001ryan are you uh ready to do your thing okay um i won't good afternoon everyone i don't have a lot to update you on myself just that we continue to work on how this division this office will support both district and building level work and so i've been in conversations with the superintendent and others about what that could look like and that continues and we expect to have a plan coming forward here soon um data is a big need of ours and we know that and a couple of other things have come up as well so i'm going to let dan rambler our director of student services and security is on to present today so i'm going to let dan share his equity plan we have a template that we think will work for presenting
002to this community uh to outline goals indicators performance measures some anticipated outcomes with some accountability pieces so dan i'm gonna turn it over to you before before you do that um i just want to ask um there's a phone that's not muted that we're getting some feedback from uh it's a it's a 330 area code uh last two days or seven seven um so so that's you if you're if your phone number ends in seven seven if you wouldn't mind mutant me your line i'm not i'm not sure who that is but it's a calling person um but you can be great star six works if you need to mute quickly okay thank you dan okay thank you very much um carla do you want me to present the the template as well and i
003think everyone on the call received a copy but if you'd like to present or i can do that for you so you can still see faces yeah if you did that be so happy um so our first area and i i'm going to guess that the phone call might that that might be denise ward who has been working with student services through summit county esc doing some of the apd work for us so i'll first kind of introduce that area and i'm going to ask denise to kind of talk through that if i'm correct and that's her phone number with the first section what we were working on with our goal there in creating expectations for the school resource officers we were looking at a lot of the items that were in the uh initial
004policy that was created and the role of our school resource officers as well as how students interact with them then also the students rights and then also how staff utilize the officers within the building so it's kind of like all that stuff together denise are you on the phone do you want to go ahead and go through that some i'm i'm going to guess that maybe she's having some difficulty so i'll just keep going then because i don't want to hold us up so um in respect to that what the initially we we have our apd contract with the district through the superintendent we worked on adjusting our total number of officers in our buildings to meet the needs within the district which through the negotiations with the city with apd we were we reduced
005the total number of sros from 18 to 14 and then making sure that they were placed within the buildings that we needed the sros to be placed next we actually had reached out to denise to do some work with our sros and students and we started this through the cova time period and kids and the police officers were meeting virtually we took this in stages we initially did um conversations with the police officers and then conversations with students and then we started to bring the two groups together now she denise is going to meet with a group of students and the sro buildings and we're focused initially on brookdale north and firestone and then as we keep going we'll involve the other high schools and eventually we'd like to get to the middle schools as
006well i put a link on the document that carl is sharing that shows some of the some of the information that we've been able to get from kids their knowledge of the police officers their interactions the relationships they've built the experience has been really good we we just look forward to getting them together in person part of the work that has been done has been to get the school buildings to identify a group of kids that they want to work with the sro in this project so we're not like we're not going to buildings and identifying the kids we ideally are getting um student leaders that like that are really the leaders of the school what whatever if that means that they are just the kids that other kids look up to or maybe they
007have a principal leadership team in the school but we leave that up to the high school building principle to kind of identify and create that kind of open communication between the officer and the kids to then create the common expectations of how they're going to work together within the school so the initial phase we've been able to do through the the cova time period there's a denise is going to have additional meetings with those four buildings with the officers and the kids in person this month actually and then we're going to continue that work as we move forward next year addition the next the third box is kind of where i'm at now within that first goal we've done some cultural diversity training with our staff within student services and we also completed the beloved
008audit as well we're looking at using love akron to do some additional training with staff next year through mr kemp boyd as well so i put that note on there the rights and responsibilities of students interacting with police officers which is part of the policy as it was created we're going to continue working on that document which we're doing with the kids is being involved in it we're not just drafting that we're having the kids that are going to help draft that as well then also the creating the expectations of staff and how they utilize the sros that's going to be done with staff members we actually are using part of our czi grant actually to do some of that work next year so we can have teachers have some time that they can meet
009within teacher leadership groups within the buildings to help we be able to work on that with school resource officers charlie is it okay if i just keep going to the next goal okay okay so then the next school the cultural diversity and the skill training with department team members we were really fortunate i know senior staff's heard me talk about the work we did with carla with our safety team members um early on this school year when we were still remote our safety team members really really enjoyed that carla met with them virtually approximately 60 safety team members and really did a lot of work with them over a period of time the safety team members loved it they have all told me that has been one of their favorite trainings that they've ever done
