001um so we'll try that one more time to make sure that it is on i already forgot to use the microphone on tape can i have a motion to open the meeting crucifer pedo seconded by jane anderson all those in favor one two three four five um uh nothing all right so can um please join me in a pledge to fly i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] okay so um thank you all for joining us for our uh august 12th work session um as you can see we have four board members here on the stage and we have one who is calling in remotely um uh through audio for
002the meeting um and one who's absent so two more sorry um so just to clarify this is a little bit different from our normal regular board meetings uh work session is really an opportunity for the board to talk through an item or a program or an issue in depth that we don't always get to do it's there's no agenda where we are approving anything like we do in our regular board meetings which are usually either personnel or fiscal related so tonight will just be a lot of discussion and possibly some follow-up items as a result of the evening um so i think i will turn it over to dr byrne thank you very much good evening so uh the way we're going to proceed i know the board wanted to talk through the recommendations of
003the race inclusivity and community task force that were presented at the june 15th board of education meeting so what i have prepared is a short presentation that essentially is not a presentation but it's for your ability to view the recommendations themselves that were presented so you will see the same exact slides up on the screen uh and in front of you on paper that were presented to you and the community on june 15th they haven't been changed in any way and then there's a final slide that just gives you a status update on the equity audit um and the uh data piece that that we've been working on so i will control uh the slides from my clicker here and certainly um turn it over to the board for your discussion and uh we'll actually
004be recording uh notes of any actions or direction or steps that you wish us to pursue as you discuss discuss the different items so and are certainly available for any questions okay so i think um the first uh recommendation um and uh you know hopefully everyone who's who does end up watching this video will understand we're working a little bit with microphones and trying to make sure that we um are uh um speaking up so everyone can hear what we're saying for throughout the discussion but it might be a little awkward throughout um so the first recommendation is for athletics and extracurricular activities so we can certainly read through each of them and then just discuss as we go so the first is to evaluate our present extracurricular and athletic programs um in relation to
005participation in offerings specifically addressing who is participating with specific attention to a breakdown of various groupings such as gender race socioeconomic special needs lgbtq etc so i guess just just kicking off this um i think you know one of the things that that when we had these recommendations passed on to us was trying to get a better handle of what the landscape actually looks like for in for rye and so you know i'll open it up to anyone who would like to to make a comment but um it seems like uh this seems like a very straightforward opportunity to get a better sense of who's taking advantage of the extracurriculars and athletic programs um our students represented across the board as we hope um you know i think it's gathering data is always a good
006thing understanding where we stand stand is always a wonderful thing um i'm highly supportive of doing that i'm you know i think that it opens up lots of questions down the road what do we do with the information once you get it what are the expectations and what would you expect to have representation look like from different groups i think it's great to have the data and we'll open up lots of interesting discussions well i think until we have the data we don't know we don't really know what the next question is right and also obviously i'm sorry do we know that we have the ability to categorize interest across all of these categories do we have that data to we know we do have much of the demographic data certainly around ethnicity ability disability
007we can pull that from our system for lgbtq plus we would have students would have to identify we don't have that now that's no that would be self-identification so that would be if we want to gather this data we you know we could certainly work with um the high school administration middle school administration and the athletic director to put together a plan to collect this information and pull it together and bring back to the board have this been done in other places have you seen this i've seen other places do some evaluations of their extracurricular programming uh not to this extent uh but i consider i i don't know of it being done to this extent but we could certainly find out more from other places and what they've done because i think you know
008just talking about it might be a challenge without there being a selfie identification necessary from the student at first and see what that looks like um because i think part of the part of the reason there was a recommendation based on the presentation we had back in june was that there could be some hold so we have to get the foundation first before we can even identify if there's holes that or barriers that that maybe some students experience within these within extracurriculars and athletics so and the only thing i would add um that's not specifically i guess it's not highlighted here but something i think we're going to touch on with each of these is really relying on the student voice as well so it's not necessarily having to self-identify but even having the athletics
009director you know kind of talking to them about i mean certain things like social economic that's going to be very we're not going to want to pigeonhole people into those categories and run an analysis you know have themselves select but even those conversations involving the students in this process um i think it's just gonna it's gonna help a lot and you know get making sure that their feedback on on each of these things is extracurricular too it goes beyond you know obviously just the athletics there's there's so many programs within the school and i'm making sure we're just using the students as a resource to make sure we're not missing you know a data collection point that makes sense but i i think i think that i think yes absolutely but i think we before
010we even get down that road it is the very basic of what data do we currently have and then being able to say okay administration what do we what can we identify that we can identify abc but we okay that's great but now we go back to a recommendation we're missing cde well it is there a way for the district to be able to get that data yes we can we have another there are other systems or do we need to do some sort of collaboration conversation communication with students through their various activities is this something so i think there's a whole i i think the baseline is let's take the data systems that we have that can provide us with information it's easily accessible for us men to be able to say now what
011else do we need and then we can try to figure out where to go from there tom you won yeah well you stole a lot of mistakes [Applause] let's get started on what we have i think one of the things to add some of these things you may want to look at there's ways to do modeling to get some sense of sort of what they're as like the social economic and we never get to get that perfect and we may be able to proxy um from you know sort of other data sources that now is these things and make some reasonable differences this is a down the line [Music] for districts though this um social social economic status at fds is something that is actually run through federal programs so something like people who have
012access or take access to our free and reduced lunch programs that's where we would get that data from so it would not be a data set that somebody would have to self-report it comes through services that people access in our school systems online so that's a database that we have it's pretty binary no for sure yeah yeah can you access it or not right so so i think based on what um you said dr byrne as a i think what we've requested at least from this particular bullet is um and it sounds like one of the pieces that we could um naturally identify based on just student data pieces are obviously gender race special needs and maybe a look at the socio-economic status based on that one criteria for now um yeah and then we
