001[Music] Good afternoon everyone. We'll call ourselves to order. Today is Tuesday, August 19th. The time is 4:02 p.m. The 4pm work session of ASD school board has started. If member Hollowman will return to his seat, that would be appreciated. Uh present in the boardroom are members Higgins, Lessons, Jacobs, and Hollowman. Present online is member Bellamy. We'll note other members as they arrive. We've called ourselves to order and conducted a roll call. Our discussion under B1 is goal monitoring. Dr. Bryant, the floor is yours. >> Thank you, Mr. President. So, I'm really excited about today's conversation, which will be about our goal monitoring processes. uh because I'd like to propose some enhancements that I think will make sure that our priorities and action steps are crystal clear to our staff. Um in the big picture, I
002think we've had some big wins lately in terms of stabilizing the funding for this fiscal year, but I do looking ahead see the the fiscal cliff that we're headed towards because of our structural deficit. So now is more important than ever to really solidify and update our academic administrative priorities so they're laser aligned to the board goals so we can start moving progress these next couple years. So let's dive in. Mr. Opitson team. >> Outstanding. Thank you so much, Dr. Bryant. Um we're excited to present uh uh today. Um we think these enhancements are going to be uh a real difference maker in terms of setting our priorities and really aligning our work. And so today we're really going to be talking in two parts. Uh Miss Carol and I are going to be talking
003uh during the first half and talking a little bit about reformatting part of the school board uh outcome reporting um as well as the process that we went through for prioritizing our strategic action steps. And then we're going to hand it off to Miss Beltran and uh Mr. Prince and they're going to talk about um a more in-depth academic strategic plan process. And so this team along with all of our departments have worked really intentionally to make sure that this will be a seamless uh process over the course of the year. And so we're going to go ahead and get started. Um why are we doing this? Um so number one, we we analyzed a whole variety of data. Um we started with our quantitative data, our student outcomes, and the improvements are not um
004increasing at the rate we hope for. and we still are seeing some disparities across many groups. And so that was one component of the why. The other part that I think is really important is we've considered qualitative feedback from our teachers and our principles. And if you remember uh the HR report on recruit recruitment and retention one of the key pieces of feedback was, you know, we have a lot of initiatives. We have a lot of priorities. What's the most important thing? and and so we took that type of feedback into a really strong consideration in this process. We also uh did some deep dives in terms of current research. We're going to talk a little bit about trajectory changing schools. Um our teams looked at a whole variety of research. We're not going to
005go into all of that of course, but we wanted to share a couple of key ingredients there. And then finally, it's about greater clarity. It's a focus a little on on less and doing it um better. And so that's sort of the big picture why behind it. So the research I want to talk to you a little bit about today and again this is just one piece. This call is comes from an organization called TNTP the new teacher project. Um they've done decadesl long studies longitudinal studies. Um it started with something called the opportunity myth and then most recently the opportunity makers. And what they were looking at were schools that were what which they defined as trajectory changing schools where students longitudinally consistently um made more than a year's worth of growth in a
006for a single year of academic input. And so we're going to talk a little bit about that. There's three main categories here. And again, this is just one piece of research. I want to reiterate that. But but you can see on on the report there's three areas of focus. This idea of belonging, right? So the conditions, setting up the conditions for students to excel and participate. This idea of consistency, ensuring that there is a good quality lesson in the classroom and core instruction every day for every student. and coherence. This idea of a unified approach so that when students move from grade to grade or school to school, we don't unintentionally introduce gaps. Okay, I'm not going to go over the numbers, but I already sort of suggested this. You know, we've we've had some
007gains and we've had some wins, but we're not seeing the rate of improvement that we hope for and especially with some of our particular subgroups. And then this is a reference to our human resources uh recruitment and retention process. Again going back to that feedback from our teachers and our principles and our stakeholders about what is most important that was a very key ingredient uh in the process uh of of going through this work. And so just to give you a little background again this is the first part is really a reformatting of our strategic action steps. And just and Miss Carol will show that to you in a minute. It's that second part of the board report. It's that grid with all of the strategic action steps. So we talked with our uh leadership
008teams and we gained um sort of uh sponsorship for that process. Our teams reviewed national research, our district data. what we considered stakeholder feedback. And then our we put our lead teams through an exercise where we used a rubric and and they went through each and every single strategic action step and they scored them uh on on that rubric for for a variety of different categories to help us begin to hone down what is most important. And then finally, we brought all of the departments in for a full day prioritization session in which every single department had an equitable voice at the table and and we digested and and really considered which of these steps should be the the high impact strategies that we want to lift and make sure that we're communicating in a
009coherent and aligned manner throughout the school district. And so what we've done is we've honed those strategic action steps down to three to five strategic action steps per board goal. So again, the point of that is what is most important? How do we focus our attention and our alignment and we don't water things down across too many things. So the next steps will include um you know, we f we're going to share an update of what the board report will look like. Um we're informing you tonight so that you don't have surprises once we get into the outcome cycle. We've begun the communication process um with our principles and uh our communication department is also helping us make sure that that's a coherent message and then we're beginning to identify key tasks. So those key
010tasks that we're going to emphasize to lift these the strategy and so I'm going to hand it off to Miss Carol now and she's going to talk a little bit more about the actual board report. Okay. So, part one of our report doesn't have any changes. It is the part that uh we have student data and their outcomes on there. Um this portion we wanted to keep uh familiar to you. Uh there were no surprises as far as um we're going to be continuing to report on student outcomes, historical trends. We'll also continue to report on um student groups by race and ethnicity, gender, EDS, ELLL, and SWD. Um the intent here is to keep this section of the outcome report stable so that you will be able to con um track trends over time.
