001So moved. Second. I So, I know you're thinking this is going to be a short meeting because there's only two items on the agenda. That is notably going to be the case. There's a lot of data to review. And as I had emailed uh Commissioner Fitz Simons, I was working up to the last minute on these presentations. So I'll be able to send these to you right after name so that you can review it and I'll send it to the full uh full board as well. Uh so this evening we're presenting back on the last year smarter balanced assessment results both for achievement and for uh growth. Uh and so I thought we would start with what I presented last year. All right, there we are. Uh what I presented last year in terms of
002what were the focus areas that we had for last year and our action steps to give you an update on the work that's happened uh looking back and then we could take some time looking at in further detail about those results. So last year at this time when I was presenting to student achievement I had identified that grade four wow are you hearing an echo back up a little that helps uh I had presented that grade four ELA and math would be a priority area as well as middle school ELA and math with a focus on grade seven and eight particularly at well two keys and then looking at the data from last year based on the grade eight NCA performance that they would need to pay special attention to grade 19. So I looked
003at what happened as a result of focusing in on those areas last year. You see that grade four did outperform uh the prior year's grade four ELA and outperform the state. We did not do so for math, but that was a pretty um significant gain considering we're targeting that as a potential barrier by this additional levels of support for grade seven and grade eight. We did have grade eight outperform the prior year's schoolwork and ELA math. Again, it was identified as a potential cowork where did be some difficulty. So, it's great to see those results. And we saw grade seven doing the same only in math. um and we have more opportunity for and then finally based on the grade eight there was a lower profound last year so we would would anticipate that um
004so I'm saying last year but before uh we would have anticipated that they would need additional support grade nine and we also have some positive results there given the specific actions we took about the 2425 school year so grade eight vote the prior cohort in evidence-based grading writing in on the PSAT and we both of our case schools exceeded their contact goal with the percent of students exceeding the goal was at 87% of students earning six credits or more and freshman year exceeding that goal. So as a result of the actions we're taking uh in conjunction with our priority areas, we saw some positive the actions that I identified last year are on the left hand side of the chart that you see. So, we were going to continue to focus on our district-wide definition
005of high quality instruction, and we did so throughout the school year with schools facilitating learning and discourse strategies throughout the uh 2425 school year with three supported professional development sessions that were held on Wednesday afternoons along with some continued coaching throughout the school day on techniques related to this course. A second approach that we were going to take was to continue to utilize and strengthen our grad coaches by providing regular opportunities for learning and opportunities for coaches to share across the schools. Really again looking at uh discourse as the main area of our work perception. Last year we were able to facil facilitate two rounds of instructional rounds visiting schools uh with administrators and coaches with our lenses our lens focused on discourse practices and its impact on learning and all of our coaches were
006invited to those online class. The third uh strategy that I mentioned the last time that we were here talking about SBA results was to network schools and distribute leadership among teachers by creating opportunities uh for sharing their each school's strategies for improvement. So prior to this we used to have individual strategic reviews at the beginning and end of year and last year we decided to team schools together so that they could share their strategic approaches. So we did that three times last year and we partnered schools together so that they could share their strategies for improvement uh between schools that were similar and with roles of uh their school leadership teams coming together to also share their level of expertise. So our literacy coaches literacy coaches from different schools, math coaches with other math coaches,
007our social workers focused on attendance. So we had that cross sharing. Finally, and you've seen this likely in the curriculum documents that we presented all of last year, we had a particular focus uh addressing the needs for special populations and strengthening opportunities for acceleration. You've seen you've heard me talk about that as we've presented curriculum that may identify additional supports for students who might need accommodations and for ML students over the past. Continuing with the actions that we said that we were going to focus on last year, uh we knew that we were going to be really focused on the science of reading a degree. We also wanted to ensure that teachers at those grade levels s had some focus on math and math content knowledge and professional learning. So while our formal professional learning
008in August and November focused primarily on literacy uh the elementary puddles that occurred during the school day were focused on that. In 23 24 we adjusted our curriculum for grade four uh recognizing that they needed more time for um addressing the needs that students were showing literacy and math did that by um alternating our social studies for science curriculum. So on a regular elementary school day in grade four and in grade five students would two years ago have social studies science now it fall 20th and that's providing more time for reading and math intervention but we kept that approach in the past year and we saw some positive results as I just mentioned for that particular evolution. We knew that we were going to have um a quite a large number of uh elementary teachers
009who were new to our teaching staff and so we wanted to ensure that we were providing the additional supports that needed for those beginning teachers. Last year principles and coaches within the schools were the primary supports for any teacher district. And then finally, we wanted to use the systems of data that we have to be able to intervene uh get noticed in grade eight that uh there was a potential for us to sooner in the prior year. And so after reviewing benchmark data throughout the school year last year, we did set up uh strategic support sessions. Since this specific action was focused on middle school grade eight, I wanted to share that we did develop specific plans for West Coast Hills. Our L team then now CIS met to meet with the school leadership teams
