001Okay. Now, the light comes on. President Davis, the feed is now live. You can turn on your mic and start the meeting. Good morning and welcome to the April 30th board workshop meeting of the Capistrani Unified School District. The meeting is now in session. This time is 8:34. Mrs. Hayes, please call the role. Trusty Castianosy Castanos is absent. I believe she's I saw her in the parking lot coming in. Trusty Pritchard. Trusty Pritchard is absent. Trusty Zinger here. Trusty Adnams. Trusty Adams will be absent today. Trusty Jones here. Trusty Bulockus here. Trusty Davis here. The pledge allegiance will be led by Dr. Bob. Have a motion to adopt the agenda. Second. Moved by Trusty Zinger. Trust um seconded by Trusty Jones. All those in favor say I. Motion carries. Four three four three. Mrs. Hayes,
002before the board recesses to close session, is there anyone who would like to speak to a close session agenda item? There are none. The board will now recess to close session to address the following agenda items. Conference with label labor negotiators, CUA, CSEA, Teamsters, Kuma, and unrepresented employees and public safety. The board the board will convene to open session at approximately 11 over the past year and a half, uh, the 10 schools that they had then put on to be looked at. Um, and the board gave direction for staff to look at doing a few different things, right? And those included possibly adding to immersion program, but it also included looking at the the addition of uh unique programs to Marblehead as a as a mitigation based on the DAC's work. So, we've done some
003work in that area and and today we'd like to provide the board with an update on the Marblehead Flex Academy really in response to that board direction to consider adding a program to Marblehead for the upcoming year. So, um before we get started in the program, we will hear from any speakers about specifically Marblehead if we have any. Miss Hayes, do we have any speakers? We do not. There are zero requests to speak. So, I will turn it over to Dr. Merwin and his team to present um and answer questions and work with the board uh informally through an update on the Marblehead Flex Academy. Dr. Thank you, Dr. Brown and trustees. So, as uh as superintendent mentioned, we are returning today with the initial work uh regarding the the feedback that we received from
004the previous board workshop to explore this concept of the Marblehead Flex Academy. U some of the items that we're going to be that the team is going to be sharing with you today include uh parent feedback from a survey as well as some enrollment information, what schedules might look like uh as well as how might we serve students uh with IEPs and other implications for uh the potential of this program. So, uh presenting to you today will be um assistant superintendents Jen Smallley and Dr. Dave Stewart. And also here today uh supporting the item are principles Michael Hatcher and Jamie Goodwin where there in the front uh from Marblehead and from Capital Virtual. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to assistant consumer tenant Jen Smallley. Is it on? Okay, perfect. I was
005waiting for a light. Oh, okay. Good morning. Uh Dr. Stewart and I are going to provide today um an overview of the work that we've been um putting together for you to see what we're ideas our ideas are about uh Marblehead Flex. Of course, we always want to ground our work in the vision of a CUSD graduate. And I think Marblehead Flex really ties to continuous learner and innovative problem solver by providing our students and our families kind of a creative and unique way to attend school with maximum flexibility. A little bit of history on the attendance um of both Marblehead and Capo Virtual. Marblehead opened in 2001 when San Clemeni was booming and growing. And in 2001, it opened with 530 students. Its peak was in 2009 with 629 students. And you can see
006from 2009 it has greatly declined. This year they're at 190 students and anticipated next year projected amount of 168 not including students who may be interested in Flex Academy. Tapo Virtual um opened in 1999 as a textbook independent study program and then um in 2000 their second year they had 19 students. Their peak enrollment happened in 2021 during COVID with 125 students and now they're back down to just 22 students this school year. Based on the feedback pro you provided at the March 5th board workshop, we've been working with principles Hatcher and Goodwin to really come up with some creative and innovative drafts and samples for you to see how Marblehead Flex could provide maximum flexibility and innovation for our family. Our first step was um administering a community survey. We sent it to all
007of our elementary school parents as well as we pulled the email addresses of former Kappo parents who had gone to charter and public school charter and private schools and sent them the survey as well. And we wanted to seek out what they were looking for in an independent study program. Uh the survey was sent out on April 2nd. It remains open. As of April 22nd, we've had 307 people respond so far. Of the 300 plus respondents, um 107 came from CAPO families, 10 from private school families, and five from charter school families. We had 88 families that expressed interest in Marblehead Flex, which would result in potentially 125 students attending Marblehead Flex just based on that initial survey. When we did the survey, we asked a variety of questions and the next couple of slides
008are going to highlight some of the key points that we took to develop some of these drafts for you. These were the top reasons parents wanted for a flexible program. their family schedule, their child's unique learning um needs, their child's struggling to maintain in a traditional school setting all day. Their child might be more of an independent learner or they participate in um competitive sports. We asked our parents, what kind of how many days per week would you prefer? And over 50% parents said they would prefer their child do two days of independent study and three um in person. And these were the top six areas in regards to academic academics that parents shared they were interested in in this model. Math being at the top, writing, science, social interaction balanced with the independent uh
009study model, art and then reading. We also um asked some open-ended questions and these were the top trends that we saw in the survey data. Parents looking for flexibility in scheduling and learning environment, more personalized and indivi individualized learning for their child, that balance of socialization with an independent study, enrichment, academic rigor, and then it aligned with their home priorities and family values. Dr. Stewart's going to share with you some models, but before we do that, I just wanted to provide an overview for you of what the three options would look like at Marblehead Flex. We'd have the traditional model we currently do now where students are 100% in person all day. We'd have the current model we have at Cappo Virtual, but it would be housed at Marblehead where students are 100% online. We're
010excited we're buying testing software this year where students can actually do all their testing at home through monitored through this software to provide families who maybe are unable due to medical reasons to come on campus ever to have a 100% virtual experience. And then there's our new model we're sharing today, the flex program. The flex program still is an independent study program, but it allows the students flexibility to come on campus for certain parts of the day. It's important to note though that we are required to follow independent study requirements for the flex students. So, some highlights on this for you in in regards to independent study, K3 students need to receive a minimum 30 minutes live instruction each day. And Dr. Dr. Stewart's going to show you some models where that works. And then
011our fourth and fifth graders need to have at least a 30 minute check-in virtually every single day. The other part about independent study is they use a different curriculum than the students in the classroom. And their work completion or their attendance is based on their work completion. Rather than being in person, attendance in an independent study program is tied to their completion of work. So this is all going to make a little bit more sense when you start to see the models. um with Dr. Stewart. Thank you, Miss S Molly. So, we think it's important to um examine a few samples of each of the three models. So, I'm going to start first with our traditional 100% in-person model. This might look familiar to many of you. Most of our traditional inerson 100% uh schools,
012ELA and mathematics block happens in the morning. Um typically there's a recess, we have a lunch break. uh our specials uh in addition to science social studies you typically see in the afternoon and on this schedule the sample schedule we have early dismissal on Tuesday for for teacher collaboration in our 100% independent study program um you'll notice that each day there is 30 minute virtual check-in for students with their teacher this is a requirement of our independent study program um in addition there's flexible time for students to work on their assignments and then additional time available ailable students need help from their teacher um and they can schedule a Google meet with them one-on-one or or small group in collaboration with Mr. Hatcher and Miss Goodwin uh we've sat down and taken a look at
013okay so what could a Flex Academy look like taking in account the uh survey results and the feedback that we got from the community as you saw earlier there's a request for two to three days of in-person instruction um overwhelmingly and in this sample you'll see here Mondays and Fridays would be the independent uh day that students have the most flexibility to be um completing their studies at home similar to the independent study program and then the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday schedule uh would mirror what we do in our 100% uh inerson model. The next slides just kind of wanted to compare side by side how the different models uh compare daytoday. This is the Monday Friday schedule which you'll notice that the 100% independent study program on the left and the flex program sample on
014the far right. Those are very very similar, right? And they would mirror each other almost identically on Mondays and Fridays. On Mondays, the 100% inerson schedule would look very different. If we look this is the Monday and Friday schedule, right? So just focusing in on Monday knowing that Monday will also mirror Friday. Yeah. So you can see a comparison between if you think about the three models. So just to review again on Mondays and Fridays, the independent study students and the flex students would have very similar schedules. It would be the 100% in-person uh students whose Mondays and Fridays would look vastly different because they'd actually be at the school site. This slide here is looking at the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday schedule, which are flex students um who were independent on Mondays and Fridays are
015now uh present with us at the school site. Um just for comparison to see how their in-person schedule would look very similar to the inperson schedule um of our of our 100% uh students. You'll notice uh reading and math taking place most mornings. We've got um our specials like music or PE. they would also participate in the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday schedule. Um, and in this sample also, you'll notice at the end of the day, um, we'll talk about this a little bit later, special events like a water conservation assembly would be something that both flex students and our in-person students would both um, be able to attend. Okay. Um, going back to the Monday, Friday when they're at home, this is what the teacher would recommend how they spend their time because it's independent study
016and it's like we've laid out this schedule for them, right? And the expectation is that they're doing work and completing assignments on their schedule, right? So, we know kids work at different paces. Um, if they chose to schedule all of their assignment time in the afternoon, they could do that. Um, but we just kind of set up a sample schedule that we'd recommend to families that if you're at home with your child working independently, okay, we would we would suggest that you set up routines. Um, so just clarifying that they're not checking in throughout the day and they are completely independent on Mondays and Fridays. Well, they have to check in at least once, right? So, so the rules of independent study is Yes. So, the the if you look at um No, go forward.
017Keep going. Keep going. All right. Uh, one more. Yeah, right there. It's fine. So, so see that and the the time of 10 to 10:30 is not locked in. That would depend on the teacher or but but if you're K3, you have to do 30 minutes of live instruction. That's the state's law on independent study, right? So, we can't violate that. Um, if you're fourth or fifth, you have to at least do a check-in, right? So, um, if you're earlier grades, you might have that login with your teacher 10 or 11. depends on the teacher and and the structure of that login time like it does now with so you have a designated time that's yeah you'll have a designated time right so so again where in the world you do that from is up
018to you as a family how you perceive to do the rest of those days that day around it but you're going to have to have a time that you check in okay thank you in those days is there is there a way to uh do like two check-ins on Monday and none on Friday uh or you actually do have to do that. That's just the the law that you can't move it around. I'll probably let Michael Hatcher speak to that uh when he comes up, but I believe it's you have to have every day a checkin. I don't think you can like clump them all up front and it's not a minutes thing. It's a check-in per day thing. The way the laws am I accurate? Yeah. And I and then when you get to
019that, I'd like to know a little bit about how that works because like does everybody check in between 2 and 220 or well 1 and 1:20 or does is it throughout the day or whatever? But I don't need to know that now. So I'm going to ask uh Mr. Collins to share a little bit about how we support students with special needs in this program. Um yeah, so just like any other school and any other program we have in special, this is a a FAPE offer. So we have to make sure that students are able to be successful in a any program we provide to make sure they're meeting their individual needs based on their IEP. So, if we're looking at an independent study program, we currently do have students on IEPs in CAPO Cal
020Cal Virtual, but it is um students that that would just need some basic needs because you have to be an independent learner, which is in the second bullet point there. It's like we have to make sure when we're putting a student in any of our special education programs, especially an independent study program, that a student is an independent learner, that they're able to meet their IEP goals within the environment, the setting that that we're making a FAPE offer in. And if there are any additional services, can they be met through that that program? Um, so they do auh Cal Prep and Capital Virtual do a great job right now of meeting with individual IEP teams, the different schools, looking at every single student individually and what their learning styles are, what their abilities are, what
021their unique needs are to make sure that they can meet those requirements within um an independent study program. And then also again, as Miss Smallley has said earlier, the Flex Academy is an independent study program. So, we need to make sure the in the independent 100% online and then the flex academy mirror each other when it comes to meeting those students unique needs when it comes to special education IEP needs. So, um if a student's not being successful like an IEP team is holds an IEP, they make a FAPE offer of Flex Academy or the 100% independent study. Um if the student's not being successful, you're going to have several meetings, some SST meetings, some things to make sure that we're um providing intervention. And then if a student continues to not be successful, then
022we would hold an IEP to discuss is this an appropriate option, should we look at um something that's more restrictive at our um either at Marblehead within the 5day week on person or closer back to their home, their their own home schools um and whatnot. And when you're looking at if we a student does need support when it comes to like let's say a speech pathologist or OT's or PTS or those related services um students that are 100% online currently get those services at their home schools their school of residence closest to their home. Um if they become a Flex Academy student since they will be at school a couple days a week on on campus. We would then have service providers at Marblehead providing those services. And then the other students that are there
023five days a week. Um the typical Marblehead students would be again re receiving those services at Marblehead as well. So a very quick snapshot of special ed. So um but it is kind of mirroring what we're already doing currently with the independent study program with with Capital Virtual. Thank you, Mr. Collins. So would like to talk or share with you a few of the highlights of the program. Again, we're kind of at a 30,000 foot view in um exploring and developing this model, but um we already know from the survey results that we have many um families that are currently engaged in a a homeschool um program that are interested in the flex academy. So for obviously for those parents um the support of a credentialed teacher um to help them um in addition to
024the flexibility um in person 3 days a week but also available on the Mondays and Fridays to support uh socialization with other students um so again building in routines and structures um and daily interaction recess lunch PE music um as well as the instruction um another huge highlight I think is the chance to participate in school activities ities, field trips, things that we traditionally think about that um we remember about school um would also be available to our flex students um and also potentially to our independent study students as well. Um and then the last part here lessons uh SEAL we know that we utilize uh second step to support our students with learning about problem solving and empathy and managing our emotions and those types of lessons. Those would also be included um for
025our flex students. The other highlights of the program, um, as we are all aware of, next year we're moving into, um, dance and movement being a part of our phys physical education program with our elementary age students. Um, that would be available to our flex students as well. Um, block music, primary music, um, our district-led art lessons that will be six times uh, per year, um, would also be included in their schedule. What are some of the greater benefits for the Marblehead community? So, I think obviously this is um our vision uh as a board and as a district, right, to bring an innovative program to South Orange County, something that um we believe will um outshine many of our competitors um that are might be trying to offer uh similar services to our to
026our community. And with more students um allows us to offer a more comprehensive program. So adding more students, adding more staff um give us many more options um for what we can offer to our to all of our students at Marblehead, both 100% in person um online um and in the flex. Uh Miss Goodwin has already started conversations with um her school's PTA. So they've already nominated a new family liaison for the Marblehead Flex. um to think about how are we integrating and making sure that the flex academy students, independent studies students are all still a part of the entire school community. Um last year they implemented um I believe it was the first the first one second one uh dolphin day. So this is a day um in advance of the first day of
027school where families get to come on campus and get a chance to to walk around the school, meet the principal. Um the PTA organizes a lot of fun fun events and activities on that day that that would also be offered for our new students that are coming for the first time. Um and then also thinking about and making sure that we're very intentional. You saw it in the sample schedule before, but any special assemblies, um fundraisers, uh school activities, those would be calendared um and scheduled on that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday when all of our students are on campus. So thinking about next steps um and consideration. So um based on recommendations today um looking at finalizing a criteria for enrollment inclusion of a TK uh program. So uh there is curriculum for transitional kindergarten. Um
028we know that many of our families choose to keep their kids home for one more year um before they send them on to kindergarten. So, um, wanted to consider and examine, um, offering, uh, transitional kindergarten also as part of the flex program. Uh, we've been working collaboratively with our our PE and our visual performing arts to make sure that we're giving, um, priority to scheduling on the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Again, we mentioned working with our PTA, uh, special education services, YMCA, and making sure that we've got coverage for, uh, growth in an afterchool program. um working with our communications department on how do we best promote all of the great work that's happening. um making sure that we've got clarity because um you know even we had a question about okay so what's really mandatory
029right they've got these flexible schedules what do they have to do day by day what does your schedule look like so Monday Friday you don't come live in person does that mean you just have a 4-day weekend every weekend and you're not doing work no Mondays and Fridays are still school days and what those expectations look like uh for work completion that would be important to have that communicated there's a parent information meeting that's happening um tomorrow. I'll talk about that in a second. Um and then working with uh human resource services on making sure that we have appropriate staffing um given the timeline um with wanting to start this potentially for next year. Uh parent meeting that's happening tomorrow night um at 6:00. We have over 70 families that have R RSVPd to attend.
