001e rice here Williams here young here you have a quum I would move to approve the agenda second [Music] Noor right and opposed and the agenda's been approved Jenny on our district mission is to teach all reach all our district vision is Urbandale will be a school district that brings learning to life for everyone our school board mission is to partner with stakeholders to teach all and reach all through governance of board policy and operating protocol thank you and first up will be the superintendent report okay so um on the more you know what I wanted to do tonight there's an agenda item coming up that will address this but just to kind of explain to people who might be looking at the agenda and wondering why they're are items that have cross outs or
002um otherwise been changed um I just want to point out there was a dear colleague letter that was sent out and this is a federal executive order was released regarding diversity equity and inclusion what we call Dei um this executive order is temporarily enjoined by the courts and the US Department of Education um sent this letter out as of February 14 to address similar issues and stressing to schools they need to be looking at their programs policies and positions to ensure legal compliance with title six in a recent US Supreme Court case students for fair admissions versus Harvard which is the Department of Education now sets the framework for evaluating use of race by state actors in schools covered under title six the letter states that schools may not treat a person differently than it
003treats another person because of that person's race as a preference or otherwise and furtherance of Dei the letter further letter further states that US Department of Education will assess compliance with this expectation per the letter additional guidance from the Department of Education will be coming we releas recently also ref re I can't talk tonight I'm sorry we recently received an FAQ document with additional guidance from the Department of Education and we will be working through that Guidance with our legal as well as it's appropriate and in order to to comply with a letter from the dear colleague letter at this time it's been recommended that UCSD evaluate our programs and activities both for students and employees and take steps to change review and modify as appropriate those things that would be considered impermissible by Dei
004or race-based initiatives we want all of our staff and students and Community to know our mission doesn't change to teach all reach all and we will be contined to be committed to anti-discrimination mination of all kinds what you're seeing in some of these agenda items and you'll see in the Strategic plan are I'm trying to show a visual of how this is going to affect us and we've run this through our legal department so we've started to make the changes that we were asked to make this is going to be an ongoing thing so I want to assure anybody who is listening or watching this that we do intend to comply with the law and it's not something that can happen overnight we need to take time to be able to do this as we
005are guided to do it so that's where you'll start to see different things on the agendas and different places that will be altered um we'll get into a little bit more of that we have one item tonight that we'll um we're asking to alter based on this information the only other two items I had were that our registration is ongoing so any families that have not registered for next year please register um and the Open Enrollment window has closed Ed for students going into grades 1 to 12 next year but anyone who wants to come to Urbandale as a kindergarten student has until September 1st so that window continues to be open it doesn't mean you can't apply now it just means that you have a deadline of September 1st so those are the items
006that I had so now the K12 upate need more chairs good evening BR and Char dror of teaching and learning and I'm joined with a group of colleagues today uh to give an update around the math curriculum radio I'm going to let everyone introduce themselves first uh Janine Hower curriculum facilitator uh Abby Kone fifth grade teacher at Webster Elementary Jill Miller curriculum facilitator Riley spear third grade teacher Olstead Aon reev Lon geometry teacher at Urbandale High School Abby Nelson seventh grade math ATS all right and as you might remember or uh you may have watched this prior uh that last year uh we went through uh actually it was two years ago now sorry uh we went through a full curriculum review of kindergarten through 12th preschool through 12th grade uh mathematics and part of
007that process was to identify those key shifts uh instructionally but also uh from the standpoint of the learner um and those are paralleled in the math standards that the state of Iowa put forth um just last year uh so the work that we had done the year prior definitely paralleled to what the state released April of 2024 uh this idea of a focus on Focus coherence rigor and the content standards so those shifts are well represented in the standards um and a large part of that is this idea of uh the mathematical practices and that's how students experience mathematics and do mathematics in the classroom um and definitely represented in the work that we're doing as a system so just a little bit of an overview on where we've been over the last two years
008with regard to implementation in June of 2023 we had an intensive implementation three-day training Workshop to kind of get us kicked uh for the the first school year implementation um then in the summer the teachers had the opportunity to spend six hours of time uh that would allow them to complete the um planning for their first unit that they would be implementing in the fall so we wanted them to to have the time to be ready so they could kind of Hit the Floor running come August of that first year of implementation um during the first year we had additional uh late start purposeful planning sessions two times a month where the focus was again on the preparation for the units that they'd be implementing um as throughout the year and then this year we've
009extended that but they had that late start purposeful planning time one time a month in the second year of implementation and we had a full day of professional learning last May where we extended um the information that we gave them in order to make that implementation a little bit more successful so this year for uh year two we've been able to dig into training for to deepen implementation and unit unit planning um we were able to have on a pretty regular basis half day deep dives into planning for a unit with either grade alike or con or course um alike teams that we're implementing Im so with the idea that now that we've taught it for a year we can come together and really dig into um what misconception ctions did we see coming up