010at both schools. We also met with Southside school offer you know some of their benchmark data throughout the school year recognizing some additional supports and talk with them about strategy. So we did that. That's an update on where we thought we were going to need to focus this year both in action in the priority area. And so now I'll switch over to what we're seeing and more generally about the result. So achievement in literacy was higher this year uh yet growth was lower than the previous year. And I did talk about this last year as well. It potentially signals that we're able our students are coming in more higher performing. However, we need to continue to push our students who have achieved up at a higher level to grow even further. And that could be
011how we're looking at writing the the tasks that teachers are designing. Are they rigorous enough for students? Are all students really participating in thinking deeply about content? Math achievement was pretty flat. Uh but we did see some gains secondary level. And you'll see overall that more of our secondary schools medal in high specific to literacy as I mentioned there was a slight increase in performance overall achievement compared this year uh as we look back to last year it was higher than 2324 for Baines Chip Northeast and Greenhouse and not increase in middle school performance there all of our elementary schools Baines to Ben Northeast and Green Hills outperformed to the state of Connecticut average for the full scale score. And then you can see some grade levels that did outperform the state average. So grade
012four, remember that was one of our priority areas. They did outperform the state average and the prior cohort of grade students. Grade three outperform the state average in grade B. That was another grade that you might recall that. So some positives there. I also think it's uh important to note that our high need students had a higher growth rate in average percent target achieved this year last since we had again one of our focus areas and actions was a better tailoring. Then you can see schools that had a higher average percent target achievement. That's a growth measure when compared this year for math. uh math achievement was higher than the prior year for bands to Vince West Bristol. Again, see most of the achievement there occurring at the secondary level. Grades seven and eight and
013the priority areas outperform the prior cohorts of grade seven students and chippens in great hills did show more students. bit more detail move forward. So, as we're looking at some of the shading, just to I'll review it once and then the shading as it comes up. Anything in that red uh color are indicate results that were lower than the previous year. Green results that are higher than the previous year. Anything that's in blue text are results that are higher state. bold text you'll see uh reflects results that are higher than pre- pandemic. We stopped tracking that. It just seems a little funny after three or four years to say we're doing better than we were during the pandemic. So you'll see that we didn't bold any text this year. It is we sometimes take a
014look historically over a period of time. You'll see that charts but you won't see. So this is uh the trend of data across the past 10 years now and you can see uh our performance at 63.2 as an ELA performance index 98 at 77 and then state overall at 64.7. So we are higher than we were last year. The green cell by less than one point but not as high as the city. Again just another way of looking that at that data over the period of time. Really when you're looking at it this way it just looks relative. We also looked by school and uh you'll see two uh schools that say Bristol. That's Bristol Central and Bristol Eastern. So they do they while this is about the SBA, they do have an ELA achievement
015index performance index based on their SAT scores and you can see that they made up there that's actually the district this year. So when you hear me referencing our secondary schools that the had increase in achievement is all of our bases and you can see it cross our elementary schools that they're either flat or slightly I also wanted to take a look at grades since we had set some grade level priorities. You can see our grade level performance is compared to the state. So we can see that Bristol is outperforming the state at specific grade levels. If you're looking at grade three, grade four, uh grade five is pretty even. So there's a lot to celebrate there. And you can see that we've had that increase that we were looking for with the grade four.
016Grade three and grade five. uh did have some dips compared to last year. One thing uh so as I was investigating that a little bit more. Grades three and five had the most teachers in year one of their grade. So there were six uh beginning teachers in grade five and uh five beginning teachers in three. And so I would anticipate that some of what they're seeing here is the result of teachers who are granting to them. Oh yeah. Prior year. So 23 24 is in the lighter blue. pointing for 25. So, and feel free to question instead of holding them. Sometimes it's easier actually trying So now this this one's a little bit harder to track. I realize that there are a lot of lines on that chart, but they're representing our achievement scores by
017school over a period of time. Ultimately, when we're looking from about 22 23 to current time, things are relatively flat with um one and two of our schools looking at more of a decrease in performance over time. We'll get to that a little bit as go into detail upcoming. Uh this is our K8 performance. So, just like the previous slide, you see the line graph again, pretty flat. I do think um what's interesting to note here is we're looking at the KP performance of when we're looking at the two schools here, West Bristol had seven new educators at the elementary level and one at the middle school level which is a factor clearly in potentially what their results are where Green Hills had three new educators at the elementary level and one at the middle
018level. So you're 100% more beginning teachers at West Hills and to me that could be a factor that's our middle schools all had improvement over the prior year. You all know you remember member from student achievement committee that our middle school language arts curriculum was recently revised and so it's positive to see these instant results uh because it could potentially be showing us that's having a positive impact on how our students are achieving. You'll see the blue text here because all of our middle schools are outperforming the state performance. I also always like to compare to our alliance districts uh and we have no movement here where we were six above all of the districts. Last year I include the state of Connecticut as a district. There's a marker on the chart. Any questions about
