001it is time 5:30 I don't know where everybody shoulder Partners we've lost Dr pul Again [Laughter] Alicia all right do we have cor Lor's here so we have Quorum okay do we have five six okay okay then I will call the meeting to order and turn it over to Craig uh to call the role and um get us kicked off thank you thank you madam chair and if everyone would please take a minute to silence your cell phones we'd appreciate that and if you need to have an extended conversation with the person next to you or on your phone please do so in the lobby please note spontaneous comments from the floor are not permitted individuals who exhibit disruptive or distracting Behavior will be asked to leave and board members each of you has a
002microphone at your seat and it's just a push one time get a green light for to speak push one time red light to not speak please try to remember when you're finished speaking to push that button and get that red light so we don't have any undesired hot mic moments with that I will call the role Paula Lewis present Carol Thompson Pres pres Lori Bowman Jessica safes presid Dana Meister present Mike Shelton Juan Lona Meg Melaney we have a quorum thank you um I did forget to say uh we are being live streamed tonight so that's exciting so we were a little bit laxed on always using our microphone on Sunday um we can't do that today because the people on the live stream will not be able to hear us so please remember that
003and then we do have a couple of students uh we have a journalism student in the back over there and we've got um something education I don't exactly know but thanks for joining our meeting today we appreciate it and we have the most important things we have two students in the room so good job there we go all right so our first uh item is this is a work session just to remind everybody that means we have a two-hour hard stop we've agreed upon that for a long time so we will have to stay pretty much on task typically we let the staff report and then we ask question questions afterwards um that usually just allows us to keep it on schedule a little bit better um but if you feel pressing to ask a
004question in the middle of it you can but it usually works better to wait towards the end so with that we will go to 2.01 the Northwest evaluation Association nwaa and our chief of staff Jason Galloway and Vernon Martin senior executive director of secondary schools Laura McGee senior executive director of elementary schools will be presenting this this item uh chair Lewis Dr pulk members of the board thank you for having us tonight we are here to uh report give you a report on our most recent nwea uh winter assessment results so just to kick us off as we do with all of our sessions together uh with our okcps vision by providing Equitable access to a world class education every Oklahoma City public school student will graduate ready to fulfill their unique purpose in a
005healthy and Vibrant Community so the next few slides are just going to be uh slides that you've seen before we had an opportunity to come before the board in August of 2024 to do a work session on what nwaa was and so for us uh we began our journey with nwaa in August of 2022 so this is our third year uh using this assessment and so uh often times you'll hear it referred to as map Ina map which stands for measuring academic progress and with this we this is our Universal screener that we administer three times a year we do it once in the fall once in the winter and once in the spring uh just a little bit of background knowledge uh we won't be using all of this tonight but again just wanted
006to uh reconnect us back to the conversation that we left off in August so nwaa is the most widely used academic screener in the United States with over 9 million students annually participating uh it is nationally normed uh it is a standardized assessment measures uh what students know and informs what they're ready to learn next it's a computer adaptive test uh ranges between 41 and 44 questions so as the student engage in the assessment it will adapt up and adapt down to find that just right uh area of performance and that area of performance is populated in what they call a RIT score which stands for a rash unit uh it's on a scale between 100 and 350 again that scale it's a single scale and so uh it doesn't adjust based on their age
007level it's all about their performance level and so a RIT score for a kindergartener and a RIT score for a senior you'll be able to have a single measurement I think of a lot of it like the ACT assessment uh and then the norm grade level RIT we won't be speaking about this tonight but one thing that they do provide is when you have a large group of students taking the assessment at every grade level you'll be able to see what does that mean RIT score so how are our students performing overall and then you'll be able to see that against what the mean RIT score is in the country for example so growth and achievement insights the map growth assessment data gives Educators insights on growth and achievement Norms uh Norms are correlated to
008projected performance on the Oklahoma State uh testing program as well as uh the act by way of a linking study so every time that uh the state uh puts out their new set of standards and testing protocols n WEA will do a linking study to correlate how close NWA results are to uh results on a state assessment or on the ACT assessment and so with growth and achievement we'll start with growth so growth measures how much a student has learned over a specific period of time to assess points must exist uh to get a growth measure so for example fall assessment to Winter assessment will be able to look at the scores in the winter to determine what their growth percentile was so how much a student grew during that particular period of time as
009compared to students across the country so growth at the 50th percentile is an indicator that projected growth goals were met at the student student level and that more students met their projected growth goal than did not meet their projected growth goal at the schoolwide or districtwide level and this is where we're going to really dig in tonight is talking about student growth this helps us understand how effective our teaching strategies were in helping students improve and growth data is especially important for identifying and supporting students who may be starting below grade level but are making significant progress achievement is also a very relevant conversation and so we want to ground oursel in that tonight as well achievement measures how well students are performing at a single point in time so every time we take an
010nwaa assessment we will get an achievement percentile and that is uh that's populated by what is their achievement percentile as compared to all the other students who are taking that same assessment so this is important it helps us understand how many students are meeting or exceeding National norms and also grade level expectations when applying the research of the state level linking studies and this is crucial for accountability and assessing the overall effectiveness of our educational programs so next I want to take us into what did our data show us for this most recent assessment and so we'll start off by looking at the elementary schools can I ask a question real quick we get this slide deck will this be something given to us or do we need to take okay yep absolutely thank you
011yeah and so looking at elementary schools the first thing we're going to look at is the median growth percentiles again if I go back a slide or two growth at the 50th percentile is an indicator that projected growth goals are being met okay and then we'll we'll dig into kind of what this means for achievement as we move on and so if we go back to uh this time last year when we looked from the fall nwaa assessment to the winter nwaa assessment and what the students growth percentile was at this time last year in elementary Reading it's it was 29.1% which really means in layman's terms is that our students aren't making progress fast enough when they're in school with us therefore they're going to be losing ground in achievement that's what it means