010with students what lessons felt tricky what representations and strategies worked really well and then how can we systematize that across the grade level um during that time we also were able to do some isas analysis so we unearth strengths and opportunities in the specific math domains with uh regards to that isas data that we got back also we analyzed which areas um within those domains and standards were assessed with a deeper greater fluency um and then last we looked at some recently released Pro problems for each grade level and frequently missed problems for each grade level so we could do that same work of looking at misconceptions looking at the vocabulary that was used in in the assessment and then how it compared with what we could do so that we could plan proactively for
011instruction um we know that you'd love to hear from us but we brought some uh teachers here to also be able to share their experience it's the video that's okay the video can talk to it anyway okay yeah so throughout our year um the third grade team at olmstead's had many opportunities to deepen our learning of illustrative math um highlights include all of our professional learning that Joel was just talking about as a districtwide third grade team and our latest coaching cycle at Olstead with our instructional coach Kelsey Jacobs um so the video that you can see at the time was taken apart of our coaching cycle um students did a really great job synthesizing their thought processes and explaining how they found their answer which is a big part of the IM curriculum and
012what we've been learning about um these videos also allowed us to grow as a collaborative team and build what we call our third grade super teacher model implementing things going well from all four classrooms and trying to blend it throughout the grade level um The Learning we've done over the past two years has helped us plan better assess better and have better conversations um surrounding student learning we're also seeing real-time data from our work with our third grade students at Olstead with so much Positive Growth um and many students at are above proficiency um we're just really proud of the work we've been able to do with this new curriculum in the two short years of implementation um and just thank you to everyone who's helped us with our learning um and perfecting our teaching
013practices and for letting us share tonight um hi um Abby kazone uh this is my fifth grade class so what you'll see here is the start of a warmup so I had them all come down to the carpet and something I really like about illustrative math are there warm-ups and how they incorporate mental math and so just today we have been in our decimal unit and so we just wrapped up multiplying decimals and today was our first day of dividing decimals and so so they don't just throw them into Mental Math the progression the progression of learning is really amazing so the first problem they gave them was 1 divided by 1/10th which was a fraction which in a previous unit we learned how to do keep switch flip so keep the first number switch
014to multiplication and then switch the numerator and denominator so they just do 1 * 10al 10 the next problem was 2 / 1/10th the fraction so they were able to do that then they loaded them into 1 divided by one10 the decimal so then they knew oh I can just change the decimal to 1/10th the fraction and do it the same way and so then we were able to do just like thumbs up when you have it add fingers and then share with their partner that was right next to them and then share out which has been really positive other ways that they've done the warmup is like true or false so you can give like thumbs up for True thumbs down for false but I like how they don't just like throw them in
015with hard math problems it makes sense that we relate it back to the fractions that we learned earlier in unit 3 and now we're on to unit five and can relate it to decimals the other thing I really like about ustr of math is the Sinners or the game aspect so in the lower grades there's built-in time for this in the upper grades is kind of how you can fit it in so since we're on year two there's some lessons that I know that typically run shorter and so I like to start with a game it kind of increases buyin and my kids get super competitive over it and create a timer and like take points and it's just really awesome it also helps with management so like at the end of a lesson every
016day they'll have a cool down and so then they'll turn in the coold down and then there's a list of games that they can choose from and they can pick a partner and sit around the room and play a game the game you're seeing right here is called Target numbers and this was with um we were working on subtracting decimals and so they all start at the number two and then they flip a random card up and it's a number uh one through nine and so they either decide to subtract that number in t or hundreds so they have two they flip a seven they can either subtract seven t0 or 700s from that number the trick is is they only get six turns and they have to get as close to one as possible
017without going under so then we came back together and I was like what's your strategy how did you figure it out and one of my students raised his hand and said actually I knew if the first number I flipped up was one through four I was going to make it in the tth and if the first number I flipped up was 5 through N I was going to make it in the hundreds and I was like why did he say that and they were all like because if you make a number like nine in the T to start out with if you do 2 - 9/10 you're going to be really close to one and you still have five more turns so then it was like really increasing that understanding through a game instead of
018me just like talking at them which I really really liked and enjoyed about this curriculum uh hi uh the pictures that you see on the right hand side are my students engaged with um they're participating always in a wide variety of learning activities we structure the activities with collaborative partner practice Explorations and Hands-On methods to Define mathematical vocabulary and Concepts so my student above is learning how to combine like terms so a little pre-algebra Foundation um we use little bathroom tiles we write on them with dry erase markers we group we sort um all the different terms together um so that they understand what um goes together what's common what's not common and then my student down below is using some pasta to figure out the best line of fit with a scatter plot um
019so I I do appreciate all of the different um methods and um that the IM curriculum gives us uh at ums the Math teachers are observing noticeable um positive Trends in our student engagement in year two of implementing illustrative illustrative mathematics um our students benefit from the instructional routines that are in place and are having meaningful conversations during each lesson uh they are reasoning when ask which one doesn't belong during the warmup or they are always offering their strategies and methods um and I'm always asking about the how did you get there not just what's the right or correct answer so we always know that in our math classes it's always all about the how or the why um our end of unit uh assessment data is climbing closer to the 80% proficiency Mark in
