001afternoon I called this uh September 22nd 22nd meeting of that mile County School Board to order Ms Del Carro do you have a motion I do I move the board certified by recorded vote that to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully Exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered in the closed meeting second move that Ms Dale Carroll a second by Miss League that we vote to say that everything that was discussed in the closed session was in that motion for the closed session Ms Johnson could you please call the rolls Mrs Osborne yes Mr hero yes question Gary thank you we will now have our Pledge of Allegiance [Music]
002we will now observe a moment of silence foreign thank you to introduce our board members and to ensure that we all of our mics are working Dr Kate Acuff Kate Acuff Jack Jewett District Miss Judy Lee Judy Lee Rivanna District Miss Ellen Osborne Ellen Osborne I'm Graham Pate Samuel Muller district and our student rep Ella Whitcomb I'm Ella Whitcomb I'm from Community lab thank you Manila we're glad to have you with us tonight thank you could I have a motion to approve the agenda tonight's agenda I move we approved tonight's agenda I second move Miss Lee second by Dr daycuff did we approve the agenda any discussion on the motion if not miss Johnston Mr elcaro yes Miss Lee Yes Dr akuff yes Ms Osborne yes Mr Page yes motion carrots thanks we need a
003motion to approve our consent agenda for tonight I move that we approve our consent agenda second moved by Dr Acuff second by Miss Dale Carroll that we approve tonight's consent agenda is there any discussion on the motion um I I know that we typically pull these but I just did want to um acknowledge that we did get some email about the Family Life Education review and updates I personally spoke to a lot of people and people in Alexandria uh who have already who have always had these types of updates in place who have had the um non-segregated gender fle classes and talked about how it works there so I just I wanted to acknowledge that okay so basically you don't want to pull it from the agenda but just to mention that it was I
004just wanted to acknowledge it okay all right thank you all right Miss Johnson could you please call the role Dr Acuff yes Ms Osborne yes Miss Lee yes Mr alcaro yes Mr Page yes Mission Kerry thank you motion cares are there any announcements Dr Haas I think you have a school board I mean a superintendent's um item to discuss I I do have two items for uh just soups business so um tonight we're going to do a work session on our standards of learning assessment results this would be the first work session that's focused solely on our standards and learning results that I can remember having in my time working in the school system I think the board is making a lot of moves to have more accountability to focus on results and perhaps setting
005targets moving forward to help us improve as a school system we still have a long way to go on the on on and so I did want to share for the record the press release that went out today and so the Virginia Department of Education reported today that all 24 of our schools in the division have been accredited for 22-23 and that's based on this last Spring's results on the standards of learning examinations in Reading Writing math science and social studies four of our schools were accredited with conditions meaning their overall Pass rates in one or more student demographic groups did not meet state standards each year Sol examinations are administered to students in grades 3 through 12. while we've had while in-person instruction time loss to the pandemic may have contributed to lower scores
006there's really no question that this year's results are similar to those we saw prior to the pandemic we are not providing all the necessary resources to empower our Black and Hispanic students our students with disabilities our students for whom English is not their primary language and our students who are economically disadvantaged to achieve at the highest levels of their potential to illustrate this point in English which denotes a combination of reading and writing tests the unadjusted Sol pass rate for all students in our division was 75 percent compared to the state average of 73 percent but the pass rate for our black students was 50 which is 10 below the state average for black students nearly the same was true for our Hispanic students who had a pass rate of 51 percent among economically disadvantaged
007students the division wide pass rate also was 51 8 percentage points under the state average for this demographic group while the pass rate for our students with disabilities compared favorably to the state average for this demographic group it was still far below the pass rate for all of our students in the division similar results reflected on our math tests in which the average for all students in the division matched the state's pass rate of 66 percent but Pass rates for our black Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students and our English Learners ranged from 8 to 11 percentage points below the state averages for these demographic groups one of our division's three goals in the Strategic plan is to facilitate thriving students by providing students with the learning experiences that are grounded in high expectations and networks
008of care that ensure academic and social emotional development for all students while eliminating opportunity access and achievement gaps earlier this year actually just a few weeks ago the State Department of Education reported unadjusted Sol Pass rates which are the pass and failed percentages in each student demographic group for each school for accreditation purposes today's are adjusted by the vdoe today's report showed that for several demographic groups the video we adjusted Pass rates have improved compared to 2018-19 adjusted Pass rates that was the last full year before the pandemic but we're still below the state averages the division is seeing some incremental benefits from its teacher professional development around cultural responsive teaching recent instructional programming based on the science of reading and other improved assessment and intervention programming and while this is encouraging this modest performance
009growth is insufficient the key to closing our achievement gaps based on race language learner status special capacities and socioeconomics is for our entire division together with our Community Partners to develop plans and take actions with Fidelity to ensure that we're creating positive changes with a greater sense of urgency we will be developing and issuing a request for in the next 30 days to engage we'll be putting out a request for proposals or an RFP in the next 30 days to engage in outside organization to conduct an independent audit of the division's reading instructional program we'll also be entertaining looking at some of our other instructional programs as well our classroom practices our intervention and support models as well as Staffing the audit will lead to specific recommendations and actions for improvements further I'm appointing a
010task force of teachers Specialists central office staff and Community Partners to offer counsel in developing the scope of the RFP and later to review the results of the audit and offer recommendations for short and long-term improvements strengthening our reading skills for all students is foundational to their success in all academic areas and based on the findings of the audit we will develop devote resources in our next school budget to such areas as professional development and assessments to measure how well we are providing the resources and support that all of our students in the demographic in these demographic groups deserve this is a quote from Dr Kaiser Dr Daphne Kaiser connected with our families businesses and Community Partners is critical we have to harness the power and capabilities of resources we all can offer to achieve
011comprehensive equal educational opportunity and to meet our strategic goal of empowering our and having our students thrive so there's a there's more to the release that talks more about our accreditation Dr McLaughlin's going to go over accreditation results the status of our schools but the one point I want to underscore is that as a superintendent and a longtime staff member of this Division I own these results they are unacceptable and do not in any way reflect the efforts or abilities of our students our families and Educators they do reflect the inability of our current system to provide the results we are seeking and clearly demonstrate the need for these systems to change immediately um I was at parent Council last night I didn't read verbatim the press release because we hadn't issued it yet I
012did talk about the same topics uh with in the vein of we need we need help in this work and uh when I was leaving the meeting many of the parents said that they felt energized they felt that they had a reason for being part of parent Council and they wanted to pitch in and be partners I would mention one of the things I was going to mention was that this morning our office of community engagement hosted the first ever annual acps partnership breakfast we had more than 60 Community Partners that came together at K-Tech this morning to talk about ways that we can support all students success as a collaborative team when the director of equity family school and community relations Eric Irizarry reached out to schools to ask them to identify Partners who
013regularly collaborated with them he accumulated a list of more than 200 partners since he opened up the volunteer portal he has received notice from more than 500 potential volunteers the question I have is how do we fully engage partners and Volunteers in our mission to close achievement gaps and how do we one of the things we've noticed already with the volunteers is that we have for probably every one volunteer we have in the urban ring we've got 10 in the western feeder pattern so how do we figure out how to have equity in the work that our volunteers are doing to to get to the children that probably need the most extra time and support on another note I just want to give a shout out to Crozet elementary school on Monday I had the