012just in a in basic terms and so this year at this time our students were in the 37th percentile so still not to that 50th percentile in growth but a significant gain in relation to where we were last year in mathematics you'll see that last year at this time we were in the around the 38th percentile in achievement or I'm sorry in growth this year nearing that 50th percentile mark 47.5 % and so a gain of 99.4% so what that does then is we start to get views on how does growth impact achievement so when growth goes up achievement will follow and so if you take it back to the winter of 2223 where Oklahoma City uh students were performing again this is mean performance this is just our average uh average achievement in elementary
013Reading in 2223 was 19.6% in in the percentile which means that our students um that 80% of the of the population nationally was performing at a higher uh rate than our students were and now our achievement has moved up to almost the 27th percentile in achievement and this is Elementary reading in elementary mathematics you'll see a similar trend line in 2223 we're performing at the 20th percentile in the most recent assessment we're in the 32nd percentile so uh steady gains over the past two years taking a look at Middle School views uh the growth percentile at this time last year in Middle School reading was in the 34th percentile this year in the 44th percentile so a gain of almost 10 growth grow percentage points oh I'm sorry that is Middle math not math math
014uh so winter last year in the 34th percentile this year in the 48th percentile so a gain of just over 14% in growth percentage points looking at achievement so again another steady achieve another steady Rise um over the trends two years ago at this time our students in reading Middle School reading were performing in the 22nd percentile um now in the 28th percentile middle school math from the 18th percentile to almost the 23rd percentile looking at high school high school reading uh this time last year 39th percentile this year almost the 48th percentile then High School math from the 42nd percentile to now the 56th percentile so this is a very encouraging Trend and we'll see this uh kind of what this does to impact our achievement lines so high school has more instead of
015a steady rise has more of a hockey stick uh type metric and so in the winter of 2223 high school students in Reading performing in the 28th percentile now in the 40th percentile and in mathematics from the 26th percentile to about the 38th percentile in high school mathematics so in a just a summary view of kind of what this means for our growth perspectives if we compare this year to last year 25 of our 31 elementary schools had higher growth percentiles this year in Reading 26 of our 31 in mathem atics Middle School in Reading 10 of 13 in math 12 of 13 High School reading 6 of eight high school math seven of eight so one thing that we do in our organization to try to make sense of all this when we talk
016about growth is that 50th percentile in growth is kind of that magic number that we look at for what does one year's growth and one year's time look like however we realize that students come to us and students who have been with us um are at a variety of different achievement levels and so what you have to start looking at is to start closing the achievement Gap so hypothetically if there's a child who is two years behind grade level and they make their projected growth goals for the rest of their life at every single assessment if they're in the 50th percentile this year and then the 50th percentile next year they're going to end their time with us still two years behind so they don't start to close the achievement Gap until their growth perspectives
017exceed the 50th percentile so we put this into terms that we call gemstones and it's just a uh it's a easily digestible sticky way for us to uh describe the levels of growth within not only a school but also grade levels in classrooms um even with individual students we can look at their individual growth percentages and we can attach a gemstone to that and so where we come up with the gemstones these are uh precious gems and these are actually ranked in order of the Rarity of the gems and so from the 50th to the 60th percentile and again growth is the the horizontal line so the um the Y AIS if you will uh so from the 50th percentile to the 59th percentile that is a sapphire gemstone so if your growth perspective was
018uh in that range you would get a sapphire gemstone from the 60th to the 70th Emerald 70th to the 80th Ruby and then 80 plus is diamond and so when you start getting into that Ruby and Diamond space you're talking about a year and a half to two plus years growth in a single year's time or within a specific span of time and so that is when achievement gaps really start to close rapidly and so that is aspirational for us as a school district when we start looking at where these types of growth uh opportunities are happening for kids this is where we really want to get curious and learn more and we want to start to be able to replicate uh what's happening in these spaces and so again the the metric that I
019was showing prior to that was um districtwide um so it's it's not to uh not to indicate that we don't have uh emeralds rubies and diamonds within our school district because we certainly do with individual kids in individual classrooms and now we're seeing it within individual schools uh which when we looked at this two years ago that just wasn't the reality um it was a it was very much a rarity so with the gemstones we do what we call the gemstone Awards and when we identify uh where these amazing growth opportunities have occurred throughout our school district that's something that we want to celebrate and even though it's small with a certificate and a Ring Pop um to to represent the gemstones uh it's just something that that we enjoy doing and that has really
020gained quite a bit of significance uh among our among our staff among our schools uh our leaders and our teachers so at this time I'm going to invite my colleagues Miss Verna Martin and Miss Laura McGee to walk us through a couple of uh growth opportunities that have happened at some of our individual schools and what we've decided to prepare for you tonight is just doing a highlight from each of our board districts we'll start with John Marshall Enterprise middle school thank you Jason um for your overview of our district progress with nwea uh good evening board members chair Lewis uh superintendent pul I am delighted to have this opportunity to share with you our secondary schools that have had significant Improvement in nwaa growth and achievement during the middle of the year assessment our
021first school as Jason mentioned that we want to highlight is from Board District One John Marshall Enterprise middle school principal Jessica Robinson is in her first year at John Marshall on this assessment John Marshall saw growth in Reading as you can see from the 31st to the 61st percentile earning them an emerald award and in Mass they grew from the 27th to the 50th percentile earning the sapphire award as a result of this movement John Marshall saw Improvement in their achievement percentiles in both reading and math and Miss Robinson attributes the growth to Scholars setting goals and incentives that they provide to students to do their best on their nwaa assessment she is most proud of her Scholars for taking ownership in their learning good evening superintendent pulk board chair Lewis honorable members of the
022board and to my esteemed colleagues thank you for being here tonight in elementary school we are also incredibly proud of the growth uh and achievement changes that we have seen during this school year we are committed just as a secondary team to ensuring that every student has Equitable access to a worldclass education and that we are increasing student outcomes through an intentional focus on datadriven instruction student goal setting and celebrations of mil stones at both the teacher and campus levels through great culture great teaching and learning great people and great systems we truly are building a First Choice District it is my my privilege to ask principal Dr Jennifer Cruz and her principal supervisor Natalie Papa George to stand in there here tonight and is an honor to recognize them for growth representing District 2
023this is Dr Cruz's first year here in Oklahoma City Public Schools but her 14th as an administrator and you will see that through this first semester of focusing on the okah Oklahoma academic standards and using the district curriculum in both English language arts and math they have been able to spend time ensuring students have access to the guaranteed and viable curriculum they have spent professional Learning Community time focused on teaching and teacher changes they have worked to make bold changes by making bold moves with their curriculum accountability measures and culture Dr Cruz is most proud of the fact that every grade level saw progress in meeting the goal of 10% growth from eoi toi some have more to do but most have met their goals and are excited about what is ahead her teachers are
