this in the summer you can do this also during the school year or do it both both summer and school year and the long-term plan is more around the curriculum and RTI systems again it takes a longer time to develop but me also want to
098name this as well so adopt is right for algebra one that builds up on the skills strategies uh really aligned to the state sols um and and we would say um supports those rigorous tasks you want to see kids engage with every day um the other piece with this is that a is a is a a is Big so as Akisha said a involves the curriculum adoption it should be an inclusive process are you including teachers in the adoption process getting their voice right having them look at different options to give you input on what is what is not good what they like why they don't like it trial and error right could be a pilot then what's the p training for those teachers to align with that curriculum what does the follow through look
099like for principals and leaders to understand the curriculum so a is long but is super important is built out how do we embed those Algebra 1 skills in lower grades thinking about what are the skills that we know they need in algebra one how do we build that skill in practice into six or eight seven eight so it's Continuum so we're not waiting until ninth grade to teach fractions or factors it's happening in the sixth seventh eighth grade um years and the last one is just continue to develop the content knowledge of the interventionist on this PD side making sure those interventions really have the skills they need to push in to support their students and push in or pull out formats to support those kids in the in the tier two instructions so again
100if you about this as a holistic set of actions not not um in isolation but together they will drive change uh for your students last two recommendations and then we welcome your reactions and and questions and discussion um and again these last two recommendations um really respond to that pulp coherence framework around the enabling factors as Anson shared there are no quick fixes to improving the instructional core it is work that requires sustained focus and you know not switching back and forth between strategies without it being data informed and because of that it is really important to have a strong theory of change where everyone in the district understands their role for improving the instructional core ensuring that work and decisions are not happening in isolation but instead that there is intentional integration and coherence
101especially around work that ultimately informs and dictates what is happening at the school level and at the classroom level the last thing you want is for principals and teachers to get direction that they feel is in conflict or that they feel that they simply do not have time to do all of those things in a given day instead that work must be integrated and well aligned we think that there is significant opportunity to improve the feedback loop from the division to the school and classroom back up to the division our teachers know best what is and is not working about the curriculum and we have to listen to them and we have to aggregate what we're hearing from them so that things that we're seeing among individual teachers inform the focus of instructional coaching teams
102that we see across and within an individual School inform additional support to that school but then themes that we see across multiple schools has to inform the professional learning that is offered by the division the tools and resources that the division develops to support the practice of teachers at the school level [Music] we see an opportunity to be really clear about what is required and where there is autonomy being clear about what is required is critical to ensure a basic level of instruction of high quality instruction across the district this is particularly important for our students of color and our economically disadvantaged students who disproportionately rely on the instruction and what they are receiving in school compared to other students who may have more supplementary opportunities outside of school so being really clear about what
103is required and what the standard of Excellence is for classroom instruction is incredibly important we see an opportunity to reimagine the instructional coaching model it has so many strong attributes it has contributed to so many strong outcomes especially for new teachers and teachers new to the division we see an opportunity to extend that model to be a part of the overall comprehensive adult learning system so that it is no longer opt-in but instead a part of the supports that teachers receive as you think about adopting new curriculum for K-5 literacy secondary math and algebra one that job embedded instructional coaching will become a critical part of teachers internalizing and being able to offer that curriculum as intended we also see a real opportunity to make more visible the progress against the Strategic plan and against
104the goals and recommendations here um you have some really thoughtful strategies in your strategic plan and have identified some really intentional actions those along with the recommendations in this report really need to be measured and what we're seeing in response to those needs to be discussed at all levels of the organization so that you can make just-in-time adjustments one of the things we observe is a measuring of inputs and outputs and less measuring of outcomes for example we saw lots of evidence of the number of instructional walkthroughs per school being captured and reported what we saw less evidence of is what were we learning from those walkthroughs what were the instructional practices we expected to see and what did we actually see that's what we want to measure because the instructional walkthrough is only a
105tool and it's only an important and relevant tool in that it tells us what is happening in the instructional core our final recommendation is just around stakeholder engagement strengthening systems for input and feedback again we heard consistently from teachers that they want to leverage their training and expertise to be a part of the solution we acknowledge and applaud the district for its efforts around task forces and committees but I think you've seen both from this audit as well as from recent Gallup survey results that teachers want to be engaged differently we could offer all kinds of recommendations about what it looks like to do that well but I think the people that you want to ask are your teachers and create engagement opportunities opportunities for them to help you figure out how to do the
106work indicated in this audit well I think it's equally important to listen to parents um I think because the district is adopting um curriculum district-wide it creates an opportunity for district-wide tools that give parents more visibility into what their students are learning and provides tools and resources that parents can understand that Empower them as their students first teachers I have two Elementary age students myself and I am consistently seeking resources to understand what their day-to-day learning looks like and what my husband and I need to do at home to support the teachers and supplement that learning at home what we heard consistently from families and yes from families of color is that they want those tools and resources they want to be empowered as their students first teacher and we recommend that the division really
107double its efforts to position them as such again we just want to thank you for this opportunity to partner with you in this incredibly important work we cannot acknowledge enough the importance of you taking this step and laying bare the challenges that are in the district being transparent about that with your community with all of your stakeholders and the commitment to then respond to the findings we welcome your reactions questions and discussion I will just start off before we open questions by saying thank you thank you very much I'll also offer a quick apology my kids are supposed to deliver coffee at the break and I thought it was going to be more disruptive if they walked up while you were talking so let me just make my way out there and grab it for
108them um so yeah I think it's opening up for discussion foreign this is a lot to digest um and you know I thank you for this Diagnostic and and the you know pointing the direction toward where we need to be going this has been a challenge for us and you know we have worked with our strategic plan and our anti-racism policies and we were clearly aware that that was necessary but insufficient and this provides us a tool for going forward um and you know you can't you can't yeah sometimes you have to rip the bandage off and and see where you know what needs to be done so thank you for that I'm a little overwhelmed at this moment and talk to me about the theory of change I mean I don't even know what
109to ask but you you did mention it multiple times yeah and how does that how do we do that yeah let me first respond to your feeling of overwhelm um and I will say I know it's a lot of content and though tonight um is the end of our official engagement with the division we would welcome your questions as you um kind of dig deeper into these reports both as a board and as a leadership team um we do not turn into pumpkins so please reach out to us um if you if you have questions um related to the theory of change and we're happy to share examples um but it really speaks to a series of if then statements and so one could imagine a statement um you know if the central office provides
110the tools and resources and opportunities for professional learning and sets the standard for instruction and then if principal supervisors and instructional coaches are charged with then providing the professional learning opportunities that Translate kind of those tools and resources and standards of excellence into practice and then if principles XYZ and if teachers XYZ and so it really clarifies the role of everyone in the system so then when you take on particular initiatives or make particular Investments you go back to that framework and so then you ask yourself what is the role of the division for adopting this new K-5 literacy curriculum what is the role of kind of the middle so those instructional coaches and principal supervisors what is the role of principles and so forth and so on um what we see now is a
