001Good evening and welcome to this April 7th, 2025 meeting of the Akran public school board's instructional policy and student achievement committee. Thank you for joining us. Um I am Diana Autri, chair. Um I'd like to acknowledge um Mr. Bruce Alexander and Miss Dr. Renee Monarch. Um, as well in attendance is Dr. Caver. Um, I don't believe there is any request to address the board in this committee. We don't usually get that, but it is certainly uh welcome um if that ever becomes the case. And so we will um move on into our agenda item 1.01, our minutes. Um are there any additions, corrections to the minutes? Seeing none, we will accept these minutes as submitted to us and we will turn things over to Dr. Caver. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Autry. Good evening or
002good afternoon everyone. Thank you. So, um I want to bring your attention to one item that will be on the next board agenda and that is additional funding um that we are receiving from the Akran Community Foundation. So, just wanted to let you know that that grant award in the amount of $126,000 will be coming to the school district. Um, so, um, just wanted to bring that to your attention, um, in support of our eighth grade changemaker challenge and we are thankful to our partners for continuing to support us. Business affairs recommendation uh right now is item 23.9 and that is again with our college and careermies um continuing with our agreement with the Kyahoga Valley National Park and the conservy conservancy for Kaihog Kyhoga Valley National Park. So the renewal of their work with
003Elllet and just wanting to bring that to your attention once again and today we have two items on the agenda. So I would like to get started. First we will have the social studies adoption um from Adam M. He is the supervisor for social studies here in Akran public schools. And I'm going to turn it over to him um to speak to the board today. Okay. Um, board member Autri, board member Molinar, board member Alexander, good afternoon. Um, it is an honor to be here. Um, I'd like to spend about 15 minutes or so talking about um a recommendation we have to you for social studies. And this involves a K3 social studies adoption. This is the first time in geez, it's it's been a minute. It's been probably 15 years plus um where we've
004been looking at new materials and uh that'll get kind of understood further into this conversation as well. Um and also we do have a singleton AP European history which will show up at the end of the presentation as well. Um oh next slide that's me. Uh I did want to just point out quickly that uh it is my hope in the presentation that you will see connections to cornerstone one around safety and belonging certainly cornerstone 2 around achievement uh and uh interestingly enough uh cornerstone 4 um because you're going to see some uh pieces in this curriculum that really connect our students to their community and their families to this community. Um, and this opportunity for us really makes those connections uh far better than uh with this curriculum that we've maybe seen uh so
005far. I also did want to take a quick second with this slide. You are the last and last is not least uh um last but certainly not least most important piece to this puzzle. Uh this process has connected partners uh our scholars uh our parents and families um community members and our uh APS teachers uh through this adoption process and you'll see that throughout as well. One last um caveat before we begin special thank yous. Um our teachers uh really went above and beyond our elementary teachers. Um you know that many of them uh give their time, talent and energy for not just this adoption but for other elementary adoptions. Um they have to go through a lot of evaluation of vendors to do this. They probably don't want to see me show up again
006with my evaluations. Um but you know as you learn more and curriculum uh you develop best practices you know these evaluations need updated uh almost you know every year or so as you learn best practices to ensure that we're getting the best things for our teachers and students. Um another special thank you to we have a district coach his name is Chris Sims. Uh he's been invaluable in this process. Um he is a social studies teacher, a social studies coach for the district. Uh he's worked with many teachers in this process, done a fantastic job. And lastly, a special thank you for our very own Dr. Caver who who has really shephered this process through um as she does with all adoptions. But um it's been so far we've uh this has been you know
007like I said we haven't done this in a long time and making sure we get this just right has been very important. So thank yous are out of the way. Um and uh a couple quick other overviews for you. Just to remind you as you probably already know we start our uh we start our adoption process. Uh we bring uh teacher teams and steering teams in separately. uh we unpack our priorities and goals for the curriculum. Uh what what our big picture is, what we're hoping to do. Uh then we bring them again bring them in again and actually go through a very sophisticated evaluation instrument with them uh where they even have the chance to adapt and change the uh the evaluation instrument. So we get them ready and then we set them off
008into the first semester where they get their vendors and they start evaluating. They unpack the programs. They they look at things based on their evaluation. They actually pull stuff out and share it with the students so the students can manipulate and play with things and give them feedback. Um and they do all the way that through the first semester and then in the second semester, January, February, we actually bring in our top vendors. Uh and in this case it was our top three. Um we bring them in for formal presentations and that's when the teachers get you know there's only so much you can understand by yourself. When when the vendor comes in they walk you through what this would look like, what it would look like for the students, what it would look like
009for the teachers. They have an entirely separate evaluation for that and and they go through that entire process. Um they then have discussions about um you know each vendor what what was really good that we learned that we didn't know before what are some challenges that we didn't we didn't know before but we know now. Um and they come up with a recommendation to the steering team. Uh then they present to the steering team and then the steering team uh brings forward its uh um recommendation to uh the superintendent and to you as a board for your consideration. Um another just quick FYI for you. you uh this is also something you probably already know but in social studies in Akran and with our state standards uh and indeed across the nation you know there's
010a there's sort of a philosophical way that social studies is taught and it's always taught from you know the inside out. So we always start in kindergarten with the self and then the next thing is family and then the next thing is what about my other family? You know what uh what do people do for a living? you know, what's a teacher and a fireman and a policeman and a a scientist and and so forth and so on. Uh then in third grade, it extends out to your community, what does your community look like and and what does time look like in your community and uh money look like in your community and so forth. Uh and then of course it gets into your state and nation. But for our presentation today, you know, these
