001for for good evening everyone happy Thursday and happy Black History Month I would like to welcome everyone um and call uh the regular meeting of the laning Board of Education to order at 6 p.m. please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you could the clerk please call the role Mrs Boer present Dr Cabana present Mr herd Mr Mr Lopez Mrs Moore present Dr narz Martinez present Dr Rodriguez present Miss trod present Miss Williams Quorum is present thank you and I am aware of trusty herd's absent for absence for tonight could I have a volunteer for the reading of the district mission statement please thank you
002truste Kavanaugh the mission of the laning school district is to provide a highquality education in a culturally safe and nurturing environment that supports all students to live purposeful and fulfilling lives thank you are there any additions to this evening's agenda seeing none are there any public comments on agenda items Al righty seeing none at this time we're going to have a presentation um of 98b student data report from Jessica benovitz and and who Anna dep ponio welcome Anna dep ponio thank you did I say her name welcome all righty you control the clicker o I get to control the okay see well thank you everyone for having us here this evening um I'm here with dionio our director of data and accountability um and we are here tonight to present to you our winter assessment
003uh review this is something we've been doing for several years now um as you might remember we've called it the 98b report um that is actually old legislation that is actually still in effect but we thought that it is just really important to be transparent around how our students are doing academically and so we've really chosen to carry carry this on as a tradition here um after our winter assessments to give you a sense of how our student achievement is in the Lancing School District so hopefully we have some good information for you and if you have questions just please let us know we have planned three sections for you tonight we have a review of our winter assessment data we will also go over our partnership um 18-month Benchmark for you and then we
004also go over a um the Stanford and Har um Harvard study that has just come out in the growth after and before the um pandemic so we hope this will give you a good view of where our district stands currently and without further Ado I will turn it over to my wonderful counterpart thank you good evening everyone um I think Jessica did a great job of explaining to you our 9ab presentation we present it twice a year once in the winter and then once in the spring so this is our winter presentation but I don't want to get right into the data yet until I go over who are students that are actually taking these assessments so we have a total enrollment of 994 students our two key uh groups are multilingual Learners and students
005with IEPs so our students with IEPs make up 2.63% of the 9,904 and our multilingual Learners make up about 17 a little over 177% going over to um our P graph with our uh race and ethnicity we our two largest groups are our African-American students our white students and our Hispanic students our African American students make up 39% of our total enrollment our white students and our Hispanic students each make up about 21% of our total enrollment and then we have students that identify with uh as two or more race or ethnicities that's 133% we have 6% of our students um are Asian and we have two groups that are less that make up less than 1% of our population and that's our Pacific Islander and our Native American so these are our students that
006are taking the nwaa assessment we give them to we give our assessment to all grades kindergarten through 12th and we give that assessment three times a year once in the fall once in the winter and then once in the spring for purposes of this presentation we're going to go over our winter data uh I want to go over a little bit about what nwaa is and before we get into the data it's nationally normed so what we say is a student receives a RIT score in both reading and math because that's what they take the end WEA map growth in those two subject areas reading and math like I said both kindergarten through 12th grade those are all grade levels that they take the assessment in um they receive a RIT score and that RIT
007score helps indicate where the student is performing academically based on other students in their grade level nationally so let me give you an example if a third grade at Guyer Park takes the assessment that RIT score will actually show the national average of other thir grade students across the country it puts them in a percentile if they are in within the 61st percentile or higher they are considered proficient if they are lower than the 61st percentile they are considered not proficient we also use nwaa to measure met growth so in the fall we collect Baseline data what score did the student achieve in the fall and then we use that score to determine how much growth they should make from fall to winter and then also how much growth they should make from Fall to
008spring so in terms of this presentation this winter 98b presentation we're talking when we say met growth have they met their growth goal from fall to winter I mentioned too before I move on that we take this three times a year so we pretty much collect proficiency and met growth data at all three times fall winter and spring but like I said in the fall we're collecting the Baseline data in the winter we're digging a little bit deeper so I mentioned we're collecting did they meet their met growth goal from fall to winter that's one piece of data that we're collecting we're also collecting have they met proficiency that's another piece of data that we're collecting another piece of data that we're collecting is nwaa is a predictor of how they will perform on their
009state standardized tests tests like the mstep the PSAT the SAT we look at that data to determine how we think that they will perform on those tests and then also nwaa and this will help when we start to analyze the data for proficiency and met growth nwaa once the student takes the assessment it actually gives a report that's tailored to the student to the individual student based off of how the student answers their questions whether they answer it correct or they answer it incorrect it gives us a report on what areas of strength that student has what standards that student has mastered and what areas of weakness or what areas of growth that that student still needs to um Master what skills what standards that that student still needs to master so that's what the
010nwea tells us and then again they take it in the spring and again we're looking for mat growth and we're looking for proficiency I think I've covered this slide mostly where in this presentation we're going to cover proficiency levels we're going to cover if they if our students are meeting met growth um we're looking if we're closing the achievement Gap if our students are at grade level if they're meeting the expected growth that they should be meeting and we're going to use comparative data by grade level so when we uh the next slides that I'll show you when we start talking about proficiency and met growth it's actually by grade we're not comparing by cohort which means for example we're comparing last year's second grade to this year's second grade we're not we're not following
011students from first grade to second grade to third grade so one thing I'd just like to reiterate around met growth and proficiency is a student can have met growth but not be proficient so just to kind of make sure that that's clarified so a student can grow and make the the norm the normed growth that they should be making but that does not mean that they are necessarily proficient so as we go through there those will be the two metrics that we'll be looking at and I thank Jessica for bringing that up because actually a tier three and a tier 2 student you will see actually has a lot of room to grow to meet proficiency so you'll see typically in those areas or those students more growth than you would typically see for a
012tier one it doesn't mean a tier one doesn't grow it just means that they have more room to grow so let's start digging into the data we're going to start with reading proficiency the next couple of slides are just going to talk about proficiency for grades K through 12 a student is considered to be proficient like I said if they fall within the 61st percentile or higher this year I wanted to start out by saying we got together as um a group in the office of schools and we really started talking about what do we want our students to achieve this year how academically what how successful or where what successes do we want to see from them and one of the things that we talked about was proficiency we wanted to see an increase
013in proficiency we had seen increases in growth but we had not seen as much in proficiency and we wanted to see that this this was the year what supports could we put in place what uh options or tutoring options could we give them we really wanted to see what we could do for proficiency so as you can if you look at the graph up there we are increasing in proficiency if you look at the high school grades 9 10 and 11 you can see that there has been some some big gains between between those grades and proficiency from last year so last year's nth graders compared to this year's ninth graders um the same thing if I move over to SL to the next slide for reading I mean I'm sorry for math proficiency you're
014starting to see growth in both math and reading and Proficiency in grades K through 12 having said that because that was our Focus I also want to say one of our other focuses this year was math we realized that our students were falling behind in math so we really wanted to give them additional supports and some things that we've done is we've been very um very intentional about putting tutoring into the schools into all schools at all grade levels but we've also taken like I mentioned the nwaa report that's tailored to students that talks about their strengths and their areas of growth we've used that report to tailor it to a student to actually maybe during school or after school additional supports tutoring um mentorships we have um um we are piloting a math program
015this year hoping that that will adopt it for next year um we have really been intentional about really providing some really robust instruction and rigorous instruction around math I do also want to point out that in the area of reading and math um Statewide the average for uh proficiency is anywhere between about 34 and 42 is% so when we do look at these numbers if we are driving to be at the state average that's those are the numbers that we're looking at would be anywhere between about 35 and 42% so as people look at this of course we'd like 100% of our kids to be proficient but as we're looking about the metric of the test for mstep because this is a predictor for mstep I just want people to keep that kind of in
016mind our next couple of slides are reading and math met growth so have our students reach their growth goal that's what these slides are telling us in grades K through 12 there are a couple of things that that I need to mention on this slide so we talked before about assum can show growth but not show proficiency a student can also show proficiency but actually be slowing down or plateauing in their growth goal and if you look at grades 2 three and four compared to last year's grades 2 three and four you'll see that there's a little bit of a decrease in in these students meeting their growth goal we know that in January of 2023 we we implemented a new phonics program for grades K1 and 2 at that time that happens to be
017our 2 three and four grade now they actually if I went back to the slide with reading proficiency you'll see that they're increasing in Reading proficiency but they're not making as much growth if I were to have gone and shown you uh data from 2022 they were showing uh growth they were showing increase in growth so what I'm saying is the closer sometimes a student gets to proficiency that 61st percentile or higher they might not show as much growth and in grades two three and four that's what we're seeing here we're seeing an increase in proficiency we're closing the Gap they're they're reaching that grade level but they're actually starting to slow in growth this is a conversation now based on this data and looking at it and analyzing it this is a conversation that
018we are going to start having with our principles and they're going to start having with their teachers how can we keep the growth going the growth momentum going as well as stay stay on track and increasing proficiency yeah the bands are really interesting when you start to look at nwaa because the reports that we get for student profiles will show us students and they're colored um from uh red to yellow orange green so forth and so on and where we are seeing the largest amounts of growth are between our red B basically our lowest performing students are showing the most growth um what we are seeing this year though because a huge focus of ours and I know it's been a topic of conversation here at the board even is the students that we are
019calling Bubble students or the students are on that cusp of proficiency and we are seeing that the things that we're putting in place are moving those students forward but what we are also seeing for is a real need for a program um like gifted and talented so that's something that we are looking into because one of the things that we want to make sure is it's wonderful that our students are proficient but they need to keep growing otherwise we their their scores are the ones that will stag State and then we will still see movement of the ones in our in the lower levels of performance but we also need to make sure that we're closing the achievement gap for those students to then become proficient so it's kind of a two-fold thing that we're
020looking at within this data and I know these charts don't show that but that's the behind the scenes data that we're really looking at to make sure that we're meeting each of the students at each of the levels to make sure that each student has meeting their growth and not plateauing once they become proficient the next slide it talks about math met growth have our how many students of our how many of our students have met their growth goal from fall to winter in math you'll see that for across all grade levels it's over 50% of our students on average are meeting their growth from fall to winter um again I can't stress enough how much we have really uh tried this year academically to really talk to to to Really increase academic performance in
021terms of math we know that our students NE uh were deficient in some standards and we know that we needed to put academic supports in place for that the next couple of slides are as a district and these slides are over a span of three school years instead of two but I do want to direct you to the title it talks about grades 2 through 12 not grades K through 12 and there there's a reason for that in the school year 22 23 our kindergarten in first grade did not take the nwaa so if we were to have given you a comparison of grades K through 12 it would not have been an accurate comparison what we did is we just took the K one out and now we've just given you a comparison of
022grades 2 through 12 this slide shows both proficiency as a district and our students meeting met growth as a district you'll see that in school year 15.9% of our students were proficient and then we've bumped up this year and winter to 20.9% proficiency we'll also notice on the right that our students have met growth 48.9 6% in school year 2223 this winter um our students on average 49.7% have met their growth goal from fall to winter so just to kind of set some parameters of what our overall at least beginning goals are for proficiency again our goal is to be at the state average minimally right so we are looking that we are first step of achievement is to be in that 35 to 42 is range and when I say A Range it's because
023at each grade level there's a different um State average um and then of course for met growth the goal that we are striving toward is 80% of our students will have met growth and that's really based on the um RTI model because we know that 80% of students should be able to achieve in using tier one strategies and our curriculum so just to know kind of where we're headed and what what we're looking forward to um to meeting in the future this next slide is a comparison for our winter math proficiency and our winter ma growth um in school year 2223 our students were on average 9.12% proficient this winter we're showing a proficiency of 17.5 % we've also if we look at the growth on the right hand side 51.1 15% of our students
024met their growth goal in school year 2223 55.55% of our students met their growth goal in um 2324 and this winter 2425 57.9% have met their math math math has been an area that we've really struggled in the district for many many years so for me though I'm not satisfied with 7 18.5% not even for you know a long shot um I am really happy to start seeing those numbers move to go from 9 to 17.5 just within two years is really pretty incredible and I think we need to really um P pad on our back our Educators that are really taking that deep dive toward math education the other thing that we need to really focus on too is math is something that takes a a lot of skill to teach right because it
025skill builds it is not an easy concept necessarily for students um to grasp and they need a really wonderful educator in front of them to do that work and so even with um having people that this is career second career or having long-term Subs in classrooms and different things we are really pleased to see this type of growth and we're hoping with the type of instructional coaching supports and robust curriculum that this will just keep increasing so we've talked about growth by grade level now let's look at growth by school we'll notice that we're starting with reading proficiency and the next slide will be math proficiency so we're starting with proficiency on average as a district 5% more of our Lancing students have met proficiency during this school year 2425 then the 23 24 school