014opportunity to complete five learning walks with the principal Stacy England and assistant principal Trish Moya we enjoyed visiting Alex Lancaster's kindergarten Catherine parnell's fourth grade Jalen Chris third grade hope kaplan's art class and will Donnelly's fifth grade students were engaged in word study celebrations of Hispanic Heritage Month readings from crozet's common school book of the month the magical yet a story problem maze which really is what we used to call word problems in math personalized color wheels and order of operations in math I was very impressed with each teacher's creative approach to engaging students in learning tasks that were targeted to grade level standards in addition all of the teachers we visited were creatively integrating the magic of yet a story designed to promote growth mindset in into the day's learning so I just really
015appreciate the students and staff at Crozet making me feel welcome and I know that their teaching and the learning that I observe typifies the best in all of our Educators work so I want to thank them and that's what I have thank you Mr Page thank you deccas and thank you for um for the statement too because our board is committed completely to what your the statement is saying we realize that our County Schools will have to will have to do the best possible job to educate all of our students so we are all completely behind that statement so thank you so much for making it can you can you clarify what the RFP will be for so we uh we were originally looking at reading but we were have had some more conversations with
016staff today and we'll also look going to want to look at math I think that those would be two areas that when you look at our results they're below the state averages particularly for black students which are have the area where we're having the most intransigency in terms of our ability to serve them well okay we will now move to public comment and tonight Miss Osborne is going to lead this portion of our meeting yes we invite and actively seek The public's input and the matter is relevant to the school board governance and provide for time and our business meetings to hear from our residents and community members during public comment we expect respectful and on-topic comments disruptive behavior from speakers or from members of the public in attendance will not be tolerated anyone who
017willingly 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 beginning 9 A.M on the Monday of the meeting week until 3 30 pm on the day of the meeting public testimony guidelines are as follows speakers should adhere to the following protocol state your name and address or 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 Tom allotted a copy of supporting materials will be provided
018to school board members three minutes will be allowed for each presenter to speak a commenter will be required to discontinue comment after three minutes or if they're more than 10 individuals signed up each speaker will be allowed two minutes color-coded light card system is used to time presentations the yellow light means the speaker is two minutes or or means the speaker has two minutes whatever or one minute if there are more than 10 speakers and to the presentation and the red light card means that the speaker is at the three minute limit and the presentation must wrap up in order to maintain respect for all points of view the school board requests no clapping booing or any other audible form of support or non-support be used if members of the public wish to show their
019support for a speaker they may stand or raise their hands won multiple comments on the same topic have been presented the chair May request additional comments on the topic be limited to those who have new information to present debate and dialogue with the school board is not allowed use so the projection system is reserved for the staff scheduled agenda items presentations only so we have we have six people signed up three will be Zoom the first three will be the zoom folks they will be D Braxton Suzanne Daly and Katie Rooney and I ask that you turn off your live feed because there is a delay and prefer you just up just relate directly to the zoom okay um how do you get that going okay first up is D Braxton not in the waiting
020room and she is not in the waiting room so let's go ahead to Suzanne Daly hi there hey thank you my name is Suzanne Daly and I'm in the Rio District I'm a parent of a child in acps and I disagree with the school board approving the recommended changes to Family Life Education in Albemarle County Family Life Education in the middle and high school years is bad enough when separated by sex if I would have had to attend that class with boys at that age I would have crawled into my locker and stayed there for the two weeks duration of the class you could not even pay children to want to be in that class with members of the opposite sex yet your so-called committee is now recommending this but with zero public explanation as
021to why they arrived at this recommendation I requested specific information regarding the makeup of the committee but was only provided generalities of the types of people who were involved not from which schools not how many nurses fle teachers parents Etc here's my question given that acps Prides itself on data-driven decisions what exact data has driven this decision was there a focus group of students who attended family life with mixed Sexes and outperformed those who attended family life with only their same sex is there a survey of students asking if they would prefer to be in a mixed sex Family Life Class that answer is no but there should be you're directly and intentionally setting children up for a socially traumatic situation while attempting to teach important information that could impact their health and well-being if
022these children are sitting in sex education or family life class with a mixed group both boys and girls they're going to be embarrassed nervous mortified sweating turning red wanting to curl into a hole and are not going to be paying attention to what is being told think Maslow's hierarchy of needs they're not going to be able to feel safe and secure here's a solution table this vote until next month You're missing two school board members today anyway one of whom is my representative whom I contacted about this very issue in every homeroom from grade six through High School give a quick one-question survey to each child the question is this would you prefer to have family life class with students who are your sex only or with mixed Sexes EEG Boys and Girls Together better
023yet pull the parents since they seem to get left out of these decisions the only thing is you need to actually care about the results I know that is not the norm in acps but as an aside if you genuinely don't want to hear or value our opinion don't put don't pretend to Care by asking if you're going to ignore the results parrots are kind of tired of that school board please empathize with a little little sixth grader or ninth grader this recommendation is not data driven and is some enigmatic decision that has no basis in Logic for reasoning and it will lead to an increase in an already difficult social landscape that our kids are trying to navigate day to day topic two I would like to request that school board members respond or
024send read receipts to their constituents when an email has been sent my members Katrina Carlson and despite many emails delineating my concerns as a constituent I have not once in the past two years ever received acknowledgment of receipt of my email let alone a thoughtful response I would like to give some credit to Matt Haas because while we may disagree on issues he at least responds to just about every one of my emails our school board members are elected civil servants and to ignore our correspondence is equivalent to spitting in the face of those who voted you in and whose individual voices expect representation on our school board thank you for your time thank you next up is Katie Rooney hello my name is Katie Rooney and I am a parent of a first third
025and fifth grade students at Mountain View Elementary School in the Scottsville District I'm also the PTO president um for the second year in a row I have substituted in the building for the past year and I'm most recently a long-term in the a-based classroom at Mountain View I'm a licensed special education teacher and have taught me several schools in other counties I have a unique position as I have the perspective of being both a volunteer a teacher and most importantly a parent I'm here to talk about that absolute need for an in-building family liaison support person social worker or some type of liaison inside the building mountain view currently has two family support um Co support workers assigned to the school by DSS however they are only available through referrals we are one of the
026biggest schools in the county with some of the greatest needs however we have the lowest number of referrals this is obviously not working I've spent the past 11 days in the building and they're an unbelievable amount of students in crises there are students crying out for help and we are failing them as a school system teachers and administrators are doing the best they can do with the skills and resources they have available to them but it is not enough this is also not part of their job and they are going to burn out we are going to lose quality teachers due to burnout because they simply cannot do their job and manage the trauma in the classrooms students are not available to learn when they're experiencing trauma at home and come to school in crisis
