001the Board of Education to order if you join me with the Pledge of Allegiance liberty and justice for all start by making a motion to a point um Dwight and Spike presenting secretary and Brad's absence do we have support new discussion you can't object I'm sorry all in favor please say aye also make a motion to amend the agenda to include an action into after the presentation for an out-of-state overnight trip request support any discussion I'd like to talk to you when you get to the agenda all in favor please say aye aye all right um absolutely Angelina Barnes a black hand Spike president Jason Hanselman here right starter John McConnell here is the trust spot right Weaver here thank you um so before he starts I'd like to kind of preface why we're why
002we're here a little bit so um back in July uh there was the governor's budget and you know Rob went over all these different budgets and possibilities and then there was a lot of categorical funds that was talked about so like back in July we knew money was coming then in September we got a memo from mde which basically just copied the legislation with not a lot of guidance um and so then on October 7th um we received from Kent ISD some guidance on some funds some Grant funds that were going to be available and so that was the Friday before our board meeting and then there were some meetings that curriculum directors were getting getting into which was the week of the board meeting and so you have to have a a board meeting
003prior to the end of October to even qualify for these funds and so we thought because we have the board subcommittee a curriculum that we could probably do at curriculum but we don't want to risk not being able to get these funds so it could be as little as a hundred and fifteen thousand to to more and I just want to make sure that the district has every possibility of receiving funds that we can in this kind of action it was just it's not an action item he has to present and we'll put we'll post it he'll also talk a little bit about a timeline and they're giving us a webinar on how to use these funds but as you'll learn it's not even until November which is after the presentation has to be done
004so we've got some guidance and this is a template that was recommended that that Brian puts together so that's why we're here yeah thanks for the introduction there as I said Dr spickard um we had our County curriculum meetings the day after our last board meeting you know when some of us were filtering down to us through nise and Wayne icy and some of the guys these in the state about what the state statute was going to entail and included president presenting this information and parts of this plan to the school board in the month of October and that was the day after and there were several folks not just me in the room thinking like I don't know what we're going to do about this now and again we thought maybe the the route
005there could have been through the subcommittee that we wanted to play it safe and make sure that we satisfy State Statute and make sure we don't risk losing these funds so um so this is based on a template provided by some of the big iscs in the state about mitigating learning loss this will satisfied State statue 98 C Public Act 144 to make sure that we're eligible for those funds so um I'm gonna be a little bit formulaic I want to talk about what it is 98c is part of that budget part of that law um the established the budget uh PA 144 represents uh 52 million in federal funds that the state government is earmarking um through gear through the governor's emergency education relief ear fund you know again these are funds are flowing
006to us from the Esser to funds from the federal government there's links here these will be this presentation will be posted tomorrow and I've tried to hyperlink where possible so folks can kind of Trace back to what I'm referring to here that's the basic overview of details and timeline um it's going to be it's 50 million dollars it's based on how many districts apply districts to apply and accepted if you get x amount of that pool based on their student body count or student count from the fall and we're estimating that we'll receive as much as fifty dollars per student which will put this you know a top range of around 150 000 for DeWitt Public Schools so again that was something that we needed to make sure that we were following the lawn and
007eligible uh and not let those funds pass Us by These funds need to be used during the 22-23 school year we have to have a board presentation by October 30th the technical assistance webinar from MBE is coming November 4th after um the presentation must be due there was to be fair to say there was a TA webinar that happened a few weeks ago those who attended that said it was completely not helpful and that every question they asked the state was kind of like we don't know we'll get back to you type of thing so say bureaucracy and all of that was was trying to be helpful but wasn't totally helpful here as far as giving us information at the right time to make these decisions in a timely fashion so trying to do the
008best we can right now with the information we have um so once we have this presentation uh done tonight we'll be attending that webinar and then our plan will be posted to the state by November 30th about how we're going to use these funds if granted funds will be available made available in early December we'll use those funds we have Parts in here where we're going to be talking about um if we need to revise those or we need to kind of um judge how we've done with those funds Etc and then we'll be issuing an impact report July 14th to mde and mde will turn around an issue an impact report to the legislature about how these funds were used Statewide and the impact that they had on students because that's kind of overview
009there as a piece of this template I need to show you kind of our current District data and luckily we typically don't do this in the fall but we have NWA the nwea data how it depresses and I will go in detail these are going to be you know these have been available online for a couple of days now and they're going to be posted a couple of weeks here and we'll be posting um this tomorrow so folks can look at them too but as you know we've been really interested the last couple of years with our nwea data that we give that these assessments we get three times a year in grades k through eight about the quintile level or the relative quintiles where our students are scoring and how that kind of gives