013can see what that looks like and so we have at least have that baseline understanding of who's that who currently is accessing our extracurriculars and our athletics like what is that for what does that look like generally across our system and and we'll define what the offerings are so that there's an understanding of the scope of the offerings of the different programs yeah that would obviously be because we'd have to see you know where are we seeing um it's not just extracurriculars as a bucket i would think we want to look at okay extracurricular one extracurricular too like that in that level of detail okay okay um bullet number two is review of current board of education policies specific to eligibility requirements um ensure that policies are inclusive that students who struggle with eligibility are
014supported through policy change if necessary um oh sorry about it so so i could give a little background so there there is an official board of education policy for eligibility for participation in extracurricular activities so what um was explained by the subgroup is that the board policy committee take a look at that policy and understand whether or not if there are some safeguards or supports for pieces that could be considered for including in the policy that could assist the student that may be struggling to meet eligibility to different programs so if a student is struggling academically is there a way that with the right supports they could potentially be able eligible to participate in a particular activity so this is a policy that the policy committee within the last six months and actually when i
015look at the policy adoption date had been reviewed and we did that with um aaron in may it got approved so it is a policy that we have looked at because we wanted to ensure that and from the basic understanding of the way the policy is currently written and structured that our special education students at that particular time who were looking within that sort of an eye to ensure that they have an opportunity to access their programs i think um certainly taking another look at the policy i think it's worthwhile i would say i would like us to get a bit more data about the participation right i see this really fitting that best kind of dovetailing this word um with the initial data set that we've requested because for us to be able to
016say are there other barriers within this policy may be less uh productive until we can see are there fair are there groups that are not participating and is it a result of something policy written so what i'm hearing is you'd like us to gather data to take a look back potentially and say across the last couple of years trying to understand uh trying to develop a better understanding based on data of students that are not that are on the ineligible list and not able to participate because there are actual ineligible lists that come out um that the different extracurriculars and athletics work on yeah we got to figure out if it's if it's if the policy is blocking right and then why try to dig into the causes perhaps not just defense but i see
017this as an opportunity to really dig into if there are student populations that are running into eligibility let's figure out why they are and perhaps it's not changing the policy but it's giving them more support to reach the standards and if that if we can identify that and move forward that way to that point then i think um what we might want to do is sure um i think what we might want to do for the first bullet then is not just look at this one snapshot of one year but like you're saying see if there's like maybe it's a two or three year i don't know what the the most appropriate time span would be um to look at but it's you know maybe looking a little bit further back than just one year
018especially given the last how the last couple of years have been it might be worthwhile some of that past more standard your data all right great i'll stay on the second goal with everybody i've heard anecdotally this is one of the things that came sort of you know but we will probably talk to a lot tonight about the voice of the student this is where i think that it came from students pushing um and and feeling on this that again i don't know that i have heard that anecdotally and uh so it's just something consider that that's not a pushing that we should really rethink these policies or not um i think i agree with everything that everyone said but i just wanted to you know float that out that i should have heard that
019um well and in that case i think what's even more important is to have the the actual data pieces to look at in order to understand if there is something that links back to the anecdotal um that you've been hearing or that hasn't been floating around okay um and then the last bullet for athletics and extracurriculars is to consider a community service element within the um extracurricular with each within each extracurricular group as well as the athletic program um and i think um it might i've thought about this one a lot i i think in while i think there's enormous value in community service i think there's already established community service that happen so i wouldn't want to i think i think that there might be some of wait time on this particular element to
020see where where there might be other ways to integrate into our already existing community service yeah this one absolutely jumped up to me when we first saw it and i you know trying to back my head through it i think it's because probably the people who are on this subgroup we're focused on community service perhaps not just the people like we we have community services at core right for every student and we value it very very highly um i'm really curious to what they were trying to dive into it almost seemed like they were diving into the quality like the internal ride versus global view it felt like they were really part of that discussion about the kind of community service that we either require or encourage um and i think that's a very different
021discussion for everyone i don't think it belongs within curriculum and athletics without being jumped by everybody and i suppose if that's if if we get to a point where um we are looking at community service across the board perhaps there's an element that there was a feeling that um individuals who are part of a club or part of an athletic team might want to you know do something specific as a group around community service i i don't i just feel like there's not i don't i don't think if we're going to really try and take our first steps this is not one thing right now any other comments on that uh no i think the only thing i would say is going back to tom's earlier point that if this if these categories of these
022bullets that came out of athletics my favorites were more student-driven then i would encourage students who perhaps are not feeling fulfilled in their community service experiences or opportunities to reach out to the administration at the middle school high school at the athletic department to go through those channels to talk about the expansion of their own opportunities within community service i don't think it's a district at this point we it's something we need to do but certainly for individuals who are not feeling fulfilled they should take that personal responsibility to engage in those conversations with the administration right but to chris's point i think it's a bigger conversation than just athletics and extroverts that's so i just switched the slide up to student support the recommendations from the student support is this process working for everyone
023to go bullet by bullet how are we feeling as a as a board about i can't imagine another way okay all right [Applause] [Music] um [Applause] okay all right so student support recommendations the first one is to evaluate improve or establish clear channels for students seeking support and actively communicate those channels to students through mediums such as the district website school assemblies classroom presentations and signage throughout the buildings students should be able to easily identify and access the person or people in their building we can provide and or connect them to the appropriate support so again i feel like this starts with evaluate because we can't improve what we don't know yeah exists i basically say yes there are opportunities but clearly they are missing certain right groups of people so i think to evaluate
024to see okay how is it being done now are there gaps are there places where things could be improved upon and i think again new building level administrators of both the middle school and the high school this is a good opportunity for them to reflect on the past practices to see if they have any recommendations or perhaps just more clearly communicating the support that already exists in the time of the game come here [Music] as we think about this as we evaluate how do we destigmatize some of this stuff i mean i actually remember going back and reading through the instagram page that i want to say all the software you know and also to some of the responses that we saw in the panorama survey in terms of reform responses i mean and that