024better equipped to analyze their data and respond to their teaching through data analysis and as a result you can see some exciting growth for Nicholls Hills Enterprise Elementary in reading from the 31st to the 48th percentile in growth nearing almost there they'll have that gemstone by the end of the year that led them to an increase from 35th to the 42nd percentile in achievement in reading and then in math from the 45th to the 53rd percentile in growth earning them a sapphire gemstone which moved them from the 40th percentile to the 47th percentile in achievement congrat congratulations Nichols Hills [Applause] Elementary yes ma'am we live in acronyms will you please explain boy M as well as eoy yes ma'am so uh boy toy is beginning of the year to middle of the yeary to eoi
025is middle of the year to end of the year so we are at the middle of the Year Point um at this time while we're reporting out to you all right our next school at the elementary level is from District 3 Mark Twain Elementary School the principal of Mark Twain Elementary School is John White he has been the Principal there for the past five years and he attributes their amazing nwaa progress to several key strategies first they have built a collaborative data driven culture where students and teachers use nwaa and CFA data that's common formative assessments to guide instruction and interventions secondly they have implemented a daily Flex time that allows them flexible grouping so that students are supported by need and by name and finally they attribute much of their growth to the Daily
026targeted support that students receive based on their individual needs students use data notebooks to track their progress and set growth goals goal setting has been a key factor in their success these strategies have helped them align their systems around data driven decision-making and student outcomes the principal of Mark Twain Elementary School Mr White is incredibly proud of his dedic dedicated team for achieving six areas of growth above the 50th percentile so you can see that they moved from the 27th percentile in growth in Reading to the 40th percentile which moved them from the 25th percentile in achievement to the 30th and then in math at Mark Twain They moved from the 44th to the 55th percentile in math growth earning them a sapphire gemstone and from the 35th to the 40th percentile in achievement congratulations
027to Mark Twain [Applause] representing District 4 is Wilson Elementary School principal Margaret Saunders Simpson is in her seventh year as the principal at Wilson and they are probably our strongest growth story yet the one thing that they attribute their nwaa growth to is intentional planning for success and ensuring that they know every student by name and by name it takes an entire Village she says it takes our families working with our kids at home it takes our teachers working very very diligently and it takes administrators who find the gold in their people it does not happen by accident we use our tools that we believe in like Arts integration and Great Expectations to present what we need our students to accomplish and we use the guaranteed and viable curriculum it is all of our students
028working toward their individual goals and knowing where they stand that has made the difference congratulations to Wilson Elementary for their tremendous gains from the 41st to the 62nd percentile in growth in Reading earning them an emerald genstone that caused them to move from the 65th to the 77th percentile in achievement also in math from the 43rd to the 55th percentile in growth earning a Sapphire gemstone and from the 66th to the 73rd percentile in achievement we're very proud of the accomplishments of our students at [Applause] Wilson all right next we have from Board District 4 also Bell Isle Enterprise middle school we're going to correct you there since we're live stream that's Board District Two still but but B too got okay well from Board District Two then thank you bow Enterprise middle school where
029principal lyzon is in her sixth year at B Isle on the middle of the Year assessment B saw growth in Reading from the 35th to the 53rd percentile and in math they saw growth from the 33rd to the 57th percentile earning them two sapphire Awards as a result of this growth you'll see that bow also saw significant Improvement in their achievement percentiles in both reading and math missz attributes their growth to Scholars knowing their data and tracking their individual progress towards nwaa goals as well as schoolwide nwaa goals she is very proud of her teachers for their dedication to helping Scholars achieve their [Applause] goals next from Board District 5 I'm very excited to highlight Star Spencer High School where principal Michael Harris is in his third year on the nwaa assessment Star Spencer saw
030growth in read from the 45th to the 54th percentile and in math they grew from the 49th to the 66th percentile earning a sapphire and an emerald award as a result of their growth Star Spencer has improved their achievement in both reading and math but most notably math with an increase of 14 percentile points Mr Harris attributes growth to their reading intervention plan which is implemented through a modified schedule three days per week using Lexia and the use of schoolwide testing strategies for all grade levels Mr Harris is most proud of his Scholars and staff and how they have adjusted to the modified schedule as well as his math and English teachers for for their focused work in [Applause] plc's next from district 6 it's my pleasure to share the story of growth for Esperanza
031Elementary it's important to note that Esperanza moved from an F to a d this last school year they are on a state designated list but they will be off very shortly as you can see from their growth story principal Lena Barry is the principal at esparanza and she has been there for six years she is attributing their success in growth and achievement by their focus on tier one instruction and using the data from progress monitoring to hone in on specific skills that are needed for remediation she is most proud of her staff for embracing the data and making changes to ensure students are achieving they have worked very hard over the past few years on changing perceptions on what our students are able to do which is tremendous tremendous so I'm proud of their growth
032story here they've moved in Reading from the 22nd percentile to the 37th percentile in growth which has moved them from the 14th to the 19th percentile in Reading achievement and in math from the 33rd to the 46 percentile in growth in math moving them from the 21st to the 206 percentile in achiev ment and although we haven't earned gemstones yet I wanted to take a minute to highlight this story of great growth and perseverance as we know they will be just right behind here everyone here at the end of the year in earning both growth and achievement gemstones [Applause] great and our hot our final school highlight for tonight is from district 7 wheeler Middle School where principal Desiree Jackson is in her sixth year as principal on the middle of the Year assessment wheeler
033saw growth in Reading from the 27th to the 56th percentile and in math from the 42 to the 64th percentile earning a sapphire and emerald award wheeler also improved their achievement percentiles in both reading and math as well miss Jackson attributes their growth to making plc's a priority and to their low teacher turnover which has allowed them to have a deep focus on tier one instruction Miss Jackson is most proud of the fact that Scholars are taking ownership of their own learning thank [Applause] you that concludes our board District Spotlight for our schools I would just add that over the past several years our organization has been in Relentless pursuit of highquality instructional infrastructure which includes strong curricular resources strong assessment strategy strong teacher collaboration at the campus level and incredible instructional practices collectively those