020seventh grade um just past unit five our students were learning about how to compute with rational numbers without a calculator and 83% of our seventh graders proficiency um there is always room for improvement and we as a math department are always looking for resources to assist our intervention time with our students and also um finding opportunities for our students who are reaching Mastery sooner than others um but overall we're really excited um about the growth that we see every year and we can't wait to keep continuing um the momentum and celebrate their success is that B's classroom on the left yeah okay great okay so uh at the high school level we've been uh I'm new this year to uh Urbandale High School so I've been learning illustrative mathematics for the first time uh one
021thing that I and my co-teacher and a Christian really like about it is how as you've been hearing it pushes kids to focus on the thought process that gets them through math problems and into the real problem solving skills behind all of it rather than just you know spitting out formulas and and finding answers quickly uh what you see in Haley's classroom there are uh some of the students acting in the format we call building thinking classrooms uh this was uh part of a professional development that the math team at the high school went to in February for two days uh it's a method that really aligns pretty well with uh illustrative math because it gets kids standing doing math with groups of random uh other students so that they can both work on solving
022interesting engaging kind of puzzle like problems while building communication skills with each other and being able to communicate everything they're doing uh with each other there um in a similar vein to what you see in the others we I too was very surprised when I opened up my uh class materials and found pasta when we were trying to figure out how to make different types of triangles early on in Geometry uh the kids were very excited on that day um but yeah we're seeing a lot of increase engagement from students uh I two or three students just the other day uh asking oh are we going to do something fun like last week where we were standing up at the whiteboards again I was like yes that's most of the days where uh so they're
023very engaged with it um it's kind of showing them that math doesn't just have to be something that you're sitting at a desk working through problems on it can be much more engaging it can be much more uh socially focused as well um currently we are still working to make sure that that uh all of our students are kind of getting used to this format of talking through their answers sometimes of our higher performing students really like to just get their answer and run to the next problem without really working through it uh but we hope we're seeing a lot of improvement in that area we're seeing a lot of students get more engaged with discussing that learning and we're hoping that as we see more students from the lower levels coming up who've been
024in illustrative mathematics uh more than just a I think a few years now that we'll see even better engagement as we go um so yeah so our next step says we're moving forward as we continue on with our implementation we're going to engage in a more frequent cycles of peer observations and feedback conversations with within our um learning communities what naturally flows from those cycles of getting to see your peers um teach and get getting feedback having that discussion as opportunities for reflection on our own practice and then opportunities to uh goal Set uh around our our own goals for instruction and for our classroom student achievement and then all of these actions will continue to be part of our unit planning and our lesson study activities which are embedded within the plc's great what
025questions do you have for this team I would just like to commend the team teachers back when I started as a math teacher going in someone else's room was not done that was just you just close your door and do what you do so the fact that you guys open your classrooms to each other I think is really really a big deal and I think that's a great way to reflect on what you're doing and share common common skills so I think it's great yeah thank you guys for everything that you're doing I know during conferences actually my d math teacher told me how much she they he liked the new curriculum so which is pretty amazing that they bring that the conferences so I've got two quick questions um so you've now had two
026years of training your teachers so what what do you have in plan for new teachers new hires this summer to catch them up to speed how are we how much time do you have to catch them up to speed I guess um um do be there you want to talk to yeah what that looks like yeah we can talk to that uh new teacher Academy last year we made the change that it is over for days now okay um so day three of that is just a deep dive into all things curriculum and instruction um so built into that is a morning uh math planning and it is an abbreviated version of that three-day training uh that the teachers got as part of their implementation in the summer so um usually that is the the
027first step and then a followup uh coaching opportunities in building but instructional coach and then their grade level or content PLC or team continues to support that as well um but yes we have kind of redesigned new teacher Academy to account for um the need to make sure we're maintaining kind of the Integrity uh and bringing that training to the people that are entering the system for sure it's not um it's not as comprehensive uh but it is as Jill said an abbreviated ver so like because you said like the first year they had the whole their time was spent getting that first unit so is there like what do you get to hand them here's your like is there a nice thing that you hand them that's like here's your first unit ready to
028go like or is that something like the grade level teams help each other with kind of thing yeah yeah I mean they do have like the actual instructional materials just to make sense of it right and the pacing of it um is done kind of at the team level okay and then my second question and this would kind of is directed at you guys as the teachers what um one of my original hesitations about this curriculum was the incredible amount of writing that is involved in it and how you you know distinguish for you know if we're assessing their math skills or their writing skills so so much of it is explain your thinking and and so a lot of that is written form so what are some actual things you're doing in the classroom
029to really um see their math understanding and not their language understanding right I would say I accept a lot of different methods and strategies and I'm not correcting grammar or anything like that is very shorthand because I'm a shorthand kind of person too so um I'm not digging deep into that but they I have some students that give this much and I have some that I like to write so I'm going to really explain my thinking and I and I applaud all so everybody gets a shout out on what they are producing okay at the high school level we we try to help kids practice uh their writing in explaining their math thinking a lot of times for students who you know where it comes as something completely new to be writing out answers in