025and just a very common expense you know a lot of stuff is it's difficult for people to reach out and it's difficult to say i need help or i feel marginalized or i feel left out or or whatever so that that's something in addition to making the resources clear how do we also you know think about making them accessible and i remember one comment way i don't remember where this was by the way i think it was kind of a discussion from the presentation of the past course where somebody said yeah we know there's these resources but it's also like obvious when you don't get them and no one's going to do it because you're flagging yourself as someone who went to ask for help or something along the time so just the types of
026things we need to think about as well as we you know appoint a sub task force on the subgroup to evaluate mistakes that's probably just as important as having the resources available is making sure they're in a yes i think that's an important piece of it and i think that's in my mind that's part of the evaluation process so it's not just evaluate is there signage it's evaluate if there's a way and i don't know if there is a way off the top of my head this is something that i think the administrators for the middle school high school and others who are in those fields can help us decipher a way to almost like see what maybe maybe what is the path of a student that is in crisis or is in need of
027support what happens when they reach out like do we have a sense of that experience for the student um so i even see it as a a level that kind of evaluation level not just farther signs you know doing things that are more student-centric and accessible now like qr codes and those types of things we've talked about we've heard about those being implemented um but also you know what does that feel like for that student and and how do you let those how do you let all students know what to expect if that is what you want to do for me and i certainly think as we you know i've heard student voice a few times tonight this is certainly a place where we can involve students to help as part of the evaluation because
028we need to know from the end user of these supports how are they finding out about them how would it be best for them to find out about them and what would be the best way to reach the kids um in more ways than just signs and qr codes throughout the the building so i think you've just referred to court number two which [Music] to that point i'm not sure i understood what what a student support task force would be um and i think you know as tom mentioned if there's going to be sort of like an identification maybe in this particular instance of a student subgroup that could help to i do want to say um separate from this work i have received the proposal from the the new high school administrations two weeks
029ago to set up a student ambassador program so that almost like a pure peer leader type program at the high school that that would work with like similar it's kind of modeled after the principal's council at the middle school where where there are numbers of kids that volunteer and are really a part of the life of the school in a different way they participate in events they assist in back-to-school night and things like that and they also help mr campbell in fact set the proposal up to me with mshort which i fully supported and thought it was a terrific idea so so i think they're certainly um they were thinking not in relationship to this work but i think this is a great opportunity to say to them listen this is a great idea this
030is also a recommendation from the task force that that may be worth really pursuing so i asked them to please make the plans to get that up and running because they want to involve students in orientation and the start of the school year when we're all back full time in person five days a week in september on the ninth so that we can make that transition easier for kids and have that as an additional resource a kid to kid resource available so i think the only thing i would ask in that same spirit is that there'd be some some real um deep thought put into how do you get to the kid who isn't going to naturally self-select into that kind of a program um and i think i feel like that's in my mind
031i'm thinking like you know sort of the ones that are a little bit under the radar they're not in in the you know the the people that want to first try something new um so you know again i think it's this is i think just a first step in exploring um and understanding a little bit more about how we have this support system for students and and you know where and then really deep dive into what could those improvements be so that they're meaningful and the whole point would be that they should be meaningful i i think with all of this right it goes back to that first bullet is let's evaluate what what do we currently have in place and who's accessing it is it being accessed right like so we have signage okay
032how many k what's the percentage of kids who are actually following the prescribed channels and then we can really say is the way it's enough now working our kids engaging with them but until we know kind of what our what our use rate is we can't say what's working you know or what we need to do next we need to first just have some data to be able to look at what we need more information on or do we have enough that says this actually isn't working and so then how do we engage with purely i don't know that would be um student ambassadors and kids who are not raising their hands to participate but who are actually uh actually using it right and and how do we make sure we get there and how
033do we get input from all of the kids but we need that initial data set first and i think just to be really clear for um when we talk about students i mean while this might have been called a race and inclusivity community task force this is it's well beyond an identification around race this is this is about all each student within our community um who you know regardless of of any one category is not feeling like they are part of the community or aren't sure how to get the supports that they need um so i just i think it's important to reiterate that this is this is about each and every student um it's not about any one particular group of students that um you know it is meant to reach out to yeah
034yeah okay so i think we kind of covered then bullet number two already um and wow bullet number two i think as it's written we're not really sure what that could be but you know we see where there could be some um uh role for a student support entity so the third is to identify mechanisms to support parents and caregivers of students who feel marginalized in our school community such as working with existing parent organizations within the district to provide a platform that enables parents to safely and effectively advocate for their children so for this particular bullet um you know i feel like there's if we're going to work with parents there's um sort of a natural potentially a natural connection to our parent organizations in some capacity um so perhaps that's where to start
035exploring well i do i meet with the leadership from the parent organizations from each of the schools and raised monthly so this certainly could be something that i bring in our first meeting of the year in september but we are wonderful parent volunteers from across all of our schools and we do meet and talk about our work together and i i certainly believe from my work with the parent organization leadership in the past that they would be very interested and supportive of our families and trying to reach more families and and help them identify ways to support them is there a history on greece and how like was that a parent-driven group that specifically banded together to help on the special ed side um and just thinking about how you know so we have documented
036to the board you know sort of some bipac students who have said that they through an open letter to the board felt that we could make some you know changes on inclusivity so kind of reaching out to that finding a way to protect that parent specifically and giving them the model of raise and how that a group of parents that have similar concerns for students that they could creating a path for them in a way and finally are there other groups of parents similar to race that have just issues to help elevate their students within our community um sort of using raise as a really good example of a way parents can band together to you know improve the outcomes for their their students if they have similar inclusivity or you know any sort of
037issue that they're trying to elevate yeah i would i think that's a it's an interesting uh um idea to explore and see where what that might look like in terms of um you know how many people would be interested in that i'd be really curious to hear even just in general what the current po leadership uh what their senses of of um the types of issues that parents bring to them from an advocating standpoint to understand that better because i think there are some of those but you know often that happens uh solely at the building level which is appropriate um when there's an issue at the building level um and and you know so i think i think i'd love to kind of hear more about what some of those issues might be and