030So that's really exciting. um digging deeper into the 70 families um it equates to over a 100 students um coming live in person. So um we'll be making sure that we follow up as well with parents that couldn't be there with any information um and slides that will be shared with families uh tomorrow. So that is the end of our presentation. Um we wanted to gather additional feedback from all of you. Um before we do that, are there any questions for the board? I I have a few questions. Um, going back to page eight of your presentation, I'd like to understand I'm even going to go back further. Did we decide because I'm not remembering as a board that when we thought of doing a flex academy and offering it that Marblehead was the place
031to do it or did we consider other sites? Staff has considered lots of sites. Uh Marblehead was the one that we presented to you to get approval to pursue looking at and we did that in March 5th. We had the direction to look at adding a program like Flex to Marblehead specifically. So, we did name Marblehead on the March 5th board workshop as the site we were looking at specifically because of its proximity to the freeway. So, its ease of access for families that might be coming from all over the system, right? So, it's it's an easy in, easy out. It has plentiful parking. It had the actual available classrooms to house the independent study teachers. So, it met sort of all of the criteria logistically to have that as opposed to trying to um
032force this program into a school site that maybe doesn't have the space or has other impacts near it. Okay. Well, at the printing of this report, 303 um responses were received and we received less than 30% of yes interest. Did we talk to the 70some percent that are not interested in this? Do we know where they are? And did the location have anything to do with this? Most of them are current cappo families who are currently in a full-time program. So they're they're students who are going 5 days a week to some school and they're totally fine. They don't want to change. They're not interested in the program. So because the survey went out wide, anybody could fill it out. So you had a lot of our own families fill it out and be like,
033"Thank you, but no." uh which is fine, right? They're they're in our system. They're not most of the people who fell out the survey were in our system at our schools. So, this was not um a bunch of people who 70% of people who were outside our system and had not chosen us and who were continuing to not choose us. These are people who are already in our system. So, what percentage of the people um did we reach out to that we know are being homeschooled or in some other um charter school or public school? How many people did we reach out to or or did we have that ability to reach out to people that have chosen something else? So, if we had their contact information, we reached out to them, right? I we
034don't have the rosters for everybody who's in a charter or private school, but if they had been a CUSD student and had opted to leave us for one of those programs, we reached out to them, all of them. And do we know how many that was? I don't off the top of my head. Uh, okay. And then um my next question is in regards to the flex and the three models. At what point will we learn because you're talking about preparing to staff it. Um knowing what percentage of the number of students that will attend and take a partake in this um whether they're going to choose the 100% you know the three different models because that kind of really makes a big difference in how you're going to staff it. So which the cart
035before the horse? What comes first and how are you approaching this? Yeah, I mean the school continues to exist with its own regular students, right? So the school will be staffed for that projected number. We're pretty confident that we know that number year-over-year. So that's the the one model, right? We already are staffed for the independent study program through the um Kappa virtual program. So those teachers are just going to move over to Marblehead. So we've already staffed that. Now, if we get a bunch more of interest that who are going to enroll during the enrollment window, then we'll we'll restaff or add staff as needed to to support those kids. But we have the ability right now to support the students that we know are coming and then if we get a bunch more
036between now and July, we'll we'll increase staffing. Do we have a deadline on this flex program for them to sign up that they want to Yeah. So, our plan is to do it in in sort of two windows. So, we're going to do a window of enrollment. We're planning to open uh coming up tomorrow maybe through July 1. That would be the main window of enrollment so that we have an idea of staffing, right? But like our independent study, once we've staffed, if there's availability and somebody wanted to enroll in August and we have room, we would take them. If we don't have room, then we would probably wait list them because at that point, it becomes hard to start hiring teachers in October or November, right? So, so we're going to do a kind
037of a main push and then based on what that leaves us with staffing, we will fill those as people decide that they want to come to the program and then if we have a bunch of interests for the following year, we can grow the program. Okay. Thank you. Right now, we have 22 students that are currently enrolled flex program. So, that's in our independent study program. Independent study. Yeah. Right. So moving that over staffing will sign. And then next year at Marblehead with 168 students, does it look like that we will be having to have combination at three grade levels? No, just two because that's Yeah, we we will have there will be no but there will be combos. Perfect. There will be combo classes, but we're not looking at three grade combos. Just this
038the standard two grade combos. So um wanted to just comment that we said here that capital virtual started in 1999 but there was a predecessor school called check um that you I guess you remember you're nodding uh that was around in the 1990s um and it was right by the old Capistrono library in a building that is now gone. But anyway, I I I remember that very well because I knew people who had their kids in that school. Um, now, so is Kappo virtual going away or just moving to Marblehead? The plan is to move it to the independent study team to Marblehead. Okay. But the but the program which is really 100% virtual will stay there. Okay. Will it still exist? And actually the program will will become truly 100% virtual. So the program
039right now is not the students right now must show up in person to the Thornsley building for assessments. I'm correct with that right. Yeah. The the students who are currently in Capo virtual. So uh some additional software that we're adding will actually allow this to be truly virtual. So there is a group of students that exist in the world that we know of that won't uh currently come to the program because they cannot qualify to show up in person. And this will allow those students to actually be served by that program now. Right? So that program will come fully online. So students who for whatever reason um are unallowed to show up in person for testing can now be served by that program. But it'll all be at Marblehead. And the idea would be that
040it would be multiple models all housed under the idea of the Marblehead Flex Academy. Right. That's kind of what I thought. Yeah. So it' be Marblehead Flex Academy for the multiple models. Um, so the idea being that it's one community whether you're online, whether you're in person, or whether you're both online and in person. Um, and then obviously for our secondary students that'll be different, right? Exactly. This is just K5 or TK5. Okay. So, um, because the numbers here indicate mostly combos, but we will figure out a way to uh accommodate them um in so there so it's not all combos, but there will be combos. I'm not going to promise there's not going to be combos. There will have to be combo classes, right? I understand. J's freaking out over there. No, there has
041to be combo classes. No, no, I understand. It it pretty much has to be. Yeah. Uh but with a flex program that is somewhat easier because on Monday and Friday they are doing different totally different assignments. Um they can be and and that's where those independent study teachers could be present with them. So So there's no doubt that staffing this first year could result especially with the serving of IEP students. um it could result that we have to overstaff slightly um for the service providers and for other things. But but if we're going to try and get a program like this off the ground, we have to try to do and and it will grow. I was just a parent called me about a problem they're having in one of the charter schools and they
042wanted to go to independent study and I was telling her and um Dr. Mr. Hatcher knows that we have this independent study program which she knew nothing about and I think as people move into this it will grow because it is it's a great option and I know other districts do something like it. Yeah, that's a a good point too. So I should have been more clear about the registration. The full independent study, the 100% online kids can register for at any point in the year and that will continue. Right. If they're going to be fully online, we we currently take them at any point in the year. Okay. Um, and that will continue. So, if you're if you're choosing to just go to the online model, um, we'll be able to continue to serve
043you. Okay. Um, and that was a question I had as well, but in this new in in the in the, uh, flex academy, the the the I'll call it a hybrid academy for one thing, uh, you, uh, won't have so much easy in and out because you've got certain number of students and teachers and this and that. Whereas in the fully independent study, there's a little more give because there's so few students per teacher and such a wide grad span. Yeah. I mean, if you want ultimate flexibility, then you're an independent study, right, right? I mean, this is the idea would be that this is to try and hit that middle need of, right? But my question is that in that we're taking kids whenever whenever, but and that will be less so in the
044new program, right? Because once you're in person, there's a ratio I have to maintain. So once we're full to what the teachers can handle on the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in person, then we can't take more kids that particular for the ratio. Yes, I understand. Okay. So how did we decide on this um Monday, Friday independent and Tuesday through Thursday? That doesn't seem like that if if if it were if I were the parent, that's not what I would want. Um I would want to have something more like uh Monday, Wednesday or Tuesday, Thursday rather than the So if you look at the survey data, the responses from the surveys were that the the predominant was that they wanted three days a week. I understand that. But we also know that Mondays and Fridays are the
045days that they generally are not with us. I was thinking so that those are those that's the days that our attendance is the lowest that families are opting out of school and that they wanted three days a week. So when you put those two pieces of data together, it became a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, okay, uh, option. In the future, if the program were to get bigger, we would be able to then think about having like a a Tuesday, Thursday option, a Monday, Wednesday, Friday option. But the reality is we can't staff for every possible eventuality. Um, well, let me phrase it. We could, but I would be coming to the board for a huge investment number that I'm not willing to do until we see that the program works to some level. I I I
046think we need to pilot the program for a year, get the feedback from people who are in the program to help us then tweak the program moving forward as we go from there. So, this is trying to be right now. We can't be we can't offer all things to all people. Maybe this is an additional offer and it hopefully aligns with the data that we got from the people who said they were interested, right? Plus the data we got from people who are already in our system. I do want to talk about what the check-in is like or will be like because um again if if what parent Yeah, I know. But I want to know um if the parent is really basically want wanting Monday and Friday off. Um probably what they're saying is
047I would like to have my check-in the last thing on Monday and the first thing on Friday. Um is it like a Zoom check-in? Is it everybody checks in at the same time? Is that what it is? It's like one time of day. Yes. Come sit. All right. So, the the current structure is that there is one guarant there's one set time and the teacher groups the students has like a combo, but we have a primary teacher that's currently serves K to three. Um, and so she has two separate times. one time for K1 and a separate time for 23. And so, um, in our experience, we found that families really like the consistency of the of of of the of the check-in time. Okay. And, um, we also found that students that that want
048independent study, they're, you know, have trouble waking up in the morning. So, like an 8:00 check-in just isn't necessarily going to work. Um, and then also, you know, activities going on in in the afternoon. So that's why so we currently have our check-ins at 9 and 10:00 and so we do that because of the teachers availability of uh organizing the their instruction or their interaction for the day. So everybody in So if you're teaching, let's say you're going to be the teacher for uh a uh a a TK1 combo. So you would have a what is the minimum 20 20 minutes? So you're going to have a check-in for the TK's at a certain hour and for the K's at another hour. Is that it? Or everybody is going to check in at the same
049time? It I think it would depends upon the number of students. And so currently we only I mean of the 22 students I would say um 15 of them are grades four and five. Mhm. And so it's so few numbers to have a check-in in a in a in a you know an engaged academic you know discussion and again at the different levels it's good to have multiple students in the room. Okay. Um versus just having a oneon-one. So, if you're going to, let's say you've got um so maybe you're you're a little bit understaffed and you've got say 30 students that are grade four and grade five. You might take uh and and they're mostly grade four. So, you're going to take uh 10 grade fours at this hour and another 10 grade four
050at this hour and then all the grade five all 10 grade fives at another hour. Right. Is that sort of the kind of thing? Yeah, that's I mean if I was teaching the course, I wouldn't want all 30 fourth graders or fourth fifth graders in one at one time. I would definitely break it up, but the the scheduled time of when students come in, it's currently based upon numbers and um and it's by Zoom or some some sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. The other thing to think about too is as we think through this moving forward, remember attendance for them is based on work completion. So we offer the check-in time. we want them to come to the check-in time, they do. They can also make appointments with the teachers for other
051times to work through stuff if they have an individual issue. But if if the parent was choosing a flexible day for some reason and the kid did not come to the check-in, while that's not what we recommend, long as the work is being completed, the attendance still counts, right? Because attendance isn't based on the check-in. Attendance is based on work completion. So, as a family, if you know your child, it provides you that flexibility. Again, most of our families are are having the kids check in, but if you're like, "Well, we have this on this particular Monday, we have something big going on as a family, so the kids not going to check in." Long as they're getting their work done, you know, it'll be okay for the kid. Okay. So, uh, well, work done
052and mastery, I'm assuming. Um, well, yeah, that's how work completed. We talk about that later on today. Yeah. Our our program is generally more rigorous than competitor programs. I'll be honest, we've gotten feedback from our program that the reason people leave our independent study program and go to other uh non-public district-based independent study programs is that ours is too hard, rigorous. Um it actually really want we really want our kids to learn. We really want to say if you finish our independent study program, you're ready for the next level. Because some of these kids may do this and then choose to go to a traditional middle school. Um we don't want those kids to walk in behind when they come to our middle schools. We want them to have that option or they're going to
053go to our online middle school, but then they're going to go to a regular high school. Same thing. Um, often when those families opt out, when they do come back, their students are are unfortunately behind. And, you know, we've shared data with one of those programs here in this boardroom, right, where the metrics for those students are in the red category on the state dashboard in pretty much every category. Those kids are unfortunately probably not as prepared to come back. Um, and so, so when we talk about options, we don't want to be false about giving options. So, we want to say if you go through our programs, you still have options to do other things in the future. Stay online, come back, etc. So, um, and I I kind of hate to even ask
054this, but the teachers on Monday and Friday are going to have a certain amount of time doing check-in. Uh, what are they doing the rest of the time? So, planning and that's where independent appointments can happen, right? So, if kids have appointments they need to have for specific things, for intervention, they can have that with those teachers. That's the flexibility. Okay. Okay. Um, and then are we going to I understand there might be some issues with the appropriateness of the program for a student on an IEP that we really can't give them FAPE if they are uh have certain IEP issues. Uh, will there be any other sort of kind of admission requirements or it's just you you know come one and come all uh as long as there's room and that kind of thing?
055Yeah, I think at this point it's come one come all as long as there's room. Um the IEP is the a specific one, right? Like certain we do not want to set up a kid to be in a program that that that is inappropriate for whatever their specific need is, right? So the IEP will be the one thing, but right now it's come one, come all and even we will have students with IEPs in the program. It's just a matter of can we provide the services needed to make sure they meet their IEP goals in that setting. Um okay. And then that that will determine also where they get those services. So, I think like Clint said, if they're a complete online kid, 100% online, means you're never showing up to Marblehead, your services will
056most likely be provided at your home school. That way, if you live in Mission VJO, you don't have to drive all the way to Marblehead to get your services. You can get your services at your home school. But if you are a flex student where you're going to be at Marblehead Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, that's when we'll get you your services in those days at Marblehead. So, um, a student who, uh, maybe comes in for your semester and either is not attending because really they didn't they wanted something much looser than we have or they are just doing so very poorly because they're really not independent learners. Um, are we going to be saying to them, you know what, this is you were here, this is great, but it's really, really probably not for you in
057the future. Yeah. I mean, this is not So, you're talking about a general education student. So, we would absolutely counsel these students into a placement that we think is appropriate if they're being unsuccessful. But ultimately, um, as we know in our district, we can't force general ed parents to do, um, one program versus another. We can't force them to not go to a charter and come to us. We can't force them to go to a charter and not come to us. And so we wouldn't be able to say, "You've been unsuccessful. You are not allowed to be in this program." That would be very hard for us to do. Um IEP is different. Like if you're not meeting your goals, we are not then doing our duty, right? Um in terms of what we're legally
058required to do. Um that being said, we would definitely have a conversation with the family. If independent learning is not seeming to be successful for you, we recommend that you come to our 100% school day because you need more intense service, more interventions, those types of things. Okay. As I I I don't know if I have any more questions, but I have a a cautionary statement. So, when my kids were at Ambul, there was uh year round and traditional. And you may think that you will get this to be one school. You're not going to because Ambul was not one school. I met an assistant principal last night who told me he was at Ambul. Uh he'd been ambul student. He told me when he was there. I asked him if he knew two adults
059the same age, the same grade that I knew who had been students at Ambial. He didn't know either one of them. And I realized he was in year round and they were in traditional. They never knew each other. And I I mean I know all I talk to people all the time that their parents, you know, I talked to parents who were parents at AMU. Sometimes their kids were in the same grade as my kids. They didn't know them. So I'll I'll a challenge accepted. Uh and b I'll answer your anecdote with anecdote. I live down the street from a woman I went to grade school with. I have no idea who she is. And we went to a one school traditional all year and we were in the same class, I've been told. Yes.
