001exactly foreign thank you good evening everyone Welcome to our September 11th um KSD Board of Education special meeting work session I'd like to call this meeting to order Mr boyko can you please lead us in the pledge all righty first thing up is our recognition key contributor recognition the Board of Education will recognize the key contributors for the 2023-24 school year Dr Ulrich and Miss Steph Dietrich you think all right well thank you very much and this is uh really just a wonderful opportunity for us to recognize our key contributors and I think I'm I'm going to make sure I do this every single time this is a true passion uh specifically for Lisa Wade and the work that she puts into ensuring that our staff members who are recognized in this way really feel
002like it is a true celebration as it should be so always want to make sure I take that opportunity before I turn it over to you Miss Wade and thank you for everything that you do to make sure these folks get the recognition that they they deserve and so I'll go ahead and turn it over to you yeah okay good evening everyone I would love to introduce these fabulous people to you but before we do that I'd like to show you a quick video that we put together that we were able to share with staff on opening day so foreign colorful and conscientious brain is incredibly Dependable real life High School foreign [Applause] okay so that was our fun uh Publishers Clearinghouse moment we had when we got to surprise um our announcement with our
00310 key contributors this year so we're here today to celebrate our inaugural inaugural recipients of this award the key contributor award this award was developed in conjunction in partnership with the support staff advisory committee the committee this award is to replace the former support staff of the Year award program and the goal of our work together was twofold the first was to celebrate our support staff colleagues In The Same Spirit with which our teachers of the year are celebrated in the teacher of the year program tonight's celebration with all of you is part of that it allows these individuals to have the opportunity at the board level which they haven't had before to have recognition so thank you very much for your time and celebrating them today the second goal is we reviewed and updated
004our categories to align with how these people actually support our kids teachers schools community and this work netted in an expansion of the program and we built the categories from six to ten categories and we renamed the categories to identify how our support staff members directly contribute to Kirkwood schools so the individuals I'm not going to introduce were nominated by colleagues from across across the district and then chosen by a selection committee as the key contributor for their respective category so I'm going to first introduce the four folks who weren't able to make it tonight so first we have kind of McCoy and kind of McCoy is our key contributor for physical mental social and emotional supports and she is a para educator at North Kirkwood Middle School she makes all students feel supported and
005always goes the extra mile she's flexible with her thinking and can independently think through what's Best in all situations needed she works collaboratively with the staff to best serve our special education students at North we have Henrietta Williams is our key contributor for transportation supports and is a bus driver for our Kaiser kids Miss Henrietta as the staff and students know and love her she knows the name and stop of every single kid on her bus by heart she always knows exactly who got on the bus and who's missing her memory is incredible Miss Henrietta asked the kids about their activities and listens to all their stories she has a great rapport with her bus riders and makes sure our kids get to and from school safely Barb eilerman is our key contributor for Food
006Service supports Barb insures our food at the at kecc is not only safe and sanitary but delicious she goes above and beyond to ensure our students dietary needs are met in that kecc is well fed the kecc kids and staff absolutely love Miss Barb and the positive light she brings When She is delivering food to the classrooms in our last person who's not with us tonight is Brian Freeman and you guys all might remember Brian he was recognized by the board last year he is our key contributor for meetings and facility supports and he serves Robinson as one of our custodians you might remember him because he helped rescue a child he was choking last year so he radiates a positive energy to all at Robinson and he constantly is doing something to make sure
007Robinson is safe and comfortable learning environment I know the Robinson field team feels very taken care of because of Brian's efforts so I'm now going to introduce our team another colleague from over at Robinson is Shelly Armstrong and she's our key contributor for technology supports she supports Robinson as the technology specialist she takes the time to explain the systems and techniques needed to use our Kirkwood technology she is relaxed and patient with all staff and students she is solution oriented and helps Robinson every day thanks [Applause] Kathy George is our key contributor for pre-k through five classroom teacher and student supports she serves as the library media assistant over at Kaiser Kathy brings the Kaiser Library alive whether it's promoting an author visit highlighting a new book or working her magic with her creative bulletin
008boards Kathy uses her love of students reading and artistic talents to help make the Kaiser Library a wonderful place to be thanks Kathy [Applause] and so we actually this was one of our splits we had we have so many on our team that support we have a pre-k through five and then Catherine you could kind of consider her counterpart is our sixth to 12th grade classroom teacher and student supports and so last year Catherine served as a teacher's assistant at North Kirkwood middle school but this year she transitioned to her role as a Spanish teacher at North Kirkwood middle school but regardless of her role she's a hard-working and thoughtful team player who is always willing to support her colleagues she goes above and beyond and takes great pride in her work [Applause] next is
009Cara wall who is our key contributor for school and building supports these are our team who maybe don't work directly with kids but they do some magic on the back back end to make it all happen she currently serves as the data and scheduling specialist for Kirkwood High School in addition to the volleyball team where she absolutely has a lot of direct access with their kids Kara's heart of service is prevalent and absolutely everything she does she tires tirelessly Works to put a seamless schedule together while thoughtfully balancing the needs of all of our constituents at the high school the countless requests that she takes in to help are always received with such kindness from Cara she is quick to help solve problems answer questions plan ahead and she generously gives of her time to