034things together are all needed to raise the bar of teaching and learning in our school district it's a journey and it's something that we are deeply committed to and we are excited about where we are headed moving forward at this time I would invite uh any questions comments before we start with questions we should probably stand up for the education they did and clap for them [Applause] all right well done everybody that was a great presentation thank you exciting to see the good things happening so let's start with Meg we'll just go around the corner one question each and then if we have a little bit more time because we do have two more items and we're about an hour and a half in so okay thank you guys I don't have a question but
035just a general statement I think I've been on the I mean I've been on the board for a minute and this may have been the first time that we've had the growth Illustrated to us in such a tangible way and I know um a lot of this education speak is very it can be inside baseball for people and I love that this is live streamed and I just thank you so much for making it palatable and and teaching all of us more about how to understand our school's growth and just fantastic job across the board this is really encouraging and thank you so much for your work thank you good afternoon everyone my name is Juan Lona district 6 so I am very proud of the wonderful presentation first of all thank you um like
036me said this is the first time that we we we get to see this this is this year will be my second year on the board and I'm very happy and excited to see the changes and whatnot that that excuse me the changes are happening in the district and I am very pleased with all the schools and of course I have to say espir Elementary I mean their math from uh 33rd percentile to 46 their reading from 22nd to 37 that's that's impressive and of uh I believe that we as a parent if we do our work at home with her or or kids you know get them to read every day help them with their homework you know get them get them active or get them you know uh to to sorry I lost
037my trans thought uh get them engaged that's the word I was looking for so uh thank you to the principal staff and uh and of course everybody in the district um let's let's uh keep up the good work thank you good evening uh Mike Shelton district 7 uh first of all great presentation just for those administrators as well as uh teachers uh that couldn't be here that really are in the doing all the work and uh we appreciate the work that they do uh Star Spencer I appreciate uh the uh work uh that they're doing uh just as a uh I'm colorblind so I'm still trying to make all the make a try to see what colors what and so I'm going to need that uh need those uh colors written out for me so
038I can make sure that I can give everybody their their due uh congratulations yes sir car'll go back bump over to you thank you I just wanted to first of all thank the presenters for being here tonight and also I want to thank our wonderful students in Oklahoma City Public Schools I am so proud of you as an ex educator and administrator in Oklahoma City Public Schools we never had anything like this when I was there and this is the most awesome thing to see the growth that is happening I had one question and it was about textbooks have we had new textbook adoptions and has that helped and are we planning on new textbook adoptions to help us progress can we start with this one um yes uh we I believe I'm going to
039look over at Jer she's going to fact check me we adopted new Ela curriculum two years ago two years ago and then this past year was the math adoption and so uh textbook Cycles in the state happen every six years and so we were able to secure funding for both our Ela and math adoption um during those adoption Cycles um which I've had conversations with the uh the the math team and they uh they're very very satisfied with the most recent math adoption the upping our level of curricular resources um significantly and so uh very excited about that will you please share on today what actually happened with PD in relationship to textbooks absolutely absolutely um you know this is a for for the audience and for everybody in the room uh this is a
040very special day for okcps um February 24th but but for us uh starting back uh two years ago three years ago um we get as a school district we get two days a year dedicated to full districtwide professional development where we have our whole District as a as a as an audience to be able to deliver districtwide PD and so one thing that we uh transitioned to uh three years ago was something that we call Job alike professional development so not a canned professional development that everybody in the district has to go attend but we develop a customized jobike uh professional development opportunity for every job grouping in the organ ganization so if you're a secondary math teacher you go to professional learning with all the other secondary math teachers but we have something completely
041different for secondary science teachers in um in special education teacher so we have a we have what probably 70 or 80 different job alike groupings throughout the organization it is a massive undertaking um but one that that we believe is it creates a much more relevant professional learning experience so we are just deeply grateful for that opportunity to really deepen our learning uh today we um I believe and Vernie you can fact check me on this um had professional learning specific to the the secondary or the math curriculum um so because it takes time you get a new resource uh takes time for for teachers to really deeply um become immersed in the resource itself how to interface with the resource what uh what are the highlights of it um and then the curriculum team
042uh develops the pacing guides that go along so sample lessons and things of that nature so we did have an opportunity today uh to have the whole District available for that job alike professional learning anything you want to add for any good okay Jessica yes uh thank you so much Jessica sentes uh representing District 3 um I did want to start off with my comments um I wrote down quite a few notes but um first of all this is quite refreshing to see in the district um congratulations okcps congratulations everybody here um I really like the fact that we are becoming transparent um there are some key words that I really appreciated being um evidence-based practices um I heard Mr Galloway saying uh maybe replicating our growth in other schools is really important um today
043um it really shows how we are becoming focused on student outcomes um I also really like that we had that hockey stick analogy earlier um and I wanted to also just just fully comment on the significance about these gemstones that were just presented to us um that um if if you know if we want to become a student outcome focused governance Group which is the training that we've been undergoing as a as a board we have to talk about student outcomes but not only that we have been learning that we need to invest in what it is we want to see grow in through our budgets and um and how we allocate our our monies um so what's significant about these gemstones is that we hadn't become a student outcome focused governance group in these
044past three years this is a new thing um and so the fact that we have been growing without necessarily being completely focused on it um is so significant um and also focusing on the quality of instruction um I have really really loved that so there's a term I'm going to Enlighten everybody uh that I I was just thinking about right now which is um something that few people have been saying around me which is drip or drown okay and the way we have talked about this is well if you see somebody who is dressed very nicely um well they're they're dressed for Success um and so I think right now okcps is exhibiting a dripper drown moment because we are flexing and showing off our student growth um so congratulations okcps and um I do
045want I do have one question for clarification when it comes to using our NWA scores to compare ourselves to other uh other districts and and other states um can you talk a little bit about um what is the number that we need to be looking at is it like the the year-to-year number in comparison and what what that really means so see if I can put this into just the achievement percentile is the one that is correlated to per efficiency on the state assessment or uh a certain Target score on the ACT so the linking studies that they do if you what they've done is if you perform here nationally in this achievement percentile that will most often correlate to a 24 on the act or a 300 on the Oklahoma state test um so