011we adopted recently uh social studies materials from 4 through 12. We're filling a gap in through K through three. And I wanted to remind you what the philosophical sort of big picture of what social studies looks like at those grades. When we started out with teachers, we did have some key areas of growth based on data and priorities in the district. and and you can read those for yourself, but uh it shouldn't come as a surprise to you that we really wanted to focus on ensuring all our learners had the ability to get into the curriculum to understand the learning targets, our standards, um and and have that process available to them in multiple ways. Uh additionally, we want to teach social studies through multiple perspectives. uh in the historical narrative. We want pe we
012want our students to see different kinds of people and different ways of thinking to be curious about their community uh through inquiry learning and of course foundational this is a good time to tell you um you know according to Marzano's research uh over 50% of content vocabulary in all standardized ELA tests grades 3 through 12 over 50% of that content vocabulary actually comes from social studies and a lot of the vocabulary and concepts on those tests are only taught in social studies curriculum. Um so it is a great thing that we're getting these foundational pieces in our K3 program. uh and uh I I believe it will help us uh well make sure our students are well-rounded and support their learning um as as we do integration across you know ELA and so forth. uh
013would be remiss if I if you were wondering. Of course, when we do an adoption, we look at all kinds of things and this list is not uh comprehensive. Uh but these are more of the types of things that we of course we always look look at when we do an adoption. It is a comprehensive look at at a at a curriculum program. Okay. So, without further ado, um we had five um vendors uh pass our RFP. Um you can see them listed here. Um we narrowed it down through our teacher evaluations, a top three list, McGraill. This next one is called social studies, school services, Nestrom. they combined, right? And kind of kept both names. That's how we say that. And the last one is studies weekly. Those were our top three. Uh based
014on a unanimous recommendation to the steering team, the teachers recommended social studies school services nstrom. The program by the way is called young citizens. Um and uh the steering team after it received its recommendations uh unanimously recommends to the superintendent and to this board for your consideration social studies school services nistrom the young citizens program. Uh I want to stay high level but I ha I did want to share some data with you. This is the evaluation from the second evaluation. Uh this is the young citizens program when they came in to Akran and presented to our teachers. And for each of these lines there are three, four, five questions um evaluative questions uh that the teachers quantitatively score. Um so we use a lot of quantitative data based on our priorities and of course
015the standards um to to evaluate which one is best. We also use qualitative data represented here. These are some of the teacher comments after the young citizens program presented. Uh these are the types of things that they laid out. uh so the teachers and the steering team could actually corroborate did you see this as well? How important is this to you? And and so we used quantitative and qualitative analysis to to come up with the best of the best for our Akran students. Okay. So let's take a dive into this. So, this is just outside and what you're looking at right here is the student textbook for I believe this is first grade. Um, uh, we have class sets of textbooks. Uh, and as you can see, uh, on the online version that they would
016get on their Chromebooks, by the way, that, uh, we're recommending this, and this is for a 7-year digital license. Um uh the the social studies is actually explored uh through the for the students uh through a number of characters in in a story form um where they're curious about something. They they want to learn more about something. Uh the students then engage in these curiosities and learn more. So, it's a very engaging engaging inquiry forward look at social studies education in these primary grades. Uh there's also uh uh credit to the teachers, lots of handson activities that go with this. Here you can see, you know, the the they have student handouts laid out and ready for the teachers, which by the way, they love that. This is ready to use for the teachers. But
017there's group activity cards. There's uh you know the type of laminated maps where the students learn how to read a map and how to look at a map in their community and indeed in the US and world. And then there's these mini globes that you'll see out there which uh our teachers absolutely are I mean we lost all our sample we lost air quote all our samples. Um they had to send us some more which the vendor happily did. Um they said we're not the first district that that's happened to. Um so a couple big picture things here. Um, you know, I do want to remind you we do have some newer expectations around the teaching of social studies as it's built into the elementary school day. And this is an overcrowded curriculum as you
018know. Um, our teachers were tasked with not only selecting the best of the best, but additionally it's got to spark curiosity for the students. It has, you know, we need a hands-on approach where the students are engaged and excited about activities. It does have to be logistically achievable in our curriculum. And this is where that asterk comes in after the word tasked. You know, right now our teachers uh they they do a million things a day. Uh they do they have a thousand achievements every single day, if not more. Um and and getting the social studies activities and connections, getting that time in, they're going to get better at it over time. And I asked our teams, we need to pick resources for our school district that can grow and adapt over time, which they
019did. That's why this is also a very exciting decision for you. Um, obviously this fall, our K3 teachers will be ready. They will be able to step out this curriculum directly with the students. Uh the teachers as usual will receive orientation not just in the summer but in the fall to ensure that uh our students are all getting this uh amazing curriculum. Um so I just put on some quotes there for you uh from from some amazing teachers so you could see in their own words some of the things they're deeply excited about with this new program. And at the I know I went through a lot. There is one last thing. Um we do have an AP European history course. This is a pathway at Firestone High School uh for students. It kind of
020it's sort of an on-ramp off-ramp for students uh preIB students and we have not adopted uh a textbook for them in some time. Our major focus is we want our students to be successful on that AP test. We had to do an evaluation based on our students data in the AP European history course and then find the right curriculum that would support that data which uh that is also up for your consideration. Just in case you're wondering, this is usually two sections at Firestone. Um, it is a and it is a year-long course. Um, so with that said, I know I gave you a lot. I tried to go quickly at a high level. Um, but at this time I would ask if you have any questions. I'd be happy to help. Thank you, Mr.