026year so what does 5% really look like that's 476 students that's the 5% that's bigger than some of our schools so we're really excited to see that that data point this year if you look at that there are some bars that look like there's a a a pretty big increase in proficiency and so let me point out some schools like Capital Area Lancing Tech The Learning Hub let me explain a couple of things Lancing Tech had one grade level last year now they have two grade levels the more students that test the more students can be proficient so that's a small we've gone from a small uh testing sample size to a larger one same thing with Learning Hub and Capital Area those enrollment numbers are increasing in our online schools so therefore we're having
027more students testing and more students are proficient um and then we ALS I also have to point out Mount Hope that that has not shown an increase in proficiency and we are working with that school about that same thing with oh I'm sorry I was jumping ahead of myself um so we broke down reading proficiency by gender the dark blue are students that are not proficient and the light blue shows students that are proficient so when we look at the difference between male and female our female students in terms of reading proficiency are scoring higher than our male students moving on to math proficiency so on average we were higher by 5% for reading proficiency on average for math proficiency 4% more of Lancing students met their grow they met their uh math proficiency this
028year 2425 compared to last school year 2324 so if we break down that 4% that would be 385 students that's what that 4% looks like again as you can look Lancing Tech The Learning Hub Capital Area it looks like they're making great increases in proficiency but I also want to uh point out Post Oak you'll see that there's a pretty large gain there they have have been very intentional about bringing in a um bringing in and having someone train their teachers on instructional coaching methods that can instructional methods that can be done in the classroom whether in a small group whether one-on-one they have really focused on that this year so that might be something that's helping to move that needle as well again looking at it by gender now instead of the females having
029the higher proficiency level the males in terms of math proficiency are higher than our females they are 18.5 6% um proficient compared to 16.23% looking at our met growth in terms of uh by school and this is reading we're seeing that there is growth within the schools as a district we've made a little bit of growth like I mentioned on the the slide a little bit ago um we do have some schools that are showing some pretty big increases in growth like Atwood Capital Area again um The Learning Hub again there are there are schools that are meeting growth but again I just want to point out the closer we get to proficiency sometimes we don't see the growth that we expect same thing with math we are seeing like I said we were intentional
030about focusing on math this year so we're seeing growth in math math um and again we can look at some schools that have made some gains in math like luten uh post o again Eastern has made some pretty good gains in math so has Willow and Guyer Park so one thing I do want to say is as we're looking through these slides it's like oh this school and this school and this school right so we're looking at the data however I think it's important to kind of peel back the layers and then say well what are we doing with this data right because data is great to admire and look at and say oh this is up this is down um but what what you don't see is that we do meet every month with
031our principles actually a couple times a month depending on the department to really look at really student by student by student so what this could mean is I might only be one point off from my met growth so I have a much different need and say Anna that might be off by 13 points right so that looks different when you start to look student by student then it also helps us to understand is this a student that would be Rel wonderful candidate for tutoring for Saturday school do they need an advanced math class there's so many different things that we need to look at but this is really just an over overview of all of the data but the important work really is done at the school level as they look student by student in
032their classrooms and then really figure out what are the needs the holes and the standards that they're missing what are areas that we need to beef up as a district are there certain standards that every fourth grader is more deficient on then we need look at the curriculum how is it being taught who's teaching it well those kinds of things so I just want to shed some light on that because it's really great to admire data but unless we're doing something with it and we have an action plan then there's really what's the use in looking at the data other than to say oh here we are right it's really kid dependent student by student and Jessica made a great segue into the next one what's our plan for improvement so we really want to
033strengthen our tier one instruction but I really want to say this when we talk about our students we we believe all students can achieve academic success and so we all we treat them as gened students and then we give them the supports that they need and then if they have an IEP we go in we dive deeper into that IEP and look what what what uh what's in their IEP but we all think that they can achieve academic success we do know that we have to incorporate supports and so when we look at nwaa and I'm mentioning nwe because the 98b is predominantly about nwaa that actually gives us great reports great data on where our students are and what we need what we need to do to help them move that needle whether it's
034proficiency whether it's meat met growth we do have um this year we've been very very very intentional about training our principles and continuing to train our principles on strengthening teacher feedback so feedback to us looks like being in classrooms talking to them about their instructional practices making sure that the pacing guide is being used making sure that the curriculum is being used to Fidelity we do have new curriculum for ELA we as I mentioned are piloting math curriculum so hopefully we'll have new math curriculum for next year as well but these principles are actually being coached on how to have these conversations to help our teachers grow in their practice and help strengthen our student academic success we are continually uh collecting data and like Jessica mentioned she is meeting with the principles monthly they
035are talking to her about their data they're talking to her about how they're using their data to help inform and drive their instructional decisions how they're talking they um inform her how they're talking to their staff about the data and how they're digging into that data to help their students and uh how to provide resources that their students need that we didn't think about so we're continually looking at data we're collecting uh data from surveys that we give to students to parents to staff to help us um become better um we are I mentioned that we have the new curriculum for ELA and we're piloting math curriculum we are continually training our staff and looking for any other supports that we can give them to help our students grow yeah one of the things I'm
036most proud of is that we've just been really consistent right that's what takes the time is I think a lot of times when we don't see results right away we're quick to abandon things or say oh we need to change this and do something different we know that this works we know that having high quality curriculum in front of students being taught on grade level focusing on teacher preparation focusing on collegiality looking at data um using what we call plc's which is where teachers get together by grade level and look at data to talk about standards for students we know that these are best practices and I think what I'm most proud of is we have not changed the course over the last three years we've added it in other pieces like instructional coaching and
037some other things that we know Saturday schools and tutoring for every school summer school for every school those kinds of things that are happening will layer in uh gifted and talented but what I'm really proud of is that we're now establishing kind of a new um um a new way of doing things in Lancing that is just really consistent this is not the pendulum swinging from left to right and this year we're doing one thing and the next thing we're doing something else so I just if you look back on all of your 98b presentations I really hope you don't keep them all there'd be quite a filing cabinet full but you will see that this slide has really stayed consistent um for each presentation and so I'm really proud of the work that this
038district has been doing all right all right you're off the hot seat now at least for a while that's right all right so we are going to talk I'm going to talk you through the partnership District um Benchmark Review so as you know we have schools in the partnership um what that means is those are the schools that are in the bottom 5% of the state as measured by the school index so if you remember the school index is not just proficiency on mstep it is not just achievement that is a major component of that however it also includes things like now referred whoops wrong way two um to the following things so in the bulleted Point you'll kind of see what the school index um contains it is things like attendance it is things
039like Behavior it is suspension rates it's chronic absenteeism um it also talks about having access to the Arts so there's a lot of things that go into the school index um for the state and those come out once a year so when we met with um the mde we meet with the mde the ISD the laning school district we had a huge meeting um actually in h Center we took up half of the conference room they had that many people come and so did we which was really wonderful to see that many people kind of surrounded around our student achievement for kids um so these are the areas that we talked and reviewed with the mde and ISD the ones listed in the bullet points and then what happens in that meeting is everyone has
040to come to agreement so they will pull up a school on the um clever touch or the screen and we will review for example April and we will go through line by line how did they do with um office referrals how was their student achievement how was their NWA growth how is their chronic absenteeism how's their daily absenteeism and we go through all of the things and the ISD says yes we think they met it we say yes we think we met it and the MD says we think you met it too and they say great you've met it and they check mark it's quite a process as you can see and so we did that with all of our schools then you leave that meeting and you're still not sure quite how you're doing
041yet because then you have to wait for the school index scores to come out which of course is later than that meeting um it's closer to November after they get the scores then they provide us with a final report which Ben and I really went through with a fine tooth comb we did find a couple of erors in there so we wrote them back and said there's a couple things that need to be changed which they did and then Ben signed off on the agreement we then have which happened on January 29th and then we have about 60 days I believe before we um that we need to be able to present to the board and make this public so that's why we're here tonight so I'm excited to show you where we are and
042um also answer any questions that you might have about the process or where our schools might be so if we take a look we're probably wondering the thing that everyone's wondering is what are the results so what do we see on the um on this partnership report the way that the mde puts this together is there are three metrics within all of those metrics so it's very it is very complicated um we have PR process benchmarks that are things like they need to hold monthly data data meetings so processes in the schools or system building that schools will put into place to help them be successful this to me is one of the most important components of the partnership because we know that when schools are not performing a lot of times it's because they
043don't have strong and consistent systems in their schools so we're proud to say that all of our partnership schools um met four out of four for their process benchmarks they have then they have another bucket which is our local outcomes so that's everything that is outside of process and outside of mstep we can kind of think of it in that way everything else kind of falls in the middle so the local outcomes are things like absenteeism office referral rate NWA met growth um and NWA proficiency um and so those are the middle ones and we have some schools that didn't quite meet their benchmarks we had several that um actually had an increase in office referrals or they didn't maintain the number of office referrals so then we need to look back at how strong
044is their um proactive approaches in their school how strong are their their uh restorative practices how are they looking at their data to be in the right spots at the right time to um be proactive about behaviors so that's the local outcomes and then of course the state assessment outcomes are things like mstep PSAT and sat and in that category you can see for example Atwood met one out of two so that tells me that they either did not meet their goal in ela or math um we have schools like uh let's say Lions two out of two that tells me that they' made their goals in both Ela and math and that's where those scores are coming from um and then an increase in the school index value every single School in this category
045had an increase from the time they were um identified until now so they take all of this into consideration and then you come up they come up with a final score for each of the schools and when I say final I mean at the 18-month Benchmark so we were halfway through it and it's there's like this strange delay at the beginning so actually this next M step we're taking in this spring is the determinant of our exiting of our partnership so even though it looks like 18 months we don't have another year and a half left right so this actually takes place in a delayed fashion so they can get all the data together so which schools are on track when we take a look um at the metrics I just showed you every single
046one of our partner schools or partnership schools is on track with the exception of averil and you might be wondering well why ail ail so if I take a look at the screen before you can see that ail is the only school that did not meet the um State assessment Benchmark they had zero out of two so they missed their goals um I can kind of show you too um if I I'm going to really take you back though so you just hang on um if we take a look at ail's let's go to proficiency I can do both so if we take a look at ail's NW reading proficiency they are increasing so their scores are higher than last winter which is really excellent um so we are seeing growth in April and so
047I'm very hopeful that it we will be seeing them meet their mstep goals for the um for this spring and I can probably go back to math let's take a look there and averil for met growth we can go to proficiency see I'm going to make you nauseous before this thing is over um here we go and there's their Proficiency in math so again ail is seeing an increase in their math from Winter to winter so we're really excited about the um the strides that ail has made since the last um the last U benchmarks for mstep so let's take a look now um how did the schools compare two years later so these are schools that were identified using the 2021 2022 school year so the composite comes out in 2022 so you can
048see the cut off for that year for the state of Michigan was 2388 that's how our schools are identified so of course they're all going to be R because they're the schools that were identified that did not meet the cut off you might be asking yourself like I did well wait a minute seon's at 23.8 a so how does that work exactly um it is a cuto off and that's how they um rank it but at that point um ston was not even was not making their graduation rate requirement for the state so we obviously know that that has been met over the last several years but that was one of the major identifying factors for seon if you take a look now this past year for 2024 these are the numbers that were just
049released this past year just a couple months ago um the cut off now is of our schools with the exception of April and north have exceeded that metric so you may be saying to yourself what does that mean well if the state was identifying partnership schools right now in this very moment we would have two schools that would qualify instead of all of the schools that we had prior to I think there's 10 nine or 10 schools so again schools are really putting in systemwide approaches to really making sure that they are meeting students needs we of course know that we have a long way to go but we're really proud of the progress and we know that that consistency over time is going to get us where we need to go as a district
050we will have the mstep coming out here um this spring and when we take the mstep test that will be the one of the last metrics they will need and then we will find out how many schools will be exited out of the partnership agreement um this coming fall and now I'm going to turn it over to our superintendent to talk to you a little bit about the education recovery scorecard I can flip through your welcome too absolutely oh sure you will all right well good evening everyone it's h wonderful to see you always a little bit different from this Vantage Point um but I do before I get into the Harvard study I really want to highlight the last slide that Jessica showed to put this in perspective when I became the superintendent when
