20230213 Strategic Planning Forum

001good evening folks sorry for the delay uh technical difficulties our first goal in the Strategic plan will be to make sure we have state-of-the-art display and communication technology ready to go at a moment's notice probably something we'll try to achieve by year five um so we've been looking forward to this night to have a chance to share work that's been going on really over three years now uh so what we're going to do this evening is we're going to take you through a presentation sort of sharing what we've what we've done so far uh explain what the structures are that we have at work right now that are attempting to develop a strategic plan and then sort of um where the points are for the public to become involved and we'll end with an exit

002survey we hope to get some input um input from our stakeholders has informed the process to date quite a bit and we'll share and share how um but first I'd like to sort of introduce my uh my partners in this Enterprise um and if we just go around the table we'll do introductions hi I'm uh Rick Johnson I'm the Dresden chair hi I'm Ben keaney the Handover School Board chair Dave superintendent uh and right there I come back for the student services in Spanish so each of our board chairs and Reddit have been working as uh their other job has been just to chair our subcommittees for this 2D plan and so we have an academic subcommittee that Ben chairs and Rhett and Lisa Christie have chaired the student support subcommittee for Thomas handle facilities

003and Rick has done organizational Effectiveness and um and so when we get a little further into this they'll each share with you where each of those subcommittees are so far uh but I just wanted to I'm going to try to share my screen and hopefully your technology will cooperate we we have tonight um that looks like we've got 24 participants now that's great and we have a few folks here in the library with us uh that's not quite as many people have even stood on the design team for the the portrait of a graduate but this is we really are hoping to to get more and more public um participation I'm going to take you through really quickly as a set of slides that we use to explain this process internally um at each juncture

004so far the work that we've been doing we've we as committee members have thought I'll need more input it's it's a lot to put on the shoulders with a handful of people to try to determine the direction of an entire school system for the next five years oh we're doing it um so we're working on a strategic plan right now because of a couple of reasons we hope to develop a portrait of a graduate or what we're coming to now regard as portrait of a learner that serves the purpose of sort of our vision that centers our work and then the board will establish and approve ultimately some broad goals and some some some metrics some outcome indicators so that we know whether we've achieved those goals or not it'll be the job of uh

005folks in the schools to to develop the strategies to get us to those goals and more on that shortly so the why of this this um this process not only is it just good practice for any organization to have some idea uh what its purpose is where it's where it's going what activities it needs to undertake in order to achieve its goals and purpose we have a statutory obligation as a board in the state of New Hampshire anyway um to fulfill our obligations as a board to develop strategies and goals for moving forward in the future and in Vermont there's a similar requirement for boards to engage in comprehensive planning and so we feel like we'll be meeting both of those obligations by through this process but for me it's school systems are really complicated

006organizations and unlike maybe a private Enterprise there are I don't want to say necessarily competing interest but there are so many stakeholders each of whom have has a different perspective and a different a different state in in the work that we do it's it's obvious for our students they're here to learn um our staff have a variety of roles to play in the organization and in their wanna their actual work with children uh our our parents obviously have a huge stake in the work that we do here our non-uh parent taxpayers um I have a big interest in what we do as stewards of tax dollars um and and you can go on and on and on about the various folks that that are part of this this work we do together in public education

007and for my purposes as a leader of an organization like that I would love to be able to say these are all the things we're doing to meet the needs of all those stakeholders and these are the dates by which we're going to complete them this is the cycle upon which we're going to renew all that and and make it ready for the next person who's going to leave for the next five years um so so just on a personal level that's my goal and my promise that I've made to the board I don't know how many different times that before I can leave here with a clear conscience we will have such a plan in place and it'll be one that we as a school Community have created together and will shoulder together so

008that's the why we started this back in 2019 it's it's really it's more and more it's actually gone from being frustrating personally to say that then to to being embarrassing and now I just find it kind of funny um we've been trying this since 29 through the notes and the work we did with an early consultant early on um in 2019 we just started to get underway um but at that time we became interested in in the sort of expedited process and working on visioning sort of at the same time we began doing planning and um one thing that came out of that very initial work was we we all agreed that we wanted to use the portrait of a graduate for the model for that visioning process partly because the high school was being

009required to um by their re-accreditation through NEOS and also many several of us from Vermont went to a joint conference with the vsba and the superintendents Association Beyond portrait of a graduate and that introduced us to a consulting company called vital for kids again more on the moment so right now we've been talking about strategic plan I've been giving updates along the way we've had a number of meetings we've invited folks to we've had surveys that we put out publicly I've made reference to this more times than I um but what it really is is we have a steering committee that consists of our four board chairs there are teacher Representatives administrators we had two students we need we need to refresh our student representation and we need some support ready uh the steering committee

010then undertook the portrait of a graduate work and expanded and we called that our design team and so we added more teachers we invited more folks from the public to join us we had policy makers Faith leaders and uh ultimately that group wanted more input so we surveyed you and 500 people gave us additional input on that portrait of a graduate and then I've already mentioned the subcommittees those are those are working groups that'll create all four of the component plans uh and then what I shared with our staff is this is this is becoming real um but we're when we're developing goals together as a board and as these subcommittees uh a lot of it is aspirational and and our our charge to each other was to make goals that were um they were

011specific enough to give guidance but broad enough to give latitude and that's that's something kind of murky charge um but the idea is that we want to be able to continue to tap the creativity of our staff and our public to develop the actual strategies that'll get us there and we wanted room to be able to be creative within that framework the timeline it says your commit to timeline uh what is our your plan to move goals in the next five years so there are a lot of things that we identified as being sort of urgent uh that we probably want to get done within a year or so and then there are things we know are going to take time and so um that's why we're looking at A Five-Year Plan and in all

012likelihood of looking well beyond five years for some pieces of it um but again uh we're dividing parsing personally off that work so that it's attainable and limiting our goals and strategies to a number that is also attainable um because we can't we can't do everything obviously at once so that's what I shared with our staff um and that's the the really quick history and I just think I'd like to I can figure out the technology you're going to stop sharing for a moment by way of just finding your way through all the materials that you have on this I'm not sure how many folks that are on Zoom right now are familiar with the board docs tool but we have this agenda available in board Docs so that you're able to follow along and

013um and all the supporting documents and the slide decks and so forth are there uh and including over 80 slides that take you through the entire survey that we created and um and I'll talk back in June and okay this is one of my great fears trying to run a meeting both in zoom and live I'm just not good at it even after three years okay I've got another document coming up just again as more of a visual I want to show you a timeline that's available on board docs as well that kind of takes you through every meeting we've had um the dates that we we help each meeting and then whether or not the activity that was listed was actually completed and so again um we we ended our effort in 2019 surely

014shortly right right as covered to be starting or put it on on hold and then we re that we re-engaged around June of 2021 and you can see all the meetings that we've held since then uh that included or we had four portrait of a graduate meetings that were the formal design team meetings we've had a number of subcommittee meetings and at a monthly steering committee meeting and uh at the bottom are a few more to check off I've already given my presentations to RMS Marion cross and uh we'll be able to check out February 13th as a public forum okay and I will change up and share one more document foreign so going back in time to 2019 this this was actually kind of fun I found this the other day um and in

0152019 it's really I think that was the last time we we had the entire staff together uh at our October welcome back meeting and we were we had had a board retreat in may we had we had committed to doing a strategic plan we had procured a consultant and we were starting a year with a big meeting with the staff to get and get them as excited about your teaching strategic planning as I can tell our entire Community is now um but but I I was trying to figure out a an engaging metaphor for the Strategic plan work and my wife and I are just done a like a hot to hot hike through a few of the uh the Huts in the in the whites and that was the metaphor that kind of struck