011The second part of our report is where we have uh revisions coming into play. This section helps us move beyond our identifying our student outcomes into actual um strategies of showing how we're actually acting on those outcomes. Um it moves us into our theory of action and how we're tracking those strategic action steps. So previously you'll note um that we had five implementation stages coupled with uh four progress designations. Those were used to act um share progress on up to 15 to 30 action steps. And as you know um it was often a challenge to know which actions were fully implemented and at what stage uh we were in in progress. So you'll notice that the revised uh framework is somewhat simpler. We're going to use only five implementation stages that start from in development
012to sustainability. That way the board will be able to see uh which actions are being developed, which ones are starting to be communicated and staff training is taking place. Uh where we are in implementation and the monitoring, what refinements we're doing based on our findings and whether or not anything has been fully scaled. In addition, uh as Mr. Opitz mentioned we are scaling back from 15 to 30 action steps to three to five priority actions. These are those actions where we believe their research base field tested those high lever practices that if we hone our and um focus on throughout the school year we will get the most impact most change across all of our student groups. In addition, we will still be showing um a list of prior or universal action steps. These are
013actually action steps that are happening throughout the district, but they're not going to be scaled districtwide. They may be uh things that are happening at certain schools um for certain programs, but they are not anything that we're going to be tracking district-wide. We really are going to focus on those priority actions. On this page, you'll notice that we intentionally have made a bunch of changes on here. Um, we wanted to make sure that we are communicating uh to all of our stakeholder groups, not just the school board, but also down into the schools and our families and also out into the communities. We've um clarified the language to make it accessible to uh all of our user groups and we're hoping um that we'll add some transparency. We want to make sure that everything on
014here is actionable and approachable for our entire school community. on this page. This is where we'll be sharing with you those priority action steps. Uh this is where we'll actually have um for each of those action steps, the one to five depending on whether it's a reading goal, a math goal, or a CCL goal, um where we are in that progress. And then we'll also be sharing those universal action steps based on those independent interim goals. >> So before I hand it off, I just want to make a couple of closing remarks. I'm I'm really excited about this work. Um, as I'm sure anybody that's any taken on any project in life, you know, when we try to focus on too much, it gets watered down and it's very difficult to measure and monitor implementation.
015And so using data um both student outcome perception feedback of our teachers and of our principles along with current research we've we've come to an agreement on what we believe are our high impact priority action steps and our goal is to implement them with discipline and monitor them with discipline. Um we did we did our very best uh in historically but when you have 30 action steps it's I it's difficult for people to keep um clear in their mind which ones of these are most important. And so that's why we have that priority steps versus universal. And so schools are still working on other things because they have different contexts, right? And so it still honors that but we're going to lift those priorities um with great intention and great discipline. And you can see
016on here on this slide that the title in big bold letters is protect the priorities. Um and this is everybody at the entire in the entire school district. We heard loud and clear that that with with a lot of initiatives and a lot of priorities, it's hard to maintain focus. So one of our jobs is to always come back to what is the connection back to these priorities? When and where can we say no to some things that might seem really shiny and and you know like a great idea because if we want to monitor something and have confidence in the measurements and the monitoring we have to implement and monitor with with integrity and so that's that's our mission and I and I think it honors our staff's feedback. It honors the research and
017it honors our data. And then once we monitor it, it's going to allow us to say, you know, this is moving in the right direction or you know what, we need to adapt and adjust because it's a living document. But but with that prioritized um these prioritized actions, we can feel more confident in the process. And so in a moment, I'm going to hand it off to Dr. Beltran and Mr. Prince. Um one of the things that we uh had very intentional conversations about, they're going to talk about an a more in-depth academic strategic plan. Um, so we were very intentional about the formatting of this. So as that takes place and takes shape, it won't be changing the format. It will be a seamless transition if if one of the priority action steps changes.
