GHCS Board Work Session

001uh so yep this at the beginning of the pandemic we started the strategic planning process with suzanne nicholas and this is her colleague mike slider got that right um so we wanted to restart the process uh so for this work session i uh asked suzanne and mike to come and so we can go over our new timeline and a new way of having the plan to be worked through so suzanne thank you so if you will recall we had started meeting at the beginning of the year talking about some of our hopes and priorities for the plan and that work was stopped due to coven and so really what we're here to do tonight is to answer any questions that any of us needed i apologize the work that we started really was to get

002as much engagement and involvement as we could from all parts of our community that would include our staff our teachers community members many of the wonderful partners that we have at garfield heights who also support the well-being of children and families as well as of course our families and children and so what we want to make sure when we go through the conversation tonight it's just that we get more wisdom um and input and thoughts about how we make sure that still happens even though we're in a really different context and so that's that's the purpose um but at a reminder um i wanted to just let you know that um from oe strategy's perspective it's been a little bit of a while and some of you were new to the board when we were

003first starting that our goal in working with organizations we are organizational development practitioners we work with schools we also work with other kinds of organizations and with that background we see ourselves as facilitators who help organizations and communities really have broader more effective conversations to come together to a couple of clear concise goals that you're able to build energy around the community and i just wanted to give mike an opportunity to introduce himself because he has not been to a behavior hi there i'm new to all of you but after this type of work i'm like slider like suzanne i'm also a workplace organizational psychologist my background i was in academia for a little while teaching at a university or coming into what i like to say the real world to engage in consulting a

004lot of the work that i've done has been around helping organizations function more smoothly help them focus on the priority of their employees since i've become involved in school work the priority of the students a lot with mental health because we all know that they were bigger especially with uh coaching especially within the state of the world today so a lot of the work i'll talk about is the mental health but i'm really excited for this i have a eight-month-old and a four-year-old so i'm probably very involved in my own local school district so thank you so i thought that i would start with just where we were in terms of logistic and and timeline please just jump in with your questions so the event that we had to put on hold was really our

005first what we call our steering committee meeting and that steering committee meeting with your guidance as well as the work of chris and the team had invited quite a broad number of people we were meeting i believe kind of before a sporting event maybe so that we would gain extra traction and people wanting to come and so that's what we need to reboot the purpose of that meeting is to bring people together to talk about the portrait of a graph and so when i see a portrait of a grant that sort of design thinking starting with the end in mind what have we delivered as an institution that will allow students to leave on the next part of their journey to be successful adults so we were going to work on that and we were

006also going to work on our revision elements if you'll recall the organization has a vision that is pretty compelling and you feel fairly good about preparing students for a global economy with 21st century skills is my mental summary i know that's probably not perfect but close we want to make sure that that gets validated and that we understand the work that people feel is most important in compelling i'm actually going to ask you to revisit that a little bit tonight kind of the four four pillars but that's the work that we want to do with that steering committee it looks like we have two options at this point in time one would be to do a zoom meeting so i was really glad to hear michelle say how well as we're going and that people

007are participating our current technology holds 100 people and we have a lot of breakout group abilities so people can work in different tables and different groups so that's certainly one option another option that mike and i are open to is coordinating something outdoors so as long as we you know after we're risking the weather so soon would have to be a backup plan but i have been attending outdoor church services and outdoor large gathering meetings and those have certainly been effective as well i'll kind of run through and then come back to that point so you can be thinking about what your recommendations are once we have that portrait of a grad and those vision elements the next step in a plan is to determine so what are the priorities or what are the objectives

008that are going to help us get there that really is going to start being fleshed out in focus groups and so we have within our framework by focus groups we will want to include community we will want to include students families at both lower and upper grades staff certified staff and make sure that there is an opportunity for voice those i would highly recommend we do by zoom just because it makes them more accessible and we can have some you know play around with the time slots to make sure everybody can get to a stakeholder grade so really what they're doing there is they're looking at the portrait of a brand work that's been started and they're starting to say so what does it take so if our portrait of a grant includes people with

009social emotional skills how do we get there we'll then come back from a design committee meeting standpoint and really work with the leadership team to start to refine that and fit that into so much of the good work that the district is already doing and really focus on how do we fit that and prioritize that into the four strategic area goals so that would be the point at which of course we would want the board to look at that and give some feedback we do have some opportunity to do a follow-up pulse survey to just send that information out and let people respond we want to make sure that we have both those in-person and electronic opportunities at that point so now we're in early december so you can see we're really kind of moving

