001which stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice forever is the director of curriculum instruction and assessment i've heard people call it cia lately i didn't hear that [Music] um we were planning on presenting to you in june and then the day before the presentation i came uncovered and that slowly made its way through my family my wife and four children and that was a lot of fun in june and so we all got healthy and had a great july and we're back and we had to knock the cobwebs off we had first given this presentation to our building leaders back in april and so when we met to talk about so we had not some cobwebs out here's about four months so um appreciate the time to do this appreciate your patience
002with us tonight it's always a privilege so without further ado basically what we're here to do tonight is to fill in the board on the growth in the curriculum department over the last 12 months and that's really been driven by a lot of things education in our world right now by pandemic response we know that the pandemic presented bigger challenges than we had ever seen in public education at least from our careers here and we knew a systemic problem needed systemic solutions and so when it came time to talk about how can we affect change and do things differently here and help our teachers and our students and our community respond to the pandemic um you know we didn't have to reinvent the wheel we know of uh you know tried and true practices of
003hiring curriculum specialists instructional coaches and so we just happen to have some some master educators master teachers amongst our ranks that fit the bill and we were able to create 40 positions a curriculum specialist and make that happen it's been a wonderful this is that happened a year ago probably to the day right it's been exactly 12 months it's been a wonderful journey we knew that we'd have a lot of growth to do we all believed in the project but we also knew that none of us had participated in it so it was going to be a lot of growth uh learning a lot of planning yes it's kind of that whole cliche of like flying the plane as you build it you're going to have to do some good things at the same time
004and affect some change and help some folks too so really want to talk to you tonight about what that journey was like how we how we grew how we leaned on area schools again this is not reinventing the wheel schools our size typically have the curriculum departments with specialists with coaches and sure enough school districts like alchemists are whole grand ledger do have these apparatus and we met with them invited them over talk with them and we're humble in that way and really tried to accelerate our process so that we could turn from novices to folks who could help people kind of overnight and so tonight is really about a relaunch for us um this is year two but really now that we have a bag of tricks to go to um this is really
005kind of the relaunch of year one for us i do want to introduce and just kind of explain kind of our four specialists we did split them two in the high school in middle school so two secondary and two elementary at the high school level we split them by subject area so the stem the math and science was this is laura forback and took on that role um in the humanities so the social studies the english that was jody kaler who stepped up into that role and then at the elementary level we again had two different folks there that came in a specialist and we split it kind of a different way mrs courtney craig novak is our academic specialist and then uh miss taylor shawn is our behavior specialist so that's they've been already
006just again we're learning but we've they've been so vital to us in these past 12 months that we've said we've responded to the pandemic so once again we're here tonight to let you know what we've been up to how we've done it and what our big plans are for the future so when we were getting started we were coming um from our classrooms where we were experts like brian said in our teaching philosophies but we had a lot of learning to do when it came to coaching and so we did a lot of research on different philosophies out there for different coaching practices and we purchased some books that we did some book studies around so that we could learn some different strategies that way but our main adoption of coaching philosophy here was called
007cognitive coaching so cognitive coaching was a training that we attended that was eight days throughout the school year and so it was quite an investment for us to be away from the district for eight days but it has turned out to be an incredible investment because we've learned all these strategies that we're taking forward in our curriculum department so moving forward and this is kind of an infographic that has lots of different pieces on it that you can see but moving forward this is what we're going to be using as our our philosophy that we move that we use when we work with teachers so one of the main pieces that i want to bring your attention to are the five states of mine and so the five states of mine here that we learned
008about our craftsmanship efficacy consciousness flexibility and interdependence and so those five states of mind are characteristics of an individual and when they're teaching we learn different ways that we can work with them to pick up on if they are really high in craftsmanship or feeling low in efficacy and how we can work with them to boost their efficacy or whatever it is that they're missing we learned some different road maps and so you'll see the different maps here some planet conversation maps and reflection maps that we use so that we can identify those states of mind and really pick out what we need to do for this particular particular teacher that we're working with the other piece that we came up with uh from this training are the four support functions so the four support