010through our department so initially the work was to to have them do that initial training then carla was able to actually go out to buildings and kind of see their work and what they do and their interactions with kids after we came back to in person then as we move into next year we're going to continue on that work to identify where the where are their strengths and then where are some other areas that they need to be able to apply to the different skills that they've learned so we're going to continue that on next year also our safety team members were able to get the mental health first aid training um last last school year um so between that and also we have some training that they'll do with project lot rise for homeless
011students we're going to kind of unite all three of those trainings together so that way our safety team members are more interactive involved with kids and then responsive to the unique needs that each of our students would have within the buildings that they're located the third section which then is kind of focused on the engagement center one of the things i would say that we have learned as we have gone through the covet experiences how do we how do we diversify our our abilities and interactions with our parents and families to meet the unique needs that they have one of the things we were able to do was to make a lot of our processes electronic so that way it met the different needs that families had i i've told the story about work permits
012so many times but work permits in the past people families would have to bring them down there's a lot of information they have to complete the job has to complete a part you have to have a physical all these different sections and then they bring the paper back down to us then we sign off on it and we give them a paper copy of the work permit and send the permanent one to the job we were able to realize how complicated that would be with covid and wanting to limit the interactions and all that as we went through covid we were able to create a more electronic process of that so that way the family does the parts they need to do then they can actually the student using their email address through the school
013which ellen's heard me thank all of us so many times for getting students chromebooks and emails because that is just phenomenally wonderful kids can take pictures of the forms they email them to us from their email address we're able to complete it and take a picture of the document send it right back to them we actually worked with a lot of businesses that hire kids and kids can actually then forward that email to the job to their manager so it limited so many interactions and also um minimized the trips that people had to keep making down here um which i i think was hugely important um so that that's something we've utilized a lot of those things we had to do through covet to realize how else can we help families get the services they
014need through us but appreciate the unique challenges that each family and each situation may need and how can we help them to minimize creating obstacles so that's a big overview of it another area that i mentioned here is scheduling metro bus passes because we do the metro bus passes for high school students through our office same thing we set up a process so kids could schedule that and get those completed much more efficiently kids as we all know are the kids are really really good at utilizing those electronic forms um and honestly families have been too they they've done a really good job of doing all that we've done the same thing with our homeschooling notification that families do bullying and harassment complaints we're able to get the information so much quicker families don't have
015to go somewhere to get a form from an office they can just come they can go to the link and complete it but then additionally too there are a lot of families that need one-on-one support whether it's for registration or if they do want to report information and we're fortunate that we have a lot of good staff members in the engagement center that work with families like in those circumstances and then we also have um families that come in that have different language barriers and we're really fortunate that we have dr winn that's able to help get interpreters that can come down and sit with us and the family and help us walk through the process of registering and again that's figuring out the unique needs that individuals need and then providing those interventions and
016services that they need to accomplish their goals and that that's been a an evolution of the engagement center i think it's kind of what we all desired when we started that process but we've really been able to move forward with that even more as this this past couple years have gone on i put on there too parents um parents are able to take photos of legal documents and send them to us so they don't have to go get them we also we have relationships now with a number of the courts that were able to actually get the court document if we're alerted to it from the family so they don't have to just go get it again trying to eliminate those bureaucracies and hurdles that are created often and then the last section in there
017is with our safety team members hiring over the years we've started to use safety team members drivers various staff members in our department to help with interviews which has been a good evolution of that process because it brings a lot of people of different and diverse backgrounds into that process of hiring and supporting that interview process through our department so i wanted to mention that section as well then carla the final section is the adjustment of student behavior practices um and i know a number of people know that we have have some disproportionate suspension numbers and referrals to the board so the one area i want to point out first and i probably should have put this up higher um harley if you go to the very bottom of it i want to mention the
018current data which is the third or fourth box from the bottom right there so i should have put that higher and i'll fix that but currently what i did today was i ran data from 2016-17 um august of that year through today so including all the years through that um to point out this data that is very consistent year in and year out too 65 percent of our suspensions are males so 35 are females which obviously is disproportionate like our student enrollment population is it's 50 50 i mean it's a little bit either direction um sometimes it'll be 50.4 and 49.6 but our suspensions are 65 male um race with black students the the number of suspensions from 2016 to 17 through today 74 of those suspensions are black students which obviously is also disproportionate