010share her knowledge thank you Cara [Applause] and Brian Benben is next and he is our key contributor for Adventure Club supports and I'm going to go off script here for a minute because I was over at Kaiser last week for a meeting I'm sorry at Westchester last week for a meeting and he was um in any given classroom at any given time because as Dr Rucker said Brian does anything that the school needs so he's officially our key contributor for Adventure Club but he just makes sure that Westchester has served in every capacity possible he serves them in a plethora of ways and the Westchester team appreciates his thoughtfulness and willingness to support in whatever way possible I remember seeing you out at the Bike Rodeo last year helping our kiddos on bikes he's absolutely
011fantastic with all students families and staff at the Westchester team count on him in some way each and every day so thanks Brian for all you do [Applause] okay and last is Philip Norman and he is our key contributor for substitute supports where he serves our Kirkwood High School team as a permanent sub I learned that he was supporting our library today when one of our library Librarians was out sick he is constantly flexible and positive among amongst the midst of his always changing substitute schedule he serves as a wonderful role model for students and his desire to achieve excellent shows every day and he is a Pioneer through and through because he is also a Kirkwood High School grad he as a Tillman North and Kirkwood High School class of 2011 graduate so we're
012happy to have him back with us on our staff so thanks for all you do Phillip [Applause] and that concludes our recognition can we maybe do want to do a group photo together at the okay okay foreign [Music] foreign [Applause] okay [Music] congratulations again to our key contributors all right we're going to move on to item thank you hey 3.01 board protocols but before we move into that discussion I do want to just say I know last board meeting there was a comment that was made that we were in danger of possibly breaking the Sunshine Law and I just wanted to address the community and whoever's listening or watch that that um wasn't true the board did discuss the possibility of having less than a quorum of board members meet with the superintendent prior to
013the next board meeting uh to review and organize the data and other information to be presented in public during the Open session of the next board meeting at which boundary issues would be considered if such meetings had occurred no decision would have been made in no votes formal informal or straw would have been taken the purpose of the meetings if they had occurred would have been solely to understand and organize the data and other information in order to move the boundary change process forward efficiently at an open meeting the district is aware of and uniformly complies with a standard set forth in Colombo versus Beaufort case in accordance with Colombo the related federal case law it is well established that less than a quorum of board members may meet with a superintendent to exchange information
014and plan for board meetings so long as no decisions are made and the meetings are not to subterfuse to avoid compliance with the open meetings Act therefore even if less than a quorum of the Kirkwood board members had met or were to meet in the future with the superintendent to discuss information for the express purpose of making that information available in an orderly fashion during open session at the next board meeting there would have been no violation of the Missouri open meetings Act and I'd also like to address the published quote in the September 1st issue of the Webster Kirkwood times that attributed to myself alleging that I stated that the purpose of the potential meetings was to develop a final map that report was completely inaccurate as the meetings are streamed live and are
015archived on our school district's website following a discussion between the district and the Webster Kirkwood times and their opportunity to review the archive video of the August 28 2023 board meeting the newspaper removes the phrase developed a final map from its online publication of the article and will print a retraction in the September 14 2023 issue accordingly the school district has not violated the open meetings act and has no intent to violate the act the board individually and collectively and the administration are committed to strict and consistent compliance with the ACT and I know that Miss Bernardi msba delegate has some information about Sunshine Law training um that I'm sure we can all probably benefit from we have new members I probably need to be you know brushed up on and so um you can
016share that with us later about the training or you will sure okay absolutely I can share it with us later okay thank you um and so this brings me now to the next order of business which was to discuss um our board norms and protocols before the sake of time it won't be like a full discussion I just wanted to introduce a document that I'll have in the queue right now to send to you guys it's like a start stop continue protocol or form thank you Matt Bailey I got that from you from one of the wellness meetings um but it's an opportunity for us to look at our current norms and protocols and see what we want to continue doing what we want to start doing that isn't listed and what we think needs
017to go away um vice president boyko will take the lead and then follow up with board members on compiling that information and finalize the ones we want to adhere to for the 23-24 um school year and Beyond any questions around no alrighty so I'll shoot that to you guys in just a second and we'll move on to one of our action items um 4.01 facilities master plan I need a motion and a second to approve Paragon Architecture to service the district's architectural consultant for the facilities master plan study as presented so move all right uh Mr Rome thank you for joining us Mr Leary thank you for joining us as well um as the board is no doubt aware we are coming to the completion of a nearly 65 million dollars worth of improvements to
018the district uh much of that was a part of our previous uh facility master plan we used that facility master plan to help us build and identify our needs for that for prop R and and you also know that there's never an end when it comes to making sure that we keep our facilities safe and aesthetically looking great like they always do for our students our staff and our community and so the timing is right for us now to take a look and engage with a group that will help us determine what our work we how we should prioritize our work moving forward and so um before I turn it over to Mr romay and Mr lyria I can say that as we've gone through this process and as the board has supported prop R
019and we've been able to successfully complete those those projects and we're finishing some up even as we speak even on this campus the fact is is that uh this is one of the ways that we can be open and transparent with our community about how we are dedicating their resources for uh for our students in many cases this will be multi-millions of dollars worth of decisions on the board's part and both figuratively and literally we want a very solid foundation upon which to build and make those decisions a good facility master plan does just that and so one of the steps that the board can expect again obviously I'll turn it over here in just a moment so they can describe Paragon in our recommendation but I want to make sure that the board knows