021Mer, for your presentation and to the entire team who assisted uh with this process. So 15 years is a long time. So I'm sorry if I missed it. So what what is the main reason behind it being such a long time? It's it's a great question. Um um you are all well aware probably more than many of the changing mandates around um reading and math. Um that and and our programming to support that. um our ELA adoption obviously integrates elements of social studies and elements of science and and other things. Um, one of the challenges has been just finding enough time. And as we want to be good stewards of taxpayers dollars, we don't want to adopt something that the teachers aren't going to use or don't have time to use or are unsure the
022best way to integrate in with a a ELA program that requires fidelity and requires a certain capacity toward. Um just in the last year or so um well certainly this is the this last year uh we have instructionally carved in some time for social studies at elementary and students are uh teachers are uh they did social studies here and there when they could but to actually have time for a dedicated program um I I think that's one of the big differences. Um, I would also defer to Dr. Caver if I missed anything there. No. Okay. I I guess I haven't been here long enough to know why it took Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm sorry, but I can't answer. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the historical sort of longer picture of it was, you know,
023well, do we do we really want to get this right now? You know, let's focus on something else right now. And you know the more you kick the can down the road you know the harder sometimes it is to come back to but we are doing the right thing here and it will be fantastic. Dr. Her I do have one thing to add. I will say that I did make the decision with Adam to only adopt K to 12 um two years ago and it was due to all of the demands that were already placed on our K to3 teachers at the time when we rolled out the letters training they had just did their ELA adoption. So, those of you that were here that approved, it was intentional when we only did 4 through
02412. We knew we were going to have to do this, but it was a conscious decision to give our K to3 teachers a break. And so, and then um we had the science adoption and then we came back to Adam to say, "Okay, we haven't forgotten. We need to add K to3." Yeah. Thank you for that. Thank you. Any other questions? Member Hall. Thank you. Thank you so much for your presentation. Um, and thank you for that. Having a plan, right? That's most important. Um, and not forgetting about our young kids. And although they're trying to take books out of schools and all this, that, and the other, and take away our history, this is big. Um, I was reading over a couple of the teachers comments, one teacher said, "This is exciting to me."
025So, if it's exciting to the teacher, it'll be exciting to the kids because the teacher will give her all, his or her all um to learning this. Um, hands-on, right? I'm a hands-on learner. not everybody is a person that just read and just get it like hands-on is very important. And then state of Ohio standards. Um so I'm excited about you guys actually taking the time to review this. Um and then teaching our kids about where we live, right? We live in the United States of America. So teaching them about a map in their their states and things like that. And you know they can some kids that travel, some don't. But you can pinpoint, oh, I've been here. I've been there. Maybe I want to go here for vacation. to mom and dad. So,
026um, just thank you for that and I appreciate this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, member Alexander. Thank you, Mr. M. I appreciate the presentation. I have two questions. Um, one with the K the K through 12 K through 12 program with the K kindergarteners. How do those teachers integrating that into their how how are they using that? There's using some type of is there a certain technique? Is there certain uh maybe animals or different things that they're they're using? How are they using that? There is um um so uh you've probably seen the big rugs in um in the kindergarten classes where the students come and they learn a story. Um and uh this curriculum uh one of the main characters uh they go on they're they're going there's a story involved where they're
027looking for something. The students you know the teacher can help read it to the students. Uh the students then maybe uh can you know are coloring or learning words or learning ideas. Um so it does look different in kindergarten and sometimes first grade too. Uh but um our primary uh as you know our primary teachers are absolutely fantastic at taking in a very large spectrum of learners and and working through these concepts and ideas which is what we need them to learn. Incidentally the standards for social studies, math, science and ELA really intersect at kindergarten. You can read them separately and you can say, "Ah, I see that one in social set. Ah, I see that one in science." So, they do all kind of blend together. And as you you've probably all heard from
028our kindergarten teachers, they say, "I teach everything all the time." And they're not lying when they say that. So, okay. That's what I was hoping to hear because I think with with the kids that age it's they're learning but it's got to really be fun to them because we want it to be more like structure like other classes but I don't think we can do that with them because they got to have it's got to be fun and then they want to come and they want to learn. Um then the other question was um the uh AP European history uh you said that's for uh appropriate for the pathway at Firestone. Does that go to any other schools uh as well or does it fit into any other schools uh that have AP classes at