009functions are coaching collaborating consulting and evaluating we're not doing evaluating in our position but the three other ones the coaching collaborating and consulting the coaching is the one that this whole training was about and the whole focus of that is to mediate thinking and create self-directed learners so instead of us always coming in and solving problems for teachers and telling them the solutions and ways that they can fix their issues helping them to become self-directed thinkers so that they can kind of find their way in that whole kind of thing of teaching amanda fish instead of giving them a fish situation so that they can figure that out the other two that we'll be focusing on are collaborating which is when you're working as a co-equal with someone and kind of bouncing ideas off each
010other whether that's with one teacher or with the team and then also consulting and so that's where like brian said we all came from four different areas of our district with specific expertise and so during that consulting we'll be bringing in our expertise and giving some advice and acting as a consultant with teams [Applause] so early on in the year we knew we had a lot to learn we were all new to this role and we had reached out to another district and some other coaches and one of the bits of advice that we received was to create some sort of coaching summary or spreadsheet or a way to keep track of what you were doing and what we found is that it served a lot of great purposes it was a great way for
011us to make sure that we were supporting vertical alignment so as i'm working on something at the high school and logging in my spreadsheet people who are working with elementary buildings are also doing the same and we can kind of look back and forth and see um what projects we're working on what ways we're helping teachers um this tool also helped us to reflect so individually we could at the end of the month go through our notes and reflect on the things that we had been working on and track those and then um it also helped us to reflect on what other people had been doing so there were times where i was going to start a project in the middle school and i noticed i noticed courtney had already been working at herpes and
012woods and then we were able to collaborate and connect on that and then finally um i just think moving forward this is going to be a great tool for us to look back on as we look at already i've looked at what we did in august what we do in september and hopefully we can use that as a guide for us to be able to make sure that we're strategic with our time and our efforts and that we are planning our goals based on some of the work that we did the year before so due to the newness of these positions we use the feedback that jody was just referring to but we also used informal conversations as well as more of a formal way of surveying administrators teachers other stakeholders and what we realized
013is we had not created that valuable mission statement that path that's going to keep everyone on the same page that common language so we spent some valuable time and sat down as a team and created our mission statement and really our mission statement hits um in two different areas it really does support the teachers um in giving them those back coaching aspect of it but it also puts a focus on student achievement as well and our vision we came up with three main statements by spring of 2025 we would like all school buildings throughout dewitt to feature a strong culture of achieving student success through planning reflection and analysis we would also like staff at gps to think critically and demonstrate flexibility within their practice and lastly student achievement will have improved in two categories
014like benchmark assessments but also looking at reports by teachers and students to see the attitudes and how they felt the quality of their instruction looked in addition to the cognitive coaching training that taylor mentioned we also took taking the lead by killian and harrison as kind of our primary handbook it is a book about coaching that describes the 10 roles that instructional coaches can have within the district and we wanted to kind of formalize some of this input because in addition to relationships with teachers strong relationships and understanding with building administrators is critical to the success of a coaching program as well so we hold our building principles and ask them what their priorities and goals were for us where they wanted to see most of our time and energy spent of course there were
015some differences between secondary and elementary as you would expect um but these were the top five really because there was a tie for third place roles from those ten that were identified as being what our building's leaders would like to see the first one was instructional specialist an instructional specialist role is one where the coach is working with instructional strategies and curriculum to make sure that you're meeting the needs of all the students in the classroom in second place was a curriculum specialist understanding and leveraging the adopted curriculum and making sure that teachers understand how to do that well and then in third place there was a tie for data coach that's part of the processing and understanding of all that data that we talk about all the time and wpa all of our m-step
016results helping to parcel those pieces of information out so we know what we're doing in the classroom resource provider can be finding resources but also creating them with teachers so that's more of that collaborating or consulting role and then classroom supporter means being within the classroom walls often and frequently to make sure that we are modeling those high leverage um strategies and that we're working with students for teachers too all right so now that we've briefly shared with you where we've been what our processes have been like that growth that learning at planning that doing um goals for 2023 and beyond we want to talk a little bit about that i did put um curriculum and curriculum mapping up there first because to me it kind of lives in both worlds something that we've been