111lack of that Clarity and what it what it causes is a lack of coherence across work that individually is research informed and worthwhile work but you don't get the benefit of all of it working together in concert and that is what the theory of change really speaks to um I like Kate feel there is so much here and I'm I'm so grateful and I I want to express um how grateful I am that you were able to really get families and students we have not been able to engage as you found out um to really be candid and I think that there's that really speaks to um your talent and um you know the way you were able to engage folks uh in the presentation of those the quotes and pulling them together and everything
112I think we have it now I mean there are things that we've always thought and known but we have it now in these reports from their mouths with the numbers with every way in which they can be presented and I am deeply appreciative of that and you know very disheartened and disconcerted um but I am I'm just grateful for that and I think right now I'm just in the moment of taking it in understanding it and you know really verifying and validating what we've thought but and so much more than that and you know giving us Direction so I'm just I'm very appreciative thank you so everyone start with two thank yous so one this read this recommendation for this process came out just as I was joining the board in January so first I
113mean I've worked with a lot of school districts at a lot of states and a lot of just organizations in general who wouldn't have the guts to first of all do this RFP um engage with such a high quality organization as Bellwether and then sit and have this these 120 Pages put out publicly um and so first of all a huge thank you to Dr Haas and the leadership for doing that for acknowledging that we have some issues and for saying we are going to face those issues we are going to make them public and we are going to take the first step so I think that in itself is something we have to acknowledge because I've seen many school districts where they did an audit and no it never saw the light of day
114and so that's it's a huge um it's a huge advantage that we did this and then a huge thank you to your team um as Judy said it is very hard to engage with families especially to engage with families in such a short period of time and I have to say I was doubtful that you would have been able to do that in that unbelievable time frame that we gave you to get this done before the end of the school year so just a huge thank you for the comprehensive nature and for not being focused on just one thing but for looking at all the levels right um all the what do the families need what have it what is what do all the adults need what do the children need and what is the
115comprehensive approach that we need to do um I don't know if anyone can see this but I have a researcher of my heart right and the last time I did this I think I wrote a dissertation right like I who tabbed this um to their point it's overwhelming because there's so much information but that gives us a plan to go forward um so I mean I think one of the things we need to think about as a board and the division are kind of what are those next steps I'm a short-term medium-term long-term person and so beginning I know the task force has started this but I think kind of task force with Ford really need to sit down and spend time going into this um because we've you know already been getting questions from
116from teachers and from leaders and from parents because this is this is a busy time of the year right and you're there's this uh came out at that point because this is the time the report was supposed to come out but kind of knowing this is the end of the school year and it's a busy time how do we make sure we take this and begin and continue those conversations so that those people that you've talked to um understand what you said and feel part of that process and hear it so I mean I think that's one thing is like what is the process and I'm sure um the division is already thinking about that and there's some listening sessions that are happening tonight but what over the next you know two to three months
117are those listening and discussion sessions at all levels um in an accessible way right in a way that also has interpreters for those families who don't um speak the language the report is written in and then I think about what are those next steps like what is the what is the cost of implementation and what are those things that we need to think about now and what are those things that we need to to buy sure and then I think finally thinking about what is that kind of long-term plan that you talked about that keeps us accountable so what do we do saying as we move forward on a quarterly basis is this something that is always an agenda item for the school board I'm sure it's always going to be something on the the
118superintendent's cabinet but what does that look like so that we can be clear what the accountability is going forward and so that we can see if we are publicly or not making the improvements that we need so thank you so much thank you again so much for your report and I have two questions and one I'm not sure really even how to um phrase it I guess but in your report you had said something about most about black and brown students were being guided into technical jobs and not into going to college do you think that would be related to less rigorous I'm not even sure what the right word is but whether or not somebody is not being as rigorous with those students in guiding them in it into that pathway as compared to
119being guided into the college campus and how serious is the problem because sometimes technical jobs can really give a huge pain to kids so how serious is the problem overall in that phase too I really appreciate the question I'm happy to start and answer would invite you to jump in I I want to first state that like there is significant value to Career and Technical education we live in a world where there are multiple and more varied economically viable post-secondary Pathways I think what we saw however were that Black and Hispanic students were disproportionately enrolled in those classes and so it raised a question for us about expectations for those students in their post-secondary Pathways relative to other students I think another important metric to look at is that Black and Hispanic students are disproportionately
120taking algebra one in ninth grade compared to their white and Asian peers who disproportionately take it in the middle grade years that again speaks to both expectations but then how those expectations result in the course taking of students as early as Elementary School to inform than the secondary math pathway Keisha said it spot on but just to take this story a little bit longer imagine parents who aren't aware of the different options and they just trust the school and so they have to have a voice to even say if I can roll my kid and my child in algebra as an eighth grader they have a higher chance to go to college I don't even know that option so now it goes from not just the school of expectations it goes to the parents not
121being informed of what the options they have and so this is what kids were saying this if then right all these things work together and so if a parent knew algebra and eighth grade is an option and I get resources and supports for my kid interventions even though it's hard but if they take an eighth grade they have a better chance of taking higher math and ninth grade and 10th grade and then getting better at scores on the S18 act right all that leads to this like through line and so I think that is the the picture we want to say is how do we make sure outcomes not just on assessments but life outcomes are Equitable for for all students you know not just black and brown but all students latinx students students with
122you know disabilities as well [Music] okay then my second question your report is really fascinating but um as we begin to try to bring changes about uh we're devising the theory of change be probably the first big step to take so I think so yes I I do think so because it really is an organizing mechanism for all of the work that you will ultimately undertake a lot of decisions will will be made at the leadership level and that's okay that's what we expect leaders to do but we have to understand then how those make it down to the classroom level and there are a lot of layers to get to through before it can get there and then we also need to make sure there's a feedback loop that comes back to central office
123I I happen to believe very strongly that the decisions that are made at the division level around what investments to make what tools and resources to provide what professional learning to provide has to be informed by what's happening in the classroom and so if you don't have that theory of change that really defines that feedback loop and ensures that it is continuously happening then I think you you have you run the risk of making Investments that are not informed by the needs of the instructional core piggybacking off of Graham's point I think that I'm just sort of struck that some of the ways in which we've tried to remove barriers um have been passive and what I appreciate appreciate about your report is making it more active like for instance we've removed some barriers to
124you know advanced classes in the you know secondary but we haven't pushed the kids from first through all the way to get there so um I appreciate the clarity around that you know in response to that I just want to acknowledge again so many of the right first steps have been taken it's about taking the next step so we need to measure that we have like removed policies that were a barrier but then we have to follow up and measure the extent to which that has resulted in more students of color and more economically disadvantaged students accessing those courses and if we aren't measuring that and continuously coming back and talking about if it's changing and moving in the direction that we want it to then we don't make changes Beyond just having removed the
