001Now, please stand. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands nationy and justice for all. >> Our first item on the approval of approveent We do recognition. Hope you can hear it. Maybe not. One second. >> [music] [music] >> Congratulations to all. We do have one more to add to that. We want to thank Governor Armstrong for nominating his former elementary school students at Jefferson for creating an original artwork. Our next item is the approval of tonight's agenda. Our next president environment included almost all of tomorrow for the midter school moving towards campus central office coordination committ Last week again this week identified about 16 committing studentaviology data flows professional development specialist. The other thing I' pushing Mr. Harris has done a really good job of putting
002together a team and work with principles, but then also in our district. Any questions? We will move on to our business topics. >> Yeah, you have kind of an update the monthly update that I'll share with you. First page is just that rendering. You know, move to the second page maybe some key points. We're at that 30%. I think it was 30% last month too, but you can kind of see where the different items are. Maybe moving to page three. more interested in that structural steel that area Dafety by the end of the year we'll have steel won't see over there go for metal framing. You'll see the exterior walls are all completed now. They've started framing on the third floor. I'll show you pictures of that later. Kind of impressive. You start to see
003and then kind of another key thing is under concrete. They poured the second and third floor. I think they want to be by the end of this week. So, kind of neat. If you turn to page four, that's where you see that roof on the music right there. If you want to look inside of it, you look on page five and that's Mr. G's room. That's probably doesn't look great right now, but if you move to page six, that's kind of you're in the cafeteria and you're looking into kind of where the food's going to be made and prepped. And then above it, that's where a walkway looking kind of at that library will be right behind there. The next page, page seven, you get to see what the building looks like with windows. Obviously,
004they started putting some of those windows in windows and doors. Well, not doors yet, but those will be over the next few weeks. They'll install them. They have most of them. I believe you'll see on the opposite side of this building on the south side. Those will be the last ones that are brought in. Great big openings there. That's how they'll bring in a lot of the equipment they use to build the place build. You turn to page eight. That's first floor. Uh they're just putting down moisture barrier there and I believe they've already started pouring that if you want to look what it looks like when finished. You can turn to page nam. If you turn to page 10, that's the third floor. And you can kind of see the same thing, but page
00511 is the third floor. And there you get to start to see walls being put up. Kind of kind of neat. Start to see how it's going to be laid out. This is on the far far west side of the building. You turn to page 12. Crazy about roofs. You can look at the roof there. American page 13 just kind of shows you January of of 27 we will have taken over these areas there's a few things up in the area building those types of things but for the most part January 27 actually right after Thanksgiving but we won't move in January 27 back area obviously this summer work some of that work kind of exciting the next two pages are obviously just 14 the different floors interesting [clears throat] if you look at page
00614 is that four rooms kind of well our is the principal's office and then there's two science rooms actually three science rooms I believe right below the science but kind of object up there that'll be August 27 so Mr. Brand will get to not have an office for half a year also our science will be shortterm science rooms they're already working on how do they front load some of those lab classes just knowing that second semester next year we'll be short for our art and science trying to figure that out into the schedule and how that all works out then ideally we take over the project that's the update for monthly also Sarah threw together just this little timeline you have in front of We've added this to the FAQ. So people are asking when
007are they demolishing the pods, right? You can go in there and you can see pod classroom demolition January 27th. So probably some key points maybe summer of 26 parking lot, right? That's going to be a mess. Mr. Franc and all that. Um level one and level two of the 97 edition or the 97 edition. So they're going to some new finishes, old finishes, fire sprinkler, we'll start working on those special ed department over there. Again, we're going to have some scheduling things that we're have to figure out. When you look under January 2027, students move into the new addition, right? That's kind of a key item. classrooms demolished after that five pods and then the admin area demo starts April 27 do the bus loop obviously can't do that when are sitting there nice little
008timeline people ask like hey what's happening here and so this is I'd encourage you to refer to this So I know spoke to a group and that concludes the DHS rebuild report. Thank you guys for tonight. talk a little bit about choice ready and some of the great things our students are doing are doing. So many of you guys have seen the choice matrix that is up there right now includes essential skills that we want students graduate choice ready to look at our choice data. Our essential skills were roughly about 89% of our students essential skills start to break down We fell a little bit short of our goal. We actually 66%. If you look at our insights data on the website, you can see that our choice numbers. You look at the graph changes.