016me as the purpose for strategic planning and also sort of um it's it's real purpose I'm just going to scroll through this really quickly because the whole idea was where have we been and at that time we had just been through a series of pretty significant leadership changes but going back to my hiring and some of the other administrative vacancies that we'd had prior to me joining the system um we had leadership changes in multiple buildings and at that time when we began this process more than half of our leadership team was was new I think Rhett was our senior still is our senior administrator on staff um I added the items and highlighting to show that there's not a whole lot this is a pretty easy presentation to update um a really cool piece

017of this is that like since then we had our big pandemic uh interlude there and we came through it remarkably well and anytime you like in many of the strategic planning processes that I've been involved excuse me involved in before there's a lot of work up front where there's a lot of data Gathering and there's a lot of um mulling over of that data and what's really interesting for us here and this is something else that I shared with the entire staff my my first year here was that that we live in a place that's just immersed in education and the people who live here in in uh you make use of our schools like our huge proponents of education and extremely generous funders of Education and uh so our resources are more than adequate

018and when you look at the metrics that define success in public school our external metrics are so good as to be detrimental I would argue and we can talk a little bit more about that in a while but this graph I just want to put up for you to take a look at look at um this is a three-year average of SAT scores in New Hampshire public high schools and all public high schools in New Hampshire are represented here and if you if you look in the upper right corner of the graph the soul dot way up there is Hanover High School I mean you could basically I mean it's it's I don't know how I feel about that this graph like we should all be extremely happy and uh consider ourselves extremely fortunate and

019that's a huge gap I mean we're talking standard deviation like that kind of difference it looks like I mean and it is consistent it wasn't a free year it wasn't a freak three years This Is Us in terms of the SAT which is not just a sampling of college-bound juniors in the state of New Hampshire it's our accountability measure like each School in New Hampshire has to use the SAT as its 11th grade proof of of um performance and that's where we are so um so what that does it's an affirmation it said wow we're doing really well or we have a lot of students who have parents that had really good SAT scores without getting too philosophical about the SAT um those of you are familiar with the test know what it tests best

020um and I would say that if you have two National Merit Scholars that decide to have children that there's a fairly good likelihood genetically this they'll be good on that test too um but but with that much of a difference between us and every other High School many of which were located in college towns too I mean we're off the chart almost literally and what that can do though is give us a pass um it's really easy to sit back and say we must be doing such great things in our classrooms that were Head and Shoulders above everybody else throughout the state of New Hampshire and really when you look nationally compare those numbers we're a pretty darn good nationally too we could call it a day whatever we're doing is working right um but

021when you look more deeply um when you have that kind of a metric that everybody else looks at and says oh they're doing the best in a state and they're doing outstanding it's a real temptation to not look deeper to see if there are things within our system that could be improved and that's the kind of introspection this process needs to generate um just a few more random pictures of this hike but um the board set a goal in advance of 2019 to do this to do a strategic plan and I said to the staff actually 2019 we're going to take our time a full year to plan which turned into three um the crossouts there we originally thought education operation finance and governance we changed the academic student support facilities and organizational effectiveness September

02230 was going to be our goal to get that much of it done and now we're hoping to have it done in time for board approval this may the SAU 70 meeting I believe is May 1st so we're hoping to get this part done by then um there were some reference points we talked about initial data when we started this in 2019 we had completed a curriculum audit with the University of Pennsylvania we were talking again about completing a facility study which is just about complete now um I know you know a number of other activities and when I look at them now a lot of them are just starting to see some some traction even now they haven't been part of a formal strategic plan and again this whole notion we we pride ourselves

023on um our Democratic High School and we have a real few we've had ever since I got here I've sensed immediately and we had a really strong sense of trust in our our faculty uh there's been a lot of autonomy in the classrooms and this effort I think for some people threatens that autonomy when really we need to take all that great creativity and and that that teaching talent and Marshall and that doesn't mean micromanage it necessarily that means we need to be pulling in the same direction so so I asked a few rhetorical questions here to help guide some of that initial thinking around the plan and many of those questions are still ones that remain to be answered so we're going to get there by getting this plan approved and then we're gonna

024we're gonna achieve the plan by making sure that we hold ourselves accountable to using that as our reference tool whether it's in the budget process whether it's in deciding on what what are the key initiatives that our school boards are going to undertake policies that we're going to we're going to bring forward um we need to make this plan our Touchstone for the work that we do together that was Lakes of the cloud that's a pretty cool place so very long intro and before I give a little more detail on the portrait of a learner does anyone have any question like whether you're online or if you're in our live studio audience feel good raise your hand and zoom at this point if you want any okay Ferris Bueller moment yeah actually hold there is

025one all right thank you all Rachel uh Queens this evening let's see we basically do the same thing here foreign God okay let's say she just made it lower down she's already under there Rachel I'm sorry if my technical uh clumsiness here interred you've been speaking oh she is trying to talk okay Rachel can you try again she's on oh there we go great thank you um hi I live on Main Street in Norwich um I would love to get access to at some point maybe not tonight more information about the curriculum review information with the University of Pennsylvania I think that would be really interesting for us to just know more about what their General assessment was sure yeah that's uh yeah you did that I want to say in 2017 or 18 and

026there's a presentation that we can put back up to refresh and I'm happy to do that thank you so much sure thank you Rachel if you have any other questions okay so back to portrait of a graduate which we're already amending the portrait of a learner so when we when we began our work with Patel for kids I mentioned earlier that this is a Consulting Group that does this work all over the country um we we embarked on the journey to try to just determine what competencies we thought would be important for our students as graduates and then from our initial meeting we talked about the transitions that our students go through when they go from Marion cross to RMS from Ray to RMS RMS to the high school that we really thought that those

027competencies aren't something that are going to be solely a high school concern so that's that's why the change from a portrait of a graduate to portrait of a learner and it was it was an interesting process it wasn't um it wasn't Alchemy it was a pretty basic um series of meetings where we had one meeting to talk about sort of changes in the world and changes in technology that we're having obvious impacts now on education and also creating a a world in which we're educating for kids for realities that we have a hard time comprehending right now and when you think about all the different things that that are happening in our world as we speak and you think of the pace of change and you think of the development of Technologies it's hard it

028makes my mind hurt thinking about how much more things will change in the next five years let alone the next 10 15 or so um so we went through we watched some videos we we uh we had some conversations and some structured uh feedback around uh the changes that were taking place and then the second meeting we talked about our aspirations for our kids in light of those those changes to the Future so we talked about our hopes and dreams for our the children in our school system and and I felt like we had some really good discussions and I would say my my main critique of the process was that in one meeting in one night um it felt awful to me like we would just start having these really deep discussions and then

029it was time to go and then else we'll see you next we'll see a leap to an hour two weeks from now we'll we'll get on to the next step so over the course of the next two meetings we began to think about the competencies that we we really hoped we'd be able to help our students achieve and we had essentially a huge word Bank of all sorts of attributes that you might hope for in a person and we essentially voted on them and we voted on them in groups I mean we voted on them as individuals and uh when the dust settled and we had used their online feedback tools and we reviewed all the definitions for the various competencies we settled on two that across our roughly 30 people that were on this

030design team really Rose to the top and those were critical thinking and empathy and it's I'll comment on this in a little bit but um those were like very widely like um selected and then there were there was there was like maybe there was fractional support where maybe a quarter of the group wanted communication a quarter of the group thought we should have creativity and there just wasn't enough consensus to say yeah those are we should include those and so the group felt at that point that we needed more feedback from everyone else so we we set out surveys um and we sent them to our staff to our students and to the public oh I see the public um in all honesty we are our public was really our our parent and um and

031guardian group and so we end up with over 500 responses to that survey which made the committee feel much better and what we found in that is that as you look down through here we had um critical thinking and empathy but then oh yeah sorry we ended up also communication Rose to the top about you know along with the folks that had indicated on the committee that they thought communication was important our parents and our students and our staff of the communication was an important Focus um and what was really interesting is the the students and there were well over 200 responses to the the students or this to that survey from students and responsibility was really kicked was kicked up onto the list of priorities by them which I thought was really neat um