010you a quick visual about how we relate to the National averages and so on so we have with tracks like this right so this is the latest data from our school district this is kindergarten and as I told you before one of our goals and when we look at this and data inquiry Cycles with grade levels with buildings we aim for 80 of our students at that average or better so blue green or yellow and as you can see here are incoming kindergartners are scoring very well right and better than any kindergarten group has scored for several years and so that's kind of like nature is healing type of thing I'm trying to positive maybe hypothesize but suddenly we've got a kindergarten group that's kind of right back on track where we used to kind
011of see them there but I'm not going to go through each and every one of these as an example of what we see just to flip through we do see you know obviously some grade levels here especially in reading that aren't where we would like them to be as far as 80 percent of X you know the national average are better even this one on the right here the third grade reading distribution still better than the national average right still better than probably the state average but it is lower than our goal and that's something that we're paying attention to so when we talk about learning loss um the first second and third graders are showing a lag and reading that they had now in our district prior to this and that is consistent with
012local districts consistent with the state the the nation even the world some measures of world reading um the pandemic had a negative impact on learning outcomes no matter where you were so that's where we see it hearing delay but we also see like there on the left-hand side of the math in the same grade level despite everything that those kids who were you know kindergarten first grade when the pandemic really hit are hitting our Target and math you know so these success stories even within some of our challenges moving through the grade levels again you can look at this later too start to get some really good scores seventh and eighth grade reading again I think one of our takeaways were that students who experience the pandemic as fourth fifth sixth graders who had the
013kind of basis of reading down prior bounce back you know they had a solid foundation with which to build back on and you see some of those scores here from our seventh graders are are pretty darn pretty unexceptional some of us where they've seen as far as the number of our students who are at the high and high average or average race on NWA compared to the National gear so and then I did do where I kind of combined all of our data points the 2000 odd students that had taken it this is K8 and you see our goal is 80 in the last couple years I didn't pull that one out but we have been sub 80 to start with and here we're right kind of one was 79.5 or something like that one
014was exactly 80 right we're we're hoping to be so and the aggregate we see ups and downs as we see the kids are performing about where we want them to be of course we want to we want to see Improvement but there are spots that we see learning loss and want to Improvement there's no doubt one piece I just need to slide in here today because I just made it today I want to show this is our Cadence so this is our K5 reading screener this is measuring the kind of building blocks of reading can kids comprehend reading kind of the code words you know this is really kind of a skill based pieces of reading and this one here is a cohort View starting all the way over on the right with the fifth
015grade class you can see what they did in the fall of 2020 the fall of 2021 so it was the third grade fourth grade fifth grade the fourth grader is the next set over is a second grade third grade fourth grade the next seven cohort over the class of 2032 our current third graders UCA first grade second grade third grade you see the trend here there are some hiccups for the trend here is the cohorts of kids because we're going to look at grade level over grade level or grade level we know those are different kids year on year I often like to look at cohorts of students graduating classes how they are progressing or gaining through the system and this is a fall on fall on fall and like that's the kind of textbook
016our current second grade came in as kindergartener 64 percent uh proficient or at or above Benchmark and they've made gains each fall they've been in our system so I think that that's a piece that shows some really good news um as far as how kids individual cohorts of kids are progressing so it's a mixed bag there's some there's some tough scores in here there's some really impressive scores and then if you look at this like how are individual grade levels of kids progressing um that I think there are a couple spots where there's a lot of Hope and you see exactly what you want to see next piece here per you know the the template here was to talk about our current and future supports and their impact you know what what have we been
017trying to do again I think with a lot of success to mitigate um the effects of the pandemic on our reading course we had strong supports in place in the first place our tiers our multi-tiered systems of support so we already had plans for when things went wrong right we didn't went surprised by when things went wrong or when when the students didn't learn we had tiers of support built in to so when you know this big shock hit us and the pandemic in a lot of ways we were more prepared than we probably ever had been so you know again especially at K5 level we've really focused on Ela and math and establishing through my predecessors and John Dieter when he was here making sure we had viable guaranteed math and reading curriculums K-5