009>> Yeah. A lot of opportunity. going back to I was able to pull some numbers from her dashboard. Some of those look at numbers 37% of our students 37% 27% I think those areas on a school we've tried to engage families teacher conferences holdingformational sessions trying to increase our partnership opportunities for students. I think some of the misconceptions around that are justif of fine arts classes only 23% of our students actually qualify for another area students take that Funny thing, one one thing that I did hear from a family question. We've done a lot to promote CTE classes like seemed like this this group didn't want to get out of class and they said we don't do enough to promote our CTE class and I think we can improve a We have great partnerships. They
010want to work with us. Essential skills have qualify at 94% of our graduates last year. We're also trying The other thing we're exploring right now will help our military also I think we're going to increase military. We went back and surveyed our students to see if there would be interest. I think it was 435 that gives us a lot of confidence that students Is public schools one of the things that people aren't aware of the cost the cost savings that are associated with taking That's one of the things that we're really trying to families. We're very something that we I'm happy to take questions. took a quick drink of the board. for the opportunity to address you tonight. I never thought I'd find myself in a place in my career where I'm excited to talk
011about student behavior. But I am and I'm excited to spend a couple of minutes. I couple years ago the board came out with a goal said you're going to do the impossible. You're going to reduce the number of students and disrupt these student behaviors in our school district. And uh and that's it's kind of a funny thing because I think every school district in the country probably was uh feeling the exact same thing. Uh it was bold leadership on your part to say we're going to do something about it. And so it was kind of exciting tonight to have the opportunity to talk about what we're doing about it. And so I'm gonna trust that it says that because my eyes see that years ago. So um in uh Dickson public school tonight just like
012to focus our presentation around maybe four or five specific questions. And the first one is uh because of our efforts are things getting better uh I'm I'm happy to say I I think we've got the uh evidence to uh support this that yes uh things are getting better in the area of uh of behavior. Um to date uh since uh September um our schools have identified 17 opportunities where the data shows that we could improve within our buildings. Uh when when we identified those 17 times. We set a monthly goal. We set a goal that said we were going to do something about that. 12 times since the month of September, we achieved that goal. And so uh uh that's that's pretty cool. We've got the data to show that across our district 12 times
013we improved uh and met our uh improvement goal in the area of data or in the area of behavior. But what I think's even a better story is to take a look at the times when we did not achieve that goal. It'd be easy to say, you know what, we probably well, we didn't get it right that time. We didn't improve there. But even when we did not achieve our goal, things still got better. Uh, one example of this is our is our high school. In the month of October, our high school had a goal that said that they were going to decrease behaviors uh behavior referrals to the office by 10% in every one of our classes. They did not achieve that goal. They only got three out of the four classes to decrease
014by at least 10%. And even in the classes that didn't make it, they showed improvement. So even when we didn't achieve a lofty goal, we 75% of our classes improve in their behavior in the area of behavior. Um the second question that uh we were going to ask is how are things getting better? And so we took a little bit of time and and just dove into those goals. And as you can see there in those different areas, we improved across our district. Uh the the best uh data that's up there is we have successfully accomplished a behavioral goal in every one of our buildings uh this year. So uh as you can see, three times we've reduced physical aggression on and on. But uh but the thing that we'd like to that we're excited
015about is in every single one of our at least in one area. We improve uh our reality. Um and so I'd like to go back to to Dickson High School and I think they're a great example of this. You know what? They didn't achieve their goal in October. So what did they do? They got their leadership team together and they said, "You know what? We can do better than that." And they set the same goal for the month of November. They didn't back away from it. They showed some grit. They pulled up their uh boots and they went to work and they accomplished their goal. Um they did reduce uh behavior referrals in all four of their classes in the month of November. But what's really cool is they had a 40% decrease in overall
016referrals from October to November. Was that Yeah, that's pretty amazing. But then when you go year to year, the high school also decreased by 25% the number of referrals that they had over what they had in 2024. And so just so proud of some of the work. Um another example, Dickson Middle School reduced the number of students in their next step program. Last year they were at 15. This year they are at nine. Um it uh Another example at Hart River Elementary School, 81% of their students that they identify to receive tier 2 behavioral interventions are successfully meeting behavior goals set for them and is being progress monitored through their school. So, how are things getting better? They're getting better in so many in all of those areas. I would just like to expand on