018Um, and so just I wanted you to have that background knowledge that um, it's not going to feel disjointed. Um, because we spent a lot of intentional time uh, discussing that. So, I'm going to hand it off to my colleagues over here. >> Thank you. And so, we get to then talk to you about the work we're doing in building the academic strategic plan, which will um continue to build that instructional coherence that Chris talked about early on. So, in order to build our plan, we have a four-phase process. It's highlighted right there. And the first phase is the discovery process. And this was a twopart uh diagnostic that was conducted in our discovery process. The first was the performance data analysis. And the second part was instructional quality review and constituent perspective. And so
019in the performance data analysis, we reviewed our data that's aligned to our board goals. In the instructional quality review, we looked at our curriculum, our highquality instructional materials that we currently use. And we also looked at um um how uh we are conducting our our PLC's and our instructional support systems that we have in place. And then we conducted focus groups and interviews with um with our um various uh to gain various perspectives. It's similar to the work that Chris did. We interviewed principles, coaches, mentors, teachers, and central office staff. Uh the discovery report uh did demonstrate that we have taken a lot of steps towards uh making progress towards our board goals and we are currently on track and meeting three of those goals. However, it also demonstrated uh opportunities for growth and the
020focus groups and interviews really highlighted these particular areas that we lack uh unified strategic plan that we have a need for a stronger internal collaboration and coherence and we need to refine our instructional supports to focus on quality and impact. Okay. From here, Sean will share with you how the discovery report will drive our work through the strategic planning process. >> Good afternoon, everybody. Um, so as Dr. Beltran had mentioned that the four parts, phase one was the discovery and then I'm going to talk to you about the strategic planning, the establishment of collaboration and the communication structures and then our monitoring and early implementation stages. And right now when we think about um the strategic planning, we're actually forming the steering committee based on all of our discovery process. We're going to examine and
021look at our root causes. We're going to define all of our instructional priorities so they actually narrow down, continue to gather and apply feedback from all of our various stakeholders, and then we're going to finalize our plan. So if you needed kind of a visual in your head, it's like an hourglass that just comes in from the discovery. It adds in all of the inputs. Then it takes it to a steering committee that reviews all the root causes. It narrows down, refineses our instructional priorities, and then as we gather and apply that feedback, we put together a plan and then we disseminate it out to the entire district so that we're unified. And this actually will uh take care a lot of the problems that we saw from our stakeholders where they said that we
022didn't really have a clearly defined action plan that we could focus on. Like Chris had mentioned earlier, it's really important that we narrow our focus and our goals so we know exactly what is working and what we need to work on. The steering committee, if you look at this slide, actually keeps in mind some very key considerations. It focuses on the vision and board alignment to the goals that you have all set for the school district. It talks about our organizational diagnostic and really focuses on what is the actual root cause that we are not seeing the progress that we'd like to see. It makes sure that we have a representation on our steering committee that meets all of our stakeholders and that our stakeholders are engaged beyond the steering committee but are constantly asked
023to continually review our feedback. And then we work on developing a strategic action communication plan so that we can actually manage any change as we're going through this. [Music] Now I know this next slide member Donnelly has a lot of small words on there. Um I actually am of the age now where I get to use glasses and bifocals on a regular basis. Uh so if you need to hold them at arms length or just look at them closely. that this feedback right here actually can tell you from our various stakeholders about things that they identified in the unified strategic direction and prioritization. It talks about the cross divisional collaboration. It also talks about instructional coherence, equity and student outcomes, consistency and communication and transparency and then also looks at our capacity. Like I said,
024member Donnelly, all the details are in that fine print, but those are just quotes from all of our stakeholders and it actually outlines that we started the discovery process in 2425. We're beginning our strategic planning now and we hope to be done in December and we will establish our collaboration and communication structures in spring of 2026, which will be right around the corner before we know it. And then we will launch in the beginning of the next school year. If you had any questions as to how we might be communicating this uh structure, it's right here. We have community uh communication plans where we would have videos, short memos, other structural sharing at uh general leadership with uh school leaders as well as teachers. We'll create a cadence of cross-divisional meetings using department chairs and