051we first started to have the partnership conversations almost half of our schools were in Partnership that meant that almost half of our schools were in the bottom 5% of the state so that's a relative number right it's not just an just a a regular number it's versus everybody in the state we were in the bottom 5% Mo almost half of our schools now and we still have time and we're moving in the right direction now we would only have two schools that's incredible and those two schools averil and North if you look it's not like they're not making uh huge gains North more than doubled their score so we know that North is in is going in the right direction when you look at their proficiency rates we know they're going up so by the
052end of this year Our Hope like it should always be is we'll actually have zero schools on that list which as far as we can tell is the first time that's ever happened where we don't have at least a school on some sort of list uh from the state so I really want to congratulate everybody the teachers the principls the kids this is just tremendous growth um over the last couple of years and um we're really really proud and again because the school index score isn't just a graduation rate or isn't just a proficiency rate it's this like amalgam of all the things we care about attendance and and test scores and what have you is that it really shows as a school as a whole things are really moving uh in the right direction
053and as kind of proof of that is that the Stanford and Harvard study look at not just schools around Michigan but school districts uh you know certainly around the country and what this study looked at was n 2019 to 2022 what happened we know that the pandemic happened we know that things did not go great for this country we know things uh you know got kind of worse but the question is relative to that how did Lancing do and then because the study just came out they then now have looked at the last three years from 22 to 24 and how did we do and it's been pretty amazing so that's a lot of dots and I have to put on my glasses but what you're seeing in front of you is the change in
054math achievement from 2019 to 2022 so this is every school district in Michigan or thereabouts and the size of the circle is the size of the district and on the left hand side it's the change in achievement and on the right hand side it's free and reduced uh percent ages so what you see here is sadly a travesty what you see is that laning school district was one of if not the single lowest achievement District in terms of math achievement from 2019 to 2022 now we are certainly you can see uh more impoverished we have a higher rate of free and reduced but where you see that Circle right by that 75 what that says is our children lost more than one year of kind of learning during those pandemic era and if you look
055at similar districts like a Kalamazoo or a Dearborn or a Grand Rapids they lost too but they didn't lose like we lost and this is about math and that you know um purple line is just a a best fit line so you can see where we are and this is math this is reading pretty similar this is reading from 2019 to 2022 change of school districts in Michigan and where do you see Lancing you see Lancing at one of the bottom we have more company there right we we do know uh we have a little bit more company this one we're pretty alone here we have a a lot more company and especially around districts that are more impoverished but you can see that our children were losing almost a grade level uh in in
056Reading from that kind of pandemic era so where are we now this is math achievement so what's a really terrific about this is not only did math achievement go up when a lot of districts went down but we're actually above the state average so you know for the first time in a long time lanc sing's achievement rate rates are actually above the state average or at the state average you can see the circle kind of like touching it but we're doing better than cazoo better than Grand Rapids better than Kentwood and even better than places like a Rochester which have a much lower uh free and reduced uh price so uh free and reduced uh lunch uh situation so you know what you see here is good news we're certainly not anywhere near the bottom
057uh like we were um certainly I would love to see us um you know I would certainly love to see us do even better you know good good job Dearborn that's pretty impressive but the good news is after kind of going down we're now going up and we're beating our peers and then the slide that makes me really happy this is our reading score we in fact have the highest growth rate in the state of Michigan over the last three years that's really really incredible because what this is showing because you can see us all the way at the top there is that the rest of the state other than whatever that other circle is and I don't know who they are I apologize the rest of the state during 22 to 24 actually still
058continued to degrease in Reading um they slowed the role because here you have the reading in um was really low you know .48 here the role kind of slowed down but where you see uh us is where we actually gained in an era when almost nobody else gained and we actually gained the most out of any school district in the state of Michigan now we have a long way to go to get back to where we were in 20 uh you know 10 and and 2015 but the fact that over the the last three years where we had the highest reading score achievement uh change in the state is really impressive and so we wanted to share that with you because all of these other numbers are super meaningful the proficiency one being the most
059important the fact that we have 400 more kids proficient in one subject and 300 and change in another but it also shows I hope uh that this study which is a national study with some of the best uh universities in the world and what do they show they show that over the last 3 years we're really doing something special so I want to thank uh Jessica and Anna and of course the entire department but I also want to thank our teachers our kids our families you don't get this uh without a real concerted effort uh with focus on student achievement so with that I want to turn it back over to Jessica and I will let her take all of your questions um I'm GNA sit back in my seat um but I really do
060want to thank the board for the Indulgence today and the last thing I'll say from this seat is I hope you all and the community recognize we used to do this 98b because it was the law like we had to do the presentation we did it during covid because everybody wanted to know what was going on well they got rid of this law like two years ago but we still do it every year twice a year because we believe that not only should you know this information the community should know this information and we should be willing to share good or ill uh how our students are doing and so uh that's really meaningful I think to how we're running this District um and I really applaud uh Jessica and her team for doing that
061so I'm going to give her back to clicker if she wants to use it I'll go over there thank you um Miss benitz for the presentation and your colleague are there any questions for our presenters this evening okay um Dr r R please thank you I have several question but I want to ask for the superintendent before I forget uh when you are talking about the last four Graphics you are talking about growth we are not talking in the real situation that we have through the other districts we're talking about growth but we didn't see where laning is compared with the other district and the real situation today yeah I mean the study was about I I congratulate everybody you say some more for for the growth but doesn't mean that we are passing other
062the district right I mean and that's where the proficiency rates come in but the the study that we were given it just shows that growth comparison but I mean yeah I think the I don't want to fight through all the district but just for know to find out what our students are compared with the other ones you know but maybe another time thank you alrighty um Dr Kavanaugh oh hi everybody it's time for me to be a wet blanket um so so as many of you know statistics are my passion that's what I teach at Michigan State um and I for our June 98b presentation I usually join um these these wonderful presenters up here to um do some inferential statistics so I just want to remind my board colleagues and the public that what
063we're seeing today are descriptive statistics and not inferential St statistics so what that means is we cannot draw conclusions about change because the change that we see may be due to random chance there is a special type of statistical analysis that decides whether two numbers are meaning are meaningfully different so although we might see that a a particular school had a math met growth rate of 5% and now it's 6% we need to do a separate set of testing to know whether that 5% to 6% actually means a meaningful increase um so I would caution us to stay away from language like saying we have increased in this area or we've done better in this area without recognizing that that could be due to random chance until we do the inferential test which we do
064in June the reason that we don't do that for the February meeting is because the Midway through the year is more of kind of like a descriptive a check-in um and then in June when we have the end of the year information that is when we can do this test to see if the growth is Meaningful in a way that is statistically significant so that's my first caveat I want to give um that's not to say that we haven't seen great progress in fact I would be quite surprised if um a lot of this was not statistically significant but I have to give that caveat or else my my brain hurts um the second caveat I would like to give um is relevant to the last four graphs that we saw um I'd love if
065we could go back to just one of them doesn't matter which one or not not a big deal um I just like the last uh this last one here that we're yeah from the the the Harvard study we got change in Reading achievement from 2022 to 2024 there we go that one's a perfect example um I just want to caution us that so the graph is a little confusing to read if you're not like really into graphs like I am um and so we can basically ignore the xais those are the numbers along the bottom because that's just relevant to free and reduced lunch it's just the way that these people are are choosing to kind of sort where the schools are that's not relevant for us what we care about is the Y AIS
066the up and down on the left and what the Y AIS is saying is the change in Reading achievement right so this is the change um the percent change score and what that dotted line at next to 0.00 means is that there was no change at all okay and so what we're seeing here I would disagree with the superintendent's assertion that we have grown because we're kind of right next to that zero line right um we have grown maybe a 0.1 um 8 0.08 yeah and and I I would feel pretty confident that that is not statistically meaningful um and so while it is certainly good news that we unlike all the other districts up here have not continued to um reduce our reading achievement because that's what we're seeing right um so from 2019
067to 2022 um Everybody dropped off in a really big way um us more than anybody um and then what we're seeing now is that most districts are still continuing to kind of see this drop off but we are holding steady so I just want to be really clear about that interpretation um because it's not this is not necessarily indicative that we are improving this means that we are not continuing to lose um that's still that's still a really big deal right like we were losing out big time in the in the other two graphs but I want to be really clear about that interpretation um okay I don't actually have a question so I'm sorry for totally hijacking this um but like I said statistics are my passion and I just want to be really
068clear about what we're seeing what we can conclude from it and what we cannot conclude from it I do think um that there's there's evidence of some really great change I think that's that's un deniable um but I just want to make sure that we are not overstating what we know from this presentation um and so that we you know have a good direction to follow moving forward thank you so much for your work thank you Dr Kavanaugh truste truste Williams did you have a question I do have questions first thank you all for the presentation I I for clarification points first and foremost tier one is that our special ed and Ela and tier two are everybody else am I correct in saying it or is that vice versa so to what tier one
069means is just the the general instruction that we give to all students so it is kind of your Baseline it is where a teacher teaches right from the curriculum it is on grade level it is the access to the curriculum that every student has if you have tier 2 accommodations it means where we're pulling small groups typically in the classroom and we are giving you targeted um supports based on things that you may have missed so if we have a math lesson and you are missing certain standards or you have a holes in your learning we'll pull you on a small group we will retach those strategies tier three is typically an intervention program that you are in and that is where it is more targeted it could be um students with an IEP but
070not necessarily because students with IEPs have accommodations and I also want to make sure that we're not saying that we have tier one this is not what you said by the way but uh we do hear this districtwide that we have tier one two and three students that's actually not the case students are students strategies are tiers so I might be tier one today with I got the lesson the first time through that my teacher taught me tomorrow I might need tier 2 strategy so I just want to be clear about the language because we do hear a lot um even from teachers in the district there's a lot of misnomers like oh those are tier three students no no no no no students based on a standard can move tear so I'm really glad
071you asked that question because it is something that is uh vocabulary that we're trying to make more common so we were thinking the same thing so that is actually why I asked the question because a lot of people don't understand that aspect of it absolutely so my second question is you said that in checking the scores and validating scores so we we test second graders this year and second graders last year I guess a concern for that is that while we're not following that student we're missing because as a parent I you know we've always done the na we've talked about this for years with my child and I see the growth but comparing him so if he took it last fall he's in 11th grader now so his numbers are not where they should
072be and so it's not a good rep so how can we fix that or monitor that to make sure that while we're following the students we're also following that actual grade level so that they are actually being scored and charted because some of them are Beyond proficient and have exceeded that and it's not showing that I think part of that is when we're looking at bar graphs like these these are not typically the the data that we look at for schools right so a school can look at their oh did we go up did we go down just to say exactly what Dr Kavanagh said well how much do we go up is it one student are they a better guesser than they were last year there's things that can uh skew your data or
073your scores what we look at though is actually the student profile report which is the in my mind uh NWA if you're hearing me um it's the best report they came out with because what it does is I can pull up an individual student and I can actually see from the beginning of time that they started NWA 2 grade third grade fourth grade fifth grade over time what is happening with those students in fact one of the things that we're really looking at is met growth and proficiency depending how you look at it can skew the way that we look at our our children so for example you might have a student that met growth this year but their score is actually less than last year right and so it is very important that though
074we're not looking at cohort data here tonight we do follow cohort data Child by child to look at at the end of second grade if you ended at let's say 150 was your RIT score it needs to be higher than 150 in your next year otherwise your your learning is going to regress and sadly um as Ben when it was a memory that I have from when Ben first came in as superintendent and showed us the Stanford study and I was really blown away like oh my goodness our students actually regress as they're going through laning what's happening happening and that's because we're not we were not looking specifically at cohort data during that time and so it is really important to say that our students in Lancing the graph should look like this for
075students as they go from year to year it's not good enough that you go oh met growth mat growth right because you can have that for a student that may start out in the fall a little bit lower so I'm also glad that you lifted that because you have to look student by student to see also we have students that are proficient and when they're Prof efficiency rate and they're not growing at all but their score is high enough to keep them proficient it's like how many years though before they go underwater right before they're now not proficient so it's really important that we follow student by student across many years so I'm going to segue into that and say is it possible I know we have this data but end of year can we