060Um, so I would say I remember that my son and his wife were were classmates at Ambul and she was in year round and he was in traditional they didn't know each other and I mean yeah one of the things that we are looking at is making sure that the school site where we got one school three models how do we ensure that um there is strong collaboration amongst all staff members. So we would be going to one common uh minimum day or one early out day. The staff can be meeting together both uh collaboratively to make sure that we're hitting the mark at every grade level. Um but then also as an entire Marblehead staff. So that would be happening. I have one last question staying along the lines of what we're talking about.
061So I'll direct it to you. Unlike our charter online school where they are outside CUSD, any one of these models, especially the flex, do they have to live within CUSD? So, we take the chances of growing or I would there be a chance that those charter people may look at our program and switch over. Can you talk us through that? Yeah. I mean, so we absolutely would not limit our program to the boundaries of CUSD, right? If we can provide an awesome experience to someone who lives outside our boundaries but wants to come to our school, we do. And we have students at every school who transfer. And I think a great example of that is we have a lot of students in the M.Y.I.P. program who do not live in our boundaries, right? Um,
062and we get them an experience that they couldn't get in their home area. Uh, if if they are currently attending a public school in another district, obviously that district has to release them. Um, generally the county supports those releases, especially if you offer a program that that other school doesn't offer. Uh, i.e. Mission has an a program. We don't. So, a lot of our athletes go to Mission High School. Um, not that I'm bitter or anything if Crystal's listening. Um, so, so, so yes, we would take that. So, I if for example, uh, Cal Ops students started to notice that they could have a version of ours, they could. Now, obviously there's a limit. So, the the charter you're representing or you're talking about, I should say, um, CALOPS has students from from deep in
063Riverside. Those pro those kids could join our online program. They're probably not going to do our flex program because the commute from Riverside to three days a week here would probably be unsustainable. So, I don't expect that we will take students from a large radius for the flex program, but we could. They absolutely could. Um, like I said, that's actually how we know that the data about the rigor issue is we've been told by some of those families who've left our 100% online program to pursue options similar to Cal Ops is because of our rigor, right? So, my real question is the financial part because we know what that charter online is doing. We're not getting the monies to educate these students that live outside. So, are we not further opening our door to growing
064that actually? So if they lived outside our district and came, we would claim as a m as ADA though. So we would get the money if they attended this program, right? So So what's happening now with that charter is um because the charter is located in CAPO, property taxes from CAPO fund all those students regardless of where they live. So if they live in Riverside, it's still cappo property taxes on a pass through basis that funds them at Calops. This would be different if you're a let's say you're a northern San Diego County student um who just on the other side of the base from Oceanside and you want to come to this program. we would now actually get the ADA for you. So we would get the money for you. It wouldn't be passing
065through to another entity. So So if we were to grow by a hundred students outside of our district, that would actually be a financial benefit to the district. So is it legal that we could solicit from that charter that's within CUSD to make them aware of this program that we have? I would say marketing is always legal. Soliciting at the charter and their events, probably not. And Ryan does do marketing. So I will tell you that Ryan did some marketing in Orange County areas outside of our boundaries for the MYI. My program and I believe we got I don't know if Ryan if you're listening we got like four students from Cronad Delmare area who joined our MIT program this year in response to some KAL9 advertising um and some other advertising that we've done.
066So so we absolutely can advertise in selective areas um to to targeted people who we think that this program might speak to like we've done with my to add on to that question. Um but the 100% virtual learning we would not of the financial benefit. Yes, we would. We would. Yeah. If they enroll in any of our program because that's not our program. So, CALPS isn't ours. So, they get the money because it's a charter, right? If it was our school, we would Huh. Right. Yeah. It's our school. This is our school. Yeah. And it's a charter. It's not a charter. This is ours. So, we will be doing a little recruiting. Yes. I I would Yeah. I would say we can't go visit we can't go visit their events and like zoom bomb them
067and jump in. But but we can definitely market our program. I have a question. Oh, I was gonna say and this is why I want to pilot the program, right? Like the reality is the best marketing we have is parents who are happy and and their students are successful in a program. While it might not have every option for everybody from day one because we pos can't possibly do that by doing something we get to see if we can make the program run. Then we can iterate it, refine it, make it better and and our best marketers will be the kids who are successful in the program and their families. Okay. Let's say I have a fourth grader next year and the program is wildly successful. Everything goes well. I'm just wondering what's ahead for
068my fourth grader once they get into middle school. Like where would they go if is there a flex program available to them? So there is not currently a flex middle school program. Um honestly one thing at a time for staff. There's only so much we can build at once. So they'd have two options, right? So there is a 100% online middle school. So they can stay 100% online. Um or they could go to a traditional middle school and go 100% in person. That will be something as we see our numbers, right? I mean the reality is if if our numbers to be entirely honest stay at like 22 kids in the program, we probably can't build the follow-on program. If we build the program out and there's hundreds of students in this flex program, then
069we would consider building a flex middle school um for them to move on. I don't know that that program works in high school as well, so we'd have to do some research on that. But really, it's just going to depend on program growth potentially for those kids moving up. Yeah. I mean, if you're going to be a fifth grader next year, then probably not. We probably don't have something for you immediately moving into sixth grade uh se separate from online. And this will be one principle for all three options. I think that's in there. We can talk about staffing. It will and it won't because we ought to have multiple online programs. So right now, yes, the Marblehead principal would be over the Marblehead Academy. All three options. Um and then the way it's looking
070is that Mr. Hatcher will be split amongst the middle college um and wherever our middle school online program lands because he'll have to administer both that. So while those teachers might be on the campus of another school as we empty the Thornsley building, uh Mr. Hatcher would still be their administrator and would administrate for all the families for the middle school and the high school. Marblehead will be one principal, but all of our online programs wouldn't be all housed under that Marblehead principle. No, 100% in person and the flex and the virtual. So all the Marblehead flex would be one principle. But I say that because I don't want to blend this idea because we're moving all of our virtual programs out of Thornsley building. So Mr. Hatcher will still stay over the secondary virtual
071programs. So all three of these programs here will be under one under one principle. All right. So, this is where we like to get some feedback from all of you. Forward. So, we have three posters um at three different tables. So, we want to capture some information around these three big big questions. And it'll be just kind of a casual gallery walk. So, we can get up, get out of our seats. Um, you can talk to a neighbor, um, add some information. But the first question, um, that we'd like to ask, knowing that each of you are very connected to your communities. We heard from 300 people, and we know we have 40,000 others out there that we didn't get a chance to hear from. So, we're curious, what else are you hearing in your
072community about the Flex Academy concept? Is there any feedback that you've heard um, with families that maybe we didn't share out in the slides? Um, another poster, uh, going to the second bullet. What questions do you think parents might have? Because tomorrow night is when we're doing our information night at Marblehead. Um, so is there any questions that you think that parents might have um that we need to answer tomorrow um or in the future uh for all of our parents? And the final question is um based on what you've heard today, some of our conversations, what do you value most about what was presented? Um, and what do you think are some of the cornerstones for this program that we want to make sure that we emphasize? So, with that, um, three posters, there's
073markers at every poster. Um, just take your time, add as many ideas as you can to each of those, and then we will do a share out at the end. So, the posters are on these three tables. One right here behind me, and then two here off to my right, one on the tables. If if staff would like to do a little summarizing and sharing out of the thoughts on the posters and then it'll be uh time for our lunch recess. Yeah, it's like zoomed right in. It's going to be great. Um, so we'll just review real quickly uh the the feedback that you provided to all of us. So the first question is what are you hearing in the community? Is there any feedback not captured in the community survey? Um, so some general
074comments. Um, not hearing too much, but when it is brought up, everything we hear is, uh, positive. Um, I think this goes back to one of the earlier uh, trustee questions and thinking about we're running three programs, one school. How do we make sure that everyone feels included and that we're accepting? The second question was, what questions do you think parents might have that we need to answer either tomorrow at theformational meeting or in the future? ideas about how the flexibility will provide opportunities for students to socialize, addressing rigor, addressing um students who are advanced and then trusting idea of what happens if they have gone there for fourth and fifth. Is there a middle school option? And then the last question was what do you value most about what was presented and what are
075the greatest strengths of this model? Flexibility allowing f socialization along with flexibility and options for our families. Okay, at this time I suggest we recess for a 1-hour lunch. The time is now 12:32. Trusties, I will ask you to return to the boardroom at 1:30. We'll be speaking to you in a little while. Um, we wanted to give the board an update on our work for standardsbased grading. This is a long-term project that's going to roll over the next few years, obviously. And and really what we're working on doing with standardsbased grading is is a couple of things and um I'm sure the staff who will present to you will help contradict me a little bit or or at least increase my accuracy. But but the few things that we want to do is one,
076we really want to make sure that our grades are consistent, which means um when we tell colleges and our local partners that a student got an A in pre-calculus from Toro and another student got an A in pre-calculus from San Clementi High School and another student got a A in pre-calculus from Aliso Niguel that that those are commiserate grades that that that is saying something about the level of understanding of those students about the pre-calculus standards, right? That that's what the grading is based on. it's actually based on performance and learning and knowledge um and and that we are reasonably assured that they are ready for the next step right and that the colleges and the other post-secondary partners can look at that as a very accurate very true um reflection of students knowledge and
077learning. So part of that is is then thinking about how do we grade and working with our teachers on standardsbased grading um and because talking about something in theory versus putting it in action are two very different things. And so uh it's I would say not easy to say in theory but much easier than it is to put in action. So the easy work happens um in my office and then the hard work happens in the classroom. So, we wanted to give you an update on the on the path, the work of the guiding coalition and the great work that the teachers have done. And then we wanted you to have some time to hear from teachers and students about their experiences with it, knowing that this is an ongoing iterative process that will continue
078to to get better and become the way we do business over the next few years. So, with that being said, I'm uh going to say that we will hear from speaker cards if we have any. There are no speakers, so we will skip the speaker cards um because there aren't any and we will turn it over to Dr. Merwin and his team to present. Thank you, Dr. Brown, trustees. So, uh, as superintendent already shared, we are here to provide you with an update, but also to, uh, kind of ground you in again the history and the background behind this work. Um, some of you may recall or you may not be aware that this this work, as you look here over to this side wall, this work began the evening that this was uh, created.