125policy that was the barrier in the first place so I really appreciate you raising in that I like the part of your report where you talked about educating the adults which is more than clearly more than the teachers I mean it includes educating that School Board as well no doubt but also with respect to the math I really think um that goes all partly to families and getting the information out to families but also goes to the guidance counselors and the people who help select those courses and explain not only what's available but why what's available is important and how it can impact your further choices so I don't even know what our policy is on professional development for guidance counselors I'm sure there is one but I don't know what it is but that's
126why everyone needs to know what our theory of Change Is Right you had some examples of theories of change are they in any of the documents that you gave to us and if not how can we get them they are not in the documents but you can get them because I will aggregate a couple of them and send them to Dr House in the team okay thank you would you talk a little bit one of the things you didn't highlight um tonight but that I think is an important piece that I think evolved there's a lot of data that was very concerning but one of the biggest was the um the suspension the disproportionate suspensions would you just talk a little bit about kind of that piece of what you found [Music] yeah I think
127you know this is not a problem that is just at acps right this is a problem that's across the country um when you think about um and I talked to Dr Haas about this we had a conversation about you know um there's no like ill intention but when you have a student population at a school that is a majority African-American majority Hispanic in the population of teachers is eight percent women it's not like a fault but there is a gap of like understanding it just happens it's natural right it's not a bad thing this is what it is and I think there are some places where the learning can happen to to grow how do we understand the needs of those students a lot of them are boys right um who have some meat and
128supports and sometimes the supports that we have at your disposal may not be enough right and so what do you do you send home what do you do you sit in ISS and again it's no it's no fault of anyone but I think there's just got to be a figuring out what are the the issues of dealing with and how do we invest more um is it hiring more male teachers of color what is the investment to support not just the students but also support the adults in learning how to navigate when students misbehave or disengage and I would also say um having I'm a father of a young young black boy um if they're engaged they behave if they're engaged with rigorous material they behave and so how do we put the material that's
129in again goes back to the task we put rigorous tasks in front of kids I don't care if you're short tall black white you're going to engage in that task and so it goes back to that core how do we put the things in place for kids to really be engaged in and then support them with the wraparound services that they need but it goes back to that core piece of like those tasks that kids are engaged with so I think what I would want to talk about is next steps [Music] um so you this is the end of your engagement with us is what you said I know we heard from Dr Berlin about having another work session on this it sounds like we're coalescing around the idea that we need to develop a
130theory of change which could be a tangible next step I guess I would ask you guys while you're here what would you advise The Next Step be for us in a tangible way store I'm happy to start um you know I think having conversations about these reports I know Dr Haas has engaged Us in putting together some materials for teachers to be able to view to kind of support their understanding of um these four reports and their recommendations and I think just having those conversations across the division but also in the community in really authentic and accessible ways is incredibly important I think as you think about your annual plan for next school year thinking about like kind of what is the first right step I really want to caution you about trying to do
131all of this work and doing it doing it quickly this is thoughtful intentional work there's research that says it takes two to three years for a teacher to internalize a new curriculum and for that internalization to show up in their practice right like there are no quick fix it here and so I really want to encourage you to to take your time and think about this as a multi-year plan I would point you to K2 reading especially in schools that are disproportionately serving Black and Hispanic students and economically disadvantaged students and so as you look across these recommendations one of the things you might think about doing is how you stage them so what grade levels might you focus on first what schools might you disproportionately invest in first I think it's also really important
132to build the capacity of adults that are meant to support teachers in schools I can't say enough how important it is that reading Specialists interventionists instructional coaches Equity Specialists that they are really trusted as experts in both the curriculum resources as well as instructional practices so that they can provide that job embedded support for the teachers who are interacting with content and students I'll just add one more I think the important piece is around the family engagement um we can't do this work without families and the research says the more families are engaged better chance of students be successful right we know that and so um black and brown families are engaged does not engage with the schools right so they are let's not say they're on a game they are engaged but engaged with
133the schools authentically and so I think another push would be I would I would encourage you all to think about the systems and ways you engage families thoughtfully not just in an email or not just like sign this off but true engagement where they're engaging their students learning their curriculum best practices uh and so there's some places where families live on the outskirts of the town right uh you have a large County right and so how are you going getting them engaged in the school when they're working nights going to their community and having a curriculum night right instead of having it at the school go to their neighborhoods their apartments and so I would also add to Keisha's Point around um the curriculum and uh those shifts a theory of change I would really
134think about the families and stakeholders as another lever uh as a partnership in this work and I don't think you can really do the work well at a high level without them engaged right okay you mentioned I think it was you Akeisha who mentioned that our model for our instructional coaches is an opt-in model I mean we not for the new teachers or new to acps but otherwise it is how would you change that I would make it not optional um and I was surprised and I would really look across those instructional coaches I would think about kind of what they are trained in in terms of kind of their expert and skill so again if you think about like how long it takes a teacher to learn a curriculum and to internalize a curriculum
135and we've recommended adopting a new K5 literacy curriculum Middle grades math and algebra one Workshop PD will not be sufficient to help teachers learn new curriculum and translate that to instructional practice but an instructional coach who can kind of be shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip with a teacher in the in a classroom who understands the curriculum who understands the instructional practices that are expected and can observe what a teacher is doing and say hey like here's a strategy I think you can try here's a place I think you can help instructional coaches can also be school-based professional learning communities so in all of your K2 teachers are getting together and planning instruction around a unit that's new to them you want that instructional coach to be able to answer questions and kind of
136demystify that curriculum so I would look at how the instructional coaches are trained and then I would look at how they are deployed and again disproportionately supporting schools where there are lots of new teachers where instructional walkthroughs are telling us there are lots of opportunities to improve instructional practice so this begins to get it like how it all fits together right like we have the instructional walkthroughs as a tool that's let's use that to know like where are the gaps in practice and then let's let's deploy our instructional coaches as a tool and a resource to help fill those gaps in just a this could also look like um doing a few schools first right running a pilot that was exactly my next question you I would say on this idea of include inclusivity ask
137teachers what they need ask staff what they need ask coaches what they want to do bring them together in a room and say how can we best make this work as a team of teachers and coaches what do we do to make this possible Right use one or three three or four schools on a pilot see how it looks like give them a resource and investment you're running well and then scale it out so um on this idea of going forward to go fast I would not go full scale I would think about how do we do this thoughtfully pilot something Run Cycle continuous Improvement you know over a quarter over years over two years and then scale it out as you learn from those Pilots pilot but you did it we're thinking I'm like