038certainly then understand better maybe there's a maybe there's just a better way to um engage with parents about how to advocate for their child because i think to your point i think raise has that function already built in whereas i don't know that the other po models are are built specifically around including that advocacy piece yeah i can i can for my heavy involvement at the melting pto uh there is definitely a different uh historically there's a different structure around the pos versus the rays function and it is much more a community building fundraising structure as opposed to a historical um needs or or a curriculum there's always there are always meetings where they're bringing in curriculum and instruction and those kinds of questions the advocacy is certainly not something that historically has been part
039of the po structure um but i do think it would be a worthwhile conversation looking at just the general structures anyway of the pos and are they working to meet the needs of the communities from the broad spectrum right within the building and i think that would be a great conversation with the building principles and the pos and then really to look and talk about and i know dr you've talked about this for a few years now just an overall look at are we utilizing and are we leveraging our parents in in a way that really doesn't advocate for for all kids um in this in the with as much might as we have and so i think that would be a worthwhile conversation and engagement especially as we move towards this idea that we
040have five schools in one system as opposed to five independent schools who all exist within a system and we are definitely moving towards one system and i think having a po structure that better reflects that would also possibly really leverage some real supports for our parents in a different way so i think i think the follow-up there then is dr burn if you can have a that kind of conversation a preliminary conversation with the pos to start off understanding where um where where we might be able to go with this kind of advocating for your student um for the parent uh to support parents in that um and i i think too you know as we as we go through these just for the for community one of the important things to state is that
041but this at least so far at this juncture we are not um this is all about just some internal evaluation of information data and um you know what else we can discover about our school community so you know i think i think it's just important for people to know that we want to make sure that we're taking a measured approach to this so that we are fully in full understanding of where we're trying to address the needs of rye okay so the last bullet here for student support is [Music] teachers coaches and school staff members are our front line resources in terms of creating and sustaining cultural belonging inclusion to ensure our faculty and staff have the tools they need to perform this role effectively we must fund broad-based training for our teachers and staff
042to better understand the new york state education culturally responsive sustaining i'm not going to do the right word education framework it's an acronym be trauma informed and empowered to integrate social emotional learning into curriculum deliberate um so i totally agree that teachers coaches and school staff are frontline resources that that i absolutely agree i forget our students and our students sorry i think they should be in there as well well they're the frontline resource for the students i think our students can be front lines through resources that's where we're trying to get that's the goal i think and maybe i'm being a little too meta on that but but i think that's the idea of including i get your point um i mean i think for this in particular we i think what's important is
043to first understand what kind of training happens and is it effective and is it serving what we're hoping it's serving when people are being trained well i think that's a great point that's a great point and i think we're going to figure it out and i'm going to make this point now because the nicest framework is going to come up a lot um and it is having spent a fair amount of time going through it um but when i first came out and then over the summer again it's a framework it's a it's a list of lofty ideas it is intended for the entire state it is really up to every district to figure out how to take those ideas and make them real within and for our students um so and i'm not picking
044up what they they call this out about it's a bigger it's a it's a much broader um thought i'm having around the framework is that training people in the framework won't make any progress i mean yes those ideals are great we've been talking about forever it's a i think everyone should read through it everyone should become familiar with it um but it's getting to solution to i think they're this thing the commentary i loved in here is about how do you integrate social emotional learning into curricular delivery that's a great idea learning how to do that thinking about that on a broad scale is a is a huge goal of ours you're not going to find that in the fun no step by step well there's no step by step the framework itself i think
045but i think your point though is it's not like there's this framework is a step by step here's what you do you know when you introduce your curriculum idea and here's how you much more granular yes but but to to to your comment that social and emotional learning is not in the framework one of the very pillars is creating a new world and what an affirming environment as we were from the first slide we're six steps from where we need to be yes because before i think we can have any training for anyone there needs to be a very thorough understanding of what really this framework is and that needs to happen for a whole lot of constituents but before we can get to any sort of evaluation of professional development or any sort of
046integration about how to take pieces of the brain we've got to first understand what it means yeah so i'm i'm just gonna because i as we know there's been a lot of discussion around this framework from many members of the community um and so i think there's there's a question that sits out there with some community members of this isn't even worth looking at why are we even bothering to look at this so i think it's an important question to hear yeah and um and i think the other piece of that is part of what you were talking about jane which is we need to understand more fully what this framework is providing it can provide what it is meant for and then having a much clearer understanding of how would that how would that
047impact what happens in a classroom and why would it need to happen in a classroom right so it's taking that idea of what is it how could it become part of what would be the benefit for it to be in the right schools right the elements of it and then what would it actually look like right and what is the reasoning and we have i think you know one of the things that research is very clear on is that students who have a strong sense of belonging in school perform at their highest capable possible levels and academic excellence is a stated mission of this district and so for us to at hand dismiss a framework that could um provide all students an opportunity to propel their learning and their success even further would not be
048to our students benefits it wouldn't be to our community benefit so i think there is a lot of reflection and learning that we as board and as a district should undertake about the very foundational understanding what's in this framework so then we can have the conversations about how to where is it possible where is it beneficial to layer that into the work that we already do yeah and just to piggyback on all of this and we'll see how much we repeat the same thing throughout the evening or we can just use this conversation now without reference back to it when it comes to the framework um i probably agree with everything that has been said so far you know the framework air itself though there there's a lot to it and then there's also not
049a lot at the same time you know so there's very good as much as it's a massive document that you know will take a long while to read i think probably all of us have at this point a couple times but um it also is very repetitive though um and that's not going to say a bad thing in any way perform so i think if you've taken some time to study it's not that hard to get the general sense of it but then the specifics it's interesting because there are things in there that we've had some of these conversations before i think are very good and very very relevant to us there's stuff in there that you know probably what i disagree with and then there's stuff in there that honestly i have no idea