017that. at Lincoln Elementary we've had in all our buildings has moved from an interaction based system to an intervention based system where students are going to the room for purpose and they're shifting that time and skill so that they're working on adjusted development for those essential behaviors in the area of the school building that's identified where Rose Elementary is implementing a community connect team that's maximizing community partners students develop skills so they're successful in school. Finally, Jefferson again was a big month for students from their behaviories in a successful manner where they were no longer those intensive interventions. It was simply back to preventive efforts. want to read a quick quote. The next question we have is we getting better. Um here's a quote from a a article from a magazine. It says, "Challenging student
018behavior is one of the leading causes of teacher burnout. This is no surprise as new teachers receive almost no training in mental health or behavioral principles. Um our our teachers are being expected to be experts in a they never receive training to develop that expertise and that that's that's that's a heavy lift. That's not the case in our district. We're getting better by one of the ways that we're getting better is we're providing uh the training and the professional development for our staff so that they can uh meet the challenges of these students. And up here we put uh some examples. Uh we had Jessica Han by the end of this year three times they for three days they will have been in our district virtually they will have provided training for four days Dr.
019Jessica Mahan uh she has provided um one day of in our district of training one day of virtual training Dr. Stuart Avalon. Uh he he um next month in January will all of our teachers will receive uh training in uh collaborative problem solving. And we have four staff right now that are working towards becoming uh collaborative CPS trainers, collaborative problem solving trainers. Um the thing that is kind of stands out with that uh If you take a look at any of those three individuals that are on the board, they are nationally recognized as the top of the field. Uh our teachers are not being exposed to just uh any fly by night. These are the these are the experts that uh nationally are uh in demand. Um if you go across our state, we we
020know of at least three different districts who are trying to um implement the behavior solutions model that we implemented with the Hanigans for example and they and the Hanigans are so booked up they can't get them uh they they have to go with an associate trainer and yet the Hanigans still answer the phone whenever we call so we feel very fortunate to have the relationship we do with these uh folks but uh but the training that we are providing and the PD that we are providing our staff is second to none and an example of how we are incorporating that training. Yeah, we'll do certain things throughout teams again system and model we have in place through intervention teams, leadership teams and teacher teams is building the capacity so we're able to meet and prevent
021those identified areas and also just sequence development throughout the school year. Specific We go back to that Lincoln Elementary example. Uh, one of the things that Dr. Mahan told us was, you know what, giving kids breaks, it's something schools do all the time. Kids are getting in trouble. They're having trouble with their behavior. Well, give them a break. But we, what the research says is that's not very effective unless you give a break with purpose. So, what the people Lincoln Elementary did was they said, you know what, the radio room is all we were doing was giving kids breaks. That's an interaction with kids. But if you if it doesn't have a purpose for building skills so that they can be uh successful when they go back to the classroom, you're really just wasting time
022and losing instructional time for that uh student. Lincoln has revamped that. When they go to the radio room, it's for a purpose. They work on building skills so that they're more successful when they return to the classroom. Uh the next question that we asked was how are we getting better? Uh we're getting better across our district in so many different ways and it's been really exciting this year to see uh the improvement. Uh uh we are shifting our focus uh in our buildings from reacting to behavior to preventing behavior through the building of skills. We are breaking down the silos in our schools so that we rather than offering a a program here and we're working over here and our counselors are doing this and social workers are doing that but rather we're bringing all
023of those resources and all those efforts and we're weaving them together so that we have more of a united front as we address behaviors in our buildings. We in one building we reduced the number of teams that were operating in that building from 12 to 4. In another building we reduced the number of teams that were operating in that building from 8 to three demonstrating that coordination of efforts as we try to meet the behavioral needs of kids. We've clarified the role for our school mental health providers. We've uh we didn't always know exactly what their job description was. We're providing clarified role for our mental health providers and we've provided clarity to those roles. Uh we we've uh uh introduced the FIA one and two and in each of that each of those teams