138so earlier Dr house we heard a little bit about the fund balance and you this is a question you know we've talked about a little bit because we've passed a budget we knew this was coming we talked about the fund balance I think one of my questions is you know as we think about what is needed in the short term right I love how it's like you summer 23 fall 23 throughout the school year then 24 25 beginning to cost out as we think about kind of everything right I hear you we should we can't do everything right at once but beginning to think about what those costs might be so that we can help kind of think about you know what is needed and what if there's approval that needs to happen um because
139I think that's an important Next Step as well thank you yeah I think I'm echoing a lot of comments and there's just a lot to take in because I actually have quite a few questions but I'm you know I'm worried about our time and how much we really have right now um I'll just I guess throw a few out really quickly since we're here I guess my hope is probably that we can continue to engage with Bellwether as we move forward is what I'm imagining if we decide to pursue this a deeper dive into this so I guess that's something we'd have to figure out but while you're here um what extent do you feel it's necessary to bring in outside perspectives as we take on this work non-internal um I think it's great I
140think it's a balanced approach I think we were Outsiders right but a lot of those things that we we said you already knew and that just means just translating different in different ways I think the outside perspective comes in very objectively right so um you know sometimes activity is good to come in without any bias uh without any histories you can see things from a higher level I think that is a benefit to that I think also when you have outside experts or support they're not in the work every day so they can level out and level in pretty quickly and not be stuck with day to day right sometimes during the day-to-day you're pulled at different things and so it's hard to dig deep into a priority so I recommend for those reasons find
141something if there's something you want to external support I would recommend do that but be very clear like what their Lane is but I have seen benefits to outside support okay my last question which is not the most meaningful one I just think we need to have more stuff but since you're here I'm just curious and I don't probably can't say this eloquently but I always feel a little discomfort as a person of color myself when we have these conversations around how I know what was mentioned in the report how we've adopted asset-based thinking and we're making sure to frame these conversations in a way that feels like we're lifting up our students not just focusing on where they're not doing well um and so I guess since I'm trusting your outside perspective what was
142your interpretation of what our students and families were saying because sometimes I feel like we are just pushing out this negative message around how our students of color and our low-income students are doing and I worry about that uh I'll start first don't talk first of all I enjoyed acps I enjoyed coming here I'm enjoyed going to the mall getting some food after talking to kids the teachers the families um everyone was very warm at all the schools I went to and I had a lot of observations um so first like there's a positive feel here right um from the outside perspective right I'm Outsider um what I would say is the students I went to a high school I think it was Monticello High School I believe I got lost um but I talked
143to a number of students um latinx black students and they enjoy learning they enjoy the school experience they enjoy their teachers they want to be successful and it's very very clear I talk to families they want to be successful it seems to be successful they want that teachers as well and that's that's that should be that that is like a win because some schools it's not always happening it's not always the case but I would say where the disconnect is is around expectations I think there is a clear [Music] um gap between was expected that kids of color can do or poor kids and kids were more fluent um and non-non kids of color or um immigrants right and again I think it is it could be a number of reasons I don't want to
144get to the rabbit hold why but that's just coming up right we saw that and so I think that then places the minds of students and they see this again they value their teachers opinions they like their teachers but they also feel not expected to do the same work as a counterparts an example a student told me Mr Jackson when I do one thing right the teacher gets excited and says awesome and he feels bad because like I should do it right and so how does he feel annoying that like your expression is so low for me I just do one thing right I get like applause when I actually do all 10 of them right and he understands as a student a student a young student so I think that is the disconnect again
145this is not across every classroom but a trend we saw um again I saw beautiful things I saw kids engaged but I also saw there was a level of expectation um again I don't want to get into like the reasons why I don't know all the reasons why but there was a gap yeah yeah I think that that is maybe getting to what I feel like is occurring and I wonder sometimes how we contribute to it because we focus our conversations I feel like sometimes on all these things we assume that are negative in in a low income are a brown family I mean we heard it today in public comment we we assume that they might have a drug problem they might have a broken up home we you know all these things that
146and then I think sometimes we get off track from the fact that these kids can do as well or better than anybody else so you know why are we just but it I'm just telling from up here though it feels weird because we don't want to ignore I don't want to say we don't need to provide extra supports for families that are struggling but somehow I feel like we're caught in this cycle of focusing on things that aren't tied to what I think ultimately helps students of color which is having high expectations and good outcomes that give them opportunities to succeed so I don't know I appreciate it I guess I'm I wrote a big note for myself to stay positive this is hard stuff to take in because I know how passionate so many
147people on the board are people in our families or teachers our community members about making meaningful change and it can be frustrating here we have so much um more to do and it can be frustrating to think we've tried things and it's not panning out the way that we want but I this is this is a step in the right direction and I appreciate it and I'm looking forward to the next steps I'll just no we're not done yet but because we're going to continue to engage I'm sure you will um somehow but um there's a quote I like to say it's uh by um you've known James Baldwin right about America he says if I love it I love this country I will criticize this country in some of the words right so I
148think like I just want to be very like show my gratitude to this board to you all that you love acps and love all kids that's why you're critical critical of this right that's why this work is so difficult and that's why you criticize this and you're able to put this up and make it public because you want to do well and you love these students and so when I when I see this and the struggle you're having it's because you have love right and so in the words of James Baldwin like you love acps because you criticize acps which is a beautiful thing yeah I have another question I'm sorry there was a press release saying bellwethers come and given this you know harsh diagnostic about acps how can we um put together a
149message to families about what we hope to be doing and what are we going to do about it I mean do we just leave that press release is the only public information out there or people I mean I think we need to do something and I'm not at all talking about prettying this up but that I mean we're very serious I mean my colleagues and I are very serious about this report and using it to take meaningful action but how do we communicate something about this or should we I mean I don't know I think our actions are going to communicate what we're doing yeah right but that's as we've been told may take two to three years of a pilot I mean yes I mean we can get a press release out about a
150task force for and that we're going to do a pilot you know I would hope at one of my schools which is the highest most diverse and lowest income schools in the county but um yes I mean I think ultimately Ellen you're absolutely correct I like me to press really I think we just need to do it well no there's already better press release that's the point and also it can be done through just communication with will like everyone being also like like they said like parents and stuff need to be like right but we're not going to send you know several hundred pages of this report which is extremely detailed and we can't translate it into 20 languages but you know so how can we communicate the essence of this and the seriousness of
151this report and the seriousness of what we hope to do I mean I think starting by communicating your why I mean why you commissioned this audit in the first place I don't I don't think any of you were expecting a Rosy report you had a sense that there were things that were not going the way that you wanted them to go that there were opportunities to improve outcomes for our students furthest from opportunity so you were expecting a report that laid that there and you would have been unsatisfied if that were not the case in what we delivered you and I do think it's very important to focus on the intentional actions that you're taking going forward and while improving the instructional core is certainly a long-term value proposition we should absolutely have leading indicators