050what it means and so but the point is that this framework is a tool it's a resource for it it's not the only resource course we have other resources it's an important resource it should be looked at i don't think anything it should be dismissed but i also don't think that anything in it you need to look at as something that ryan needs to do and we should i know chris made this analogy i think uh at the meeting when these presentations will come up we need to take it and other resources about it and look to what is going to work for us and how do we want to articulate this is one of the resources and tools we can draw from but you know i would say one of them so so um
051i think i've just lost my train of thoughts sorry i i i think what's um one of the takeaways from this as we talked about was how do we how do we translate these questions about the framework to something where it can be discussed communicated with our community um and or with us and faculty and so that there is a better understanding of what the what this framework is um what it what it's outlining and and then i think the other piece to to everyone sort of made this point a little bit you know we have a a document that we've been using to continue to model our entire school district off of and it's the rye commitment and some of much of the the spirit of the wry commitment is in this framework so
052you know when we talk about high expectations and rigorous instruction and inclusive curriculum and i mean there these are all pieces that that we have already stated for now four or five years that we want to be able to bestow and provide to our students so part of this under better understanding of how this framework can be helpful to us is also seeing where it complements and um maybe boosts the ride commitment to further uh that goal so what i'm hearing is a focus on developing understanding of what the framework is um across the broad community of ron so staff in the schools parents community members for us to come up with a way to help this community develop a greater understanding of or an understanding of what is the framework what does it mean
053for our schools and how does it align with the right commitment so to me i i could see quite a number of things coming out of this um sessions to unpack and develop understanding with our staff sessions to unpack and develop understanding with parents with a broader community and opportunities for people to read it discuss it talk it through line it up against the right commitment and i certainly believe that that's something we've been put in place and we could create opportunities for that to happen i think that's a great first step toward before we can do anything else we have to do that well and i just i i just want to like put as clear a point on it as we can that this framework is not um a curriculum these are not
054lessons there is nothing in the framework that is a lesson there is nothing that is taught in classes that comes out of this framework and i think we just want to be very clear so that people understand that when we're talking about looking at the framework we're looking at guiding principles big picture ideas not content driven lessons yeah i think the the thing to add on that um eric just said and all of this will be a conversation in terms of you know it's not just for the eight of us um to sort out um and so that will be an engaging dialogue we said we've set by several before but making sure that you know understanding what it is bringing back to bringing that understanding of the community and then what we take from
055it and how we choose what to draw on and what to prevent a community conversation with parents students well that's the affiliate with the who don't say have people in school but there's still members of the city of ryan relevant too and i think that's one of the things that we have to focus on and make sure that you build into our process whether that's communications out whether that's learning sessions um and things all along those lines is the same in i totally agree so i think um i think actually this last bullet on the student support really lends itself more to professional learning um as well which i think is the next section um we're going to go through did anyone else have anything else on student support they wanted to talk about before
056we move on to professional learning no okay um so i'm not going to read through all phases of the professional learning because i really think that we are in the gathering and learning at this point and in some ways i feel like we uh we already know what we need to do first a bit um is with the with this understanding of the framework um i i'll just ask the question in terms of professional learning i feel like we currently do try to align it with the right commitment but perhaps there's it hasn't touched every professional learning program or do you feel like that's that that's already been i would say thanks tom um i would say that we work very hard to ensure that all of our professional learning offerings are aligned with the
057ride commitment certainly we look at the right commitment and what we are saying what we are committing to our students if you look across if you did a crosswalk with the things we're committing to the students with the offerings for our professional learning you will see those run a constant through the programs that we offer for students but but i will say i i kind of think that the charge from the last bullet point on the previous slide i i feel like we have to start there before we do anything else i mean we just said that it's the entire community it's the faculty it's the staff it's the parents it's students it's the broader ride community before we do anything we have to all have an understanding of what this framework is and how
058it aligns and what it means right this is kind of the implementation plan this will come out of that but i think everything on this line is you know well thought out i think that they they organized it very well i think you encapsulated it when when you talked about the takeaways from the last lot of the things you do across the district and in the lining and then thinking about aligning with what the framework is aligning yeah it's like there's a phase eight one right we need to add a column to that right and to say okay let's let's learn about it because before we we can't do the next pieces until we really have an understanding of it right i think it's the only other thing to add is at the um public
059comment session for this uh when these recommendations came out there was a request from um one of the parents who raised to document as well so we're pulling that in to this analysis um you know as an ongoing piece as well or if there's another document that dr greenberg or somebody recommends to say you know would be helpful but the blueprint for students with disabilities from the office of special education was also called now it's a great point yeah i'm glad you brought that up um kelsey because it was something that i had in my notes also and i think it's um we were able to to locate at least the cover memo around it um it's called the blueprint for improved results for students with disabilities and so um and in reading through kind
060of the overview of it it it does align very nicely with um you know envision with what you want to be doing um i think with both the right commitment and with the the what seems like the purpose of the framework is so that but i'd like to brought that up that is something that we noted to to make sure we brought we included okay so um i think the very last bullet in this phase one um which is really the only column i think we can talk about for right now in this part of the discussion um is identify opportunities for students and teachers to collaborate during professional learning so i don't know i'll turn to the administration i don't know how i've certainly experienced some professional learning opportunities where students were involved and
061i i think that can be very helpful i think i when i certainly think about the right commitment and what we're we're committing to the students i think we could work with students to understand better what those things are but but i i certainly believe that there are ways that we can bring students in to help us develop better understanding and do our jobs better i think there are areas that we can explore within the offerings that we have that that may bring kids in as well so i i certainly believe that there are opportunities we just need to look carefully and identify them i also think our students are incredible resources that we can learn from by asking questions and asking for feedback and advice and give them an opportunity to do some training