027the best instructional practices the most competent teachers the most well-intended administrators simply cannot help the root problem for these students We are failing these families we need a trained social worker parent liaison or someone similar to be in the building proactively building relationships with families so they have an ally in the school to ask for support and resources we need someone available to walk families and students through a crises and make them feel supported before an incident occurs and someone punitively becomes involved acps States the quality excuse me Equity family and community and wellness as the values and their strategic plan I assure you these values are not being upheld for families whatsoever at Mountain View we need a person within the building present and struggling communities building relationships we need a bridge to help
028stabilize these families and to help these students be available for learning I have been a member of the Mountain View Community for five years and I have witnessed the gradual deterioration of a parent liaison role which was hugely successful over the past few years at back to school night our principal explained that Mountain View was under conditional accreditation due to gaps between scores with marginalized student groups I assure you this is not a coincidence if you walk inside the building at Mountain View you will see these kids screaming for help literally and figuratively kids are in crisis families are in crisis and therefore teachers are in crisis thank you we are failing these kids need more and they deserve more the teachers need more and this really your time is up thank you Ms Rooney
029thank you I want to Circle back around and see if Miss Braxton came in the waiting room okay we will check at the end of a comment time next up is Vernon lecti and then Mary McIntyre and then Barbara krushank [Applause] good evening my name is Vern lecti and I'm president of the Albemarle Education Association I recently sent the school board an email concerning a leave policy for Rosh Hashanah coming up I went to give a statement on that but I also promised uh Miss Braxton if she wasn't able to speak tonight that I would speak on her behalf because she gave me her statement good evening to all one of my main concerns is summer breaks when teaching assistants do not get paid and also the holidays when we don't get paid it's very
030difficult for teaching assistants especially those that have kids that might not be able to have Christmas money to buy for their children and then to have to wait until January to get paid we as Tas we work hard for what we live what we make and we don't get anything unless we save the statement I wish to make concerning the Rosh Hashanah leave policy recently an employee in the first year with the county approached me with a question about how to take a day off of Rosh Hashanah which is coming this Monday during our staff work day when we looked at the current religiously policy we discovered it requires an employee to use their personal leave to cover the time off unfortunately the personal leave policy states that new employees earn two tenths of a
031day each month and cannot borrow against anticipated leave this means this employee has no way to take a paid day of leave for this coming Monday in fact through the timing of the Jewish High holidays employees will never have enough personal leave accrued to celebrate the holidays and use paid time off do not believe this is the intention of the board when the policy was written nobody has approached us about this so we trust that supervisors have been accommodating these requests despite the stated policy it's important that your intentions and the practices of Supervisors be reflected in policy and not just handled on a case-by-case basis I have contacted HR to ask for an exception to be made this year while you adjust the policy for future years I have copies of a policy as
032it is written in a neighboring School Division I shared with you as an example as I previously emailed this policy would still need to go through the equity checklist process to ensure that is inclusive and Equitable for all religious practices though it does allow for Jewish employees to observe their High holidays we look forward to working with you to create an inclusive policy and trust that new employees who need access to paid leave for religious reasons will be accommodated appropriately thank you thank you next up Mary McIntyre hi I'm Mary McIntyre I'm a reading specialist at Journey middle school and a mother of two acps students tonight in your work session you will discuss current and historical testing data I know the recent public criticism has finally spurred Frank conversations phone calls and emergency meetings
033about how to meet the needs of black and brown children and economically disadvantaged children before all of the public scrutiny though the division was practically taking a Victory lap over our better than expected test scores accreditation rates and seemed quite pleased to be quote above State averages overall end quote the thing is we don't educate averages we educate individuals and your own mission statement says we will know every child instead of averages look at our rankings compared to all divisions across the state Focus your lens on the students who have been marginalized and underserved we are not only not above average for those students we are near the bottom of the rankings for school divisions in Virginia I noticed that these rankings are not included in the attachments for tonight's presentation you will hear about
034adjusted Pass rates that include growth and you might think that as a literacy specialist who provides intervention support for students I want to focus on the growth adjusted scores because they make me look better but I don't I think that tracking and showing growth is necessary but including them in Pass rates is disingenuous if they still did not meet the minimum proficiency to pass with a score of 400 they still are not where they need to be our unadjusted Pass rates are the cold hard truth our growth rates are merely hopeful snapshots of forward momentum and not a guarantee that students will ever reach the minimum proficiency we do not have a history of getting kids who fail sols across the Finish Line I'm thinking of Yancey Elementary's continuous continuous years of struggle and strategies
035to get kids to make progress and pass the sols you close the school using costs as one of the reasons but my biggest frustration with that decision beside the impact that it had on that Community is that you never figured out how to meet the needs of those kids we were told their outcomes would be tracked after they were dispersed to Red Hill and Scottsville what were those outcomes no one should act surprised at this the teachers of this division certainly aren't we know these scores we live these scores every day we lose sleep over them we feel personally responsible for them even though we shouldn't we have had little to no control over major decisions that affected whether or not we could be successful Staffing and funding decisions scheduling decisions curriculum and assessment decisions
036they were not ours so any blame that comes our way for the results that we have or have not gotten should instead be placed squarely at the feet of division leadership we welcome this audit multiple meetings have already occurred about this and it is concerning that they are not including the very people who are doing this job every single day no decisions should be made about Solutions without current working Educators and families in the room do not come to us and announce your decision about what we will do to solve this problem top-down decision making is how we got here it's time for a drastic change thank you next up is Barbara krushanick and I hope I didn't mispronounce your name too badly crochet crocheting Crookshank yes thank you for allowing me to speak so
037my name is Barbara Crookshank I live in the Earlysville area and I have a grant I'm a grandmother my grandchildren are in Albemarle County Schools this this is not an easy topic I'm here to request an evaluation be conducted to determine the levels of radio frequency radiation inside Albemarle High School and in the surrounding campus this evaluation can be done by a certified building biologists who would measure levels of radiation and interpret the results for us I have taken measurements on the campus of Albemarle High School with my radio frequency meter and I am found finding levels of radio frequency radiation above what would be considered safe for human exposure children have a unique vulnerability and they absorb higher amounts of radio frequency radiation compared to adults especially in their eyes and in different regions
038of their brain I have given you two research papers there are thousands now thousands of research papers on this topic but I'm only going to review one and ask you to look at the other one on your own this is brand new um 2022 just was published Environmental Research Journal they did a review of all the scientific literature on the effects of cell tower radiation on humans now the kids at the school and the staff at the school are there six to eight hours a day and a staff is there longer and then it's five days a week they they looked at all the research again thousands of research studies they've identified three outstanding effects that you will find number one radio frequency sickness or radio frequency it's uh called electromagnetic hypersensitivity I have that