152that show the progress we're making so we should be consistently seeing high quality instruction in classrooms and we should have tools and ways to measure that so we can talk about how instruction is we should see students performing better on high quality instructional tasks and we should have common tasks across grade levels and across-focused schools where we can show that Improvement we might not see students right away at grade level proficiency on sols but we certainly should see growth and so we should celebrate and communicate broadly the progress that we're making towards goals and when we're not making progress we should also be transparent about that and talk about what we're doing in response but we could also use this it seems to me as a way to engage families more strongly I mean we
153are serious we need your help you know absolutely Okay so I just feel like there's so many questions I also have a question about being a reader just because you it does say in the report that we I mean as strength was that we have research backed the sound Investments strong investments in curriculum one of which was not approved by the state level so it doesn't and you're saying it takes two to three years for a teacher to adopt a new instructional method or curriculum so it seems like probably not the right call to suddenly switch to an interim plan while we wait for the state approved I mean do you have an opinion on that teachers are here so um a couple things I think go to the teachers right you want to ask
154a teacher so I don't want to just say what all I know but I think like the first thing is when it impacts teachers directly you need to get their voice in the room right and ask them what do we we have this being a reader is now no longer approved teachers what are your recommendations right go to some of them to get their voices and perspectives I do think they're small I think wins you can do when it comes in from the curriculum and so to kind of accelerate that process and that is that if in statement so if you know you have a new curriculum and you want to accelerate the learning what do you want to put in place to help that learning accelerate maybe add more coaches um do you adjustable
155walkthrough form do you provide more PD um do you make PD where it is aligned to that curriculum where that's the key driver of that like this first year of PD is really around driving the curriculum so there are things to do but I would I would recommend like and this is where this idea of like go somewhere to go fast go to the folks who are impacted most by this by the decisions right and if you know curriculum impacts teachers directly I would I want to get their voices in that in that profiling solution okay thank you I would just add to that like um you know it takes a a thorough curriculum adoption process we'll take a a good year um in terms of like engaging teachers um to be a part of
156the decision in families as well I think over the next school year you have to continue to support teachers around the being a reader curriculum we cannot afford to have a year where reading is instruction is up to individual decisions made by individual teachers in classrooms you have a curriculum that was thoughtfully selected it happens to not be on the state list and so you have to make a decision around another curriculum in the interim we still need to support strong instructional practice in reading and the curriculum that you have is a tool to leverage to do that and again not to go over this point again but but if you have to use that curriculum for the year I would then engage teachers and say this is what we have to do for the
157next year yes those gaps what are the gaps you are seeing how have you solve these gaps together for the next year bring on the conversation and that may take a little bit longer but they will then let you know curriculum is strong here week here let's add some music was here to fix this for the next year and then you can continue with the next process for the following year absolutely do you have any feedback on the school board level that you want to impart to us before you you ride off hopefully you'll be back again like really just applaud your energy and engagement in this process I had an opportunity to speak with a number of you um in one-on-one conversations to help inform um these reports um I I would just ask
158that you think about kind of your own continuous Improvement cycle and so when you think about the reports that you're asking for the data that you are reviewing and the cycle with which that you are reviewing it ensuring that it is also aligned to the theory of action because boards can ask questions that incent superintendents and Leadership teams to double down on the most important work or boards can ask questions that really kind of distract and have superintendents and Leadership teams kind of chasing all kinds of different kind of questions and initiatives and so I would just encourage like the continue the level of focus that you have and the level of alignment to the key priorities of this work thank you both so much this has been a great session and I'm actually going
159to take before we move on I know we're running behind schedule but you'll have to deal with it because typically we're very much on time I just want to solidify our next step since y'all are all here um I feel like later today we're going to have a quick thing but I feel like we should add probably some kind of work session around this seeming to me solidifying around a theory of change do you all have any comments on that yeah I mean I'd like to see another work or another this is this was a presentation a work session where we think about kind of digging into some pieces of the report but also kind of having conversations with leadership about kind of what are those first next steps um that we're going to they're
160going to do and where they're going to need support and where they're going to need funding okay and then Dr Haas I wish we had had this information before we did our instructional coach work session because I feel like I would have had a lot I feel like we all probably had some questions after that who's in my group was it new Judy no Ellen yeah yeah I feel like we had a lot of questions that now I'm almost feeling like I wanna dive back into that so I guess I'd ask you Dr Haas what are the next steps that you're taking so the the next steps that we've got in place right now um because we were concerned that as the school year ended you know tomorrow's a half day and then teachers last
161days on Monday was we just wanted to be sure that we closed the loop on the report itself and not this isn't the most meaningful way to do it but it's it's just to close the loop for the year and get feedback uh from instructional staff so we did um ask Anson and Keisha if they would work with us to make a video that we put together that I introduce and it provides a high level summary of the report so and we've talked with all the principles about ensuring that every educator in their school sees the video before they head out and there are poll questions on it to give us an initial blink of what they see as first steps you know how does the how does the report resonate with their experience in
162the school system and and start to gain their their input on it um so that's that's the the first step um I do agree that it one of the one of the goals in doing a process like this is it does create a whole different framework for how the board views everything after that right so now you don't just have the Strategic plan that has the overarching goals where we say this is our strategic plan we also bring the Bellwether report up every time we do something how's this how does this recommendation how does this work session how how is this structure that we have in the school system how does that uh reflect what we learned from the Bellwether report the theory of action probably is just listening to Akeisha talk about that it's
163probably been the most impactful thing for me because I think that there is there is a you look at the Gallup results right and you can see that Gap and engagement Gap from the upper leadership and then to the principles there's a gap and then it really bottlenecks there you know and then it goes down to you know it goes from the division leaders to the associates you can see that it's bottlenecking there and and what I what I've learned what I've learned through this process is that it's because we don't Define the action steps really below the principle or the director we we share with the you know it's like we shared shared decision making is we made a decision we shared it with you so now you go share it with your instructional
164staff go share it with the staff at your school and then the expectation is that it would then happen and we don't have adequate feedback loops in either in the form of formative assessment or learning walks those structures are only now just things that we are just beginning to do while school systems around the state probably 20 years ago were adopting these kinds of structures to respond to standardized testing for for better for worse they said standardized testing is not going away we want our students to be successful with it let's use best practice practices that were recommended by Rick Dufour everybody with professional learning communities Albemarle County did not adopt these practices Albemarle County was hoping that standardized testing would go away okay so lo and behold here we are here's where we are
165um now there there is an ancient there's an old expression that is when's the best time to plant a tree and the answer is 20 years ago uh when's the next best time to plant a tree is now um many many of the things that uh Anson and Akisha talked about are in the first step phases that have been taking place over the last really trying to begin in 1819 but then vastly interrupted by the pandemic you notice that we've been emphasizing how professional having professional learning communities having formative assessment we have faced a lot of resistance from the school level in doing this work but the reason for that as I again as I'm unpacking this is because we didn't adopt a theory of change of who does what to make sure that people