076add that cohort so like class of 2026 will be our 11th graders how have they been going through the whole process k we add that for our final piece at the end of the year report because I think that would make parents and everybody in the community say okay this class is graduating next year this is how much they've grown this is what they're doing because I think it lends more to the Educators the teachers everybody that's involved to see that well no we're not meeting here but this child as as they've been going they're doing what they're so I think that would help the community as a whole um I do know and I'm going to say Kudos because I think when I started two years ago on the board we had 13 schools
077but we never congratulated those four that fell off can do you remember what four fell off two high schools Eastern and ever I do remember that um oh my God oh my God help me Jessica we got two other we got four schools that fell off that's a good thing orinal partnership yeah it was 13 so we actually so oh okay all right let me back up so actually what you're referring to is you're digging in the data which is awesome um they are actually schools that were deemed partnership but not in the agreement so we do still do have a couple of schools that are what we call ATS schools which are additional targeted support schools those are schools like Eastern Everett Sheridan Road um and there's one more Capital Area I think is
078the other one I'm hearing it behind behind me Dwight rich thank you um they are actually still all partake in the partnership agreement um all of the things that we do for our partnership schools we actually do for them too we actually do those districtwide um but those are student those are schools that are still targeted support so they are it's technical right so they're considered in the partnership meaning that we're watching them but they are not partnership agreement schools so they haven't made it to them level yet so thank you for lifting that because they they're haven't fallen off yet we're hoping that's the case um but they're on like what we' call like the watch list yeah just as a kind of a clarification those schools had things that we had to address
079but they were not on the bottom 5% so they're not part of the agreement agreement because just as a reminder if you're in the bottom 5% and you continue to be the state actually can do some pretty Draconian things and they can actually like get us to do things um with ATS schools as Jess is saying it's more of a like let's make sure things are good they're moving the right direction they don't fall off but the those four and I'm really glad you talked about that those four are making great progress they're doing great work but they're not part of the 5% or lower and so that's why they're not we didn't have to sign on them and we didn't have to present on them we're happy to always present on them but that's
080the different kid the different kids have got one more question think trusty Williams are you I have one more question okay then we'll make our way um so my final question because I S know we still have those two schools that are not performing well are what factors are are there other things outside of just the testing that could be causing that like their long-term Subs the inconsistencies uh so I mean how are we looking at that that you know we don't want to affect the staff in that building but the external factors that are causing that because can you address that sure so um the first thing that we do whenever something like that would happen is we take a deep dive into the schools um as you know there are um measures that
081we um have within the partnership agreement that if they're not making certain metrics that we have certain um measures that we can take to make sure that there's proper leadership or there's proper Staffing at those schools so as the board knows um at ail we had Dr Sarah O'Neal who stepped in as um interim princi principal this fall and we now have wonderful Charles green as the principal there who is coming on board just last month and so we did signal a change of leadership at that school to make sure that we could get the school back on track and in the right um on the right path which you can see by um some of the data that you've seen they are moving in the same in the right direction at least in the
082area of reading right now um math they have a little bit of area to to grow but um we believe that the signal in leadership was one the other thing is making sure that we have um the right supports in the school so we're looking at do we need to have a DSS for example which is our district student support specialist we have um cordelia's office often will place special supports in our schools so we looked at that we did the same thing at North so we also had an inter principal in the fall Dr Peyton Stalter and you might may be wondering why we chose these two individuals they were actually both our partnership directors so they know this information inside out and backwards they have been very successful principles in their own schools
083and so we felt that that was the those were the best two individuals and they said yes they took the challenge on uh we now have uh Javita Kyle as an interim principal there at North and um Dr Stalter is still supporting that school actively every week uh at North also because we do have the long-term Subs we had uh many um teachers at North that were not certified but we're not just not certified they were actually long-term Subs so those and then we even had a couple that were rotating Subs so the students wouldn't even know from one day to the other which individuals were going to be in those classrooms that was specific to North one of the things that we're really happy about is we have what we call the 1.2 teacher
084so we put out postings several months ago looking for teachers that we actually incentivized and they are able to earn 1.2 of their salary so there's a bump there and it was based on uh certain criteria they had to show a certain success they had to be have taught for more than three years and we were able to hire believe it was five teachers um specifically and mostly in the middle school areas and let me tell you if you walk into those classrooms the kids are like yay I have this teacher that's here every day and they are highly skilled um we have one that came as far as Texas that joined us and so we're really happy to see the change in staff so those are just a few of the things that um
085that you've lifted that there does have to be a real overhaul at some of those schools to make sure that we're not just changing one thing it has to be like okay what's happening here that's not happening at some of our other schools yeah I'm I'm really glad you asked that question um when we see data like this you have to ask yourself what does the whole system look like and North was one of those schools where we had sub after sub after sub where we had non-certified teachers we had vacancies and thanks to the partnership with the Union the teachers union and some really thoughtful work from HR that building is now more fully staffed this year than it probably has been in years uh even preco and so we know that the most
086important person in a child's success in a school is the teacher in the classroom and so we've really done some great work there but we also do know that leadership matters too uh we have a lot of hope uh and support for uh Charles green and Javita Kyle and you know we really think that the two of them are going to do some great work so you know and I appreciate the question from the board too because I want to make sure you ask us you say hey Ben if these schools aren't doing well what what extra are you doing for them and so these two schools actually have gotten some like super extra stuff and you know my firm belief is that you know by next year we'll have all those schools above that
087cut off so and and you can see that the winter NWA scores are showing progress even now so I feel pretty comfortable trusty Williams are you all set wonderful trusty stro awesome presentation again um I definitely know what it's like to have to pull this data together and then present it to a bunch of people and also um make sure that we're presenting the information in the way that people can obtain it um and being clear on with uh Dr Gau had already lifted um in regards to making sure that the language we use is very careful um surrounding what changes are actually being made and not um so I'm jumping to one of the questions that came up and that's me switching my Seria hat from a parent to a board member sometimes you
088mentioned that we have access for tutoring for each level grade can you confirm is that actually true in every school or not so it's not at every grade we have tutoring available at each of our schools schools um because we have to make sure that staff can actually come and do tutoring we've targeted specific grades um and the principales really have decided which grades they're going to focus on and some of that really comes down to which teachers are available to do tutoring after school so thank you for that clarification we don't have tutoring currently at every single grade at all of our schools but we do have tutoring available at our schools awesome I'm very quick because I know we've had a lot round of questions my other thing is that I was looking
089over at the information in regards to the data for the uh specific when it came to the Met growth for our youth from grades first through sixth grade in that first half there you'll see that we did really okay pretty well with the metroo but it also bring the highlighted for me of the conversation that truste Roslin had already mentioned about those youth that are doing extremely well but it may not show that tracking and so it brings up in my mind again the conversation surrounding the gifted and talented program what are we doing with those youth are we utilizing a system where you might pull a certain child to track or you spoke about that bubble student right following those metrics as they go and what the action plan could be because what we
090don't want to do is we definitely want to move our kids up that needs to be making proficient changes but we also want to highlight the youth that are already in those spaces and making sure that they're growing as well so I guess um as a district and I lift this to Ben as well with making sure that we are always thinking ahead um it's awesome that we have made some changes and even looking at the scores that we are um right where we're supposed to be versus maybe two schools that still need some some support so I do want to lift that the work is being done but while we're doing the heavy lifting we still have to be accountable to those youth who are excelling yeah I'm really glad you brought that up
091and you know it's actually Jessica and I were meeting about this today um and you know really to point out that the district over the last couple years has made a conscious decision to focus on our most atrisk kids and our kids that are below proficiency but close to proficiency and the good news is it looks like it's working right and that's always good it's like if you're going to invest time and money and and effort it does it work and you know when you compare the reading proficiency over the three years and the math proficiency with math we've almost doubled um now look it should be a lot better don't get me wrong but to go from 9ine to 17 a half that's an almost doubling of the the proficiency for Math and from
09215 to 20 that's you know five out of 15 so that's a onethird it's a 33% growth that's great so we've done that but you are 100% right that what we haven't focused on yet is what about those kids that are at proficiency but aren't being pushed that aren't getting there and so what we now need to do as a district is really have those opportunities you can call it g&t you can call it honors you can call it acceleration doesn't really matter the question is how are we serving our kids that are now proficient and maybe a little bit bored or maybe aren't making that growth and so on my hope is that over the next couple of months you're going to start to see it this board's going to see it this community
093is going to see it and by the beginning of next year you'll see some real great um kind of advanced work for our kids and then our hope would be that our proficiency rates will go up even further and our met growth uh rates will go up even further too because as you've noticed you know we've kind of stagnated right the Met growth you know to to to channel my inner uh you know Caitlyn Kavanaugh you know 48.96963 1 to to 57 there is something there but but you are 100% right and I want this community to hear that we are focusing on all of our different wonderful children but we had to make sure that our most atrisk kids and our kids that were below proficiency that we set those kids up for success
094and now moving forward we're really going to set up everybody so thank you for that question yes and just uh following up I know that a lot of times being a parent in the district you hear a lot of conversations surrounding our our youth that are at risk and surrounding the rates that are not so well so I just always want to bring back and Forefront of the community we do have kids at Excel we do have kids that meet above the metric I have one of those kids um and so I just want to make sure we're highlighting that in our conversations just as well as we have kids that need extra support and we're doing the work and you all are doing it too so thank you for your service thank you truste
095trusty Boer hello love seeing you all at the table so I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation thank you for taking the time to do this I know it was digging through a lot of data I love digging through data too I love spreadsheets It's My love language so this it is I love systems and data and all of that so in um I want to reference first something truste Williams had mentioned in regard to the difference between following a student versus following the grades so grades from last year to this year is it correct to assume we do that so that way in some ways we can measure the development of the curriculum so we can see how did the second graders last year do with maybe a pilot program or a program that might have
096been new to them and now this year are we seeing that teachers are even able to kind of even look at the teachers on oh it seems they may be more comfortable with the curriculum would that be why we would do grade from last year to great this year yeah that's one of the reasons for sure and I think the other thing that we have to do is um we can look at that and then we also look then by the cohort by school and then even by grade level because sometimes what happens in our schools is we might see second graders um from last year the cohort from second to third are really growing at a particular school and then that way we can really look at okay and then is there a grade
097level that that right that grade level is there a teacher and then we can lift practices because sometimes it's that there's different experiences or different methods that the teachers are using and so we're really trying to lift the Excellence in our teaching staff that's happening to say at this particular School in third grade wow this teacher every year can get those kid those they go to fourth grade and they just keep excelling something magical is happening there and so we just kind of need to figure out okay what can we glean from that teacher and we do spend time in those teachers classrooms thank you to those of you that are out there you know who you are um and then we lift those practices and we even have principles that have um visits to
098those particular classrooms and grade levels to lift those experiences so there's a couple reasons why we would look at that but that is an excellent one and those are things that we're really going to be looking at with the new CK curriculum my perspectives and then into from go maath now to reveal Andor IM which are and envision and there's a couple others for high school but yeah I know having been in the classroom I know the Deep dig she's talking about with you can look at the individual student I found that that was more helpful for parents to show up to parent teacher conference because you can print out that's right this was your students growth from last year when they were in third grade or second grade to now did they meet a
099growth did they was was there uh a slide was their retention what did they retain and so that's kind of why I like looking at the way we're doing it because you're seeing and tracking the curriculum development is the curriculum we're using is it working our students responding our teachers responding to it and I believe that is what is very very important um you talked about piloting a math program and and you just name them what what's the math program that we are piloting cuz go math So currently we have go math that is the oh your face says lots of things right now I did it didn't spend enough time we're done now with this is the last year thank you it was just way too it is not was not very popular no
100um it's run its course thank you go math um however right well we're just saying like I our teachers have done a good job though really trying to supp like supplement the curriculum and do things but actually what I will say is Nationwide there is a real push for really high quality curriculum and so we're really seeing um some curriculum that we are very happy to be seeing in the school district right now and in the hands of our teachers so for kindergarten through 8th grade um the first semester pilot was called reveal um and I think that's a mgra hill Oh Girl Scott G's gonna kill me that's okay um uh right so we have reveal and then um for second semester we have illustrative math which is also called IM okay so those