018and we saw our test scores rise over the past 10 years and so we have high quality research-based instruction for all nationally recognized curricular programs we also have robust tier 2 supports at each building where we have pull out situations or even in within the room excuse me where teachers can do groups and do different things with different techniques win time is one thing they do a different grade levels where they build in time for students who need a little extra they need some reteaching and get some pre-teaching they need some you take a test small group instruction you know that's our first item in defense when students don't need expectations or aren't performing uh you know the way the way their families and they and us want them to we go to those tier
019two supports and then when those fail we didn't have another layer of support tier three and those are in specialized settings where we'll pull out for intense uh remediation and different subject areas of math and Ela especially when students show a special media um and I would say too about those supports as a part of our response to the pandemic we've hired um paraprofessionals to assist are folks who are giving those tier three supports and we've doubled in all three of our buildings since the pandemic doubled our capacity and interventions that's been a key part of our so twice as many kids a day are getting interventions in that tier three setting pull out one-on-one three-on-one they were before us we've doubled that other programs we have um you know like online programs we have
020a program at the elementary level called read live IXL is something we use um two through 12 you know for math especially where kids can get extra help and get extra practice espark is a solution we use at K1 and on it won't go into all of them here but we have several kind of a bevy of online tools that have helped kids see a flow not only during the pandemic but since get caught up um have a secondary level we have Support classes at DMS we do less pull out of that grade level when we do more like in seminar I know my wife for one is a sixth grade teacher she's creating the teacher and she teaches um a Ela support class and get some really good results with kids who need that
021extra boost their teachers who are teaching that through math as well so I know the Middle School really takes advantage of that seminar time for that the other piece I want to talk about that we're doing now is our curriculum specialist so we've also hired throughout the pandemic they've been there for guidance planning and coaching um the both the the leaders of our district so the leaders of our buildings and teachers depending on the need I want to hit briefly here too the role that counseling staff have played obviously they are appoint people for our social emotional screeners and lessons they lead they've used that to inform kind of group counseling group sessions that they have but they're also obviously one-on-one counseling sessions for students when they need it they're also core members of our
022leadership teams and so when we do our data Dives and identify who needs help social emotionally but also they're at the table when we make decisions about who needs to be in what groups for academic interventions they're key parts of that leadership team and then beyond that I mean throughout the pandemic just wanted these are just a few of the things that they've been doing here meeting our social emotional mental health needs supporting Educators coordinating our responses um engaging with community members parents to make sure that folks have what they need resources they need they have been more utilized and more critical to our efforts than ever you know throughout this future going forward we're going to continue to utilize our staff and resources in these creative ways I mentioned bringing on the Specialists bringing
023on extra pair of Pros a Double R capacity you know those are unique things that we've done based on responding to the pandemic so we'll continue to do those kind of creative things Summer Schools after school programs you know some other examples here continuing our efforts around social emotional support so we'll send an email out to grades two through 12. we've invested in a product called Sabers and that's a product that's used all over the state to help identify students in need of intervention and help kind of tell us look at our systems and see how our kids are internalizing externalizing behaviors look for red flags that type of thing see who's at risk from that standpoint uh are going to be continue to utilize those curriculum Specialists to work with grade levels and departments
024and then continue to explore utilization of existing and emerging programs one program in particular I talked about NWA there's a there's several but one through NWA is called accelerator and not only does it do the extra practice like I excel but it actually partners with Khan Academy it takes the students map scores their writ scores and gives them like what Khan is famous for like those targeted video lessons new instructions to help Advance students who are ready to be Advanced we talked a lot about the kids who fell behind but obviously hearing what we have a lot of gifted students as well and that may be a big part of how we score that Circle and allow kids to kind of continue to spread their wings and continue to grow at their Pace um you
025know while still serving all of the Learners in our classroom so that's just examples of things we could fund with some of these ones the impact impact studies we do annually on our programming through what used to be through assist and through the school improvement process now a state has shift to that into my Kip the Michigan continuous improvement process and so we are kind of embedded in some of these pieces where we analyze impact so we'll be doing that naturally as our leadership groups meet and analyze their data we'll be taking a look at how we spend these funds what the impact has had and then we'll be reporting that out to the Michigan continuous improvement process that might get as well give you any Vision obviously we do this all the time as