020that this is not the only step in this process that will involve the board once the the facility master plan is put together much like our other guiding documents like our annual plan which you will hear about here in a little bit we will bring that final document back to the board of education for approval I do believe that's very important that is something that we did in a previous District I was in that is just like our strategic plan it is a guiding document that we should use and should be able to provide a really a two-way street of accountability to make sure that we don't lose focus on what our needs are and how those have been prioritized Mr Romaine thank you and good evening we issued a request for qualifications from firms
021to lead in the planning process to update our facility master plan the last one was completed in 2018 and typically we update this every five years and some of the things that we'll look at is base utilization Code Compliance infrastructure safety security Etc we received proposals from eight firms we evaluated those proposals based on the firm itself and their key personnel and their experience their related project experience their project delivery methods and then their responses to the RFQ we narrowed it down to three firms arc images Corrigan cordigan Clark and Paragon Architecture these firms were then evaluated based on their presentation that they gave us differentiate differentiating factors of the firm communication skills leadership skills the presentation skills and the information that they provided so myself and Russ Leary our director of buildings and grounds
022would like to recommend Paragon Architecture to serve as the district's consultant to guide us through the facilities master plan study if approved tonight then we will work with the firm to negotiate their fees based on the scope of work and then we will present that to the board in October any questions from the board starting with Miss Bernardi yeah thanks Mr romay my question is about the timeline it'll be presented in October um and then we'll be I also want to request well go ahead the contract if approved uh tonight if uh Paragon is approved to serve as the firm then the contract with them will be presented to the board in October then the process will start so it'll probably take six months to complete the process okay that's great and also in alignment
023with the Strategic plan I'm sure yes okay thank you thank you Mr Kathy Miss Andrews Miss Pangborn you can hear me okay you can hear me sorry um no thank you Mr omay I did have a couple questions I won or maybe comments um I did want to make sure that the the process that we're going through is going to involve input from all of our buildings um considering some of the demands and utilization future utilization of those buildings when we're thinking about all of the different needs um I think it'll be really important that families and and teachers and principals have that opportunity for input so that was the first thing um and then second um and Dave this is something we've talked about sorry Dr Albrecht this is something we've talked about um
024I really hope in in this next one that we can consider some of the things that really would enhance our buildings and make them better I.E some of the things in bathrooms um and other things that really have been left um left as it is for a really long time um and I know that wasn't the part of the last one and I'm hoping that we can consider that in the future yes Miss pingborn we certainly will involve the schools what we did last time is we had sub we had a steering committee and then subcommittees the subcommittees did consist of the building admin teachers and even some community members parents um so we'll I'm sure we'll do a similar process um and then also last time then we got community feedback so I think
025we held three or four Community forums where we discussed it with the community and got feedback yeah you okay you good Jennifer are you done okay thank you Mr boyko I'll just support uh what Jennifer's last comment there in terms of there's certainly spaces in our buildings that are you know technically functional but probably should be considered at least uh for where they need to be on list for improvement thanks okay okay thank you okay thank you oh yes all those in favor to approve Paragon Architecture as our District's architectural consultant for the facilities master plan study say aye raise your right hand say aye aye all those opposed motion passes thank you all right next up 5.01 to 2023-24 annual strategic plan goals all right thank you very much President Sharon and my team
026will make their way up everybody got the invite so I think we have enough uh enough chairs and do we have enough microphones because the microphones are going to go back and forth while they are making their way up here I want to First say thank you for the board of education for their commitment to this process obviously the Strategic plan is again I've mentioned it before one of our guiding documents that we use the guiding document that we use really to make decisions on behalf of our students so as they are going through the presentation that you've seen again I want to thank um yeah that squeaky makes me laugh um and so I want to thank Ms shearn for her suggestion we have a living document that is uh quite a long document
027and that is the one when I call that a living document because that lives and Brees and while the board and the our public can see that plan and the PDF uh is uh is on board docs we did produce a a abbreviated and abbreviated version of that that does in fact include the goals and lists our strategies so each of those strategies aligns to the uh directly to the uh the Strategic excuse me the annual strategic plan goals and each of those annual strategic plan goals aligns directly back to a priority goal area from The Five-Year strategic plan and the success of that plan the success of that plan and I want to make sure that that my team hears this as well the success of that plan is only possible if we are
028able to complete these steps that you will find in the strategies but ultimately will be judged to be successful on the annual goals and how we reach those goals how many of those goals that we reach on behalf of our students and so you will notice a pattern this evening that pattern will be we will will briefly touch base on the goals There's a summary of those goals we'll briefly touch on that but we will spend our time on the strategies and specifically you will see this pattern where we will talk about a strategy of the appropriate team member will elaborate briefly on that strategy and then one of the things that they will include in that summary is exactly what data point among the goals we expect to have a positive impact and so