019based on our enrollment numbers of race of students and then 34 of our students who are suspended have ieps which is also disproportionate based on the number of students that we have that have ieps so i'll put that at the top because i i wanted that point i think so we know where we're at is an important point for then where i'm going through all this um so the first box then carla i'm recommending that we explore how to reduce our out-of-school suspensions and much the same way my recommendation is much aligned to what the state required for kindergarten the third grade it was the state didn't say you just have to end it right now they said there's going to be a progression and each year you have to continue to reduce your numbers
020so that was kind of the same idea that i was putting in that for each year that we'll reduce it by 10 so that way we have a target each year we have a goal each year clearly i appreciate there are many challenges to the work but that's a taking those steps would be a significant impact to the current disparity that we see that i identified the second block then [Music] the reduction of suspension days which is an equity issue but also is just an issue of how many days kids are suspended across the district which again i appreciate the challenges of this but i want us to consider reducing suspension days for all students commonly high school middle school kids get suspended for a fight it's commonly in high school middle school it's 10
021days my recommendation is that we look at district-wide saying that any discipline suspen any suspension you're gonna have for a student misbehaving you've reduced the number of suspension days per incident by half so instead of getting 10 days for a fight you get five the my my perspective on that is our kids are out of school a lot we have a lot of different interventions we could provide i clearly understand the challenges to these things but i also think we need to reconsider the number of days that kids are out of school and then the third item discipline transfers on average on a normal year on average we have 600 hearings a year kids are getting transferred from building to building i didn't put the data for discipline transfers but i can put it on
022here too but it is a significantly disproportionate number of males and black students and students that have disabilities as well i'm recommending that we explore the ability to stop trans discipline transferring kids it's incredibly problematic it's creating a lot of issues i know your building administrators would have a lot of perspective on getting discipline transfers from other buildings and the challenges that occurs or occurs from that i know that everybody is aware of all the crime and such that's occurring in the city and many times removing kids across the city which becomes other issues of their areas they can't go into because of affiliations that they have and then my last item is that with the level three um discipline actions with dakota behavior there's there's a mandatory requirement that there is a referral to
023the board as part of that um i'm also recommending that we explore not having that mandatory minimum i i just want to give building principles more flexibility i think we all know that mandatory minimums tend to create disproportionality as well so looking at those areas with discipline through an equity lens i think that we need to consider some of those actions and carla that is all i believe i had dan and so we typically open up for questions at this point and you all have access to review the other additional pieces of information that dan has included in his plan so yeah thanks but miss chapman let me let me hop in um so dan first thanks for putting together that that presentation uh i appreciate it i see i see mr alexander i think
024we're still waiting here in a minute um so so i've got some questions but but um but before i suck up all the oxygen in the room um let me um defer to my my colleagues and other committee members uh to let them get their questions in first so mr alexander thank you uh mr vice president uh dan thanks this is a good report and i like what you've done uh you're doing some good work here i had two questions really uh one is a question actually i think there's a comment uh one is uh with the kids that are being selected for the sros are you getting a diverse group of key principles getting a diverse group of kids to to talk to uh in those groups because i'm thinking of you might want
025i mean i know there's some of the leaders in in the schools but they're also some of those bad leaders in there and i don't like to you know have too much going on but in there because they can give some insight as well to some things that may be going on some ways that the sros can deal with some things because they come with another way of information to you guys and uh it will provide better ways i think for the students to or the sro to be able to handle some of the issues that that the uh students may have so i i i think if you got a hopefully that this the principles the school administrators are getting uh a diverse group of kids from you know the academia even some of
026the ones in trouble uh some those in between uh just to get their ideas because all those kids will come up with some some ideas and some things to help uh uh with you and then the other the comment is and i like what you're uh reducing school suspensions but i think one of the things we have to focus on too is training for teachers making sure they uh get training that will help them to understand you know different grounds cultures folk ways that various students have because sometimes some things are misconstrued if we don't know uh the backgrounds of the kids or their folk ways or some things maybe that they do in their culture and so it kind of gets misconstrued in a different manner so we need to make sure we we