030math we'll talk them through like you know different senten starters ways to start framing their thinking we definitely have on both ends of the spectrum students who are able to get their thinking explained in one sentence pretty clearly and others who fill the entire page on a math test um and for a lot of them it's trying to focus in on you know looking at those kind of what's the main thing you're going for what is the actual point you're looking for it's a lot of practicing those skills leading up to it um the nice thing is that practicing those skills does assist the kids in thinking through the math itself uh because being able to explain it to someone else usually shows a much deeper level of understanding than just kind of the surface
031kind of recognizing patterns instead of seeing the underlying reasons that different aners come out yeah I think at the elementary level you see it in like visual representations and pictures um we work really hard with them to understand the problem um before we kind of send them off to work you know what is it asking me to do um are there words that mean certain things like difference mean subtraction or groups might me multiplication division so we kind of give them some scaffolds and help them understand the question and then if they want to draw a picture that's usually acceptable um and a lot of times the different strategies have names so they might not be able to write you a complete sentence but they might be able to say well I use this strategy
032and then here's a picture of how I solved kind of like they were saying I try to give my students like a bank of ideas that they can use used to explain or show their reasoning so a lot of things a lot of what we're running into now is like they just want to show me the formula and how they did it and so I try to say like two ways so they could use words or a lot of them like to draw like arrows and label and like I did this here um also there's diagrams a lot in fifth grade where they have to shade in and then like labeling that diagram has been helpful um so it's not just a lot of times them like writing out paragraphs but like labeling and explaining
033through that I I'll also say that IM am does a good job of like the language routines and like having them share with a partner first and so that's been really helpful like share and talk about it before you write it and then giving them the sentence stems to do that have you found that it's easier to find misconceptions or you know like if they're if they're going down the wrong path is it with IM you found that it's easier to hit those first okay before okay thank you how common is the adoption of this what I would say is remarkably improved instruction across the state it's uh very popular um so the kids that we're getting would already maybe be exposed to this um yeah depending on where they're coming from um but a
034lot of districts have moved to illustrative math and the state has really lifted it up as well not that they're um endorsed seen one set of instructional materials but they refer to it a lot in uh their guidance most of the Essa um briefs for targeted schools when you clicked on them it went to something from illustrative math good thank you thank you thank you thanks thank you so we're going to do our quarterly strategic Plan update so as the portion of my team we not all together tonight so first uh want to remind you the data that you're going to review um we're consuming this data at the district level we're not getting down into a school classroom or individual student level um so this is just what's happening across our district um we
035give you these updates three times a year uh you guys also received in the um assembly you can see the board data is here that's something that you had asked for I believe a year or so ago so that you had more if you wanted to dig deeper into it you could and and then the goal explanations are also in there uh I just want to remind of our culture of dignity and belonging that this is the the uh filter that we take everything through so that we can make sure that we're meeting the needs of all of our students the next couple screens I apologize for the blurriness of these but I just wanted to remind you of what our annual goals and measures were in the student achievement pillar we um measure gradu
036uation rate and isasp data and the what what is now called the equity and inclusion pillar um we recognize through conditions for learning emotional safety the algebra 1 assessment third grade literacy and chronic absenteeism in our service pillar we are measuring the family school relationship survey the solvency ratio and our UAB ratio and in the safe and well-being pillar we focus on conditions for learning again emotional safety physical safety student student relationships adult student relationships and boundaries and expectations so those are just a little bit of a reminder and we'll start with our student achievement fillar where Brandon will go through that information yes so the District Administrative team and teacher leaders uh across the system had the opportunity to review um all of our data related to our strategic plan as well as great
037level and content area teams post winter screening I took a look at their um data and they made revisions to how they were supporting unfinished learning uh but celebrations that we identified were that K1 early reading proficiency increased from 63 to 72% we saw an increase in the cbmr proficiency between winter or spring or fall to winter and then the overall a reading proficiency increased uh from fall uh to Winter as well and then early math proficiency increased from fall to winter and then in our um winter gold for preschool um just indicates that we have a we've reached the kind of that healthy core for both literacy and math as 80% or more proficient opportunities uh continue to be that most grade levels kind of experienced um adverse Trends overall when looking at individual
038grades uh from fall to winter and a reading and then most grade levels experience an adverse Trend and proficiency from fall to winter and a math right with our next pillar we see um connections to the systemwide um our schoolwide systems and structures and our teaching and learning um some celebrations that we see 89% of students in Algebra 1 are receiving AC minus or higher this has a connection to our end of year assessment so as it's we're making progress throughout the year checking in on that and we definitely have increased awareness of chronic AB cism within the district and within the state um some areas and opportunities for improvement um our chronic absenteeism increased from quarter one to Quarter Two which makes a lot of sense as that's the time of year where the