017doing um since 2010 that's definitely the longest live initiative that i'm aware of in a school district that i've been involved with i was a teacher here young teacher um not the older guy you see before you today but when we started that uh and i still remember those initial meetings we're still doing that today and uh really enacting that guaranteed and viable curriculum making sure that we can guarantee that no matter what second grade class your student is in what seventh grade math pastor student is in they've got high advocacy you know stuff that connects to the the standards it's high quality instruction and the backbone is there that speaks to the state national standards etc and a goal for a long long time has been and i've been a couple different districts that
018have had this atlas curriculum mapping and it's always a goal is kind of beyond reach to say hey at some point we could kind of pause where we're at select certain things and make a live facing public facing so all of our stakeholders all of our teachers all of our parents and community members can kind of see the scope and sequence the unit calendars the learning objectives those type of things and make that a public facing site and i'm happy to say that after 12 years now that we had a team that was dedicated to that type of work they were able to do that now it is a work in progress we're still polishing up some maps here and there but by and large i think you'll see the lion's share of what we
019do here at dewitt is accessible to the public through that portal so there's a link in the presentation that was posted on the website tonight and if you navigate um through our curriculum new and approved curriculum you can find that link as well so i thought that was critical for transparency but also for self-accountability all those different pieces when you know someone's going to be seeing your work you know what that gives a little bit more um kind of important to what you're doing there too so that's one we're very proud of and we'll continue to do very important especially in post-pandemic and tying these things into pandemic pieces when you have a disruption as big as what we had it's really good to go back to brass text and you all found that when
020we sat down with folks and got back to the table with colleagues and said okay we've been through this disruption where are we at now what new standards have come down what can we do to improve and i feel like we got really good feedback from staff and it was kind of just in time type of work there as well next piece is kind of launched in the fall which is this is a part of to presenting to the board and other stakeholder groups as i mentioned back in april i believe or just back from spring break we presented in this room to the cabinet for the building leaders and other leaders in the district kind of talked about hey same idea this is the stuff in our journey this is where we're headed and
021then we hope to in the process of the month here get in front of building level teams staffs and talk to each staff about same type of presentation where we've been what we learned where we're going to think so just to make sure that everybody knows what services we can provide how to access those services you know the different levels the coaching the collaboration all those different pieces there i think that the wider we have understanding under that umbrella the more good can come of that next piece would be you know when we look around and see need right now this has been an incredibly tough time for building leaders not just here but in around the area state and nation in the world really um i've seen more stress you see more turnover locally
022and throughout the state and country we've been very lucky lucky to have a lot of continuity here in dewitt um you know but we want to make sure that we're supporting our billing leaders that have been very stretched uh to the limit in terms of their bandwidth and capacity and so we want to start monthly check-ins with them to make sure that we're hearing their needs organically from the building leader meeting with their teams as well so here not just from the leaders but from the actual leadership teams and from the teachers themselves and that we can then become that kind of like connection that can take these bits from each building and make sure that we have a cohesive cogent hole to make sure that we're all moving and pulling in the same direction
023despite what individual needs the building has and to see where those fit and how we can help make those address them better and then lastly another piece here would be new teacher orientation this group has taken on we've always had new teacher orientation but it's always been it's been quality it's been kind of a one-off day where we get a full day of really key information about systems and personnel and building maps and those kind of like basics about your new teacher new staff here here's what you need to know and a lot of times it's been a one and done and then we turn over to a state mandated mentor teacher mentor and that's good we want to continue that but we thought we would also turn that group into more of a cohort
024we're going to try that out this year for a year or two we get them together at different times after school to get themselves and get them release day that type of thing maybe two or three times throughout the year and this those new staff have needs learning needs social emotional needs needs as a colleague that no other cross-section of teachers or staff have and we really want to get them together in a room um create that sense of team make sure we're hearing their their concerns giving them the answers giving them resources and that will even to hopefully uh increase retention we also know we're living through one of the most kind of dire teacher shortages in our lifetimes we've invented we've been uh lucky enough here in dewitt i guess with the kind