032and so we those those four had the the most um common agreement for inclusion in our portrait and those those became the four that that survived that process and um it was after that that I it was kind of reading through them and I was really aware that this process had been done by the high school in 2014. uh they they engaged in a strategic planning process and and I've since learned that in 2004 the SAU did a some sort of a mission and visioning process that yielded the um the mission statement that we we now know as Hanover High School's mission statement um I have found I've found no evidence that the SAU ever rescinded it but the SAU actually adopted this um mission statement in 2004. um I Saw Linda confirming that um

033and so really interesting that we talked about all of our students being given the opportunity encouragement to use their minds critical thinking Hearts empathy voices communication um I just thought that was a really either happy coincidence or we just haven't changed in our thinking much over the course of the past several years um I think they're honorable aspirations for our kids and and I think of all the conversations I've had about our schools and all the things that have happened to us uh going back five six years and um it's always that that balance of academic excellence and caring uh kind citizens that we're always talking about and aspiring to and I think we caught it here um we may have missed some other competencies that are really important and we'd love to know if

034you think that we have um but that's that's where we ended up with the portrait of the learning and I know that Council has done some work around that and I'll be kind of going around at schools to shop this this work around with our students just to hear a little more about what they think uh before we ultimately finalize it but um this is where we landed and it's I don't know it feels like we're in um we're in concert with ourselves five six 19 years ago um so that's portrait of a graduate and if anyone has any questions of a portrait of a graduate we'll take a few minutes here to entertain those just a technical questions and stuff in our for those of us who are nearby your screen is not up

035there so it tells me I'm screen sharing you know secondly Linda did you have a separate question well I would say to say um I think you're getting used towards in the learner we can use foreign I guess without taking a vote I think that's uh that's a sentiment that's been expressed by a number of different folks and I've been very happy to make that change formally um I just think it's fun that I Unearthed this file here at the note from May 10th of 2004 making that the SAU Mission yeah even with a fancy diagram nothing new Under the Sun so do we have any questions online about portrait of a graduate uh we do have one now I'm sorry portrait of a learner I gotta discipline myself here [Music] um it's hard to

036share and I could stop the share foreign yes hi Katie hi this is Katie kitchell I live in Norwich Vermont um and I just I'm curious it sounds like you just said that you Unearthed you know some language from 2004 that is very reflective of where you got to or it has a lot of similarities and I'm I'm curious about whether is there part of the strategic planning process that we'll be looking forward to how to hold on to the work that's done in the past and make sure that it doesn't get lost when there's leadership changes um how does one pass on it seems like there's a theme that I'm hearing in the community that as change happens work that's been done in the past gets lost in some way and I'm wondering what

037your hopes are around that and what your planning is around that hey I'm so glad you mentioned that there's actually a slide later on that addresses it directly and that's um back to my promise to the board I've got about five years left um and one of my promises was to create a succession plan one of the things that happens inevitably and there's a lot of research to show that there's a a big benefit to continuity and Leadership but every time here that we've had we've had a major change in leadership it's been an external process where we've advertised far and wide and um and then had a brand new leader come in and that's uh research shows that if you're having frequent leadership changes like that it's very very difficult to gain any traction

038whether it's traction on a strategic plan or um building upon the successes of previous administrations um it often goes to the Wayside and a new a new Administration comes in and identify different priorities and and uh we find ourselves continually um Reinventing the wheel so one thing that I mentioned was that if we to get this plan in in the planning process itself becomes institutionalized here we should be people proved that is if you get somebody who comes in new and the board has a strategic plan that it's that it is approved and essentially made the law of the land you're hiring an administrative new administrator to come in and execute that plan not not to just come in and discard the plan and start over again um in the absence of the plan and

039when you have these major leadership transitions um it's not even a tool that I could hand to a new principal for example or to um a successor superintendent you know I won't go into the details about sort of the guidance I received when I came here but it was essentially this place is in great shape you have nothing to worry about have funk um and there's a lot more to running a school system than that and we right now are feeling uh the challenges that come when when individuals leave us um and and we don't have that sort of documented organizational history I will give a shout out to Linda adante uh there are people in our community who do have certain sort of along you um I would say cariasmus is another one of

040our community members who's been extremely helpful with a perspective as a former board member and an ongoing role with a finance committee if there are people out there who who do know what's been done in the past and what's worked well and um and I guess this is another indication for those folks to come forward I just feel good that we haven't strayed too far off course apparently I just wanted to say I'm a co-poinator in the app that we're engaging in the high school now for people listening and um I've been involved in other media uh self-reflection government school and that's another place that this really supported and the 2004 mission statement that was developed that was actually a great representation what we're doing I mean it took us a year to get that

041statement they have our community forums of all states and advisors and constant a whole year if we visited so it was not a short-term thought that so I think that's why it's and has stood the test of time if you will but people should be really glued into the Nia South before I think it's going to be coming out in May and then this will continue again for two years and our progress as a school is cracked and then we viewed everything which is a great I think you know you have to be accountable so we're held accountable at least there everything there right but to Katie's point though rather than me stumbling on it um we need to build a system that is is that reflection is built in and we're and we're benchmarking

042our progress against those goals that we set yeah which is ultimately the point here Katie did I answer your question or they're adequately address your observation yes yeah I just I I've heard this refrain not only around you know like strategic planning but curriculum building and things like that how when leadership changes happen how do we hold on to the body of knowledge that we have and it doesn't necessarily get lost with the people who are who have moved on for other reasons so thank you to that to that example I would say one of the the primary goal for the academic subcommittee is is accurate documentation of the curriculum um which was a finding the other person who asked about the pen study that was their number one observation was just to do a

043curriculum God it was very difficult because of the the wide variety of ways that our curriculum's documented or the or the absence of documented curriculum um and so that's something that we need to make sure that we have on hand as well sure hi um today and then four numbers and yes um one of the things that I would like was the highlighted um is covered and we all know it's unprecedented impact that it had on the destruction of everything and learning um and then as Jay was saying you know we with these transit or like the leadership positions that we had um that in and of itself then you have I mean when we place our new leader comes in sometimes it will take three years to reset um then on top of that

044and go code with me um so maybe now that we're two years out and people might be forgetting about Covenant he said why isn't a lot of this happening I am a massively and oppressed um the way I took a couple notes but I just I don't want to take too much time because I know we want to move forward but I um how um I wanted to mention these things but we we provide the stable learning environment while protecting the Student Self does faculty Health um we navigated distance learning you need um yeah we're addressing our finished students learning and stress as you would say all of these roles and you think about the parents and the faculty and what what your school did ISM collectively balancing the demands at home or not just

045with parents but David's at home and while you were doing all of this and finding a very a brief perhaps even breathing the loss of family member to the covert 19. um the extra responsibilities during bachelor's whereas you know parents of work um somebody in here uh Equity accessibility to technology and learning um was you'd say massively you're doing it is an understatement um so I just kind of wanted to reflect I I changed the faction collectively and um we all to be this you know I know none of us want to count ourselves especially in teaching or even a leadership I want to have himself out of us but even your parents support um yes there is movement or there is traction so I just wanted to take a moment to say that but

046I am incredibly proud to be a part of this community and the school so things are happening so I just have to say I just have a message on that because you think about how fast we are responding and how Covenant disrupted everything right thanks Patricia yeah when I think about what everybody and I I really mean that inclusive everybody like it was our families it was our entire community and it's that really made all that work um and yeah I think we need you definitely need to like be proud of that and and I do feel like there's opportunity now to to undertake this to get back on this but I also at the same time know that it's a fragile recovery right like right now it looks like our schools are normal to

047everybody but just with our staffing issues our our people are having to do other people's jobs they're having to work harder than than they ever have um and uh and that's invisible because everything looks great and perfect but in fact we've got assistance who are covering for teachers on a regular basis we have schools that have more than 10 unfilled uh support positions uh it's it's hard and and um and so to ask people for a little more bandwidth to think about planning is I know that's going to be tricky but um but we're going to be able to do it for several reasons I feel like people are ready they want to they're tired of the holding pattern where we're just doing circles around the airway Airfield and uh um I I get a