029again you will see that and everything we do goes right back to having a positive impact on our students and so what I will do is I will make sure I'm looking down I've got everything here the last thing I will say is this does provide the blueprint or the roadmap whatever analogy you want to use that guides our work and so the strategies is the work and the work that we are committing to to make sure that we are doing everything we can to reach those goals and so as you get into the uh the presentation itself you'll notice that that is straight from the cover of our five-year strategic plan and then of course we have our summary document that has our vision our mission our priority goal areas along with our guiding
030principles and again you should see those things play out throughout this presentation and so the other thing that we're going to do in talking with Ms Sharon and preparing for this evening we will go through priority goal area one which is red and then we'll pause there and answer questions that the board might have and then we'll do that we'll go into that pattern through our diversity equity and inclusion and our social and emotional mental health for our staff and our students and then finally communication that way that the board won't feel overwhelmed by the amount of information that we have so with your permission Michelle and I'll turn it over to Dr granna right Dr granna yes good evening to the board and to our community so if you look at priority objective 1.1
031we want to ensure that curricula are relevant inclusive and challenging with consistent use and expectations across the system so for our Ka students K-8 students we want to see our benchmark scores increase in math and reading and we want to see them meeting or exceeding those benchmark scores and then our Ka students also will make typical to aggressive growth in reading and math and we'll see an increase in that as well Dr Bailey also will talk about our ninth and our 12th grade students you're passing the mic a lot I think also with our 9th through 12th grade students being on track for graduation and then looking at the ACT average remaining above State and national average foreign so as we look at strategy 1.1.1 we want to look to increase performance on benchmark assessments
032and increase the number of students making typical to aggressive growth and we know that a viable and guaranteed curriculum are essential are an essential part to this so ensuring that curricula are tied to the Missouri state standards that we're following the board approved six-year curriculum cycle while adhering to policy and law around curriculum are key and then within the six-year curriculum cycle we are evaluating or researching or developing and we're implementing for about three years with our curriculum we want to make sure that it is relevant inclusive that it's challenging and consistent and that we have those expectations for all of our students across the district which allow us to identify areas of improvement and also to bridge any gaps if you look at 1.1.2 for our professional learning communities we look for our teachers
033to have the opportunity to collaborate and build teacher Collective efficacy this is done through these four guiding questions what do we want all students to learn how will we know if they learn it how will we respond when some students do not learn and then how will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient so this connects back to 1.1.1 right our first strategy it allows us to answer um that with Fidelity and that is what do we want our students to learn and that is our curriculum that helps guide that first question and for 1.1.3 we want to make sure that students are on track for graduation we talked about this last year the board was able to see the early warning system that the high schools put into place to provide
034an indication of students are on track and so that is roughly three credits per semester as students are progressing through the reason why this is important obviously graduation is the next gateway to whatever is next for our students it gives us a chance to plan for summer school options and plan for other credit recovery options and look at what courses are available for us and so that metric is obviously going to be the graduation rate for our students 1.1.4 provide act preparation the board added a position to the high school this past school year we were joking about it actually at dinner about adding classes after meetings but we have an act preparation course the main purpose of that is to remove barriers to that preparation we know that an act scored an act opportunity
035again opens up post-secondary options post-secondary gateways for our students but sometimes any act preparation would cost money and we want to move that barrier for our students I'm proud to say that we still have slots open for second semester but 33 percent of the students in this class are students of color already and so we're looking at providing opportunities for those high school students and increasing the ACT score that we have we're also adding some extra practice sessions that'll be individualized for our students in extra practice tests that will produce very specific reports for the students on what skills that they need to work on and then in the end tying back to the other curricular goals this does help Drive curricular preparation for our teachers as to what subjects and what courses and what
036material they should be covering in their classes to ensure that our students are prepared for the ACT strategy 1.1.5 our scoring guides and our report cards are based on the Missouri learning standards we know how important it is to have that school Home Connection and we continue to look at ways to improve Clarity around that with our students and what they're learning and how families can partner to support that work so this weekend next week our elementary principals are sending out the K5 scoring guides those are also available on our district website and we will begin collecting feedback this year from our teachers and from our community about our Elementary report cards we want to find ways to improve upon that information that we're sharing and we also want to look at the format in
037which we're doing so as well all going back to really creating that Clarity on the goals that we're creating around benchmarking and also typical and aggressive growth and skills that our students should have when they complete their grade looking here now at priority objective 1.2 which is to ensure instructional practices are student-centered and responsive yielding positive outcomes for all students so looking at those instructional practices and how we improve K-8 benchmark scores for our students in reading and Math and how we do so with typical and aggressive growth and reading and in math and then the same again for 912 students yep act preparation and graduation on track for that and so one of the first things that we do 1.2.1 is a continuation of what we did last year which is that our principal's