101are the two math programs for um kindergarten through 8th grade and then in the high school they are piloting two reveal again and then a program called um Invision so those are the the pilots that we're having so what will happen with the pilots is the teachers have several rubrics that they use they'll come to the table they will bring that to instructional Council we'll review all of the student data and then next fall we will have a new math curriculum which we are very excited I'm excited about that too and one thing I oh sorry if you don't mind one thing I really want to add and I want to give kudos to the Lancing School District because this occurred way before I was even a thought on the mind of Lancing is that
102instructional Council which is a group of Educators and administr trors come together to really discuss from a teacher's perspective what kind of curriculum there's a lot of districts in this country where that decision is made solely by the superintendent or by like a chief academic officer or sometimes even by the state and so it's really kind of amazing to know that we're piloting it those teachers will then report back they have a rubric they will share it with with the instructional counsel the instructional councel will then give um me a recommendation I'll either kind of agree or not agree and um if I agree T and then if I don't we'd go back and have a conversation about it but that's a really thoughtful move and I wish more school districts did it honestly because
103it gives the power to the teachers who've piloted it and really the kids because they ask them how they like it too and so I will say that right now I think the math ones are neck and neck uh we were just Jessica and I did a school visit uh this week and the teacher who was using IM was like the kids really like it and then we've heard from another one that the the kids like the other one too so I'll be very curious to see how the vote goes but uh we'll let you know so only had I am for a week so I like that yes well I just appreciate that you're listening to the teacher and student feedback because my students gave me feedback on what was being taught and they
104will tell you whether or not they like it or whether or not this makes no sense Miss K this is why would they teach it that way they they could have done it a shorter way so I really appreciate that um I another question I just had just because we say this often and I hear this phrase often and I I want to know is this like an objective interpretation or subjective interpretation when we say one of the supports we are doing is strengthen tier one instruction what does that mean for the laning school district that's a fantastic that's a good question so it actually means a lot of things so tier one is something that takes a lot to unpack um one of the things that it means to um our team and our
105principles and our teachers really is that all students have access to grade level appropriate curriculum so and it also means that they have access to all of the standards so we are not looking at our students and saying oh they're missing these skills or these skills and then they never get to the grade level curriculum so that's one of the things that it means to me is that we can put all of the scaffolds and uh small groups and all of the things in place but we have to start with the standard and end with the standard so any way we get there any means possible that's where we need to end up so that's kind of what tier one means to me and I think to our team um what that also means though
106is it could be things like when we go and do classroom visits or professional development tailoring professional development to make sure that teachers have the toolkits that they need because not everyone knows how to differentiate instruction not everyone knows how to manage a classroom and pull a small group so there's so many nuances that kind kind of go into tier one instruction but I would say those would be kind of the major things is making sure we have adequate professional development um for example with our cka and my perspectives we actually have instructional coaches that come in they will model the lessons they will make sure that the curriculum is being taught they actually ask the teachers what are you struggling with what are you seeing in the curriculum that's not working for students where
107are some areas that you might need some more professional development or training and I will say in the past um um having been a teacher in Lancing for many years it was we got the curriculum and we had a one-day PD and then you were on your own and so um we know that there was lots of collegiality in the laning school district and our teachers support each other but that should not be the way that so we have a full implementation plan now with each of our curriculum adoptions so I would say that those are kind of some major components that go into tier one no thank you I appreciate that you you mentioned um also in this that you're strengthening teacher feedback from principles are we monitoring that in any way are we
108going back to talk to the teachers to say hey did your principal come in and talk to you about this because unfortunately there are experiences where administrators will say I'm in their classroom all the time yes there's lots of I'm going to let her take it and then I'll fill in the gaps if there AR we are actually monitoring it by our our principles are actually putting it into a platform and then we can actually see the feedback that they're giving to the teachers so um they do what's called scripting so they'll go into the classroom and they literally script out what they see and then they take that script and they go um either they have a conversation with the teacher in the teacher classroom like maybe during their planning or after school or
109they invite the teacher to their office but they just have a it's maybe tops a 10-minute conversation they have a script that they can actually use um there's some questions that they ask the teacher um and they really just have um a conversation about what they saw in the classroom but it's more about what we're teaching the principles is not about telling the teacher what they saw they're asking the teacher to tell them what was happening in the classroom so therefore they're kind of leading that teacher to um talk to them about what how they feel the lesson went what they feel was strong about the lesson how they um where how would they rate their lesson on a scale of 1 to 10 if if they rated it a seven how do they think
110they can get it to a nine it's really a collaborative effort between the two the principal and the teacher but they literally put it into what we call eye observation and we can literally see the conversation that the principal is having with that teacher they document it um and that's what we use when we um do the trainings we actually do mock conversations to to so the teachers can the principles can actually practice with a teacher um we find that the more the te the more the principles have these conversations with the teachers the more comfortable they are um teachers tend to I was a teacher so I know teachers tend to get a little uh tense when you ask them to come to your office for a conversation or when you uh want to
111even have a conversation with them in their classroom so that doesn't happen very often so we're trying to make our principles more more visible and just having these just just just a feedback conversation but we really are being very authentic this year about training we really are we're bringing in a really really good trainer he is working with small we we do large group so the he'll train the the principles as a large group but then we've also uh are starting to do small group trainings with just a select group of uh administrators they will all get small group training it just depends on the time um when we're trying to keep them with their grade bands so if they're in a K3 school we kind of try to keep them in a small group
112and a K3 school with the trainer but they are consistently getting and uh consistently having it modeled for them how these conversations should be held with their staff and I I know eye observation I guess to clarify a little bit how are you making sure that these are actual authentic conversations that are happening because with eye observation an administrator can say I did a walk through and the teacher will say they were never in my classroom they they they came and they knocked on the door is that is that a walkthr so how are we making sure that that is being done authentically and we're not just typing it in eye observation and saying oh I had this conversation and then the teacher is like we didn't have that conversation so I guess to so
113one is some of his trust right because we can't check every observation for every principal um one of the things though that my team does is I have a team of people whether it's my instructional directors or the um Spock which are the um oversee the elementary middle or high school they're all assigned uh a group of schools and they do weekly if not by weekly walkthroughs directly with the principles so they are in the classrooms and many of them are modeling the conversations to have with teachers because a lot of this St we have to think about is an evaluation is not really what grows a teacher it's a conversation and the reflective practice of the teacher every teacher wants to be better than you know we're all they're all striving we think we
114all do we all keep growing um and we want to make sure that we're instilling kind of the grow The Joy back into teaching too like what did you see today what would you like to see tomorrow how could you make this lot the lesson better and I think in the past sometimes it's been very much I didn't see this and I didn't see this and then it can be very deflating for teachers so I think the trainer that we're working with really believes in teacher growth and and teachers reflectiveness of their own practice so we're really trying to instill that um with teachers as well so they have their um instruction someone from the instructional division doing walkthroughs with them and then once a month for their admin meetings we um do what we
115call integrator reliability so actually we have groups of principles that go through and do walkthroughs together and so it might we're doing the trust in the meantime right but at least we know bi-weekly if not monthly that there are really robust conversations happening with the feedback to teachers and then we do hear from teachers too and so it's just a lot about listening when we're in schools to what they're telling us and then giving feedback and having conversations with administrators as well love it last question really quickly oh oh okay one more just one more now does this have to do with the data 98 okay talk to us then um knowing that you have some schools that are in Partnership how did we communicate that to parents so they would understand because I have
116two students and they're both at a partnership school and I was surprised because that was not communicated that they were in Partnership so I'm a little as a parent little upset because I I had no clue now I hear my kids coming home saying I'm struggling today or this is what was happening I heard this all last year lots of subs and buildings but I didn't know that so how are we communicating that to parents or are we not that is a great question um I think from the central level we have given the tools to the principles to have those conversations with families I don't know that we've monitored though how that is going out regularly and being communicated to families okay so I think some of the schools decided Ed to have family
117nights or um put letters out to families but I don't actually know um systematically how that was communicated so I'm actually glad that you lifted that because I think it would be important if obviously they're not all watching the board meetings um that we do give out even if it's the 18-month Benchmark here's where we are with your school here's where we're striving yeah I mean yeah no I'm really glad you brought that up so historically when there was uh No Child Left Behind which is the Federal reauthorization in the 1965 Elementary and secondary schools act not that anybody cares but with that there was a form letter that by law had to be sent out to families and that was very much from the federal government saying parents need to know this about your
118schools what's interesting because you're highlighting it that it didn't happen is I don't think the state has anything like that and so that's actually a really interesting thing CU I would have just assumed like they could have done that so I'm happy to I mean we look into it but I have no problem setting a standard for this District that just says if a if a school is highlighted as being on partnership you have to write a letter that explains it and then invites them to either a meeting or a website or something like that and we'll do it in multiple languages but I'm really glad you brought that up because you know the the federal government does that these is not this is not No Child Left Behind this is a state thing and
119so yeah and I I mean not that all the other superintendents will love me for saying this but I'll happily talk to mde too that they should probably have something like this so thank you for bringing that up yeah that was a great lift that was a great lift and that's a great PR best practice to implement is there any more question from our amazing board Dr Rodriguez thank you thank you very much to all board members for the good question for the explanation I have difficulties still understanding that but I looking at kindergarten and reading Proficiency in page three kindergarten has 24.6 and 2004 24 and 25 and then the rest of the elementary and middle school or whatever you want to call until grade nth is below that and then we go to
120the high school and suddenly I don't know what miracle happened during the summer that change my point is everybody remember every child to be know how to read in grade third and third grade do we have how we can I mean we we are fighting this for years and we are not moving this to say in third grade 100% our student will be in reading level how we can create do we have the program right now they can address that we are planning to have one what we are going to do in the future I don't care how yesterday what we are going to do about the future then really is going to change that culture that we are happy to not happy but aecting like normal learning process in our country we we can
121answer it a couple ways and I'll tag team with Jessica here um so one thing is as Dr uh Rodriguez really highlighted um you see that the score in kindergarten is around 24 and then it's kind of in the high teens and then it jumps up into the 20s for the high schools well the main reason for that is the exams change uh and so you know one of the things that we tried desperately to do over the last couple years was at least to get K8 to be all on the same uh exam um if you remember we used to use something called as web which was a very different kind of exam and that gave very let's say wonky numbers because it made it seem very high and then somehow our kids went
122down um and so I'll let just explain some of the examing things but your much more important question is what are we doing to make sure that by third grade these numbers get better right that's the and so one of the things we've done and we've talked about it a little bit but we're hoping to really see it into fruition over the next couple of years is adding assistance into the third grade classrooms and into the kindergarten classrooms this isn't just if you have an IEP this isn't just if you have something that mandates us to do it we are specifically taking money in our budget to add extra educational adults into the third grade to support reading and math for these kids and doing it in kindergarten as well now we just started it
123so the numbers are a little bit better right 15 to 18 uh I appreciate statistically we could talk about what that significant is but you know 15 to 18 is something um but our hope is that over the next couple of years you'll see some real growth but but you are right we as a district owe it to our children that by third grade they are more proficient and that's why we are really significantly investing I mean hundreds of thousands of dollars into it with the hope that if they get to where you need to be by third grade that can then carry over third fourth fifth 6th CU what you do see from our numbers is that there is a kind of steady is it's not like oh grade five is at 50% and
124everybody's at two so really what you're seeing from our schools is that it's a very common thing where you know the the the grades kind of one through eight are in the kind of middle teens or high teens and then the high schools get better and the kindergarten is high we acknowledge that and we got to work on it but Jess I don't know if there's more stuff you want to add to that yeah absolutely so uh the instructional directors um have been working um on systematic approach to literacy and this really came out uh robustly last year but the plan has continued this year so I'm really hoping that we're going to see a lot of growth starting next year because it takes a while to get the training and the systems in place
125um we are now fully embracing this the science of reading so I think you're going to see those increases start to happen specifically with our CK amplify reading curriculum uh we also have a robust pheic awareness and phonics curriculum we have Hagerty and we have youly and then this year uh we have we're working on full implementation training and coaching is currently happening with a program called 95% group so what this means to all of you is when we talk about students that are in different um achievement bands we have strategies for every single band now systematically in the school district to address needs student by student need by need um one of the exciting things that we found is we had a kindergarten uh classroom fully implemented 95% group they were the one of