048sense that people are in are interested now where before it was too much to think about I think there's also a growing amount of Interest now because once people start hearing well the board's going to approve a strategic plan that's when all of a sudden especially those of us who work in the system started to get really interested in this this thing called a strategic plan what are they going to tell us to do um and so I think there's a heightened interest from that perspective which isn't bad either um we do need a work plan going forward so so thank you Last of The Talented seeing a faculty we couldn't have masses and curriculum writing who are very passionate things don't stop right to be with surrounded by whatever can we faculty about that

049but there's a lot of mentoring and teamwork it's an incredibly special place to be so yes things are women so with if there aren't any more questions or comments on the report should be learner um the other the other thing was really interesting is as our subcommittees did their work they came to the same sort of sense that the design team did with the portrait work that we wanted more feedback um we weren't getting people showing at the board meeting saying hey how's that strategic plan going um so we decided it was it was time to make a survey and then of course each subcommittee wanted to get certain information since they're doing a survey Ben and his team on the academic subcommittee were kind of spearheading this separate and then everybody else decided they'd

050like to get a little bit of information as well and pretty soon the survey sort of is swelled and um how many items ultimately been yeah yeah how many items 47. so 47 survey items um covering a really wide range of stuff and um that was this past June so obviously circumstances are a little bit different but we thought it'd be worthwhile for you to have a an overview of that survey data to hear what um your neighbors and and friends and our our staff and our students had to say and so you need to share a screening let me navigate to it first okay while you're doing that how do you want to handle questions from audience members so it's a it's gonna be a lot um but uh we'll definitely leave time at

051the end of the the survey discussion and then if you if the hand goes on if if you feel compelled up and um on our Zoom audience If an item comes up and and you'd like to um ask a question during the presentation if you raise your hand but you can decide if you're at a point where you can take that question sure uh let me just get to that point all right so here we go then it's all yours right okay right and also someone has asked that the meeting will be available to watch later this is being recorded and we will send send out a link to them eventually and all the um slides from the survey are in board box as well so thank you for your question okay so 503 responses

052sorry I said 500. thank you Jay for that introduction so you did that 500 responses back in June of 2022 the survey was sent out by Jay to parents staff as well as the local community list serves and initially we got several comments from people who self-identified as students it was open for multiple weeks until June until July 1st with multiple reminders from Jade to our email list sir it was 47 items as you mentioned and in total parents I mean I say parents in the community spent about 130 hours answering the survey which we put them into more appreciable context that's more than 30 work weeks of parent time so we really appreciate all the feedback we've got a lot of great comments both long and detailed additionally we invited parents to put in

053their personal information and be contact and actually have a discussion with the superintendent and a staff if they so chose 40 people identify themselves as part of that and we met with each and every one of them in the summer throughout the summer and fall of Jay it's my understanding that we're going to have school specific findings and PowerPoints at some point later on yes that will occur at each one of those schools the thing the things I'm about to show you include all four schools put together the items included 12 free text response questions and I'll summarize those shortly and um we spoke about a little bit and also redacted those um that we needed immediate adapting to eliminate potentially identifiable information New York so these are the 12 questions that a free text

054responses and you'll notice that the number of responses that there are 2 three text responses among 12 questions and among those the actual wording of the question is do you have anything to add or anything we don't know and a lot of people answered no so we took those out just to shorten the document a little bit and in terms of specific responses that addressed some sort of comment besides no or none or none of the above we got just shy of 1400 among those 12 questions ranging from 65 to 100 and something so we're going to go over this fairly quickly for the sake of time but if you want me to slow down and I can see already for the folks in one room that a lot of this is not legible can

055you read that yes um I've seen folks in the room are shifting and sitting right there on each other okay so the first question again I'm going to kind of be a little fast for the sake of time but feel free to Slow Me Down anyone is which current aspects do you value the most about our SAU schools the top choices were in order overwhelmingly number one was teacher and staff quality we're over 80 percent of all our participants said that that was one of their highest values followed a little bit by quality of curriculum and instruction followed by um the trip was not a little bit to access the student Support Services as well as social cohesion and connections and Then followed by some other things so Jake can you scroll down yeah I'm

056sorry I also want to mention that um I crafted the initial wording of the survey it was vetted and added and edited by all the board shares and we sampled it a little of members of the community who were survey methodologists and experts so I I put in in this document a sample of both comments that I consider to be positive and negative responses from participants all of the comments we got which is approximately 90 pages long we will provide to the community shortly and it has been partially redacted in places where identified information was Sat by Jay and myself working in Canada so some positive comments about aspects that were valued by the community is some of the teachers are life-changing for the students and I really value the culture of caring and community

057and the thoughtfulness that goes into considering the means of all students diversely we got negative comments such as as much as I want to choose all of those none are true all caps and academic Excellence is very important and currently lacking so people were not afraid to speak their minds which we really appreciate doesn't matter being on anyone responding this is to get a sense of the level of feedback with God our next question was what are the biggest current challenges adversely protecting quality of life in our schools a lot of choices here you can see it on the top two a little further ahead of everyone else is the balance of time spent among academic extracurricular family and personal activities as well as student Mental Health and Wellness notably the third choice is Everything

058feels just fine which has survey like this like this where you get as you one of your top three answers everything is just fine you can read them a couple ways you can say wow that's our top three answers we're doing an incredible job or we can flip it around for those who can read the percentages that it's less than 20 say everything is just fine or input let's say four out of five we're saying everything is not just fine so just like Jay was talking about we have to make sure not to get complacent and to keep always trying to improve ourselves a couple of additional highlights I want to point out is we often get dinged by the community right later on it's either having too much rigor or not enough rigoring those

059are separate choices here and for those who you can we can read the print not enough rigor was actually accommodating more often than too much rigor that's a question where if you're thinking through there's some high deviation about which school we're talking about one school says there's way too much rigor I think we all know a school that probably is just making players to high school the elementary school is much more likely to say there's not enough rigor so we hear that and we'll get to that as soon as Pacific comments some sample and positive comment with the positive and negative comments on the challenges are thank you for including lunchtime in the schedule for those of you have not been at the high school for too long that is actually somewhat of a new

060change which I still think is insane so folks love the counselors and the therapy dog on the other hand like someone in the audience mentioned lack of curriculum and limited opportunities for advanced work are not available as much or hard to find and to please work on Mental Health specifically at the high school seriously this is urgent okay we'll keep on going then we put a lot of a lot of free choice responses where we had sort of a bam bam bam in pen build what do you think about this issue is it just right or is it too little bit too little bit more too much about so on the graph you see that in this slide in certain words follow you want the middle one to be as high as you can and

061the other ones would be as low as you can in an Ideal World so over the intensity of our academic Focus about a little over half say it's just right healthy proportion sample too little and too much for academic Focus in terms of the intensity of extracurricular activities such as Athletics and theater just right is almost three forced to folks saying that's just right and again a smattering of too little and too much on both sides here that gets a little bit of a variance from the bell curve the intensity and pressure to succeed only less than half say it's just right and almost half say there's too much pressure and intensity to succeed that said we still have 30 folks who say it's still too little intensity and pressure to succeed if you're paying

062attention to the percent to the numbers which are on the far right in terms of a response rate a sample size if you times that by roughly three and a half that's how much you get across all of our schools in terms of number of students the amount of regular homework that's just right just under half and about a third say there's too much homework what about what the one in six say it's too little homework thank you for time availability for the playground or recess Recreation Etc just write about two-thirds of parents feel that way a little under a third say there's too little and you've got a feel for those kids who have 12 folks that say there's too much recess too much intensity but those folks are out there time availability for