010along at a nice cadence we would want to invite everybody who attended that steering committee you can add additional people as well but that first steering committee then comes back and says we started this and look at where it is now and really start to validate those plans what are those objectives that are going to help us get there we start asking people how would you measure success what do you want to see reported that will make you believe that your district is delivering on these promises so that would happen early in december we just then are done gathering information and ready to put the plan together so we'll be working on that in early january back with our leadership team really making that look and feel like something that's simple clear will deliver what

011the district needs so that that can then come back to the board by the middle of january with them with your changes of blessing to be approved by the end of january so it is a doable but um crisp timeline it will keep us all it will keep us all busy so questions on that overall design and then i'm going to kind of take you back to the steering committee piece and they ask you to talk a little bit about you know what are some of our options or what's your wisdom and advice just overall questions yes i just have a quick question i was not on the board at that particular time and was going to participate as a stakeholder so my question is as far as the board with i see the last

012couple of sessions where we have to approve and adopt where throughout the board do we participate in these steps and processes the board members can be involved in the steering committee so that's certainly something that we should be discussing you may want a board member to also be participating with the leadership team so that's certainly a place for input but throughout the process wherever you would like a board meeting update chris will have one of those uh we'll be able to share every point along the way what's been done what's been discussed and certainly i would be coming in in that early um that mid january session to really walk you through and make that a working session so those are the intended points thank you yes no thank you so if you're not a

013gymnast moving would be a good that's can everybody else see does anybody else want to move i can wait absolutely okay absolutely no thank you for that question so the notes from what we met before we talked about a permission meter concept and so what we had talked about but of course anything could be revisited right um what we had talked about was that the permission meter for the vision was that you would like it to be tweaked and revisited in that first steering committee meeting that he felt that it was largely on track um somebody had made the comment that we're you know fairly far into the 21st century and do we want to really think about you know those skills and those career opportunities so the permission meter concept just to remind people

014was do we act as if we never had it would be one extreme and the other extreme would say you know we love it and it's perfect and we don't want it touched and so in that process you were a bit up from what it touched um but that we don't want to throw it out so i i would ask if people still feel like that's appropriate the strategic plan that we're working off of is is a few years out of date already out of the five years and um i think the development of new vision vision and mission statements probably is important but i'm certainly that's certainly up for discussion that's just my two cents so one of the things we ask people is what you like about it and where you think it

015falls short so if there's pieces that people want to jump in with now or certainly we will be asking those questions at that that steering committee but but i would be interested if anybody wants to jump in now what you like about your current vision and mission and where maybe you think it falls short of where you need to be today so the vision is transforming lives by instilling 21st century skills and the mission statement is to educate guide and ensure all students graduate prepared to meet high expectations and serve as responsible citizens in a global society and this was at least eight years seven almost i think we're in the eighth year so i agree with mr hankey we should revisit um so it sounds like we'll do a thorough revisit okay and so

016just to repeat if people at home can't hear it's really having our current stakeholders own it and and feel fully uh participated in the development right now i don't know quite frankly i think yeah if you want to go to the pillar slides i don't have to memorize but suzanne but but i believe the pillars including equity and diversity uh fiscal facilities um there we go family engagement teaching and learning so two of those especially at the top there are in my mind priorities and in in in terms of a healthy school community and um it could you know alignment with the current division of mission i don't know if it's there one man one person's opinion just um just for discussion absolutely this um presentation will be available in your portal um right after

017the meeting and and i am not even i mean these are the right concepts but certainly you're enough you've sent facilities and fiscal it's implied in there but we certainly can adjust the language as well so i'm going to go back to the uh the meeting piece so that we can talk about the hearing committee and then i will go back to the four areas because i wanted to get sort of where people's hopes were in each of those four recommended areas as part of tonight's discussion if that's a reasonable starting point so if we look at the steering committee which we hope to have in early october the we will be going over the vision and mission we will be going over the portrait of a grad just what are people's thoughts in terms

018of your recommendations for how we have adequate broad diverse participation both in terms of how we invite people and in terms of how we um conduct that meeting whether it's electronically whether we try to do in person outside what are people's thoughts yeah i think we worked hard um when we began this process to find those different community members and stakeholders i don't think that because the timeline is pushed back then we should target a different group willing and able and then if we feel like we need to add to that because some people aren't available then we go and beat the bushes again um i think that we probably especially with the time frame that we're looking at we probably do better with a zoom meeting because we are looking at the change of

019the weather you know even just this evening it is getting a little chilly and to be able to bring a lot of people together we have the space it's just the timing of the year and we live in cleveland it could be 80 or it could be 40. [Music] first and foremost we have seen that we have been successful and able successfully able to conduct some community events via zoom in the district as far as our town halls and things of that sort so i think and also just the liability issue we want to air on the safest side possible for our community members and our stakeholders and giving them the invitation so we want to make them know that it's a part of their safety is a priority and participation so it sounds like