019the cheat sheets? ELA literacy. So I'm going to move on to literacy growth which would mean um just as a recap of some of the terms relative to growth. So for every student's performance on the SBA, they're given a growth target and that could range from 50 points to 100. Just going to give a number there. When we talk about growth rate, that means the percent of students who met their target. When we talk about the average percent of the target achieved, it's how much growth they so when you look at a BPS growth rate at 33.4 4% means about a third of our students met their growth requirements. When we look at the average percent target achieved means on the poll on average students in rowing met about half of the target that they
020were intended to achieve. That you can see that uh we did not outperform ourselves last year. We did not grow more than we did last year. and we've been uh lower and decreasing our growth year-over-year. So, it's an interesting pattern to notice that as our achievement is growing, our growth is lagging behind. And again, that just speaks to we have higher performing students. We have to think differently about how we're continuing to grow our higher. You'll see here that our uh high needs average target achieved is higher than last year quite a bit. And I think that speaks to our again the efforts of our special education department working with our students specific specifically literacy pattern. This shows growth over time and you can see again if I were to put trend lines in there
021it ends up being relatively flat with these highs and lows over the past years even prior to We look at the literacy average percent target achieved by school. See that there were some significant differences between our this year. Uh so Southside school was the only elementary school that had higher this year than last. But we do see our secondary schools across the board really Uh just two things about this in particular because you might be startled by the difference between 4 and 245 for bubble. They did have a new literacy coach and actually they had a literacy coach for about a month last year before she uh resigned to a position in another district. So they did not have a literacy coach last year. That could be a factor that's uh Ivy Drive school. and
022looking more deeply at what could have happened there. So growth is a measure between students who had taken their SBA in grade three and their grade four and then grade four and grade five. So you really can only look for both schools based on grade four and grade five. I would drive has three teachers at each grade level. Two of the three teachers in grade five were beginning teachers in five. So again speaking back to the impact oning teachers and have having our beginning teachers will they become familiar with curriculum so that they can address them that is a factor that we're seeing student areas you'll also see that then we are looking at growth uh among alliance districts that is honestly not where I'd like to see us as the district. Um but it
023has been relatively stable across years and this again this is the growth rate counted should have counted it. question for the chair. when I was looking and I know we can't I just click click click go back to the other pages but for Hubble specifically because you mentioned it as in the last slide a few slides ago it appeared as though Hubble's growth was and I don't remember what slide it was it seemed like it was more progressive than what we just saw in it was going back a way. So I'm sorry I'll have you flip through one apps. I don't want you I don't want ill advice. So you might be is this No, it was a bar graph. Uh it could be this one. >> Yeah. So this is achievement. So this is
024the level that the students are achieving on SBA and the other is and so that gap right my ultimate mastery measure of this year versus how I compare to student when I compare my student to student versus overall school achievement. Uh and just to note as we're thinking about our performance you've heard me say in the past that to me growth is the more important measure. So no matter where you are coming within this district, we want to make sure that we're to grow and the state sees it in a very similar way. When we look at our overall accountability index score for the district, those haven't been released yet. Those were typically released around the end of December. A growth will count uh it's doubly weighted in our overall index. And so this is
025the achievement that the score is this year when we look towards growth. It is how do we remove all students from last question and one that everybody asks all the time so it takes I didn't take note of what what that u slide was representing. So when I saw the sort of discrepant but it's measuring different things. So yeah, thank you >> again. And that is a just another example of seeing pretty high achievement and that we as a district need to think about how can we continue to take higher achieving students like them grow making sure that they are working towards rigorous uh learning targets. So from your perspective in student achievement, the curriculum that we're presenting, how are we continue to support the level of rigor that we're asking students to meet in
026our curriculum documents and then how are we instructing that same level in classrooms so that all students are still growing so they're higher achievement. Sure. the next generation accountability index score. And so that's the you'll you've likely heard me reference that when we're talking about our budget and the 12 different indicators that make up our accountability index. Really the way that the state looks at performance of a district overall. So it includes things like art access, PE, physical fitness scores, but it it also includes math literacy, science achievement, and math literacy growth. So we're looking at math literacy growth, it's it's weighted at 100 points in the overall indepth uh and achievement is weighted at 50. at the elementary level. So to fit science and social studies and an additional what we were calling an
027additional block. So typically in a elementary school day, they have one what I need and in the past teachers if they noticed that there was an issue with students benchmark assessments they're not quite growing to the same extent that we want them to would have to decide whether literacy or math support in order to be able to provide additional time for Wayne and to be able to provide literacy and math support they reduced the social studies and science time. So that rather than doing 30 minutes every day, the full post sentence period, they're doing about 45 minutes a day separatively for a period of about two months. So six weeks, two months, month and a half for social studies and then it rotates to a science topic. They also adjusted when they were teaching the
028science of instruction math so that it fell right. So there was that adjustment. >> Well, we see that it worked for grade four on the achievement side. So they were a lower and on the growth side they were a lower achieving cohort when they were grade three students which is why we prioritize that grade four is the group to focus on. And so we see that they did they're one of the higher performing grades that we have and you see that change through the chair. Um I've actually received really favorable feedback about having that double wind block. Um I say I've spoken to I have a teacher in the district in elementary but the the teachers that I've had um connection with because I have elementary student a son um um has been really favorable