039flu and everything starts to play um and then 18% of students overall during semester one were chronically absent I'll handle the Ser service pillar data um the solvency ratio has improved at a faster rate than we anticipated um from about 6 point even to up to about 8.8 is what it's forecast for now um I actually feel like it's going to be a little higher than that um the UAB is remain steady at greater than 10% and it's forecast as of January to be at 18.4 and I'm going to talk a little bit about safety and wellbeing uh a couple of celebrations is that uh all of our grade levels on the Sabers and all but two on my Sabers are above 80% which is fantastic indicating a healthy core for social emotional character education
040um and certainly that's something we would be striving for in all of our curricular areas but it's really great to to see it here and then prek winter gold data indicates a healthy Core Curriculum higher than 80% again Proficiency in social emotional and for these overall strategic action updates I'll talk about the first two and then Dr Dak will hit the last one a little bit but uh we are currently um working through with a couple of groups first on the evaluation system for classified employees so if you remember we just did a full revamp and review of our professional um evaluation for our teachers uh overall and in our in the midst of year one there uh we're also taking a look at our system then for classified employees which is uh much smaller
041and it's less um I guess robust in that um it takes place typically once a year um but we're taking a a look at a few of the key components getting some feedback from staff members on that and that work is happening currently uh we have a our second get together with that group here very soon uh in terms of reviewing of hiring practices we're working with a different employee Advisory Group there uh and just taking a look at some of the things that we really want to take variation out of uh or where we might have variation for instance one of the things is looking at interview questions and making sure that um for uh positions that are hired across the district like elementary teacher that we um we can see some really common
042things that we're looking for that really match what we're trying to do with the rest of our strategic plan and bringing people in that really um really can live that so there's that's just one example example of how we're taking a look at that with maybe a few actions taking place moving forward as well and with respect to the Future facility needs you know that I think there's a couple of you that have been on that committee working with Eric Baron from DLR they're leading us through that work and it is about at the process where we need to talk with the city talk with the board and kind of update everybody on um the work that has been up to this point it's it's been I'm not going to lie a little um busy
043right now so I have not gotten that next session scheduled I plan to talk with Eric when I see him this week about getting something on the calendar um so that we can continue to move that forward so that is work that is important to the district And Timely so I recognize the fact that it needs to move a bit quicker so that's where we are with that piece and I think that is our update so if there's questions we can be prepared to answer those for you thank you for the update you for part us so well we understand what's coming now so I feel like we're ahead it's good thank you okay so this is um oh no I'm sorry I'm jumping ahead of you guys all right Representatives I'll be quiet go
044well we don't have a ton to share this week um not a ton happening at the high school but we just wanted to point out um one exciting event that happened at the high school was our career con which we held um recently we had a bunch of representatives from different um businesses in the community as well as outside the community come to the high school um I did not intend but I know majority if not all of our junior class attended this career con where they got to talk and hear presentations from different businesses around the community um and then also talk oneon-one with them afterwards if they would like to um this was just a great opportunity I know we had it last year I'm not sure how many years it's been now
045but um it's just been it was great to have that and have students be able to hear about the different jobs and paths that they can take After High School in Urbandale but also just with in their life um I know that lots of students learned a lot learned a lot from this Con and it also opened their eyes to different internships and jobs they can take at the moment um like during their High School career which is pretty awesome to see as it helps get them ready for Life After High School so that was pretty awesome uh only two other things so uh while the spring break is near uh and the school years near for our seniors so there's been a lot of College Planning some college visits to the school uh I
046always walk in there's a whiteboard right there with who's going to be there who's going to be there soon and what to look out for there's some FAFSA help going on so just sort of guiding students through that process uh and the last thing is just spring break soon we're all excited to have some break and then get back back at it after you've had your last snow day last in March that was impressive yes thank you we have no public comment tonight so we will move right on to Dr ja again okay and again I apologize for jumping so far ahead um the the next item is the changes to District documents and again I this is really what the details in this is what I read at the beginning and I felt like
047I needed to do that to set the um the tone for what we were talking about and one of the first areas is that we were recommended to look at is the job description for um Stephanie Davis which we we kind of knew a couple years ago that that this might be an Avenue that the state or the government mostly the state we thought we had a couple of years to do it um the job description itself is attached in here and the edits that you see are the edits that were recommended by our legal council to change and for the title we are just going to ask to call this the director of student services so that would um bring us into compliance with what the um current expectations are politically so I know
048I read that fast at the beginning so if there's any questions on it I'd be happy to answer them has I I'm this is just a a mystery to me as I'm sure it is to a lot of school board members across the country and administrators I'm looking here and they talk about how that the US Department of Education will assess compliance and additional guidance from the US Department of Education will be coming from what I've heard it's entirely possible that in the next several months there may not be a US Department of Education and so what situation does that put public education in in terms of the expectations of Meeting those requirements oh I'm G to guess because we haven't we haven't gotten that information either but a great deal of what the department