020what we should do is go to the original list send out a very simple survey that confirms people's availability and willingness to still participate and then using that information see if we need to identify additional people who would be able to do so and that you will conduct the meeting via zoom and for those of you who have been using zoom we use a lot of polling we've we've had to move our entire practice which used to be in person to online and so we've been using a lot of polling a lot of breakout groups a lot of chat interaction whiteboards and and mike and i run those meetings together so that we're able to get good participation so it's not just you have to speak up in front of everybody we do lots of

021pieces so we'll take that advice under consideration and get together a communication that we'll share with you to ask people if they're still available then in terms of the focus groups those would of course be zoomed also other comments questions suggestions on the methodology and the timeline so what topics will the five focus groups cover so as we have the portrait of a grad and the new draft of the vision the the focus groups are then presented that information and asked to respond to it and given a question that is essentially how it might be and so we start to from that learn the priorities that we would be needed that we would need to do to achieve those and what's nice about the stakeholder groups is we do them in stakeholder type so we're

022really hearing from the staff which is critical we're hearing from the parents about so how might this work so thank you other questions comments advice or does our [Music] group that we have for february include graduates do we have a graduate group as a focus group that really has gone for our district and knows our strengths of our district in those areas of improvement i don't know if we have graduates involved i think some of the folks just some of the folks invited just by nature of it being this town were graduates but uh that's certainly a group we can leverage i think especially you know recent graduates i i think that would be interesting uh an interesting group to include on this as a group you know and other graduates and to see how

023i think i think that can be good information good data again i think one of the strengths if i'm recalling correctly that we discussed in at least one of our meetings was alumni wanting to come back to work here and so that being really that's a strength of the community that's the strength of the organization that's certainly an effective recruiting strategy so making sure even as as we include staff that were aware that some people loved it so much they came back to work here and the folks in the focus groups don't necessarily have to be the same folks who are in the steering committee meeting so we can go beyond the stack roof that you've already selected and maybe once the steering committee needs a little bit of speed people want to become more

024involved become more excited and that can be a way to reach a broader audience and get more perspectives thank you so much for the reminder mike absolutely any other comment so a couple of people asked questions about points at which the board would be involved and so i just want to directly sort of raise that as a topic for discussion about people's hopes and desires about board participation along the way or is what i've outlined okay yes so if if that feels like a good level of participation so what the board may want to discuss is who would like to come to the design committee meetings and certainly that doesn't need to be decided this evening the next one of those will be early november but you may want to consider that so we just

025always want to ask the question because we want the process to be open and to have as much touch on it as makes sense and help the process so just a couple of other pieces because i want to leave just a little bit of time for discussion on the four areas so the elements that we had agreed upon in our initial discussions as we all said it's been a while so i pulled them back out we're reestablishing our vision and our mission statement so that's where we were talking about elements that we might want to look at really differently establishing a portrait we've talked about um really thinking about what is the impact we want to have over the next five years so that we can pull that into an identification of what are those

026clear objectives and the desired impact or measure that was something the board made very clear to us that we remain committed to that we want things to be measurable and we want them to be really clear specific objectives we know that the organization has partnerships resources willing and engaged stakeholders and so making sure that all of that is part of the plan for the work that happened so those are the elements that we discussed being in a final document comments questions differences there i just felt like it was good to pull it back out since it had been a minute we know that for a successful plan and i think um thomas even talked about this a little bit we need to make sure that it's something that can be communicated well to the community

027in terms of it needs to be exciting people need to feel like our vision and our mission is a true reflection of who we are and are becoming um we can't have too many goals we have to think about the culture and it has to have a clear process to implement so those were some of the things that we talked about when we met the first time this board and then these are the four focus areas and so what i was hoping was that we could just have a little bit of conversation about what each one of when we look at each one of these what they mean to us and what our hopes are around those and each of these you're already doing some great work that you'll want to build on right is

028it possible to include equity in the first bullet because we already have a working committee that is working on diversity equity and inclusion yeah actually um considering the you know the this is my my view considering you can call it diversity equity and inclusion i think that's we um just for your purposes suzanne uh we uh founded an equity diversity equity inclusion task force um and equity really has come to the forefront i think uh in the district in terms of a lot of things so i think that's a that's a that's a good very very good idea it will fold in what we're already doing and it also will allow us to see where some of those gaps are so that we can continue to grow as a district in all of those areas