166need to know or have what they need to know and be able to do so that they can adequately embrace the change that we're asking them to make just saying to someone change because it's the right thing to do if they don't have the professional development to embrace that change then it's very difficult for them to do that we should expect them to resist it even if it's for the right reason so my big takeaways are that um my staff and I want to work with the board on this because I feel like one of the other big changes that we've made over the past few years is that we work as a team that it's not me running interference for the school system so you don't really know what's going on so we don't
167have to and face up to the results that we're getting I feel like we've all become more become very transparent with each other we work together and you are in a leadership role and I'm here to carry out what you want me to carry out and I feel like you you need information to do that and that's why we do this work that we're doing right now but the first step I agree is to is to really adopt that theory of action and implement it for really the the key things that we that the board and staff work together to identify and listen to the teachers you know getting that feedback from them what are the key areas that we need to tackle first then say well if we're if we're going to make this
168change then what who needs to do what all the way to the classroom and then what is the teacher's role in making that change to the task at the core of it there also needs to be that feedback loop um even this year we adopted a learning walk in Albemarle County when I came to the school system it's always been an opt-in you know teachers are supposed to get five in the fall and five in the spring there were those of us that practiced it with Fidelity and there were people that didn't and up until this year we did you know we didn't hold them accountable for it especially during the pandemic because you know so we it is compliance right now because we're just basically saying get out and do the learning walks and
169do 10 a week otherwise you have absolutely nothing to talk about so with that is a key coming when I picture with the theory of change is that first is driving in One Direction and then you're getting the feedback from the other direction the learning walk the formative assessments I know we get complaints that people say we give too many assessments I don't think we give enough I think there are too many assessments but there's too many low quality assessments that don't measure standards I think that we need to have teams work at teachers at the grade levels they need to make the assessments I don't think we should be making and handing out assessments that doesn't build assessment Literacy for teachers I think they need to make them but they need to be given
170and they need to be given with Fidelity across the system so we have that feedback loop coming back up so we can see what's going on um so I do I think next steps make sure everybody knows about it I do think every teacher in our school system every educator should have at least a one hour module next year either in person or asynchronously or or or synchronous online to unpack this report and actually understand it otherwise having been a teacher myself if if someone says do you want to come learn about the Bellwether report or do you want to get your classroom ready for school I'm going to go get my classroom ready for school we need to put this in front of people and ensure that they know about it otherwise they cannot
171participate in it they cannot help us with this Mission that's that's part of that theory of action so the first step awareness across the board that this happened we're moving forward with it and then I really want to engage the board around theory of action are we going to go broad with one strategy or are we going to go uh after schools that are really treading water and do a pilot but those are things that I need direction on in in terms of where we're going to take that support but I uh fully Embrace everything I read it all resonates with me uh there's I I feel firmed by the report and I'm glad to hear an outside consultant say the things that you've said because I feel like it's going to empower my Administration
172to to make the changes that we think need to be made so I really appreciate it if I could experience but I have a question for you Dr Oz or maybe Dr McLaughlin about the math Readiness I mean we have a lot of rising 8th graders that are going to be starting in the fall and I would love to have some data on the demographic breakdown in terms of what students are signed up for algebra one whether we can talk with the families about the importance of taking algebra one and if we need to provide some intervention I know it's late in the year but if we need to provide some intervention or workshops to get kids interested in that I would be very much in favor I completely agree and I don't think you're
173out of line by suggesting that the the families that have their children signing up for algebra one in high school they will respond very positively to us reaching out and saying hey your child's taking algebra one next year we've developed you know a two-week program that's toward the end of July are that your child can participate in I guarantee you we'll have a very high response rate children to the parents who didn't their kids didn't sign up also well first and encouraging them to sign up absolutely yeah that's what I meant they would be thrilled about that but I'm also thinking the real the the areas where we have the greatest difficulty with the success in algebra one is in ninth grade to your point about um students signing up for algebra one uh again
174that's we have schools that do summer programs around that but it's been like are you going to do one are you not going to do it this is why you should do one it's what we should be saying yeah um I just wanted to respond also one I have to go back home I know um but one thing and you we're in alignment on a lot of things um just one thing that caught me about what you said about um how you know coming back to meetings how does this align to the Bellwether report how does this line to our um strategic plan I think that that still feels to me too passive um this feels like we now know that our house is on fire and so that still feels like you know just
175spraying a little water at it I really I think that we really need to be driving action with this and not just sometimes I feel like with our strategic plan yeah back into it in a parallel path and we're like okay well we're doing this thing and here's why we think it aligns with our strategic plan instead of really coming from the strategy plan instead of really coming from this report we back you back into it we say okay well we're going to do this so how does it relate to this exactly yeah exactly and I think I don't I don't this really has to drive all of our action all the the recommendations that are in here are recommendations that we are going to enact okay um what's floating around my head it's so
176hard I know this is a it's a good conversation thank you guys I just I'm recalling and I want to say it too now is that I did that PD back in 20 which by the way for a school board evaluation we should all be making sure we get PD in um but that PD where it was a school system in North Carolina that just took out the equation of systemic racism sort of by we can't really ever take it out by but by saying they made their kids take the P all had to take the PSAT and anyone that scored above a certain amount which was they had to take algebra and then they got the supports they need it was just no opt-in no talk to it was just you can do it
177so get in it so anyway I'd love to see more like proactive School Board command day whatever you want you could say all yeah and then they had this amazing success story number one you can say that if you chose to it's it's I'm all for it I'm looking forward to doing the work this is not the time to throw in random new suggestions but I'm really excited about having this conversation thank you guys thanks for leading it thank you for opening it up um and I'm really looking forward to all the work that we're going to do yeah thank you and then I would also like to note to our student reps we are well behind schedule which we have not done before so if you need to leave you are absolutely welcome to
178do so and you can just flip out too yeah you don't have to you don't have to decide but if you need to leave truly I mean you saw I went and picked up a coffee from the back you can you can can head out if you need to um so we are just get through my papers here moving I believe we have a report Equity updates Equity updates I'm assuming Dr Harrison's going to come give that report a good evening chair Carlson school board members thank you for the opportunity to provide an update from the office for Community engagement the mission of the office for Community engagement is to inform Inspire and involve our broad spectrum of stakeholders and collaborative Partnerships that Empower students staff families communities encourage lifelong learning um through the development
179and implementation of the anti-racism policy ACC and the policy on the treatment of transgender and gender expansive students jba our School Division strives to become anti-racist and anti-bias rejecting all forms of racism as destructive to our mission vision and goals our office Works to create an inclusive environment that recognizes the power of diversity and driving positive student outcomes diversity makes us stronger through a variety of perspectives backgrounds and experiences that improves our educational environment and gives rise to new ways of thinking and Innovation to better serve all School communities the anti-racism policy and the policy on the treatment of transgender and gender expansive students are firmly embedded within the Strategic plan learning for all with both policies at the heart of everything we do in the division I am confident that working collaboratively as a
