Group 2 | Board of Education -Cabinet Retreat | Equity Metrics Work Session

001on looking at different indicators of success and then how do we truly measure our success and effectiveness in those different areas and so as we get started we always start with our as i keep moving there we go we always get started with our vision mission and goals to make sure that we are in alignment with what we think feel and believe about our district and we know that equity is at the core of what we do here and now we are looking at all of the ways in which we actualize equity in our practices in our procedures and in our policies at this time i want to say thank you very much because our board members are here and president savage and i will tag team through the powerpoint information which is which just

002kind of lays the foundation for the work that we are doing i welcome all of our cabinet members as we get knee deep into all of this work and then working together in a very collaborative manner with our board is essential to the success of our district and so at this time i turned it over to president savage okay so if you want to advance one slide that would be helpful so i tonight we are going to as the superintendent said be talking about metrics development and to be clear especially for board members who i know are always anxious to talk about how are we doing we are not going to be actually talking about the evaluation of the equity policy instead we're going to be a little a little bit meta we're going to

003talk about how we will evaluate the equity policy and we came to this as you guys may remember because the board met in public session a couple of months ago where we went through this similar presentation just with the boe this is a recommended best practice for policy governance boards like ours so that we identify clearly defined agreed upon metrics the goal being for all stakeholders board members cabinet members community members to understand and know the evaluation criteria for policy implementation if we're successful with this and it leads to a good foundation for our work with the cabinet and superintendent we could envision doing this sort of metrics development for other critical policies but we're going to start with the equity policy because we know that that is the policy that is the most foundational

004to everything that we do in the district our goal is to develop concise and meaningful metrics that are agreed upon again so all stakeholders know what the evaluation criteria are one of the things that can create friction between board members and um superintendents is a mismatch between the expectations of what the metrics are and the delivery of the reports that is a known problem identified in best practices of where it creates friction so by identifying the metrics all in advance we hope to be sure that we are clear and uh collegial in our communication with each other and of course we have a big into the policy the criteria and so we want to be true to the wording of the policy which is the policy that's been adopted by the board um for best

005practices i do direct folks to the upper right hand corner there is a lovely article by larry leverett that i encourage you to read if you have not moving forward thank you superintendent adams i wanted to just reco do a brief history of the equity policy just to get people grounded in the work i know that we all live this so we know that there's been advocacy for an equity policy i know on the board side it may have been happening on the cabinet side and i just wasn't aware but certainly since at least 2015 we have been talking about trying to have a formal equity policy we had of course many equity oriented initiatives even before that and between 2015 and the adoption of a formal equity policy but we didn't actually adopt a

006formal equity policy until after the superintendent superintendent adams worked with the equity policy committee and then principal on special assignment um sanders in 2018 and ultimately adopted the equity policy in 2019 so that is the policy we still have on the books it's coming up on two and a half years old now nisba has adopted a um sample x equity policy now that may be something we want to consider in folding into our policy and so i know the superintendent has started looking at that and we'll be working on that through the policy committee at this point i'm actually going to go through the entire text of the equity policy because one of the things i love about our equity policy is it's really not very long it's really just a few paragraphs and so

007the first section of it is about philosophy where it talks about the city school district of albany is committed to the success of every student to achieving the adopted vision of being a district of excellence access and opportunity with caring relationships and engaging learning experiences that provide equitable opportunities for all students i think find this to be one of the really critical sections of the policy in terms of the philosophy the district believes that equity is a right and it is the responsibility of all of us of all of the stakeholders the cabinet the board the staff the administrators to ensure equitable experiences and outcomes for all students the district will work in partnership with our diverse community to engage every learner in a robust educational program designed to provide the knowledge and skills necessary

008for success another critical piece is positioning the equity policy in the context of the larger society the district recognizes that the current educational system along with complex societal racial racial and historical factors create and perpetuate barriers to access and opportunities within the system next slide please the second section of the policy describes what the district's going to do the policy requires the district practices and procedures be reviewed based on the established cultural relevant criteria in order to reverse the cycle of systemic disparities that impact student success the district will implement research-based educational practices to eliminate racial predictability of student success disproportionality and behavioral consequences inequities impacting marginalized and underserved populations and systemic barriers to opportunities and success and the district will provide a supportive nurturing learning community which values student voice recognizes that focus on

009individual student needs is necessary for equitable outcomes and utilizes the strengths of albany's diversity to ensure equitable outcomes finally the district will provide professional development and resources necessary to ensure that all administrators teachers support staff and community partners have access to high quality culturally relevant research-based strategies to reduce racial and other disparities in measurable outcomes all of that should be very familiar to us because it is the work that we're doing each and every day in the district the last section of the equity policy actually specifies how the policy is to be monitored so this is baked right into the policy the district will develop and monitor an evaluation rubric and accountability standards for measuring success that's the core of what we're going to be doing tonight is working together to really define in some

010better detail what that evaluation rubric and accountability standards look like a clear plan and timeline for identifying equity gaps in educational experiences and outcomes an implementation plan for instructional programs hiring practices and operational systems that addresses disparities an ongoing plan for continuous professional development and improvement and a plan that includes student voice and parent guardian input as an integral part of the decision making and transformation process and the superintendent shall annually report the progress towards achieving these goals each year to the board the district etc moving on so we that is what it says in the policy and what has actually happened matches that relatively well before the policy we had a report on equity and i've linked to those things in the slides for folks who want to care follow along at home in

011november 2019 we did also get a second another report about a year later it refers to the 2018 plan so one thing that's a little bit of skew between the policy and what we've done is that the policy calls for a plan to be developed and the plan that we've been referring to actually precedes the policy and doesn't match up exactly to the wording of the policy so that's something we can talk about how we want to address then in october of 2020 we had a third presentation nicely yearly and of course that's just the beginning because we always disaggregate data and we talk about equity implications in just about every presentation and i really appreciate that the cabinet has made that a focus and an emphasis that equity is not something that happens in

012parallel to the work of the district but it's something that happens in the work of the district so we really appreciate that um revised equity cre implementation plan i think you added that bullet superintendent adams so there must be a plan that i'm not thinking of and how we will reporting how will we change our reporting and this is what we'll be doing going forward to account for the metrics that we are developing over the next couple of hours did you want to add anything in there the piece about the revised equity and cre implementation plan has to do with the way in which under the leadership of dr wilson turner that we have been able to evolve with the needs for the district and you're going through this process where are you seeing the

013gaps and especially when you look at having active teams at each of our schools how do we make sure that their world responsibilities are consistent yet still meeting the unique needs of the particular schools that they serve and so that's what that revised equity and cre implementation plan is about is because this is not a stagnant document this is a document that that we use and we also evolve in our own behaviors with what we know is best practices so then that means that that document has to be revised along the way um dr wilson turner i don't know if there's anything that you wanted to add with regard to that work at this time no i think you gave a good overview okay thank you okay so this is just a restatement of the

014slide from before and a reminder that the requirement for an evaluation rubric and accountability standards is baked right into the policy so that's nothing new and if you move forward one more slide we'll just do a quick conversation about what what we think these accountability standards should look like and this is certainly open to conversation but when i went through this with the board a couple of months ago i was really trying to keep us focused on very high level standards right we want measurable indicators of success that means something quantitative but they should be strategic rather than tactical we are not going to be talking about you know mrs so-and-so's class and whether she has a particular um you know success rate with a particular set of kids instead we want to be very