046that is the number that we um that's that's ultimately the standard that's the Benchmark that we're looking for and so one thing that I I just want to point out for clarity is that a lot of times when when people are starting to look at this data they think the 50th percentile is the target for achievement the 50th percentile is not the target for achievement the 50th percentile just means that's where half of the students nationally are below and half are above that's just the midpoint what we find is on these linking studies and it varies by grade level but that Mark for proficiency is somewhere between the 65th percentile in achievement and the 75th percentile in achievement so that just kind of shows you where the nation is also in comparison to what is
047um what is categorized as uh proficiency and so this is um this is a journey for us this isn't just something that uh and I think it also speaks to if a child is in the 20th percentile in a AI for example it just puts into it it quantifies how big of a leap it's going to be to get to proficiency and so it's important for us to be able to be able to measure the growth along the way um because it may not be completely realistic for a child who's performing three or four grade levels below the standard to become proficient in that year but it is very much um realistic to know that if I can have high quality instruction and we can close achievement gaps if we are growing in those gemstone
048areas year over year over year over year give me a period of time and we will close that achievement gap down and we will be able to to close it down towards proficiency and that's ultimately what we're moving towards I don't know if that answers your question um but that achievement percentile is ultimately what we're looking at we didn't really discuss the RIT score tonight um but the RIT score also the linking studies also have RIT scores uh in relation to proficiency scores and so for instance if you're um I'm Dr po you have to check me here uh I believe in Reading if your writ if you have a reading RIT score of 232 that would be an equivalent to being able to score a 22 on the ACT and then it it goes
049up slightly from there uh math requires a little bit higher RIT score in math to be at that 22 level on the ACT but we have a bunch of uh data tables that we can do those correlations with um so there's not many people that have it fully committed to memory but U no that's wonderful and uh and you did also touch on a good point as well that the reason why we're doing nwaa for everybody who's live streaming I mean it's correlated to a lot of things so you mentioned it's correlated to our state testing ACT scores um and again this is a nationally uh recognized assessment that we're using now so good work okcps keep up the good work and I'm excited to see uh how much more we grow thank you thank
050you Dana the benefit of going on one of the last people is to say Y what everybody said I agree with and I do very much agree with it congratulations to all of the teachers and the principls and the administrators I know like you said it takes a village and you guys are that this Village is is going somewhere um I love that there are numbers there's a lot of times you can just say oh we're doing better and and parents want to see we went from here to here and and this is wonderful to give them actual numbers and some concrete things that they can look at obviously we have a way to go but as Dr poke always says let's get to work that's right there you go Lori sure well I Echo
051what everyone has said that thank you for doing this um Jason knows I I love all this and of course I have like a thousand questions but um my first and and I do want to um comment you know just following on theirs I think we've come so far and acknowledging how far we've come from the days of the April test then the August results and then you know the fourth grade teacher doesn't really know the third grade you know they're going in a bit blind the days of going having our teachers go in blind to the school year and not exactly knowing where they're students have been where they've they've come from um academically I think it's so powerful all this data and I shared with some people that I had the great Fortune
052of being invited to this um to Monroe Elementary celebration and I think what is so powerful about this nwaa data is that not only do they celebrate the school which they did excellent and I understand have earned several gemstones um but they also celebrated the grades that had the strongest you know um had moved the most then they recognized the teachers in the grades and then they recognized the students who had been moved off their watch list so I think the celebrations went from like it cascaded down in such a powerful way that they were celebrating um such granular success I mean really instead of it just showed the power of this data and how it can really affect the lives of our individual students so I think it's wonderful um in the comments about
053esparanza I noticed the quote from the principal that said that the staff is really embracing the data so I just wanted to hear a little more about how you all well first of all how you think it's going I I can imagine that a lot of the last couple of years of this have been helping the staff to embrace the data to not be scared of the data because we're all getting more comfortable with like naming it we have to know where we are right now in order to know where we need to go that's also painful and sometimes can be embarrassing and all the emotions I can imagine I can just imagine if you were um talking to teachers um about this so can you just talk about what strategies how okcps is working
054with the leaders all the way down to the classrooms to help our teachers get there with embracing the data like they have at esparanza absolutely I would invite I have all kinds of stories but I would invite um Miss MC or Miss Martin to uh share any of their insights yeah I'm sure miss Martin has much to share and really probably our principles and principal supervisors are the very best people to speak to this but I want to share just from a systems level what we've seen Chang since we began using nwea to track student growth and achievement we have seen our teach teachers hungry to get this data they're excited in fact we were um sending out the nwea protocol and I went to do site V visits at Briton and several other schools
055and they had already gone through dug through the data determined their next step celebrated the wins so what we know is not only has it been embraced by our teachers and our leaders but has become a part of their culture so they're not waiting on the district to analy data they're not waiting for the day that we say this is the day they're doing it automatically because it's making such a difference in ensuring that they're meeting every student's need by name and need and that they're helping their students set realistic stretch goals so that they can see their performance improve over time so I think that we're um and it really I want to give a lot of accolades to Mr Galloway and the curriculum and instruction professional learning team because through their hard work
056um through a lot of training they really began to build this culture of embracing data not being afraid of it not being um hesitant to share it with one another but using it collectively so that we could uh together increase student outcomes through collaboration so it's very exciting um Vice chair Bowman to see the change in our culture um and we're excited to see the same shift in our common formative assessments as we begun focusing in the second semester on getting data quicker in real time so we can adjust adjust our instruction based on student needs immediately the only thing that um I will add uh first I agree with Laura our uh leaders are uh emailing us and as soon as the window closes and they're saying look how well I've done or our
057school has done on nwaa and so that it has been a significant culture shift for Oklahoma City Public Schools in addition to that the thing that I think about is the fact that when three years ago when we first started with nwea uh I can tell you that during our boy Moy and eoy those windows we were not seeing the type of usage that we were um looking for in terms of the percentage of students being tested and people just really did not have a great understanding of the value of the data whereas now we are seeing 95% Plus in the usage and the participation uh of our students with this ass assessment and so leaders Now understand that I get great data from nwaa because it allows me to see where students are and