025of profile and quality of our schools we're still in a situation where mostly hiring high quality teachers from other districts we haven't been in a situation where we're too much having to emergency certified people and go down that road but we definitely when we get new staff we hire the new staff and i've been amazed at the new teachers we've hired the last few years our principals have done a wonderful job in some tough circumstances and we want to hang out with those folks that might be the number one thing that's important is to recruit good staff let them do their work facilitate growth let them be you know self-driven employees and thinkers and teachers and hang on to them so that's that's a that's a key thing it may be seems simple but we're
026planning on making it more than just a one-off orientation when we try to have a cohort approach to the teacher staff orientation so that is our presentation kind of in a nutshell there so i guess at this point the board if you have any questions or comments or suggestions you'd here well thanks for coming in it's very helpful [Music] when i first joined the world i was really surprised that it didn't have great horizontal vertical alignment are you feeling like that because it was that's not something we still need to grow um but i know what you're saying i think it was you know i've talked a lot over the years you know that night the 1980s this is a classy district small town it's grown in some ways we've got silos within our district
027that have grown with it and other places i really felt like curriculum was one where like those efforts were happening but it was low intention from principles when they had time you would get teacher subs and they would come out and try to be those specialists while also you know teach in your class would be pulled up and check on the class and listen so it was a strain on folks but they have people who are like many districts our size and kind of our weight class i guess you call um there to do that work and have that intentionality and have that time and energy and excuse to do it i think we've done more in one year even while we were learning maybe the previous five you know that's enough that's something against
028the folks that were doing their best and that was some of us right while we had other jobs but i think there's no doubt you know i just see a casino on teachers faces and the feedback we're getting this team has been incredibly helpful and and that was been one of our big goals last year as you know as well to make sure especially as we came back from covet we were vertically aligned these folks were key in kind of leading some of those meetings hey the second grade staff needs to talk to third grade staff because the learners that are coming up to them are are different you know you've seen that again not just in the whip but all over the country so um so again i think the the end goal is
029to take we've got wonderful teachers we've got wonderful resources wonderful students and parents and just make sure that all heroes line up right that they become greater than the sum of our parts and that's through coherence that's code you can say those we've got c words over and over and i think the scene is to do that do you feel like this team is able to meet the needs of the teachers like the requests that you're getting for help and to be able to work with the teachers that want you to work with them or are you like in such high demand that you couldn't possibly get to everyone how does that work we're busy there's a lot of demand and that's wonderful um and and i hope that that continues to grow i think
030we're refining our pace through the learning that we've done we've learned to prioritize and so i think that this year we'll find ourselves making sure that the time that we're we're committing and the yeses that we're giving are really in line with those goals um is there any part of the model of coaching and what you're teaching people that they then can pass on to others or i don't know if they're always aware exactly of how we're guiding them so sometimes you ask questions like if i meet with a teacher i'm asking them questions i'm getting them to think about their own solution to their issue and sometimes believe in them like thank you so much i you know like they think that i solve the problem and really i i didn't you you solved
031it yourself we just you just needed someone to talk through it it's kind of like in life right when you if you're like mini therapy sessions right because you're like sometimes i'm having like an issue at home and i have to just talk through it and then i'm like oh where i mean i think i think in some ways some of the consulting and some of the collaboration that we're doing is is and they didn't show their website and that's when they built a really nice website that teachers can access and see like okay i have an issue kind of again pressure on what we do what services they offer and so there's some of that where a teacher reaches out hey can we have a day and need and talk or you know it's
032kind of that buzzword of that partnership or that type of thing but then there's also other times where it's like we can tell from data reviews that this is an area for growth here and we're going to get a department together and look at the principle so it's going to be more directed from us so you're proactive proactive and then it might be a situation where there's even times maybe where a young teacher and they have a lot of growth and they and we're going to partner with somebody who's too young and has a lot of girls so there's various ways you can involve but yeah i think as the year went on you got busier than this year right yeah it's a good kind of i mean yeah i think our rules will adjust