029because all three of them are very important when we look at that portrait of what we want our our grad to look like other thoughts or comments on our first diversity equity and inclusion one of the keys to me is that we build on some of the things that you're already doing so i certainly appreciate that i was reading up a little bit on project mosaic before we came over and i have had a conversation with i believe it's yolanda to to understand um some of her perspective and that important work so should we move to family engagement so comments about our hopes and the strengths that we're building on relative to family engagement um so i did unilaterally come up with these pillars they're certainly up for if we want to if we want

030to look at other things or different things that'd be fine um i've been working kind of in the diversity arena since i was middle school principal especially with staff training and moving forward i think there's a broad amount of things and it seems to me that it was pressure considering the the events that have unfolded in this nation over the past uh uh months uh that this this was included back uh when we when i kind of started to think about this in the fall our community i think is very strong in being able to discuss these things very well uh miss daniels and i don't know if any other board members with these kids that may have been they had a community outdoor community meeting uh it was it was it really really showed

031me that the community is willing to tackle some tough questions and i think in that area that's what i think we need to do very broadly you know there are some focuses that you have um recruitment retention and hiring of staff you have equity and inclusion issues with special education students um and what you know what our hopes and dreams are you suzanne's parliaments for our kids that's very important and i think that those are all i think that's why this is a very good pillar family engagement we hired our first family engagement coordinator so we took i think i'm calling this step one and we're trying to engage families and meet them meet them where they are and meet their needs and that this is something i i think i need help in just

032fleshing out from the board and from the community uh how to meet the needs of all of our families i think this is very important to make sure that it kind of ties in with equity a little bit facilities and it should say slash fiscal as mr seleka knows we we gotta have great facilities and sound fiscal policy uh i i think that should always be in a plan uh that's a that's a requirement uh that we're charged with to stay healthy fiscally and also provide very good appropriate facilities for our our our students and parents and teaching and learning is our core that's our absolute core that's what we do on a daily basis in this pandemic we've had to pivot multiple times uh and uh i think it you know all three kind

033of inform the fourth and also vice versa and learning i think is something that needs to stay front and center so those were my thoughts i think uh choosing these four pillars i still think that they're at least for me these are these are great focus ideas certainly uh i'm up for any sort of discussion if if if the board uh would like to look at some other things i think it does kind of nicely you can encompass other things under it so some comments in terms of family engagement i would also i agree with everything that you said uh superintendent hanke but i would also like to figure out or brainstorm about how we might how might we get families to actively engage in their students education i think about me sitting in this

034room in the spring of as a parent of a junior here at garfield heights high school and we were talking about what's going on for your child going into the senior year their senior year and i was the only parent here so how might we get parents to come to those meetings and understand the importance of those meetings meet the teacher night conference night um and maybe it's doing something um outside the box around those types of events that would engage our parents in a different way but still meeting those needs the other was teaching and learning and making sure that we are are setting those benchmarks for our scholars that we know what the expectations are for our scholars we can continually look at those benchmarks and make sure that we're meeting and exceeding

035those academic and achievement benchmarks yeah like miss king said i do agree with everything that superintendent he said um just as we're looking at these four focused areas a few comments about a few of them um i would like to really see these focus areas come to life when we talk about this vision and mission you know i talked about it being a living statement that we can really live breathe and dive into i don't know how detailed entire strategic plan will be but i would love to see numbers and details and goals that we can actually see and push our district to actually reach um so when we talk about diversity and inclusion um i think we definitely need to place a focus on hiring um diverse educators and that also goes hand in

036hand with teaching and learning i just feel like a lot of these things go hand in hand um when we talk about family engagement and ms king talks about being the only clear parent in a room like i would like for our strategic plan to really have steps on what we're going to do to get more parents in the room um so as we're having these focus groups and these large community meetings like i just want to make sure we're asking the correct questions so that we can get the answers that we need from the people who are who need to be more involved in our district um also with family engagement um i think we need to i think one thing that we could work on is just to be really really more welcoming

037not that we're not welcoming because we are definitely welcoming but um i think we need to look at the way we reach out and make sure we're meeting everyone um where they are i agree with all four of these areas but then i also am thinking now about the social and emotional health for students the mental health aspect and i'm not quite sure where that would fit it um but i think it's important and i agree with the scholars the scholars the kids that are going to move on to college and they have but i think we have to look at the college of our career readiness of our students whether it's military career college what what what's best for each individual student and i think really that's where guidance counselors can come in to