025other building instructional leaders at all levels of elementary school, middle, and high school. We'll also continue collaborative structures as well as our academic system playbook and then Diana, I'll just pass that back off to you. >> And so this is our final slide and what it really demonstrates is what our final phase could look like. We really don't have a plan yet of what that looks like because the work will drive us to this phase. What we want to really communicate to you is that this uh in in our final process, we will be creating a plan to sustain the work that we put together. Um and we will continue to include um input from all our stakeholders and we will create a monitoring system and communication structure. And that's it. >> Great. And just
026to tie this with the bow, I know that was a lot of information, but really I just wanted the board to be aware that the board goals are the priority. That's what the team should be focused on and working towards, especially now that we have a year of being stabilized, but we also have a long road of multiple months of figuring out what investments are going to move the needle when it comes to our students. So, a lot of this work still needs to be done, too. So, there'll be a lot of things that we need to develop over time, but I just wanted you to hear from me and the team that um this is all in service of the board goals. This is to support and elevate the work. And this isn't a
027new initiative per se. It's really in light of the fact we've done a lot of really big structural changes, but now we got to take it from good to amazing. That's what this is about. >> Okay. Thank you, Dr. Bryant. Team, um, for our record, I'll note that members Donley and Wilson joined us at 4:03 p.m. Um, welcome. Then we'll go to questions. I see member Higgins first and then we'll go to Member Bellamy. >> Thank you. Um, I appreciate the presentation and the the way that the presentation was rolled out. You know, I always look at this and I look at it when you're trying to accomplish something. You have a you identify what you're trying to go. You're looking at alternatives and you're selecting some course of action. It's pretty common. They call
028it the pace method or Providence calls it Opportunity. No problems. Uh, it's kind of cute. But when I'm looking at this and I'm trying to say what are we trying to accomplish and how are we measuring it? Um to me we're trying to get academic success for every student. So we've got kids in third grade who are reading at fifth grade level and we're trying to measure how many are successfully reading that at that grade level but we're not focused necessarily on the fifth grade are moving up. I know about um it was about 10 years ago we had a report presentation and I remember the form superintendent rolling it out in which it said by school how they were doing by grade on ac on academically achieving a four years growth so that accepted
029that are we looking at that are we are dissecting that because to me that's that's what it really focused down I see you know we're focused on every child different ones we want to make sure everybody's fairly you know, nobody's left behind. But, you know, the studies on the on the progress, the top group does the worst as a general rule, 80%, the bottom group does bad, but the but they were not as bad. Okay. And and so I'm concerned about are we looking at the academic results? I would ne never never want it by school, you know, where where we identify teachers or staff, but they did it by school and they even had it on their website broken out. Are we using that as a as a matri as a metrics? >> Uh,
030thank you for your question. Absolutely. Um, every every single uh report that we do in in board connect, there's a a report that shows uh by school progress. And just to clarify, we look at both proficiency, like what percentage of kids are attaining grade level standards. Um, that's the AK star. Um, but we also look at growth. And so we look at the growth percentile and and we look at that in in a high level of detail at a district level, at a school level, and and down to the student level. Our teachers are looking at that down to each and every student. Um and so we we are definitely taking uh a very detailed look at that across the board. Much of that data is also publicly available on our dashboards. So yes, I
031appreciate that and it's definitely a consideration. I I remember in 2017 I remember it pretty well. Um 2016 um some of the growth indicated that in third grade and reading it was all not doing very well on the four year academic growth and they kind of looked at it and said this is not by school this is curriculum. Have we got information coming back that way that shows where some of the success by grade might be directly related to curriculum or issues where that's that's going to require something more than just the the process of working with teachers. It's the tools. >> Yeah, I appreciate that question as well. Um, and I think the process that we described here today is actually going to inform that at a greater level of detail once we get
032into our reporting cycle and we we share those very specific action steps. Um, when we're talking about curriculum in particular, it's it's about high quality evidence-based curriculum, right? So, and and we have that across the board in our reading and our math. And one of one of the things that we're looking at, in fact, that research that I shared with you from TNTP when it said consistency, it's about every student having access to highquality instructional grade level materials in every lesson during their core. And and as we hone our focus and we de have our monitoring plan, it's going to be more valid, more reliable for us to make correlative sort of um uh uh for us to understand the correlation between the implementation of highquality instructional materials and outcomes. So I think this process