039the second effect is cancer and the third effect are changes in biochemical parameters in the body so that would include blood pressure heart rate hormonal levels melatonin levels we need a professional building biologist to measure the levels in and around the high school and I ask that the school board support this I am very concerned that there are children and staff that are experiencing microwave radiation sickness and they have no idea what's going on those symptoms could be anxiety depression very severe sleep disturbances Tremors headaches the list goes on and on and I have personally experienced most of them so I appreciate your listening to me and I hope that you'll consider this very seriously and I thank you thank you that concludes our public comment time thank you Miss Osborne we will now move
040to our work session led by Dr McLaughlin all right good evening board members I'm Pat McLaughlin the assistant superintendent for strategic planning for the School Division and I'm happy to be here tonight leading our work session our work session tonight will focus on division level Sol results from the 2021-2022 school year there are multiple ways in which Sol data can be reviewed and we'll spend some time tonight looking at the data in a few different ways once we've had time to review this data I'll be asking the board to help us set specific achievement targets for our data over the next four years and to consider ways in which the board might help us to achieve these targets I want to emphasize that this is going to be a new experience for the board in
041the past we've not devoted work sessions to review of this data nor have we asked the board to set specific Sol targets for improvement by doing so will both ownership of the goals we are trying to achieve and the processes in place to achieve them we'll return each year for the next four years and Report our results to assess our progress a primary reason that staff thought it important to have this work session with you tonight is that our Sol results are one of the key indicators of our mission specifically this is one way in which we'll know if we are ending the predictive value of race class gender and special capacities for our children's Success Through high quality teaching and learning for all as you know the mission statement is at the heart of
042our five-year strategic plan learning for all our plan will run through the 2025-2026 school year and I encourage the board to look at tonight's data as Baseline not only for our returns from school closures but also as the first year of our new strategic plan which has Equity as the primary focus for all students when you look at tonight's data I want you to consider what targets we would need to hit in order to have met our mission in what role the board plays in helping us to achieve our goals I'll emphasize again that this isn't work that we typically ask the board to do but by doing so we'll build Collective ownership of both the process and the outcome for our work so to begin I'd like to provide a brief overview of the
043impact of the pandemic on pandemic on school accreditation and assessments results are used to determine a school's accreditation for the following school year for example in the 2018-2019 year school year the Sol results from that year determined our accreditation for 1920. the most recent years that schools have been a part of the vdoe accreditation process was the 2018-2019 school year in the 1920 school year schools closed for four months of school and no Sol tests were given in the 2021 school year participation rates varied widely throughout the state due to continued school closures and online learning options for students in each of these years the vdoe waived accreditation for all schools in essence those two school years don't exist for accreditation purposes at the vdoe last year all schools opened for in-person Learning and we
044resumed normal accreditation procedures with the Department our time tonight will focus on the results from the 2021-2022 school year so when the vdoe compiles results for our school they do so in two ways the first is what the term assessment results these results indicate which students passed an Sol test by earning a score of 400 or more on that test we refer to these results as unadjusted results the second way in which the state reports School level results are what they term accreditation results these are results of Sol tests with adjustments for student growth which can be achieved by showing improvement from a previous Sol test even though a student did not pass that test with a score of 400 or higher so to illustrate these two types of results the vdoe has created this
045graphic in this example six students out of 10 passed their reading Sol results past the reading Sol test this would give that school a 60 percent pass rate on the assessment to calculate the school's accreditation status however the state uses a combined rate that also considers student growth in this example the school had one student who did not pass the reading test but showed growth from the previous school year the school also had one student who didn't pass their test did not show growth from the previous test but was an English learner who showed growth in the English as a second language who showed growth in learning English as a second language through the Wida test when adjusted for growth purposes this school had an 80 percent accredited passing rate since the state uses both
046growth-adjusted and unadjusted Pass rates in their reporting in their accreditation I felt it's important for us to review these results in a similar way one important note about this the state does not calculate growth adjusted results at the division level only at the school level whenever you see growth adjusted results at the division level in this presentation they are internal calculations that we have done using manual calculations of the data from all of our schools in the division so your board packet tonight includes a number of data sources which are listed here as you have had time to review the data prior to the meeting and will have some additional time during the work session I'll provide a brief overview of what's included in each data set but will not go into detail unless there's
047specific questions from the board and with these data sets in mind I believe we have both a short-term and a long-term Target that will indicate we're making progress toward our mission the first is our short-term Target that all of our schools in the division are rated accredited using growth adjusted Pass rates the second target is our long-term Target that all schools meet State benchmarks for all achievement Gap groups using non-adjusted Pass rates now the state doesn't set achievement benchmarks for non-adjusted Pass rates but I think it makes sense to use the similar ones they use for accreditation for our non-adjusted rates since they don't provide us with one there and finally and probably most importantly as we look at our results from last year I want to be clear that the gaps in achievement for
048our students that when we see gaps in achievement for our students those gaps do not in any way indicate that our students do not have the ability to achieve but are an indicator that our School Division has not created the conditions needed for those students to be successful our Focus over the next four years must be on developing the conditions that will allow those gaps to close so to begin with our short-term Target that is for all schools to be rated accredited using growth adjusted Pass rates from the vdoe schools are accredited based on six quality indicators for elementary school for elementary and middle schools and nine indicators for high schools these indicators include academic achievement for the school's overall in English achievement Gap achievement in English academic achievement overall in math achievement Gap levels
049in math academic overall achievement in science and chronic absenteeism those are for all of our schools elementary middle and high and then our high schools add a graduation and completion index a dropout rate and a college career in Civic Readiness index a couple of notes about this chronic absenteeism because of the continued impact of the pandemic was waived for all schools last year so if schools hit a a low level and that that wasn't counted against them for accreditation purposes and the college career and Civic Readiness index was also delayed by the state for our high schools that will begin with this school year so to earn a rate a school must have all of the level one or a level two and they can have any combination of level one and level Twos for
050their quality indicators if a school has one or more indicator at a level three their rating is accredited with conditions and it's important to note also that the state Awards what are known as three-year accreditation waivers which means that if for three consecutive years a school meets all of their accreditation targets the state grants them a three-year accreditation waiver where even if they get an indicator uh at the level three they're going to be rated as accredited for those three consecutive years if they do hit a rating uh hit a accreditation indicator at a level three at the end of that three-year period they'll no longer be on a waiver in any level three indicator would move them to accredited with conditions so schools with level two and three indicators must conduct an academic review
051and create a comprehensive School Improvement plan based on that review schools with a level 3 indicator must also complete a state monitoring process failure to do so may result in another level of accreditation which is accreditation denied so I was going to say this morning the video released our results but it looks like it's been delayed uh they were scheduled to come out today the website just changed their message to indicate that they're coming at a later date hopefully tomorrow we get a preview of all of those so we are anticipating that what we'll see when they do come out is that 20 schools are accredited via the 2122 performance results eight of those 20 schools were via a three-year waiver meaning they had one indicator or more that was at a level three but