029feedback and so now I have a fourth grade see how that concentration on fourth grade and for that. >> Uh so math is exactly flat to the decimal. Uh we can see some you'll see as we go through that there are some grade levels in schools that did have some uh gains over the past year but overall as we look at the district as a whole and again this is not just SBA. This also includes our SAT performance is flat. We also see that there was a difficult on high need students within that area. >> Jen, I'm sorry. Can I just ask um how are you defining high needs just Oh, great. Another great question. Should have defined that earlier. So, the state defines high needs for us and it's any student who is an
030ML student, any student receives special education services and any student who qualifies for transition but not 504. uh the same as we looked at in the last graph. So you could see the state index, our performance as a district in gray again flat and our performance high. And again, even as we're looking preop, you could see we're pretty flat all the way. And we have our uh percent proficient and advanced by a school as a way of looking at achievement uh by a school over the past year. So the light blue is yeah the blue color it's 234 darker is 245. Again you can see uh our Bristol central had an increase in map over the prior year as did ship and chimp and west Bristol slightly. We don't see the same gains by grade
031level. Okay. Uh but again, I'll make sure that this is updated, but the light blue is last year, the navy or black as it appears here this year. uh and we could see that uh grade seven and grade eight which were our areas of focus did see an increase in I'm going to give Laura all the credit I'm sure she deserves some of the credit being a new supervisor with us but we could see that we had some in seventh and eighth grade elementary school uh this is again the the line chart that you saw for literacy but for math While we didn't outperform ourselves uh last year, we that's why all the pink cells there, we do outperform the state as a similar pattern here um that we saw before. I I have I
032don't know as I looked deeper here, but you can see that it's the reverse of what was happening for literacy and I I don't have a stronger explanation here. or any changes uh really that would be an extent that we see at most are two middle schools not much changes in the ter in terms of not much has changed in terms of staffing there and where we are uh we were this one I did count uh So we were fifth last year back into schools but again their whole school is the size of one of our school levels. So there's a size factor as we're looking at Vernon Spencer. >> So that was all achievement. Now we're looking at growth. Uh and again growth rate is on the left. That's the percent of students who
033met their target. So you can see that the percent of students who are meeting their target was higher than the percent of students meeting their targets in literacy. Although it wasn't quite as high as we were last year. And uh the average percent target achieved is how much of that target on average our district is paying. So again, you can see that it's higher than literacy, but not quite as high as it looking at the time and then by school. Uh so the blue light blue is 2324 the average percent target achieved and then uh the dark blue is this year. So again, if you see the potential issue, Thrive School, I mentioned that before, two out of the three teachers were beginning teachers for us within the district. Uh I also see a drop
034at Stafford school. Uh and they did have a new math coach. It was her first first year as a math coach at Stafford. I can't say with all of this data that there's I think one factor that's really resulting in what we're seeing, but these are factors that I'm considering having. It did not count this time, but I'll get that for you. I'm sure you're going to ask the question. Uh slightly higher than we saw in literacy, but still not at the top of the chart, which is good for us. So for just like last year uh identifying the priority areas, who do we need to pay attention to this year? As we're thinking about literacy, looking at the cohorts of students based on the 2025 data, we need to pay more attention to our
035grades four again, grades six, seven, and eight at all of our elementary schools, Green Hills, and Crystal. for as we're thinking about resources and time, energy, we need to be putting towards those areas. And for math achievement, I'm going to um it's harder to tell now because we have only benchmark data that's available for grade two students, but given the trends in the past, I think we need to dedicate some resources to grade three, four, six, and eight elementary schools. It was looking at the cohorts and where there there might have been gaps because the cohort itself was underperforming based on prior years cohorts. But I also wanted to take a look at schools that showed a difference in growth within the school year. And so focusing in on helping teachers at that grade level
036look at their individual students and ensuring that each student's growing. We need to pay attention to literacy at Hubble Ivy Bristol and math at Hubble Ivy Stanford. And thinking about our next steps, um I used the area of influence from a text called Simply Better uh by Brian Goodland. It identifies high performing districts and the factors that make them so. And so you'll see that we're thinking about these actions that they relate back to these five areas of performance. So the first is guaranteeing challenging, engaging, and intentional instruction. Some of the actions that we're taking this year is to increase voice and ownership and professional development based on a new instructional improvement. So, we're working with every school to identify one of three focus questions that are based on feedback from our teachers and the
037review of our professional development and evaluation committee that committee. They developed three questions for the elementary, three questions at the secondary level and each school is working with their teachers to identify one area. These questions that they developed did focus on supporting their area of focus are generally around supporting discourse particularly students who are in the high students who may require accommodations and for that work they are going to consider students. We're also going to focus on instructional supports for grade three. Again we have five teachers new to that grade level and grade five for teachers who are new to that grade level. And we saw last as we just were reviewing those results that we need to think about the ways they're going to support our beginning teachers. These are not beginning teachers though.