058where we need to continue to grow as a school and so our participation has increased drastically over those three years and and they're excited about it I think additionally we saw the um change this year we pressed a little bit and our students shared with their families and their Guardians in their student leg conferences their nwea goal setting and growth data and achievement data and so that's another way that it's become embedded in our culture is our students now own the data I'll just share and then I'll pass back but but no I get a screenshot which I've shared with some of you from my ninth grader the moment he's finished with his nwaa check me out I increase by 3 points Five Points whatever it is from beginning of year so it I I
059like that was UN you know unprompted clearly we haven't talk we don't talk about this around the dinner table much but so but clearly something's happening in the building that's making him understand the power of the data and he immediately we get a screenshot to the family text so it is definitely a culture it's happening can I ask a quick question while you're getting your m do we have access as a board uh like if I wanted to see my schools and their scores do I have access to that we can get you that absolutely so I can tell them congratulations absolutely okay thank you I have I mean many of us probably have I'll say I have Curiosities but they're not worthy of a question really but I was thinking is there a way
060Dr pul to have a like a Google doc or something where board members could put in their curiosity questions or questions and Laura may say know this can't happen but you guys could answer Laura not listening so that's awesome and neither's Tony look at that neither one of them they're not even looking up at me I'm answering the question no sorry I was like Laura's going to say no in a minute can we do could we could there be a Google doc where board members could put in any questions since there's a lot and they the district could just answer them there as long as there's no communication between the board members on what the answers are as there's no communication between the so that would be a walk in Quorum just so you know
061that so but we can all put our questions in that way we could all see each other's questions that the district would only have one place to answer them and like I said it's probably just Curiosities like there's a lot of things that I'm like what about that but not worthy of taking up everybody's time for it but um would that be okay with you superintendent okay perfect all right there you go that was not my one question also then I came to the board via Wilson wise wool so woo got to go wolves that's where I was when I first got on the board was there with a hunter and Rain um so one of the things that was not one of the best things I ever did on this board was about 30
062hours of uh meetings uh when we had a a rift in the beginning and what consistently came along was that we had not done evaluations on that some of these people many people got their jobs back because there' been no evaluation and what was that thing they all used to have to do what's that human resource test I don't know anyway but I'm wondering since now superintendent pulk her evaluation will be based in outcome government outcomes of students will that matriculate down to teachers too so so they're so excited about the data will they start being evaluated based on the data of kids that's my one question I'm looking over at my colleague Mr Brad Herer um Brad would you like to comment to be like an immediate like yes it's happening now but is
063that a goal overall yes that'd be great if we could uh do that um if we could use that uh there's a lot of districts especially council districts that use a student performance um in their teacher evaluations that will take some work with us and our Union Partners um in order to make that happen but yeah that's definitely would be ideal for us to be able to utilize that um as as a teacher evaluation and I'm going to pipe in uh to say one of the things our coach just shared with us this past Retreat on uh the Sunday was if you had a clever superintendent your cabinet would already be lined up with their evaluations to be uh in line with mine and I'm pretty clever can I ask a second question so that
064is already taking place and and it'll be a little bit uh before it trickles to Educators to the teachers themselves as we find our way through but please note it would be hard for a teacher not to align with the district to be successful because the things that they're sharing with you are the kpis in regards of how a district is then measured which is how the superintendent will be measured my cabinet will be measured but it will take a little bit and I've asked um talent management to start playing around with what does it look like if a group of teachers within um the building hit their goal their eoi uh and how does it would the entire building get recognized for that monetarily so we're playing with that and and I'm telling you
065in three years that is what I would love to be able to say because this is the work and if we can get it then we will so so it it's not now teachers it is not now teachers it is not now but coming near uh that would be something that we would actually use our Cadence for decision making to see what that looks like for okcps okay teachers it is not now not now now now um so another thing is uh Ruth vills board member Ruth vills served a long time and she used to always say we're data rich but we don't do anything with it well thank you for doing something with it appreciate that thank you so much for that and but PL a new word new two words have come into
066my vocabulary recently stretch collaboration and it's stretching to look at the complexities of every situation and I feel like you guys did that tonight and and you did it in a way that didn't categorize kids or Scholars it just stretched and like what this looks like they're gyms they're all gyms and I really appreciated that because I think in order for this District to be First Choice we've got to go into the complexities of the situations that we face every day so thank you ABS thank you all right so you'll get a Google form you can put your questions on it if everybody's okay to move on because we have two more things to get done today is that okay okay got it all right thank you all very much we appreciate you thank you
067thank [Applause] you 2.02 Workforce Development update Toby Blair and Scott McAdoo while they're Ching out I want to say thank you for Craig and it for getting this all set up every time I really appreciate it thank you superintendent pulk board chair Lewis and board I am very excited to be here this evening for our second update uh related to our Workforce uh programming uh for the audience uh the workforce programming that we're doing and what we're focusing on uh stems out of a bond issue in 2022 uh we will be standing up six Flex spaces on six high schools and inside of each of those Flex spaces will be Workforce or career line programs today's update will cap uh capitalize on some of the work we're doing I'd like to share some things based
068on the last update that I did and how we've moved forward and give you uh some celebrations and some uh a look into some of the Strategic partnership work we've done so let's start with a refresher um each time and I love the fact that we show the vision and it can easily be something that is just that let's hurry and get past this moment but the reality is that every board uh every school principal every District leader everyone will tell you that if you do not have that North Star and in this case those underlined words that mean something to you and help you identify what your programming and what your strategic planning is all about and in the context of our vision it's Equitable access we Aspire for nothing less than every single
069student in our district to have access to the incredible programming that we're working on we also know that our seniors will walk across a graduation stage and that we Aspire for them to be ready for the things that they dream when they get on the other side of that stage and finally the uniqueness of all of our students is apparent and will be apparent today when I show you a couple of celebrations uh you guys remember the last time that we met and I gave you an update on this strategic plan there are four elements to the plan that address the whole of the work that we're doing they are transformative programs and I mentioned those we're building those for each of the high schools they're all career aligned they will all result in certifications