052they were on a three-year accreditation waiver because of their past performance so they continue to be rated accredited and we have four schools that were rated accredited with conditions data included in your board packet tonight includes the current year accreditation ratings which indicates the school's accreditation status and performance level for each quality indicator you have that data for elementary schools and you can see that a um uh a green in any box is a level one a yellow is a level two which means they're close to the Target but didn't quite hit it and a red is level three you can also see down the right hand side whether they're accredited with a waiver accredited or accredited with conditions so you have that data for elementary schools and for our secondary schools we also included
053in your packet the accreditation ratings from the 2018-2019 school year which was the last year that schools received accreditation ratings through the vdoe so those again you have Elementary and secondary and they follow the same formula for accreditation in that year your packet also contains a chart of the distribution level of level 2 and level three academic indicators by School in other words how many of our 24 schools had an academic indicator for any of these reporting groups at a level two or a level three for English for Math and for science so you could have a school that's accredited but still has level twos in that mix and could have multiple level twos in that mix so this kind of gives you an idea of where things stand across the board this next chart
054allows you to see the percentage of our division accreditation results that are attributable to growth and I'll take a minute just to uh to explain some of these columns here that we'll look at the top one first these are our division English results that we've compiled for the entire School Division the passing column and it's the number of passing tests we had a score of 400 or above for any of our students you'll see a second column called recovery the state has a program called remediation recovery which means that if you have a student who in the previous year did not pass an Sol test but receives remediation and the following year passes an Sol test they call that a remediation recovery student and you get a bonus toward your accreditation those students count twice
055in both your numerator and your denominator when you're calculating your accreditation rate the next column that you see here is growth as we explained earlier these are the students who did not pass their Sol test by scoring above a 400 but showed enough improvement from a previous test to uh to count for as a pass for accreditation purposes and then the final column that we have are students who are English Learners who did not pass their test did not show growth from one test to another but showed enough growth on their Wida test that they were able to that they count uh in the eyes of the state for accreditation purposes so if you add up those four columns the 6713 plus the 216 plus the 628 plus the 87 and you divide it by
056our total number of tests which was eight thousand three hundred and seven that gives us and for purposes of accreditation a pass rate of 87.2 percent in the division for English you can see that 9.9 of that pass rate is attributable to growth to students who do not pass a test uh but showed growth in one way or another can you can you tell us what how many points count as growth is it 10 points 40 points like I know so yeah we're all shooting for 400. so what the what the state does is it the uh many of our schools have just completed uh growth testing this year we give a test in the at the beginning of the school year and that generates what we call a scaled score and that score ranges
057oh gosh I think from uh it's in the thousand points ranges and the state produces eight ranges and students who are in range one through four and they produce it by grade level for a test so there's a third grade fourth grade fifth grade uh reading ranges and there's third grade fourth grade fifth grade math ranges that are there and a student needs to move if they're in range one through four that indicates that they may need some additional support in order to pass an Sol test at the end of the year to be a student who achieves growth you have to move from one range to a higher range so it's not as simple as saying 10 points it could be one point if you're at the top of the uh the range one
058or it could be 150 points if you're toward the bottom of the range those ranges are going to change for us this year we haven't seen that yet uh but we're anticipating that coming out from the vdoe very soon you see the same information for math here math does not have an opportunity for English language growth for students to to earn a pass through that and you can see that 12 of our 83.5 percent adjusted pass rate is due to growth for math so this next chart shows what our results would be if you were to apply the accreditation criteria to our division as a whole and again these are calculations that we do every school gets a report that looks like this and says where are you and how do you determine your accreditation
059rate so if you looked at our division as a whole you would see that our English scores for all of our students are at a level one above 75 percent and that we have two reporting groups that are in the level two category for English between 65 and 75 percent are black students and our students with disabilities to calculate your accreditation level for your achievement Gap groups if you have one or fewer uh level twos in no level threes you're at a level one if you have more than one level two uh you are at a level two and if you and if you have more than one level three you are at a level three so for English our division had one uh it had two level twos so that puts the entire membership
060group at level two Miss Lee do you have a question yeah so um how is the economic leadership managed not a part of that it rounded up to uh 75. for um uh yeah so the state will round up so anything above really 74.5 uh would be in level one uh here's our results for Math and for science you can see that in math again for all of our students who are at a level one at 83.5 and for our membership groups we have uh one level two for our black students at 65.5 and one level three for students with disabilities at 63.1 the thresholds for Math and Science are different than English they're a little bit lower so you have to get to 70 to get a level one uh 65 to 70 for
061a level two and below 65 would be a level three and so if you have no more than one level three then your membership groups as a whole would be rated at level two and our science results are only looked at uh as our aggregate results for the division not by achievement Gap groups and those came in at a level two so if you put all that together you see that we have three indicators at level one and we have three indicators at level two according to the state's formula that would make us a division that would be accredited uh should they calculate those results and so that is uh those are all the data sets that we have that are going to really be focused in on adjusted rates using growth as a pass
062rate we're going to transition into looking at our unadjusted rates in just a minute but I did want to pause there to see if there's any questions about this data uh before we move on and if if they come up later we can certainly um come back to them so that brings us to our long-term Target we know that growth adjusted accreditation results help us to achieve our short-term Target but we really ought to be shooting for a long-term Target that removes growth from that equation and increases our student performance of kids just passing the test without adjusting for growth so the next set of data in your packet is going to look at assessment results that haven't been adjusted for growth foreign that data includes a comparison of unadjusted and growth adjusted Pass rates
063for our reporting groups in English so you can see the blue bars here are our unadjusted rates at the division level the green bars are the adjusted rates at the division level the bigger the Gap the more we uh we attributed those results to because of growth we also have that same slide for unadjusted versus growth Pass rates in math and then we also included unadjusted Pass rates versus the state this is the only time we can really do a comparison directly with the state of Virginia because it's the only data that the state produces for us at That level and so you can see our division results on the left hand side of the bars the state results on the right hand side of the bars and those are both unadjusted Pass rates at
064the division and the state level in English and you also have unadjusted uh Pass rates in math with comparisons to the state level and the final piece of data that we included in your packet tonight we have a comparison of our 2021-2022 adjusted and unadjusted results in reading and math for all of our reporting groups compared to where we were in the 2018-2019 school year which you remember is the last year we really had uh valid accreditation and assessment results that are there so this one might you know takes a little bit more time to dig into but you can see the columns for you've got reading unadjusted 1819 versus this past year growth adjusted so accreditation results 1819 versus this past year and the same thing over here for math so in addition to
065all of that data even more can be found on the Virginia school quality profile site which again was uh we were anticipating being updated today I'm hoping that as soon as tomorrow uh that people will be able to go in there and there you can dig down into um all of the division level data all of the school level data uh and see it uh in almost uh in a large number of ways by grade level by test by uh achievement Gap reporting group um all of those different ways in there and so with those data sets in mind I want to bring us back to our purpose for our meeting tonight um when uh our work session will now move into uh having the the school board consider some achievement targets for the 2022-2023