038They're not brand new. They're uh teachers who have had some experience but they're just new to that. So we have curriculum based professional learning sessions scheduled uh to focus in particularly in grade three curriculum just last spring and so they'll be meeting in front of the supervisor with uh the supervisor on how to best finally we um need to our office will have to collaborate with the office of talent management to monitor observations and feedback. back given to teachers and to ensure that teachers are are getting regular as a function of talent management and I do think that's a factor that could be the next area of influence is looking at our curricular pathways to success and we need to given some of the changes within the district think about different ways of looking at
039our data and really analyzing how the the resources that we have are used. So, we're going to be working with each of our instructional support teachers and principles to identify what are the uh times within their school day where they can provide additional tailored support. Uh, and we just I just met with all of our elementary literacy teachers yesterday. Uh, so that they could really think about at the elementary level, we can have up to 30 blocks of time where teachers could be working with students. So how do we match what students need with the class time that's going to happen? and Laura and Les are also going to lead those meetings at the secondary level with middle school thinking about each of we also need to look at the impact of our current intervention
040processes and we'll be working as a team throughout the year to dig deeper into what has been the impact of intervention and are there any changes that the third bullet there is I would like to be able to provide more detailed strand data from this murder balance so it does provide to you some information on the assessment about what strands of content students did well and where they uh did not. Uh that would help us as a curriculum department really tailor what our curriculum looks like and could also tailor questions. Right now uh it says depend on that teacher interest. It is going to take some time. So that is almost like a bonus if we able are able to do that. I'm going to look for teachers who may be willing to with a
041siphon dig more into the providing full child supports. As I am looking at our data compared to the chronic acid tea rate that was presented by last month, we do see that some of the schools were identified that there was an issue potentially with growth. There also had a higher chronic absentee rate last year than they did the year before. So I think it's important that our office work with Eric Mriani to look at those schools and see what could be done so that school students are coming to school more frequently there's more of an opportunity and I just thought I won the third best attendance for the last time. So quick question on that point. I mean obviously we know that research shows students with poor attendance are underachieving. I'm just wondering have you
042had a chance to really like just aggregate data to determine if the students who are lower performer are actually those who are not attending or and you know if the students who are attending at a higher rate are they higher performing or are or I mean I know there's there's a lot of variable in between um because there may be some students who are uh have good attendance who aren't performing ing and so I'm just wondering you know if you've had a chance to really look at that. So each school does have a tracker where they're looking at individual students. I am in my head looking trying to think back to if they're appearing on the tracker. So each school has attendance tracker that monitor students attendance month dayto day how many days how are
043there and then they also have a classroom level tracker. I don't know that there are any charts but I think that's a good suggestion. I think informally teachers have a good sense of that data, but from a district-wide perspective, it would take a little bit more digging and coordinating pieces. >> I feel like if you have students who are high attending, low performing, then it speaks to a different issue. >> Absolutely. Right. is I just was talking recently as I was supporting an administrator and identifying students who might be at that risk and that was one of the factors we talked about if they're if they're attending regularly and putting effort then really need to deeper that student isn't isn't being successful right and then you know if you're and then if you're taking that
044even further and looking at high attending students who are low performing you know is there an instructional component there Is there a support component there? You know, I know you're looking at all those things. It's just those things are coming up for me, too. Um, and and by instruction, I don't mean is the teacher not amazing, but sometimes it's those new teachers. How do you embed the supports for the new teachers? Or sometimes they're um not new teachers, but maybe there are other things going on. For sure. I think that when I would say those conversations happen most frequently with students for demonstrating the highest level of need because that's certainly venture talking uh reminding me of our MTSS process that our principles are leading their teams of teachers of what might student and with
045you know with that it just you know compounds itself because when you're considering how to and like build in supports. And I know we we rely heavily on our coaches and ISTs and you know I'm writing down questions about how many ISTs and coaches do we have and where are they? Because you're really talking about how to um look at strands and where can you build in supports for teachers um with coaches and ISTs and then it had me thinking how many ISTs and coaches have and where are they and do we have vacancies? I know there might still be some positions. I'm sure you're thinking about that, too. Um, you know what? I'm looking at the whole global picture. Um, those Sure. Yeah. Sorry, I don't mean to off track. Nope, that's fine. Uh,
046so we don't have any coaches any longer. Uh, we have one thematic coach that's available at for ISTs. Uh we have Carter off the top of my head, one math in structural support teacher at West Coast at the elementary level and at the center there three with one vacancy at the vacancies right hey at the middle school or math IST uh and so I'm sorry West Bristol has one math IST documentary. I have two bad free ISC math across the district. What's two days? So ideally we would have five or three now to wake five. One at West Bristol, not three and one secondary. Gotcha. And one West Bristol. No, >> you said one that's secondary >> elementary. So one for K5 that's West Bristol Mathist. The secondary math IST is vacill one and then
047uh northeast and veins is a split position that's now northeast. >> We'll make a chart for you. Yeah, we'll make a chart for you and that leaves chip in the point. >> And that's it. >> That's it for Matt. So, not to state the obvious, but I wouldn't ask the staff to do that, but we, this board collectively made a decision to eliminate coaches and a heavier reliance on ISTs who then left the district and we have more vacancies this year than before. Is that accurate or is this >> some of them were intentionally uh not filled part of the reduction at or uh Joe Joski might have to talk more about that. The secondary ISTs at our K8 those were positions that were affected by the reduction and some went to the classroom. Some