033will actually help inform your question as we work through it. So I think it's a great question. One last question then and then that is on the issue of the paper versus the computer as far as from an instructional standpoint. I mean I remember um achieve 3000 where you had it broken out the computer would give the same story to different kids at different grade levels to help it grow. And I know some of our documents some of the schools are dealing with paper some of the others. Is that something from a review standpoint of trying to allow everybody to academically advance a full year, that sort of approach is the paper approach, the books, um, is that is that getting to be outdated or is that an issue? Because I've seen, you know, Academy
034of Science other presentations that really uh question that as being something that's u academically beneficial. >> Uh, I appreciate the question. Thank you, Member Higgins. Um you you're right. I mean electronic and digital uh uh assessments, reading for that matter is become pretty ubiquitous everywhere. Um most of our students uh access it digitally and electronically. One thing to keep in mind is when we review these results and we make comparisons and ask how we're doing, it's relative to all the students around the nation that are accessing it in an identical manner. However, we do have accommodations uh for particular students with very specific needs, whether that's special education or ELELLL. There might be some very specific accommodations based on student need, and of course, we live up to those in those particular situations. >> Thank
035you, Member Higgins. We'll go to Member Bellam. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh wow, you guys have been busy. I I'm liking what I what I'm hearing. So in my mind um uh you will have a theory of action for each one of the board's goal. Is that is that my am I understanding that correctly? >> Um >> like the reading the theory of action for reading would be slightly different than that for math and then that for CCL. >> Yeah, member Belly, we'll answer that. I just wanted to make sure that you understood that we are not substituting the um council of great city schools vision theory of action. I know that's been discussed um but I'll let the team answer the specifics for this. You are correct member Bellamy. We will be having
036uh different theories of action for each of the board goals based on what those goals are and where we are actually at in um the progress of trying to achieve those goals. >> Great. Okay. That's kind of what I thought, but I I just wanted to uh be real clear. And so when you say strategic plan, you're talking about the district's instructional strategic plan, not the community's plan. See, there's a board level strategic planning and then there's this level, I think. Am I thinking of that correctly? >> That's correct, U member Bellamy. So, uh, the board set a strategy 2028, which will be completely the same. Those are the board goals and really this is a nice companion to it that talks about all of the administrative instructional strategies that are in service of the
037board goals. So I hope that clears it up. I caused some confusion there but the board strategic plan is still well intact and even better supported. >> Okay. I think the only thing Yeah, I I'll just have to think instructional in front of strategic plan when when I'm uh as we move forward. Um I I I guess so the I'm looking forward to our first report cuz I think we needed to take it uh we needed to do something uh different. Um and I think so I'm thinking now about the PLC's and so while the board would get a report that looks at the entire district will each of our schools get a similar be be able to get similar data that's just for them not necessarily for publication but for planning. >> Thank you
038member Bellamy. simil similar to with all of our board reports, we'll we'll provide that highle um school district view to the school board uh which breaks it down by student subgroups and and grade levels and that sort of thing. But all of our schools um have access to real time data at high levels of detail. Um and in addition of course we'll follow up as we have typically done in the board connect where we're sharing school level data uh with you in uh via board connect. >> Okay. And then my final one Mr. Sher, if I might, is just uh when we are when when we look at prioritized um actions at the district level, schools will be able to have their own prioritized. How would that how does that how does the board level
039prioritizations trickle down to the schools? >> So, a great question, Member Bellamy. Um you're right. Every school has its own context and and and of course we're going to honor that. However, when we're thinking about scaling at a large district in a complex organization, when we're talking about priority action steps, we're saying these are these are the few things that we want to get great at across the board. That does not preclude schools from saying, "Hey, I'm noticing, you know, X in my data and I want to do uh this particular intervention." That doesn't preclude that whatsoever. But what we're trying to do is communicate very um succinctly and in an aligned manner. Uh align our training, our professional resources um so that we can scale and lift a few highlevel priorities um across the
040district. So you you're reading that correctly. >> Okay, that's awesome. I'm excited. And Dr. Bryant, uh one last question for you. um given when we look at allocation of resources. I mean I kind of this is a this would h would this better help you advise the board on those kinds of decisions? >> That's a great question member Bellamy. I would say so because I really want to be transparent about the strategic plan with the board and community because I want to make sure that the things that we're saying are the priorities resonate with the board and the community. So I think when we have to make difficult decisions, I'm hoping that the difficult decisions um will not be impacted by the strategic plan because we've only selected the most high impact strategies that are