063lunch kind of the same thing almost two-thirds it's just right over a third same it's too little time for lunch and a smattering of both saying there's too much time for lunch and again we'll give school specific graphs like this at a later meeting for parking access and availability when needed or people said there's too much parking access but mostly it's just right in a lot of two Littles we hear you on that and I personally agree on that with you in years of Dei efforts that was a big discussion at the time back in the summer it still is today and in terms of the amount of efforts we're putting into it just right is well below half it's about 44 with over a third thing there's two little Bei efforts and almost 20

064saying there are too much eei efforts for our sustainability efforts and environmental efforts just right over half too little about a third too much about four percent and again as someone already mentioned coven has kind of been forgotten about in terms of a lot of our Collective conscious it was much more of an issue back in June 16th and about two-thirds of folks said we're doing just the amount just about the right amount of effort for mitigation efforts about a Ford said it was too little at the time and a little under 10 said it was too much we're gonna get some variants on this select on this selection for General communication from the schools about 30 out of four it's almost 75 percent of folks said it was just right about a quarter said

065it was too little and nine people said there was too much communication from Microbus and we appreciate getting that feedback recovered specific communication it went down a little bit but it's still about two-thirds that it was just right for the level of covet communication from schools and staff about a fort said it was too little and seven percent said it was too much now hear you most there's a big big change here from the typical bell curve and this is the first one where just right was not the plurality too little communication from the schools and staff specifically about your child had over half the respondents including me when I pulled out the survey and almost half said it was just right and four people said it was too much communication specifically about your child

066in terms about the accessibility of the curriculum again um a big healthy portion of too little 41 so there's not enough accessibility in the curriculum one person said it was to view access and 60 said it was just right for the availability of additional academic assistance which we meant to say things like summer school after school help and within School help about 61 said it was just right over a third said it was too little and a handful said it was too much for the effectiveness of that assistance it was two-thirds just right a third or two little so that was a lot of things we threw out very fast and we got a number of comments about that whole series some of the positive comments were that the assessments and oversight discussion of results

067as well as the implementation of support and exceptional we've had wonderful help in the school and Communications we may be biased and taking that history conversely we got comments that there was lots of communication but not actual information being passed which I I thought that was a good comment and that there's not enough focus on effective curriculum development and holding classroom teachers accountable for executing that curriculum and there's a lot of variance between classrooms in the same school the same grade there were a lot of similar comments um similar to that one the next question was about the current most pressing academic needs within our schools um thank you so the top one as we've already discussed with the consistent standardized curriculum between schools and within grades and subjects closely behind by optional After School

068academic availability smaller classroom sizes and everything feels just fine again academic rigor was one of the choices that it's not too high up on the priority list or as voted on either for an unemporator or too much rigor and then a few other things too you got some sample comments here along the academic side of things such as our experience with the teachers in the race school has been phenomenal at each grade level the teachers have been wonderful and amazing and they're sorry inspiring our child would not be more excited I appreciate the school's Progressive homework policy and emphasis on well-being but we need more instructional time there's a lot of fluff and some lots of comments about the new map curriculum yeah the next question was based on student support and service needs this

069is a social support committee there's a high up above everything else was a more focus on Stress Management feeling valued and non-school like preparation and more focused on mental health and related Wellness for this matter and other things if you're keeping track of everything feels just fine it is all the way in seventh place for this one indicating there is a lot of things we can work on as a community and as an Administration same slide just putting our numbers on it we heard that student support services are exceptional in my opinion administratively especially with Ed assistance and one-on-one AIDS and there was an issue when there was bullying and the teacher and school's response was phenomenal as well as the counselor everyone should get a raise conversely seriously conversely someone told us to stop

070coddling kids you are creating a generation that lacks resilience and will struggle in life as a result on the flip side of that we had several comments relating to the pressure that kids are getting either from teachers or from the community or putting on themselves and that it's heartbreaking we don't need a pressure cooker and I really like this quote just because you get an A rather than a plus doesn't make you a failure which we all have to keep in mind we had a question about specific concerns for your specific child during the school day and notice for this one Everything feels fine was our number one which is great but it also shows that roughly two-thirds of people did not put that as one of their top three choices separate from that the

071top comments were social intensity or pressure academic intensity or pressure and struggles with a specific subject one thing I want to notice consistently in last place on this type of question was school-related physical health concerns which is something that we want to always be working on but it was the least concern on these questions some free text responses we got included the school has been amazing about specific learning disabilities having great teachers and finding more great teachers but we also heard about clippishness as well as boredom lack of Challenge and my child's disillusionment with school because of lackluster unaccountable teachers so we are doing the best we can in all these and we wanted to highlight that sometimes you're getting older opposite responses on the same issue where you're saying something better for concerns for

072your specific child outside of the school day top two by Falling ahead we're a virtual tie between not getting enough sleep Everything feels just fine and a little bit after that enough time for homework probably not too many surprises there I think we all introduce some more sleep but we have to deal for those students we had several comments about wanting to have the school day start later and then later specifically After High School that said we did get a few things school starts too late um I'm not gonna comment on that one you got some comments about doing a great job staying open during covid and we are fortunate that but we see more needs for high quality affordable and nearby after school care it's been hard to have play dates and meet families

073there were several comments about that especially for new parents in the early stages of covid lots of pressure to do lots of that curricular activities which are often stressful and expensive there's a hard balance and the facts people have been participating as well as the stress which I certainly understand about my kid has a runny nose that covet is a knock they go to school do they not that's the right thing to do there in terms of the physical environment the top choices were more outside education as well as improving indoor air quality and security measures and everything feels just fine we have done lots of work on that for the specific to covid which um again specifically but I know we have administrative folks who can and we are working on the outdoor outdoor

074classroom stuff and security measures are we have several things in place but for security reasons we often don't go into public we'll get more specifics about that but we have many things that are there high schoolers should get outside too and the health and safety elements are being managed beautifully but that said we got a lot of comments about our athletic facilities drop off and pick up are often challenging especially at the high school and the elementary schools and some of you may have heard of some septic issues I paraphrased about 30 comments into the one who just had one word a septic exclamation point I believe Thomas heard about this I don't know which chair so I'll leave that week in terms of common specific to the transportation arrival and departure we hear a

075lot of welcomes from parents at meetings and with emails that said it is uh good to hear that everything feels just fine as our top category but again noting that 70 of people did not choose that as their top thing and other issues were including not enough parking at the schools schools should start later in the day and we need different more environmentally friendly buses we have we do an amazing job reporting and transportation the bus drivers are wonderful but on the other we get comments and complaints about specific bus drivers and the amount of time it takes to get to school and the schools all starting at the same time as well as other people wanting a later start time in terms of sustainability not too much of a majority you hear a lot

076of a lot of things of interest including increasing renewable energy preparing for and adapting to climate change reduced energy consumption and reduced waste generation it's always good to try and find ways to help conserve School values these things but we got several specific comments and just a matter of examples including not using single-use calorie a lot of papers coming home where are all the solar panels why do we need that why you have gas buses and not electric buses there's too many kids driving by themselves and and septic this one had a lot of comments on it the question was what are the next what are the most important large-scale initiatives in the next five years and the top choices with a lot of variants including introduce and expand additional practical subjects for study such

077as drivers education business education and family consumer Sciences improvements to the existing buildings and grounds School sponsored Sports and after school activities specifically all the schools besides the high school and before and after child care at MCS and Ray notably the none of these seem important either for budgetary reasons or Everything feels just fine we're in very minor less than 10 specific to his questions and for this one because it was more of an open-ended what do you think we should do there weren't really many positive or negative comments it was more just many great ideas we had about 100 we all send some demographic questions that doesn't kind of see what people were the vast majority had parents had children in the schools a handful of people who were the child were not old

078enough yet or never and not anticipated which were mostly staff members in terms of the breakdown between schools it roughly emulates the actual population counts of those schools for Hanover high is the biggest school Ray Elementary is the second biggest and then Marion cross and Richmond have very comparable numbers and again the No Child in schools was mostly South where do you live it's about two-thirds Hanover one-third more which again happened roughly where our children live as well as tuition students and employees and no one filled it out who declared no current connection to the SAU 70 schools that was Zero as we've commented about Hanover Norwich having a focus on education if you add up the Masters and doctorates together about 86 of all of our households had at least one of those in