048ISTs went to the classroom. Uh >> so >> or coaches coaches coaches went through the class. >> So IST positions. >> So we just reviewed math. We didn't talk about literacy. There weren't as many impacts in literacy in general. There's about two literacy ISTs per elementary school or they except schools that have one and a half. Uh and our our bigger elementary KS that's three ISTs. That's the literacy slite quite a number of resources elementary and middle and so if you can refresh my memory and maybe this question is for um superintendent white were the IST because all I really remember in the first round uh round of cuts was the coaches. I don't remember us targeting this many IST positions. So, did those come as additional cuts afterwards in the initial round of cuts,
049right? Okay. Okay. So, I will most likely just send a follow-up question email outside of this um group just to get a better understanding of total amount of reduction impact because I still think it's not entirely clear between what we voted on and then what ended up happening and then shifts since then um which might not have been initial targets of reductions but after reductions we saw additional shifts. And so we'd want to understand that if we find um budgetary dollars increase more than expected and consider filling some of the reduction positions. I'm sure you're considering that in your plan, but it would be good for the board to understand this is what it looked like when we did the first round of reductions. This is some additional reductions that had to be made and
050these are additional trends that happen outside of the reductions but are impacting goal areas. And so we'd want to know all that for when kind of restructure resources or explain to the board how you'd like to restructure resources when when you get them. I think that would just be be helpful this as we approach the um yeah and the you know the December time frame. and all that. Thank you very much. >> Another factor that impacts that is that many of our uh instructional support teachers are funded by title one and so you wouldn't see an impact necessarily in the general budget. Some of our literacy ISTs and some math IT were funded under alliance. So that did allow for some of those conditions to be impacted when we needed to staffing or staffing general
051classroom teachers. Uh so there were two more areas within uh an area of influence that would uh lead to a higher plumbing district. So thinking about what could be done there, we need to uh think about providing ongoing support to administrators within their first two years in office. So, we know that there's a number of schools that will have new administrators and I've been working closely with those administrators and understanding their data and really looking at what their potential goals can be as we're looking at who that would be across our district. Hubble, Ivy, Mountain View, Southside, Greenville, Southwest Bristol all have had uh new administrators either joining their team or grinding with their roles this year. uh and for all school leaders our office serves to support and helping to identify what those academic
052goals could be and we are here to support monitoring of those goals as students are taking data from uh as we're thinking about high reliability district systems uh I think superintendent white and I have plans to talk about instructional rounds learning blocks and practicing practices and how we could use those as tools to help us have a better understanding of some of those factors that were on the prior slide. How how uh guaranteed? How rigorous is our instruction? What are the pathways to success in curriculum? And as we're thinking about the tasks that are in front of students, certainly having the opportunity to see those tasks happen on a day-to-day regular school day will help us know what other actions we really need to take. And then finally, we need to work with our office
053of talent management. uh supports for beginning teachers uh given some of the changes within the district uh and also think about supports for any teacher who might be in a long-term absence. We see that we have new mothers for FMLA long-term substitute in that classroom. are saying and act on strategy in those classrooms and so what can we think about to some more long-term substitutes or >> are we seeing a lot of long-term subs? Uh so yes and Mr. have to give you the details on that. I know just casually we've needed across the district and I think the last time that you mentioned it to me six among our elementary among six teachers among our elementary that is going to be important too. Um, we're looking to one strategy that I've talked Joe about
054uh is hiring back uh retired teachers who might not want to come back and be a long sub. You don't necessarily want show up every day in a regular schedule, but you might be willing to support planning or checking in with them, classroom management, those types of processes. So we have a plan. Uh just need to work together to see where those >> it's definitely a scopeful plan. Um but they definitely do not want to be paid at the long-term sub rate. Correct. Correct. They'd be paid as a consultant rate which does allow us to use title two fund. Yeah. Because it's professional learning coach. So we title two. That would be the same kind of thinking that we' be thinking about with I will send as I said I'll send the detail at the
055keys and count where we are compared to alliance last year. Uh and it sounds like you'd like the IST detail too. I can well I think I'll ask that Mr. send that because I don't have the most updated information and and with the IST and coach I mean I know I know that we have a a drastic reduction in that and those positions I mean I'm I'm just feeling a little bit worried about how that's going to impact any plan that you might have knowing how important those positions were and I'm seeing it firsthand um in my in my son's grade band not having the support of ISTs and coaches and I think I said previously and anecdotally that whatever model Southside had with coaches and ISTs was to me an exemplar and it was
056really really um impactful in a positive way. So I worry especially seeing where those concentration areas you have based on the data those elementary years literacy and math but math is where we're seeing most of the reduction. Um how are we going to be supporting classroom teachers? I mean I know you I know you're figuring it out and this is not a reflection on I'm not I'm not sure that I have a perfect answer. >> Do you know what I'm saying? Because you do have to rethink. you really have to rethink without having those supports. And those coaches and ICS were supporting tier one instruction. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't about tier 2 in it. It was about they were supporting tier one instruction. They were supporting instruction in the classrooms. Um, so that's