015strategic so we are looking at measure things that measure progress on critical objectives what is it that we think drives success of the district we want things that are aggregated at a very high level by district by school maybe by unit or grade but not by individual class or by student we are looking for things for this level of reporting that are measured over very long time periods at least quarterly certainly yearly but not daily weekly or monthly that's very different than what the cabinet and the building leaders need right they need things that are at a much shorter time frame we are looking for indicators which are quantitative or numeric we really do want to try and get to a point where we have something that we can really point to and measure they

016can be trailing indicators so things that actually happened graduation rate of course is the one that's the easiest to point to and one that we know that we've been very happy with our progress on over the last few years or they can be leading indicators that is measures of something that we anticipate are is contributing to success for example we believe that the cre training that we've been doing is really impactful and so how many of our staff members have participated in that would be a uh seer would be a leading indicator towards our success so when the board worked on this we identified some source material and that's what's up here in the white box these were ideas sources that we found looking for ways that we could identify some of those rubrics and

017in particular for those who haven't had the chance at some point i encourage you to click on that seattle equity scorecard and look at what they're doing because this is a really interesting uh approach and they do essentially an annual report where they report on a specific set of metrics and having looked at a few of them i do know that they actually have evolved this a little over time they they started with a set of metrics they added some they found some not that useful so that is the goal for tonight and i'm going to turn it back over to mrs adams to walk us through the how to um and what how we're going to be using our time for the rest of the evening so we have the categories that are listed

018and i'm going to now exit the powerpoint and well i'll finish up here and then i'll go to the agenda when we finish our work with each of the indicators and the categories we're going to look at how this aligns with our district priorities and try and set the stage for what those priorities would be for the 21 22 school year and then once we look at how things are aligned we're going to talk about after we finish this work is the timeline feasible that we have a draft for review by july 8th and then the presentation of the district priorities and the equity metrics by july 22nd which then puts us in a position to roll this out with our kickoff with faculty and staff when they come back so i just want to

019make sure that i put that information out there so i'm going to stop sharing and then we need to look at our agenda and i know that you have copies of this already and i want to make sure that i explain what our steps are in terms of what the action steps are in the groups so we have completed this first part which looks at um the main session so this is where we are now our objective for tonight is that we are going to look at specific evidence to support the identified equity measurement categories we're also going to look at indicators and what are some of the possible data sample data collection pieces that we need in order to measure that particular indicator in your groups you will have a and i want to

020show what you're going to receive just to make sure that everyone is um ready with what we need to do in terms of i'm going to pick room one so you'll be divided into rooms and the first thing that you're going to see is a sample student achievement student academic success which is an equity measurement category you have indicators that are listed and then you have sample data collection and this has been provided as an example so you can look at that and review and see the sample data that we're looking at for that particular indicator everyone will work on the second the second category for the equity measurement category because this is one that we need various lenses by which we look through at what does it mean to have an equitable distribution of

021our resources and so in your groups you're going to have about 15 to 20 minutes to look at this and determine the evidence that human and fiscal resources are being distributed equitably what are some of the indicators that we would have to address that particular category and then what would the sample data collection b and so we're all working on this one when you finish that for about 15 to 20 minutes and you're gonna have to gauge your own time in there then i'm going to ask that each of these are different so each group will have a different category where our principals have provided information and this is where you will look at what the principals have said various indicators are and what the sample data collection would be for that indicator and then

022in the comments section your group or room will write your comments or adjustments or anything or feedback with regard to what our principles have done so the goal here is to have our group tonight our groups tonight work on the equitable resource distribution look at the evidence and develop sample data for cl for that evidence and then review a category that has been provided to you where our district administrators have put their first draft thoughts and then you tweak that with your comments questions about the two things that you're going to do and you have roughly 20 minutes for each of those activities within your group in the chat if you look at the chat you have a link we have provided for each group in the chat you can link directly to your form

023and then one of the things that you're going to do is you will have a spokesperson and a scribe and when we come back to the whole group then each group will have about five minutes to share out what the work that you've done on the equitable resource distribution and then the comments that you have with regard to feedback on this particular your particular category all of the information will be here i will po i will show that so that we will have your particular worksheet will be shared during your discussion any questions okay at this time we are going to look at approximately 40 minutes please be reminded that in the live stream that are public you can absolutely from the youtube channel look at the different links in order to go to the

024group of your choice and you can observe the work that cabinet and the board will do on the particular indicators and categories with regard to equity so at this time mr baker if you will send us to our groups we will see you back in 40 minutes i was going to say when you were talking without when when uhuita was describing how we moved from place to place i was going to say it's sort of like the old star trek beam me up scotty i just finished watching uh voyager that's great um i'm noticing that the group and the room number is not identified as to what you are supposed to be working on and um so i had assumed that it would be curriculum but now i see that matt is here in this

025group with us and he probably assumed it would be hr so i'm not sure it might be worth texting kuwita a question um okay just to uh determine usually there's a little thing at the top that says room one or room two and so you have a clue as to what you're being assigned we've worked on all of these um hassan both with the administrative group and then um in cabinet we've you know sort of revisited as we were preparing for the retreat so yeah i'm very familiar with teams but i've actually never done this kind of beam me up it's so cool didn't realize it was even a possibility so that's good yeah it's you can define the groups but sometimes what and and tonight it's certainly appropriate but sometimes when you're in a

026very large group you might not know how just how many people you're going to have and so you can just one click of a button and just randomly send 50 people into you know five group rooms or whatever it is that you want or 10 group you know small group rooms and you can define the time you could say 15 minutes and then everybody magically comes back it's pretty uh interesting tool um but regardless um we could probably at least look at that first indicator because i think that the student academic success indicated well actually it's interesting i'm sorry um i think the other board members are having some similar questions about what group exactly this is yes but uh i will let you carry on karen yeah every every one of them um starts

027with the student academic success indicator so at the very least we can um you can open any of the documents i mean i don't know if you had a chance to open the document uh hassan if not i can put it in the chat here um i do have it on my phone but i actually think the chat would be better so thank you all right let me see if um i'm just gonna put the one that i have up which is the curriculum one and if that changes we'll switch it around oh i was gonna beat you to it karen but okay okay um and again because they all start with the same thing what we what we found for the student academic success um criteria category that it was helpful it helped um

028ground us and how to go through this process with those boxes that were empty and so i really think it's worthwhile for the three of us to take a few minutes and look at you know what is the evidence that racial disparities in student success are narrowing and so folks came up with um these were you know sample thing the graduation rates um especially for uh black and white students economically disadvantaged non-economically and those gaps closing um the measures of academic success beyond the minimum that's something else that we want to look at we want to see what kind of diploma the kids are earning we like to look at midpoint indicators gpas enrollment in middle school honors that was something that we really changed the um the system for that several years ago because

029we felt we had predominantly white students in those um classrooms and we've uh worked that to um make sure that those classes were open and students had access um the nwea scores which you know are predictors for the on track to graduate academic [Laughter] no worries [Laughter] i win [Laughter] well i'm gonna opt out oh no no you'll be able to join um fully i'm sure uh so anyway so we're in the right document which is nice um we talked a lot about the percent of the children entering kindergarten who had access to quality pk the pre-k the midpoint progress uh of sufficient credits the percent of students enrolling in post-secondary and then student perception would be based on surveys and so we ended up having the data collection really be that graduation rate enrollment