066school year and Beyond and we've included a graphic organizer in your packet tonight and what I really want the board to spend some time thinking about is with our mission in mind that we are going to end the predictive value of race class gender and special capacities on Student Success Through high quality teaching and learning for all what Sol results would indicate to you in the spring of 2026 that we have met that mission and what are the increments of change you would expect to see over the next four years to have met that mission so the first thing on your so you've got a a graphic organizer in your packet that looks like this we want you to fill in the blanks here if we were at 87 percent uh for all of our
067students with growth adjusted scores in English this year is that acceptable is that where you want us to stay do you want us to get better than that where do you want us to be that would that you would have confidences aboard at the end of the 26th school year to say yes we've met that mission where would those scores be for our unadjusted scores in English in math and then you've got uh the same thing in there for uh I'm sorry you can't see it up here but you've got the same tool for math so I want to give you about 10 10 minutes or so just to work on your own or with an elbow partner next to you to start looking at this at the end of the night tonight I'm going
068to collect those from you and I'm going to take a look because I imagine you're not all going to land on the exact same thing and we'll take them and compile them and bring them back to the board or email the board at a future time with some targets for you all to say yep these are the ones we think we should be shooting for and then we'll be back year after year to do that so this is the first part of our work session I'm going to give you all 10 minutes I'll be around if you've got specific questions about that but we'll come back in about 10 to to move that forward any questions before we start I would do English and math so trust so try to go through the whole thing
069I know it's it's kind of a lot and a little bit of time um but uh but again with that key thought in your mind around our mission what's it look like to have met that so I don't have an idea of what is reasonable is is 10 shooting too low 10 Improvement shooting too low is 100 improved I I don't have a I don't have a concept to really to do this very well other than let's make everything better so can you give us a little more Direction like where are other divisions or I'm or do I hopefully I don't know many divisions who do this uh with their boards and so that was kind of the conversation I was hoping the board would have tonight that what do you all think is reasonable
070is a five percent jump a ten percent jump a 30 Jump reasonable in a uh in a year for um for these results that are there and I think that's really what we want the board to dig into a little bit and kind of set a challenge for us right that um this is where we want to we want to be next year and and a year from now I'll be standing back up here saying hey we hit it here or we didn't hit it here uh with based on what you all give us feedback on Dr McLaughlin yes ma'am this does not permit sort of stratifying by Target groups I mean it's certainly for blacks or Hispanics but um some of us just attended a a conference today talking about the literacy act and
071reading interventionist and K through 12 reading it this does not permit I guess I can do an asterisk or footnote but if we wanted to really focus a lot of resources on early literacy for example with the English I mean of course want everybody to do better but I guess we would fiddle so that so part two of the work session once we go through this is going to be asking you about that what are the board priorities around this work and what are the uh the things that what are the roles the board can play in helping us to achieve those goals so saying things like hey I want to I think we need to to put money in the budget for an early literacy program uh around this that's going to help us
072move that's going to be kind of the second place since there's legislation that we're going to have to do anyway but yes thank you yeah but I'll figure it out okay you cut me off because one quick note for the board uh Miss Collins as always makes things better uh with her suggestions she said it might help to know what is five percent what is ten percent so this slide shows you the total number of tests that were taken in um English and in math last year they won't be exactly the same this year but it's a pretty good ballpark to say well a 10 increase for English would be 830 more kids uh passing a test okay good question okay I was telling you okay can you listen while you do that too yeah
073all right so that was so so thank you for that engagement uh you know I saw I I didn't preface the meeting by telling you there would be math involved tonight didn't want to scare anybody off for that but it looks like you all did a a great job on that so what I'm going to do before the night is over is collect those out from you um take a look at them all together and figure out somewhere I don't know that we'll average them or look for um commonalities but we'll provide a report to the board about what we saw across the um the results that you put in there and I saw that some board members were focusing in specifically on some of our uh some of our groups that have traditionally not
074uh had a significant Gap there and I think that's fine to do as well and set targets around there and so that was in my mind let me get back to where we were kind of the easy part right to figure out where we want to go and what the targets are now the harder part is figuring out what's going to get us there and what I really want to encourage the board to do tonight with the rest of the time that we have for our work session is think about what are your priorities as a school board around this work and what is the board's role in helping us to meet our goals and those can be around budget those can be around policy those can be around any of the things that that
075the board impacts uh Dr Acuff earlier mentioned something about an early intervention reading program and so what we want to do tonight is I'm going to step back and allow the board to have some conversation amongst yourselves right you all don't get many chances to uh to meet all together and just have some conversation as board members around this using this graphic organizer as your guide for that I'm going to be taking some notes as you all talk and if you do have questions uh we've got a lot of Staff here who can step up and help to answer them but I really don't want I don't want to pretend I have uh any or all of the answers for um for this and really want to hear about what the board is thinking about
076particularly as we get ready to start the budget process um for this year so I would encourage you all to do a quick maybe five minute brainstorm on your own to get some ideas down on your on your second graphic organizer that you have there and then open up the floor for the board to to have some discussion uh and throw out ideas around that Dr Haas Dr McLaughlin I really should have said something earlier but it Dawns on me that something the board should just have kind of a refresher on is that with schools that are accredited with conditions there is an extensive process that they go through with the Virginia Department of Education correct in the background there's that and I if you could describe that a little bit or maybe have absolutely
077and that's um and that's the key part is just for just again a refresher on how our own internal School Improvement planning and uh accountability works with our principals because I I want to I guess just have everybody understand that it's not a vacuum that they're they're excuse me that there's a lot of work behind the scenes on that absolutely so so any school and it's not just schools who are credited with conditions it's even schools that are accredited uh but have one or more uh areas that are red which would normally mean you're accredited with conditions but some schools have a waiver so they're still accredited any school with a level three indicator goes through a state process that involves two things one is called an academic review where they take the any areas
078that are in level three and they really take a comprehensive look at them through a number of different facets um four of which are required by the state and I think they provide us with with eight total I'll have to go back to my notes to uh to get that but they're really focused around instruction and lesson planning and professional development and Leadership within the school system that then turns into what we call a comprehensive School Improvement plan and uh based on their academic review schools make changes to their comprehensive School Improvement plan with with essential actions and action steps that they're going to put in place for the year our schools that are that have a level 3 indicator are required to submit those academic reviews and comprehensive School Improvement plans to the state
079by the end of January we do them a lot quicker than that and then toward the end of the year the state comes out and they meet with the principals of each of those schools and with um and with some Central folks to kind of review what's happened throughout the course of the year uh in terms of those reviews in those comprehensive School Improvement plans one of the things that we did proactively a couple of years ago is we redesigned our school Improvement template in Albemarle County to align with the state school Improvement template and so when we build our school Improvement plans for all of our schools regardless of their accreditation status or whether or not they have any level three indicators they're building a school Improvement plan based on that state model and