049of education does there's talk of moving it to the state level for the state to administer um we talked today for example about title funding we don't know where that's going to go we don't know if it'll go to the state and flow to the schools will it change to a different kind of Grant will it be something that's competitive or we we don't know what that would look like so I I would guess that this would come to the state level for enforcement right now there's a portal that was created for anyone that wants to go in and identify um their child's school or a school that they know of that they believe is violating any of this so that that can be turned into the government um hoping that people go through and
050put in how great their school district is instead and maybe give them something else to read but um I I wish I knew for sure don't we all I know there's a lot of districts that have already started to remove things we're trying to be very meaningful about it and follow the guidance that we're getting from legal rather than just take everything in the world off because we don't necessarily know you know now there's words that we don't know if we can use certain words and is it the word itself is it how it used is it a intent we just want to do it in a meaningful way that we're not rushing to something but still complying with the law we do not intend to break the law the the fear is that Federal
051funding will be restricted or removed if you're not following the law and that's something I don't know any District that can afford to lose Federal funding because that will not go to the state to provide you the money for it thank goodness for local control and I think we also need to reiterate to our community that we are maintaining our goals of teaching all in reaching all that that is our number one priority to reach all of our students even the marginalized students that we're still we're not cutting you we not cutting you loose you still are part of our community and we're committed to anti-discrimination of all kinds it that's that's part of who we are so we can still do that and comply with the law law can you point out what Direct
052effects what Direct effects on funding for example Title One what else anything that's Federal funding anything we get but I we're not handing out pel grants so what kind of effect directly on the district if the department were to go away with worst case you know if it just disappeared or title Title One title two title three and title four but what we have here all those could but you also special ed funding trickles down to the States through the federal government so that could be a disaster yes if we were to lose any kind of special education funding I'm not sure e funding flow from the government at any point the title three funding title three okay that helps to supplement and enrich education for English Learners is funded through three yeah so I
053think I mean if uh the board would like it we can bring that back in our next uh more you know to kind of outline how much yeah fing we're talking I don't I don't know that that's totally necessary but I think people do need to understand there is a direct local effect that it's not just uh H grants ffsa you know all those things that the services that are provided that people don't really realize comes through that department yeah it's going to have to go somewhere and I I personally feel like the biggest effect is the title funds um for specialized reading instruction for people who don't know what that is yeah we have five we talked about that today we have five interventionists employed through our title funding to provide reading and math
054services to our students in need and that's 400 some thousand yeah and that's just us mhm yeah that's just us thanks else okay move on to the Athletics and activities position take a vot oh sorry yes we do need this is a roll call no it's not okay so all those we need a motion first um I would move to um change the district documents is that what you're talking about um to align with new federal and state laws minky will reluctantly second so all those in favor I I I oppos okay motion passes now we'll really move on I'm sorry I'm having a hard time so we're going to have Jared uh Power come up from Athletics and activities we as you know you approved a couple of board meetings ago or maybe the
055last one an administrative assistant for the department and as we've talked about restructuring the department so that we can retain employees and not have them working 80 to 100 hours a week and have to go through every couple of years um this request that we have in tonight is one of those requests to take an existing position that is will be vacant and restructure that position to be more of an assistant director um I can let Jared talk about anything or go straight to the questions it's up to whatever the board would like to discuss at this point what do you think questions is is the main difference between the previous position and this one is the ability to um like evaluate the coaches is that the biggest difference between that yeah and our coordinators
056now they could get their evaluator approval in the coordinator position it's just a class you take but um what Dr Dak and I have talked about is having somebody that's got we would prefer to find somebody that's got the prek-2 administrative license so there's an understanding of how school systems work and things like that um and not that our current coordinators don't know that but um I just think having an overall systems view of what a public school looks like um would be helpful in this position as well and this was something that I um talked to Dr Watson about back during my first year um one of the coordinators at the time was working on a license and the idea was that once they got through that process that this would be what we
057would do because there's a lot more responsibility with that there's a lot more work with that and I feel like we owe it to the the coaches because they're not going to get with hundred something coaches to evaluate they're not going to get the feedback that they need they need to have that authentic feedback not going to one track meet and saying oh you did a great job here's your evaluation or no you didn't do a great job here's your valuation so we felt like we owed that to them and this was what we had talked about even when Josh got here is doing that same thing so we're in a position now that it can actually happen and that's why we feel like this would be a better way to give them give them
058what they need to actually lead Athletics and activities versus just managing events and checkin boxes for example like right now for the winter seasons I've got 38 evaluations to do um that's a lot like we uh granted there different types of evaluations than what a teacher evaluation would be but like 38 is more than some of our administrators have total so when you think about having 169 of them or whatever it is throughout the school year it probably does work out to a bigger load than what a lot of our administrators in the district are doing and do we have a good I know we just redid our evaluation system for teachers do you have a good tool in place to do evaluations or is that something that we need to evaluate as a district