079the household that is obviously excuse us from other communities that means something for us to note we did ask about income and the breakdown you can see the bell curve there our median income assuming I'd rather not say is uh back up the rest of the community between 200 300 000 was our median then that makes us a little different from a lot of other communities and something we can keep in mind and about a fourth uh chosen not answer the question I'll keep you going down to the next one in terms of self-declared race ethnicity for your child or yourself if you do not have a child in the schools a little under three-fourths identify themselves as wider Caucasian 13 said I'd rather not say makes you there were four other categories ranging from

080less than one percent to about ten percent ethnicity is a separate question we were trying to emulate within our accounts roughly what the census does and here about a little over 80 percent identify themselves as not Hispanic or Latino numbers about four percent identify themselves as Hispanic or Latino and 15 said I'd rather not say for the gender of your child is slightly higher females compared to males 43 versus 41 about three percent were identified themselves or their child was non-binary and 13 where I'd rather not say that was all of our survey questions so we threw a lot at you right now very quickly to the same time all of these slides are online are three text answers redacted are going to be available soon does anyone have any questions on those or needs

081you to go back to a specific slide either an in-person or on Zoom please raise your hand s update I just first of all I want to thank Ben for all the work he did on us both on the front end as well as the analysis afterwards there's a lot more it's been disaggregated in 10 different ways for each item and as the schools begin their more granular planning process we're able because of the way that has coded the data to to um pull those relevant pieces out and the one difference in particular that Ben noted was this idea that some people think there's too much rigor at their school and others think there isn't enough and that really does break down very clearly by school so we can get that data for the right

082teams that'll be working with it so and and I have to say the the feedback we got through this survey has been already did a presentation for the steering committee that it was it was um disseminated to our our subcommittees and so they've actually already used this feedback in in revising and refining their goals and and as importantly the outcome measures that you're going to learn about in that um and any additional feedback we get what we plan to treat with the same respect so um so we'll we'll inform you about how you can provide us with more input shortly this is the period of time unless there are any more questions any other questions yes please okay sorry Wendy Keller Alford uh I live in Maryland two uh Elementary schoolers at Mount Marion Croft

083and then a high school over here um and you may have already entered because first of all I just want to say thank you that would be very impressive set of data and it gives the volumes about the qualities directing across the district and the quality of people's satisfaction with it and really uh I'm really just impressed in what needs to be said um how amazing that is I'm not that there are no problems but just the dramatic amount of accomplishment that's built into the classic yes thank you um you may already have answered this but is there that just aggravated information by school is that going to be shared with the public or when you said that would go into the appropriate place which is that more of an internal disco it would be

084both yeah so it's going internally already in terms of Public Presentation I think the plans are going to do that at each School physically at that school that we're we'll do stuff from eating we're invite parents and all that um and Wendy the other thing too is I I want to put a little caveat in there if we're in a situation where we we disaggregate the data and then we realize that it's that there might be demographic information or something will really pinpoint certain students or families you'll you we'll have to think about that more like whether it's something we can redact or if it's even easy to for people to guess no of course I was more thinking about things like the priorities like what it is that fans would like to see happening

085sure yes absolutely and in terms of a free tax comments like I mentioned earlier that was like 90 pages long and Jay and I have already redacted it so that there would be as far as we can tell working together there's no possible way to identify an individual student or parent or teacher within that document which we'll send out I assuming very shortly I just really worked many many hours on the subject thank you I think Jay and I met in person I think we had five two-hour meetings yeah about the survey thank you so much sure another question um I just have a question to help me look at this data before this was maybe clouding the picture of some of the responses um let's say a couple of years ago that's a great

086question um in terms of a repeating survey it is this is a survey that that we took point on right this year as part of our strategic planning our goal at least my goal speaking for myself is to have similar surveys with repeating questions year on year so you can track how we do over time so that gets back to the sustainability question that someone else asked about we are working on that we intend to have sort of the you know demographics and how we're doing well in during the school day like repeating year on year with occasional topical news of the day type questions as needed yeah and that the other thing that we're looking at is well there was a large-scale survey done like this one the high school did it's certificate planning

087process I again I want I can't remember if it was completed in 2014 or if that survey was administered back then I've reviewed that survey but we didn't use it as a like a comparison point uh and it was targeted specifically at the high school um and to the best point what we're looking at revising the way we we send out survey after survey after survey for a variety of different things and we had policies that dictate that we survey um parents and staff about our principal evaluation process the superintendent evaluation process um and and we're I'm really thinking that what if we create more of a general satisfaction survey and have items on there about each of those we could probably survey parents once a year um and just make sure we're getting the

088data that we want yes and that was really bad again um yeah and that was very helpful so because once you're out of college a lot of times you get the same they request back on when they bought a video yeah I need to work with guidance Department to figure out what's whether that's still happening or how we're doing that um it's it's really that is really interesting data to use and then I get asked for it a lot actually one thing when I was listening to some of you know some of those points and comments that a lot of people from the attics that not all of Hanover and have them have fiber options significant change of course most everything has been digivized especially with that said there are selects and families that we

089not have reliable internet exploring it goes out please and um probably those same families and I am one of them today the two-hour delay are the one that we had I almost did the exam drawings to get on my driveway at 10. so yeah it just we're still we're not here the community is not quite clear yet to come to it and then accessibility we get there hopefully we have a comment from a member of the audience um Jennifer Rickards is letting us know it's difficult to hear our in-person audience members so any future comments if you could just come closer to the owl so that the people that are on Zoom can hear you that'd be great all right and thanks Jennifer for letting us know any other questions specific to the certificate either

090in personal online I'd love to give you a break but um we're going to have each of our uh the chairs who headed up the subcommittees give you a sense for where that Federal planning's going and the first one up is academic curriculum subcommittee and that's been all right so this subcommittee consisted of myself Handover School Board chair our assistant superintendent Robin Steiner each of the four principals from our schools at least one teacher from each School [Music] and several other staff members and so and I think we're going to see a trend here with the other uh chairs that we have an aspirational goal statement sort of overall useful overwritten goals as well as specific goals for each of those um items cool thank you so I in general our goals surrounded curriculum instruction

091assessment and professional development and we heard folks loud and clear on the survey about the importance of having a publicly available full online searchable curriculum and that is goal one bullet one and several other similarly ones that were on the surrounding the curriculum including templates and similar language across all subject matter as appropriate issues around equitability and viability implementation and sustainability for how we see this year on Europe someone asked a great question what do you do year on year we want this to be a moving document and there are ways that we can kind of get at that through self-evaluation on a yearly basis in terms of instruction we want to develop current instructional practices and methodologies we'll document what we have as well as develop ways to make it better again in a

092public fashion we are going to have start using instructional coaching and peer observations going to be fairly new to us across all of our schools that's part of our evaluation committee work which we've also been working on currently for a couple of years increasing the use of different modalities across all classes as able to help all of our Learners we learn in different ways we want to support that and not push people down into one uh you know kind of putting a pagan Square whole situation and similar things with assessment completely developing the system for the security Digital Collection of this we've made another data creating multiple types of assessment making things as student-centered and balanced as possible as well as empowering our staff to seek and get the professional development that they need and

093develop their own strategies based on established best practices and align with what the school and the individuals involved want to do so the specifics are on board docs I want to bore you with the line by line for several wages sure we are getting feedback already yesterday and so so the Educators out there in the audience when we say best practices we've had a lot of folks that have already asked the question which best practice practices so that level of planning will be what happens next all right so Lisa Christie and Rhett Derrick had a spearhead of the student support subcommittee in red you can kind of take us through that yeah great um so we met uh four or five times across last spring this fall now we have one Community discussion uh in