057why I'm asking about these positions and and then then compound that with potentially long-term subs. Like I know you have ideas. I'm just, you know, more more hands make less work. >> I think um I'm I'm in agreement with um um Commissioner and was part of the reason why I asked, you know, a reflection on what the reductions may have done, but also could continue to do going forward. and knowing that um there does seem to be some correlation already in my mind um and I know you know you're the data people you're going to scrutinize the data and you're going to do the best that you can with what the board allowed you to have but as we go into the budget year and that's why I said that you know the entire board
058not just the three of us that sit here at student achievement and understand these and listen to these meetings and understand the scores and the presentations that you give us um year after year. You know, they the rest of the board needs to understand that clearly and be able to support the investments that support student achievement. Um because it's one of our goals as a board to make sure that our students are achieving. So, um, if we're starting to see those trends already, we have an opportunity in January to make some focused budget considerations on how to bring that some of those models. I had some before we move off of SBA though, and I I want to stop talking to give anybody else a chance, but I did have some additional generalized questions that
059I asked about the SBA stuff. So in the very beginning there was the um the slide that said that you conducted two instructional rounds focused on this course. Um great. What what was it before? How many instructional rounds did you guys do before this year? So in prior years we'd have three uh full instructional rounds and four promising and practices class across the year. So it was averaging about one. The promising practices looked at schools that showed uh higher achievement scores either from the SDA or from benchmark assessments. And we would conduct elementary literacy practices walk secondary literacy pro math but math at elementary and secondary. Uh and last year we did we did not do those promising those walks and held our focus on to structural rounds which means our entire administrative faculty are
060dispersed in smaller groups across every school uh to observe practice rel related to this class. In the year prior it was focused or it's going around to the middle level really trying to identify what were those practices that would strengthen middle school instruction and again I think that is as you're seeing exceptionary showing some rise in achievement and so in our early conversation superintendent and I talked about reinstituting a greater with greater frequency incural bounds practicing practices to bring Um, similar question. The three times where the teams shared their strateges are bothering me here tonight. Sorry. Three times teams shared their strategic plans and network with similar schools. Um, did did we do that with more frequency before? >> That's a the change from before were individual meetings. So schools presented their schoolment plans to
061our office teaching and learning as well as the central office cabinet uh at three times a year beginning middle and end of year. It really was more of a formal reporting too uh and so we wanted to have that more of a collaborative experience the past year and allow sharing between schools. Uh and again superintendent way and I have talked about doing a blend of those two approaches because there is something I think to the individual accountability from the prior that might have been schools together. Certainly it's beneficial for schools to be talking with one another. We want that practice to continue but I think we built in a middle of the year individual opportunity for schools to report review and report. We've got two more left. Um, so I'm going to bring up the
062Wednesday afternoon when we had some more. Um, and I don't want to say the wrong things about what it what was it and what is it now and is there opportunity to use that Wednesday afternoon time frame to go back to some of these practices. >> Uh, let me start with the first fact. to the facts I could answer with that. Uh when we first began with Wednesday early dismissal on Wednesdays uh we had 32 right in inception and it went down to 28 and now it's at 19. So those three different contracts. So the first contract started at two reduced not recent contact it is about two meetings per month. Um we're focused right now on that instructional improvement process. So schools are looking at uh discourse and how to meet the needs of
063all students. I reference back a focus question that they were studying at each school. That's really the time that they're using for that focus question and there's time for curriculum based professional. So in the upcoming session October 29 Wednesday are going to be that changes their next that weekly attempt to teachers do that at least 19 So because that was a contractual reduction, uh we can only work with the 19 we we promised them. So unless we pay so that's the other option. Uh we do have some curriculum that's happening update on Wednesday. I don't know how else to fall to that but it would be a Wednesday that doesn't have a meeting that helps us keep teachers substitut >> and I know They're very clever at coming up with creative ideas. So, it's good
064that I like to ask these questions. So, we're hearing when we can to the opportunity. We're doing site events. We're getting people to come in on those nonline Wednesdays, Wednesdays. Um, and working on these items. But you know just something else that student achievement committee would you know have to think about is that if that is the only time that we have we go into contract negotiations at some other point and performance still appears to be in need of improvement in comparison other things. It's just something else that you know might need to be talked about if it if you know you need more time to do things. So, it'll be up to the priorities that are set by the by the district and hopefully maybe do some great contract negotiation. I don't know. I
065don't know. It's possible. Right. So, we do we we make some changes, we assess the impacts of those changes, and then reassess where needed. I don't think that's an any than any other kind of changes. Last question. the um with redistricting coming up and um eliminating the K8s to be elementary and then change um students sort of changing and shifting in the district um to their new middle schools for some and it might be a change in their middle school for some. So some kids will not know any different because they're just starting their middle school year at sixth grade. But some other seventh and eighth graders may end up moving. Um, are we I am sure that the district staff is mindful of the potential for the redistricting to have some, you know, homes