033as we go too because right now we're coaching teachers along the way but we also as mr hanselman refer to we also need that that bottom line foundation of what we're doing in the classroom to be consistent across the grades in order for us to have something to the coaching process so i think once we have that foundation really solid then we can fine-tune and adjust and enhance even more than what we are now one of those times you were talking about your vision and i was just wondering how will you measure that to know whether you've achieved that or are there things in place that you can attract yeah it's a good point every good question we talked about quantitative you know and so the state has um you know mandated that's something that
034we were in process of anyway so we were well prepared for that but to be looking for go growth trends or just what trends are there um in our in our key metrics in our um k through eight and we a which i've spoken to the board a lot about um the other piece is we started this year doing more qualitative contraception data that was one thing we did survey staff and principals we want to do that annually to see where they're at how they can support it but also kind of and we'll have to fit it into because i know that we've done some perception surveys in the past it's been part of the accounting work i know there's some different type of perceptions data this year with the strategic planning initiative and so
035that'll probably have to you know this actual we're trying to get into like what is your sense of the state of the culture of learning you know those are those are tougher things to put your finger on and we'll probably develop um you know like scales things like that to get a baseline and see where we grow from that to kind of follow up on that what what can we expect in terms of reporting back on that data to the board yeah i'd love to you know once or twice a year have our team come and send to me i've been a long ranger here but you know we can definitely i think sometimes too when i've presented the data you know that that's the question okay so what you know what are you guys
036doing about that and everything and that's where maybe a team presentation or if i can you know maybe show up showcase more of the work with this team and also building teams are doing um to give you a sense of okay we have this data we're buried in data like what are we doing how are we making sense of it i think that's you know again as much as you like you know i can talk to you i would say that i i've appreciated presentations over the last what two years that we've had on betterment of ea data maybe i should quit now i i would like to see that continue at twice a year i think it makes a lot of sense here but to me i think those are great things to have
037on there and a great thing to put out there but i agree let's have a measurement but i'd also like us to kind of see what that is not only from the effectiveness of your team but just overall for the district of just kind of how things are going well especially if we you know from the very first time i was a principal i kind of latched on because the middle principal said something called a ct explorer and this is the real deal this is what's telling us how kids are doing and we had a caution that we weren't over emphasizing that test of that standardized test we're talking about assuming as a whole things too and make sure we're doing that but you know we can do some of that with the reception data
038as well but you know i've always been about you know transparency in that front um let's get it out there culture and things people can feel you know i do that you know you want to get that i'll give it air and let people see where strengths are where weaknesses are and let people know how and anecdotally speaking a lot we noticed as the year went on and teachers were more aware of what we were doing that the teachers were delving into their data a whole lot more and they were doing they were meeting with us to make changes like what can i do to they would look at a point that maybe they weren't happy with a certain score or whatever they wanted to meet with us and try to improve their data individually
039and so i can't help but think that those individual meetings eventually it'll make a big difference and and before i think we because we were printing off a lot of reports and just going in and talking it's a lot it's really overwhelming when you're teaching to have all these numbers in front of you in these bar graphs and you're trying to figure it out and so we have the time to sit and get that prepared in a way that makes sense to the teachers thanks so much for immediate um i'm not used to this that's good plan okay that's a good plan but i would caution you making sure you understand the definitions within [Music] okay i'm here tonight because one of the things that always one i wondered about is why did crt accelerate
040so rapidly within society this is the only society that's really accelerating them it's not you're probably not china not japan i know that so i've done a lot of research because this is an issue that parents are concerned with you should be concerned with concerning this whole issue if you look at five years today now girls are being called boys boys are being called girls i'm talking biology boys cannot have babies according to congressional hearings uh elementary age children are being allowed to choose their sex school children are being allowed to choose their preferred pronoun closing of schools for various reasons when the student age at .01 impacts the covenant educators are accepting that the us is systematically racist without definition without definition let me clarify that again why has this happened so easily or