030in advanced classes the pass rate of advanced classes and students on track for graduation that those are some really firm metrics would help us um unders you know as we look at the demographics of those advanced classes and our graduation rate and our students on track for graduation are we providing an environment that is um uh you know open and and accessible to all students so that kind of gives you a sense of how we did this process is like we sort of said well what is the evidence and then we narrowed it down to those very very specific data points to get to um that sample data collection and i don't think that we were charged with adding to this unless someone had a thought to that i think this was just our sample

031to um get us get the get the blood rolling here so that we know what it is that we're charged to do i think that was really good karen thank you for bringing that back to me that that really helped set me like where we're going and what we need to do and kind of again brings back the like what we need to do in this next one so i think that was very helpful all right excellent excellent so it's kind of a little bit of a brainstorm in the middle and then and then really let's hone in and get to what kind of data that we're going to look at so that brings us to the the um the one in the middle which is evidence that human and fiscal resources are being distributed

032equitably and everyone in the um everyone in the group is working on this so we do not have to be the we we we don't have to have the answer to it all but we hopefully will have a piece of the answer and so um i i've actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about that well i spent a lot of time thinking about this topic anyway because we are um interested uh and i would just say historically that the district in my 10 years has improved i think almost radically um in in making sure that we have equitable distribution of both human and fiscal resources that's just anecdotally it's just a little piece of evidence from my 10 years in the district yeah and i think if if i was to add to

033that i think that shows in the work that your team does and and what our building leaders uh clamor for that you know if we have a particular program at a middle school level for example we make sure that that programming is available to every single middle school or we make the decision that we may not do that particular task or thing um but we we take active steps to make sure it is a that we have the same offering and we only bring forward offerings that we can give to everyone right right and it's interesting because it came up at the last board meeting about our issue with middle school tech and facts i don't know if anybody recalls that um and that uh one of the things that um because it's so hard

034to find a tech the tech and facts certified teachers they are they are the most challenging group you you have to go to oswego because they're the only ones that have a tech certification program um and it's really difficult to get those teachers that the state the st the entire state was having that issue and so they uh loosened those requirements up and said that you could also satisfy the requirements with the cte um which in our case was business but it has left us that north albany is has a business class and the other two middle schools have um tech and and facts and so because of that this is really an emerging thing and i think this is evidence for this is that we as a part of our whole computer science um

035roll out that we know we have to do we want to look at all those pieces the tech the facts the business and the rollout of computer science and where that lands and falls and i think ultimately what will what we seek to do in 2223 is reallocate staff even if it might mean some traveling so that kids got the business kids got the computer science embedded somewhere they got their tech they got their facts and it's just a matter of um pulling the program and a new alignment together but we know in our mind that we're guided by making sure that just as matt said we're offering equitable opportunities to kids can i ask a quick question um relating to the scribe is are one of us supposed to be the scribe is one

036of us supposed to be right i um matt's taking notes are you yeah yep i i jumped right on that hassan i i'll subscribe for the group uh on our sheet thank you i just was like oh crap am i supposed to be writing something down right now so i'm still taking notes but um not they're not like official or anything um so yeah when we i'm just uh i'm looking at this uh this google doc and we are on the equitable resource distribution um part i i do this is good like to jog my memory because i actually remember a lot of these points being made so for example one of the indicators was a percent or number of students that are coming into kindergarten that had a pre-k um experience basically so that

037was for the evidence of student success and now we're really talking about how are we uh deploying our human and fiscal resources equitably that is really our focus and then we want to get some evidence for that and um from my seat i would offer that we have um district uh we have centralized distribution of all core programs so for example wonders and envisioned the two major programs at elementary and um any of the any of the textbook kinds of pieces at middle and high school are all centrally done so there would be no way that a montessori principal said i'm not going to order envision this year because i want to order something else no every student and not that that would ever happen but every student um every student is is has their

038a book designated for them in those um core core programs so those physical uh print resources the digital resources are by and large district distributed and then um i guess we could talk about human resources and while matt is so excellent with helping all of us get people in and hired and doing all the the back end work to make sure that we're successful with that and supporting folks um he does matt doesn't say you have to send your reading teachers you need three reading teachers in this building and two in this building and five in this building that's for the instructional folks and that was another thing about shortly after i got here a few years after maybe we started deploying the reading teachers in a databased decision making process so prior to that

039we had two reading teachers at every elementary building no matter how many kids they had and what the need was and so we said no we we need to do this differently and so we started um collecting the data we have a formula we have a way you know with enrollment and then um we look at the average uh score the reading score and then um and and then we and how many children are falling below the threshold and then we build this documents formulized document that says okay this school is going to need five reading teachers and this school can get away with 1.5 and still deliver an equitable program but it's not equal it's it's it's understandably because there might need to be let's just say 100 hours a week you know 100

040hours of work work hours a week dedicated to one school because they have x amount of students that are below the reading level whereas another school may not need that 100 hours of work you know work hours they need only work hours where i'm just making the numbers up obviously but um where we're spending more time is where the higher reading uh needs are i get back into like the the real finer points uh but like you know again talking about uh certification and strengths of staff members you know we find ways if we have a particular staff member that has a expertise in a content area that is not their specialty we partner with the instructional supervisor team to use the guidelines scd has given us allowing us to have qualified teachers in classrooms

041that may not be their exact content area in one or two classes just to make sure that we're able to give that level of programming um within the the confines and expectations of the state education department so taking a um a science teacher and making sure that we provide the same science courses to all cl all students in a building yeah yep well there's a lot of unifying factors too that i find is really encouraging one the the one book one school um project i think that's fantastic um first of all the different grades will get you know different lessons out of these books so if you're a little bit older you may understand i mean you can understand it at a higher level yes yes so and and it it gives the entire school

042administration than teachers to have like something to almost like discuss across the board so it's like everyone has a commonality that's right and that was the whole purpose of that that was such a wonderful gift and we um we did we did that for every elementary building and then we took the rest of the funding and put it into diverse ebooks in our digital library and that was sort of the secondary piece of the gift really quick actually now that you mention it we should um that may be something that we could potentially measure about how many times certain books based on diversity or you know cre kind of themed books are checked out or how many times you know they're covered in a class or something like that well certainly the library i think

043would be a challenge because you'd have to tag all the books that are diverse and there's thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of books um but i would agree with you on um uh it's not just about the and i think this is more in our next piece that we're going to talk about when we get to the curriculum piece which we probably should only spend like maybe five more minutes on this this one but um is that uh we we i'm gonna i'll talk more then about what we're doing at the secondary level in terms of in terms of diverse texts and and karen i'm going to challenge you five minutes maybe too much i think our session may be ending at 6 20. um so maybe we'll just throw a couple sample

044data points the the date the time up at the top says 25 minutes left no oh good okay good so you're right i thought this was 45 this one was 45 minutes we started playing on the agenda which i think we're 10 or 15 we're 10 or 15 minutes behind so hopefully they won't take time away here but maybe in debrief but you're right we could we could speed it up so so then the sample the data collection given um given these and and i will say there just because i know that um there are some buildings that have grants and sometimes people say oh that that school gets to do such and such or purchase such and such because they have all that grant money and what people have to realize is that the