029their class at the schools? It it doesn't. It's just for Firestone and here's why. Um when preIB students, you know, we just have the IB program at Firestone. Um as these students metriculate through, they have to take OST testing in um they have to get their US history and their government for OST OST and requirements. Um the IB of Americas can count for their other um required coursework. Um but should a student be in preIB and then they move away from IB and still want to take college coursework, um they've already taken AP US history, they've already taken AP government, which is districtwide. they almost need a different AP elective if they want to take it. Uh so we provide it for them because you know we want as many pathways for our students as
030possible. The other one that we have in the district over at STEM is AP human geography for similar reasons. Um but the AP euro, especially for the preIB student that um they're tracking toward college, they wanted to count for for their Western Civ class that's usually required in most um um majors. Uh that AP Euro satisfies it. So they're they're walking away from Firestone with many times their political science, their US history, and their world history requirement. um when they if they choose this pathway. That's why we have it at Firestone. Thank you. Yes. Yes, sir. Any other questions? Dr. Molmar. Um thank you. I will echo the thank yous that everybody else has given. Um, and in addition to that, um, I really appreciated how you pointed out the Robert Marzano and the foundational
031use of non-fiction text because, as you mentioned, K through three or preK through three, um, not just in our district and but across our state and across our country, um, the use of social studies has kind of taken a backseat to traditional English language and learning to read. Um but using reading and using reading to learn um is what I see in the program that you have selected here and that is really exciting for me um because I am a huge non-fiction text person um as my children's bookshelf at home will will show you um so here they can um really have great opportunities. This seems uh really wonderful. I did have a question. It does seem um on one page here that there's almost more than you can possibly achieve in a single school
032year of materials which is really exciting uh with all the hands-on materials here and I would really hope that the teachers are as excited and remain as excited as they seem now in using all those hands-on materials during the school day. But I saw that there was also an online platform with pre-built on one of these slides it said with pre-built assessments. And so I was wondering if this might be an opportunity um for students to have access to this, if it's been discussed, access to this over the summer and continuing to read and access the non-fiction um text in the social studies curriculum over the summer on their Chromebooks um for just additional support if we still have the licenses. Is that something that um I will abs I've wrote it down and we
033will absolutely get back to you on the exact answer. Um uh and and and I'm thinking in my head as well is and there's by the way there's uh non-fiction reading and stories that will be available in this adoption online for the students. Um and my and I'm I'm hearing also the question be among our many cataloges of things that we have available would this also be available? We'll find out and we'll make sure we get back to you. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other questions? I did have uh one final question. Um at one of the recent conferences I attended, it was around civics and it talked about how in general um most citizens are just not knowledgeable. And so I'm just wondering, I know we get a touch of it at
034the secondary level, but is there any civics embedded at the prek through three level? A great question. Thank you. Yes, there is. And we do more I'd like to think we do more than a touch uh in social studies with civics and secondary. Um it's very important part of the social studies. Um that is our goal by the way. We want our students when they leave the Akran public schools to be a to be a ready uh important positive focused civic-minded uh member of our community and that is our goal and uh secondary is an incubator for learning how to do just that. Uh but at primary it does look different and it starts actually with what are your rights but also your responsibilities. So learning what the word responsibility is is really important in
035primary social studies education. Um what are rules are uh what are why are why are rules fair? Um why you know why are they different sometimes? Um um what are the rules in my classroom? What are the responsibilities in my classroom? Um in my school with my teacher, with my principal, in my family. So starting out in social studies education and by the way all of our elementary teachers always it's all they always start with this every school year. Now we have hands-on engaging activities to help students unpack that um across all of our elementary schools which is going to be very exciting. And it does it looks like that and and you build from there. Um and that's why those foundations are so important. Thank you, Dr. M. Dr. M. Mr. M. Yes. Okay.
036We appreciate your presentation. Um, if there's no other questions, again, we just thank you for all the work around this. Yes, ma'am. Of course. So, it will be displayed out here. It is. It's already displayed. You guys are ready to go. You can check it out and um keep the globes on the tables. uh um but you will you will enjoy uh and all the grade levels are there and you will enjoy looking at the textbooks themselves for how it it it just brings in the students. You'll get it. You'll see that immediately when you start uh meandering through it. So thank you. Thank you. Our second presentation of the day uh is a recruitment overview. So I'm going to invite Mrs. Angela Carter and Mr. Larry Johnson Jr. up to the podium. Just Larry.