038assistant principals and other District leaders are engaging with the center for educational leadership on specific learning for our admin team regarding teacher evaluation teacher observation feedback feedback cycle and being able to provide kind of a what's next and you're on the verge of language for our teachers to improve their instruction the data point that you look at for that obviously is not just the the sessions that we spend with Cel but an increase in the number of observations and we look at that's going to tie in later Dr Fields will talk about the keys document for our educator evaluations but that work will continue actually this week it will be one of the first sessions that we have with Jeff McCormick as well so looking at 1.2.2 again around our plc's you're going to hear
039me talk a lot about those four guiding questions tonight so I appreciate your patience with that instructionally though we're looking at those last two how will we respond when some students do not learn how will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient so this really is the heart of the PLC work and truly where instructional practices shift to meet the needs of each student in real time so our teachers will use student data they'll review that together they'll identify areas of focus to ensure their instructional practices are student-centered and responsive yielding those positive outcomes for all of our students our principals have met with each of their guiding PLC coalitions along with their PLC coaches from Ed plus they've created Collective agreements and norms and they are continually looking to improve and
040refine that PLC process in their buildings as that is getting going we want to go slow to go fast I know we still have a lot of learning to do around plc's but we're trying to provide that support through Ed plus and also solution tree a lot of the research from defor and Mike Matos as well and looking at 1.2.3 we are in year three of our comprehensive literacy plan lit link is scheduled for 32 days of job embedded instructional coaching across the district this year and as we have worked with literacy link we have seen improvements in our literacy instruction and an increase in our students ability to recognize things like letter names sounds and code decode words accurately identify words and strengthen their vocabulary so we're looking forward to continuing our partnership with
041lit link while we're also exploring opportunities for job embedded coaching specifically around literacy as we move forward in our plan and looking at 1.2.4 we are now in year two of our plan to support and Advance high impact teaching and learning in our middle school math classrooms I think it's really important to note that this work stemmed from a previous objective in the street strategic plan and we wanted to ensure that there was alignment across both middle schools to guarantee that students have equal access and opportunities to academic experiences and so over the past two years we have Rewritten and developed the curriculum for the courses of math six Math 7 math 8 Algebra 1 and within this process we've also adopted the math resource Desmos we've partnered with math314 from washu and we want
042to provide that support around our math PLC work and job embedded coaching as well we now at both of our middle schools have the same opportunities in math for our students and it is directly aligned to the state standards thank you and then 1.2.5 talks about utilizing our mtss processes and protocols to make sure that we're examining the effectiveness of our instruction at the universal level the supplemental level and the Intensive level and so just um a quick reminder that mtss is that overarching framework that we use to provide high quality instruction the beauty of mtss is that it's proactive instead of reactive so we're continually looking at lots of different data sources but looking at different pieces of data and making sure that kids are responding to the instruction and then reflecting on what
043we as the teachers can do differently to make sure that kids again are meeting those benchmarks making that typical to aggressive growth related to that and also related to our new and expanding PLC processes is 1.2.6 where teachers and leaders will understand the different types of Assessments so I mean in education for a while we've been having more and more data but I just think especially in the PLC process as we're looking at some of those in the moment quick assessments those formative assessments that teachers can really use in that moment to figure out did students learn what I wanted them to today what kind of changes and adjustments do we have to make it's just a kind of I want to make sure that everyone has a clear picture of all those different types
044of Assessments and where they fit in than 1.2.7 so we plan to work with over 30 teachers across the district and a professional learning technology Cadre to advance the meaningful use of instructional technology and to highlight the incredible work that our teachers are already doing to transform teaching and learning in our classrooms so um we are very fortunate to be a one-to-one district and have Apple devices and we want to ensure that we are capitalizing on that opportunity to create student-centered learning experiences that really yield those positive outcomes for each of our students 1.2.8 update Kirkwood educator evaluation system last school year we started the work with a particular committee which was the keys committee to update the evaluation system having said that we understood that because of collective bargaining and that is considered working
045condition working conditions that information or that committee did stop and we're looking forward to pick up that work with the collective bargaining unit as it relates to 1.2.8 and in looking at 1.2.9 again it's providing Clarity around our scoring guides and report cards to ensure our instructional practices are aligned with what we want our students to learn and what we are also accountable for was sharing with our families on our report cards foreign okay objective 1.3 we want to provide all students with ample opportunities to explore and pursue a variety of career Pathways and a couple areas that we're focusing on earning qualifying scores on relevant post-secondary assessments and then demonstrating on-track performance on state identified measures of success AKA map test and EOC the ways that we're going to look at that one point
046one or 1.3.1 again providing the ACT course this is really going to focus a lot on the the curriculum pieces that we can use making sure that we have full enrollment in each of those classes reviewing the course instruction and developing our own local curriculum to be able to provide to our students along with the ones that we're already implementing with some purchase curriculum but again like I mentioned before I want to emphasize this year we're also adding some individualized practice tests for students to be able to get scores back and highlight the areas that they need to focus on specifically outside of just the ACT preparation course that is available and then as a reminder we also still continue to provide the ACT test to all of our Juniors at no cost to them