038play and i really i'm still i'm on the board at cdcc and if we can get the right student in the right career path or college path early i i really think it would help help our students so i think that's it yeah and again the social and emotional health especially with this pandemic and i think it's important now so that's all thank you i'm the last pillar on teaching and learning just wondering um so that it could be a little broader um because we i know we had a meeting where we talked about student achievement a little bit more would that fall up under there or could that be maybe the name of that pillar where that has that social emotional piece and a lot of those other things because i really would like

039for us to start looking at just having a big focus on our student achievement and letting that be a highlight and began to have some measurable goals as it relates to where our students are where we like to see our students and really putting the push on that so even mr hanky if you can help me understand if teaching and learning goes up under that or is student achievement a separate pillar yeah a couple things uh i think that student achievement does go under teaching and learning and how it informs practice um to mrs kitson's point um social and emotional health is is a big issue um you could nest that under family engagement i think one of the things about meeting families where they are to miss thomas's point does also have to do

040with social emotional health um i think that's very important it also goes to the some of the partnerships we have uh with agencies uh throughout the district so does that make some sense long-term um [Music] of the whole child because then you're looking at you know physical intellectual emotional and social um the board may also want to let it sit as its own conversation to hear how people talk about it and think about it and so you can also make that final decision later um i think that student achievement if we could add a focus area i think student achievement would be a good fit focused area just because we kind of have a focus area for everyone and i think having student achievement as its whole focus area will be good and then we

041could focus on that social and emotional health within student achievement because i think when we talk about teaching and learning we're not only talking about teaching our students but we're also talking about our staff members and our teachers learning and developing as well focused on sometimes you know um and stronger foundations to deliver to the students um you know behold them um is the focus in doing whatever it takes to ensure that all the others um i just would like to see more things that um that sales student achieved you know really seeing students um so to make sure i'm understanding um so if student achievement really is central in its own um its own pillar then by thinking a whole child there it shows everybody that the student is important to being focused on

042and also from your perspective gives a place that social emotional would not get lost is that yeah on measuring you know but we know that you're doing better thank you do any other people have pieces that you would like to sort of um contribute or or put out now in terms of how we are going to just want to sleep is something to look at you know you know absolutely so from a um ford perspective if we are looking at telling our true story about how our students are achieving what are a couple of the things that are are most important to all of you that we think about when we start to define student achievement from this district's perspective the board had asked that mr hankey is doing it mr that we get a

043benchmark when they first come in in august we get a halfway benchmark how the kids are you know reading arithmetic and all that at the end and if you look at those statistically as daniel said you'll see that these kids are learning and they are and what like she said they just go by the state report card to see us as a year and even though we are making progress and just a few years ago i had the uh randy randy considered to do a survey of all the students that started their system from getting out to 12 and in the state of your court card you got to be so if they come here and stay here they're going to get a good education thank you as a board member my goal is to

044educate the whole child and look to see what their what what they're doing after they graduate from high school i mean i can give them whatever grade in a class but i want to make sure they're successful adults with whatever skills we can give them throughout their education and their time here in our field that will help them succeed and it's it's soft skills it's the communication it's the sports it's the music it's the curriculum that we're giving them but each title is so unique and you can't just you have to look and i just wish you could and i know it's so difficult to try but just to focus on each child um that they're especially stable that they have skills to succeed with whatever they want to do in life that's that's important

045to me it's kind of like a mom i guess like i guess that's phenomenal for my children i learned right away that trying to make them do the things i thought they should like didn't work out so much thank you any other additions to that so we are at um close to time i think this is a great start i'll i'll switch it back to you i know the more intense governor after me um i did i would encourage to just let things sort of sit a little loose and let things sit a little separate until you have that first meeting and just hear from people right because we can always apply structure later but it's hard to unbundle um so that's my recommendation is these are great conversations for us to have people at

046so that actually covers um behind that i just have all the all the data slides we've talked about zoom we've talked about how we're going to recruit participants and we've gotten some advice on focus group makeup so any final comments advice hopes that people want to add before we include our hour and rest very fortunately my office has the list of participants and so we will go ahead and survey them and see where we are with the steering committee participants and see who's available and things like that and then we can go from there and i'd like to thank everybody this is fantastic thank you so if you need our support and just let people know hey we still need your help and the district will be reaching out to you we can do that

047for you also so that's awesome thank you so much for the rich discussion we are so excited to be partnering with you and we are so happy to see real people so thank you everybody have a great evening i the small small medium i think they're smaller yes any questions um they were okay um and there were several staff members that didn't finally did not need the requirement and i gave them information to let them know but this is based on last year's school year but again something that we did in the spring but we kind of pushed off with everything that was what we got during that time yeah it was something i hired [Music] so that we'll know those standard yearly um yes