045reason that they have the grant and i'm talking big grants i'm not talking about somebody who gets a little bit of money to put a brand new rug in their classroom kind of grant i'm talking about the big sed or federal grants there's a reason there's a reason that that that grant money comes to those individual buildings those individual buildings have shown a need and the purpose of the grant is to fill that need and the state state and federal government support it so that's another case of it's not equal but it is equitable um so i did want to mention that so so we would what could we measure then in terms of our uh human and fiscal resources distributed equitably i would offer maybe the new um i believe it's essa reporting and

046how dollars are spent uh down to the building and the so we roll up all of our funding and then it's it's broken out by um by building so that would be a report to confirm that okay we say we need additional reading support over here are we paying more reading teachers over there okay i'd like that the essa report um the a data report that would be good um i i also think um and you know from the instructional the reading teacher thing is real and i actually wonder if that could be a data point is reading teacher deployment because all you would need to see is the the data that we pull to to try to make sure that that happens equitably and um and see that we're doing it so we're just

047we're going over hr um potential hr like trackable hr uh um methods or what i think that's in the hr criteria that we we're not going to discuss here correct yeah and i think it's more like how can so the things that we were just talking about uh we say we're ensuring equitable distribution of resources we're saying things are centralized what data points can we refer to to say that that's happening um i i could easily provide um uh you know the yearly um textbook purchase memo would with backup that shows all the things that goes to the individual schools um the yeah the annual textbook notification yeah um that that would highlight the distribution of of text across the district because that's where it happens not to go back to the library um and

048i know it's harder to track but i'm a book guy and if you can get data on how many things are being checked out how frequently the library is being used and basically kind of get aggregate the data that this library is in use or it needs to be used more what is being um how is it utilized is it being utilized through like the ebooks or is it being utilized more through physical books and how many how many times are certain classrooms or certain students utilizing the library services i know it's it's a tough one because it's you're gonna there's a lot of ways to read that data and there's a lot of data that you'd have to collect but i just i'd like to see you know a school-to-school comparison on how often

049yeah we can do that easily um the system that we have will give us those reports um and we won't have any problem pulling that type of data what we would struggle with is what kinds of books kids are taking out because then first of all you'd have to be very specific you're right but i mean it doesn't have to get that granular um i mentioned that just because like if we could track like those those specific like when we're going back to the one book one school you said there was uh some funding for uh particular ebooks and like if we could track just those ebooks um you know how many times we'll we'll look into it i i the librarian uh in the back of my head is saying we don't monitor what

050people read it's against their rights and their freedom but i'll look into it and and i do like looking at the library data to measure the frequency of student use by building i think that's a great idea um not um and so we'll we'll look into what we can do there i hear you we're not trying to be jeff bezos and uh track people's orders and suggest that they buy other things but yes exactly all right we've got about 18 19 minutes so let's move down to our last one where we want to throw just one more thing out there just to help our conversation i think like it would be uh we could take the master schedules and show enrollment to then say why we would have deployed additional resources in one place over

051another so like uh student course load and and what they're taking that would drive what we're doing while we're making these changes that was my only other data point yes and we do that every spring when we try to build the master schedule at albany high school all right 18 minutes little reminder okay so the last section on here which is the um improvements to curriculum and instruction so the evidence that research-based strategy strategies to reduce racial disparities are incorporated in curriculum and instruction and um i don't know i feel like i've been talking a lot matt you want to do the review of this one sure but you were so eloquent about it karen um so i think uh what i mean this is my area i mean i could i just didn't know

052people were tired of hearing my voice i'm good and this because i can't talk and type at the same time okay all right so um and i didn't sit in this group with the administrators either i was in another group so uh we talked talked about folks district-wide attending the unbound ed standards conference and how that has been a game changer in how people think about um equity in the classroom and i i like to always give this example because i think it's fabulous my math supervisor frank he you know he he's math guy and he's like i don't i'm not i don't know how to get to the equity and met like he was struggling like where do we where is that access point and when we went to the standards institute what we

053learned is two things two very important things the first thing is is that every child needs to get the great level standards it's an injustice to deny a child the grade level standards and we have to find strategies in ways to address any unfinished learning that the student needs in order to get to it that was that was like that was three years ago everybody was like oh my gosh the second thing and i like to think about this for math was this push for student voice and our kids don't talk enough in classrooms and when they don't talk they don't learn they have to talk to one another it has to be student to student talk student to teacher talk and a lot more student talk and what frank said is that's how i

054have equity in my math classrooms i'm making sure that kids are getting the standards that are at the grade level and really specific ways to strategies that we learn to address that any gaps that the student might have and then secondly get the kids talking this is an equity issue so that's been um that's all captured in that first bullet and we we love that um text selection and represented representative books this is where i wanted to talk uh hassan about what you had mentioned is is what kind of literature are we reading what kind of work is going on so in the humanities equity is around having um around having those diverse texts in in place so i will say that you could look at any curriculum in ela from grade 6 to grade

05512 and you will find that the cornerstone text and usually every grade level has a two or three um usually two of the three are diverse texts and when they're not they might be from the canon but they're they're used they've got some parallel um uh messages going on that that work together um you know a recent one that we're thinking about doing is uh how uh student voice and agency especially for girls and we were talking about a doing of mice and men in ninth grade and how there's just complete lack of student voice and agency in that and then move to a raisin in the sun where there is uh where we're illustrating the structural uh barriers in the way of um voice and agency for black americans uh was very much in

056evidence in the 1950s and then um and then we move on to um i forget what the next one that we're going to do in that series but another book that um shows how to manifest i know what it was it's how somebody gains their voice an agency and then a final research project where the students determine a way that they're activating their voice and agency too so this is the kind of curriculum we write these days and um that's in our our ela and then um i think um and then the uh social studies as well lends itself well and we've we've been doing so much work with the 16 1619 project so the curriculum and then if you go down to the last data point on this one where it says curriculum reviews

057based on the review cycle when we um review our curriculum we are looking at it does it represent we have a rubric that says does it represent the diversity of our student body and that's something we rate ourselves on in the curriculum review process so we do have a system for doing that um we have the one school one book initiative which you talked about is a way to ground everybody in that school with that message it was beautiful um we've in in uh integrated multicultural themes and text into our wonders curriculum it already had some but we we've added um in our curriculum maps a column of what other um partner texts could stories could teachers read that connect to this theme that's in the the program um so they had consistent pd across

058buildings and then uh looking at pd attendance on an annual basis um to to look at what the equity focus is and then inclusion of diverse resources in school libraries and classrooms which we've always done and you know i think an example of that if you go to the website and you look at the summer reading program you will see all the librarians did a video of themselves or most of them of their top 10 books and you will see that they are a mix of diverse texts uh that the the librarians do a little summary of it um of the ten choices and uh and and that so i think there's some nice evidence so that that is what's here i'm sorry i i got a little carried away um but this is my

059work and passion and i i don't know if anyone um wants to point anything else out in the data points or anything else that they think could be evidence of how we're working in curriculum and instruct you know curriculum and then instruction this our student voice an engagement that has been really radical these past couple of years and i think if i was to add to that uh i would think like whether i see the rubber meeting the road is the the pd attendance and how how it impacts what our staff do and improvements to instruction i think there's such a gold mine and karen you and i we talk about this like things that are in your wheelhouse things that are in my wheelhouse i don't want to add more to your wheelhouse but