062of us well as you were talking i was just thinking that so many of the years of cohorts for project-based learning actually mesh well with um this so it maybe there's something to look at there and how that model works um you know because students and teachers are learning this whole new way of approaching problem solving together i will say having served on the curriculum council for a few years just as a community member prior to being on the board one of the things that i really enjoy about that the work of that council is the participation of students on that board and so it's always really interesting when students who are sitting around the table have taken these courses that are now up for review of the vision and they're able to provide real
063life experience and contentarian reflection on those courses and so i do think that you know trying to find other ways to engage the students in a feedback loop as it were is helpful okay great so i think for now we're gonna hold off on discussing anything in a phase two or a phase three until we can uh dig deeper into i think what we're now looking at as a phase 1a a1 or right so the next slide is curriculum recommendations um and and i think to chris's point what he just said in case it didn't get picked up on the mic was are we about to have the same discussion i i i don't i don't feel like we can do um any kind of evaluation of curriculum at this point given um all the
064other information that we really need to kind of understand better first sure i think the if you read what the recommendation came out of that out of the task force uh they're very focused on the the framework the estate framework what we just talked about was the importance of taking this a framework and layering it in and figuring out how it fits within our commitment and what we want to do in rock that work has to happen so we can have a model against which to audit the curriculum we are doing that so i completely and i think it's it's all the ideals what they want to do with what the idea of it is is fantastic but that comes after the fact that once we decided the benchmarks of the ideals that we want
065to moderate against right he's my biggest fan so in in that case then for the moment i think we um we'll have to revisit anything related to curriculum at a later date once we have more as we talked about this other set of information and better understanding so next the next uh slide is data and analysis um the vision so maybe we should move past that to the recommendations so the efforts that were underway at the time were the panorama survey that was implemented in may with the students um and then a subsequent one with teachers and staff and then understanding once we had that data understanding what it was trying to tell us um so i think at this point maybe dr burn if you want to give us a a quick update on
066where some of that is so first um i'll say that we do have the summary data from the panorama survey which i shared with the board of education and i would certainly say in in looking at it and talking with it with some of the folks from the data sub group it tells us some things but it tells us some things about what's not there that we need to figure out a plan to gather um so when i in talking with some of the folks from the data t the data subgroup really it's their thinking is what it tells us is that the next steps that they developed we're definitely next steps that we need to pursue one we we can certainly engage with an outside analyst to assist in looking at this data we
067actually reached out and on the side it says the ryac resource that came up in the discussions because we've done a fair amount of surveying through rye act we've also done a fair several rounds of surveying with challenge success and ryak has been working with a researcher from iona college who has done a lot of the deep analysis of their data that's been collected through the pride survey so we had a meeting set up with the researcher from iona to have a conversation about what could possibly be available for us unfortunately due to a medical situation had to be cancelled and we're working to reschedule that meeting which will be sometime in september to have that further conversation because honestly that you know when you look at the data there there's some information that tells
068a bit of a story but it tells more about how we have to go deeper into looking for specific information and having an expert that works with data and research and analysis i think would be helpful with that so that's with regard to the student survey the teacher survey and i honestly believe it was due to the timing of when it was distributed and the craziness of the spring did not get a significant a sample size that was large enough to do any significant analysis of that it was very few responses and i think that's something we need to talk about in terms of figuring out ways to gather better information from staff whether it was timing or not or developing some additional surveys but but i do know that it was it was very
069much discussed in the data group it was identifying survey instruments and experts that could help us to a greater degree than panorama was able to panorama had tools that were available to us that were already norms already calibrated but we never felt in the group that that the the tools gave us the information the ability to gather the information that was necessary so i do think identifying ways to get that information and resources to use whether it's by engaging with someone that is a professional survey designer or researcher or finding a different organization that may have better tools we were struggling to find [Music] quality surveys that were out there for the student for students with disabilities there was just not much we were able to find and i know that members of the subgroup
070were continuing to look over the summer and research so that's sort of where we're at at this moment i want to just get back to the actually the recommendations from the task force do you think you need a stronger mandate from us to go gather data and think about analysis i feel that it's probably there i definitely think the mandate's there good and then um you know we haven't talked a lot about the costs that come up in this stuff have you found that the financial resources have constrained you in anything you've wanted to do yet you have to come to us and say i'd love to do this but it's cost us x dollars um we haven't had any of those discussions so it doesn't seem to have donation yet no it hasn't been
071an issue yet but part of you know i think one of the limitations of working with the panorama survey was it was limiting because there are limitations when you have a contract for a product that exists if if we start to get to identifying someone that can create and create valid and reliable instruments to gather information it will be a cost that is quite different from what the panorama cost was to you know use that which we used for a variety of surveys across the year last year because they had other surveys available but at the moment i would say that that has not been an issue and we i would certainly come back and say this is this is going to be a costly uh venture this is what it will cost and this
072is what we need to do and take direction from the board at that point in time sounds sounds hair so i would say what i think we it would be important to do um as a first step like you said is to uh i think you mentioned is like going deeper into the data so and just looking at how the subgroups of um demographic information uh rolled out in the summary there's some and i know it's mentioned in here there's some very small subsets of groups that it will be it will be challenging to analyze how that data fits into the broader questions of whether it be belonging or the other categories that that were part of the panorama survey so i think that i think first it'd be really helpful whatever we can understand
073about that would be really helpful in inform us how much more we might want to go into creating a survey of our own to try to administer because we don't i mean we do have to consider the cost piece of that and understand more about what we're basing it on that next step yeah except it's that idea of right i don't know what i don't know and it's we've got to figure out what is it that we don't have the information on that we think would be beneficial for us to get the information so we can help with the student experience for our kids and i would love i i think there could be tremendous value in looking at some previous sets of data and where there might be crossover in that challenge success data
074or even the ry act pieces um in that sense of belonging and um you know feeling included in the community space because that is already in existence and um it could be very informative for us from especially from a longitudinal standpoint i think we could definitely do that and i i think when we are finally able to have that meeting with the individual from uh iona who's been doing that data crunching for ryac that will be particularly helpful and and i know that that will be coming up in the next couple of weeks i know it is into september because of the individual schedule but but that will be happening great and i think the only other piece we haven't talked about so we've talked about figuring out ways for this ongoing data gathering potentially