070employability skills and things that give those students that ability to be graduate ready we're really focusing and doubling down on strategic Partnerships I'll speak to that today a little bit this year we're really focusing in on work-based learning opportunities and building a framework two years out for our August 2026 launch we want the day that those programs launch to already have a framework and and an underpinning of support so that students access those authentic experiences in their chosen career line program and the last thing is the is the holistic um work that we're doing to really prepare students in a k through2 articulation to to identify not only what they want to do what they dream and what they would like to do when they walk across the graduation stage but have the skills have
071the resources have the support have everything in in their in within their grasp to accomplish that so let's start with celebrations the last time I talked to you I spoke a little bit about some of our Partnerships I talked to you about an internship program that we were working on just this last semester called construct my future as a result of that program we have seen incredible participation from companies in the community in fact we thought that this is just going to be a pilot and let's just have you know some kids interact with a couple of companies but the the the fact of the matter is we've had so many companies say we want to be part of that we want your students to work for us in an internship capacity because we want
072to hire them as soon as they walk across that stage in fact you'll see that we've had 37 Juniors and seniors at Capitol Hill High School and Northwest Classen High School currently participating in the construct my future internship program we have 15 construction trade companies that are participating in just this pilot four trade associations and again I'd mentioned two high schools I'm meeting this Thursday with my community representative who is uh helping me build this program and our plan is in that meeting meeting this week to plan for next year doubling everything you see here from two high schools to a minimum of four to six high schools from 37 kids to 90 students 90 students that when you see the video I'm getting ready to show you you're going to you have to be
073impressed with what this student Renee is accomplishing and what our students will accomplish with that said I'd like to show you a little bit about Renee and the construct my future internship program [Music] we have started an internship program with obom City Public Schools and about 15 different industry Partners commercially in Oklahoma City metro we have taken 37 students and we have trained them in safety Finance literacy soft skills and then after that we put them on job sites they spend 3 weeks on a job site with either what a subcontractor or a a general contractor or a civil contractor I'm senior for nor West and think this my last year I went to be a electrician I learn about things called hold a construction that is a beautiful program they learn about the ins
074and outs of how they get the job how they do the job and then they get to go work on job sites I was working with the lingo I read about all the their design for the buildings or how the construction working with the Midwest Drive working with the old drive after the 3 weeks they get to rotate the the point behind the 3 weeks and not just keeping them at one job site is so they get more exposure to commercial construction and that they um can with people at the end of the program so kind of like um Renee he wants to be an electrician and so we have unions we have U private contractors and we have the CER Tex that are alongside us that they can get um a pathway so at
075the end of this program people either have um be signed up with the union or be signed up at a Career Tech to get his um license so let's review what we just saw there first of all we excited about that thank [Applause] you so Renee is a good is a good student I mean he we love the story of Renee there 36 other stories I I do not have the time because Miss Martin over here is going to do the five minute you got to stop talking thing here in a bit but I can tell you I can talk for probably an hour for the stories that we're hearing for the students who are saying you mean I can go there and I can do that that is amazing the thing that you heard
076Whitney you heard Whitney on there that's my community uh representative that uh we work on this program together uh you you heard her say they're at the end and and this is the point I always want to kind of really focus on this this is not just an internship where they go spend a period of time and then they come back to school this is a three week rotation through three different career uh construction trade programs three different programs he said he wants to be an electrician but when I talked to Renee when he was with uh lingo he talked to me about some employability skills I asked him I said hey are you learning a little bit about the business employability skills is what I was getting at he said absolutely Mr M I
077love the fact that I get to interact with the CEO the superintendent I don't know if you saw that that in the video the gentleman he was talking to is the the super for the entire Jim Thorp renovation right there by the capital he's in charge of the entire thing and he and I and he and Renee were seemed like they were just best buds I love a a really authentic Rich program that goes beyond just you go there and there's a lot of models that we're going to have to follow that are similar to this but you hear that and then the final piece I'm going to share with you that excites me more than anything the speaking the language of career Pathways that Renee has the option to either sign up with trade
078associations he can sign up directly with quad mind you we already have companies saying can we stop this internship stuff and then just hire them please and I said no the the experience is is the thing uh we we'll talk in the summer but the beauty is is that he can go to to trade Association become a member of the of the union he can get a job directly with the company or he can go directly to uh to a Career Tech program and this is the part where we have to stop and say superintendent Collins is here this evening in our Metro uh Metro Tech program let's give that guy a hand as he sits quietly over there humbly so uh the guidance that uh Mr cins and his leadership team has provided us
079uh just in general but specifically specifically to some programs that I'm going to share with you on our next update that I'm not quite ready to do so today uh Mr Collins and and the amazing thing they do they do at metr Tech and they do it so well we're looking to capitalize learn on that and then send Renee directly to to Metrotech that's the goal you see there so enough about Renee keep talking about him I'd like to now introduce you to Ava Ava is a Southeast High School student she's going to be our next Oklahoma City public school math teacher Superstar let's give it a let's give a clap uh believe me Scott Farley principal Farley over there is already got his got a bug in her ear like I'll see you in
080a couple uh the great thing about this internship it's a different model that we're looking at it's internal it's probably a little bit more traditional it is a student who's a Southeast High School student who's participating in internship internally so we're really looking at a lot of different internal internship opportunities this one is a teacher prep internship program so Ava wants to be a teacher and so they've Set uh an internship opportunity for her to be in a math class interact with the math team and even teach large and small scale instruction I talked to Scott just the other day and I said How's Avid doing she said he said she is taking over the class she is teaching the class and I said that's awesome he said guess what she also goes to the