066in the road and students are moving in those critical areas. But I also see an opportunity in the K5s for because that redistricting is also supposed to put a little more equity in the classroom sizes across the district. So I'm hoping there's more positive on the K5 front and minimizing any potential impacts on six through eight front. So, just something else that just popped in my mind because next year I saw your priorities and the goals that are very well laid out based on data, but we're also impacting those populations with redistricting. So just another layer of potential. all those children. So I mean children are different programs. decided level. >> Thank you. That was great detail. there's a classroom size um component that mentioned that I didn't even you know kind of discuss with
067my previous concerns but when we're looking again at fourth grade classrooms with 25 students in a class um and all of the needs that were discussed title one schools um schools that might have attendance issues again I just think you know it's really important that we do consider budget uh budget conversations um how we build in staff supports whether it's using title one funds to build back in some of these supports that teachers are desperate for I mean they're just so needed and ultim I mean the students are desperate for but they don't know they don't know they need it because they're just littles you know but um so just kind of rounding out your concerns And the concerns I think that you shared, I know the concerns that you're having is really how do
068we look at what we have for a budget and how do we build in uh build back in some of these supports that I don't know that we want to wait two to three years to look at the impacts of not having them because that means that those achievement scores um are likely to be um detrimentally. Who wants to see that? Sure. So the last assessment is the library acquisition and skills assessment. So it's given to all of our ML students in grades 8 through 12. And so this will be the presentation uh that series of assessments that occurred last school year in between January and March. So the district headlines of last performance, Bristol's students overall achievement on the last is higher this year than last and higher than the state average. Achievement on
069literacy and oral subtest were higher than last year and higher than state average to some population. Greater improvements were made in literacy that has been an area of the past years. We saw that there was some impressed achievement in literacy and so as Sarah Lupa's guidance they really kind of focus specifically literacy results grow on the oral subtest study while we play against grades four five across the district last year we had our highest number of ML students district and I did pull just this year's October 1st numbers to give you understand talking with Sarah earlier today that that number is down by this number does tend to be um pretty variable throughout the school year we can see students within the school year and by 21 this year so last year was study on
070October 1st and 569 uh this compares the 23 24 performance two to 25. The gray bars are really the light gray is literacy. The darker gray is coral. The darkest bar is overall performance. The light blue is literacy. The darker blue is coral performance. as well. So you can see again as I'm talking about the move last year's results and that achievement on the last is a little bit tricky because you're looking at where a student is coming in what their potential uh background language is. So if I start as a 35 student and I've had dual language instruction from my school my home I might have the stronger level of like students that know I say that some of our high school students really. So this is a little bit misleading because it could
071just represent students. But we do see overall that subject all students have access to the literacy. see the difference between last year and this year that we see that there are more students out of five more now. So for students that have been in the district for more than one year unlike what I was just talking about background growth does show a student. So this shows the average% targeted is pretty flat. where but we do see that that% target achieve is above 16%. What's interesting again these numbers because these numbers could represent so they were not here anymore. So when we try to compare from year to carrier what the impact was last year we also I also looked by grade level to see if there were there suspicion thing is that one or two
072um I mean it's helpful to have the percentage but I think because the numbers could be far lower it would be be kind of helpful to see the the actual, you know, specific number of students that we're um looking at. >> It's going to be harder to show this as a previous state. >> Oh, get that on each one. >> Okay. >> A little bit harder. >> But it's it's a number that's accessible to you. like it wouldn't take I just have to hover over and see. >> Okay. >> Oh, I see. And then trying to import your own. Okay. >> No, no. Yeah, we don't. That's what I want to have to go through all that. But thanks. Well, the state is going to be required to be ADA accessible with their stuff that's
073online by April of 26. So hopefully the hover over stuff does not continue to appear. >> Um, okay. Okay, so growth in literacy. Remember this is where I was saying saw the greatest last year we turn and it is through last year very specific centered around protocols. Again, you can see the schools where they're seating above. This is the rating number of our schools did exceed 7% priority area. This test has it's important to us provide more specific information. So we narrow down to students levels speaking. So already shared this second So you'll see that there are some slides around you'll have that for each. But if you have any questions about have a lot of questions, but I I'll look at the, you know, I mean, the data is it's there's so much to
074data, as you know, I mean, and then to then to be able to interpret the data and create plans around the data, it's it's a big it's a big undertaking. You guys are really fantastic. Um, I think once we have sort of the full uh scope of all the data that you have, then maybe there'd be a chance to just not necessarily put it on the agenda again, but have opportunities for conversation around it. Better than now. Sir, >> thanks. Thank you for putting this all together. I know it's I mean I know you love data and you love to you know maybe it's your love language, you know. >> I find data to be one of my love languages. >> English teacher. >> I actually love literature. >> Okay. >> No, I think every
075bit of data question. One quick question for the chair. So the data that comes out in December uh would we not have that in student achievement until the January meeting? >> What's interesting is typically presented that I don't Yeah, I don't want to put undue pressure in the, you know, the December time frame. So, if you think it would work there, that'd be great. If we think it's going to better fit this year with the rest of the budget talks, that's fine, too. I was just curious. >> So, I think uh what I could do is really their state still has to finalize some That's why we get but it won't take so long. Is it possible? I don't know how big this document is, but is it possible to have a hard copy of
076it? that I I mean I'm mindful of how much paper that might take, but uh it's nice to have and be able to notes