060like you know some sort of analysis on the pd attendance and like the what's happening how what are those metrics that are go along with those pd instead of just we send our staff we get the measurable we get the results from the doing the pd but like well let's look at it let's look at how many people go to these conferences and where the expenses and the value of that i just i think there's a data gold mine there that we haven't tapped yeah i i agree with you i think if i could get the mlp system to work for me better which is something that i will it's my learning plan and it is um a place where we actually house all our pd cad art our district pd catalog but also we

061have access to the boces catalog questar i think the teacher center is in in there there might be an another one kazda might be there as well so that any teacher can go in with their albany credentials and see not only what we're offering at the district level but what um other organizations are offering and access those things sometimes there's a cost associated but they could access it well could we also do some base comparison about which teachers took what pd and slash how you know how many courses of pd a a teacher took or an employee took and then um kind of gauge where their students are well that would be yeah i see i like where you're going and this last pd day in march when we had everything in mlp where teachers

062had to register then we know who is in the sessions and you know you could disaggregate that data to look at elementary teachers and what they did and you know this this group and what they did um but i the the mlp system i have not tamed it so it's it's in my future i think um but i also like where matt's going is that while we do a fairly decent job of making sure that we do surveys at the end of our pd they are i disaggregate that data and i give that data back out to the facilitators so that they can uh read the comments of the folks that attended their professional development and what the impact felt we always ask the question are you going to um uh put something in action

063from this and we get a we have a quantitative data point from that we always ask what else do you need those kinds of things so we do try to do that fine tune for that very specific uh pd um when we give it but mlp is a an honor it's not unexplored it's a um a lightly explored system that i need to harness because i think it could help with um making those connections that you're talking about you know right back to did they implement it so all these people are going to standards institute do we see it in their rooms now that's something that cecily and laurie focus on with their building principles when they do their walk-throughs how many people went to standards this summer okay this who went let's go see

064if we see in evidence see in evidence in the walk through that this teacher is um uh displaying her learning so and that's caught in our walk-through data that's i like i like that um that methodology as well it's um if you can if you can track the pd and then i'm not sure how the walkthroughs exactly go but if you have a list of what pd uh you know courses this teacher took and you have that list while you're doing the walk through and you try to and whoever is doing the walkthrough kind of checks off um components that they see from individual pds for example it might be it might be more complex than that but yeah it's a way to to sort of triangulate what's happening so somebody goes to the conference

065they come back that you know they implement what they're doing and then we have this accountability piece where you can go in and visually see it but that's at that very building granule level which is captured in the walkthroughs um you know but a data system to to make all that work is it's definitely you know something that's aspirational it's you know something that we need to i am well aware things take time i'm very very cognizant um and it's it's very it is very important not to start with a pie in the sky kind of um outlook i mean small incremental measurements is definitely the way to go yeah and i i think for this one i i think really the curriculum review has been a very good system to measure um some of

066those things the walkthrough data is a way to measure some things um this also references the middle school acceleration in honors um classes um you know participation and then you know enrolled versus successful those kinds of things because when kids are engaged and they feel um that their voice is heard in the class then they tend to be successful absolutely and you know this is i know we've got a limited amount of time but this is something that i i was thinking about when both times i've toured the new portions of the high schools i want our students to really kind of be involved and and have like ownership of the building because when you have ownership of something you take care of take i think we're gonna see i think we've already we were

067beginning to see that happen we only had the kids in the new wing for what was it two months a month before we shut down and um coming back the every other day that you know for this the last quarter that was that was okay but it isn't like hopefully where what it's going to be in the fall and um but i agree with you that ownership of the building ownership of their education um will help benchmark exams for disproportionality that will that will be something that we will be um watching and attending to that's a good data point so matt what kind of notes did you put together well i you know i think our goal was i'm sorry if i called you if you prefer matthew i could i didn't mean to call

068you matt no no i'm i'm quite flexible um yeah i think you know our our goal was to have a conversation about the items um add on to the work that the administrators uh do and you know highlight the things that i think you know we really think will make a difference and are good indicators and so that's kind of what i tried to do i put on um the areas that we maybe added to what was out there um and then i highlighted the items that not that we feel but you know we we talked about that we think are good indicators um you know to to the work that needs to be done in these arenas so and i think you know systematizing it will help um you know having having a structured

069rubric is a great starting point because you can say that you do a review cycle but if you don't have a tool that you can refer back to that oh consistently yeah yeah we that the rubric um is actually our work ends up being the work plan because when they do the review they write notes on it and then when they have to go back to improve the curriculum or revise the curriculum they what needs to be improved is is captured the first indicator to matt is a good one that at the ccr indicator okay um because that's a measure of how many advanced courses kids are taking okay actually that's something we didn't touch on but i i noticed and i want to i want to basically get into that a little bit more

070but we don't have enough time i'm just wondering how students are selected for the advanced class placement is it just teacher students choose students choose guys i've got my baby too so i think we're all back and thank you all so very much i enjoyed going to the different groups because i was able to go out to the live stream and take and go in and observe each of the groups through the various links so excellent conversation and so we're going to go ahead and get started and jump right in and i will just start with i'm gonna start with group four and uh we'll have the spokesperson and we'll talk about um i'll go ahead and i i will pull up your form we're starting with group four so i will pull up your

071document now there we go and then i will share it that way you can have it um as we are discussing the topic so i'll go ahead and share and we'll jump right in with group four and if everybody else can mute so that the spokesperson from group four and we won't get the echo and i'm gonna mute now so um are you able to expand that for us so um in our brainstorm about equitable resource distribution we felt that for one it's evidence in our budget that we put forth and it could be we could use data as in our staffing ratios not only by position but just in each category and why we chose to bring back staff in the way we did which includes teaching support staffs emotional social emotional learning and

072um by building and we feel that that demonstrates equity also our academic plan as well as our five-year facilities plan illustrates our commitment to equitable resource distribution in addition to our district worldwide program we think of music and athletics and we can probably gather that information if we look at student participation in each building in those activities and any sort of barriers that we were able to overcome for our students in the case of athletics we put on a clinic for example if they weren't connected to a home pediatrician another area we feel is our arp investment where we're making those investments and why it's another data set of data that we could use to illustrate that and just comments overall i feel that something that is a thread throughout all of this is that

073we had frequent communication with the community by necessity and as a regular course whether we do surveys or forums we've done more in this period um given the nature of things being virtual and we had a lot of ways to collect data responses and suggestions and not only get those insights but to test them whether they're feasible or not for us and why or whether it's some regulatory impact so that's the first i think that's sort of what we came up with equitable resource distribution any comments with regard to the first piece about the equitable distribution of resources okay we can hear a little bit more let's go to your second response where you gave feedback to the district administrators looking at success in equitable hiring and retention so um we talked about we actually

074got into a conversation about what other factors may be at play for candidates even being in the city of albany and being available for us to hire um and so we talked about you know what our pathways are from local colleges and universities for diverse staffing i know we do student teaching what does the demographic do our student teaching population look like are we tapping into various organizations that exist on campus to get to that diverse more diverse teach our teaching force and then we talked about our referral process and our job fair process and when we go to recruit um you know what is the exact process because that's neither of our lanes you know is there a sign up sheet of people who press interest in our organization do they sign up for

075a particular position um and do we do a demographic breakdown of that to see if we're even capturing in our recruitment processes those people who um would help to diversify our workforce and then if we are capturing those people at the table how many of those people actually become successful candidates and if not we're losing them and we had a conversation about um our exit interviews with staff when they do leave um what kind of trend data are we collecting when you know when staff of color or other diverse members males any other field that we're really trying to recruit for are not staying with us you know in our exit interviews are we able to find trends that may help us better um support keeping that type of staff on on onboard and i