094May of 2012. some additional feedback uh our members included um school board members school counselors from the various schools and myself my coordinator and student services students like Middle School and High School a coach and American Community Mental Health provider as well um and really our initial task was to try and come up with what do we need my student support and we kind of came around to all things that are now an academic that are part of your student's Life as a student and so looking at Athletics extracurricular corporate governance program systems and disabilities physical and mental health and wellness and it got really broad um and so we try to balance that by going really deep eventually do that mistake and so we needed to these specific things at this school they showed

095all students potentially um which brought us to our goals again looking at prior level building for students um and I think what was helpful for me to think about is when you look at some of our report cards now for elementary schools that have things like um learning behaviors or workouts they're not reading writing math but the other aspects of what it takes to be a good student instead of being respectful being able to regulate with others those are things that were more explicitly teaching now as part of our school you know Elementary School establishment classroom BLS I just got advisory um so we're embedding a lot more of those social emotional students that people are improved student aspects so goals that we have I just want to point something out right I wanted to

096call you folks out as the overachievers of the group who actually took the time to link your goals to the portrait of a graduate competencies the rest of us will do that afterwards they're not just academics um but also facilities called burglars and sharing that what we're teaching in our classroom has multiple means of accessibility which students expert disabilities and dyslexia area that access the same text as traditional readers and provides virtual school and intentional such emotional learning well as mental health and physical wellness third all right just ensure that our policy procedures convincibly board and District wise Endeavor but they are reflect on the social emotions um and then we're building collaborative engineering connections uh one thing that came out of our meetings were we have our roads on our school with students with

097their families and parts of um religious communities like in sports um it's a much larger Community than Mr school and so reaching out and connecting with Community Mental Health Providers when other people in the community that can both benefit our soil but that our students will have to read and benefits and the Performing those connections through experiential learning opportunities that's what I'm going to understand learning program and bringing people into the schools out in the community and I see you have quite a few outcomes that's where yeah and there were more than you narrow them back but those are really again those will be our measures when we look for stores what do they want to implement these right and just just to be clear this this team went ahead and actually had recommended strategies

098so they they started doing the work that we're going to be doing next at the building level um so we didn't throw that away when we made the document uniform we just took those off and set them aside so we'll make sure to return those to their owners eager to say oh we should do we should do this yeah we're looking big right now but you're ahead of the game so we'll expect that you're ready in like early April so to make lots of things to be excited about all right Tom well it's hard to follow something you know you'll read as a too strong a turn because we had a very uh very strong uh technique which was made up of uh folks from uh across a number of different areas and uh have

099some big support from other board members they're also in as fast as the uh Jamie Teague obviously is an administrative and uh uh so many things I had a facilities and then I think you remember John who has authorized uh um area and uh the surveys and more than just separate idea notes anymore um but we took a brought a whole review on the facilities and then you know you know and came up with horrible um and and the overarching idea is all i'll address but with our four goals uh we focused in on the uh the curriculum actually definitely needs to become a business and how is to achieve those and obviously in this area and uh budgets [Music] and then creating a safe secure and helping them into that facility is going she

100realized early on though that it has been such a long time that we've done and these strategic planning the arguments here that we definitely needed to the facilities audit which is a thought everything was playing on Golf Course uh interest of the various schools and I even though it has incentive means that how they're playing necessarily exactly but uh has actually has almost been completed yet I believe that to our administrators here and that's been divided tremendous amount of information that will help us prioritize in terms of the measurable outcomes um we went back to a lot of the things the board members of community members and I was administrator this year new to address and was reinforced by about being found in the results of the survey here our measured a lot of times

101in well one include that with the states were provided but no preparation of dining rooms both here at the high school um I need uh for uh we've been very fortunate in this system populations and continue to capacity units as the district uh hang on a momentary Roseville in the future technology and this one I thought it was to provide our students and staff and then as you know the reasonable active partner with this business um sustainability uh obviously referenced earlier and I think there were three of the questions that we have in assuming they hear what helped us a better understand how you can approach that um that is going to be um something as well becomes specific weapons that we requested it was a big time uh sustain under the options and considered

102on a new job at the district whether it's uh [Music] thank you and I think one of the biggest things that uh this has been about the next five depending news on how we were arrested because as we've owned this year I think we've been doing much more reactive planning uh field uh the track and the baseball field that are going to be underway over the course of the summertime the subject over in there and across field hopefully with uh line article that's on uh this year there's a meeting with their balance and things like that and what this is going to help us do is see what we need over the next five or ten years and so we're going to be less is going to go inside of the rolling out with a

103lot of debt that is coming to the conclusion I believe um as uh the big uh that has been on the districts here at the high school and the building of Richmond Middle School allows for uh rounds it up there's a lot coming and that's pretty exciting too to see if you can uh facilities thanks Tom and and just be be assured that the results of the of the facilities condition assessment are in there's one more piece that they're doing which is a sort of a space utilization component so my guess is that within a week we should have that completed yeah I think the Silver Lining too there is one of the candidates we really even get ahead of some of these things like the Outdoor Learning spaces so we've got a little bit

104of adjustments and that's great so Ricky get to bring us home so uh I led the organizational alignment in the faculty in this committee with Jay and Jamie T and Julie Bowman who's our HR rep for HR coordinator um and we are kind of still waiting for the other groups to finish up we're kind of being skeleton that everything else can drop him so we're not as far down the road I don't know where we want to go but we're waiting for the details from the other groups um our aspirational goal to ensure that the leadership governance Financial administrative function of our organization supporting the attainment of the academic student support and facility goals establishing this plan so we're looking at Administration where we're near the line all our structures and processes to improve efficiency

105of Effectiveness our HR department will support the continuous Improvement of our organization through Recruitment and Retention of Highly qualified employees will improve our community and stakeholder engagement uh financial and asset management will support the implementation and attainment of all our goals foreign listed here are board meetings will be more focused and efficient that's kind of my number one goal for the central office and School administration and methodists will be aligned with strategic plans goals and we'll have specific strategies outcome measures and budgetary consideration um we're going to get a legal review to take a look at our governance structure and see if we can streamline it and make it more effective as many people probably don't know where I don't know where we all sit on pretty skateboard so we'd sit on the Dresden school

106board and over school board and SIU School Board the Norwich City on the North so that's three meetings a month plus all the other community works so uh we're trying to figure out how we can make it a little more streamlined maybe cut down the number of millions we have to attend um we're going to look at leadership development and succession plan to ensure that as people leave or retire that we don't uh come get in the water we have a couple key individuals that work at SAU that if they want if they left I think we all recognize it would probably be in big trouble so we're trying to figure out how we can ensure that doesn't happen uh we're looking to increase our diversity stability and job satisfaction uh trying to maintain our

107accurate job descriptions and document ongoing operations and procedures uh we're gonna try to engage and expand our Communications beyond our regular school board meetings trying to figure out how we can be creative to get input from uh our towns our parents our students uh and any other potential stakeholders plus our staff and our faculty and then uh financial and asset managements will be aligned with our goals uh our building staff will develop continuity plans and provide appropriate cross-training in our business office will be reviewed and optimized all right so thanks very much so that's it that's as far as our our proposed draft goals right now I mean notice documents um that's where we are right now and so our idea is to again subject these goals to scrutiny whether it's from students parents the

108general public um and really Hammer them out but I think the important thing for us all to keep in mind I think Tom you mentioned it this is this is what we're putting on paper right now and circumstances can always change and if this process becomes uh institutionalized the the contents of that process can change to meet new circumstances so um this kind of God leads us into the wrap up here which is that we we do still want public feedback and so yes Linda um I'm sorry um I've been just dying for this question because trying to hear the quest on the environmental book in the high school and they have been stopping us a bit to get involved with the audit and what's going to be happening at the high school and every