037All right. Mr. Johnson is going to handle it. Wayne. Wayne. If you know me from, you know, if you know. So, I'm going to pull up his presentation as he gets ready. Phone book. You didn't bound it. I think there wait for you. Is that one packet for them to keep? We're going to go by each of those uh each of those um papers one by one. If you'll This is a 15-minute uh presentation, so it's going to be quick. JK JK. All right. Do this. All right. Uh we are going to I'm going to go through this presentation. There are a couple of pieces here that I'm going to go through really quickly to get to questions. Uh what you have in front of you is uh the substitute uh data request from January
038to March and then you have it broken down by fill rate for March by school. So I'm going to go over that once we get there. Um, but we're going to spend a little bit of time getting through this. I'd like to thank Dr. Robinson for giving me a whole slide for recruitment and retention just for my part of my job. Um, as you know, our mission and our vision uh for a public schools is it touches the uh four cornerstones in our blueprint. We're going to spend a lot of time talking about each of these cornerstones, each of these cornerstones, but we're going to spend a little bit of time in culture one, two, and a little bit in uh cornerstone 3. Today, we're going to go over four things. Well, five, I added
039another piece in there. We're going to showcase our collaboration initiatives. We're going to talk a little bit about how we prepare and how we deliver our job fair uh participation. We're going to talk about how uh how we've organized our um marquee events, our our standard events here in Ara public schools, our talent fair and our teacher expo. And most importantly, this is my favorite piece is we have two paths for our grow your own program. And we're going to talk a little bit about each of those pieces today. Uh at the request of um this chair, we are looking into Teach for America. Now, this next comment is no shade to Teach for America. We've reached out to Teach for America, Angela and myself both on separate occasions. They've gotten back to us and
040I told Dr. Robinson this. They've gotten back to us and said, "We have some time maybe later in March in April, I'm sorry, later in April to give you some specifics." So, what we have is a really high 75,000 foot view of Teach for America. We don't have any specifics until we get a chance to meet with them. Um, so essentially these are the things that Teach for America does. uh they recruit, they apply, their applicants normally come from different majors other than education. Uh Teach for America teachers are trained to continue to have uh professional development through their teaching experience. And during their two-year period, teachers can choose to earn their master's degree in education. Once we have more information, we will share that with you. Uh right now, we have a couple of
041dates sent to Teach for America. Um once they confirm those dates, we can get into the specifics of how Teach for America works with districts and what that looks like. Regarding our efforts to recruit Nakam public schools, this is the team that helps get this done. Um I was going to share with you their code names, but I'm not going to do that to them because I don't want anybody seeing Yolanda in the elevator saying, "Yo, that's her her name or special K for Teresa." Um but the these are these are the people that help sit with me weekly. Um fortunately for them, they get the unfortunate pleasure to work with me weekly to figure out what are the things that we can do to kind of close some of these gaps and increase recruitment
042and retention for our schools. Our goal is to have a fully staffed AA public schools at the beginning of this year. I added communications because when we market our events, they are the people that do that. Marshia Pullman has been incredibly um important and responsive to some of this work and so I wanted to give them a little bit of a shout out. Um some of the work seems easy just go and do this just go to a fair but as as I'm doing this work I I can promise you it's a lot more complicated than that. So I want to double click on some of the things that we've been doing with our data wise work. So this comes out of step two in data wise and it simply asks us to be a
043little more curious when we're looking at data. Now you have a ton of data there and I'm not going to call you out to stay low on the ladder of inference. However, I would encourage you as you're looking at your data to allow yourself to drift off into what Dr. Chapman says to me all the time. What else do we need to know? What else do we need to know before we do this? Um in the bottom right hand corner you'll see um it's it's the mindset of our profile for an employee here in Akran public schools and those those are the things that have that have helped anchor some of this work. As many of you may know my department or division touches a lot of divisions. So I'm only as effective as my
044ability to be collaborative with all of the divisions. So what you see here is just a part of the work that I do with human capital and the recruitment team here in Akran public schools. So first our collaboration and building relationships. Uh I a public schools is a part of the camera um association. So it's the Cleveland area multicultural educators recruitment association. Uh our goal is to work together to recruit multi-cultural educational professionals to our school districts. So from around the Cleveland area, Cleveland, Barberan, Maple Heights, Warrenville, all of those school districts come together and we collaborate on finding strategies to increase the recruitment of multicultural teachers to our programs. To no surprise, all of our districts are struggling with the teacher shortage. You're going to hear a little bit about that a little bit
045later on. What we have done is we've shared resources, I'm sorry, we've shared resumeumés and candidates with each other as we've crossed paths with them. So there's a young lady for example from Mount Union who was a BookTo graduate and she's looking to come back to Akamon Public Schools. Uh I will tell you her name later. I don't want to put her on blast on the microphone, but I've called her several times. I'm looking for her to call me back because we have a position that we like for her. We're interested in her feeling she wants to come back and do be a fizzad teacher. She's going to graduate in May. So, we're hopeful that she's able to do that. Our university partners um I work with the University of Akran and and Kent State