076think those are the ones any comments and i apologize because my babies don't quietly sit in my lap anymore they're screaming their imagination any comments about equitable hiring and retention just kind of looking over what the administrator said and then the feedback from this group any comments or questions okay we will move on to group two and i can chime in karen unless you wanna karen led the charge in our group so i'm happy to speak on behalf of the group um so we we kind of grounded ourselves first on kind of what what the the main topic or the the sample topic was so that we kind of get our um you know juices flowing in terms of we'll talk about the next one so when we looked at um equitable uh resource distribution

077um you know it was commented that you know over the years we've improved to ensure that we ensure equitable distribution on a more consistent basis making sure that our middle level program our elementaries have the same options for all of our students building to building all across the city um other ways that we've attempted to do this is leveraging certification flexibility um karen was talking about how um you know if if we're looking for a particular tech or fax or business uh uh program we're not finding the the right type of teachers we're able to use the cte pathway um or other ways to get the same type of programming across to our um students um the also uh work was done over the the last few years to centralize distribution of all core programming

078so if we as a district determine this is important we centralize that and make sure every building every student gets the right allotment of that things that we've deemed to be important um partnership between the hr division and instructional divisions to move staffing around to provide equitable services i know the instructional team over the years has built um systems based on data of student enrollment and then flex staffing needs so it's no longer building a and building b both have two reading teachers for example if building b has a greater need for reading we redeploy our resources accordingly and make sure that those students get the things that they need and we put staff and resources in particular places all based on student data so those are some of the big areas that we talked

079about and the data points that related to that um we think a great measurement is the essa data reporting because that shows that okay well you will see a greater expense in this area um well that's because we deployed more teachers there or we apply deploy more resources there um we talked about the reading teacher deployment um you know also the curriculum office issues an annual textbook notification um highlighting how much how many different textbooks and the types of resources that are going to be deployed across the district that's a good summary and highlighting um how we centralize that um we also had a conversation about the reviewing uh library data and um kind of see if there's anything we can mine in that in terms of student use of pulling out particular resources accessing

080different content areas seeing if we can't mine that data that we collect on a regular basis to see if there's any sort of trends there um and then last the review of the master schedule and course enrollment um so seeing how students are selecting things seeing what students need for different services in different buildings and then redeploying staffing to meet those needs questions comments okay so let's go to your assigned area we have the improvements to curriculum and instruction including pd your responses and comments to what the district administrators stated yep um so this section was really about how the district uses pd to improve our curriculum instruction and we talked a lot about some specific examples of administrators and teachers who have gone to pd had that aha moment and then shared that um

081in their instruction in their planning um and we we talked about how those things you know are an exact example of uh when we spend these the these uh expense these resources towards these things it makes an impact on our students so what we did was we kind of as we after we talked about the evidence we really just focused on the sample data collection highlighting the things that we also support what the administrators recommended not saying the other things are not uh recommended but we support those items and kind of added some things in bold to those areas that we we think could add on to what was shown there so um looking at the ccr indicators looking at the middle school acceleration honors classes how how enrollment versus success in those programs works

082out um looking at walk-through data so that was a particular item that we um drilled into a little bit that through the walkthrough data that the assistant superintendents and the administrators do we're able to see the implementation of uh the pd sessions that our staff go to uh the implementation and how instructors pull out student voice in the work that they do um so we we think those were good and actually i'll take this moment real quick to talk about we we added um leveraging my learning plan um and i think i will tag on to this and apply it to the previous topic that you know we have some systems that we need to just tweak a little bit or really get fully deployed out there because then those will ease our data collection

083and allow our data mining so the my learning plan program is out there it monitors our professional development if we're able to kind of get a little bit more of that up off the ground we'd be able to run more reports out of it karen and her team did a great job this past year um where we had a lot more of our staff and rolling through in our pd days through my learning plan um i'll take it back to the hr data an applicant tracking system would get us right to that data of the applicants we get where they're in the process et cetera et cetera so um that those are the things that we saw as a group team did i miss anything i'm very happy with that matt thank you i i

084just want to note that um matt definitely took that opportunity to tie into hr uh i know i i just knew you would i knew you would but outstanding thank you so very much uh the next group is group three and we will so i am the spokesperson for group three and eileen was our scribe so thank you very much but we had a great conversation um i'll walk us through the human and fiscal resources um distribution equitable distribution so we had talked about much of many many of the things that the other groups had talked about already as well but staff ratios at each school looking at it by by teacher by grade looking at the distribution of more veteran teachers versus newer teachers in each building experience of teaching staff the demographics with

085respect to each student some group subgroup looking at ells and special ed also taking a look at um data sources to inform how resources are distributed um so for example looking you know when we're thinking about social workers or behavior specialists looking at our um social emotional data like um student discipline referrals or the number of students with disabilities in our buildings um for looking thinking about academic um looking at the number of students needing tier two and tier three and how we're equitably distributing our interventionist into our schools thinking about our extended learning and enrichment opportunities by school you know review of the programs and offerings and the student level of participation alignment of the elementary middle level programs at each school to ensure that students have access to the same core courses and

086resources at each school another group had mentioned that as well also taking a look at the review of this physical space and the condition and the resources at each school including the signage green space and playground and the data source would we would refer back to our five-year capital plan we also talked about um field trip and school event opportunities and looking at student participation rate the number of uh field trips by building and disaggregated by the different demographics we also felt that it was important for us to um keep in mind our budget process for for determining resource allocation and taking a look at our budget process presentations and the documentations to get to an equitable budget for any given fiscal year and then finally donations outside from outside sources and pta including afe

087funding and um and looking at that by building and the distribution of those funds we also talked about perception data of stakeholders um and how that plays into the human and fiscal resources element of this work team did i miss anything would anyone like to add anything okay so we will go to now your feedback from the district administrators input with regard to success in equitable student and family engagement so we had student success uh evidence that racial disparities in student success are narrowing and we looked at what the administrators had identified and we did agree um you know as we went through um the different data sources um and areas to focus on uh you know we were in agreement that those are the the elements that we need to continue to monitor so

088for example closing the gap and looking at a graduation rate especially between our black and white students and our economically and non-economically uh disadvantaged kiddos um also looking at measures of academic success um and we um our ccr college and career readiness indicator is one of our uh through essa is one that we um would recommend and and closely monitor to inform whether our students are meeting that beyond the minimum to graduate each year i'm also looking at the midpoint indicators like honor rolls or gpas so certainly looking at honor roll list by school disaggregated by sub group uh looking at data for students on track for graduation um the pass rate of advanced classes again disaggregated by the different subgroups looking at students enrolled in honors classes disaggregated by subgroups again we've done a

089lot of work over the last several years around uh honor roll and identifying uh criteria for honor for i'm not for honorable for honors courses and i and developing the criteria so it's more equitable and so looking at that data to ensure that our honor rolls our honor classes are equally or equitably distributed across the different subgroups also the nwe on nwea data one of the data sets that we don't look at um or report publicly is around our sat act our ib and our ap data and so we had a um a conversation around um how beneficial it would look it would be to look take a look have that as an indicator um and looking at those test scores just disaggregated by subgroup also looking at distribution of grades on report cards um