047and each of the students takes that in the spring of their junior year we also want to continue to offer early college options and expand that opportunity for our St Louis Community College partnership we have 25 students that are in the program right now for those that don't know the students get to go to St Louis Community College for their Junior and Senior year of high school and at the same time can earn credits towards earning an advanced associate's degree last school year was the first year that we had students actually finish both years and earn an associate's degree while at the same time earning High School Credit and graduate and the district provides that opportunity those students then are two years ahead depending on if they have other credit options or if they have
048other dual credit that they've taken throughout their years they may be multiple years ahead and so continuing to expand that our High School counseling team is looking at the GPA requirements accuplacer requirements and I'm happy to say that that we are right up there with a high number of students participating in that program as compared to our peers in the area we talked about this last year but continuing to have our students in grades 8 through 12 create what's called an icap individual career and academic plan not only is it a requirement from the state of Missouri but it also allows our students to start thinking about what interest inventories they want to take what careers they may be interested in what pathway they would need to follow in terms of courses or extracurriculars to
049achieve that career goal and be able to explore things that line up with their interests for students as well this also gives us a chance to plan for field trips to things like South County Tech or to participate in the STL caps program starting at eighth grade we have a continuity between the seventh eighth grade students going all the way through high school so that they can have the preparation for the courses that they need starting as early as freshman year but even because we have some high school credit classes offered in middle school algebra and our foreign language classes they can start as far back as eighth grade to start gaining some of that credit and mapping out their programmatic opportunities for for everybody this year also we were able to expand alternative programming
050at the middle school and happy to see program up and running with several students that are in there those students have what are called ilps individual learning plans that are developed based on their specific goals in conjunction with the team of of Educators administrators SEL coaches and some of our social emotional support staff we have that alternative programming we're going to continue to use systems like the early warning system to take a look at who should be recommended for that look at protocols and assign different students to the compass program review that schedule programmatic needs staff support needs and really look at what opportunities we have to provide something different for some middle school students to increase their attendance and the metrics we'll take a look at for those students initially will be attendance but
051because they each have individual learning plans we can get specific to their goals based on on their team meetings that they have put together and then the last thing that we want to take a look at is continuing to explore expansion of dual credit opportunities to increase the number of courses available AP classes and dual credit classes sometimes have the same end goal which is to get students a college level experience or a college level course there are some AP courses that rely solely on that exam for you to get that credit at the end of the time and so we've seen an expansion in dual credit because students can progress throughout the semester to earn that credit and I was telling Dr Ulrich there's some research evidence that shows that dual credit actually creates
052more of a Gateway to College and post-secondary opportunities than AP does specifically for black African-American students and for for other students of color as well so we want to continue to expand those especially with St Louis Community College being right in our backyard being able to provide additional opportunities for students to be able to participate in those courses and and start that pre-college or that post-secondary plan I think that concludes all of our one point whatever the red goals I'm not sure what to call it and so I think we're happy to take questions thank you Dr Bailey I will start to my left Miss Motika thank you for all the very specific information you're giving us um and keeping it so student centered I've one other comment and then a question um and so
053I also want to thank you for listening to the community about report cards and taking this opportunity to really refine them so that they give families what they need with the ACT course which is fabulous I love that do for instance Juniors get priority into it I'm thinking they take it they all take at the end of their junior year we don't want to say freshmen can't take it but I'm just wondering if some grades get priority if it's filling up yeah what I would say is we have a full house this semester and it's it's mostly Juniors and seniors part of that is because there are still so many graduation requirements kids need early on that we want to make sure freshmen and sophomores don't necessarily miss out on an opportunity because this is
054just a straight elective credit not a practical art or fine art and because of the timing of the test we haven't had a chance yet just because of the numbers to expand potentially beyond that junior year but because we have practice tests that our sophomores will be taking that will offer some very specific feedback to them and then we also still offer that free ACT test that a student can take along with the preparation piece there's some other opportunities for kids to get some practice but yes right now it's mostly junior senior and also that we were like I said joking at dinner earlier about courses being added after schedules this was also a later ad and so being able to find students that had opportunity in their schedule and also had a need focused
055mostly on junior senior but boyco thanks yeah when I was looking at priority objective 1.2 I I think it's great stuff um particularly I appreciate the work on professional development in terms of the plc's the focus on the middle school math and K-5 literacy and it not really a question but it it did trigger a concern that I've had in terms of whether we are running uh too lean in terms of our staffing and so um whether we need to have sort of a bench of certified teachers who are ready and trained um so that they're not missing out on these opportunities obviously if you're put into a classroom in the middle of the year uh or right before the year starts there's going to be a huge learning curve uh in terms of a