041is it because the u.s educational system has a new religion that is being forced into schools by the educational industry university educational departments msu in particular education unions mba and nea athletic and their supporters i propose that both educational schools in the u.s as well as educational unions have become radicalized as the site is defined by my friend webster that means a considerable departure from accepted traditional and known ways since they want to make changes to exist existing proven and accepted views habits and conditions these are elements of what is considered post-modern educational theory from which crt and its add-ons have been developed i mean here's a book it provides you the roadmap to provide you how this started in europe in the 1970s as a failure of communism did not take traction so the
042theorists most of them unfortunately are french took it upon themselves to find new ways of converting society to a more communistic socialistic view and just allow me to read a couple of these and this is post-modern theory the west has constructed the idea that rationality and science are good in order to perpetuate its own power in marginalized non-rational non-scientific forms of knowledge production from elsewhere therefore we must now devalue white western ways of knowing for belonging to white westerners to promote eastern ones that is more emotional at least as defined by this and i'll follow that up just quickly and i unfortunately am running out of time but i'll continue to settle in time is that the four elements of post-modern educational theory is what crt has blossomed into first the boring of boundaries sexual
043violence and other companies the power of language they're making new definitions for established words this is all planned and it's in schools as well as business as well as politics and again primarily the u.s cultural relativism you know what that means one culture is the same as the other well i i think exception to that and the loss of universal and individual in favor of group identities so the individual can't exceed this you know that little vogel game somebody pops up the game right now because it's the value of the group so to the extent that the concern that i have is much of this is fostered by the unions if any of you have looked at the conference that was just held in chicago by the naa and the outcomes of that conference let
044me just give you a couple things they call them nbi's new business initiatives i find that laughable in the this is a school this is people that have students as their primary objective this is not per se um bare knuckle union i've been in late relations and industrial relations for 35 years i know up here or nothing okay so let's not care about it so i'll just share a couple because i don't have time yeah here's one anya will take all this this is nba 41. i don't know if you could approve because they haven't issued it naa will take all necessary steps to defeat overturn the don't say gay law in florida there was no don't say gay long for and what is the union doing about this why are they doing it what's
045their agenda so and i've got more which i'll share with you at a later time my concern is you as a board this is a new religion a meaning it's a cause it has a system of beliefs hell of art and faith is now unchallenged in the classroom due to the authority of an administration as well as students my concern with the school board is which board member is the liaison of the superintendent on union matters which formative is involved in die meaning diversity inclusion and faculty initiatives which board member has been assigned as a liaison with a teaching trait this is great curriculum planning is great what's it mean what are the definitions i'm not exactly sure where our time is but i'm sure we're way over three minutes okay one last one just
046one last which board member has actual experience in union relations for the management and the employer perspective these are critical elements if you wait too long who knows what the next wave will be and there are really wonderful teachers but the union is not the union is not to the teacher the unity of students it's going to teach you and i'll add more material thank you for your adult i appreciate it and again i cannot overemphasize reading of this book it will open eyes thank you chelsea [Music] um before i begin my comments i just want to say that on the live streams often very hard to understand sometimes so maybe make sure your microphones are on [Music] okay in june the district unveiled the new five-year strategic plan and included what you have called
047belief statements which you claim are the core values of the fact of work and i was looking forward to seeing some of these blue statements in action one of them says involvement from students and families and staff in the community creates it creates a culture of excellence and that sounds exactly like the type of collaboration that many of us have come to these meetings asking for but at the july meeting just weeks after the district unveiled this new plan the superintendent revealed that she without board or community knowledge let alone any board of community input has once again developed a new copic masking warranty plan shauna said it was presented just as an fyi that she was merely informing all of us including the board and that she did not need any input everyone in
048this room knows that that isn't true but even if it worked in the district just state in june that community input is a vital value if you mean that why wouldn't you see info whether it was required or not why was the plan developed in secret by a bunch of unelected bureaucrats and handed down them on high rather than done collaboratively with the community and the school board another alleged core value of the strategic plan is that dewitt evaluates and uses resources responsibly to achieve our mission i have to say the timing of this one was great the plan was unveiled right is the situation with the books being discarded was unfolding so we could all see in real time just how seriously you take responsibly using resources but i'll ask anyways is it responsible