079It was a board workshop back in June of 2021. Feels like about 20 years ago. It was only it wasn't that long ago. That evening, a board provided direction to staff to begin to revise the grading policy. That was back in June of 2021. And then work occurred and we will talk be talking just very briefly about that. And then the board approved the revisions in February of 2023. Since that time then there's been significant work uh and you'll be hearing about the guiding coalition on grading that's been working on this different trainings that have happened and now we're very excited to present to you a multi-year plan on how this will become uh district practice and fully implemented by 2829. So I am going to without further ado I'm going to hand it over
080to um assistant superintendent Jen Smallley and executive director Dr. Meg Irvvis. they will be leading you through the presentation and they will also be introducing to you some very special guests who have joined today that we will also be hearing from them as well. So, uh, Miss Smallley, go ahead. Thank you, Dr. Merwin. Um, we've provided trustees questions. Dr. Irvvis is going to lead a moderated panel this afternoon and we just wanted you to see the questions that we're going to ask our students and teachers in case if you have the same questions, you'll know that we're going to ask them our experts in a few minutes. We're honored to share with you today uh our journey towards standardsbased grading. Standardsbased grading is our natural next step in our professional learning learning community work at
081our middle schools and high schools. Our secondary schools have been focused on redeveloping or developing robust tutorials to provide both reteing and reassessing opportunities as well as enrichment and standardsbased grading is the next step in that process and work at our school sites to support student learning. We always want to ground our work as Dr. Morwin just mentioned in the vision of a CUSD graduate service. Thank you. So why standardsbased grading? As we engage in this work, we consider the why. We want to communicate student learning that reflects mastery of standards, encourages a growth mindset, separates academic achievement from other factors, and provides clarity for students and families. As you know, trustees have been critical in spearheading the work around improving grading practices in CUSD. In fall of 2022, trustees provided feedback on their values
082for the grading work we were about to engage in, including grades as a reflection of a student's mastery of content and actionable information about progress that is understandable to students and parents. Out of that work, board policy and AR5121 were revised in a series of collaborative meetings that included teachers, CUA administrators, parents, and students. Some of the key shifts of board policy 5121.1 are reflected on the slide, including evaluating students based on standards, how that information is shared with students and parents, and that grades ultimately reflect a student's level of mastery of learning targets with multiple opportunities to demonstrate understanding through a variety of assessments. Additionally, the AR that accompanied that work included clear direction to eliminate the inclusion of non-academic factors from grades, guidelines around the type of homework or extra credit that should
083be included, multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery throughout the semester leading up to and including the final assessment. The work of communicating standardsbased grading to parents is ongoing and will be a critical component of what we'll be doing next year. That work has already begun with presentations to our CUC CU PTSA parents on those three dates. And we also did a book study with the CUC PTSA reading grading for equity by Joe Feldman, which is one of the book one of the books that's guiding this work in our district. Last spring, we established a guiding coalition. It consists of 56 teachers from across our middle schools and high schools and subject areas. They met throughout the spring and then throughout this school year. They did a two-day training and then continued to meet with those trainers
084throughout this school year to share what they were learning as they were piloting components of standardsbased grading in their classrooms. They shared best practices with their colleagues on the coalition and they shared with us their challenges, what they were learning, and provided a lot of feedback to district staff on how we could better support this implementation districtwide with all their colleagues at their school sites. And lucky for us, we're going to get to hear from some of our guiding coalition members today. Our administrators, especially our site principles, are absolutely integral to this work. We did a workshop with all of our assistant principles and principles last summer. The last two years, we've spent time in our principal meetings doing book studies. We also read grading for equity by Joe Feldman and then On Your Mark
085by Thomas Gusky. Our principles are exhausted about talking about standardsbased grading with Dr. Irvvis and myself. At every secondary principal business meeting, our middle school principal meetings and our high school principal meetings, we have been talking about standardsbased grading. But it's been very exciting for our principles to share what's working well at their school sites. They're sharing the experiences of students who are going through this pilot with a teacher and highlighting things and sharing challenges and working together as teams to figure out solutions of how we're going to implement this district-wide. Um, so we really do focus on student learning and that vision of a CUSD graduate. I meet with principles every three weeks. In those meetings, we always talk about the progress of standardsbased grading. I asked them to share what have you accomplished
086since the last time we met in this area and what will be accomplished next time I come back. I've had the opportunity to see really neat things. Some of our um principles have led book studies with certain departments or with their leadership teams. Um and then we've also shared best practices. For example, uh principal Ezra at Tasorro High School created a survey for his staff asking his staff of these 15 components of uh standardsbased grading, which ones are the most easy to implement or do you agree with and which ones are going to be the ones that you need the most work with? And then he shared that with our principles. So now all of our high school teachers have taken that survey and most of our middle school teachers, which has really helped our
087principles lead the instruction and this work at their school sites and personalize it to their staff. And then we have another training coming up for our uh principles this summer as well. Just as a quick reminder, the books that were mentioned, the book studies are also the books that were given to the trustees a few months ago for you to read as well. Although our guiding coalition teachers, those 56 teachers have had extensive training and they themselves have gone out and shared the message at their school sites. All teachers in CUSD have had some training with this. In addition to the specific site training experiences I just shared with you, we did uh have road shows last spring and went out to school sites to share information to either departments or entire staffs. And we
088had several two-day trainings. Um and then all teachers in on November 1st when through um standardsbased grading training for middle school and high school teachers and we completely recognize that November 1 had challenges due to our limitations on space and audiovisisual and putting that many people in a room to come together and do small groupoup discussions. But a really positive thing came out from November 1 and that was the feedback from the teachers that we need to simplify this training target it specifically to CUSD teachers and make it one day. So, we did, we took their feedback, we made a one-day training, and since November 1st, we're really excited to share we've had 400 teachers go through this training based on the feedback from November 1st. I will work on the math right now and
089get back to you about 25%. 25%. He's better at math than I am. We had to count everyone for this. About 25%. So these are two draft documents that have been developed in collaboration with the guiding coalition as well as PLC coaches. You have a copy of these and we're going to dig into them a little bit. So the research on grading suggests that you need to go slow to make such substantive change especially in a large district like ours. And so we are working on a four-year implementation model that includes two two-year phases. In phase one, including 2526 and 2627 school years, we're focused on two parallel sets of work. Identifying CUSD universal priority standards and learning targets and separating behavior and attendance from academic grades. As part of our work as PLC's for
090years now, sites have identified their priority standards and learning targets and we've collected that information. We will now begin the work of identifying CUSD universal priority standards. As you can see in the column on the left, this came out of requests from teachers and department chairs across the district, both middle and high school and across content areas. It's the critical next step for our PLC work that is connected to this grading work that we're engaged in now. So we will be identifying these universal standards and targets across courses in secondary. The work will be done by the teachers who teach the course as they are best position to determine the guaranteed and viable curriculum for their subjects. This will support the existing PLC work around common department assessments and learning targets and around reassessment strategies
091and norms. This is a heavy lift for any district aligning content across every course in secondary and especially again for a district our size. So to start with the work will be done over three full days. We'll be utilizing two existing PLC days that we have in secondary by content area, but we have calendared those so that everyone uh in English and middle school is on the same day or math and high school on the same day. So capturing those two days which already exist as well as November 1st, teachers next year will be working on the priority standards that will become our universal CUSD priority standards and learning targets by course. Parallel to that work in phase one, the guiding coalition is looking at how to separate behavior from academic grades and how to
092reimagine our current citizenship and work habit scores to support this shift. And I'm going to go back to that in a moment. So phase one, identify universal priority standards, report behaviors separate from academic grades. This will last for two years. In the following two years, we initiate phase two that will be in school years 2728 and 28-29. And that will focus on establishing grading scales and a standardsbased grade book. By placing these significant shifts in phase 2, teachers will be familiar with the why of the work and position to adjust the process of how they report grades in meaningful ways that better support students understanding of their own learning. Our guiding coalition has been utilizing different grading scales. So when on the left we talk about grading scales, that could be a teacher implementing a
093four-point grading scale, a fivepoint grading scale, moving away from the 0 to 100 mark that we currently have and that is very supported by the research on grading. And just to just to jump in because I know we get one question from the public a lot, so we'll clarify it as many times as we can. The transcripts will still be A throughF. So this will not change how a college looks at a transcript and a GPA. So your your colleges will still see what they always see. So this won't have any delotterious effects on our students ability to attend college or be competitive for college. Right? So it doesn't change the transcript in any way, shape or form. And because this work is all based on research, it's happening across the country and it's actually
094there there's research on how the students who have experienced standardsbased grading are doing in college which is also positive. There is nothing to preclude a teacher from utilizing grading scales in an individual classroom sooner than 27 28 28 29. It's already happening in some classrooms, not only with our guiding coalition members who might have tried this with their students, but also there are teachers who teach advanced placement classes, IB classes that have already been using a grading scale rather than the traditional 0 to 100. And this shift um the grade book will eventually need to support the shift and we will be leveraging our technology tools. Canvas has capability for this within its existing model. So, we'll be looking at that and um our teachers will be letting us know how we can leverage those
095tools and which ones we want to include district. But they'll eventually have grade books organized by learning targets and assessments that provide students with multiple opportunities to show mastery of those targets. So, if we're separating out behavior and attendance from academics, we still need a way to communicate that critical information to families. Members of the guiding coalition as well as PLC coaches began to consider how to ensure that we effectively communicate what is now being called the Kappa way. We would be repurposing. This is the recommendation. So be reporting that through the semester in Canvas. A lot of this is just kind of thinking about how do we we go back to the beginning provide clarity for families and students throughout the year as opposed to here's your grade at the end of the year.
096You can't do anything about it, right? But throughout the year, parents are getting these updates on what happens throughout the year. These these families can see what they're doing. And so students, families, teachers can work together to make adjustments because we want to enhance of all of our and our trainers who have followed this shift in multiple districts say that it actually makes the citizenship and work habits grades much more relevant and important because teachers, students, and parents are placing more emphasis on that piece. and that's going to be a part of the year one and two phase. So at this time we're going to be turning it over to what you're probably most excited to hear in this presentation which is from the teachers and students living in this work. And so we're going
097to be introducing our panel or having them introduce themselves. So teachers subject and school and students if you can share what school you're representing and then we have some structured questions that we're going to use with them. It's a moderated panel but then of course we can ask them other questions as well. Um, hello. My name is Sunonny Nelis and I'm from Dana Hills High School. Hi, I'm Jen Vega and I'm a math teacher at Aoyo Vista Middle School. Hi, I'm Ya and I'm from San Hills. Britney Branding from New Hart Middle School and I teach English. Want to start with that one? Hi, I'm Via Mock and I'm from Tasor High School. Uh, I'm Steve Danner, a science teacher from Tasor High School. Hi, I'm Kai Muso and I am a student from Tasoro
098High School. I'm Kiana Brashier and I'm from San Clemeni High School. And I'm Laura Compion. I'm a math teacher at St. Clemeni High School. I'm Hannah Wood and I'm from Zenkcommen High School. I'm Tatum Davis and I'm from Sanan Hills High School. So, first we want to say a huge thank you to our students and our teachers who have stepped away from school at a very busy time of year. So, thank you for joining us and I'm going to throw the first set of questions out to our teachers on the panel and then we'll follow up with students and I shared with them when we discuss the panel. Um, anyone can jump in and we're not going to, you know, wait for an answer from everyone. We're just going to get through questions to really
099get a feel of what it's been like for our guiding coalition members who were probably asked by their principal, hey, do you want to be on this great committee without really knowing exactly what that meant? And so after a year's work with the guiding coalition, they were actually invited at the very end of that first year to recommmit. Okay, now we deeply know what the work is. Are you still interested in being a part of the pilot? and nearly every single one of the original members agreed to continue with us, including these four teacher leaders. So, what has been the most rewarding part of piloting standardsbased grading in your classroom? Any of our teachers can jump in. All right. So, I want to just start by saying I went to my principal prior to even
100knowing the district was moving to standardbased grading because I read a book called Building Thinking Classrooms, which is phenomenal. And I tried it out for a year, but the kids at the whiteboards were still, is this worth anything? Is this is this going to affect my grade? Do I have to do this? And I was like pulling my hair out. I just want you to learn the calculus, right? And so from that, I said, I've heard about the standard-based grading. want to go more towards standards and just getting to know what they know opposed to all these extra points for just doing whatever. So that was in 2023 and then we came back in the fall and I was like oh the whole district is going to this. So it was interesting to see the
101perspective um regarding this question rewarding part is those original questions have diminished a lot right I don't get any kind of is this worth points it's more like okay I know I need to practice in class in order to learn the assignment so that's been really rewarding the other thing the students can clearly see what they're struggling with opposed to um just oh chapter eight right now they can say oh I need help with integration or I need help with you know taking derivatives of trig functions um a lot more clearly and then they can focus on those remediation so it's smaller chunks opposed to just I'm failing the entire class thank you I'll add into that I think that as teachers we um but our heads up against the same problems over and over
102again year after year so I think what's been rewarding is to see that here we have an option to try to address some of those things so that they don't have to be year after year the same problems. So things such as student motivation to be willing to rewrite since I teach English, rewrite a paper, work on that. That used to be a big component of what every single quarter you knew that you'd struggle with or end of the quarter projects that students would never, let's say, turn in. And now all of a sudden that's changing because the system itself is changing in a way that I couldn't have done all on my own. So I think the power behind this too is that as we come together then it becomes more of that interaction
103that we want like that vision of teachers and students and parents all working together because teachers understand more clearly what they're trying to teach. Students understand more clearly what they're trying to learn. And then parents are brought into the program too. So they can encourage their students. They can see on a rubric. Let's say you can do this. you're only missing your topic sentence or your piece of evidence and it provides them a path forward instead of just you still haven't turned it in. What's going on? So, from a teacher's perspective, that's a huge rewarding component. I was all in when this started to happen. And I tried to do this by myself when I worked at Los Flores Middle School with the algebra classes because it's I taught high school so I understood what
104they needed to know from algebra and could really hone in on those skills. Um but it's hard to do as one person. So as soon as I heard this was available, I was all in. Um I feel one of the biggest rewards is that students are in it for the learning now. They're not trying to be point collectors. So they they don't say, "How much is this worth? What am I going to get for this?" It it goes to understanding. Now, what can I do to better understand this? And where can I seek that intervention if I need it? Um is it going to be during class? Um do I need to be part of a smaller group? Something like that. So, the collaboration, what Laura said, having the building thinking classroom whiteboards in my
105room, um, really helps facilitate them learning the content. And it's not just going home and practicing all the problems in the book for math. It it takes thought process for middle school kids to truly deeply understand the algebraic concepts because I tell them it's like having kindergarten all over. you're starting that new foundation and it's got to stick with you through all the higher math courses. So, you know, these are 12 and 13 year olds trying to do the work of 14 and 15 year olds. So, them not getting so caught up in the minutia of I have to get this assignment done. And for even just regular math 8 kids, homework to them is check a box. Oh, it looks like I did something. Here you go. So, but when it comes to standardsbased
106grading, well, it they see quickly if you're not putting in the work to understand, you can't pass the assessments and you're not going to understand the standard. So, for me, that big picture is they're no longer point collectors. They're taking their own learning into their own hands. I'm really trying to understand and I appreciate that several of you have kind of gone right into our next question. I'll just read it in case there's anything more to share about it. If you can describe a moment when you noticed a shift in how your students approach their learning because of standardsbased grading. I was going to say I have nothing else to add to that question, but I want to talk to this one. So, um I teach science and we do a lot of labs. Um,
107and one of the frustrating things for any teacher, but especially for a science teacher, is when you start reading labs and it's a group lab and next thing you know, you're reading the same answer over and over and over again. You've got kids that are just collaborating on the lab, you know. Um, big turning point for me this year was no more grades for lab packets, but there's a lab assessment the day after the lab typically. Um, and on that day is when I assess the big points that we're supposed to the students are supposed to get from the lab. Um, it was probably our third round of this this year. I had a group of students working on the lab. Um, and I just was kind of walking by and they were all kind
108of going about the lab in their own way using different strategies to complete the lab and the data collection and the analysis and all that stuff. And at the end, just as I was leaving, I heard a student say, "Guys, I before we get done here, I I need you guys to talk with me about all the analysis questions." Like, he hadn't written down a single thing, but he knew that the next day there was going to be an assessment on it, and he wanted to make sure that he understood the stuff from that lab. That was unprompted. That was just he wanted to make sure that he got it. And that is not something that typically happens during a lab rotation in our class. So, that for me was like, "Oh, okay. This is
109working." even though the kids aren't necessarily going to turn that lab sheet in because they didn't want to go through the whole process, they at least want to know the big picture and and learn from it. Um, that was a good thing. I liked it. I had to say during our final exam because I hold the kids accountable to taking each standard three times. Two times for sure, third time is an option for them and we take the higher of the two scores and average them. So, it just keeps them accountable throughout the semester. I don't know if they like it. so much, but by the time the final exam comes about, they don't have to cram anymore, right? That they've actually truly learned the material that it's like, oh, I've seen these questions 15
110time, you know? So, it's really exciting to know that I want them to learn calculus at a high level. That's my main goal and I tell them all the time and they're showing that's true from um before I was doing building thinking classrooms, the final um we're about 10% higher now with standardbased grading and that's on an AP mock exam first semester. So that's huge to see that kind of increase because they're actually retaining the material instead of just memorizing right before the exam and dumping it, right? That's typically what happens in math classes. Thank you. In what ways has standardsbased grading allowed you to better support individual student growth? I guess I'll start on this one. Um, having been in the district for a while, I think it's nice having been on the coalition