041aligned to our fiscal uh situation. Uh, so it's going to be tough and and that's why it's going to take many many months to develop this. But I think that this will allow me to really hold each other or help all of us hold each other accountable to investing in the areas that we need to given where our financial situation is headed, which is going to be um more dire than I think it needs to be, but we'll keep on advocating. But I want to make sure that we're in a good place academically. And we can only do this if we really narrow down the priorities and the board supports me in protecting the priorities on behalf of the board's goals. >> Absolutely. Thank you, team. Good work. Thank you. >> Thank you, member Bellamy
042and member lessons. >> Um, thank you and thank you all for um kind of a great way to start this school year. I think it's critical to acknowledge that, you know, we have a multi-year plan when something needs to change. It's important to recalibrate during that process so we have a better um a better possibility of of actually making meaningful progress. Um, you know, I'm thinking about the forthcoming budget cycle and one of the thoughts was that I hope that, you know, we end up seeing these priorities um prioritized during what I anticipate will be a difficult budget process, but um this seems like a really smart uh meaningful way to begin begin our conversations. One question that I had recognizing that um this is really an instructional approach but it's an ecosystem and I
043appreciated there was a the use of the word ecosystem uh somewhere in here because that's how I think of our schools right because there are so many different components uh to make it all function um you know the role of of HR and the fact that we have vacancies right now uh and and high turnover rates um and this is top of mind because I'm thinking about an agenda item we'll have later tonight. And I peaked at frontline and we have 48 positions that are posted, which is, you know, great. We're ready to hire at our schools. But when I looked more closely at um the positions, you know, about twothirds of those positions almost are at title one schools. And the ones that have been there the longest going back into May and June,
044the bulk of those vacancies are title one schools. And when I think about the students who need to make the most growth, those are some of the schools where a lot of that work needs to happen. So I guess this is an instructional plan but I also see in this ecosystem that we are you know collectively uh trying to shape um we need to make sure we have highquality teachers in all of our schools. And when I think back to the slide, which I appreciate that you included, you know, the top priorities by bargaining group, each bargaining group said that workload initiatives and burnout were a major problem and class sizes that continue to go up and staff that, you know, don't have the opportunities to really dial into students needs. um you know th
045those are those are HR things, they're policy things. Uh so I guess I'm just saying all of that because I recognize how complex things are. Um and it's great that we're taking another bite of the apple through the instructional approach. Um I guess I just want to see fewer at the end of the day I want to see fewer schools lingering on front line with vacant positions um in really high need spaces. >> Maybe that's what I wanted to share. >> Yeah. Thank you, member lessons. I'd like to uh go ahead and respond to that one because I think that you've actually been very central in helping us focus on ways to do just that, which is to make sure that at our title one schools that they're appropriately staffed. And what I've realized is
046that I think we need to speak directly to the educators to help figure that out, too. So you'll notice that in the board memo tonight, we'll be looking at a memo that talks about one setting aside dollars specifically for teacher recruitment retention, but more importantly asking our recruitment or educator retention and recruitment group specifically what are the most high impact ways to use this towards the district at large. But um we're also working on something called the accelerator project that we've mentioned once or twice and that's explicitly about figuring out a way to quantify the schools that have the highest levels of need and speaking directly with educators in those communities and parents too asking them well what would it take to make sure that this is the destination that you want to be at
047and and feel supported to stay at for the long term. So, I know that we haven't talked a whole lot formally about the accelerator project, yes, but it was very much inspired by a lot of the the feedback that we've gotten from board members and the community. We have to have a sustainable plan for title one schools because if we can make a gain there, the the statistics for the data will go in the positive direction. Surely so. >> Thank you, member lessons. Um, with that said, on the topic of um educator recruitment, retention, and hiring um because we touched on the memo that we're going to be addressing earlier tonight, Dr. Brian, could you give us an update as to what the board uh how the board um approved FTE and us filling our
048current open vacancies is going um as we prepare to vote on that memo tonight? >> Great question, President Jacobs. So, just to recap for the community, so very very recently, as in I think it was three Saturdays ago, the legislature appro uh overrode the veto that allowed for additional funding to the district. So for ASD that meant about $10 million that we're now about to finalize tonight for how to use. But I want to again thank our legislators and two thank the board for providing the administration the flexibility to immediately start hiring those teachers as recently as two weeks ago at our meeting. Uh I believe we have some positive progress to report. Mr. Lang, would you like to speak to that? >> Yeah, if I could, I'd just give kind of a quick snapshot.