026we respond to student needs we evolve you know one example of that I've shared a curriculum committee before was we came to the table thinking at a second grade third grade in our Scott School data review thinking hey you know we've got dollars here our resources we can start some math interventions well our math inter math scores came back great and so I dropped with a hat they're like no we're not we're not going to commit those resources to management we're going to redeploy that person back into reading intervention that's where we needed it so I've been very proud of our teams they're very responsive to what the data says we don't come in with a kind of pretextual idea of what we want to do before and we really let the data to speak
027to us so I have no doubt what that is something that our teams can continue to do that's my presentation so any questions when you're going through the corals at one of the grade levels it goes to the further center right seem to go up and take a step backwards who would you love that uh so looking at the current fifth grade fifth grade all right yeah so they this is fall on fall so fall third grade they're at 70 percent fall of um last year they were at 80 and now they take down just a couple of points of 78. um you know that you can sometimes there's noise in this too it could be just based on um how students are feeling that day or testing you know testing conditions that um that
028type of thing obviously that's something that's not a celebration but a two-point drop um you know isn't isn't the biggest concern in the world either but I'd have to go back to our notes for our fifth grade meeting and see exactly kind of how they handle that and typically we'll look at that kind of describe a problem of practice um kind of the the data inquiry cycle I described for you before and they work in their teams to kind of hypothesize on what could be going on here I mean the good news is that especially for this year and all of those previous charts is that this is our Baseline data for this year so our Baseline data is already looking better than what we were expecting which hopefully we'll be able to make even
029more games with but that's what we do that you know root cause analyzes and try to figure out why what might be happening here and hypothesize about if we tried this this might improve this in this way set a smart goal so we can measure that set up time limit say Hey by January next time or by the spring Administration if we do the things that we plan to do that we think are addressing the root cause then we should see a increase in those scores so we also look at I'm sorry we also look at other data so if you'll go back to NWA data for in fifth grade so we can take a look at um other data points to see you know where where we are and we can see here that
030obviously they're struggling a little bit more which is flipped with math than they are with breeding so we we take a look at other data points to try to help make sense of the data as well are you drilling a little drill down the stator to see a specific subcategories of map of reading yeah so especially I was going to say that each of these reading and math kind of monoliths in each grade level they have four sub categories beneath that have the same splits we kind of say hey numbers and operations the math is difficult or pre-algebra or those different things and that's a great example in graduate myself Dr sticker because you know we saw a little hiccup there in the fifth grade 80 80 to 78 but they're showing as one of
031our stronger reading groups here and and um sorry in acadians and NWA they're showing as one of us trying to reading groups too and those do test slightly different things right the acadians is more about the kind of like um the process of learning to read and I think NWA is more about common core and like reading to learn right so that looking at the passages and are you comprehending this can you compare it to something else um they're looking for more advanced literary kind of analysis skills in NWA and acadians you see it stops the fifth graders are still we're measuring candidate code words are they fluent how many words are they reading a minute so it's kind of more the RPMs under the hood if you will and so one of the conclusions
032that I might make with data like this is that because this is an analysis analysis piece and kids are doing really well they know how to read so Arcadia the arcadian's piece is telling us they might be struggling with reading that this is telling them different and so I mean 78 percent proficient you know I mean that's about that's average that's where we want to be for DeWitt right but you know that's you know basically it was more than that yeah yeah no obviously we don't like that that concerns us I think it's the blues blues and gears from folks when we sit down and they're not happy well the teachers are really hard on themselves when they see that for that too so let's say we get this funding I I know you kind
033of talked about is this just going to continue ongoing programs that we have I mean it can okay it can or it can find new food programs if there was a new program what where would you invest it um boy you know I I think that's a tough question um because there are needs and all over the district and the one thing we talked about was um our continuing support you know the social emotional screening um you know some of the curriculum kind of pieces that come along with that because we've we've made some purchases and done some things but especially the Specialists or the new Savers curriculum that are screeners that um we've already invested in but if we are able to use these funds for that or to prolong the life of the
034curriculum specialist I mean we basically want to use the funds for something that we're seeing make an impact on where he wants but another example was the product through um and they'll be able which is called map accelerator you know which would be um it's not it's not an insignificant cost you know so if we pilot you know we're hoping to Pilot at a low level this year but if that was something we wanted to really invest in that could be a big chunk of that 150 000 right away you know to try to make sure that we're allowing not just practice but opportunities for new lessons and things for kids who are already at grade level or above grade level and also that would be that's one that I know that um you know