111to recognize that as our preview today shared, all of these pieces have been in process for a while, but it's now the full picture coming together. So, we've had tutorials at our school sites for many years now, and we've had ELC's where we've been working to create unified rubrics for, let's say, a writing assessment. But with this final piece of the puzzle put together, all of a sudden the opportunity for what intervention could look like is dramatically different, the idea of being able to hone in on, for example, at a new heart school setting, middle school setting, um tutorial for, let's say, a specific writing piece and have the distribution of students who need work on, let's say, a skill like claim writing going to perhaps one teacher's classroom and then another group of students
112students going to another teacher's classroom who are really struggling with evidence that that's now we're coming full circle. I think we have not been able to complete that puzzle because of this piece that was missing. So I see standardized grading as fulfilling that last piece of the puzzle. So for me that's where I can foresee that that individual component will just be remarkably different in years to come. piggybacking on what she's saying about intervention um how I've changed with math 8 in the new curriculum that we have um implemented this year with the textbooks we just adopted um and using the I Ready components um it's really helped me hone in on making my test smaller and more targeted That way they're not having to remember for a long giant chapter. No, it's specifically this
113one learning target that we're going to focus on. And it might piggyback on other things, but this is the foundation we need for the next one. So, I'm able to have that small group intervention. And when it can't just be me, I'm able to take the higher level algebra and geometry students to be peer tutors because they've already gone through this content. So they come in to my tutorial as well and they peer tutor each other and they start making these relationships to help each other understand. It's one of the most beautiful things you could ever see in a classroom. They're all doing it and I'm just facilitating or I have the one that I know needs that targeted help but some others may just need little spots here and there. Um the other thing
114is is that they are getting multiple opportunities to show that they understand the content and even though it didn't happen on my timetable it didn't mean that it was impossible to do it just meant they needed more support more resources and more time in order to understand that learning target that for me is the biggest thing I've seen from students I also think it It it gives hope for the kids who are failing, right? That the kids who have been missing so many assignments and whatnot, they're like, I don't even know where to start because my debt is so big to even get out of that failing grade. So, I feel like with standardbased grading, it's truly looking at, okay, you might need to do five of these assignments to be able to take that
115assessment, but at least you don't have to do all of them, right? That it's just the assessments that are in there. Um, that it gives hope to the kid to be like, I can still pass this class. Even to this day, I every single I think I only have two C's in my class right now, but those C's if they show mastery on the final, they can still get an A at the end of the semester, which is huge because they're showing me they understand it. I like what Jen said down there. It's not, you know, my timeline that I'm giving these assessments. It's throughout the entire semester. They still have a chance to earn that A because they showed me that they understood. Thank you. You're actually touching on our next question. I really
116appreciate it. How has your own teaching practice evolved during this pilot? Um, so through my work as a PLC coach, um, it always kind of felt like we had this old system when we were trying to like force in this new thing where we had, you know, it's not new. Um, for some people it still is. um we have these standards based uh or sorry we have these um priority standards and we have assessments with priority standards and we have reassessments and how do you make that work in an old grade book um standardsbased rating kind of forces you to wipe the slate clean and just focus on the assessments that are telling us progress towards standard and that fits perfectly with our PLC process where we're um basically chunking and checking into small groups
117um assessing intervening and then reassessing Um, so for me going through this pilot has forced me to be ex much more focused. Um, I think I kind of halfway joked like I feel like a real teacher now. Like I actually know specifically like what we're learning every single day and I know how it's going to be assessed and I know what I need to do to intervene afterwards. Like it it has completely changed my approach to my curriculum. Um, which is obviously a good thing. everything has a purpose now. And I hate to say that I found stuff that didn't really have a purpose before. And I was like, but it's such a good activity. Sorry, it's not. We don't need it. Like, let's get rid of it. Um, but that opens up time for
118intervention and reassessment that we didn't have. Um, so that's been I know. I used to go around and stamp homework be at the beginning of every class and if the kid left two of them uh not attempted, I go and give them 50% of their work. And I'm like, I don't know how many hours you just spent on this, but I'm going to give you 50% because you didn't finish the problem. And I think back and I just want to cringe like, how dare I? Like, I don't know how long they spent on that. Now I just gave him 50%. Um, my son is in high school. He's a sophomore and I know I see him do his math homework all the time. If he doesn't turn it in by midnight, that night before the
119day, the day he has class, it's now late. And sometimes he just forgets and so now he has a bunch of homework. And I know he should turn it on time, but it's a careless error. you know, it's just like, oh, I got busy with something else and he's still getting 50%. And I'm like, is that showing how much he knows? No. So, it's just it really I have changed my practice because I'm like I I know they should be turning on time, but the main goal is that they learn the material. So, that's where homework I haven't I I still give it as like, hey, these are good practice opportunities, but there's no points attached to it, which really leads another I think we'll get to later. Thank you. I would add just one
120more thing on that in that I think this process all of us who have been on the grading coalition. It's created an opportunity for us to have humility in our past practices and recognize some of those things that we've done because that was just sort of the system we came into and it's all we knew. And yet now sampling what you know this vision of an alternative world of education could be I I would say that for me personally I feel like it's building student and teacher connections in a way that I don't know as much as I have tried in the past I think there's always been a few students that I felt stayed removed right disengaged and I could never quite figure out why. And what I'm finding this year, and maybe part
121of that magic is this program coming in as like that last piece of the puzzle in my classes pretty much down to every student, everyone's really connected. They feel that when there's no penalty for late work, that it took them two weeks to finish something that someone else finished in one, and I'm as excited to get their assignment as I was the student who turned it in on time. there's just a new bridge between us and I feel that that connects every single student in the learning process in a way that really wasn't possible before. So on the on the heart part of it, I would say that's an observation that may not have as much tangible data to it, but I'm certainly feeling in my classroom. Thank you. It's going to bring us right
122into the next question. What surprised you positively or otherwise about implementing standardsbased grading as a parent of a CUSD graduate um who's graduating from Chico State 17 days soon. Thank God. Um he he was that kid that could take all the AP courses. He took nine from Tasorro and he could understand without having to do the assignments that the teachers were giving them. He he just learned differently and he had to change his work habits to play the game of getting the points for the right grade, but his grade didn't always match what he got on the AP exam. So, that was another reason I was really into this because if this kid can get fours and fives on AP exams, but he's getting a C in the AP course, what is that saying? And
123is that fair? And why am I doing this to my students? Why am I tickytacking all these points when it's not about getting the points, it's about the learning and being able to demonstrate that learning? Um, that was probably one of my most biggest ahas that not every kid has to do all of the assignments in order to understand. And so the practice for me in my class, I've kind of flipped my class and they watch some videos for homework, but now they come into class, go to their thinking whiteboards, and what I would have normally given as a homework assignment individually is now done in teams in groups of three so that they can talk about it and really cement what they had watched a video about and be able to me be able
124to spot check and say, "Okay, yes, that's right." No, you know, how did you think about this? Did you think about that? So there's more interaction and less people looking at me for all the information and more them doing to learn. Thank you. So I'm all about data, right? This the whole PLC process. And I thought, okay, well, what happens if I compare my AP calculus class to the other six high schools at the six week mark and then at the final mark, right? So when I pulled that data at six weeks I only had 17% A's and I was like oh 17% A's in this class the kids are going to murder me right all the other classes were averaging about 4950% A's at the six week mark and I was like this is
125not good and I remember Dr. Johnson telling us when he went on his road show you're going to have a lot fewer A's and more B's and C's and I was like that's not true clearly it is. But then I pulled up the semester grades and at the semester I had 46% A's um which was right in the median of the other high schools, right? So I just had to wait to show me that they understood it all the way up until um if I look at the D's and Fs compared to everyone else, I there's n% of my kids are getting D's and Fs. Um that one is pretty skewed at all the all the schools are different at that point. Um, but I I just was really happy to see that yes, they
126did have a chance to still get A's and B's um even with no fluff points, no homework or busy work or all that kind of stuff, right? That they had multiple opportunities to get up there and show me that they understood. So, that was something that surprised me. I just wanted to jump right back on the D's and Fs. So, I don't know if you guys all know math 8, eighth graders taking math 8, they're they're not the most studious at times. Um, and that was typically my largest D's and Fs parts. I don't have I progress reports are due today. I don't have any D's or Fs to report them. In fact, I can count on one hand how many C's I have. So, that to me is telling me it's working. Thank you.
127We're going to hear from our students soon, but what feedback have you received from parents or colleagues about the shifts you're making? I'll go first. Um, I can't share all the feedback here because some of it's not appropriate. Um, just kidding. Just kidding. Um, I actually haven't had that much negative feedback, especially not from parents. I have had a few negative uh questions about parents or from parents about like what this all means and how it looks. Um mainly the feedback I get from parents is like um my kid heard there's no homework now and this doesn't count for points so I don't have to do this. Um that's quickly corrected with a little review of like what the purpose is of the work. Um my colleagues uh they've expressed fears about like losing control
128of the classroom because there's no points for classwork. So how do you get the kids to do the classwork? Um one of the things that I've um one of the surprising things for me is like how much it's changed the type of language I use in my classroom. Like now instead of it being like this is the assignment, I say here's what we're doing to learn this today. um and here's the the learning activities that we're engaged in here. Um here's how you show me evidence that you've learned this. Um not instead of like is this going to be on the test or this is going to be on test so pay attention. Um that shift in language has helped I think a lot. Um the connection thing that you mentioned I think you know
129fits right into that. Um just because it doesn't count for points doesn't mean that the kids aren't going to do it. Um, that's one of the surprising things for me is that even if it's not counting for the grade, I'm still putting scores in the grade book based on like how much of the work they've done. That's kind of like how I keep track of work habits. Um, students will still come up to me like, "Mr. Danner, I got a I got a four, but I did it. It's on the back." And I was like, "Oh, okay. Well, it's a five then." And they're like, "Well, can you change it?" I'm like, "It doesn't count for anything." And they're like, "Well, no, but I want to see the fives. I want all fives." And it's
130like, "Okay, I'll do it." you know, like we'll go back and change it. So, even though it's not actually impacting their grade, it's still recorded. It's still in there and students still want to put their best foot forward all the time. Um, so those things were definitely surprising. Go ahead. I'll I'll go because I'm piggybacking a little bit on what Steve said. So, um, I would say something that's surprising is the student language that you start to notice in that the kids are internalizing a little bit more the language of a scholar in each of our subjects. So, I feel as if you walked into my classroom this year as compared to five years ago. Obviously, the lessons are still tied to what they should have been, and that hasn't changed, but the students really
131using the skills and being cognizant of what they're doing in the moment that they're doing it, I think is what happens through this process as well. And as far as the colleagues part of it, I would add into what's been surprising in a positive way is at our school site, we've really tried to bring a lot of this back to begin the process of um reinvisioning how we're communicating learning and making sure we'd be ready for the implementation of the next several years. And to a teacher, although there are many that have questions because this is asking for a huge change for all of us, teachers, parents, students, all of us are going to need to shift the way we've seen things. Um, and what we expect to have as communication. When it comes down
132to the why, that's where it's 100% everybody's bought in. Because even though it's this space of I think we're in a space of needing to be uh comfortable with the uncomfortable, right? It's like we're taking a risk to shift this and students and parents and teachers, we're all going to do that together. But the beauty of it is that that's where the growth comes in. So when our site saw all that's encompassed in this, felt overwhelmed, questioned all the things that we're going to need to change, but came back to the why, it was a resounding, well, of course, we're moving forward. This is the right thing, it makes sense. And that, I think, is a pleasant surprise. So, for our final teacher reflection, we're talking about looking forward. And I'm going to pose two
133different questions. You can answer either or both, but they both talk about looking forward. One, if you could offer advice to other teachers who are about to begin this journey, what would you tell them? And also, how do you envision standardsbased grading improving our school community over time? I feel the advice I would give is to a have grace for your own self. Like taking a risk is huge. We're never been doing this. So, it's going to take a lot of mistakes and oh, let's uh change it. However, I feel like teachers and students have always been on opposite sides of I'm going to oneup you or I'm going to get you or and I feel like this does bring connections more of I want to be their biggest cheerleader. I want to see that
134they can learn and having the teacher have that perspective opposed to oh you're me misbehaving I'm going to punish you with your grade that aspect has to change right so you do have to have a huge um growth mindset of a I'm going to make a lot of mistakes but I want you guys your grades will not be affected by it I want to you know work with you I want to see that you can learn calculus so let's let's have that communication um and then the second part is just ha be their biggest these kids are so fragile they need a lot of encouragement ment and a lot of um you can do it, right? You can do it for sure. So I I have I Oh, the other thing is be in community
135with the other teachers that are on your content team, right? To be able to work with them and work it out and talk about it and say, "What did this work?" or "How about that?" That's a huge huge aspect. I think all of the guiding coalition meetings, we walk away with like, "Oh, that's a great idea." Just because like-minded people are in the same room that we have like what's working here, what's not working there. Um I really do think that this is a way to shift classroom and school culture. Um I think one of the you know when we came back from COVID a lot of uh teachers felt like we weren't able to connect with students in the same way and the students didn't approach learning in the same way. Um this kind
136of forces everybody back to the learning part of things. This is why we're doing this is because we're trying to learn and the reason why I'm assessing you because I need to know how much you learned. Um, and the classwork and homework just become a way of facilitating that learning. But there's other ways to do it. If you can do it a different way and you can show me your evidence, then okay, that's awesome. It celebrates students um indep independent learning style. And it also gives students a way to take control of their learning. And I think that's one way to like really increase engagement in classrooms is to give students the target ahead of time. Here's what you need to hit and you do it. Um, and here's how what I'm going to do
137to support you. Um, I also think it's pretty awesome to hear people talking about learning centered classrooms and and I think we need a lot of training on that still, but to get that shift going across all different subjects, like that would be amazing. Put the, you know, put the learning back in the students hands and let them, you know, work it out and the teacher becomes more of of a facilitator. I think we're just going straight up the table for this one, right? So um I think that one of the expectations that sort of built in that seeing the future ahead is there's a lot of trust building that we are doing that we're needing to do uh as far as broaching this process. a parent and a teacher and a student really need
138to be on the same page and that we're trusting each other, that we're really in this for all the right reasons. And if something goes a little haywire, we're we're going to, you know, uh, ask a question, come forth with the expectation that the why is there, right? We're all in that collective process together. And I think that I I already see that happening within I mean even within the coalition we've had to do that like let's trust like we can ask a question we can share a failure we can you know because that's where we're going to get to our end goal. Um and then I think that the most exciting thing in the vision of what's to come is I do see that some of the students that in the past would not
139feel as maybe that they're fitting into the process of learning now feel connected in that they are growing confidence in skills that they wouldn't necessarily have had if we insisted on you must learn in this timeline or if we don't know what's going on at home that might be getting in the way of their learning. Now all of a sudden there's a space for them to have just as much confidence as a student who might have a wonderful supportive network at home, a higher skill set coming in the door, etc. So I think trust and confidence are two key pieces of the future. When I think of advice to offer, I think starting small, especially now that we have this four years mapped out with two phases. Um, because it is overwhelming at first. Um,
140but I would strongly encourage everyone that's going to be starting it to do the book studies that we did so that you understand so that everyone's on the same page and understanding the background of it. um because we need the 15 fixes to make standardsbased grading work as well. Um it just gives a lot of the background component of a mindset because it is a mindset shift. It's a whole culture shift even. Um I know it wasn't the same. I mean I've been teaching 31 years and I've seen all kinds of shifts. Um but I I feel this one is the best one because now students are learning intrinsically. They want to they want to succeed and they can um I've seen them feel okay I'm good in this but I'm not great at that
141so I can focus more on this part and it's not I give up that it hasn't been a lot of giving up this year. Um, so to students, I would say, you know, do the work that's assigned and if you don't, see what happens and maybe you just change a little bit. For parents, I would beg for grace. Um, it's been really hard being the only teacher at my school doing standardsbased grading and being so different than everybody else. um it it's hard to have all of that support when you're the only one doing it. So having more teachers on board is really going to be super helpful. Um the teachers at Aoya have always brought the information back and um some of them are starting to do small pieces during fourth quarter and we've
142looked at mastery tracking tracking together just different ways to use different grading scales. Um for the looking at our school community I feel like it goes back to the basis of like beginning teaching. You plan, you teach, you reflect, you revise, and you do it again. And you keep using that cyclical uh cycle until you get as close to perfection as you can. So getting all of our kids to be mastery of all the standards. Thank you. Such thoughtful words for us to ponder. Appreciate all of you. And now our students. So, very similar to how the teachers, if you're interested in answering a question, just kind of position yourself to get ready for a microphone and we'll you're welcome to join in on any question, but you're not required to join in on every
143question. So, students, how has standards based grading changed the way that you think about your learning and progress? Um, I see it as less intimidating because It makes me feel like I'm being properly assessed because it's very specific. And when it's specific, it's like, okay, I know how to get a four. I I know if I get a three, I know what to how to do better. And in that way, it becomes less intimidating and super straightforward. Um, so I come to the classroom or I think about English as like a class to be almost easy, if that makes because I know like exactly what I need to be doing in order to get the grade that I want. No, it's all right. Um, for me, I think it makes me feel more excited to
144learn, to be honest, to come to class and to be more excited about the content that I'm learning and be excited, um, not for my grade, but for exactly what I'm looking at and being like, I know that I can come back later if I don't understand this concept and get a better understanding of it and come back and do it again instead of just saying, "I only have this once. I get a grade and this is final." Like, learning. Going to school is all about learning and seeing the best you can do. And even in the workplace, it's the same thing. You get better over time. You like change to be better. And so, same thing with school. You should be able to have a second try and be able to see if you
145can do better next time. Um, I actually agree with that. Sorry. Um, going to science now makes me excited. Does it helps that it's a class that I'm very interested in. Um, I feel more as if like, oh, if I don't understand a subject, instead of just fixing the assignment that's wrong in that subject and moving on, I'm actually like learning the subject to fix the grade. Um, I just want to add that I think that standard based grading has changed the way I think about my learning in progress. I just think that it's really made me rely on my accountability for my own homework since there's no grade for it. And it really is just like I need to focus on the areas that I feel I'm not progressing or not completing in proficiency.