126the first ones to take that on all of their students now have exited and they are all fully on um standard so we are seeing that these programs absolutely work um but we need to make sure that teachers feel comfortable implementing in them so the systematic approach to literacy is something and I've been in the district for a really long time as many of you know I've never seen anything this um intentional around reaching every student at every band especially in those K what I'm going to say K5 years so I do think that we have a plan that we've been very consistent with now we're layering in the um the very high quality curriculum that we've seen uh and then all of these other approaches with Phim make awareness phonics and then intervention so
127I do think uh you're going to see some significant growth and there is a strategic plan happening right now in Lancing thank you m president but I'm going to challenge this board and don't blame the teachers or the parents blame ourselves from now on if this District continue having a students don't know how to reach need right when they are in third grade if they need help money present that to the board this board should be responsible for that and I will talk about that later a little bit more you're talking about everything here we do here we do present a plan to us sure that we can approve the community can see it it's exciting our students our parents our teachers this board should be exciting about the plan that we are having for
128the future I am not going to be here more than two years but I hope so but but let's go one for all be all together and solving that tragedy is a tragedy educational tragedy we have many other but are not going to talk about that much thank you and the other question I had about the curriculum new we talking about new curriculum all the time here where I can find the curriculum do we have the curriculum in the web do we know what this board know the curriculum School District do we have a copy do we have great by great objectives they we know then they will communicate I thought I thought the teacher know about that no question about that but how about the rest of us that we approve the curriculum we
129choose approve that curriculum as a board members and I I hope that they presented to us that we know more that we emphasize the supporting all this effort the administration is doing because this board has a role in educating our kids thank you thank you so much uh Dr truste Rodriguez thank you for that for lifting that um yes the question is the question is are going to present the curriculum plan we are having that we are going to be aware of what the curriculum the new curriculum is You' like to see a presentation is that what I'm hearing of the curriculum or I think it should yeah I think that's important we would be happy to do that thank you so much so superintendent you got it on your list thank you yes we
130should have that and I think you're going to be excited about what trust I know I know I got it go ahead Dr yeah so I'm going to be an insufferable academic and do a comment instead of a question too um I would like the record to show that I am that statistics are not my passion at all but um taking us back to the Harvard charts um I actually think that the xaxis um provides really important context about who the students are in this school district um and being an ethnographer uh um I think that uh acknowledging where we fall in that x-axis is really important especially in these conversations uh after the pandemic and knowing who our students are what their households may look like what their incomes are I think that the
131holding steady actually means that there's you know lots of lots of great things going on in the school district and I wanted to just kind of uh point that out so thank you thank you for your comment trust the vice president um thank you Madame President well all the questions were asked already I don't know what but yeah I just want to make sure that um just to verify that our that our student count is at 9,900 that's where we're Landing that's that is or is there other students that were not counting in this no 99,900 um is where we are um we are in the count window so that may change in a couple of weeks but as of today that's our current and does this include prek Adult Ed or any of the
132other programs it does not include um Adult Ed it does not include so it really just includes who we typically count during count so no gsrp no ecse yeah no I was going to say well just Just for information what are those numbers I can get them for you um I mean that's that's something that I don't know off the top of my head yeah for gsrp I think we're in the high four is low FES and then for adult that it's around 200 250 we can get it to you but just as a reminder to the community the district itself runs a myriad of programs when we talk about count that's only the K12 students enrolled in our specific programs and this is the the number that is not audited yet I don't want
133anybody to quote us on the 9904 uh we should have account number in the next couple of weeks remember the account window uh started uh second week in February and will end first week in March so we should uh we I'm and usually I'll present to the board on that if you need um but just right now we are at 9904 for enrolled students in the K12 system uh but this is not an audited number the audited number will come in like three weeks so and just to be clear we use the 99,900 because those are the students K12 that would take the nwaa assessment so that's the number that we include in the data because those are the students are taking it does that mean that those are the students that were there on
134that day those are the students that are there and those are the students that are meant to take that assessment is 9,904 okay but I I certainly would like to know the the whole absolutely the whole picture of of students because adult that is as much important as as anything else and of course uh gsrp definitely uh we need to to um keep them in mind of course um trusty Williams touched on something that I was going to ask and that was about the um the training of subs and um I think you said that not all subs get trained on or get professional development on on on the plan that I'm talking about page page 10 so to be specific any substitute that is in our in our school district that is launch longterm
135meaning they're not a day-to-day sub goes to all of the same trainings and professional development as any of our teachers so they have the same training opportunities and the same training days as our teacher our teachers do if you are a day-to-day sub meaning that I'm sick today I have a sub come in or if it is a sub that we're not able to keep a long-term substitute in so it's one person after another then no we don't we do not do specific training in depth at least with those particular people but anyone who is a long-term substitute teacher in our school district does have access and is expected actually to go to staff meetings and provide go to the professional development they are just as any other staff member in that building yeah dras
136mentioned about the curriculum so if if the subs do they get some sort of information about curriculum so they know what we're talking about when they come for one day to a classroom so what that would look like in a classroom is the teacher leaves a detailed lesson plans and so it might not be detailed on the curriculum but it will say things like if it's math they will tell them the page numbers and what they should do and they often will put sticky notes in the teachers guides to for questions that they will need to ask but as far as training specifically not unless they've been en Lancing and kind of a lot of our subs do frequent Lancing and so they are used to oh this is C or I know what these
137various Things Are but the teachers actually are the ones that put in the hard work to create really detailed sub plans for the teachers or for the substitutes um the other question about teachers we have some non-traditional teachers right do in our classrooms so they get the same training as the regular teachers what additional supports do you give them because they're not they didn't grow in the education in in the classroom So currently the supports that we will give to our teachers are they are all assigned um an experienced Mentor teacher that they work with and that means that the mentor teacher will come into their classroom to do observations and um look fors they also have the opportunity to go into their Mentor teacher classrooms these are veteran teachers that um are steeped in
138the practice whether they were non-traditional to begin with or not um they also have instructional coaches many at their schools that will work with those specific new teachers and then um this month specifically we are launching a new teacher project that will specifically take these teachers under our wings and making sure that they get very specified individualized training because we have some people that they're non-traditional but they actually get the hang of it very quickly and they may not need as much training as someone else so it really has to be um in some ways broad brush stroke so they all get the same thing uh we also have an in-depth orientation for all of our new teachers it is not um you know going to make make you the best teacher on the planet
139but it is going to give you the basics for how you set up your classroom your management locating the curriculum getting you logged into the system so there's lots of different efforts that are happening through the year um also we've had principles that also co-write lesson plans with those specific individuals as well those are just some of the few things that we do so okay well thank you for that I think that's information that people need to know absolutely as to when they don't have teacher that's not teacher per se well one one more question on that how many years can they teach without the certificate oh that's a great question for HR because the laws are changing and there's different permits that people can be under so I would I know there's permits yeah
140but I would have to lean on HR to give that specific information prop there's a couple ways I can answer and certainly I will defer to to HR and specifics but um if you're on a sub permit you know depending on what your level of uh uh education is you can do it for a year um you also there's some that are only 90 days and then you have to actually switch classes um but you know what's really wonderful and I would urge everybody uh to know this is because of our uh grow your own program what we're trying to really do is people that are substitutes people that are assistants we're trying to get them enrolled in college classes so they can get their teaching license and we actually pay for it so you
141know please please if you are listening out there and you really want to do this and you're working for us we've got grant money uh that we really want to give you but depending on the kind of sub permit they're on it could be a year it could be a 90 days and then they have to switch to class it it really depends um but I have I would love for HR maybe they'll create like a one pager to just explain to you the kinds of people that can be in the classroom fully certified on their way to certified in a program daily sub and that I think would be a good thing for everybody to know so happy to do that yeah because uh I think there was some language in state law that
142the teachers had to be certified or or or you would not get the the credit so that that would push the the district down so okay now with all this said and and the need that that we know we have to continue serving our students in many different ways I want to again bring the issue of uh this board putting together a student achievement committee so that we can um on an ongoing basis have this conversations with staff and and keep them keep us on track as well and I think that uh reading we need to have a reading plan for students from beginning to end that because uh some students um graduate and maybe they're not a proficiency level and we need for all of them to be proficient and to have uh um
143you know a comprehension of of of what they're reading if they can't read they can't do much we all know that so I think that uh from now on we need to work with that committee and I'm asking the or president to um start putting that committee together so that we can um follow up with things like this you know so so with that I I'll I'll I'll leave it up to the the president to follow up on that yes and I will we've had this conversation it's very important all of our questions have been amazing tonight I think trusty Williams has another question we will be discussing the student achievement committee at our Retreat so be prepared um to to have that conversation trusty Williams just a few questions I'm going to go work
144backwards no can you just a few questions there govern so one of the things I'm I'm listening to Dr Rodriguez and he's talking about the literacy from K then going up is I know we have multiple libraries in the area is there some way we can partner with these libraries during this summer I do know during Co um during the summer that there were like reading packets and things given out can we go back to to help our students I mean book challenges things like that we have them anything that we can do to develop our kids to keep them going I know for me um summer reading programs were always fun for me I was actually sitting in our family Round Table the other day listening to some parents and they have a book
145challenge going on currently within their school and to think that their kids are competing they have teams that they're competing with to think that if we can get our kids to do this learning wise growing wise I think their lit our literacy rates will grow up so and it is one of our schools that are high performing so I just want to put that out there so that's my first question and concern my second question is Doc uh uh trusty Lopez talked about the numbers but I'm going to have a Dr Day a moment um are we here our homeless population when we're looking at these numbers because they're not always coming to school how are we reach because I believe we have more students missing because they are homeless or transient that are not
146in our accounts how are we reaching out to them how are we meeting them where they are that's my second question second and last question for now I was going to ask you if you would like to speak on that [Music] can you hear me okay great we thank you for the question we have um through the office of school culture uh under director Jennifer West's um leadership she oversees the DSS's who also assists with case management uh we have a partnership that uh we just uh kind of uh got involved in with uh Child and Family Charities who um through one of their grants have kind of given us a case manager uh solely for our homeless uh Division and so that person is working between the office of school culture and the office
147of um special populations and so between uh the the two offices we will be uh begin targeting um on a deeper level um to ensure that um those who are struggling with um home home and SEC or security uh that we can get those kids at schools we have also um four vans that run every day where we're picking up students all all around outside of the the city limits and of course um you know ensuring that students have uh ways to get to school um outside of a school bus we provide um of course the cata uh uh cards uh gas cars Etc so I think that um through our dsss and this new partnership with our child and family we're going to see uh an increase in uh Services provided to to those
148who are struggling so let me come back to that how are the how are we identifying these students I mean we we'll just be transparent have a moment we all know my situation in this but I was never reported to your office so if their child is not trusty excuse me trusty Williams we all we let me trusty trusty Williams I've got the G we all don't know your your situation and I want to focus on 98b in the report in the report understand question that's part of the we all don't know your your situation okay so let me so how is a child if they're not not let me if the school doesn't notify you that they're homeless how are you targeting them because somebody has to tell you so how are you target
149if they're not told by the school how are you know that they're homeless unless they're being told so we're missing some people that's what I'm asking uh self-identification uh other members in the district coaches uh ssss teachers administrators uh again self-identification um that's another piece in in terms of the case management uh getting into the schools having uh in-depth conversations with principles going down the entire roster starting at you know letter a uh and you know talking about every single student in that building and trying to identify where they're at who they're with um ensuring that we're educating on exactly what mckenny vento is because sometimes uh I think you know from a cultural perspective I think that uh many times uh our family Ames are uh they find themselves doubled up but that's what
150we do uh right uh I mean I grew up uh with cousins uh living in the same household according to mckenny vento my cousins would have been homeless uh so we we're aware of those factors we are trying to uh position ourselves in front of as many uh in e um external groups as possible to help with the with the identification piece we are connected with Faith groups around the city of Lancing we're connected with Advent house around the city of Lancing we're uh strengthening our partnership with child and family who also uh dives into homelessness and so I think that you know it it's a big web and so if if everyone's working uh at the same Pace on the same uh topic you know I think that our our numbers will continue to
151grow our numbers are up this year by 10% in terms of ident ification as well so I think that we're all moving in the in a in a good at a good pace and in the right direction thank you for answering that and thank you for reframing how thank you for reframing your question I appreciate that is there any other questions at this time wonderful wonderful wonderful at this you all are amazing thank you for presenting the 98b report for this winter I guess it would be we look forward to seeing you in the fall spring soon our pleasure in June in June thank you very much thank you um at this time we're going to have our superintendent give us uh his report well uh now it's definitely good evening uh but it's uh