035as we grow in size you know some schools you know slightly bigger than us have pretty more robust need programs and we just don't have that kind of scale to do that we've partner with um higher higher institutions of learning very well at the middle school and high school level to accelerate kids at that level but the question is how do we get that same type of challenge to kids who are ready for it K5 and a program like map accelerator might be might be a great choice for that so that would be addressing something that's been a long-standing problem but I think the pandemic has it kind of exacerbated that even more where some kids are laying behind other kids are ready to go you know type of thing and the teachers in the
036middle it has kind of two polls of kids in their classroom so it's very close thank you Public Communication oh sorry I forgot I'm under the agenda it's the recommendation by superintendent Channel speaker that the Board of Education approved the out-of-state overnight field trip for DeWitt High School Marching Band National Finals competition in Indianapolis from November 10th to November 12th 2022 I did not bring my reader sorry that's okay so we just yeah support movement supported discussions so um obviously we knew that this trip was a possibility or something that we qualified to do but um we just got the paperwork today and it has to be approved and we don't have another board meeting until after the trip so um when Mr Norman saw that we were already calling a special meeting you're not
037going to happen very quickly um which is great because now we don't have to schedule another special meeting but um so obviously you know being state champs there's some pre-qualification I think that the reason why we did like he talked to me about this trip months ago but I think he wanted to make sure the band was ready and they've secured funds for like anyone who can qualify to go is paid for to go so that's exciting news um too so um it should be a great trip I think we've got a couple of band parents here so you know a little bit about it but yes because it's an overnight trip the board does have to approve that so I recommend that you approve the truck any more discussion all in favor please say
038aye aye give me a post all right thank you trips approved Public Communication I only have one and it's Adam Holland good evening uh in another embarrassing episode the board president is publicly smearing honest and decent parents seeking Improvement in the district's governance as threatening extreme agenda that is sweeping the nation uh the Weaver family online disinformation expert confirmed that the honorable president is speaking in that capacity while making those misleading statements to influence the election Angelina should alert her campaign Finance act to expert colleague to investigate potential violations of the school district neutrality requirement and here I am the hands from the caricature of a low information knuckle Dragon Fox News watching a roof that doesn't really care about my kids or the district fulfilling its basic legal duties to parents instead I mean
039to incite people with my calls for transparency rather than all the specific issues I've raised I'm actually here to slay imaginary gender queer CRT dragons that Jason assures us are definitely not at DeWitt Schools if you ignore the whole genderqueer CRT section of the school website where the mission is to disrupt patterns of Oppression and deconstructs his heteronormative whiteness in the schools just as he assures us that parent questions are always responded to by Shawna speaking of will somebody please explain how you continue to ignore the addition of each statement and on the same topic to the public participation policy and what happened to the administrative guidelines that used to be available online those curiously disappeared after I brought up the mass consent and training guideline you were violating now the extremists definitely aren't the
040self-proclaimed disruptors of norms those are the good faith actors staying the course and focused on traditional core subject matter instruction the extremists of the parents who dare ask questions about what and how any of these racist sex says platitudes mean or have to do with ensuring equality public education questions which those parents don't receive answers to from the most transparent District ever like transparently skirting accountability on the most important public policy matters facing the district under the masb instructed guise of delegating day-to-day operations to administrators why are you so desperately fighting to maintain control of the board which according to you doesn't really do anything at all because it doesn't have to unless your goal is to ensure that the real policy making continues to go on in the dark between the union and Advent
041to the exclusion of parents and taxpayers speaking of transparency in the union I asked union rep Cochran for some basic information on the DeWitt Education Association but she never got back with me and then blocked my ability to follow up since this board Bargains with the DEA can somebody please let me know where I can locate any information about the DEA officers members bylaws financials political contributions and address anything I'm glad to see that you're capable of meeting basic requirements to satisfy funding conditions when you see fit not seeking public input on back to school plan revisions will come back on you eventually but the focus today is the learning loss that you all caused and got a bunch of taxpayer money to remedy which is a weird thing to need after all of the
042successes you're hiring an army of counselors that need more learning supports because you broke children but sure let's stay the course instead of more mental health crime you could have made up for forcibly removing kids from school and lying about it by making summer school available to all of my needed like my son whom you informed me wasn't eligible because of his race and gender I'm still waiting for an explanation on that maybe I missed it what with all the transparency I've been hearing so much about thank you that's it to a motion to adjourn a motion together support all in favor aye aye give me a post all right