027look down and get teachers training for that and that includes also you know special ed with the ips knowing exactly what's going on with the iaps what is needed for each one of those kids or the 504 plans and that would be teachers but not just teachers but also the administrators also so they understand they know how to handle certain situations to be able to deal with them a little better i'm not saying they're doing a bad job but i just think sometimes some just don't know especially when we get new teachers who come into uh uh school district and they're trying to find their way and maybe import some things that maybe they train when they're in college but we can maybe helping make it better for them so those just a comment and
028maybe the one question of the diverse group of kids for the sros to talk with thank you mr vice president yeah mr alexander i think those i think both really good questions i'm going to ask i'm going to try to put nicole on the spot here because she's at book dole so she and that's one of the groups when we ask the building principles we we ask for authentic leaders it's one of the things that i found is really good about our buildings especially high schools they they tend to have like a leadership group whether it's a principal leadership team or whatever it may be they have a group of student leaders those groups tend to be really authentic they are kids that are leaders from all different areas of of the high school so
029nicole for example with booktull what who's on your group because i don't know all the specifics so i i i'm smiling mr alexander i was smiling as you were speaking because i think two scenarios applied dan did a fantastic job of encouraging campus principals to engage in this process it was a little challenging during our virtual learning time period many of our students were working and we didn't always get the full representation that we wanted however we've already made plans to have um the same panel happen in the building during the school day in person and that allows us to get the leaders who check their email and respond yes and grab the ones out of the classrooms and the hallways and the iss rooms who didn't check their email and didn't initially say yes
030and so i think the next phase will allow us to make sure there's true diversity because it will be in person and during the school day and not during our virtual learning sessions okay yeah and the reason i also say the diverse recruit because we talk about leaders there are leaders who are not the best they're not leading the right manner but they are leaders and they can kind of control a group of individuals as well so we need to get to them and make sure they understand if we can get them they may bring some of those others around that maybe some of the other individuals in the group cannot cannot do so that's why i say that because i i think we always have to have that that even when we don't want
031to have the best group we still need to hear the voice because there's some things that they can tell us that will work that we don't normally think about and no one else thinks about but they can give us something they can be our allies serve as allies for us as well so i just wanted to bring that up so thank you very much i'm glad you're looking at those things dan is it okay if i just say one more thing in response to bruce and then ask a question dan okay i'm sure i'm gonna leave it up to derek and carla probably please please use this so so mr alexander i also wanted to say that when we have had um police officers in the building to run circles um especially after book blast
032had an incident those are the most revealing conversations um and i think they're revealing because they're candid um there's no penalty attached to them it's just an opportunity for people who live in the cluster together to put their guard down and have great conversation so prior to coving we were able to have um different police officers male and female come into brookdale and have great conversations with our kids so i'm confident that the conversation can continue to manifest dan it's so funny bruce had a question similar to mine which is how is your department partnering with other central office departments for example teaching and learning um to implement restorative practices help buildings implement pbis help buildings implement some of those proactive enrichment programs like a student citizenship council or peer mentors or post suspension conferences
033and mediations that we know that when schools have healthy programming like that can help prevent some of the behavior issues that we may experience in a classroom or a school so what does that partnership look like between you and other central office departments that was that was good nicole by the way nicole just listed all the proactive interventions we need to really look at having those it was like the litany of them um megan mannion and i have had a lot of conversations a lot of work on this we have tied some of it into various grants that we've worked on too one of them through one of them's through czi one of them also was through um the esc with um i shouldn't forget any other agency involved but so we've worked on some
034of those um and some of it is then creating the time because i know that um megan has a lot of the pbis work um tied to czi and creating time for building teams to take part in the esc with the state support team to get building leadership teams especially and also the discipline review committees to be able to embed some of that work within those teams roger that thanks thanks miss chapman yes i believe i have my hand raised for erica glover who is on a phone and wants to chime in so dr glover if you have a question go ahead and then i have a comment as well after did we did we lose dr glover perhaps we did because i i didn't hear speak up no okay maybe she'll she'll come back
035in but i wanted to piggyback on both dan and principal hughes's comments regarding how this work intersects with all the other departments across the district and so it really speaks to how we uh do the planning and development of a framework right for addressing um how educated practice is examined around culturally responsive teaching how school climate intersects with student services and pbis and so we've actually started those conversations teaching and learning our dei learning specialists which will be dr glover moving forward kenya harrington myself uh stan sykes we've started those conversations to look at how each of these pieces and parts connect with each other and so there's more on that nicole but that you you perfectly described where the work lies right how how do we run this common thread through everything that we