152wonderful to be here as always because uh you know it's already 7:58 I will try not to uh go too long uh but I do want to say a couple of things one as you all heard uh we really are making great progress and I definitely look forward to the June one where we can say it is statistically accurate progress uh because we do know uh that by June we'll get some even more robust numbers and what I really look forward to the most is when we get the final numbers about being off of partnership we already see that our sis numbers our school index scores not something else that it's also sis um we're really making big strides and even the schools that are still under that 5% line they've doubled uh you know
153one of them doubled their sis so we feel like we're making good progress there is a lot more to do um I'm the first one to admit that we are definitely not where we want to be um but those those growth things we're seeing um and I really have to commend our staff you know we have a new curriculum in ela we have new processes and procedures and and it's really working so uh congratulations to everybody um as always our transportation numbers uh they're getting better for uh gas cards cata so we're at 2384 requested with the 2,380 given so only a four differential and that's during the school week which is pretty great so again uh if anybody still needs a gas card uh if you want to transfer from bus to gas please
154please please let us know uh we always have those available uh right now we have 633 students who requested the cata with 619 given of course that's just the the time that it takes so please if you haven't gotten your catac card please go to your school please talk to the secretary uh at your high school and if there's an issue please let the Department of Transportation know and uh in terms of Dean the number is a little bit large uh there's 3,47 have requested and oh sorry have gotten a route and 3,773 uh 3,733 have uh requested so there's a differential of about 333 or 330 uh here one of the reasons why that is that's including the students that are non-routable um we we have tried very hard to make sure that we
155can route as many kids as we can we have M more routes this year uh there's a better attendance records things are going better um but we do recognize that there are about 300 kids that just are not on the bus now those kids of course do have either they have gas cards or a walking or doing whatever um so please if you're one of those 300 kids please make sure that you have a gas card uh please make sure that we're working with you and we are every day adding more and more kids to our buses so if you do have that issue please please please be uh in touch you might not even remember that you're still on that list I've talked to a couple of families they're like oh yeah we've been
156using a gas card for like a year and a half and they're like oh we never said don't worry about us being on the yellow bus so just make sure that if transportation is still an issue uh you let us know and I bring this up so much today because it is cold out there and I the last thing I want is kids waiting around or not being able to get to school because of weather things like that so please anybody listening to this if you have any transportation issues just call the office reach out it there's go online we have all the phone numbers there uh Christina and her team will be absolutely happy to to help you with that the other you know incredibly important thing is of course is to acknowledge that
157uh this month is Black History Month um you know this is our last meeting in February so I want to really uh make sure that we acknowledge it we actually have a video uh we want to show of a couple of our principles talking about the importance of it um but also Al for the community to know that um over the next week or so a lot of our schools will be doing uh performances and participation and all sorts of wonderful things we will videotape that as well and and make that into something but because this is our last uh meeting in the month of February which is Black History Month we wanted to make sure to recognize it uh with this wonderful video and to acknowledge that we're going to be doing quite a
158lot of things within schools over the next two weeks and you know I would say it hope I hope it goes without saying but sadly in this world it does not um the incredible Gifts of what make a society whole and loving and someplace that humans want to be is acknowledgment of each and everyone's history each and everyone's background each and everyone's talents and love and and just belief that we can all be together and societies have to acknowledge months like black history month because for so long groups especially African-Americans have not been able to have that acknowledgement and a school district as you saw that is you know almost 40% black it would be a disservice to not acknowledge the fact that the history of African-Americans uh is so incredible and that of course
159in some respects to have one month is unfair and and not right all of American History is Black History all of American History includes everybody and we need to acknowledge the the worth of all of our children and their backgrounds and where they're from and this is probably a great plug now to talk about how one of the things that I'm so proud of that this district is uh holding on to and doing and Jessica's helping to lead the charge with um uh Carlton and Ruben on the true Multicultural uh education a lot in community has been talking about kind of a divisiveness that can come with these conversations but when you look at it from a multicultural lens where everybody's background is worthy everybody's background is incredible everybody's background is terrific that allows every
160child to see themselves as some somebody who can be positive in society loved in society and supported in society and so it's an honor and privilege to be able to talk uh about Black History Month but it's also an honor and privilege to talk about multiculturalism because that is something that this District cares I think very deeply about and I can't wait to I think it's May I don't quote me on it but I think in May we're going to be presenting uh what that work looks like so without further Ado Ryan could you play the video and then uh I think that'd be great perfect in the month of February one thing that we specifically celebrate is Black History Month it's not that it's just Black History Month black history is a part of
161American History it's an opportunity for us to think about all the wonderful accomplishments and the rich part of the history of our country um African-Americans play without our creativeness without our swag without our contributions America could not be the best that it is it couldn't be all that it is right now the teachers have been doing different things within their classrooms sharing fun facts historical pieces of information art projects just important figures that are developmentally appropriate for our kids to learn about I have a collection of Black History Month pop dos on my table to welcome students and staff when they come into my office and then to encapsulate the month of February the last week which is next week we are going to have a Black History Month Spirit Week months like Black History
162Month Asian-American month Hispanic Heritage Month and on and on and on allows us to stop and highlight and it's a way of saying we recognize you we see you it doesn't live just for the 28 days of February it lives as a part of the fabric of teaching history so you can't just pluck out this is the only time you celebrate black history for this short amount of time time everybody that's here in this country um whatever your ethnicity is um but especially in this month as we're recognizing our African-American students that they hold value in our country they hold value in the laning school district you are important you have a voice and your culture and where you come from this is a part of the fabric of not just at wood but of
163the United States of America whatever you are aspiring to do as an adult you can do that the sky is the limit and you can really achieve those things that you want to do because we have a trail and a history of others that have done those things in the past history is not this thing that was so long ago we have to be advocates for Change and if we don't advocate for change if we don't use our voice if we don't speak up um about the things that we experience about the things that we go through and and the lens that we see life through that some of that will get lost and we want not just our history but American history to remain vibrant for all [Music] Americans uh thank you to Ryan
164and the team and of course to uh uh our two wonderful principles who had the chance uh for us to interview so um you know we have uh uh Kesha and Nicole who have been just really really uh thoughtful about uh helping with this so thank you to everybody Ryan thank you for the team for this and with that uh you have definitely heard enough from the district so uh thank you very much Madame President it is all yours thank you superintendent I like to say that uh we celebrate culture 365 but today we going to celebrate Black History 365 all righty are there any questions for the superintendent tonight any oh no no questions all right moving on to no questions for Ben moving on to our routine matters we have committee reports from
165our facility committee trusty Lopez thank you madam president you're welcome I think we had a really fun meeting on Tuesday oh was there yeah you were there and I was there [Music] remember so you're going to help me make this report or give this report anyway um the meeting started at 1:03 p.m. in this room um we received updates from for Mount Hope and the status of the school um looking looking good and I I think she can tell us everything about M ho Dr Nares Martinez she lives across the street oh oh okay yeah I thought you so um other in the agenda we have um some purchase orders or bid requests to to approve but anyway um we heard a update on M Hope on Willow and we we heard about the the
166the work that's now uh moving inside and uh in the classrooms um they're uh doing a lot of mechanical electrical and plumbing uh in that school luden because it's been delayed for a year you know with all the changes um they will be doing U schematic design and then coming to the committee then to the board with some drawings and so on and so forth so that's in the future um we have uh 1 two 3 4 5 6 7 8 I think uh request uh for approval of the bids we'll go into those uh as the agenda comes to those uh items do you have anything else to add on on just in general that we spoke about yeah I just want to want to point out that um for Luton I do remember
167Christine me mentioning that they'll be having a parent and Community conversation on March 11th and 7 no Noe can you tell us the dates again I want our community to be able to attend thank you yep you're wel welcome I just wanted to make sure this was turned on we're shooting for the week of the 17th for parents and staff so we'll be working to arrange that with the principal and then get communication out to our families wonderful and that we're on track for all of our our our buildings right we're on track oh yeah we're we are more than on track actually we are ahead of schedule which is a very nice place to be in case things happen yes one of the things that that we didn't talk about was the issue of
168um what's happening right now with tariffs and and all of that I don't know we um we will be doing some pre purchases and it that's further up but I I just thinking ahead you know uh what the circumstances will be that we may have to uh come and request you know uh uh bids for purchase pre- purchase for for the materials potentially um actually right now we've um some of the tile that we're putting in at Mount Hope is actually from Italy and we haven't had experienced any issues I know uh we haven't experienced any issues with that just yet um and so we're thankful for that uh uh crazily enough or funnily enough um we've actually been having issues getting stuff domestically um because of the crazy weather we've had um so with
169the floods that we've had um further south um you know some of the unfortunately some of the plants that build some of the Cabinetry and stuff like that have experienced flooding or fires and those kinds of things so we've had to make some changes um but so far we've been lucky enough with with with tariff stuff but yes we do think about those things um when we're making selections to see if you know domestic products if there's an alternate if we're really really stuck on something that we need to get that's outside of the country yeah the the other thing that was mentioned and I just was reminded is that um the roofs for um Willow um are being worked on and and also there will be setting uh uh panels uh in in Willow
170also in Mount Hope I think right uh or Mount Hope is not going to have panels no Mount Hope will not have panels Willow will have willow has geothermal which is already installed and it's underneath our buildings and then they will get solar panels yeah okay yeah I wanted to mention that because it's it's a different kind of roof has to be stronger sturdier uh in order to support the panels that are going to be on top of that roof and uh we'll go into the other uh bits as they come on the agenda is there any questions for the president any questions for a trustee vice president Lopez thank you all right that's my report mad president thank you so much vice president Lopez moving on to our consent agenda um trusty Lopez did
171mention all of the vids that um was shared about in the facilities report um may I have a motion Madam president I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda as presented thank you truste cab second second by trust Martin any discussion oh my mic is not on thank you any discussion at this time trustee Rodriguez thank you very much um what kind of money we are going to use for all these projects oh so if you don't mind can I turn it over to Christina to go through the beds yes okay thank yep happy to go over that um and just for reference we do list what funds we are using on each of the bids as well just so we have it as proper documentation for everything so quite a bit
172of this is done um through for our two projects that are um that we are doing the parking lots it's been a long day sorry for the where we're doing the parking lots we are using our syncing fund so um we get annual syncing fund so we were using our syncing fund for the two projects uh for that uh the one at Gardener and the one at Dwight Rich so good for them brand new parking lots this year um and then for our Forest View and Guy Park Elementary for the upgrades to electrical we are also using our sinking fund so that's to prep for um both air conditioning that's going in at both of those schools and for solar panels that are going in for our Mount Hope School furniture that is completely Bond
173use um with the exception of our our very last DBI order that is on there and that's for Food Service we're using Food Service funds because that's all cafeteria Furniture so we're able to use our food service funds for that and help supplement with that um and then our atw cafeteria equipment is also being used fully out of our food service funds um and just to remind the board we usually have an issue spending down our food service funds so we're trying to spend as much as we can with that because we usually have too much um and then the last one that is our door for pattingill that is still a change order that is coming out of um that if you guys remember that the that project was funded by both syncing fund
174and then we Ed a little bit of fund I call it the Shirley funds fund 45 um sorry I call it the Shirley funds um is from sale of former property um so we used those two funding sources and we had budgeted for a certain amount for our patent Gill Edition we did not use all of that budget so we're using some of the rest of that budget to then make this addition um to do this change order so we're not expending any more funds above and beyond what we had originally budgeted for we're just tapping into some of those additional funds that we didn't have to spend that we thought we might have to yes trusty uh Rodriguez thank you um I'm going to vote Yes for the last time in these proposals until
175I have the report how much money we have in the seeking fund M how much money we have in the other funds and what kind of the project we are going to have in the future and have a projection on how economically the district is going to be and these funds then um I think I asked for that few weeks ago but um it's about time that now we need to know that we are spending all this money we have a lot of money we are in the business and our business is not to make money our business to educate kids but um this money I need to know if what we are having what we happen in the future the we cover the I think the board should be aware of all these um
176um funds thank you mad president yes um yes trusty um Lopez Lopez thank you um I did ask that question at the meeting in terms of the syn fun and I think we still have like four years left and that's uh 8 million a year so those they abouts you know these are round figures so so with that I know that we have some projects already that we've been using sying funds like today um I think that as far as new projects we have to get done with the projects we now have but um if you recall called there was a long list of repairs needed by the buildings and then we still have shared and road I don't know how we're going to handle that but that's that's one that's uh pending so that's