090number of students who meet the criteria for and enrolled in summer school by subgroup and then looking at that summer school achievement data by subgroup to see um the success and the impact of summer school we also talked about i thought this was a great point that ellen brought up is the participation in project-based learning experiences such as science fair or fairs or state contests and you know looking at the number of students by subgroup participating in those extracurricular or enrichment opportunities and then participation in fine arts music and athletic programs um across the district did i miss anything to you and i believe this feedback goes with the very first one is that correct laurie um this goes with the student academic success one yes i think so we didn't get to the comments

091section got it i just want to make sure i'm gonna move that i wanted to get the comments and then i would worry about where it goes but i think it goes right here okay all right any questions comments okay so now group one and that is me speaking on behalf of the group it's both a blessing and a curse to go uh last in this kind of group reporting because um great minds think alike right many of the things that you've already talked about is as we're indicated are things that we talked about as well um essen reporting staffing data demographics years of service years of experience broken down by building staff and student ratios particularly in the social emotional and guidance areas again by building grade level staffing ratios and allocating our student

092resources we also talked about relying on the annual data from the new york state transparency reporting uh that's an annual requirement by building and it's based on our current year's budget and we could look at that building by building on an annual basis um and we talked also about uh tracking the percent of staff in a building that have completed what we believe to be critical professional development in target areas including uh spin especially cre does anybody want to add anything from our conversation routine and that part again most of it's been described previously hearing nothing i'll move on okay um i gotta find my moving on too yeah success and equitable community engagement yeah where is there it is okay um uh whoops sorry oh there it is so uh we talked about several

093uh several topics in this area um related to the to the uh the sample data collection point that was there about pt ptas and ptsas and and this was mentioned earlier as well uh how active are the ptas in supporting uh the school both from a financial perspective but also from a voluntary and school support perspective to find a way to gather that to gather that data and uh and take a look at um you know again how active the parent organizations are by school we had a we had a a fairly lengthy for the time that we had conversation about uh volunteer engagement and finding um tracking our data uh for volunteers who are engaged by school and organized by also by the purpose that the volunteers are there you know we don't consider

094we don't consider a a parent coming in to read to the class to be necessarily a volunteer but what are those larger areas of volunteer engagement that uh that we have going on in our buildings and and how is that uh distributed across our schools is there an equitable distribution of of our volunteer resources and can we work with some of our community partners to uh to to try and make sure that those uh our volunteer resources are are equitably distributed um one of the things that michelle bridgewater and i are working on as part of the dsip is a way to uh measure uh family engagement per building on similar activities that that we have over the course of a year and using that data to drive our our efforts to to improve and

095increase family engagement we talked about using that model for community activities as well uh you know how are our buildings um engaging with their community partners and finding finding a tool that would be able to collect baseline data in 20 to and use that data going forward to to increase engagement with our with our community organizations and the partnerships that we that we have in each of our buildings um we talked about the baseline we also talked about we also talked about field trips in in this area you know how many local field trips are the students in each school having access to and how can we facilitate more of that with our with our community organizations there are there are a wealth of resources for uh educational resources in our community for for students

096to take part in and and we could measure how we are how we are doing that by building and how we can engage further with our community partners too to provide more of those opportunities for our students um we had a bit of a conversation too about after school programming and that is as everybody knows kind of a hodgepodge across across the district and how you know how can we um level that out first of all so that there are at least equal opportunities in all our buildings but then how can we work with our community organizations to to drive equity in the programs and that we have at our buildings and and for especially for the schools that have have higher needs for engagement after school we talked about how uh that was it

097was wonderful to see in the arp survey that we uh that we received that we just the data that we just got back such a strong strong support for after school programming investment of our one-time federal funds in after-school programming and i think we were all in agreement that more robust after-school programming across the district is something that that we've been needed for a long time and it would be a great benefit to our families obviously first of all but certainly to us as well in terms of retaining students in terms of supporting student growth as well so that'll be a that'll be i think we all agree a great step for us uh moving forward as we as we begin to invest and partner with our community organizations to uh to increase the after

098school opportunities for our students um and then we then we sort of got got into communications related area and we were talking about a suggestion of a comment portal at the building level for parents to pose questions that would either come to a central location and be and be parceled out as our feedback form uh currently does and we talked about just simply as a as a basic step adding uh the feedback form uh to each of the school pages so that's available for uh for families and community members on on the individual school pages but also uh creating a decentralized process for that as well that is that is uh that does flow to um buildings and even departments uh for uh for direct uh feedback and response from uh from uh administrators in

099the organization but again that that that first step would be uh an initial step which i think is an easy step to solve uh is getting the feedback form connected to all of our school pages so it's more easily accessible for uh particularly for our families team all right so i'll open up the discussion if there are any additional comments before we move on to the next stage we are at about 708 and the last part would be the closure and how we're going to tie all of this together and what our next steps would be but any comments concerns or just thoughts about the work that's been done president savage i realized after the fact and i apologize for not having asked it in a timely way in the group that was talking about

100retention and recruitment um one of the things that came up when the board talked about this was the use of dtsde survey data as a leading indicator and i think dr wilson turner talked about exit surveys right and can we find trends there but on the leading indicator side we do survey our staff as part of dtsde and is there a question along the lines of do you feel supported in the work environment or something along those lines is sort of a big broad general question that could be disaggregated by race um so that we could see if we were if our teaching and staff members were demonstrating a sense of support and community because we do want to ensure that that we have those sort of affinity group type supports in place to keep

101people well i'll start parenting with our survey queen in that area for dpsc can join but there isn't a question i think that speaks to um that in the dtsc it is really very closely tied to the um the academic efforts of the building um whether the principal visits the classroom what data they have access to whether they feel students are supported so there isn't a question like that um and so and and those questions are developed by the consultant in line with fcd you know requires us to survey um but i do agree that that may also be a good place to kind of collect information there there's been questions about the survey um we're in our fifth i just did the report is it the fifth year with this vendor but the sixth

102year of the survey and um folks have asked me can we change our indicators we you know we kind of are committed to this one indicator uh or not this one but this set of indicators when we reduced the surveys um and so i i'd actually like to revisit with the vendor i know that several years ago when i talked to the vendor that's a couple years ago about changing something she said um that because the surveys have to go through this vetting process with the state ed and there are only i believe uh three or four vendors that are approved to do those surveys that um changing things would mean a whole new vetting process and and then there's also a benefit to looking at those indicators over time you know over this period

103of time so um but i i do know there there could be a need and i'm not sure if it sits somewhere else or if you know if we try and see what what we could uh work out with the vendor yeah i'm just trying to maximize the utility of the data we already collect i know there's a great deal of survey fatigue and adding more does not seem particularly appealing can we disaggregate the dtste surveys by race do we know the race of the people who submitted them they're completely anonymous because that would be that would be an interesting thing to know if we could add that demographic piece even if they stayed anonymous because you know if the question is do you get good feedback from your principal i can't remember exactly how

104the question is formulated and we saw a really distinct difference between um subgroups of teachers not some groups of students um even with anonymized data that might be just sort of a leading indicator that that could speak to whether we're implementing our equity policy effectively and whether the teachers teachers of color in particular are feeling supported and that they're getting good and adequate feedback so again i'm not trying to add another survey i'm just trying to figure out like how can we get ahead of the curve right exit surveys are good and we should continue to do really good quality exit surveys but sadly they are happening after it's too late i'm just trying to figure out how we can get ahead of the curve there may be a way to add that demographic data