046um with their teachers in their field placement uh courses. I am often in their classes meeting with building relationships with some of these u upper level students in junior and senior year. So I spend a little bit of time talking to these students about why Akran public schools is important to us and what they need to do on their next steps as they're deciding where they'd like to work. Uh the Harrington scholarship is part of our collaboration. Harrington scholarship is a scholarship with the University of Akran. It was established in 2020 was our first it was our first scholarship. Um, Heritage Scholarship essentially identifies students that are interested in being a teacher and it's a last chance um, scholarship. In other words, whatever scholarships, whatever monies that the students get, the Harrington scholarship fills the
047gap. So, it's a full it ends up being a full ride scholarship, tuition, room and board, and books for students who are interested in being a teacher in Akran public schools. Upon graduation, we then commit to them uh employment in Akran public schools for three years. If they choose to go someplace else, it else it ends up being a three-year um loan for them that they're going to have to pay back. Our first winner of this scholarship came from BookTo High School. Uh that he's he is scheduled to graduate this year. Our second winner of this scholarship graduated from Firestone High School. He is graduating this year and has a letter of intent and is applying to Akran public schools in um special education. Super excited about completing that circle. Um we don't know this
048year's scholarship recipient. We won't find that out until later on. But this is a super cool collaboration with the University of Akran and I'm super excited that we're going to have our first Harrington scholar that's going to be an Akran public schools teacher. Uh the next piece is our participation in job fairs. And this is really just if there's a job fair, somebody emails me, I register, we attend, and our goal is to recruit as many highly qualified candidates as possible. Uh we've talked about simply looking for unicorns. So some of these are some of the are some of the um fairs that we've gone to. Noted, we just had this bolded because it was it was last week. I thought this presentation was last week. So, um noted was just last week. Uh just
049to I talked a little bit about the teacher shortage precoid that noted this noted um fair had four to 500 students. There were a little over 200 students at this fair. I tried to give out 55 letters of intent, but my recruitment team would not let me do that because the director of the director of human capital would fight me if I did that. So, we our goal is to make sure that we cover and we find as many unicorns. If they're the right person for a public schools, we want to get them in and get the and close the deal as quickly as possible. We went to Jogs a couple of weeks ago where we met with a little over 200 students across the area um that are in the jogs program. They were
050somewhere from sophomore between sophomores and juniors. Um and it that was a nice event to see where students are interested in going as they move through um their high school careers. Next piece is our talent and our teacher expo. These are our signature events. So our talent fairs, we've had three talent fairs. Um, we'll have another one here at the end of right through right as we get through testing and then we'll have a couple more in the summer. The talent fairs are mostly designed to pull um long-term substitutes, uh, support staff, custodians, bus drivers, nutrition specialists, etc. Uh, our teacher expo is designed to recruit anyone who's interested in teaching in Akran public schools, a recent graduate or someone that is interested in coming to Akan. We just had it. It was a really
051nice event. And it was during it was during the board meeting. But uh one of the things that I enjoyed about this event was we had a uh teacher we had a panel not a teacher panel but we had a panel that was filled with some of our Akran public schools um leaders. Uh Marcy Ebrite was one of the um participants and it was such a refreshing opportunity to hear from the students. They asked questions and our panel provided answers to those questions from an AAN public schools lens. It was a really intimate and great event. We were able to sign and hire four so far of those candidates with another three to be continued. Um, one just interviewed last week in fizzed and we have a couple more that are nowhere on the pipeline
052for bringing on to a public school. So, we'll have another teacher expo hopefully before the end of the school year, but this was our big one to get the students early before they go someplace else. Uh the next piece is our grow your own. So one of the things we talk about in camera is how do we control and and make sure that we can keep candidates in our district while offering an opportunity for professional growth from candid from people within our district. So Grow Your Own is a state organization. or a state initiative that offers a scholarship from up to for up to $7,500 per year for four years for candidates that meet the criteria. The criteria is simply they have to be apply they have to be working in a public schools or
053in a district that's of need. Akan public schools meets that criteria and then if they if they're awarded the scholarship they have four years to get their teaching criteria. It's exactly what it sounds like. as a scholarship. The way we worked through this pre this opportunity was I sent out an email to everybody in a public schools asking them to nominate someone who they think would be a good candidate for Akran public schools to be a teacher. So they're already working but they think that these will be good candidates for teachers. We had 178 responses. A lot of those were duplicates. Out of those 178 responses, we have 60 applications at the state to to get that applied for this scholarship. We haven't found out yet. We should find out within the next couple of