049to send thousands of brand new taxpayer-funded books to the shredder for pennies on the dollar is it responsible to use a recycling program to purge brand new books that quote did not fit with current literacy programs or dei efforts which is a direct quote from shauna on june 27th does anyone on the board think that that's responsible or even acceptable use we know it wasn't and we'd like to see some accountability on this issue rather than grossly inappropriate attacks from members of the board against concerned community members who acted to rescue taxpayer-funded materials when the district was hoping to let them be destroyed because they no longer fit a favorite political narrative but in any case the attack against mr cooley if it was true coulee was truly about money um truly about the money
050the recycling program would have brought from these books or about some unhinged theory of theft on the part of the taxpayer objecting to waste let me talk about those ideas in march the district charged me 389 for this this tiny little stack of paper and claimed with a straight face that my foia request which sought only the communications between shauna and one other person regarding one specific issue took 10 or almost 10 hours to process there are just nine emails and one text exchange here a lot of the paper in here is just attachments and email signatures 389 if theft is a true concern then maybe someone could look into this or a fundraising is a real issue then surely the district recoup whatever it was hoping to gain from destroying those books on these
051foia feasts as well all right i just want to say that the strategic plan sounds nice if you followed it it might even be nice but in just weeks you've shown us exactly how much super it's impossible to hear any board members on those recordings i don't know i think that wasn't that better but i i can do say here we know so starting the year today uh started with our summer school and we have about 112 students and grades 113 teachers so i know brian was able to make it into the classrooms today and i plan on making it in tomorrow so it's exciting to have kids back in the classrooms as well as teachers fall sports officially started today and a new teacher orientation is tomorrow so we're looking forward to welcoming our
052new teachers to do at public schools as far as the street teaching plan is concerned under our goal of operations we have um one of the sub goals was to secure building substitutes for each building and increase the rates we have done that so our regular subbing rate is now at and our building subs who are kind of we call them our superstops so each building secures one sub to have every day and we always keep them busy um they'll be making the rate of 175 a day for school safety i've met with the chiefs and we're still working on professional development to rule out the staff and we're working on training resources so i've secured scenarios as well as video resources that we'll be using with cabinet cabinet will be using with staff and
053staff will be using the students to be able to talk about situations that are threats to the school and um we're using i have already received permission from any school in vermont so they have these training resources rather than available and then the safety task force plans to meet this week and then we'll be doing an overview update for opening days for staff for communication engagement one of our sub goals was to secure and train building social media liaison so i spent this monday last week with a group of teachers who were building up for each of the buildings and then we're also working another piece of that was the student rep and so we'll be working on that as well it's not something we're able to put in place right yet but i'm excited
054to have the additional help with getting the message out and being able to share things that are happening in the buildings and then we have the admin retreat coming up next week and so a half of the day is team building and leadership skills within the other half of the day we're going to actually spend on masb calls them action plans so each of our goals will have an action plan for all the sub goals so we'll be everybody has a lead on this and we'll be working on those so we come up with an action plan for this year as far as all the strategies that we want to make sure that we work on them and then enrollment right now is at 3117 and then our return to school plan i did meet
055with mid michigan district health department last week and they are really working to move from a pandemic emergency response to a more standard response and i shared many of those resources with you but anybody can go to the michigan health department website and see their presentations from recording and last but not least a little bit of a bond update so we're still meeting regularly with the owners reps playing ryan pressa clark construction and gmb the high school gym is scheduled to be done this week so hopefully the rain holds up long enough for that maintenance building subcontracts are underway the carpet and turf installation stadium is happening integration of primary power and design and really figuring out how to get new enhanced power to campus so that way all of our mechanical upgrades can happen
056and we hope to wrap up the bus garage in ferguson wood designs this next month and i've asked both gm young thank you ryan and crescent to put together an outline communication on the high timeline as well as highlights so that's that's to come soon it's a full weekend it's like four days thursday through sunday it's like four days workshops and it's great it's even better to attend in person because you're able to network and connect but there is a virtual option as well is