180team we will end the predictive value of race class gender and special capacities for our children's Success Through high quality teaching and learning for all we seek to build relationships with families and communities to ensure that every student succeed we will know every student in acps this evening you will hear from Dr Eric Irizarry director of equity School family and community relations and project manager for the anti-racism policy and Miss Ayanna Mitchell director of equity education and project manager for the policy on the treatment of transgender and gender expansive students I'm Dr Irizarry and Miss Mitchell will provide updates from their respective stirring committee each committee is comprised of Staff members from schools departments and division leadership the steering committee serve as oversight to the implementation of the policy and both are tasked with carrying
181out set deliverables after the presentation I will close with next steps for the upcoming school year but now I'm turning it over to Dr Irizarry director of equity School family and community relations thank you as always we as Dr Kaiser said we start with our strategic plan in mind you'll see that these strategies are interwoven into our three goals allowing students to explore their interests eliminate barriers to access with Goal one empowering our students and families to have more choices and input in their students trajectory and also ensuring that programs like our clcs are accessible to all students across the division good evening so in July 1993 the school board made its initial commitment to ensure Equitable outcomes for all students since then it's past policies JB igak ACC and most recently policy jba these
182policies remind us and guide us to continue the mission of ending the predictive value of race gender and special capacities to ensure that all students are going to succeed thank you as you can imagine the anti-racism policy policy ACC that came along was the guiding factor of how we are going to how we've been looking at our treatment of transgender and gender expansive students policy we spend most of our time collaborating and working together to be an anti-biased anti-racist School Division so even tonight you'll notice that most of the conversation talks about being an anti-bias anti-racist School Division with specifics around what's happening within each policy and for some reason I can't quite see what's under there but hopefully you can on your screen um some of the examples for that is that we have
183redeveloped the decision-making tool the anti-racism decision-making tool to be an anti-biased anti-racist decision-making tool to ensure that no matter what the circumstance is we're able to use the same tool to systematize how we go about doing that and we also use the Learning Resource betting tool to really think about as we were developing and updating our Learning Resource tool in the Department of Instruction to include anti-bias anti-racist practices so that's just a couple of examples of how that works but most of our teams overlap most of our work overlaps and as you know um the ying and he's the Yang so everything overlaps when it comes to this work so the I'm going to switch to the uh specific update to the anti-racism policy um and in It's always important to acknowledge the work that's
184been done uh to develop this policy the policy was adopted by the school board in February of 2019 and before that great effort went into getting student input getting staff input to form this uh to form this policy in 1920 the development of the internal structure project manager and subcommittees were put in place on 2021 foundational training uh trainings were put into place with racial Consciousness for example critical conversations about race and anti-racism orientation in 2021 the policy was further developed and strengthening the capacity of schools and department leaders to address acts of racism that's where the anti-racism decision-making tool um came came into fruition this year again as this policy is I'm sorry oh there's a button all right it's awesome as this policy has continued to develop this year we've developed new and
185uh new tools and updated our existing tools to focus on a bar and you'll hear a bar a lot and expanding our anti-racial anti-racist awareness in our community we've had a big team there is a lot of overlap and these do not the names here do not include all the folks in the field that have helped us with a lot of this process and a lot of these tools but you see it's a very it's a broad group and from a lot of different levels we've tried to stay within the three areas of focus for the anti-racism policy and they've been fairly consistent over the past two years due to the nature of the projects this year first is the curriculum and professional learning so professional learning on new and updated curriculum and decision making
186tools supporting the science framework we'll get into that a little bit uh here in a little bit ensuring books and materials have diverse representation looking at intentional Community engagement that's disaggregating our Panorama and Gallup data from employees our student surveys by demographics conducting our listening forums and listening sessions or Community Information sessions as well and uh and really working hard to identify and promote strategies and resources to tackle some of the existing gaps that were highlighted by the Bellwether audit also reporting acts of racism again institutionalizing the use of the anti-racism anti-bias decision-making tool and using an internal code to track School instances of racism and with that we need to provide more training to administrators on how to document and address those acts of racism when they do occur so this year has been
187very project focused and the idea was to look at tangible items that we could get done by the end of the year so one of those and one of the first ones was making sure that the anti-racism orientation was fully integrated into the HR onboarding System the second and you'll hear this in in both presentations is the development of the anti-racist anti-bias or abar decision making tool we wanted to make sure that our work in this field was not only happening internally but with our external stakeholders as well so we continued through open doors programs and one-to-one trainings with some of our community organizations like the Seaville clergy Collective really explaining the work that we're doing around anti-racism here in the county um also the a bar Learning Resource form there has been a resource
188form in our school division for a while but we've worked with the Department of Instruction again a lot of our folks overlap and developed uh an a bar tool that includes anti-racist anti-bias component in that tool so when we make sure we're about vetting our new curriculum books we're looking for representation we're making sure that those books are books or curriculum that our students can see themselves in also this year we've worked on expansion of a of the a bar lens into science and the team developed a proposal for a bar and curriculum culturally responsive practices to be infused into science very similar to the reframing The Narrative that uh that you all passed last month and the last is the anonymous reporting and referrals we do see that there are some disconnects between what
189administrators are reporting and how they're reporting it and it's not necessary that they're not reporting it's going into detail so we can track at our level the number of incidences related to race [Music] um the anti-bias or abar decision making tool was redesigned this year to allow for better accessibility across schools and departments we've worked with the HR department to do a training also technology and principles we've included the anti-bias uh component in order to facilitate broader use so as we knew that policy jba was going to get into motion this year we wanted to make sure that these tools were accessible to to everybody to make sure these tools were usable by uh by folks in any situation that that occurs so we developed a training video and a presentation to a company the
190face-to-face training sessions for the anti-racism decision-making tool and again the a bar curriculum Tool The Learning Resource vetting tool it was designed to provide greater access to relevant rigorous learning resources for our teachers and our students and ensure students have a uh of different cultures and races can see and be seen in the in in the instructional materials so for next year there are two major projects that we want to start with and move forward one of those is the expansion of the Airy board lens into uh into our science curriculum and second is taking a deep dive into the anonymous reporting and that link between the anonymous reporting and school referrals inside the building so we're working across departments to develop a training module for administrators and staff on how to effectively report and
191analyze that data as it comes in thank you Eric yay so I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the beginnings of the work for the policy you passed in 2021 the treatment of transgender gender expansive students this policy is intended to help schools ensure the educational and social integration of transgender and gender expansive students to keep their learning environments safe from discrimination and harassment this student-led policy group determined five major goals one was to support students in all aspects of school life two was to respect the rights of students to keep their identity and transgender status private and confidential three to assist in eliminating ways in which gender expansive students are stigmatized and marginalized for to Foster social and school Community integration and make it inclusive for all students and five is
192to provide consistent support and training for acps administrators and staff that enables them to address matters of students student gender identity and expression in a consistent manner you'll notice that as we go through these slides they align to these goals intentionally in order to meet these goals for our students the policy was adopted in August 2021 that year we went after a few small areas and we started the a bar work that you heard Eric talk about just before we added this specific policy to the oats training which is part of HR which is similar to the way we added the anti-racism policy work there as well we hosted a webinar introducing the policy to the General Public Building Services took the lead in planning for inclusive bathrooms in new construction because we know that