054weeks how many of these candidates are ours. It's a really short application. I'm anticipating getting a lot of our a lot of candidates through this. The big thing with this is this is a quick turnaround. So, this is a one to twoyear strategy for us. These candidates are long-term substitutes. uh secretaries or um security guards, they're already working in our district. They already know the district. Um this scholarship once they commit to it, they will then be employed by us or another district of need. So, if there's another district that meets this criteria and they want to go to that district, they can do that. Um, and this this opportunity, and I think we're going to spend a little bit more time with this at the equity committee, but this was really born out of
055a a conversation that really goes back to that that latter of inference. Um, so Dr. Chapman and I, we collaborate on a number of things. This was one of them. We were kind of in the hallway talking about how do we how can we create an opportunity for students for our employees, our pair professionals to have an opportunity because as you know they have tuition reimbursement. You may not know this but they have a tuition reimbursement that's part of their contract. But the way it works now is the tuition reimbursement is if I'm an employee as a as a pair professional, I can go to I can go to school. I pay for the courses. I submit the courses that I took and then I get reimbursed. We have a there's a bucket for that
056in in our line items as part of their contract. Um we will be coming to ask for more money later, but for as of right now as of right now there is a there's a finite item there's a finite amount of money that we have in there. Um one of one of the reasons why this bubbled up is because we had 80 recommendations in the first opportunity. 80 recommendations of teachers that said this pair professional would make a great teacher which told me that this there's something here that we have to figure out and it took a little bit of time but as Carla and I spent a little bit of time talking Carla said what about Stark State? So Carla and I met with Stark State and Stark State is going to wave we're
057working underou that's to be continued but they're going to wave the upfront cost to our employees. So as a pair professional who's pursuing a to be a teacher in a public schools they are not going to have to pay the upfront cost. We will be build for that cost. We being a public schools will be build for that cost as a we we have that bucket. We will not go over that that that amount. Um, but this is a great opportunity for our prayer professionals to really have an opportunity um to pursue their to pursue their uh their dreams and goals of being a teacher without the hardship of finding the money upfront. As you know, this these our pair professionals are one of the lowest paid professionals that we have in our public schools.
058This as an equity lens is exactly what it sounds like. It's just removing the obstacles for our employees. We're going to talk a little bit more about how we came up with that in the equity committee, but um it's it's just a great opportunity. Carl, do you want to talk a little bit? No. Okay. I mean, if you want to if you want to be excited, I have I'm at 10 minutes or I'm at I have five minutes left. All right. These are the ideas that are still on the shelf. Um referral bonuses, staffing agency, alumni, uh tiered signing bonuses, wages and benefits, and job sharing. Now, the last thing that we have for you is your substitute teacher reports in Akran public schools. So, I'm going to go through a little bit of what
059you have, but as you're looking at that big chunk of data, that large packet that you have, those are the individual incidents for each school in Akan public schools by school. So if you wanted to know how many teachers called off from LA in the month of March, you can see that without identifying the teacher. But what I do have for you is the cohort. So these are the elementary numbers and themes. And these are the fill rates for March. Now, this is where I would encourage you to ask, what else do we need to know? Because some of what else you need to know may be hidden in some of the data that you have and some of it may be hidden someplace else. We may or may not have those answers for you
060immediately. But this is where I would be cur I would encourage you to just be more curious about more than what you see. What else is what else is missing? What else do you need to know by middle [Music] school? And then these are the field rates for the middle schools. Madame Chair, quick question. Don't want to interrupt. When you say fill rates, is this what exactly does that mean? Is it that we have this amount of teachers here or this is what we need to fill for from March Higher had a fill rate of 64%. 64% of their absences were filled in March. Okay. Well, if 100 teachers called off in March, 64 teachers, we had subs for 64 of those teachers. And this is for high school. And these are the fail rates
061for high school questions with these numbers uh that we're looking at. Um, are we seeing a pattern maybe at either certain teachers, certain schools, certain clusters? That's a great What else do we need to know? I'm sure. I'm sure. Okay. Um, we've looked at this data before. Uh, we were surprised, pleasantly surprised that instructional improvement days when we last examined this was not the biggest hit, but Tuesdays, Thursdays were the biggest the last time we looked at this. But that's one of those questions where it's it's what else do we need to know? Okay, perfect. Could I just trying to think a little different, think outside the box and saying, okay, if I'm in administration, what are some patterns I might be looking at that I might need to address because of for whatever reasons
062it's going on. That give me opportunity to dig a little bit more and say what's going on. So that's that's a long piece right there. I'll let that go. That's a great that's a great example and and I would as you're looking at these numbers, compare some of these numbers with some of the outcomes that you're seeing um with some of our schools. Some of our some of our schools and our administrators are dealing with the tough task of finding substitutes looking at higher dealing with the tough task of finding substitutes sometimes in the morning. Right. So that's a that's a really great question. Are there any other questions? Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Um, first I want to say um, shout out to Rhyr and Early College because they both had 100% fill rates. So,