177just from from what I've seen uh I don't know if Christina has any any further information because I don't think we have looked at any other projects besides the ones we now have uh except this building that that got it we had to do it that was covered by Insurance um um we do have several other projects that are slated for the sying fund this summer and I'm happy um to get a list of all of those together um and what we're planning on spending that's not an issue at all we'll make sure that we get that together all righty so so if anybody has any questions on any of this bit request ask see if we can answer it yes ma'am now now who going to regulate the meeting me or you you well
178I'm doing the report by the way we had two trustees coming out I said hold up trusty boy yes madame president yes just a really quick quick question and then comment I thoroughly enjoyed the bids and just reading through them especially how you connected them to the Strategic plan one of the questions that I had for you is we stated a couple of times that this is helping um oh goodness um it's helping with the district's Mission um in regard to upgrading facilities but more so it dealt with you put a phrase in there that oh um mission of providing educational excellence in a safe and nurturing environment and so I really appreciated that because it it just helps to solidify why we're we're even doing these things but also I wanted to say thank
179you for I looked up the companies and I like that American Asphalt is a familyowned company that was like I think really important and they have long lasting reputation and so can you just talk a little bit about how you made some selections to some of some of the companies that we chose sure absolutely I'm happy to do that um so the vast majority of the time as a district when we're um looking at however we're spending whatever monies are made available to us whether it be through a bond syncing fund general fund whatever it may be we have the responsibility of awarding the lowest most responsive and responsible bidder um the contracts um so we take that as very seriously um one of the things that we've done recently too is um if the
180board remembers we adopted some things to add in the Tri County and local um so we take that into consideration as well and minority and female owned um so those are things that we we do look at every time that we're making uh going through the bid selection process um a few other things that we look through as well is history with the district history with other school districts so when we're having these post bid interviews with these companies we have a um a whole list of uh questions that we ask all of the companies of course that are directly related to the project but are also directly related to their past history in doing similar projects um there's also things like their rates of you know injuries on the job like all different kinds
181of things that are super important um and so sometimes you'll see um or a lot of the time we will reward the lowest biders because a lot of the times the companies that are bidding the work for us are responsive responsible are giving us everything that we need um and so usually we do end up going with the lowest you also see sometimes we won't and sometimes that has to do with past performance history um sometimes if they're not able to provide the exact um scope of what we need asked for in the bid and they want to provide an alternate that we're not okay with because that goes against the standardization across the district um so we do take a lot into a lot into consideration when we're having um these selection processes but
182a lot of the time a lot of these companies come I'll say come correct um with their bids um and they have everything in there and so you know a lot of times we do go with the lowest better but it doesn't mean we don't or you know we don't make a different decision sometimes y thank you for that last thing I really appreciate because I had the question on the request for change with Christman and what that what that meant and so if I'm hearing you correctly the request for change is simply we didn't spend this a lotted money for a project and because it's a certain amount over 50,000 we are now voting to take this amount and put it toward another project am I hearing that correctly sure and I I'm happy
183to explain it a little bit further too so when whenever we go into certain projects um I have the okay to approve a certain amount in a change order to the superintendent then has an amount to approve and anything over 50,000 then needs to come to the board because it's a very significant dollar amount um so first and foremost that's why it's coming to the board um sometimes when change orders like this come to the board we are requesting additional funding in this case we don't have to so I'm not going to use exact numbers here but let's say we projected a project for $5 million it only cost us $4.5 million now we have a $500,000 difference in there and we are able to come in and do something a little bit additional to
184the project that we weren't originally planning on so it's a change order to the project um but we are using those available funds that we had already budgeted for so that's what this situation is yes all right thank you so much all righty any other questions trustee Williams I have a question regarding the um the mount the mount hul Furniture classroom office and cafeteria is a lot of people that were can you tell us what each vendor is providing I can off the top of my head but I'm happy to get you I think I have like a 16 to 18 page document it might be a little bit bigger than that that kind of specifies each of the furniture um for sure I can tell you that DBI is doing both the cafeteria furniture
185and some of the office furniture and Conference Room Furniture Gear Up sports gear grid gear grid Corporation um you'll see those are a little bit smaller dollar amounts those are for equipment and Furniture inside of the gymnasium um and then do um EI NBS and Great Lakes Furniture are all combination of both the library Furniture um our resource room furniture and classroom Furniture um so we're getting bits and pieces from different ones based on what uh staff and students selected what they like most so we might be getting chairs from Great Lakes and tables from NBS and student or um teacher desks from you know do eii so it's a blend of what they picked after we set up the room Mount Hope for all of them to test out the different Furniture thank you
186you're welcome thank you trusty Williams all right no more questions all in favor of the adoption of the consent in of the consent agenda please sign signify by saying I I I any opposed motion passes thank you moving on to our action item um we discussed policy number 8330 the directory information last week and there is the policy is also in your board packet this evening may I have a motion Madam okay no Madam President we already did the cons I move that the Board of Education adopt policy 8330 as proposed thank you truste um kavanau second second by truste Rodriguez thank you so much um all in favor signify is there any discussion no alrighty all in favor please signify by saying I I any oppos motion passes 80 yes 8 Z alrighty um
187moving on to action item number B the Michigan Association of School Michigan Association for school board um 2025 election um you also have in your packet our beloved trustee GMO Lopez is um running for region number seven which is a three-year term um his election statement is also in our packet this evening may I have a motion Madame President oh everybody's excited about you I'm G who am I giving it to I'll give it to trusty Williams cuz she did it was you okay okay I'll give it to trusty um stro Madam president yes I move that the Board of Education cast its vote for truste germo vice president Lopez in the ma masb 2025 election to elect members to the masb board of directors all righty may I have a second second I'll give
188it to trusty Boer all right lady um all in favor um signified by saying I I any opposed Iain motion passes 70 all righty it's amazing M something you you know what yes yes thank you well no thank you very much for the support you know MB certainly is a important organization in the state of Michigan in terms of Education quality and preparedness of Schoolboard members right um so um it's been a a privilege serving there I was first appointed then I ran for the first time and got elected and this is my second and probably last time to to beid for that position if I get enough votes but I do thank you for for your support here in in this board of education Gracias my president yes trust rrig I had been in
189several meetings with the m Association school board or National Association School Board and the name of Mr guo Lopez came out and very good regard um I think they represent all of us very very well and um I hope that he stayed there for many many years thank you trusty Rodriguez and I agree with you when I first came on the board I I attended my first conference and you were there and you do represent us as well so thank you for serving in that capacity you wear a lot of hats thank you thank you very much you're welcome all righty moving on to new business and we don't have any new business at this time discussion items we don't have any discussion items report from our secretary and announcements yes so um on March
19014 uh we have a PD day so there is no school on March 21st there is also no school and our spring break is coming up from March 24th to March 28th um and on February 26th we have parent University um the topic is navigating emotions it'll be at 6: p.m. at uh pattingill and also on the 26th we have pcac the topic is behavioral threat assessment and management at 600 p.m. uh at 2400 Way wri Avenue and our next next board meetings are March 13th when we are having a regular board meeting March 20th we have a regular board meeting and an ISS or informational study session and April 3rd we have another regular board meeting thank you Madam Secretary do we have any public comments on non-agenda items at this time no see
191Hello everybody no all righty um comments from our board members at this time yes trusty Rodriguez M president and board members thank you very much um on the last meeting February 6 I was watching you working here from long long distance from here and really happy to see this new board member and new board room and thank you to the workers and Christina and many other that were involved and having repairing this even we like to go to the school that is our home that is the school board home and um if this room represents something is not the physical aspect is the board education dedication for so many years just today we had two and a half hours dedicated to education and that is what this gr represent when I go to Washington DC
192or I go to the capital I go to see what the members of the of the representatives of the senator Senators meet and I know that chamber represents so much for our nation and I hope they continue be representing what they were there for and never change then this board this room represent education in the laning school district in the last four 54 years I have known great board members I'm not going to mention any because I'm afraid I going to miss many of them and only will mention Mr G lope who is already 20 years but this board this Board Room represent the philosophy the the all the work done for so many years by the school board and the administration and the whole staff and in lunching community in education I only want
193to mention one person the is Gail alen Clan who died quickly quietly January 26 2025 after a life of which she was anything but quiet were you talking about a board member here there can be talking and asking her questions and all that she was one of those she was never quiet but doesn't she was coming to this attitude but after that she will be cooperating in working together moving the district forward and um she was acted as a PTI leader at her children school and ched the 1979 millets campaign that renew funding for the school during a period of T Revolt in 1981 year she was instrument and in 1981 girl was elected to the Lancing Board of Education serving for 12 years years she was instrumental in putting the first female principal in
194luning high school Easter High School of Miss elor Dawson then I remember that then this place that we are here together is a sacred place not because look good because what the job the for many years had been done here and I hope that we continue to do it thank you m president let's go to honor our own oh and by the celebration of africanamerican month I had here I had a dream then we celebrate the mat Luther King Day the best commission maybe in the United State is in laning is in laning then laning has been always celebrating diversity always and and be proud of what we are and what L represent L school district is thank you to all of you I am glad to come back and this cold weather thank you
195so glad to have you back thank you Dr Rodriguez all righty any other yes trusty boy so I I would be remiss even though I miss teaching this in my classroom that um giving acknowledgement to the creator of negro history week that then turned into negro History Month That Was Then adopted into black history month and if you do not know his name you should his name is Dr Carter G Woodson and one of the reasons he created negro history week is because his professor in college at an ivy leak School said that Americans did not care about the function nor the expectations nor the contributions of African-Americans in this country and he set out to prove him wrong and we are doing so greatly but also I hear often why February why February it's
196the shortest month so in case you do not know the reason he chose February is because Frederick Douglas was born and died in the month of February and in order to honor his memory as an activist and abolitionist he chose the month of febru February so never let it be said it was chosen because it was a short month it is to honor a hero in the history of America and that is Frederick Douglas don't forget it I'll quiz you next year thank you educator SL truste for for the history lessons for all who don't know all righty truste Williams grace us with your presence really no just a reminder next Tuesday future Chef's National challenge by sedo Magic is happening um starting at 4:30 to 7 it's going to be at lanine school district
197seon High School you all should come it is so much fun these kids are uh first grade kindergartners through fifth graders and they compete like Top Chef when I say they compete like top chefs they do I mean to watch these kids cook I'm like I think I need to rethink my cooking abilities some days last year's winter she made this roast beef sandwich with her own aoli and she was a fifth grader most people don't even know what a AOL is so let's support our babies I mean they're doing it and I mean they're taking these things home to share with their families too so and I think they showed up on some of the menus at the doco as well in the school so please next Tuesday let's show them some support thank
198you trusty Williams this is a fun event to attend I did attend before any other questions from our board members did you sit a I I do thank you you know um obviously we're celebrating uh Black History Month which we should and we have all the time um but just a little bit of History um the the TR vidalgo was was signed in February 2nd of 18 something or other and um so that became Cho history week the first week in February February the 2nd to the 6 or whatever it is February the 2nd so we um we don't sometimes we just forget and sometimes we don't pay attention but that is a significant event in in the history of the United States of America and I think that we should U um make a
199point of of acknowledging that every year and uh maybe we can put on our calendar a school calendar so that we can also join in celebration of both um the month-long black history month and the week of Cho history week and and I'm proud to say that when Michigan passed that Cho history week in Michigan our own Dr Rodriguez was the one that presented the resolution at the state house so if you would like to just share a little bit about it Dr Rodriguez uh it was a a fabulous day thank you history is is so great in this city and the nation and and ignoring each other is the worst thing we can do then um appreciation for what we are what we can be um The Cho week was celebrating that year for
200all Michigan and incredible activities in the laning school district for for for years and years um I don't want to go over the Cho week because definitely February we had to be aware is African-American week and um my respect and honor to them thank you thank you Dr Rodriguez yes teacher educator I would love to end on a high note in case you all did not know probably not we have a former sexon grad who is a professional makeup artist and her top client who is a hip-hop artist named rap city became a two-time Grammy winner this year and our former graduate was there celebrating with her so shout out to Kiera lenise who is an awesome awesome woman in this city a champion of the city and recognizing her talents it was on the
201main screen who will beat your face for you if you absolutely okay wonderful though but thank you for that high note Lancing is amazing Lancing school district is amazing and we have amazing individuals that have came out of the laning school district and we have amazing students that are coming out of the laning school district so it is an honor to serve on this board and with that being said if there are no more comments from the board members may we have a n trust just remember March is reading month we all have schools please sign up to go read at your schools I mean we're talking about educating our students let's this is one way we as board members can partake going into our sub sign schools or into any of the schools and
202reading to these babies so just remember that say you sorry I'm sorry and I don't even need to have a motion to adjourn meetings the board meeting