036do and so that we're not operating in silos but everyone moving together understanding what their unique piece is in terms of supporting student success especially as it relates to the behaviors um their ability to manage their own behaviors as well as the adult responsibilities for creating the climate that supports student success as well so i think erica rejoined yeah okay so you guys hear me yes we can yeah so my question goes back to i think what uh bruce had and originally i think uh nicole i spoke to as well is you know we're thinking about the um the adverse diversity as it relates to you know trying to get to understand the voice of our students i'm also wondering what does that look like at the elementary level uh sometimes just you know coming
037from both though by the time they're there it's not that it's too late but it's almost i wish we would have and so i'm just wondering at the you know elementary level you know what kind of things that we can put in place that we are being proactive with our sros um and then i'm also wondering how we can leverage our sros for alternative um routes to expulsion or suspension i've seen firsthand with our sros i've booked or leverage relationships in ways that i could never and i see there's i believe that there's a lot of value in that dr gloria i totally agree um it was it's one of the reasons a number of years ago we started creating a lot of presentation work with our school resource officers for elementary buildings like we
038created a bullying program a sexting program so that way our sros could go into the elementary buildings and primarily we were looking at middle school sros to forge relationships with elementary students as they started to get to a point of transitioning to middle school and that's something that we'll continue to do there's um you know i think new types of presentations they can do as opposed to in the past but some of the past ones are still relevant to um one of the and it'll be something as we get into a more normal school year environment it'll be more efficient to do this year was challenging because we didn't have our school resource officers initially and then getting a mid-year was difficult for the city so we weren't able to focus on some of those
039extra things like that we used to do but we'll be able to again i totally agree with dr glover though that we're fortunate that we have some really good police that work in our buildings and they create really good relationships with kids and they can provide some intervention that we can't even provide for kids too and they oftentimes have close relationships with the families too so i think your points are very very valid and just to you know kind of pay you back off what you're saying then i think it's also important that they're in the community so there are relationships that have formed before with the you know our sros and our students before i even know about them so i'm just trying to think you know again going back to being proactive how
040do we develop those relationships before it gets to a point where they have to be in a relationship so that's also the point that i'm also thinking about as well yeah and i think dan's work and and the work with sros also extends to the community and i'm thinking of the committee that mr alexander and i sit on for the racial equity social justice task force which has an education subcommittee we have to remember too that sros are also officers who have an identity that has already been established by members of the community that they serve and so the relationship starts oftentimes long before they become sros in our buildings and so when we we talk about relationships between sros and students it goes beyond the walls of the school and so to the extent
041that those relationships are positive in the communities that they served and that filters back into our schools so it's a conversation that i think has to happen in partnership with others outside of the district i mean if you're thinking comprehensively about um you know school resource officers and engaging with students and communities those many of those identities exist before they enter the building on both sides right in the perceptions that students might have of officers based on their experiences in the community so it's a larger conversation as well dr mick williams-woods i actually put my hand back down just because we were i was uh i had a comment if you're if it's okay back a topic before the sro conversation because i think that's uh an important conversation i loved reading the student input
042about the relationships and you know the importance of that so i think that's important to listen to those voices one thing that i was going to say from principal hugh's question about the relationship between you know teaching and learning and student services and those strategies one thing that dr james did i think it's been a couple years ago now dan is that all of our climate and prevention behavior related work was all for the most part in student services with a little bit in special ed previously and dr james intentionally moved that prevention and climate work into teaching and learning with student services being a support to that work in teaching and learning because all the research nationally on prevention work is you can't separate academics and behavior and have it be seen as well
043we do these behavior strategies over here we do these academic interventions they're completely linked and it and we were struggling in the district making sure that principals and teachers saw that this is all just one system of service that they're so closely how students perform academically and behaviorally is just so related so we didn't move a lot of that prevention work in to make sure that mrs gigic was working with all her curriculum people that whenever they're talking about reading and math strategies and social studies and science all that good high quality strategies for prevention getting kids more engaged in the classrooms working on hands-on type things bringing all those culturally responsive practices into the classroom that's all the work that dan was trying to do before but now we're integrating it right in from