063um, as we look at what else do we need to know? Um, not just looking at buildings that have low fill rates, but the buildings that are getting 100% those might have hints of other things we need to know also. Um, so I wanted to point that out. But then my question for you is um so for all of the other buildings is it safe to assume that without a substitute principles are filling in as substitutes or what is what is happening in the buildings without the 100% fill rate? Yes. So are principles filling in as subs? Sometimes yes. Sometimes teachers uh cover those those classrooms on their planning period. Yes. There's every building has a system and um a procedure that they use to fill to fill these subs when whenever we don't have
064subs to cover. Yes. Thank you. Um, Madam Chair, so to my understanding by visiting certain some schools learn about um absentees and how teachers and principles like you said have to go in and fill these classes and some of the teachers may not have a lunch or a planning period or you know whatever it is to fill these classes. Um, and then teachers are paid an additional stipen when they have to fill they're additional rate if they have to fill. Correct. Okay. Yes. Um are we seeing um that teachers are willing yes to fill the class to get that extra or are they not wanting to fill the class or like leave their um planning period or lunch? Teachers are willing to fill the class. Um some teachers, not all, or are we seeing a
065high amount? Because I'm hearing different. So I'm just It just it depends on the period. It depends on it depends on the it depends on the building. That's another one of those. So, it depends on the building is kind of also a big issue too, right? Not an issue. It's just one of the things we would need to know. So, in hire, for example, um depending on the period or depending on the teacher that's called off, depending on the period that that teacher has classes and depends on who else is off during those class times is is who is what teachers can cover. Does that make sense? So if I have a planning period on third period and a teacher is is teacher is off and they also have a class on third period I
066can be asked to cover that but it depends on the procedures that the buildings have in place to cover those classes internally. Just one more question. I'm sorry. So what if so what is the process if say a teacher at bookto right has a planning period third planning period and there's a class that needs a teacher and they go and say hey Mr. Johnson could you fill this class during your planning period does a teacher have the option to say yes or no? Yes. So then if they say no then that clash just goes unfilled unless because a principal assistant unit dean whatever could already be taking over another class at that same time. It could be um but I I mean that's painting with broadstrokes. So I I would I'm sorry let me finish
067my question. So then what does that class look like? So yes answer the first I guess that question but then what does that class look like without a teacher? And I hate to I hate to say this, but it depends a lot on the procedures that the principles in the schools have in place. I'll give you an example. When I was a principal at Firestone, we had a we had a dedicated assistant principal that would every day would get there, look at the absences, see how many absences were uncovered, and then there were list of teachers that had said in the event that there is an opening, call me, I will I I volunteer as tribune, right? They would go. So there's a list of people that they would go in and they would go
068in to serve. The second level or layer is who else is available? Who can I ask? And if if it's no, it's no. And then we get to a place where hey, we need coverage. Can we collapse classes? Do we add them to another class that period? And if we can't do that, then we go to principles and administrators. It depends on what that process is in the building. That's an example of what we did when I was at Firestone. Okay. Thank you. Um, I know we are coming to the close of our meeting and it's a lot more questions and information that I'm just encouraging everyone to bring back to our next meeting or definitely email ahead of time. But uh one of the things that I would like to know more about are
069how many of these uh positions are filled by or absences are in core classes uh CCA classes and then how many of them are long-term subs versus short-term subs for future. Um, and then as far as like ideas, um, and this is something that I've experienced in the nursing field, you know, a lot of folks can't jump right out and get their bachelor's degree in nursing. And so, some start off as a STNA and LPN and so on and so forth. So, I'm thinking that's something that we might want to focus on. Um, I was told there are like three pair of professionals working at BKO right now who were not in the teacher academy pathway but somehow they ended up as pair of professionals now. So just something to consider as we're looking at
070ideas, Mr. Johnson. Yeah, we're recruiting heavily from our from our pathways. So I have I I went to North I'll be at BookTo. I'll be at Firestone for a pair of professionals. We think with some of the with some of the partnerships that we're developing, we think that what you just described is a viable pathway, pair professionals to teacher to administrator, maybe even the superintendent. Wouldn't that be a great journey? Yeah. A lot of these young people, they they don't understand um I guess education. They just definitely don't want to do it. They know that they don't want to do it. On the contrary though, there are there are students one from BOA who's coaching at Bookto. graduated from book is a pair professional in I am recruiting him to be one of our grow
071your own teachers he is fantastic he didn't know that he wanted to be a teacher and he's still not sure that he wants to be a teacher but I've seen him in the classroom with kids he is fantastic and if we can turn him those are the kind of stories that this grow your own is is designed to do so yes I'm double clicking on that thank you y so again um if there's nothing else Dr. Caver, we're at time as you know. So, thank you. I just encourage you to read the teaching and learning um IP updates that are on the agenda. And thank you. Thank you very much everyone. Uh we will adjourn at this time at 5:32. Thank you. [Music]