075using surveys we've already done through other resources in the past and analyzing that um and then the third piece is thinking about more of a real-time data collection um of need and ability as a district to you know kind of identify a way to kind of have more of a real-time ongoing database for students to self-report in real time i actually think there are some links to the first bullet in student support that we raised because i i do know that there are school systems that have reporting systems a common one and this is the commercial name it's just the company that's out there is called anonymous alerts and it's a way for students to make reports of things that are concerning to them and it gives schools information i've not used the product myself
076i can certainly research that and find out more about it but but it becomes a way students have the ability to send information if there's a concern if there's an incident if there's something that's troubling them but i think there's an absolute connection to what we talked about with the student support piece earlier uh on the earlier slide that that we could bring to that team that's going to do that work and ask them to look carefully at that and potentially incorporate this point into that research thanks for picking that up kelsey because i was i've gone out of order so i should never go out of order but you're right eric i think that this feels like it fits very nicely into that student support section and what we talked about so if you
077can maybe add that into that follow-up any other comments i guess similarly it's there's a bullet create systems to ensure all groups within the total school environment are heard affinity groups focus groups so again that kind of goes to that student support piece so how do we improve that so just yeah kind of combining that right yeah and so i guess one of our other challenges as we've found is is continuing to connect with alumni as well so we actually uh shifted some things in at the end of the year when uh we actually asked students to who were graduating we asked them for their information so they could stay on our list so that we could begin the process of building alumni email lists so so that's now something we've taken action to do
078so it's the first step there were some great ideas that came out um i know that you know dan brown from who was on the data group talked about ways that he there are some facebook pages and mechanisms for that alumni are connected and so we can work with our public information officer sarah durman to reach out through those groups to get alumni to sign down to our mailing list so that we can begin to stay in touch with them and keep them apprised and reach out you know i know one of the things that suzanne short our guidance department is talking about is through our guidance department staying in touch with our graduates to see how they're doing outside and beyond so there are systems that do alumni five-year alumni surveys and i'm sure
079brian you've and i know you don't have a microphone over there but you may have done this in your previous role as a high school principal it's something that some systems do and i know that something that we've talked about is building a mechanism so that we have the ability to reach our alumni with a click of an email um and we've started that process well it's funny it's actually um i was having an entry interview earlier this week with uh trish and um one of the things we talked about was almost like an exit interview type of opportunity for when um kids are leaving the system and then being able to connect again with them i think is i would love for that to to be an outgrowth of this work or or just
080the work of the high school even so that you can connect back with your students to understand um you know what has their experience been it helps inform us as a system um you know where there might be opportunities for us to grow as well in a lot of ways outside of you know this particular context great yeah okay all right uh so moving on to community engagement [Music] all right so i think um i am going to read this particular one because i do think there's also some other pieces that we've already talked about that fall under community engagement um related to the framework specifically but so a short-term strategic goal for this recommendation was to gather feedback from the rye community about their personal experiences of equity inclusion and exclusion within the rye
081city school district to gather qualitative information that will inform next steps the recommendation is to conduct community listening sessions in different segments of our communities students and alumni community members faculty and staff by pop the bypass part of the community um so what i mentioned that we sort of touched on community engagement it's a little outside of this but i think there's obviously a lot of opportunity to better understand um the questions concerns um you know there's there's a lot of there's been a lot outside of our community that has been talked about around the issue of inclusivity um equity you know from a national conversation down and and so i think there is a great deal of anxiety and and i think we heard a lot of fear in the spring about things that
082may be happening in other schools maybe happening in other states um so i think having some of these conversations in real time with people and listening to concerns so we can better understand where members of our community are coming from um are going to be could be you know a very beneficial part of this work so perhaps if we can figure out how to do that i i think there are a couple of ways to figure out how to do that one um as as we emerge from covet i don't want to sound flipped because we're concerned we're wearing mess again and dealing with some of the cove pieces but i certainly think there there's been a certainly around here in our community there's been a lot of focus on vaccinations and prevention and so
083i think events and things that have been on hold for quite some time are going to be happening again so i think when i look at the short i i think there's some of the medium that can be very helpful in the short i know that i've had quite a number of opportunities and my my fifth year here to engage with many different members of the community face to face from the leaders of our religious institutions in the city of rye who i've met with quite a number of times over the years i've already i'm already on the calendar to meet with them again in september they haven't been meeting regularly and i am thrilled to be going back to meet with them um you know i've historically been a guest speaker and just for
084a touching base and talking at spry and at the osmore and at the um the different faith-based institutions i'll be speaking at rye presbyterian in september at the adult education program in the morning nine o'clock on a sunday morning and it's a great opportunity to for me to engage but but what i'm seeing is there are many different organizations the faith-based community and the different youth serving organizations in the community that can be helpful in determining a way to get out there and gather community through listening sessions so i do believe that it would not be a terribly difficult task to build that structure to go out and do some community listening sessions with a basic question to me what this recommendation says is you pose a question what have your experiences been in inclusion
085and exclusion in our schools and then we shut up and we listen and we everyone that's attending come and talk and um i definitely know as being a part of the community engagement group we talked about having sessions that were specific to groups so having high school students having middle school students having parents having community members having alumni i think those are pieces that can easily be put together and i think there are so many incredible uh community organizations here in rye that would would be absolute willing partners to help us do that yeah i remember when we had these um recommendations uh presented the first time we talked about um this sort of uh overarching uh group of growing the positive that includes i think almost all of the youth serving organizations within the