109time you know this and I promise I'd ask this question because they're looking for when their best answering this into the conversation I'm sure if many others are you know so I think some thought about that they're not going to go away but they want to be there in a timely way that's all students you know you work with um and they have a climate action plan and they're thinking about toilets and disposable ways and everything else so again the septic system so thank you very much um and you can you can assure them that the their climate action plan was actually requested by the folks that are doing our our Net Zero audit as well as survey people took the survey that said where is it right what's going on with the cap you

110know so uh so yeah so they this essentially this meeting is that kickoff it's like okay so once we get these broad goals we're going to need your students help to figure out how we get there and so the the process at the building level developing strategy is going to be where those concrete action sets are developed sure we also have a question from the audience uh Jocelyn do you want to meet yourself and go ahead hi um this is Jocelyn Meyer I live in Norwich on Beaver Meadow Road and I have two children at Marion cross um thank you for this incredibly comprehensive presentation that's unbelievable how much information um and thought has gone into this so I just wanted to appreciate all of the effort um and the and how detailed this presentation

111has been um I wanted to maybe just lift up an issue that um a broad-based issue and then a smaller issue that several people in the room I've spoken to them about but um I'd like to understand better like how diversity equity and inclusion are being built into the outcomes and goals I know that was highlighted as um a question on the survey um and I I feel like it came up in very subtle ways in um the goals and outcomes but not in a very explicit way and so um I would like to better understand like where where it where it appears um within the goals and outcomes and apologies if I missed it um and then you know as I've spoken to Jay and and Tom about this one particular diversity equity and

112inclusion goal that is of importance to me and I'm not sure if this is the right place to mention it but um I'll throw it out there for consideration um it's just that the school calendar and um the the fact that the school calendar for SAU um does not reflect the diversity of our community the school calendar really only observes Christian and national holidays and doesn't reflect the range of religious and cultural holidays that our community observes and so that leaves families like mine and students feeling excluded or minoritized and misses opportunities to teach other students in the community about different traditions and different faiths so um there are many other ways in which diversity Equity inclusion appear and and can be brought into our community that's just one that um you know that I'm

113exciting as an example and of something that is particularly important to me um but I would love to see diversity equity and inclusion appear in other places as well thank you Justin thank you so much and and uh you're doing exactly when you asked me I think early on like how you could get involved this is it um and and I really appreciate you um keeping those concerns in the Forefront of our consciousness and there are places where things like calendar will be discussed and will be part of this planning process and the other thing I encourage you to do is to um to search our our Equity policy because the Strategic plan isn't the be all end all we haven't been sitting idly by well we wait for this process to unfold and there

114was a great deal of work that was done to actually develop an equity policy and part of that policy is that there's a recording requirement actually on my part and there's also um there's a mandate in that policy for us to identify practices that are not culturally responsive and um and then work to remedy them so so there are a couple of different angles on that and um and in terms of the language of the goals like about to share a link uh that's attached out through board Docs um to a very simple a very basic um Google form that'll allow people to give some feedback and also to identify themselves um if they're interested in being involved in any of our um the Committees we have going now or the Committees that will be

115launched at building level um we'd love to have a list of folks that are willing to lend their time and expertise and and just your opinions um but in the goals themselves when we were trying to come up with the terminology for the academic goals for example we we knew we had the the our Equity policy already at our disposal and we've phrased those four goals um using um well in curriculum you said ensuring equity and we use the term all students intentionally um in in the most inclusive sense that will engage all students that will meet the needs of all Learners um will Empower all students and we'll Empower staff to meet the needs of all students and so so that's that's how linguistically we decided to make sure that we were maximizing our

116inclusiveness and then the same thing for student support they're probably more specifics under student support um and I think you'll also see language and it may it may seem maybe a little subdued but in a port in the portrait of a learner we had lots of conversations about about equity and diversity and inclusion and we didn't just use the stock definitions that were given to us by um Patel for kids we went through a process of attempting to make sure that that language met our needs and and we had made a commitment early on in that process that we were going to keep diversity equity and inclusion um on the table in all of our deliberations and I feel like we did a good job um and uh and again we we have a tool

117uh in our in our um our bag and our policy manual right now that holds us accountable for ensuring that we do just that that we keep an eye on equity in everything we do and also jobs we want to release the um the individual pre-test responses there were several great questions or answers many of them several paragraphs along about the issue that were from all sorts of different perspectives there were great comments I encourage you to read those when they're publicly available shortly any other questions from focus on the audience or on Zoom yes please I can't stand here you don't mind thank you myself there we go okay um my question is about the broad uh structure of the discussion and uh these four uh committees that you offer that they might not

118say the right word um I'm actually thinking specifically about um the interplay between student support services and academics and my question is when it comes to children who learn very quickly in a particular area where differentiation is needed but not to add support so that they can understand or access the curriculum on the deck to maintain a challenge for them does that fall more on their student supports making curriculum accessible to students or is that more of an academic thing and uh to just add on to the point of the competitive I'm very interested in recently is about how um a really robust challenging curriculum can be made possible by a really strong multi-tiered system on supports so that if we do have the outcome happening to support children we need those that have extra

119health is learning in whatever regard that might also allow us to have a challenging and robust curriculum sometimes I worry that those two things and then you put it against each other um or it can feel it's really hard to do all of it so I just wanted to throw that out here for that discussion like what is the dynamic when you're thinking about keeping a robust curriculum and also creating the needs of Learners who need that for support thank you so many thank you guys to be that I feel a little bit like like being an audience plan but just uh well I I just wanted to say like like I said before like we people haven't been sitting idly by while we're waiting for us to get going with this planning process and

120um we've we've had several folks very recently participate in an mtss training uh for those of you who aren't up on your education acronyms to multitude systems explored um and uh I I don't see those things as um butting up against each other because we're going to maintain our steering committee the function that steering committee moving forward is going to be to make sure that that the goals and the outcome measures that we have for each of the subcommittees don't conflict um and we'll have to we'll be making that turn so far it's been processed and trying to get all this stuff down and the that committee will be a standing committee and um and I see it being more of an accountability um group like moving forward but my hope would be that we

121maintain that committee and that that becomes um every bit as important as things we do like csvc which is their committee that oversees staff development there could be no committee I think more important than making sure that we're actually meeting the goals of our security plan and so there are a number of topics that kind of dance between these like and people ask about the later school start times you know that's a little bit academic a little bit of facility and a little bit of Social Work social emotional learning and the steering committee helps us hone in on those issues when when there's not necessarily conflicting but more several aspects that we can focus on and there were several comments in the survey that sort of addressed the different tier system will Pro or against

122other people's sets and they've had to bring back if they've been handled the programs or whatever they're called These Days a number of people saying we need more honors we need less honors it's putting too much pressure on I didn't even have something called honors in the first place and many comments and several different perspectives on that many of the Polar Opposites and I I don't want to keep Harvard on it but I really encourage everyone the program is included to read all the comments we've got and they are going to help shape our opinions and and for years ago probably so it's exactly 8 30 I know we started late but doesn't mean we can't finish on time the uh next steps for the 16 of you that are still online and those of

123you who are here and anyone you can tell a recruit um there's a there's a Google form you actually have to get on board docs as it stands now there's a link on the where it says Exit survey hopefully that works again I um don't claim to be a technology expert but I I put together the form and I set it up so that people outside the organization can get to it I hope uh on that form you'll be we're looking for some general feedback about this strategic plan and then some a little more specific about items that you think should be kept or considered maybe aren't necessary but then beyond that there's some questions about whether or not you'd like to be involved it's a place to put your contact information and we will

124we will get in touch with you if there is a specific part of the plan or a committee that you're interested in helping with we got one last question or comment from Tracy who says a big thank you to everyone on the various committees your work institution thank you yeah I want to thank all of you I it's not until we put this together and just presented us it it doesn't seem like we've done that much but it's been a lot of hours of weekends and uh it's been a long time so thank you all right we don't need a motion to the journey everyone get out thanks everyone thanks for those of you on too and uh thank you staring at me