044the beginning in teaching and learning so i think that that was an important shift and i think dan's done a nice job keeping that integration now as it's moved into curriculum and instruction my misshaped you're a mute you hear me yeah it's nice to be here i want to apologize the last two meetings i had scheduling conflicts and wasn't able to make it so i'm i'm happy to be here i um always believe that collaboration like this leads to greater success and and more excited to be a part of the conversation um i i was interested in all the goals that were presented tonight and um and am happy to join in the conversation it's uh there's a lot of things there that i think really will benefit uh not only our students but our
045staff and community um but i don't i don't mean to bring the mood down but i do have to go on record as saying your very last goal surrounding student behavior and uh pupil adjustment um it's aea's uh belief and position that and and it's currently every point under that goal is um currently under litigation and as soon as arbitration opens up after covid it will be arbitrated so we believe that that's um those are all subjects of bargaining and uh cannot be adjusted without going through that process so um i just wanted to get on the record as as to saying that the rest of the goals i don't see any problems with thank you okay um other um other questions or comments okay um so i've got several questions uh that i wanted
046to ask um the first one and i'll and i'll start from the very beginning um so the sra so the sro reduction from 18 to 14. um while i think i understand the background sort of rationale and as sort of why we did that um i guess the first question i would i would have is from mr rambler is um is there are there any safety concerns um with with us reducing those uh those numbers from 18 to 14 or or or do you feel like that is or i i want to say safety and or programmatic deficits uh that may be created with with that reduction that maybe we haven't fully thought through no i so one of the things is we reduced our building as we've combined buildings and we've had some reductions
047part of that was looking at that too um additionally like the we have our alternative programs and they don't have apd officers located there they have sheriff deputies that are located there and um additionally with our sros we also have additional apd officers that work in our buildings but they're not school resource officers like they're not assigned every day there any time there's any sort of safety concern that's always my first step is to work with the building the principal to identify what are the needs and supports that they're looking for and if and if it is that they need additional police then we'll look at that option as it's needed so we're not you know i have a lot of safety concerns district-wide but it's more based on there's just so much violence in
048the community right now and so much of that is involving our kids and our youth and but i would say within our school buildings i think the building staff do a phenomenal job the school resource officers do a great job and whenever there's a concern we always are reaching out to the city and apd to get extra support um dr james knows and he fully supported that we looked at one of our buildings needed some extra support i reached out to a captain in apd and we got extra support in that building through the end of the year so to answer your question in a really long way i'm sorry no i don't think it's caused any issue with safety or program okay fantastic and then and then my second question um so for example
049you presented a lot of data around student discipline sort of by school um uh and it was very detailed and i remember when you did it it made before it may have been before i even joined the board maybe i was just at that board meeting um you know but um so that being the preamble i know that there's a lot more to that you could have walked us through today and i know that time was a definite definite constraint um you know so so want to recognize that my question though is um getting back to uh principal hughes uh question around uh i think she asked what i think she kind of articulated the um the sort of various programs that we have out there um you know and so my question was is
050when you're thinking about patterns of discipline or patterns by a building is there any correlation between um the number of suspensions and by the way you can insert into blank right you know are there is there correlation between um high discipline and low programmatic utilization or implementation i don't know i don't know that would be an interesting item to study you know i i tend to when i present discipline that i present district-wide um building level like high school middle school elementary i tend to not dig into building by building a lot of that work is done through the school improvement plan and the leadership teams within the building itself but i i also appreciate there's a lot of unique challenges within each building and i don't unless i'm going to be involved in the
051work with the building leadership team i don't want to propose that i know the reasons why but i i do think dr hall that would be an interesting thing to look at is with a building leadership team and the building principle is to look at what are your suspension numbers um and then what is the programming that you have to impact that and what's the social emotional programs that you have and maybe the mentoring programs and all those things and then to start to make a determination is there a causation or correlation between the number that you have the value of them i think that would be a really interesting analysis to have yeah because and i asked that question because i mean i think often times we look at data uh and i work
052in healthcare you know and so and so there's a you know and and you know we're talking about sort of patient outcomes you know people's lives as well right and that's often you know the case with students too right so that's one of the things i love about healthcare is that commonality of shared interest and that is but i know that data can tend to be weaponized uh at times um when people sort of misunderstand uh the factors that that contribute to how we got to a certain number uh and that's why and that's why i asked a question because because you might say well x y and z school oh wow like they're just terrible or x y and z school is really really great you know without understanding that that that greater context