056variety of procedures and processes as well as your own the classroom that you're putting into and if we can try to reduce that by having a a group of folks who have received that training as well so there's one less sort of new thing for them to learn and they can be slotted in I think that would be helpful to the students reassuring for parents and I'm sure a relief for the professional that that certified teacher who's put in that position thank you Miss Pangborn thank you for walking through that um I do have one question and it's kind of overarching the whole plan Dave but I want to ask it now because when I look at um 1.2 and all of the increases um right by grade and by cohort I wanna I wanna
057better understand how you define success just for the overall objective but also like for each cohort um so if the goal is to increase it by five percent if we increase it by three percent and one and five percent on another we don't increase it in another cohort like how do we how do we gauge how we're doing that's a very good question thank you Miss Pangborn and I think that ultimately um when the the board uh really asked for us to as we came out of kova to focused on cohort data I'm looking like she can see me on the television where's the camera should I look over here maybe uh look over there okay I'm looking at you now miss Bangor um is when we move to that cohort data really taking a
058look at each of the cohorts individually and making sure that we are while we are taking a very global view at the district level making sure that our schools have the resources and what they need to get right down to the student level and that's why when we did make the uh the decision to move to following cohorts and majoring cohorts as they move through why that is so important so we do report out by each grade level we do differentiate by which grade level and what the cohort certain uh currently sits at specifically with regard if you look at the uh the annual objectives for 1.1 which are the same as 1.2 as they relate to curriculum and instruction you will see those are differentiated uh differentiated by specifically where the current cohort sits
059dictating the work that we will do with those students throughout the year so in short we will report out on each of those and success will be measured by each cohort in each grade level and frankly in the number of goals that we make in in terms of accomplishing those uh with our spring Benchmark data I appreciate I appreciate that and I feel Dave you answered my question and didn't answer my question maybe um a little bit um I think it's really lofty right like I love the detail here I'm just trying to really understand if I take a step back as a board member and I say how do I say that we have that we're moving the needle um okay yeah I just I keep doing looking at you can see me yeah
060and and Jennifer Excuse Me Miss Pangborn I completely understand that it was not my intention I I can't tell you success will be measured frankly by how many students we move uh we move forward um in our in our 2024 benchmarking data um we believe we have attainable goals uh we believe we have goals and again I want to keep coming back and emphasizing the idea of cohorts and so our success is based year over year as we walk as we kind of March our students through our grade levels um and so each of these so if you take a look at our first grade cohort that would be an example at the district level we have uh that that is currently at a 64.4 we are increasing that five percent uh and that was
061and if you think about that if you think about the uh the number of students and that's some work that uh that Miss Andrews that you were able to put together and kind of translated that and I'm sure that you'll bring that up here in a bit is as we look at those students as they move through if we can capture five percent at the end of this year and then another three four or five percent at the end of their second grade year and so on and so on that's how we are judging our success right how are we building on it what we what previously before I came and the board asked to move to cohorts and I know this is a much longer answer but I definitely want to answer it Miss
062fangborn is when we move to cohorts there is now a student that we are following year over year and so every year if we just add a few more to the bucket and I will remind our our board and our uh and our public of the wonderful work that starts with our kecc you're going to hear from them a little bit and as we move through the grade levels just really how highly our students are performing and so grabbing three percent grabbing five percent um is is really a difficult task and while we won't stop when we reach five or you know seven or eight kids we reach when we reach five percent we certainly won't stop but we also want to make sure that we're putting on ourselves that we're able to incrementally show
063this growth and my team has heard me say this an awful lot and if I haven't said it enough to the board I want to make sure the board hears this the key is are we doing things that we can show that the work that we're doing with our teachers to improve their professional practice is in fact can we attribute that to the success that we are seeing because that's when we can take that to other places and say you can re you can replicate these this data and so as we move through with these incremental increases that's the thing that I want to make sure that that we show a commitment to that it's not an accident that it is down to the work of these folks working with our principals and other leaders
064our teacher leaders and making sure that we're improving professional practice every opportunity that we can as we watch these students move through versus the data that was used to be shown which was static data on here's how second graders did last year there's a new group of second graders here's how this group of second second graders did this year following by cohort really changes that and allows us to judge whether or not we're being successful on how our cohorts are moving through the grades is that did I do a little bit better MS bangborne yes thank you you answered my question and Dave just going off of that I think it would be super helpful right as we're making these incremental improvements and I say incremental it'd be great to exceed them but to say
065here's where we started in 2022 with this cocoa or and then in 2023 and then here's where they are at the end of this year so we can see that trend line um and I feel like a graphic or some sorts of like that would be really easy to digest and you could show anybody um that trend line so thank you I appreciate you answering my and Miss bangborne just to uh to give credit there's a couple other board members that have asked for something similar as well as well uh that's a little bit bigger task frankly um because uh we didn't used to show data like that to our board but certainly if the board wants that uh data to show that we can we can look at that historically and and provide that