193all students benefit from gender neutral bathrooms because when we gotta go we just gotta go some schools started to ins started to engage with an organization called side by side who offers professional learning across the state about transgender issues secondary principles and students reviewed the dress code and the student handbooks and made recommendations in conjunction with the updates that were necessary for this year's handbook and use that across the division and just last Thursday we hosted a community information session where we hosted over 100 participants where they were able to we were able to discuss the next steps associated with the policy and share that with share Community Resources with our community and tell them about the training we will be doing with side by side along with the training resources available to them through
194UVA safe space training again you'll notice that our policy is comprised of a diverse group of individuals everybody from teachers students Division and school leaders were part of this year's steering committee together we identified four main deliverables that directly aligned with the goals of this policy Sarah Jackson who is a teacher at Meriwether Lewis took the lead as our chair of the training and professional development team um Kimberly Gibson who you heard about earlier worked on our vetting tool and she works on both committees and so does that group they work in both the anti-racism policy committee and Ours Megan Washburn who is an equity specialist took the lead on the empowering student voice and advocacy group and Jamie Gellner took the lead on our student support and student planning guide each subcommittity committee spent
195the year doing research and planning toward implementation at the onset of the 23-24 school year um they are all very proud of the work they have done and they are looking forward to moving into the new year for implementation our training and professional development will be offered through side by side which is an organization that's dedicated to creating supportive communities for lgbtq plus youth they will be designing professional learning that will be rolled out based on what every educator needs to know understand and do to ensure a safe inclusive environment for all of our students that there will be a work team that will be specifically working on a policy module that will be shared going into the next school year on what exactly is the policy jba and what is the implementation around that
196[Music] our student support and school planning guide team created a draft guidance draft document for guidance counselors school counselors to be able to use a checklist that's directly associated with what is in policy jba to clarify what you what um Educators need to do to support students support staff and support families and when they need to communicate and how they need to communicate with families about what is happening with their child the empowering student voice and advocacy group has the goal for ensuring that all middle school and high schools have functioning supportive gsas and Affinity clubs for students so by doing that they established that every Secondary School does have a GSA but they also were thinking about how to create Affinity groups for students how to provide continuous check-ins and checkpoints to support the
197sponsors and provide them with professional learning they also are looking to work with the student who is on our team to provide a GSA Club Summit this next spring and it will be the first of our School Division yeah thank you all right I'm keeping with the goals of our Equity policies keeping those in the Forefront of everything we do helps us to continue moving towards being an anti-racist anti-bias School Division um the policy implementation work will help Drive our efforts to ensure safe and empowering learning environments for all of our students I'm moving forward for the upcoming school year we will provide professional development on the updated a bar curriculum and tools as well as specific policy and support to staff pertaining to jba we'll implement the support plan and the checklist for school
198counselors to utilize with jba and we'll continue to support our GSA sponsors through professional development and hosting our first GSA student Summit and then we will continue to use the a bar tool with the science curriculum framework these are a few of the identified initiatives that our team will work on next school year and we look forward to coming back to the school board with an update on progress and we will now take questions if you have questions I always have questions um I don't know I think it was you down to Irizarry that mentioned the Anonymous phone line I know he is a school board implemented that several years ago maybe four or five years ago we've never really had a report on it but I I I I sense from what you said
199that it's underutilized or underreported or I mean is it is it limited to I mean I notice also in the Bellwether report there were a lot of there were comments about or reports about microaggressions a lot of racial nonsense going on in schools I hope it's not limited to that I hope it's more anti-bias but talk to me about it talk to us about it I can't speak to the details of the actual reporting tool uh what I was speaking to was the disconnect between when we looked at the data on how many acts of racism were reported through the anonymous reporting tool it didn't align with there's a subcategory when principals put in a referral acts of racism aren't a reportable category so the tech department has put in an extra step to track
200that that data and what we saw was we saw a disconnect there was 35 I don't want to speak to the exact number but there was a disconnect between there were a larger number of anonymous reports of racism than there were that were verified that were not recorded uh in PowerSchool for us to pull that data so there was a misalignment there so I don't think it's yeah for discipline so I don't think it's a lack of using the tool or under utilization of the tool it's trying to connect those two uh Opera you know those two systems so we can look at you know Trends uh you know are there trends at schools at different levels so it's trying to get useful data out of those two tools I was [Music] a little reporting
201that we actually see and it's a variability between schools I mean sort of you know understandable data for me yeah that's a that's a different department but I can get that data for you uh or work with that team thank you you're welcome I have a question about how that a bar tool is going to be used in the uh science curriculum how would be some things that will happen there that's looking at when we're looking at it's not the a bar tool necessarily it's using that a bar lens that anti-racist anti-bias lens so it's taking a look working with teachers uh is the proposal to bring the experts into the room to figure out how can we make that science curriculum uh you know more accessible and reflect our our diversity among our students
202so getting them engaged in that work very similar to reframing The Narrative you know when students see themselves and they're actively engaged in inquiry-based learning we see a higher engagement with students and and applying that to science in a very similar way was where the committee wanted to go with that work I appreciated this update I one question I had was just um the report you know policy ACC um had a whole bunch of metrics I remember there were also a lot about student achievement gifted identification those those types of things an annual report about disparities that still exist and my apologies if I'm missing when that was part of the discussion but I would love more integration if possible with like that Bellwether report and with that academic and achievement side tied in with
203the anti-racism policy because that was part of that work does that make sense although I'm still very happy to hear about all of this which also like the the reporting tool absolutely we get emails pretty frequently actually that allege racial racially motivated incidents that I don't think we have a good handle on so I appreciate this work but just that would be my push for the next year is diving into some of those other um for the next year's report diving into some of those other areas that the policy touches on to do that okay do we have any other questions I feel like I've kept everyone way too long Debbie I had to work for that last meeting yeah um thank you so much for this work thank you for sticking around I'm sorry
204that it went beyond schedule I know that's not really fair to you either because then we're all pretty tired by the time you're giving a presentation that I'm sure you spent a lot of time working on so my apologies we will follow up if we have questions more thank you for coming back to us twice and all of the work that you're doing thank you thank you that brings us to other business we were going to have a short little talk about our school board working documents I'm going to push that until a future meeting because it is non- it's not necessary right now I'll just remind the board members that Judy and I will be meeting tomorrow to kind of map out the remainder of our meeting so if you have any other feedback
205send it to us by email or in the working documents by tomorrow I saw that many of you filled it in with more details so thank you for doing that by 10 am by 10 a.m do it by 10 a.m if you want to have a say in that or give us a call is there any other business we should note that we do not have closed session we don't have another meeting I think until July 13th we do not have another meeting until July 13th there is no more there's not another meeting this month um congratulations to all of our graduates everyone who's moving into summer vacation Kaden enjoy your summer as well yes teachers thank you for everything you've done and I think it's I feel a lot of excitement about what's in
206store so thank you all and we will be back in July [Music]