053like what is the story you know let's tell the story right i mean so i think dr moyes you know was talking about sort of we don't divorce academics from discipline right or behavior it's one combination and so that's why as i think about how we as we move forward and we're presenting this this data as well as to into discipline it'd be helpful to have kind of a snapshot because i might see a really high number in building well you know that building you know um has a higher there may be things that are happening in that building or that community or that cluster that are contributing to why that number is what it is and it's not just putting it on the administrative oh well it's it's that voting team like they're just
054not doing their jobs right i mean so um you know and then converse we might say well you know hey like you know i see higher i see high numbers in the building you sort of dig in maybe there's more that we can do to support you around around programmatic implementation right teaching and training right so um so again so to so i think to an earlier report there's made i think mr xander it's not about saying that people are not are not doing their jobs it's just it's just that at the board level when we see this data you know um you know it's it would be helpful for me to understand sort of more context and sort of what the story is um surrounding um you know where we see certain uh areas
055of opportunity with respect to sort of uh raw numbers right um so so so so that's something miss chapman you know we can go offline but but but i'd love to see us really start to develop something like that as we move forward so that way we better understand kind of the context so makes the data that you're getting all the more valuable when you present it along with this you know along with the narrative that by all rights should probably be accompanying it um we would we would agree and you know you took the words out of my mouth i was just having a conversation with ryan uh pendleton our treasurer on the data story because we want to go beyond numbers we know that there's much more behind the numbers that we see
056that would tell us a whole lot more and in fact dr glover myself uh dr aglie um and uh her work with tableau and aaron markovic we're having discussions now about what what is that story right we have data we have tons of data but how we pull it all together to tell um more than just academic stories or more than just out-of-school suspension in school suspension stories right how do we layer that on higher level courses that are taken in a building or extracurricular opportunities or the types of partnerships that exist in the school and opportunities for field trips and um experiential learning and so it's just kind of we're on meeting two of four to develop that data dashboard uh even today with a a two hour uh stamp talk through that very
057thing yeah well and at that point too i think mr ryan's point two you know uh i would agree with him you know it wouldn't be sort of his role if he will to be kind of telling the story you know on behalf of the school i i think i think it's more of a partnership right where it's the building principal and mr rambo that come in um and present right so and and of course you know you would have met offline and kind of you know you know kind of made sure that that you all understood what you're going to talk about but but but you come together and present and say hey like you know this this is this is you know our building um you know it's kind of when you watch
058pro sports right you have you have you know you have the you know the color commentator and then you got this and the guy that's doing the paper you know the play-by-play right i mean you know and and and so the quality of the of the cat of the sports cast is is is better because you have both voices that are there and they're both complementary in nature um and so so and so so two more quick things i know that we're getting close to time uh but two more quick things one um i know that we often slice um this banana we slice it and by the way the lights go dark because i don't know what's happening with this room but like it keeps going dark unless i get up and wave my
059arms around there's nothing to wave your arm right right right so it goes dark yeah so this is not me trying to get the mood lighting right it's just it's just this is just um because this is not romantic this is equity here um but anyway um so yeah i mean so we often slice by race uh and i think rightfully so um but i also you know have some question around and i get inaccurate because we have a high reduced lunch rate again i get why it's you know why we tend to slice by race but i'd also um want to understand the the correlation uh as relates to socioeconomic status too right so um you know because again you know not you know not every not every black student in akron is poor
060right you know so so so i'd like to sort of understand like you know within you know that number of black students that we're seeing oh it's disproportionate okay we get that um you know and i know that we may think we know what the answer is oh well of course it's the poorest students and that's what well but what does the data say right so again you know and also i'd like to understand how that looks in white students you know as well you know and in other groups you know sort of like understanding like you know is there a you know and again the answer more likely than not is yes um but i don't like to make assumptions with respect to this kind of thing um so again so so i'd like
061to understand you know maybe we can slice by social economic status that's that's possible if not then then that's fine and then the last thing i had here that i just wanted to kind of note um and i'm sure that we at times have changed uh since i was an aps student but one of the things i always worry about with suspensions um is is the learning loss that occurs um you know and that and that so a kid is out of school for five or ten days and uh and you know i i believe they probably have a right to make up the work that they miss while they're gone about the accompanying instruction uh it becomes hard to really do that um and if there's any if there's any and if these are
062students you have behavioral issues with already um you know it's almost like the suspension and by the way i'm not arguing you know for for for not suspending kids that's not what i'm arguing for at all i'm just thinking about is there you know are there other and and we're doing this is great but are there other support mechanisms that we can provide for those students while they're suspended to address the you know that learning loss um you know and or the exacerbation of perhaps probably more likely than that poor academic performance is kind of um my question yeah yeah dr paul there so yes if you're suspended you have the equal amount of days that you're suspended to make up the work additionally um buildings hey buildings district-wide have programs after school that kids