059as well yeah so I've had conversations with Mr DFE about that um because I've been talking to some of the other ciml ads about what their processes look like um some of them have sent me some documents and um I do think we need to probably look at what evaluation looks like in general U one of the ideas that was shared with me um from another ciml school was to um put programs on a cycle um so kind of like we do with our teachers where they're on cycle every three years and the other two years they're doing a professional learning plan um if we were to move to something like that we would just evaluate the program in general every three years which I think is probably good practice anyway to um instead of
060trying to evaluate every program every year um then it allows you for a couple of years of of growth and intentional steps toward making that growth as a program and are we worried about finding quality candidates to fill this role since it's kind of like somebody who's you know qualified to be an ad but it's a different step there are we worried about that process or no I think I think we'll get some good candidates um I think the types of candidates we're going to get because we're not going to be able to compete salary-wise with like an assistant position at walk anony um but the types of candidates we'll get are like people who may doing at the middle school level at a at a different District or 80s at a smaller school that's
061nearby um because I know last time we had the coordinator position open that was some of the candidates we were getting was 1A and 2A ads that are looking for a a bump and salary and more responsibility and those sorts of things thank you can you talk a little bit about um how this fits in now and in the long-term plan with reducing the workload for those of you in the department um because I read through all the documents and I understand how it helps with other administrator coverage but how does it help you specifically in your department well I think yeah the initial one with the evaluation that's what I I did some math yesterday because I was like 38 evaluations for the winter season let's say that I spend half an hour actually
062writing the document and then half an hour or more in each conversation with a coach um I just had one on Friday and it was half hour 45 minutes minutes um and that didn't include the time that I had spent actually reading through their reflection and going through the document and deciding if they met the criteria or not um so that's 38 hours worth of time so when you think about a eight hour workday day that's a whole week of work just in doing evaluation documents and meetings with coaches um so I think that's kind of the initial payoff of having a position like that um and then I think going to that idea of putting programs on a cycle um I think that allows for more targeted assistance for those programs um because I
063know previously at the high school um like when I first started as Dean I just inherited a list of people that I was going to evaluate so I had PE I had at risk I had a couple English teachers and it was just kind of a smorkage board of whoever the previous person had that's who I inherited so um two years ago then we moved to the kind of The Silo um method of uh doing evaluation where then I had PE the whole department I had atrisk the whole department um so it just allows you to kind of understand the bigger picture of what's going on with all the people instead of just okay here's my experience with one person while somebody else is having a different experience with another person but in the same
064Department um it's just going to be able to allow us to kind of focus that energy into those programs um to hopefully start seeing some longer term planning being done instead of just kind of in the moment like okay that season just happened let's reflect on it okay and we're moving on to the next season um it'll hopefully give us a bigger overall picture of what's happening I know there's times professionally when we get caught up in doing the day-to-day details which is what I'm hearing with the evaluations and we don't often pause long enough to the strategy y will this give you enough time to really focus on the strategy because we've heard from our community that we need to improve our Athletics yep so does this give you the time you need to
065do that I think it'll help um so I think the admin assistant position in addition to something like this um I think both of those help with freeing up some time to do more long-term planning um because we'll still have another coordinator position to work with too um I'm still kind of laying out what those responsibilities would look like with all four of our positions to um kind of delegate the work but the admin assistant's going to pick up a lot of the kind of day-to-day clerical tasks um so that's just kind of naturally going to free the other three of us up to do some other things um as far as like talking long-term planning and um meeting with other departments because I know there's a push for um activities in community ed having
066more of a relationship cuz used to be with in the same department now it's two different departments and um but we still need to have that connection with our community head and uh that's one of the big things that I want to focus on is how are we supporting our little kids um I mean I've got a preschooler and a first grader right now so like um I remember when I was in lower elementary and like I just idolized the high school kids like we'd go to a basketball game we' go to a volleyball game and like they were just so cool because they could do all these things that I couldn't do um so I think having those having that time to strategically plan how to get those kids like our high school students
067down into the elementaries to start building those relationships with our programs is going to be a real key it's also important to bring Middle School more aligned and connected to the high school sports and right now they exist and are sort of connected but we need to make sure that it's more of a um intentional Focus because that's the middle of grabbing those little kids but also what are you doing with them in the middle school so there's a lot of work that needs to be done there I think with a position like this to we can maybe um whether it's the coordinator or the assistant have that person spend more time at the at the middle school um to form those relationships with kids and um be there for all the signups and the
068team meetings and things like that um just so that we've got a presence cuz up until a couple years ago we did have that presence in the building and then we restructured and um I think this gives us an opportunity to kind of get back into the building and not full-time but at least a couple or three days a week to be that activity's Presence at the middle school seems like um if you're talking about a programming approach that that would really lend itself to helping to resolve a lot of the things that have come up in our previous discussions about preparation that seems like a highly logical uh plan and I would certainly encourage that you know maybe even periodically you could come back and visit with us about how that's paid off and