049Overall, I I'll admit that um given some of the turbulence we had during our staffing season last spring because of our fiscal situation and having to displace a number of teachers and then recall them and then um the uncertainty around the veto and then the disruption around federal funding this summer. There's just been a lot of noise in the system and we didn't know how that was going to impact um kind of our opening position for this year. But I'm pretty excited. One of the keystone metrics that we look at every year is our number of uh certificated vacancies on the first day of school. And you know, we kind of anchor on that because we want every classroom to be filled with with a certificated educator. And it's a number that we report to
050the state annually. And the good news is this year um that we uh opened up with a lot fewer vacancies than we did last year. So we had 122 certificated openings as of last Thursday. Um, that's going through all of the open positions, making sure there weren't any summary of hires in progress, pulling out all of the open recruitment positions, and really looking at all the true vacancies. Um, certainly a number we want to be zero, and we need we have a lot of work yet to do, but the year before we opened with 148 vacancies. So, we've reduced the number of certificated vacancies by a full percentage point. And so that's a real positive and a real testament I think to the work that our principles did in a really difficult um hiring environment.
051They really went out there and shook the bushes and found every viable candidate they could to make sure that they had um solid teachers in the classrooms for our students. Um I'll have a full snapshot in board connect this week for the board that kind of talks about some of the altsert pathways that we've hired um this year um as well. But um specifically uh to your question, Dr. Bryant, about the 20 FTE that were allocated on August 5th. Um Sven and his team got those out to principles very quickly. Um so those positions could get posted where we had enrollment bubbles, where we had large class sizes. And just hot off the presses, I got an update from talent management here just minutes ago that we have actually got somebody in every single classroom
052position for those 20 FTE. And so the majority of them are filled with a certificated teacher. Um albeit a few of those probably transferred from other schools and may have created vacancies at other sites, but it really did help us move some of our FTE around in a way that followed some of our student enrollment trends. And so I think that's a really positive thing um that we were able to address um you know some of those uh larger class sizes very quickly in that way. Um, one other thing I would just note while I've got the microphone because paraprofessionals is some is a um has had a high vacancy rate over the last couple years. We have 70 fewer vacancies in pair of professionals than we did a year ago. Um, we're down to
053about a hundred um which is still again too high. We're still continuing to work to get that number down, but we had almost twice that last year. So, you know, lot of work still to do, but um in general, I think there's a lot of positive things to hang our hat on in the way we opened up this year from a staffing perspective. >> And just to put a pin in what uh Mr. Lang shared, if any legislators were wondering if they made a difference three Saturdays ago, you absolutely did because it unlocked resources for the district that were deploying directly into the schools. and we were able to do that within 72 hours of the legislature overriding that veto literally just 3 weeks ago. So, I'm really proud of the progress that we've made
054and we're just getting started. There is more room to grow, but remember because the legislature worked really hard to make sure that we um change the BSA to where it's $700 more going into next year. We can start hiring teachers going into next year on the normal teacher hiring cycle. It is not normal, nor I believe should it be acceptable that districts only had two weeks to hire these teachers. We made it work. It was a difficult situation. I'm thankful that we had 45 legislators come together to make that happen. But now that we've invested permanently additional dollars into the BSA, now we can start hiring earlier than ever. So, we really are headed in the right direction, but it's also my plug to our friends in the legislature. Maintenance every year will prevent this
055from happening in five years. So, we really need to make sure that we have strong communication as to how these dollars are truly making a difference in ASD and districts across the state. >> Thank you, Dr. Bryant. Um, appreciate that update, Mr. Lang. Um, superintendent. I I also thought it's um it's pretty impactful to hear that the recruitment and retention working group that the board formed um is going to be used as a conduit for educator opinion and perspective on how to utilize the additional resources from the legislature. Um if we want to wisely direct spending into the classroom, I I can't think of a better group of individuals to ask than our educators. So, um, it's exciting stuff and please let us know how we can continue to support your work in this area.