146But I think that also not having homework have a grade is I mean not beneficial because I only work hard and I only have the accountability to hold myself to do the homework and do the practice because I've had classes before that required me to do that. I feel like it's going to be harmful towards incoming freshmen who aren't going to have homework and things like completion, like focusing on that practice. If they think, "Oh, it's like not super mandatory." They're not going to have the same hard work habits to do the homework and force themselves to practice for the test. Yeah. Something I agree about Whoops. about that as well is I've always been someone who's been like if I have a 91% in a class I'm like always stressing out like oh it's
147too close to a B it's whatever but something I've learned through the standard base is that it's simply a A B C or like whatever and something I like about that is that you're more so striving to like it's more like a target instead of a specific like percentage like you're striving to gain like knowledge or like a certain area of knowledge and not just a specific percentages. And it like it helps you master the material more because you want to get into that percentage knowing it's not right there and kind of just overall like doesn't make you stress as much if you're on the borderline knowing you have a greater range. I agree with that. I feel like going into class with standard based grading has felt more like I'm going in to learn
148something and less to get a grade out of it. Like when I go to class, I'm going because I want to do a lab or something that will help me learn towards like the assessment that I'm getting towards the end, but also the content. And I'm not just like working to get a 90 or an 100 on something. Thank you. Can anyone share an example of a time you might have felt more motivated or confident because of the new grading system being used in one of your classrooms? Um I felt more motiv motivated and confident um when we were assigned um homework or classwork and then I ended up not finishing it in class. So then technically for me it comes homework because I do want to finish it because I believe that like class
149work is there for a reason. um to able to learn the like to be able to learn the lesson. And I it's it's better because I know that I'm not going to be penalized for late work. So that also comes into play. It just feels more freeing because I know that I like I can still complete the work and not um be rushed. So that kind of makes me feel more motivated to do the work because I know that I'm going to be penalized for it being late. Um, I think that something there's been a lot of times where I felt motivated and less motivated by standard based grading. There was times where like my midterm I had a pretty low grade in the class because I had a lot on my plate and then
150I got it up to like a B in the class because I retook all those units and I showed proficiency because I studied so much for the midterm and it got my grade up. But there was other times where I feel like so many retakes shouldn't be mandatory because there's so many most of the people in the classes that are doing standard brace grading now or like I've gotten all fives, all fours, my AP test, straight A's, but I feel like having so there's so many studying going on. There's sports, there's clubs, there's jobs, and I think that having all these retakes is somewhat I mean damaging to our grades sometimes because I study for my test, I get a four, a four, a four, and then I don't have time to study for the
151next one. want to get a like a two or a one and then like I have 50%. And I know it's about proficiency and showing proficiency, but so many students have so much on their plate that they don't have time to study. And even if the goal is to show proficiency and not having to study, like knowing the information through and through, like every student has to study, whether you're in middle school medical school, a freshman, a high school, like it's just unrealistic to expect people to know all the stuff without any studying. And so I feel like they study for one test, they get a great grade, they don't have time to study for the next one, and now they have a 50% Um I would also like to add that getting the opportunity
152to retake is also it is motivating at first. However, um we end up having these retakes like every single week and I feel like that is quite daunting as a student who's involved in a lot of extracurriculars and I understand that it can help raise proficiency but I feel like I'm we're spending more time testing than actually learning the material um at a certain point. So, I feel like that can also be damaging. Um, I definitely have to agree with that. Um, especially if there's a lot of retakes you have to do. It starts to build up with a lot of work and a lot of things to relearn and uh make sure that you are proficient in the subject. And it's also a lot for teachers too coming back and they're going to have
153to always be in class. They set up flex times so that they can specifically go through and set it up for everyone to take their retakes. And then um it also they have more work because they have to regrade something. So, it's a lot more stress on the teacher as well as the students having more stuff they want to get done and more retakes they have to do. I'm not sure um what the exact rules are for the retakes, but me personally, I think that there should be a certain amount of retakes that a student should be able to do. And also like if you get you have you have to get a certain score in order to get a retake. like you can only get like if you got below a C then you
154should be able to retake it but it also shouldn't be mandatory. I don't know if those are the rules but if not that's also a suggestion. Um but I do agree that um retakes because then you have to study for the retake in order to get a better grade and so yeah I do agree on on that part. Yeah and there we we don't have specific rules at this level about that but we're learning through the process. So this is a common thread across our students. So this gives us information about this is an area we want to do a deep dive in to see the implications of the retakes on student life. Yeah, I just want to add on something with that is something that's helped me feel more motivated is like when I'm
155in my season, we have like six practices a week and like three games a week as well. So it's pretty busy. So whenever like without standard based grading when there's assignments are due at 11:59 that oh I need to turn that in because otherwise I'm going to get a zero and my grade's going to fall it more so more so turns into like a cra just like oh let's get the work down. that's just turn it and submit it. Instead of like when there's no specific due date, but instead just mastering the knowledge, I'm able to take my time on the assignment. If I might not have time for it one day, I can do it the next day and actually get to know the curriculum instead of just trying to cram it in to
156sped effort. Um, I'd agree. Also, being able to step away and take a break from something that you're learning to come back later to it is really good. Not having to cram it all at one night and being like, "It's due tomorrow. maybe you need to sleep on it. You know, um it's good to have a little bit of extra time to sort of come back and maybe try and understand something tomorrow and get a good night's rest instead of stressing over something that's due the next day. So, just like our teachers, our students have already moved into the next question. So, that question was, "What do you like most about how you're being graded now?" So, you're welcome to share if you had something you wanted to say about that, but I'll also move
157into the next question. which is how does standardsbased grading help you know what you need to work on and I know you've some of you have touched on that too but we'll put those out there um oh um I I would say that there's a rubric like in my classroom there's a rubric under each um assignment and it shows why you got the score um that you got and I would suggest like me personally I look before I turn in an assignment I look at the rubric and then after um so I know why I got that score and what I can do better um next time. And I've seen that in multiple of my many of my assignments. Um I see I look at it and I'm like, "Okay, that makes sense. I know
158I got a two or I know I got a one." So, um that is helpful having that rubric there and knowing exactly what I'm being assessed on. Um, so in my Canvas I've like it helps me learn because in my Canvas um there's a place where there's lists of all the things we're learning and then next to it there's like fours, threes, twos, and ones and I go I go into it and I look at which one has like lower things and um that's what I go and study for and work on. We also get given the opportunity in class to look at them and like take the standards and write what we know about the standards to try to relearn it. We've been given a couple times where we've gotten like to see what
159we have like a two on and we're able to write what we know and if we know more we're able to adjust what we have in the actual score. Yeah, something I'm adding on about that too is how it helps me know what I need to work on is for example in my AP Euro class, if you take an exam and you need the retake to get it up to a two out of four, when you go in and do the retake, you don't have to redo the questions that you already got right, it more so focuses on the questions that you got wrong, which helps you, even though you've already like demonstrated mastery in these like certain topics of the test, it allows allows you to focus on the ones that you need mastery
160on and work on those in order to have like a complete master. Okay. Do you feel like you have more control or ownership over your learning with this new system of standardsbased grading? And if the answer is yes, maybe share a little bit of the how. Um, yeah, I definitely feel like I have more control over learning. Um, I think it gives you more control over um, when you do your assignments, like what we were talking about previously, how to balance your schedule with all of your different things and not having things assigned on time is also like being able to balance all of your things with school and homework at the same time. Um, being able to balance priorities and making sure that you have correct time management and um, getting things done on
161time. Um, yeah. And I just feel like I have more control overall of when I want to learn and when I'm feeling up to it and when I can like just come back and look at it again. Along with being able to control like when I'm doing the work, I also get to control what I have more focus on. Like if I know that I'm specifically doing worse on something, I can spend more time doing that and not have to spend like an equal amount of time on the stuff that I know that I already know. Because in other classes where they just give you a base homework and you have to do all of it and like in a certain time frame you have to spend the time doing the stuff that you already
162know and you have to make it by the final due date and you'll basically be able to spend less time on the stuff that you don't know. Um it makes me feel more in control because me person like I'm a very forgetful person. Um, and so I'll constant like I'll do assignments, but I'll constantly forget to turn them in. And so then I get tasked with another assignment from a different class. I don't have to worry about my assignment in the standardbased grading class having points taken off because it's late. I can work on my other thing and then come back and turn it in and my grade will still be fine. I do think that we do have more control and ownership over our learning with the system because I don't know about other
163teachers, but Miss Compion's really flexible with our time to retake. Like, she knows we have a lot of busy schedules. We're in a lot of sports and stuff like that. And so, it gives us more time to learn and focus on what standards we do need to learn and retake. What would you tell a friend at another school about standardsbased grading? Um I would say I would tell like another from from another school that it's more freeing. You have more control. Um it's less stressful because again other students do have um other things going on other than academics in their life. And another thing is about reassessments is I would tell them that like cuz some students they maybe they're going through something that day and maybe they're their score doesn't actually represent on what
164they represent what they know. And so I will tell them that they wouldn't have to stress about that one test because because I know a lot of students stress over tests test taking because they want to do well. They actually care. But there's also that um reassessment opportunity where um it's not just based on that one test and you're not and if you get a if you get points marked down on an assignment, you still have that opportunity to make it up and put it in later without a penalty. So again, that stress factor is just lower. Um and it's just I would say it's easier. That's actually a huge thing for me. I'm not a very good test taker. I find myself studying before the test and sometimes I'm like, I feel ready. I
165walk in and I just feel like the stress sometimes just gets to me. And so being able to have the ability to retake and come back later. And even when you do retakes, you do it in sections. So you do it in a specific learning target. And so you can come back and hone your skills on that specific learning target and come back and master that one specifically instead of feeling like I have to do all of this. So it gives less of a burden and feels less stressful to feel like you don't have to do everything at once. Um I tell them something along the lines of that if you look at your overall grade if like you have a 90 then that's showing that you know 90% of the material of what you
166learned rather than how many things you've turned in and how many points you've collected in that class. Um, I just want to say like I think that the time to retake is good. But even though like it helps us with all the retakes we can take and we can pick like, oh, I didn't do well in 1.2, I need to go retake that. I would tell the friends in other school that standard brace grading is really helpful, especially if you have a busy schedule and if you have a hard time like sticking with certain deadlines and stuff like that. But I think even though it helps us, I think that it's also hurting us. And I would tell my other students that because it's going to be nothing like college because in college we're not
167going to have chances to retake things. It's one test. It's one final. And that's why I think not having homework in the class is beneficial because in college they're not going to be holding you accountable for doing your homework or doing your assignments or studying for your tests. But I think that having so many retakes, while it's teaching us to take accountability for our learning and to practice and make sure that we are really learning this the the units and the I guess the course, I think that having so many retakes is just not transferable to college and for stuff like that in the future and our study skills. Okay. So, much like we did with our teacher questions, we have two final questions in the category of moving forward. I'm going to share both
168of the questions with you. You can respond to either or both. It's completely up to you, but the two final questions we would love to hear from you about. What would you want your teachers or the schoolboard to know about your experience with standardsbased grading? Final thoughts. And what advice would you give to students who are just starting out with this? So thoughts and advice? Um I would tell I would for teachers um one of the teachers I think Mr. Dan I think you said that um you said that I'm giving you this assignment in order for I'm giving it to you for a reason. There's a reason for it. It's so you can learn. And I think that's very important and I feel like all teachers should also tell their students that because including
169myself I've also asked why why am I giving this assignment? Why am I doing this? This is just um sometimes I feel like it's busy work. Um because sometimes I don't see that it's relating back to the um unit. But um as I'm doing it, I'm like, "Okay, this makes sense." And I understand why I'm being um given this classwork and all these things. So, I think telling them the why and telling them that it's for learning the unit and for doing better on the assessments, even though some students may know that, reminding them is just it's that's nice. Um, yeah, one thing I agree about this is I just think it's a great way that to allow students to kind of design their own future because obviously there's still going to be kids who
170aren't motivated in school or don't have the same goals as other students might. And I think that this is a great way to allow students to kind of choose their own path. They have the option of doing the homework and mastering the content if they want to, if they want to reach those certain goals, but they're not held accountable to it in a way where it kind of like it allows students to work at their own pace knowing, oh, I have a test. I need to get this stuff done, master this content in order to succeed on my test. So, I'm going to do this, but I don't have to do it by a certain time period or a certain like due date. And I feel like it allows for students who truly want to
171succeed to master the content at their own like speed in a way and just get in all the knowledge that they want to. Um, I kind of have a question more for the teachers and the I guess creating the stand creating. I just want to know how it's would work with all the amount of classes because I feel like on an average week with like the standard based grading AP calculus we have like one to two tests per week. It depends if you're retaking some could be two to three but I feel like for other classes like they're not doing standard based grading it's about I mean I'd have three to four tests five AP classes about three to four tests per week plus the ones in AP calculus and I just want to know
172how that would work with that would probably be about like 10 unit tests per week 10 retake tests per week. I don't know how students going to balance that. I want to know what the plan is for that much on the plate from this. It's a great question. It's why we pilot things like this in small chunks so that we can learn from the process. But definitely as we expand across school sites into the next, you got to hear the phase one and phase two. We're going to have to be mindful of the impact on students. That's going to be our number one priority. So the intention around reassessment and retakes is that it provides students an opportunity to demonstrate learning they had not yet achieved at the first incident. The intention isn't that everyone's
173retaking everything all the time, but we're going to hone it and have conversations across departments and across school teams because we're going to collectively do the work moving forward. So deeply appreciate you being a part of the initial pilot. Okay. So, I just want to reiterate what you're saying just to make sure I understand. So, they're saying that instead of having like multiple retakes, say like you get 100% the first time you take it, there wouldn't be a second retake necessary or the second retake would be more of like a somewhat homework assignment assessment rather than another test. And sometimes a a standard might naturally appear in another assessment. So you took a unit one test and you didn't hit standard 1.2, but 1.2 is going to be on unit 2's test two. So if
174you learn it at that point, you've mastered that standard. So there's a lot of work to be done in refining. And one of the things that we have done in addition, we have this amazing panel here that we're learning from, but we're also surveying students in different standardsbased mastery classes. So, we're gathering input from a lot of students who are experiencing it with us for the first time so that we can improve and refine practice. Any final words? Okay. Well, we want to thank you so much for taking your time to join us, teachers and students. It's such powerful understanding of the work. So, really appreciate that. And at this point we clicked we would be on our next steps. So we're going to continue. Oh, before we move on, first of all, thank you