063even if they are suspended are able to come up and get support in their learning i know i was talking to a high school building principal where a student did get in a fight and it was a 10-day suspension and a student and the parent had reached out about the work they were missing and the student was able to go up after school every day and get support on the work that they were missing so that is still available to kids that they're able to do that because i agree with you that is the suspension is obviously concerning in many levels but absolutely the academic loss that is occurring and how do we provide opportunities to make that up and not create more of a gap in learning which tends to create more behavior issues
064and it's this perpetual horrible cycle um but i think it's one of the good things we've done for a long time is providing kids the time to make up the work that they're out but also providing support after school too dan do you also talk about the alternative to suspension program was sore yeah i'm going to let derek jump up and down for a little bit to get the lights back on there we go all right sorry about that okay go ahead no dr mick williams was also mentioning um we we created um gosh it's probably six years ago now um sore an alternative to suspension program where um kids could go to soar and then still be able to obtain academic and the work that they're missing um because that was all part of
065it too as we were looking at how can we you know provide discipline but also provide an ability to not create the academic loss and that was part of that alternative to suspension which we modeled after other districts that do that elementary buildings that put in a lot of alternative programs within their building as well using the climate team members as well and a lot of the elementary buildings also started doing the restorative practices work too which again i think that was like four to five years ago we started in that that realm of work too so i think that that's that's a continuation of what we need to keep working on is creating those different alternatives and different options that we can make sure that students understand what they did wrong they can make
066amends for what they did wrong but not continue to penalize in a punitive way and create this academic loss so which which is all that is restorative practices in in a nutshell gotcha i appreciate that i see that we're about time here um so so one thing i want to throw in the parking lot um so i have gotten some questions from from some folks in the community around you mentioned earlier about the registration being available now online um you know for students as opposed to in person um but uh but but got some um some questions i really want to understand sort of um you know the timing and and perhaps um access and or equity issues around access and thinking about some of our schools i think our audition so for example i'm
067thinking of miller south um you know and so how do we sort of expand and access to that building as well because again i've got some some emails from some parents that had raised some concerns over the past year about it um so again so we can put that in the parking lot maybe talk more offline about that but uh but but again just want to make sure that i understand that too um and then i see mr alexander raise to hand and then so i'll give it to mr alexander and then miss chapman you can take us home here's a comment i think what we can do all the work we're talking about doing here i think will be good uh but if we take what we've learned what we've been doing to be
068successful at that information and package it into a positive picture to paint this positive picture of what's going on in the district i think that will help with a number of ways it'll help with how the defendant uh helpful the administrators have been you know see uh sorrs how administration how everybody has been impactful and then you paint this positive picture now we have a positive picture a mark of image of the district and the things that we're doing and now you gather to get more people to buy into it people's ground swell next thing you know we're doing some great things we're we've been in the the relationship with the police and the still straighters with everyone i think that that could be got down the road to say how we package this and
069say here's what we're doing and what we've done that we're so we're successful and we're going to keep adding to that thank you vice president i know i know that um it's time to go but can i just second that and dan i'm going to shoot you an email we're at a very similar sentiment to what bruce has just said about marketing what we're doing and also being really transparent on our responsiveness to cultural events so that our parents know that we're engaged in current events and the social justice work that's happening in the streets so i'll send you okay i just want to wrap up as far as that ses data dr hall we don't collect individual family income data because everyone eats in akron public schools there are no applications that would give
070us that individually it would require that we speak with other systems and i think that there is a possibility to do that as we build out what this data dashboard around equity might look like so we would be able to speak with other systems that would have family income data and i also think it's important to layer zip code information because those community indicators also tell us a lot about ses in the neighborhood and so we're looking at how we slice that information by geography so that we know that certain neighborhoods have certain characteristics and demographics and family medium family incomes media and family income so i wanted to say that and then we're going to get some student level data soon so we'll be bringing that information youth truth is going to be administered
071soon out of karanjeejic's office as a climate survey and that's going to give us some real-time information from students perspective about the climates in their schools including the relationships with the adults all right well i think we're at time uh thank you free everybody appreciate it so we'll see you guys next month all right take care everybody good morning yeah thanks appreciate it see you later you