056Uh, member Hollowman, did I see your hand? >> Then, do we have other questions before we move to Member Donley? The floor is yours. >> I just wanted to understand this better. Um, if we have 122 or approximately certified instructional vacancies, then what was distinguishable about the additional 20 from our efforts to hire for those 122 vacancies? It's a good question. We haven't had uh an opportunity to do that much of a post-mortem yet um because we've been moving fast to try to fill them. Um, it could be the specific school was attractive to a candidate. It could have been there was a retire rehire teacher who had a connection to that school and was willing to come back and fill that vacancy on a short-term basis. Um, like I said, it could have been
057a voluntary transfer from somewhere else in the district, which again is moving vacancies around. But if it's moving FTE to a school with a higher than anticipated enrollment from a school that had a lower than anticipated enrollment, then really that's um that that's, you know, probably a good thing from our perspective. So, um, some of those are, uh, you know, long-term subs, but if we had a class of 40 students and we were able to divide that into two classes of 20 and we've got a certificated teacher next door to a long-term sub and they can co-plan and co-e and and and, you know, do some things to support both of those classrooms with smaller learning environments, then again, I think we still see that as as a positive thing. >> Yeah. And I would
058uh add to that too, member Donley, that's a great question. An average person might wonder, "We have so many vacancies. How can adding more vacancies make a difference?" It does because remember that bubbles don't always follow the PTR. Sometimes you'll have a large class size in a school that was appropriately allocated PTR. But let's say they have a high, let's say, an immersion classroom with 35 kids, which is something that really happened this week. When we were informed of that, we were able to quickly dispense a holdback position that the board funded with these dollars from two weeks ago and made a difference right there outside of the PTR. So, and we've been able to do that multiple times throughout the week. And if we wouldn't have received that extra money, the budget would have
059been set and we would have been so limited in the number of holdbacks we could have allocated outside of the PTR. So, the fact that the board allowed us to have that flexibility, not just to restore PTR to every school, like every school is a marble in a jar, but to really pursue the areas where there are too many kids in that classroom and we need more educators in those buildings. So, from an instructional standpoint, these are some of the highest impact decisions that we can make in the first week of school. So, I'm really proud of the team's efforts. >> Member Donnie, do you have a follow-up? >> No, I think I understand the answer was that the additional money opened up additional vacant positions beyond the PTR, which allowed for some different strategies
060and techniques in filling them to accomplish some positive results. I'd like to just add in a little bit as as well onto this when when member lessons when you looked and saw those 40some elementary positions those positions will stay open even if we've already found a very good solid like long-term sub option. I've actually asked the senior directors to go in and look at every single school in any of those openings that have an empty position and let me know if they have good solid options. Some of those are a retired teacher that isn't interested in doing the whole retire thing. Some of those are long-term subs that have degrees. Some of those So, we stu we we're looking at specifically which classrooms don't have a really good option. And that's the work we're doing
061right now. And it's it's it's it's in a very small number of maybe less than 10 classrooms I'm looking to find a body for that it doesn't have a really good option right now. Now those 114 also include our special education openings that we have some you know those are other op other issues and stuff. Those aren't the positions like we were given extra for right now. The 20 that we did were classroom bubbles primarily at the elementary level. Most of our issues have been at the elementary level. So those are the those big bumps of like 36 in a class. That's difficult in an elementary class. So we've split that. And so our principles are doing amazing work finding these people. Um we have hired people. We have hired in long-term subs. So, we're
062actually sitting a little better than we were last year, even if um as we are looking at those openings and I know there's less, but we are really analyzing every single specific classroom for each of those. >> Thank you, Mr. Gustoson, and appreciate the great conversation from the board and then the presentation from district administration. Um, we will transition into executive session uh to the board. We're going to have a bit of an unusual schedule tonight um due to an event in between this and our um executive session. So I would entertain a motion to adjourn to the executive session um effective at 5:40 p.m. for the f for the purpose of legal updates, negotiations, and contracts. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Made by member Hollowman, seconded by member Wilson. Is any objection? Perfect.
063Then we will adjourn our work session today at 4:53 p.m. and enter executive session at 5:40 p.m. Thank you everyone. [Music]