080so we feel like we're all ways in pretty good shape to to just have to tweak those a little bit if we do have schools that need to report out for academic review and to submit their comprehensive School Improvement plans one of the other things that we've done just starting last year that really got some some positive feedback from the principals is that we shifted our school improvement process away from a loan process with the the principal coming in and reporting to us around that to uh to what we call Triad groups every principle was is paired with two other principles in the division and they work on their comprehensive School Improvement plans together they come in each quarter with Central staff to give a review and an update and make changes to that and
081it really gives them a professional learning community of people with with similar roles to help problem solve and think through what's working at some schools what's not working at other schools how can we learn from each other so I'll step back now and give you all yes Dr Acuff attached to the school Improvement plans and how our individual principles or teachers I guess um assessed based on the Improvement plan so we give so the state gives us a a kind of a laundry list of things that could be used as documentation for the school Improvement plan they include things like PLC minutes Common Assessment data and Analysis of dollars I'm sorry I guess the question is does the state allocate dollars for that or these are well that's what I thought but but then when
082we have a school Improvement plan are there any more dollars that we direct to those schools in particular they're discretionary funds or differentiated Staffing and such I mean how do we help our schools meet those targets I see Miss Collins making her way to the podium good evening I'm Debbie Collins Deputy superintendent we do have Staffing that's allocated for for schools that are accredited with warning or have a level three we have about eight ftes that we call those RTI ftes those that is money that comes from the state that is directed to that piece we can have a conversation about it that's enough or not but that's the that that comes through and we have tutoring monies and Pals monies that are determined by some of these goals the tutoring after school funding that
083we put in place at each school is about six hundred twenty thousand dollars and the pals tutoring which is based on students that did not pass Pals testing that the state comes back in and gives to us typically runs about fifty five thousand dollars so it's just a ballpark when you're starting to think about it for the entire School Division entire School Division Okay so yes so a patchwork of inadequate funding from various sources okay so we'll open things up for the next about say 15 minutes or so for board discussion and we'll sit back and again if you have questions let us know and we'll come up and be happy to address those we're talking now we're talking one thing I was just um thinking through this is as you said this is the
084first time the board has really seen all this information in this uh array and I think part of this discussion I would like to be able to just acknowledge how unconscionable these numbers are um as a board I know Matt in your statement you say that you own these numbers and we do too so I just I think it's important to acknowledge that um one thing Ellen and I have been discussing um is that if you look at the Transportation uh update from this meeting Jennifer can you pull up the transportation update on the screen you'll you'll see that the the folks that are most impacted by lack of Transportation according to this report are the same ones that are having trouble passing the test and if you scroll all the way down and it's
085that last chart right there if you look at the number of impacted students based compared against the division total and all of those groups they match the groups that are having trouble passing tests and I know that I have spoken at least four or five times individually to to staff about making sure that the ones most impacted by the transportation weren't the ones that most needed to be at school and I'm just when I saw that I'm just incredibly frustrated that that's where we ended up I mean this absolutely matches our problems in our test scores and I thought that's what we were trying to avoid and I know we just approved the consent agenda this was just a report on it but I do think it's worth noting that there's a parallel because every
086time somebody came to me and said it's the people who can least uh afford to miss school that are coming in late and I said no that's not the way it is that's not and then I saw this and I'm just frustrated well I think that's um a point that I wanted to make too is that this is not just an instruction issue this is a division wide um deep illness and um so I hope that when we're looking at Solutions we're not just being at instruction you know we I feel like we have siled departments we have an office of community engagement we have instruction and you know we have a team of equity Specialists and I just wonder how much integration there is in this work because it's not it's a problem everywhere
087and we only happen to see it right now because we have it well and there are other things division well I'd like is it are we surprised that one of the schools that is most overcrowded is at the bottom of the list on achievement and that's and it's been that way for years and we we've known it was going to be that way foreign there are also mental health issues that factor into this as well and whether it's Transportation or whether it's a number of other factors that lead to some of that I can't hear you I think whether it's Transportation or other factors you know that's just one of the things that has to be taken into consideration as well I'm with you on your point it's not just curriculum it's not just the
088uh the teaching uh perhaps it's been because I've been in several meetings including today on k-3 reading and today we had a Ms Osborne and I were and uh Helen Dunn were in a in a meeting where there was a very good discussion of the literacy Act and the focus that's going to be coming k-3 reading including some actual State resources directed toward literacy coaches at the regional level and at um the school level but I think we as a school board in the past few years have been looking at some big structural issues like anti-racism policy and culturally responsive teaching and these things that will make it easier but I think what I would like us to do is have a more sustained focus on resources in the classroom and all of our students
089need it I know but a particular focus on k-3 literacy because if you don't I mean some of the data today talking about if you're not reading at grade level at you know 90 percent of kids who are not reading at grade level by you know fourth grade third grade never do and we really need to make sure all of our students but with a particular focus and a particular accountability school by school I think in terms of bringing those grades up I've been persuaded that um that the evidence is strong for interventions and we need to focus in my view on putting those resources in place the presentation today was by delegate Conyers who carried this bill she's the chair of the education Committee in the in the uh House of delegates and also
090Emily Solari who's professor of reading education at Eva I would love to have them you know give us a tutorial actually but I could sit through their presentation again and I think it's also yes we have to do better getting our kids to school and and be successful at lobbying the Board of Supervisors to help pay for more schools to alleviate the overcrowding but I think this is a community problem and we need to do a better job educating ourselves so we can do Outreach to the community um I know we have Community you know Outreach person now in place but I think this is a message that we need to be talking with our community about um and I'm heartened that we have so many people that have signed up to volunteer because I
091think it's going to take that in addition to more resources and more targeted resources going with them curriculum part of it one of our public speakers tonight mentioned how we ordinarily come to with top-down policies and I was thinking that maybe one thing that we could do for the Reading part of it and anyway would be to have our teachers involved in some type of work sessions or curriculum development sessions so that they could have some input into the reading programs I realized that we already have a reading program but if we also have teacher input on that that may sort of improve the reading program some and also with the reading specialist making sure that we have enough of them at every school and to sort of assess the work level of the load
092of each of the reading Specialists to make sure that we have enough at all of our schools but especially our schools in the urban ring and the schools that would be in the south side that have probably more of a reading problem than some other schools would so I think when we come up with the budget we have to make sure that we have money for that curriculum development teacher focused and also reading specialist Focus reading is really important but I think where it hurts us and this is a part of what the Deep illness that I was talking about earlier is that when we have these budgets when we prepare these budgets or they come before us there are things that do not work to close these achievement gaps that we pay for and