069that that is you know an expectation from the board because that was clearly communicated from the community Y and I think when you're talking about you know Community ad building those youth programs more interaction really coordinating with the Middle School people i' also think that that would help to uh retain some of your staff if they could see um hope for the future yeah well then just to be transparent like we're going through that right now with Middle School girls track and you guys have probably heard some of that and I know some of you heard some of that um where we're trying to get fully staffed because we lost several coaches from last year and um I think we're going to be all right um but I think having that presence in the building
070and actively recruiting is it it's hard for me to get down there during the day um to go talk to those people and like I have to be strategic about setting a time and um I think if we had somebody in the building that was building those relationships with the staff and the coaches and um that's going to help us keep those programs fully staffed and hopefully lose fewer people else I had one other question but um I am not the expert on this but is there any um I guess reason to think about opening up to like allow them to complete their um evaluator and administrator authorization within a certain period of time would that help you have more c a bigger candidate pool or is it required that we post it as a
071requirement on higher I'm kind of looking at all three of you Lauren you can correct me if I'm wrong but I think if we have a qualified candidate we would have to pursue that first and rule the qualified candidates out before we could hire somebody to kind of on a conditional basis no benefit we do build the we can go with preferred or required in terms of the certification but then we also depending what the pool looks like we can make those sorts of U not concessions but adjustments if needed to then get to the right certification well and I will say to like my job prior to coming to Urbandale was student engagement coordinator in De at one of the middle schools um that's their terminology for Middle School ad um and I've had
072several of my former co-workers reach out and say like hey if you've ever got an opportunity like I'd love to pursue that so like I know at least a handful of them that would apply for this and jump at that opportunity to have that sort of position right now they they get teacher salary plus a sttip in and De Moine um so this would be a little bit of a bump for some of those folks that have really good experience um already working in De Mo and uh are looking for that next step in their career minky will move to approve the changes to the Athletics and activity position and Hower will second okay this is a roll call Hower yes Kent yes me yes man yes and rice yes Williams yes young yes motion
073passes 7 Z thank you guys thank you back to whatever activity you left there is a concert but my kids wanted to go get ice cream so I'm going to meet them for that first got take care of that y okay on to the UHS FTA F so there's a request for two halftime um positions at the high school recently uh cabinet my team went over and met with the High School administration on their scheduling expectations for next year and where their uh status was on numbers and how many requested and how many sections we need etc etc two of the most uh requested areas are manufacturing and family consumer science and we don't often get a chance to add to give those courses to kids so what the high school requested was a half
074for each one of those areas we don't have space we don't have two cooking labs and we don't have two manufacturing uh carpentry areas so we can make it work for a half Tim and his team have a plan for how we can have that half using those facilities when the current teachers are not in those facilities so that will increase the number of kids who will get that offering in their course requests so um that's the reason that we're requesting a half for each of those um for financial impact right now um I made a note that everything I've brought to you so far is uh relatively Net Zero um there's a a couple of thousand dollars different like I don't know where we were 20 at I'm probably down to about 20 um
075but I I can assure you that I am paying very close attention to that and not going and adding a whole lot of positions without accounting for other areas where we've made efficiencies so um we feel like this is a good move for Tim and his team to be able to start bringing those courses into play for more kids so that we can continue to grow our career work is manufacturing Project Lead the Way no this is I I want to say woods but it how how do I better describe it um Okay Okay C area yeah got it okay they're going to the back room they're planning to repurpose some of that and then there's the time where she's not in the room that they they can share space so I don't I'm hoping
076Tim has had that conversation now that I'm saying that on TV but there might be more to come there and I I would um in my experience which was granted a long time ago I know that these have our facilities and our lack of Staff have hampered student enrollment in a significant way that I think has not been very good for the kids anybody else have questions I would Mo we recommend uh we approve the recommendation for the addition of a halftime Fe in manufacturing and halftime FTE family consumer science position for 25 26 school year young will second and it's a roll call Kent yes me yes minky yes Ben rice yes Williams yes young yes Hower yes that motion passes 70 I would uh move to bring forward the consent agenda can I
077before you start start talking about that make a note um on the addendum the Personnel report addendum there's a jade Fox is listed as a High School employee she actually works at Webster and I just wanted the record to be clear that's a typo I had one more that I thought was a typo that I'll throw in there too um Mr McConnell's dean of students effective date was 2024 2025 oh um was that on the original report original not the agenda I did not look at that I'm assuming we're not retroactively approving it when we approved a different woman he would he's currently in Trum yes yeah well he's it's effective August 1 2025 not 2024 that's it thank you for pointing that out okay so have a motion do we have a second can
078I ask a quick question um on the appointments I believe the person who's in the new work-based learning teacher will be fabulous in that role but have we have we evaluated whether that will be a conflict of interest at all um his who who will his supervisor be Tim will be a supervisor well I don't know who's evaluating him but it would be an administrator at the high school okay yeah it would not be our director student just wanted to make sure just wanted to make sure yeah she'd be harder on him than they I think he'll be fabulous in that didn't Margaret second did you second yes I will second the consent agenda I sure can thank you me yes miy yes R yes Williams yes young yeser yes yes motion passes 7 Z
079I would move to adjourn move the second all those in favor I oppose