024that we've developed in each of every building has a clarified purpose of what their role and their responsibility is when it comes to behavior. Uh Dr. Marzo says that one of the questions that we need to ask of a highly successful school is how do we take collective responsibility for a kid that goes academically that goes behaviorally. We are creating a model where we take collective responsibility. Everybody in the building plays a role for towards uh improved uh behavior. some examples of uh how we are getting better at Hart River Elementary School. Um 100% of the students who have received a consequence for four choices this year that has resulted in a suspension when they came back to school, they are now receiving tier 2 behavioral interventions where they are receiving instruction and building the
025skills so that they don't repeat those same bad choices that they made before. We've never done that before. We always thought that the punishment was all we just we suspend them, we bring them back, and we wonder why it happened again. Uh we're not doing that now. Um Rich, yeah, Roosevelt Elementary very similar. We're seeing an innovative team of staff assignments to maximize student learning in the classroom. Just continuing to do different work in different ways. In the month of Lincoln Elementary, they identified through behavior solution framework. 34 out of 40 of those students were complimenting students. The Lincoln team took an individual skill development approach to create change and using staff to build that bridge in making sure that we're minimizing a successful pathway for the students. Also at Lincoln, four out of five
026areas in their matrix that they keep d have improved in addition to their smart. So they've gone above and beyond the essential behaviors to even get bettering services for our families and students on a dayto-day basis. Um I I don't love presenting. I would love to have a conversation with any of you about behavior. Unfortunately, Dr. catches me in the morning at 6:30. He and I usually have a short talk. It hardly ever goes more than an hour. But he has to listen to me. I I I I I'm really excited about the things that we're doing, the behavior and the progress that we're making and that. But the last question, the most important question is are we there yet? And the answer is no. We still have we've identified a number of places where
027we're going to continue to uh work so that we can get better. Um we're going this year we did not introduce new initiatives. What we did do is we said we're going to get better. the initiatives that we've started. We're getting better at using data to refine our our uh goals. Uh a year ago, we were making goals that really were kind of uh um uh Can I go We had a goal about how we were going to deal with snow pants for kids at recess. This year we're doing goals where how are we reducing the physical aggression that we see at recess there. As you can tell that's a much more substantive goal that does improve uh the culture of the school. We are re refining and improving our use of progress monitoring so
028that we know whether uh on a regular basis whether the things that we're trying are they effective or not. Um the the worst thing we can do is to keep doing what we've always done and hope that it for a different result. Progress monitoring allows us every two weeks to determine whether we're being effective or whether we need to change our approach. Uh we need to get better at acknowledging celebrating our success. Um I hope tonight uh we were able to communicate we have a lot of success. Um 12 times we've achieved a goal and that's the tip of the iceberg success that we're experiencing. We need to acknowledge and celebrate and communicate that success. Uh we all know that we have kids who have very intensive needs and and and there are some of
029those kiddos who need more uh uh intervention than others. We need to improve on our ability to meet the needs of those who demonstrate that they have intensive needs with better tier three interventions. And finally, we need to avoid the trap of allowing 1% to be the topic of conversation. Um, you mentioned today I was having a conversation with Mr. Mley and we said, you know what, if we had 95% of our kids who were proficient in reading, we would celebrate. And yet When it comes to behavior, we don't talk about the 95% who are getting it right. We want to talk about 5% who haven't got there yet. And uh and we we've got to be careful that that 1% 2% doesn't always dominate uh the attention from our schools. Um recently uh I've
030changed an answer that I give uh to our patrons and I get this question quite frequently. It's Keith. What are you doing about the behavior man that middle school or Keith man that elementary school boy that high school what are you doing? There are some kids who are just reaching and uh my my answer that I've started giving is now what what day do you have available this week? I'd like to meet you at that school because for every kid you can show me that isn't getting quite right. I can show you that's a really great and and I hope that we can uh start making that the message that we're focused on in our community. For every kid who's struggling got it yet. We're going to keep working on them. But let's not forget
031the 95% that are really great kids and are getting it right and doing a great job. And that's that's our present. I did a lot of the talking is doing a great job. We're very I works and You know what? Nobody's met there yet. But it's a fun answer to >> Thank you for your support. >> Our first item is polic. to approve harassment. Policy A section 504 rehabilitation act child. Our next item is regul AR1 website program. procedure and the final adoption. Our last one is policy religion second. our last. >> No, Madam President.