175staff. Thank you teachers and thank you students. I have a couple of questions for students. First of all, really thank you for being here. Thank you for your words. Thank you for your effort and um and the way that you went about it. Couple questions. One, um are you all seniors? No. What? How many of you are seniors? Three. And how many of you are juniors? Three. Sophomore. Okay. And then um I don't know if you might say I can't ask this. I'm not sure. How many of you have a GPA of 3.5 and higher? Can't ask that. All right. Because I because I believe all of you students are like 4.0 plus plus, right? And based on your classes and what you're taking and your level of understanding of what's happening. So I commend
176you for that and I expect that's probably what you are and doesn't matter. Why did you decide to be a part of this process? Ask that or did you ask or how did how did how did you get here? What how did that happen? Oh, how did they come to be here today? Right. How what was the process on choosing students to be part of this process? We um Oh, okay. Can I answer? Yeah. Okay. Um I my teacher came up to me and she was she's been talking about it with me. Um, and I'm a very talkative person and so I talked to her a lot and I don't shut up and she basically was like, "What do you think about, you know, coming to a board meeting and talking about it?" And I
177was like, "Yeah, for sure." So, um I just I think I told her I was like, "This is awesome that you guys um want a student's voice because that's so important because although teachers are, you know, teachers and they're adults and they've gone through the training, it's just they you don't truly know what a student is going through." And I think it's also nice to have not just one student, but several um to have their opinion. So, yeah, I wanted to um have the voice of a student because I didn't know that there were going to be other students. So, I was like, "Yes, um I'll have the voice of um a senior at least." I love that. Thank you. Thank you. And Trusty Davis, we um reached out to multiple teachers on the guiding
178coalition and asked them to be here today. And then once it's very busy time at the school year right now with all the testing and end of the year activities. And then when we got a group of teacher in that same group of teachers, we asked them, would you have any students? Because their students experienced standardsbased grading because their teacher signed up for this pilot. So, the kids didn't know they were going to be part of this, but they have provided so much input and we're really appreciative. But that's how we found our teachers and students today. I have a few comments and questions. Um, I think uh what occurs to me for teachers is that once you have this, it's going to make it easier to write college recommendations because you know a lot
179more about what your students really know and have, I think, some evidence that will be helpful for you. Um, in my career, no, I forgot to mention that when I go into IEP meetings now, I I can say they know this, this, this, and this. They're progressing here, here, and here, and this is what they need to work on. And I think it makes it easier for our special ed teachers to be able to write the goals for the next year for these students and for the parents to understand where exactly they're at. It it was so cut and dry. It was like this is where they're at. It instead of saying, "Oh, they got a B." Like it it really doesn't a B doesn't tell you anything, right? But me telling you they've mastered
180this. They're progressing here and they're still beginning stages here. And I think that some the one of the students commented about uh not preparing you for college. And I think you can get a C in a class knowing considerably less than half of what you were supposed to learn just because what h how the test happened to be weighted. So I'm not I'm I'm just not convinced this is poor preparation for college. And you know college may be very different from when I was there but yeah there's no homework. There's a lot of projects. There's a lot of labs. There are more papers than you ever want to know about. College is paper after paper after paper. Um and um so and and you need the kind of information that you're getting to be able
181to write these papers, you know, and but another thing I wanted to say was this is what our CCA classes have always done. CCA grades are completely about what you know because you're having to learn something that is useful in the workplace. And I I think it's the same thing with college. You're having to learn what you will need to know in college or what the the standards are telling your teachers you need to know in college. So, I mean, I really think that it's uh it's important. I I think that one of the things that we talked about when we were first discussing this was in the olden days there's a lot of talk about oh we should grade on a curve and 25% doing this you know some percent get Fs and some
182D's etc etc if the best teacher should have A's all their students will get A's the very and this will will kind of make teachers realize whether they are good teachers or not because if they can't if all their students are not mastering all the material. That's kind of on the teacher. I'm sorry teachers, but I think it is true. Um I think also AP classes have always been more focused on this because the goal of the AP class is to do well on the test and the test is about the standards. Um, I know one of my kids had regular chemistry and then had AP chemistry, which he thought was so much easier because it was just about what he knew. It wasn't about homework. It wasn't about a whole bunch of things. It
183was about what he knew. Um, um, I do have a somewhat of a concern, which I think is what Trusty Davis was asking. Um, you mostly seem to be pretty focused students, pretty high achieving. You might not be straight A students, but you care about school. You are not low achieving students. And I do have a concern that there are going to be low achieving students who will struggle with this and who are not going to be able to deal with the idea of maybe I'm just never going to be able to get there. Maybe they that that will just be difficult for them to adjust to. Um but I I'm all in favor of this. Um Oh, sorry. Did Did you Kiana wants to Yes, go ahead please. Please. I know this is double
184it up. Um I have math lab which is a algebra support class. So those are your low, you know, end achievers that typically you think, oh, they're terrible students. I think they're terrible students because they're not good at turning in homework. They're not good at showing up regularly. I think they um the once they see that they have success on just learning the material, their motivation skyrockets. They're like, "Oh, I can do this." So I think a lot of times we have put so many barriers on them that they have a terrible home life. They can't do their homework at home. They can't do X Y and Z. They distracted. Once you can sit down and focus on what they do know, they're like I'm passing this class. It's never happened. I'm sorry. Um kind
185of going back to that your concern that is um I think it's I think it actually gives those um how do I say this? like students who don't believe that they are doing well or think don't believe or have um or don't have confidence in themselves that they will do well. I think this actually helps them in that sense because honestly I came to a point where I was like I'm a senior so I was you know senioritis. I kind of was just like I don't care. I'm just going to just do whatever I can and get by you know because I'm as long as I graduate it's going to be fine, right? But I do I I have pretty good grades now because I've realized that with the standardized um grading, it's like it's
186so straightforward and it's almost I don't know how to explain it, but it's almost almost made me realize um my potential and how much better I can do. And it also made me realize that back to the college thing and how it might not help us in college. I think the complete opposite. I think that it will I think that it will greatly help us because it has now we are being assessed directly on um in high school we know okay maybe I'm not good at comprehension we've been here for four years maybe I'm not good at comprehension and in college looking forward maybe I can get a I don't know if this is a thing a comprehension English tutor you know so I guess that kind of goes into that and now you know
187what you are not doing so well in how that can how you can get better for theuture teacher. In 31 years of teaching, I've never had a progress report where I didn't have any D's or Fs. And I can say that this year, I I didn't have to give D's and Fs this year. They weren't earned. What's earned is they were doing the standards and they were up to a C. And for the kids that I see struggle the most with chronic ac absenteeism and they always get buckled down because they can't get all the assignments in. When you take that out of the equation and you really just look at what are they learning, they can demonstrate that they can learn and they get that confidence which you know in 8th grade I still
188have kids that are scoring at third grade level and could grow 200% and I ready and go from third grade to sixth grade in one year. So them trying to get an A in math 8 that's impossible. But for them to get that C, to be at that progressing level is is huge for them. I think it's a confidence builder for them to go into high school algebra 1 and not being like, God, I still am only in primary school level. Like it it's helped them see a path that there is kind of a light at the end of the tunnel and I don't have to be the highest of the high, but I know that I can get there. And I'm thinking of one student in particular and was finally assessed and put into
189special ed and now he has the systems in place and he doesn't feel like a failure anymore. He he knows that he can do things with support and that he can see the growth and I think that's powerful at 13 to see okay I can grow three gra grade levels in one year. And I told him, I said, "You know, ESPback's coming up and I know you're probably still going to score a one, but don't look at it that way. Think about when you're going to take it as a junior because you're going to stay on this track of building up your knowledge. Three three years of math in one year, like getting that in there." I said, "By the time you're a junior, you can be proficient. you can show that you went from
190eighth grade at this level to be proficient as an 11th grader. So, he sees that there's time now and he doesn't have to give up. I use it too much. So, a student who gets a B in AP Chemistry ought to be able to get a four on the AP Chem exam. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Um I mean truly I think you're going to find this correlates very well to college. It's did to the college I went to, UCI. I have I have a question just about assessments. Um I'm just thinking about the kids who don't test very well and I know that just reading some of the literature about um standard based grading. It talks about alternative assessments and I'm wondering what to the teachers what alternative assessments you've been able to give kids to
191check for mastery that not that maybe the rest of the class has given a standard test and what what have you done? I got an answer to this one. Um so with science as you can probably imagine we lean pretty heavily on multiple choice tests. I mean you can imagine I think few years ago we were probably almost all multiple choice tests but um because we're we've adopted the NGSS standards we've moved to the three course model um you if you read the NGSS it's really hard to assess any of those on a multiple choice assessment. So now that we're kind of grounded in those and we're trying to align everything that we're assessing to those targets um pretty much forces us to read student work um and get students building models or uh creating
192models of their understanding on things. So it's changed a little bit changed a lot actually what we use as an assessment. Um I I'm doing lab assessments this year. So it's all handwritten work. Students are building graphs of unique data sets that aren't just a straightforward bar graph. They have to add in a unique variable and change in axes to make sure that they can show um what the data is uh representing. Um they're doing scientific argumentation for assessments. Um so claim, evidence, reasoning um which lines up perfectly to what they're learning in um you know their English classes and things like that. Um so it's almost forcing me to get outside of these um multiple choice tests and to speak about the reassessment thing earlier. Um I'm assessing the same target with different types
193of assessments. I can do part of a target with multiple choice and I can come back to that same target again later on a a lab assessment um and the students have two different ways to show proficiency at that same uh target. Let's really open that up. I appreciate that so much. I'm also like hearing you speak, all of you speak about it and thank you for being here. I think this is so powerful. I love hearing from teachers and students. Um I'm wondering about just that as a former teacher, I worry about the time this is going to um restraints is going to put on teachers and what if you're reassessing and and the alternative assessments. I mean, I'm sure it's really heavy the first year and hopefully it will be better going forward,
194but do you think there's going to be a lot of push back um with the teachers like this is a big shift and I'm wondering about the time that you put into it? And maybe we could have one teacher ask that. And thank you for bringing up time because I promised our teachers and students that they'd be done at three o'clock and I know some of them have practices and games. So maybe if one teacher wouldn't mind um answering Trustees Alinger's question and then I know we got to get you on your way. I'm so sorry we're a little bit over but your information's been wonderful. that just kind of the way the way that the grades are distributed. So an A is a 3.6 to a 4 and then a B is a 2.8
195to a 3.6 and currently I'm at a B, but I feel like I'm working I'm like so close to an A. I'm working so hard and I'm probably working I don't want to like sound like superior or whatever to other students, but I'm like I'm working way harder than someone with a 2.9 and that's still a B. So, it kind of gives me less motivation cuz I'm like I can't get to an A and like I have this whole like range of like the B range is just so large. I'm like, "Oh, I'm safe to get a B. I don't really have to push myself anymore because I know I'm not get going to get to an A." I feel like that's one concern that we both have. Um, but I I do realize that
196that I don't know. I feel like it just doesn't like match how much knowledge I have. And I feel like there should be a way kind of to have a happy medium. Like I have a B, but like maybe it should be like a B. I mean there's no B+es though, so it's just kind of hard. I think I just want to touch back on this is uh I'm on the chair of link crew and that works with freshman students. I don't know if that's all throughout the district, but I think I've talked to a lot of freshmen about like what they thought about stand grading happening and they're like because they have obviously haven't had it yet, but I'm saying about how it's transferring to their grades. A lot of them I know I
197have a lot of people that are kind of in like the same kind of math lab things that do are excited that they don't test well or they have trouble keeping up with the pace of certain classes and they like that it's a little slower and they like that they have chances to redo it because they just feel like they get a really bad grade and they're super unmotivated. So, I think that having the retakes is good for students that are I guess less achieving than average. But I think another thing we want to talk about was the percentage of how a five on the AP exam is a 70% but then an A in the class is about like an 85%. to sleep. Maybe testing. One, two. I don't think that's the truth. Oh,
198here we go. We'll see how long they last. All right. Thank you. It's interesting. So, we need to figure out why they fell asleep like while mid use. So, we're a little bit over time. Um and that is okay. Uh because luckily we are going to move into our special education and and um Clint and his team did a great job of splitting this into two parts because they knew they were going to have to split between today and next Wednesday anyways. So we'll get to where we get to today between now and and 4:30. Um and then we will pick up May 7th with the same group coming right back. So So if you end up as trustees having questions that you weren't sure as we get towards that 4:30 time, no problem. Uh
199we're going to start with special ed group on May 7th in the morning next Wednesday. So you can always keep those questions for that time. We also were supposed to have a break from 3 to 3:15 which we clearly worked right through. So I would say that if you need a break for some reason, please feel free to take it. Um and we will continue onward. I think we lost only we lost one but still have four. So we will continue onward. Um and and Clint, I turn it over to you and your team to start talking about uh special ed programs eligibility and compliance. You do. All right. Good to see you guys again. Thank you. Um I'd like to introduce Gina Dagley, our executive director of programs and related services and also our
200SEPA director. And then Dr. Kathy Purcell. She is our executive director of compliance and alternative dispute resolutions. So they're going to be helping um present our special education items today. So, thank you guys for having us and we're excited to be able to talk about all the great things that we do and I can wholeheartedly say we are 100% on board with standardsbased grading because that really helps hit our our hearts like this is what we do with our students. There's so many times we have students that we know can excel, we know can take that next step but just can't quite fit that test model. So having those opportunities for alternative settings or different ways to displays their knowledge is what we um live every day with our students when it comes to um
201unique ways to educate our students. So hear me? Okay, try that. Okay, apologies. Is this better? I hear myself. Yes. And um so trustees, thank you for the opportunity to go ahead and talk about the special ed process. And so, uh, the district is responsible for seeking out and finding students who may be suspected of having a disability. A parent can ask for an assessment. A group might meet in a student success team process or even a teacher might ask and reach out to the special ed team, I'm concerned about this child. And so, when we have that referral for assessment, that starts our timeline. The district is responsible for providing an assessment plan within 15 days. um the parent is able to go ahead and sign that whenever they choose. So the responsibility for
202timelines is always on the district, not on the parents. And when we go ahead and we get that consent, then we get we begin a 60-day process of formal assessment, informal assessment, observation, working with the parents to go ahead and get their input about how the child is acting or performing at home. Then at the end of the We meet as a group to go ahead and review the results. And that's what's called an initial IEP. Student may qualify under certain eligibilities that we're going to chat about in a little bit. And the district either says you qualify for services and here's our program or you do not qualify for services. And that might be a strategies meeting about how we can go ahead and help support the student further in the general education setting.