093in fact they may perpetuate them and I think that we need to take a hard look at those things and really focus on the have to halves which is to put this fire out so I'm not going to be interested when I see the budget in seeing things that don't help us do that another item that I would like to focus on also is the CRT program um I'm not sure whether we have ever received data on how many teachers are at each school who have been certified in CRT and also what plans there are to sort of bring those people who are not certified up to certification so I think that too would sort of help us in the long run to close the achievement Gap so I'd really like to see data on
094that and to have uh in the budget continued funds for the CRT program yeah I'd also like to see that integrated into time that our professionals don't have to take outside of their work hours to fulfill that I think that's a huge issue with our CRT program right now is that we all support it and but we don't put our time where our mouth is so I think whatever budgetary measures or policy measures we need to support letting people get those um certifications during work hours is important and I would say Tom in general is is a resource that um we're lacking I mean if you talk to teachers that's the one thing that I I hear a lot there's just not enough time to do everything that one they have to do and that
095we require on top of managed classroom management and teaching so how do we build in more time at every level for teachers to do their culturally responsive teaching credential on their school time and not on the weekends and at home and along with other professional development things as well is there anything that we can take off their plate to open up time for these things that we keep saying are important but don't make time for I think that's our hard work of prioritizing the audit plan that Dr Haas mentioned I think is also really important because I think that would sort of help us to see where the problems might be lying and I know that our teachers are doing a fantastic job but I think the audit would sort of show us what can
096be done to make things better so I think we should have funds in the budget if needed for that audit and to make sure it's across the board not just reading yeah but across the full instructional audit like where are we falling down because you know we could be falling down in one area and miss it just because we're looking at reading and math well science I mean we have seven um is it level two yeah it looks like we are troubled in science I don't I don't know how our professional development courses are set up whether we um have any special thread that goes through them in terms of reading say if you're an elementary school teacher do you need to take some PD in the latest evidence-based methods in terms of what how
097children learn to read I don't know I mean I have no idea how much of it is we or we we how much is required how much is incentivized and how much is you know electives in terms of our contain our professional development programs so we learned today that along with um the Virginia literacy act which will be required to be implemented in the fall of 2024 there'll be a literacy plan required by the division um and I hope that we get the right voices in on making that plan which would be teachers and principals as well as division staff and if we have to make that plan to meet the requirement anyway let's do it well I was surprised in that presentation today that now the state will fund reading interventionists at a ratio
098of one per 550 students that seemed like a lot of students but they don't find any of it now so I guess that's an improvement but I think that's why we have to um investigate what the caseload is for each of our reading specialist to make sure that they aren't you know snowed under with the amount of kids at that school that need their services I think it would be and I know I'm focused on literacy partly because I've been in two or three meetings about it in the past couple of weeks but you know let's not I think we should start thinking about a literacy plan you know well before the requirements and start looking at what elements might go into that yeah I mean they told us what four elements are going to
099be required in that meeting today and I must have blanked out yeah it's on the slides coming back look at the slide they told us you know so so we talk about caseloads I know that it makes me think of um average class size and I know that we we have a average class size that is typically smaller than what the state requires which is great but I've also heard within the division there are classes with 30 kids much more than that and so while the average is good if you're the teacher or if you're one of those 30 kids or ever what the astronomical number was that I heard doesn't do you any good to know that the average number is better than the state requires so along with getting these average numbers like
100which class what's what's our maximum class load I mean seriously what what exists out there I did hear that one first grade teacher had 36 I'm not sure that's true and I didn't take too much you know whatever but I sure hope that's not the case but along the lines of knowing those averages it's kind of like knowing the Sol data averages you know they're fine but if you're if you're in one of those classes that that's overcrowded average don't do anything I would clarify that we do provide all that information in the report the update will be in October I think we're going to bring that in October we provide averages we provide the range we provide the minimum we provide maximum we provide the number of classes that have 27 28 29. you
101can in fact for um I believe it came out a little later last year if you go back to either the October or November um uh minutes or ESB site last year you'll see the class size report there and we'll uh we're hoping to have the uh the class size report for this school year at the October 13th meeting okay is there a way that we could have a board policy of no class will be over x amount or is that would that be impossible to achieve I I think one of the one of the issues speaking from as a former middle and high school principal is that sometimes you get what you consider bad application of kids right areas so so if so if we say 28's the most and I've got 29 kids
102who need a Calculus class right right well then I'm going to have two sets of very small classes instead of one that's slightly bigger than that so it's a it's kind of a complex topic to um uh to look at that we don't have a blanket policy right thank you for the comments be back you were I assume we're taking notes I didn't write things I was that's it that's quite all right I was taking some notes uh as we were walking in as we were um as you all were talking through this and what I'll say also is this isn't the end of the conversation right so so as you you know this is kind of fresh in your mind tonight as you go through meetings throughout the rest of the year uh I
103think this could is likely going to be something that continues to be top of mind and as we go into the budgeting process thinking about um thinking about that so let's talk just briefly about um uh next steps that I'm going to grab those uh those Target sheets from you all before we leave tonight and uh hopefully within the next couple of days send something back out to you and start to get to some some feedback around that we'll come back to the board hopefully in March with another work session on our with our mid-year data update you remember may remember we did that last year this year's will be I think even even more valid for us because now our third through eighth graders take a state mandated mid-year growth test so we'll be
104able to look at where students were at the start of the Year within the first three weeks of school and where they are at the mid-year and then we'll be back here again in September of 2023 to uh to look at those targets that you all set and hopefully have some celebrations around them and keep that momentum moving forward around this but I do really want to um to commend the board and thank you all for the level of Engagement that you had around this tonight this is important work for all of us and I think when again one of the one of the hope outcomes of this meeting was building that Collective Drive behind it that when uh when you put a number on something I think it makes uh it makes it more
105meaningful uh and and feel a little bit different as we start moving on throughout the course of the year so certainly happy to take any more questions or comments um as we wrap things up I'd just like to make a request Dr Haas and I know that that you and your cabinet and your team are looking at all the different programs that have been put into place over the years and and maybe you know which ones are still around and to determine Jimmy gilner used to do some program reviews for us and I'm sure somebody's doing that now it sure would be great if you if if you could share with the board some of those reports or some of the of those data for programs that are still in place that may not be
106as effective because that would be a great thing to talk about during budgeting and and ideas I hate the phrase outside of the box but the ones that are I have always been ones to be looked at or or uh you know they've got to be some things that we can do differently and I think you and and your team would have the best perspective on that okay thank you Dr McLaughlin thank you all thank you thanks very informative session all right oh you're coming around I cheated on this one and I'm more granular on this one I didn't either you get both mine okay is there any other business that board members or by the superintendent yes sir if not all right um at 904 tonight we will be entering into the fall equinox
107so I hope all of us will have an enjoyable fall and our meeting is adjourned goodness