086community including the faith-based organizations so that would be i think a wonderful way to start reaching out um through through those and other entities and connections to uh to start that process and the conversation and then i think from the longer term strategic goal which says inform community about uh diversity equity and inclusion initiatives and provide opportunities for feedback that obviously um i think would might be an output of some of these conversations and listening sessions um that you know where we have a better understanding after hearing from our community members and and and i and i particularly liked how you talked about um you know having it be a group of high school students and trying to be a group of parents because i think there's some um it's important for them for those
087groups to have that um commonality among them in order to feel like they can open up and and so just in thinking about that long-term strategic goal we actually have a model for this and that we've done lots of presentations in sharing our work and professional learning and curriculum over the years to to share what are we doing what are we focusing on what are the outcomes how is it helping our kids and you know i think we're pretty good about doing those kinds of presentations but i do believe that um having those regular opportunities for feedback and being transparent and sharing this is what's happening and and this is what we're seeing any other again i think we're sort of at this you know let's let's start the conversation with the the community groups
088um and uh you know see where we can go with getting some of these listening sessions um set up great okay um and then the last slide is the update on the equity audit so i i prepared this slide with caitlin sesson our director of technology just to give you a bit of a status update so we have begun working with the what we call the lyric and i know i always like to spell out in all of my reports to the board i always spell out our the lower hudson regional information center so there are a number of ricks throughout the state for some reason i the number 11 or something is coming to me i don't know the answer to that question that could be but the rick is a regional center that
089is it provides the data warehousing services for school districts in this region so when we have to report things to the state it goes through the ring it comes from us to the rig or things come from the state through the wreck to us so they are the data experts with all of the different kinds of data that are available so we're working with a wreck one slight challenge in working with the rick which is our data warehouse is that they are not yet fully back in person in their offices so it has made the work a little slower than we would like but um they will be soon and so what we're able to pull through the rick through the data warehouse is overall summary data as well as disaggregating data by subgroups so
090the federally protected classes any of the demographic information that is within the reports within the data we're able to pull it that way because the testing data and everything we have very specific requirements for reporting so when you look at the new york state department of education's data dashboard site it's a public site you can see subgroup performance across different areas so they're enabling they're helping us to pull that data in those ways so that we can look at those ourselves so our tech staff led by dr sesson and the lyrics that are are pulling this data and organizing it and we're expecting a mid-october completion when the findings can be brought back to the board of education so just to give you an idea of what we're looking at here we have data from
0911718 through 2021 and what you'll see you may think it's an error down on the bottom it shows three chunks 17 18 18 19 and then goes right to 2021 because most of the state assessments were cancelled in the 1920 school year but we do have some like ap data course enrollment data internal data that that we have we just don't have the like the ela and math assessments were canceled last year so we are able to pull the ela and math assessment data that's grades three through eight we are able and are pulling regents greater data across the different regents exams grades 9 through 12. the ap assessment information the suspension information which we have to report so the discipline information to the state and the essa report so essa is the every student
092succeeds act which was the renamed elementary and secondary education act and that is the federal so everything to this point so you have the state is the new york state element state is the reasons exam ap is their own it's a private organization the suspension data is our local suspension data and then the essa reporting which has a lot of disaster disaggregation to it that we are required to submit um and and they pull so we're pulling the asset data that has been disaggregated at that level to take a closer look at that so all of those pieces are being pulled so that we can do the analysis and and tell you what story if any is this data telling us and we're doing it just by looking at the pure data there's no need
093for any tools or anything right now we're able to disaggregate the data we're able to compare it to summary data and then we'll bring it back to you with the findings in mid-october so i guess the only other downside to the state test data is because it was also while they were canceled it was not really a full representation of what you would have seen in 1718 and but the the other pieces as we talk about up here will will be in place this is a lot it's a lot of data certainly when we do data analysis we're looking for trends patterns things like that that's a big piece of the lens that we're using as we're looking at our at the disaggregation and the subgroups what are we seeing across data sets and what
094are we seeing across years of the data so obviously if if we need to go further back because we don't have enough we're going to do that and we'll explain that when we come back okay that sounds great and and so then i guess the other quick follow-up um not by equity audit related but um panorama data related so the um hopefully maybe that the timing will coincide or be before this when we expect this data to be available where we could talk about um what we you know what if any trends we're seeing in that panorama data outside of the summary document that we have but you'll know better i guess once you've had a chance to talk to the analysts in september okay so before we okay before we move past i just
095want to go back for a second because i don't think we were explicit and i want to make sure for everybody who is not sitting in the room when we talk about curriculum one of the first bullets in phase one is select curriculum audit tools and so i just want to be explicit that is not we are not doing an audit at this time of our curriculum so when we're talking about this audit as we work that is just strictly student data on it a curriculum on it is not being done at this time there is no recommendation to do that at this time we're going to explore the framework and then we'll see where we need to go great that's correct yes um all right so that takes us through all of the recommendations
096so at this point there's um internal next steps that will occur with administration whether it be central administration or building administration to pull some additional information based on the discussion tonight and then will there be an opportunity may be in the first floor meeting of the year for you to kind of give us an idea of when we might see some reporting out on that throughout the first half of the year so the community has next understands when we might be looking at some more of this we can certainly uh tomorrow um trisha brian and i are sitting down and comparing our notes to make sure i've been repeating myself a lot to make sure that i've got down our charge and our direction from the board i've asked them to do the same uh
097and we'll develop some timelines and and i'll give you a report at the first meeting of where we are and where we're going and when you're gonna hear back from us everyone um good with that as the next steps plan sounds great okay wonderful all right so i don't think we have anything oh tom did you have something no i said yes oh okay um so um i i want to thank um all of the administrators for being here to um listen to the discussion because i know aside from dr berg we didn't really ask you many questions but i think it's an important piece for you to um understand you know kind of where we where we're trying to have a fuller understanding for ourselves of um how we're going to uh proceed in
098looking at this within the rye community i think it's really important that we focus here and and you know maintain that focus as we move forward so um i think i will just uh ask for a motion to adjourn chris rappetto second and by jane anderson all those in favor five that's why i was three thank you very much um and our next board meeting will be oh september 14th um will be our next regular board meeting after the start of school we may be asking the board to do a consent agenda for final appointments on the opening day of staffing okay okay all right wonderful thank you enjoy the rest of your summer