203And we do this every three years. And so you never really leave the special education process. We meet annually and then we start it all again every 3 years for eligibility. Just so you guys know some of the I gave you there's a little blue thing that's a hybrid. I just wanted you to have that align with things that do legally also make sure process identifying students. So Kansas went up there into 2017 just kind of gives us the process of what the process we have to follow when we're developing So then when it comes to key pre- requirements when yes oh good now okay perfect think it works okay perfect um so in regards to key responsibilities this is the areas we have to do we have to look at when we're regarding a
204requirement for identifying a student with a disability um the needs of special education we look at the the students age as well. Um, but the areas that we really need need to focus on is the area of disability. When you're looking at suspected disability, we have to work through what we feel a student would qualify for IEP under because then it helps us to identify an area of a suspected disability and then that drives the needs and the IEP and then and all the supports needed going forward. So the far right there, when a student qualifies for a special education for an IEP, they're going to qualify under one of these areas of eligibility. So FAPE, so FAPE is the one that we kind of talked about earlier a little bit when we were talking
205about Marblehead and the Flex Academy. When we're identifying how we support a student's special education needs, we have to assess the student, identify the needs, and then based on the needs, we provide a FAPE, free and appropriate appropriate public education, which is a special special education offer that not only outlines the educational setting like their their uh classroom setting, but also outlines all the services aligned to what are going to help address the students individual needs. And again, as we talked about, we want to make sure it's appropriate. We wouldn't want a student going into independent study program like Marblehead where they don't have the ability to work independently. So that's where the appropriateness comes into play. We want to make sure we're meeting the students needs, providing the supports to make sure that student
206is progressing towards their goals and making progress on their IEP. So FAPE's the big word you're going to hear from special ed quite a bit just because that is our driving factor on supporting students. Um so this is um what maybe Kathy you can comment on this a little bit more but this is kind of what the the board um not the board the corrective actions that had happened to the board of ed versus role in 1982 that that outlines FAPE And so the term appropriate is very wonderfully vague from the ed code and that's the area that we are most litigated on. Any school district is what is appropriate mean? Is a program appropriate? And that changes for each student. So then we look to our case law to go ahead and help inform
207us about what appropriate means. And so the board of ed versus rally, which is one of our um uh gave us great guidance, it said that the student must be able to make some educational benefit. We don't know what that benefit is, but there needs to be some educational benefit and additionally that the district is required to go ahead and implement the IEP appropriately as written. And I don't know if you remember, we recently had a Supreme Court uh decision in 2017, Andrews, um out of Colorado, which again informed us that dimminimus, the minimal amount of progress is not appropriate. So it's a reasonable amount of progress to make educational benefit, which we see in our progress on goals. And here we go. Um, when it comes to least restrictive environment, again, this is kind
208of what we talked about. We always want to make sure when we're after we assess a student and we are providing a placement offer, a FAPE, we want to make sure we're looking at the least restrictive environment first because we want to help students succeed. And as we know with all students, you when you put when you set the expectations high and you push them, they're going to be successful and they're going to um grow all that much for much further. When you put a student in a more restrictive environment without considering least restrictive environment first, we are um could be doing harm and damage cognitively and and behaviorally for students. So, we're always going to look for a least restrictive environment first and then add supports and accommodations and modifications, whatever the cases may
209be in that environment to make sure they're making success. And if they're not, then that's when we call IEP teams to relook at what is least restrictive environment. Is a student not making success success in the current environment? And would we want to go and increase the restrictiveness to maybe uh go moving from a just an example moving from a general education classroom with some learning accommodations and supports then moving into a stars program which we're going to get to in a few minutes um in our breakout groups of what the different programs we provide. But going kind of into the next um classroom setting that's going to help meet those students needs. And just as an aside, like it's all benchmarked off of the standard general education room is the least restrictive environment. Everything
210from there is in some phase more restrictive, right? So in in a perfect world, the student could be fully integrated into traditional general ed classes with no supports needed. That's a general education student, right? So as soon as you start adding any supports, you become more restrictive. Um so the goal is always to hopefully they're making progress on goals and at some point if possible getting to a less restrictive environment. So we talk about our programs, you'll see that, you know, kids can exit programs and go to a less restrictive environment or sometimes they can exit programs and have to go to a more restrictive environment, whatever they need to make progress and not just minimal progress towards their IEP goals, right? So um often times that that comes in or appropriate is that that
211judgment on what's the least restrictive appropriate environment for them to make progress towards their goals. Yeah. And and to Dr. Brown's point is um that the circle that we saw earlier the will every three years we're re-evaluating the students to make sure that they we are having them in an appropriate setting and if a student has moved to the fact where they actually can move out of an IEP which is obviously our ultimate goal we want students to um not need the extra support and accommodations and whatnot and they can move back into off of an IEP because they no longer need that requirement. So, I think that's why that big circle of the wheels, we're always reassessing, looking at child find, is there new or um potentially new supports and suspected disabilities? Or the
212opposite. Has a student made so much progress that they no longer need a special education setting or support? Yeah, we're we have one more slide, then we can have lots of questions before we break out into groups, but you can ask anytime you like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, thank you. Um, just back at the special education process. Yeah, the other way. Jumping. I think um as a Oh, you the wrong way. Yeah, that's okay. Um I think as a teacher like this is where I this is where I struggle the most. So um the child find is ideally I I use that word ideally supposed to happen right 0 to three at the county level would is that is that what you would say is is true or is that is that not correct?
213I mean, it it really varies to based on the student itself because we have students that aren't have a suspected disability early on because they might just be a little bit below grade level and and you don't really start identifying that maybe until later on later on. Okay. So, it really depends on the student. Yeah. Some students you're going to have a a very significant notice of um maybe they're not using their um verbal cues, that kind of thing. So, you're going to really early on have that child find issue. where you might have other students that are typical kindergarteners, maybe a little bit delayed, but aren't really having that significant um setback and then maybe second, third grade, they're starting to fall further behind than just child find starts. So it really is individualized
214based on every student because as a an early educator it's you see children coming into the system either well I'm TK so they're coming in at TK or even in kindergarten so in my wing of the of the school and haven't been identified through child find right but have pretty significant things going on right not just maybe academic issues but also behavioral issues that are pretty apparent from day one, right? And so, um, as a teacher works through this process, which is the first line of intervention that we go to is through the SST process. Correct. And then from a teacher's perspective, I think it gets overwhelmingly um slow and feels like a lot that needs that both the parent, the child and the teacher kind of have to go through to really get to
215the point of eligibility. Does that make sense? The frustration that I feel as an educator and I think it's been more impactful postco Yeah, because we are seeing more extreme behaviors that are coming into the classroom where um we are still having that long wait time. Um but then really no intervention or or supports are getting offered early early on, right? Because we have this eligibility issue that has to happen in order for the child to have an IEP or getting tested getting testing finished. So I guess my next question would be eligibility. I don't really understand. I hear a lot of different things out in the education world and I don't I I don't know what is accurate. Um what is the eligibility? I mean I hear two to three grade levels below. Then
216I hear well that's not really accurate. that's not really what we're talking about anymore because you can qualify under OI and other uh qualifications that might give you more supports on under the IEP process. So, I I don't I don't know if there's an answer, but I guess what is the real answer when you're trying to determine eligibility under like services that we would offer in the school district for a four or 5year-old coming into the system? And so actually we go to the ed code, don't we? Because the ed code gives very strict guidelines as to what eligibility is for each area of eligibility. You saw 13 areas of eligibility up there. Correct. Yes. And so when we think in terms of speech uh and language impairment, that of course is going to have
217different criteria than specific learning disability. Right. And so that's why we have multiple modes of assessment because we don't want to go ahead and label a child just based on one piece of data. Correct? So we look at multiple pieces of data including what the parent provides. Parent input, observation, and then there are three pieces to eligibility. It isn't just a child with a disability because we have lots of children on our campus who may have a disability that is not creating a barrier to them making access having access to their education. Maybe they have diabetes but it's being managed. They're not missing any school time. They have a disability but it's not getting in the way of things. Correct. Right. So that's why where your OI of their health impairment. We need to go
218ahead and see that that disability is creating a barrier to learning. And then the other piece is that that student requires specialized learning. And that's what the IEP is. If they don't require specialized learning, but they have a disability that gets in the way of learning, they might be served under a 504 plan that provides accommodations to give access to learning. And so I know it it it sounds like a um a big puzzle, and it is a puzzle to be honest. It is. It's a lot for parents. Agrees. It's a lot for parents and it's a lot for educators and we're all trying to navigate the system to do what's best for kids and it is o it is a very overwhelming uh process that we've set up and I agree and I think
219that next week giving you a little teaser we're going to talk about how we partner with our parents because it can be a very isolating very difficult process so we want to teach our parents while we're teaching their kids along the way. Okay. Thank you. And and to your point, it's it's not always necessarily grade levels behind. If you have a student that's qualifying under deaf and heart of hearing or emotional disturbance, it's not necessarily they they some of those kids have higher IQs than everyone in the room here because they have that ability. It's more of the emotional disturbance or blindness or deaf and heart of hearing that's getting in the way of their making progress academically. Um that so again, I think it's it's not always that's what's going to make them eligible.
220It's so many different caveats to help support students in a very unique ways. um eligibility. Um I I just know for our district, do we still um when my son was was not even three and was struggling with speech, I was referred to go to a um I want to say I thought it was learning lab, but it's not. Language builders. It wasn't language builders. It was before the IEP process. He did go to language builders, but I just went to a preschool room that was open for anyone. You just signed in. Does this ring a bell? Is this still a thing? You just signed in. I It was actually at Saman Elementary that I took him to, and I know there was some other sites as well. They had a speech pathologist there. Okay.
221Who like just wandered around the room, spoke to my son, and the IEP process got started immediately. Like it was really fast. I had learning link. That's what it was. Learning link. Okay. Do we still have that? I don't believe we have learning link. No. Well, it was phenomenal because I had no idea what I was doing. I hadn't um I didn't know how to start the process. I didn't even know that the district would help kids like or the county had a program that would help kids and then they'd get turned over to the district at three. I didn't know any of that. So, they just put me into this. I feel like I was I felt like I was funneled through and it was a beautiful process. So we we have a similar
222process or or something at the preschool assessment center the pack where we are identifying students at that early age for if they need um speech only or if they need more intensive programs or more um um when it comes to LRE the more restrictive environment. So our our pack team the pre preschool assessment center um at our early childhood center does a lot of that assessment as well and they do a lot of that naturalistic play and and identifying students um where they're struggling in certain areas. Um, they even have like a ready, set, grow room there at the ECC to help kind of students see how they interact with their peers in that naturalistic setting and see where their some of their deficits are. So, we do a lot of that at the pack.
223Yeah, I think that's great. I think that kind of answers your question, too, with finding is that if these parents are aware of it, then they come into your classroom as a TK are already well into the program with their IEPs. Yeah, I'm not going to talk about when we get the 0 to3 we get referrals from regional center and then once we get the referral from regional center from that zero to three that's when we assess them at the pack. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Oh, maybe so. Okay, so it's flashing now. It's flashing. Use this one. Okay. Um, so I know there's kids that are practically uh it's avail it's apparent at birth, blindness, severe, deafness, whatever. Um, but then in many cases it isn't really uh it's really not observed until about third grade
224where they're just not staying up. But some of and so then they go on an IOP IEP or at least a 504. But don't some kids end up exiting special ed in maybe in high school, maybe in upper upper uh middle school? Seems to me I have known kids who have exited. Yeah, we have students exit all different ages in elementary, middle school, high school, all different ages. Yeah, it really depends on have they made enough progress? Have they been able to show that there's when we do the reassessment process um the multi-disiplinary report? Um that is our goal obviously to help students reach the point where they're no longer having learning deficits, they're no longer struggling, they're able to just participate in the general education setting without accommodations and whatnot. So yeah, great. Thank
225you. I mean, it seemed to me back in 2017, Greg, when you were new to special ed, one of the things we learned, and we had a trustee who had a special ed um student, so it was very helpful because he asked questions I wouldn't even know to ask. Um that the earlier we catch um a need of a child and can address it, we can there are times where we can get them exited out%. So the early detection is really so important. Yeah, that was my takeaway from long ago. Exactly. And that's the reason why I want to start this the presentation with that slide of all the things we even do before a student goes um being assessed for special ed because that is such a huge part of what we do is
226early intervention. The earlier we can get students on track, the better they have of getting a better chance they have of getting on on grade level with the rest of their peers. Um, and we know like when it comes to reading acquisition, the earlier the better because it's going to affect the rest of your schooling. And um, and then also like when we look at specialized programs, sometimes we'll have a student with high level um, autism. They really need that sack structure. Sometimes we'll get them in that structure, get them that that really dialed in um, sack approach and they can be moving to a stars and then gened all that much earlier than if they didn't get that structure and get that um, direction they need at an earlier age. Um okay so this
227one more slide before we go into our group. This just kind of shows our continuum of services. You can see at the bottom there all students are gened students first. Uh and then as we do our assessments and we identify the level of need for students the the level of restrictiveness when it comes to LRE moves up when it comes to um as Dr. Brown was saying students that are in general education with just some SAI which is called specialized academic instruction. You can see down there at the bottom that is the um the instruction that they're getting within a general education classroom maybe with some pair educator support that is um guided by a uh ed specialist, a special education teacher, or they could be pulled out into like a learning lab setting where
228they're learning the the content level in a gened setting, English or math or whatever the case may be, then coming into a learning lab setting where they're getting retaught or some accommodations or some um additional support. And then it goes on up as we um when it comes to then we got to the pullout placement when you're looking at um services and then going to home base and sack and stars and the different programs we provide within the district all the way up into um the more restrictive environments outside of the district even which will um unfortunately sometimes students get to when they need that level support. So, so the next thing we would like to do, this is kind of the the fun portion. Uh, we have two phenomenal ed specialists with us. There
229are teachers on special assignment. We have Ivon Gail Singer and Jenny Sanvig. They are going to be supporting us at our two stations and Dr. Purcell is going to be running one station and Miss Dagley's going to be running the other. And I'm going to bounce between the two just to answer questions and that kind of thing. But we are going to break into two groups and one of them is going to be more of our mild mod programs. Um the stars and the learning lab that kind of thing and then one's more of the mod severe programs when it comes to step and sachs and that kind of thing. And we're going to do about 15 minutes of just explaining what those programs are, giving you a breakdown, answering questions. Then we'll switch. You
230guys can go to the next group. So about 15 minutes for each group and then we'll come back at the end and kind of answer some more questions and talk about week. So um there's five of you. So three can go to one, two to the other, and then we will um go from there. And then this is this again when it comes to the slideshows, um each one of these has a hyperlink to the program. So, here are brochures that are on the boards, but also for you guys to take All right, we'll wrap you up. All right, thank you guys. And obviously you could see that we're passionate about that and we could probably spoke for four hours worth on those programs and answer tons of questions. Um so but next week we
231will be if there's any um questions following up after these we can definitely um do that. Then like we talked about earlier next week we're going to be talking about the the supports and services we provide to students families and then allstar school sites. So you saw what makes a student eligible you saw the programs that we offer to students. Then you're going to kind of see the next layer, the related support, kind of digging in deeper, the related supports for students. Um, how we support parents and communities and and our CAC and the and the family resource center and all the different things that we do to engage and educate and then also how we as a department support our teachers and our pair educators and our principles and the trainings we offer, that
232kind of thing. So, next week we'll kind of take that next step on um the bigger picture of special education. All right. I thought it was really interesting what um now I can't think of the teacher's name. Um uh who was what? No no no the teacher who was here for the last session sitting right there. I can't think of her name. Anyway, Jenga, Jen Bega was saying that the standardsbased because she's one of the standardbased classrooms and how much more helpful that was her for her in IEPs. And I would think that it would be helpful, very much helpful for that and also help parents see sometimes that that their kid really is there now and it and and that they can use fewer services or exit services or that we could even um
233have somewhat less need for 504s because often 504s are things like extra time. Well, if you are just working on mastery, time kind of doesn't exist anymore. Um, I mean, I'm not I'm exaggerating, but but it becomes less of an issue. Um, because you're not trying to just complete it in this time. You're trying to show that you know it. um and and and possibly even fewer parents who are going out and looking for a di diagnosis because again we're talking about standards and they are meeting these standards, you know, don't worry about it. They're good. So anyway, I just thought that was interesting.