105as a drop down and maybe that's the only thing that we start with and then you can say you identify with either of these or you choose not to that happens in surveys all the time where it just says i choose not to identify and then there are others that choose to identify so maybe that's something that we could even look at i don't know what the feedback would be from sed but it's worth asking a question if we could do that i i would like to ask that question i think some of the reason that it hasn't been is that if you were in a small school building with maybe 35 teachers and we were taking the demographic information from the teachers who participated people would could be identifiable and where we have um

106there's only one representation then that is the identifier then you do know so it would have to be it would have to be tactfully handled so that it's like um when we get student reports when there's fewer than n students of a particular subgroup we just don't report that um information but you're i'm sure it would be highly sensitive and maybe it's not doable because of that sensitivity but then how do we get how do we get to where we're trying to go if we can't do it that way so any other questions comments concerns any other feedback i'd like to take a little detour and just talk a little bit about this work and working with cabinet to align what we've talked about today with our district priorities and looking at the information from

107the american rescue plan where clearly the respondents saw priorities with regard to that spending and if we're looking at taking those priorities and moving forward with those as our priorities for the upcoming school year because it aligns with funding and just to refresh everyone's memory the number one response from all respondents as a priority for our district funding would be that's the federal funding is social emotional mental health and mental health supports and so overwhelmingly we know that the feedback from our community is saying that that is a priority it does align with some of the things that we've seen as we've been talking through the different indicators and categories that social emotional learning is absolutely something that we deem as a characteristic or a component of equity and how we view that the second

108thing that came up uh as a priority was educational technology and so there there's where we look at some of the access to materials and resources and um not just the hardware but also software also connectivity also the equity among our teachers in different schools the materials and educational materials that they need in order to teach our students when we look at blended learning when we look at the digital resources how is that impacting the delivery of quality instruction for the third highest priority it was safety and security we talked about that in different ways of making sure that we are engaging our families we are engaging our community how are our students feeling safe at school those are some of the topics that come up with regard to equity as well and of course

109facilities with regard to hvac ventilation and filtration but the conversation here when we were talking about the resources was even broader than just hvac dealing with other aspects of our facilities our playgrounds the condition of our classrooms the condition of the facility in and of itself it's larger than hvac but that could still be a component when we talk about our priorities moving forward through that equity lens and at the core of everything that we do the instructional framework and looking at the accelerated learning and academic support that our students need we know that at the core of it which is why so much of our funds have been allocated toward accelerated learning learning loss all of closing those gaps that our students have so even though we have these other priorities that have come

110forward from our community we also know that it is a priority with regard to the learning that our students will experience and the delivery of quality instruction and so what i'd like to do is offer a proposal because it is that time for us to start looking at our priorities for the next school year and what has been our progress for the priorities that we had last year and putting that all together if the group is of the mindset then we could as cabinet do that work and work with our administrators as well with looking at the equity metrics and then having our priorities be aligned with the priorities that have come from the community and the work that we have done with regard to looking at our federal funding and where we are diverted

111where we are allocating those resources and that's a little broad but to bring it all together we're going to need some work time to do that but if if the board is of an agreement if there are cabinet members in agreement or not i think this is the time to discuss that because we will be working on district priorities and to align these pieces would really govern the work that we're going to do so i open it up for discussion i think i think that idea has a lot of merit in terms of getting everything landed on the same page but i wonder if people who are responding to that survey that federal funds you know did they mean that they wanted those things to be our district priorities in general or did they mean

112hey this is what the supplemental funds that are addressing what happened to do the pandemic you know this is where that needs to go like as opposed to like the core academic mission like maybe somebody said hey you're already doing reading writing arithmetic teachers curriculum books so let's use the extra money for the problems we have specifically due to the pandemic i'm just questioning i guess i'm just questioning whether they necessarily meant that those should be our overall priorities in general i think that's a good point ellen i also think that we've done two maybe three years of um this process where we've met to talk about priorities in the retreat and then implement the priorities and then um i feel like a lot of that work has become really institutionalized um some of those

113critical things like bringing back some of our specialty uh ib program for example and really focusing on that although i know on that particular one things like everything with covid right some things had to change because of the results of covid but i know that we'll get back on that um so i agree i guess what i'm thinking is in terms of the priorities we know what some of the priorities have been for the last several years and those priorities i think are going to continue as well as weaving in the arp priorities and i feel like that's something that could be done at the staff level without without another board retreat i guess is what i'm trying to define um because i think for this year the return the priority that we're establishing from

114this board retreat is to get very much closer to some sort of annual report in terms of equity metrics right like that's that's the the work at the highest level um that next level what are the priority activities what are the things to be done i do think it's a good exercise to go through and identify what those are but i think that staff could do that by weaving together the priority activities we identified last year with the arp priority activities together because i think you're right ellen they are two separate um but related things also as i know cabinet is always sensitive to there's only so many hours in the day and we didn't double the size of the cabinet or double the size of the staff so even though we have the arp

115money the implementation of that is going to be challenging um while also implementing major changes through the uh priority activities so there's gonna have to be a real sensitivity to what's fundamentally feasible and that's um it's a little bit problematic it's almost like when you write a grant for a program and you tailor what you're gonna do to the grant money right rather than knowing what you want to do this arp money is going to draw us in a particular direction because that's where the money is and we do need to expend it in a way that's beneficial for our students any other comments or thoughts karen you look like you might have something to say anyone else so are we i'm going to blend those two comments then are we looking then to review

116our progress with regard to the priorities from last year because usually that's what we do we would summarize that and look at what our next steps would be but take that blend it with the arp priorities see where the where they overlap and then use that to determine what the priorities would be underneath the big umbrella of equity and the metrics that we look at for equity yep as long as one of the list things on the list is starting to more carefully define the priority metrics this sounds perfect okay so then we will look to do this work and i would say that our timeline we will be ambitious and think about july 8th but we also know that we have july 22nd and we have two meetings in august so we have we

117have quite a bit just in case our time gets away from us but if we if we look for june 8th to make july 8th to have a draft that can be up for discussion at the board meeting we can share that out so you can see it ahead of time and then we can have a discussion on the 8th if it doesn't work for the 8th then that first discussion would be on the 22nd and then we would look to approve the priorities in august does that sound like a reasonable timeline okay excellent if you look at your agenda i'm going to share my screen again and if you look at your agenda there is a link listed for a survey for our retreat and i would ask that you go to that link

118and complete the survey for this evening if it doesn't work i will absolutely send it to you in via an email so that you have that link if you're able to access it if you just kind of hover over it a little bit it comes up this way and then you can click on it and then complete the survey at this time i would like to say thank you so very much i think we did a lot of work in a short amount of time it really seems like and i would say thank you so very much for all of your input thank you to the board thank you to cabinet i appreciate all the work that we do collectively in order to improve what we do in our district on behalf of our students

119and i will turn it over to president savage for the final comments i didn't know i was making final comments so i don't think i have anything earth shattering to say but thank you all for all the work i really appreciated seeing some of the input from the building leaders and administrators and i really appreciate the way the effort is becoming truly systemic through the board through the cabinet through the building leaders and ultimately through the equity teams and through the staff in each building and i look forward to working with superintendent and the communication staff to really kind of keep that information flowing about the importance of this and how we are trying to tackle it so thank you all thank you so very much and have a good evening all is appreciated good

120night everyone