066for the board I just don't know when I can commit to it I'm looking at my team and they're looking at no they're like oh no but we can certainly work on that Miss Andrews um thank you for you hello am I on okay um thanks for being willing to take on the the report card that's a big task so I am looking at the Strategic plan goals and in Reading um 146 first graders are below grade level and the goal as written is to move 15 students in my understanding that correctly Miss Locke do you want to do you want to address that I know that you have the opportunity to to print that out and answer that question just in terms of the of kind of the math and how that adds up
067right I didn't double check your math per se but uh in general right if we're talking about a percentage so if we had I looked at one school for example if we had 68.4 percent um no I read that wrong 65.1 percent of first graders at Robinson are at or above Benchmark that's 56 out of 86 students and their goal is to increase to 68.4 so looking at that increase would be like you said it would be three students at that particular grade A little extra level I want to add to that is the fact that we also have to keep all the other kids moving so it's not just moving three kids I mean it's moving 86 quids quite honestly but that goal would be to have 59 kids at or above Benchmark by
068the end of the year and as Dr ALK was saying a few moments ago obviously we're not going to say oh 59 good we're done you know I mean obviously we're going to hope to exceed those and whoever brought up a smart goal earlier the idea is that these have to be um you know we wanted to make goals that we could achieve now does that mean we want don't want to exceed our goals of course and when you look at three kids at one school that might be five at another school it might be four at another school so it might be 25 across the grade level 25 across five grade levels you know we are talking about you know a decent number of kids as you look across that schools um so I
069guess it my question is is this goal um aggressive enough I mean we trying to keep my answers kind of at it's hard to say because each kid is different in how much growth they have to make right so we do have some kids that definitely need to make aggressive growth and those are the students that will be receiving the Intensive instruction through our mtss approach and and you know they will have specific goals that will be monitoring even more closely than this whereas some students may not need to make that same level of growth so it's without getting too far down in the weeds it's kind of hard to answer because yes some kids will have make aggressive growth some won't and depending on what grade level we're talking about some kid could a
070student could make aggressive growth for three years in a row and still not quite be a benchmark because of the of the difference they had to make whereas another student might be able to get to Benchmark in six weeks or one school year so it's it's it's hard it's got It's hard to say exactly um Mission can um we ask that we're provided with the number of students each present each percentage represents particularly in cohorts of um for African-American students and for the students receiving tier three interventions just so that we can know the number of students for those because I feel like I have the number of students that we're impacting for the other areas but I don't understand the number of students for those particular cohorts African-American students and um students receiving tier
071three okay and I wasn't able to my kids here's not open I couldn't open up is that included in your the students who identify black is in that document I said the tier the students receiving tier three we don't quite know yet because buildings are still having the data meetings and wrapping up that process to determine who exactly will be getting the Intensive instruction okay and then it's just like what is the district's long-term plan to move grade levels to 80 percent I mean I can start and then other people can jump in but I mean I think that's exactly the beauty of mtss and plc's not to use every acronym Under the Sun but that's the beauty of having a systematic process where we're proactively looking at the data and saying okay how how
072many kids did we move did we move these you know three specific kids that really needed to make that aggressive growth where are we in the process and then reflecting as a staff what what is it that we need to change about our instruction about the curricular resources we're using to be able to get those to get students to move but I think that's what's exciting to me about the PLC process is really reflecting on what is it as teachers that we need to change we might have all the strategies in the world but for whatever reason it's not working with this group of students and so really examining that and and making those adjustments and I'll I'll add as well because we also have to take into account that some of the students may
073have significant special needs some of the students may have some other issues that are going on if you do look at our historical Trends the good news is that as we look at fifth grade sixth grade seventh grade eighth grade we do see more of our students up and then 80 percent so if we're looking at the long game the long piece of that and having our students you know the laws for Missouri state that third grade is kind of that initial cut off of when do you start looking for students to have reading success plans and if you see our scores start to Trend up towards that 80 percent right around that third fourth grade and tend to hover at or above that at the middle school level and so if we're looking at
074moving students forward we have to not only consider a single Year's growth which you know as an example for kindergarten letter sound for the fall Benchmark they have to know two to three sounds to be considered on Benchmark for the spring Benchmark they have to know over 40 and so those students even if they're at Benchmark with three sounds they still have to make almost 40 sounds of growth just to stay on Benchmark and the other kids have to move so so really thinking about how can we continue to build those skills in for the students can we still do more work on it absolutely because we can continue to raise up the students that we have we talk about each of the students that are in a tier three and a lot of times
075on a tier two we'll have plans built for them within our Edge climber we talked about I think last year we did walk through kind of a data team meeting protocol where a plan is built for each individual student that will follow and track them at that level for each of our kids and then really being in year three I know you'll touch on this too year three of a literacy plan that really re-emphasized a science of reading and a phonics Approach at those early grade levels we're seeing some immediate results and returns in that first grade second grade third grade cohort for kids that are really picking up a lot of those phonics-based structures and then having the math piece there as well so I would I would say that continuing to build on
076the success that we have not just sitting around and saying yay we did a great job but also building on those pieces tying in the plc's looking at those common formative assessments and really sharing those