081math PLC come on now what internship does that like when you hear traditional internship strategies you hear heyy you know Midwest Drywall you have a kid or two this is putting a kid in the classroom under the guidance of a teacher and the leadership of Mr Farley and he's going to turn around and have her I'll guarantee you she'll be back as a math teacher uh that's a model we can get behind so Ava is an example of what we're looking at for internal uh internships so the first one was our external big three-week rotation this is the uh what we're looking at internally the third one is kind of a little bit of a blend we uh I spoke to last time we're partnering with central Oklahoma Workforce Innovation board co-b and they have
082access to Federal funding streams and their program is called the young adults program traditionally the program serves students who have graduated and they just need a little bit of guidance so the the young adults program provides stien support job career counseling support in our context I'm meeting with the co-b representative and I am having them come into Grant High School and engage our students with paid internships internally and then when they walk across the graduation stage into what we call 13th year they will stay with them for a year after that they will engage with their new occupation their new companies that they work for and support them through that all the way through so you see the the beauty of this is and I haven't mentioned it much in our strategic plan 13th year
083as a former principal I told you the story kids walk across I shake their hand and then when they go on the other side of the stage we we appreciably have little impact for the rest of their life and so we have to hope we did a good job in the k12 and so what I love to do is to build that bridge strategy so Partnerships like co-b here will stay with the student they will call them up they will pay them stiens hey watch this if you complete a resume for these three companies I'll give you $200 sound good that's what that program looks like and so uh this is a program we're standing up now at Grant High School super excited they're testing this students or some requirements that students have to go
084to uh go through for eligibility but this is the third celebration I wanted to share with you at Grant so we started with Northwest Classen uh we went on to Southeast High School and then this is uh us Grant very very exciting stuff again there's things I want to say to you so much right now that we got to do we just can't do it moving on to strategic Partnerships uh everybody certainly familiar with the OKC CPS Compact and and the great things that they've done specifically through read OKC and embrace OKC uh we've met with uh the the compact on a couple of occasions uh presented some of the the framework of the planning that we've been doing and one of the things I want to share with you this evening is a priority
085list that we've compiled that organizes in our mind the challenges that we're seeing to that vision statement Equity also students graduate ready unique purpose and so what we did is organized in our mind and presented to the compact uh these priority challenges the first one is inside of our our strategic plan from day one we knew that we must have sight level Champions who organize sell build the vision do all the things that it takes to support a career line program of this the scale at Star Spencer Capitol Hill Douglas we have to have sight level Champions and so we are presenting our number one priority our number one challenge is that we would love to see a career navigator at every high school and just having them there we're looking at doubling down on
086what we can do periodically monthly every couple of weeks building a network of career Navigators that come to the dist District level and we engage them with our partners we have we have Boeing come in and talk about opportunities we have all of our construction trade Partners speak to the career Navigators we bring in professional learning opportunities we build basically this stretch collaboration was that the word i i man I love that I wrote that down mentally because that's what we intend um board Lewis board chair Lewis for the idea that these career Navigators come in they serve their school but they have the capacity to work in a a larger Oklahoma City public school network style uh collab to really identify the problems and and to bring those back and to Sol solve problems
087at their sight so uh that's priority number one priority number two I think you'll probably agree if we're going to Aspire to get Renee Ava or any other number of students on scale to authentic work-based learning experiences we have to figure out Transportation as Toby and I look across the country at Best Practices we look at models all over the country there are some here in the state that we love wow that's a great website that's a great internship strategy and we pull a lot of information but invariably at the bottom of the website and I'm just kind of you know generalizing at the bottom of the website we see like an aster and then we see students provide your own transportation and that right there immediately causes pause that causes pause for me because
088the very students we're trying to Target are students who want to engage in a Workforce immediately after they graduate because of some resource deficiencies because of some issues potentially at their house that they need to count on a resource what I'd love to be able to do is to have a strategic plan for providing transportation for every student who wants a work-based learning opportunity and so we're presenting that as our second priority our Second Challenge there are additional ones um we would love to see employment coordination after graduation we would love to see build a network of uh Community Partners that help students just like co-b is doing help students find gainful employment help them understand and navigate how do I attend Metrotech um superintendent Collins the number one data point that he showed us
089uh a year or so ago now is if students didn't go to Metrotech during high school with us news flash they're not going to go to new Metrotech after they graduate in fact the number is almost a negligible number of people who graduate from here and go to Metrotech we got to change that we have to do that and how do you do it you give them access to authentic learning experiences you give them Community Support to understand the world uh there's a student that pops in my name right in my in my mind right now that was walking with my colleague Whitney at Northwest class on the hallway way he said now are you how how do you get a job and and she reported that to me he didn't understand how to get
090a job I'm not talking about going to college I'm not talking about creating a a strategic plan for the rest of my life the young man didn't know how to get a job and we have to do better in 13th year we have to create Bridge strategies we have to transport our kids and we have to build a network of people to wrap around and support them to create I think you maybe remember me saying this ecosystem of support and sustainability how do we do this well beyond me you and everybody else how do we breadcrumb this all the way down to 10 to 15 years from now where we're still doing this in fact we're the national model how do we do that we have to create sustainability uh uh strategies and one of
091them is have people in the community held to account to help our students partnership networks instructors for each Workforce Development program highquality professional learning for the third grade teacher and the senior mechatronics teacher and Laura and me and everybody else we have to speak the Lang language of the one thing we're here to do get them across the stage out into life and have a chance to achieve their dream that's our job got to read got to do math you got to have some academic underpinnings but you also got to know how to accomplish your dream and how do you do that when you're under under under representative youth how do you do that when your house and your home life doesn't look conducive to getting that done that's where we can step in and
092do some things okay so those are the priorities um over the past couple of months several folks have asked a little bit about the communication plan uh I didn't give the true props to my friend right there Kylie for that video that's a Kylie production right there I a I apologize I should have hit that right off the bat man I you know how long she had to do that you would think months and months and like literally hours she that like how do okay so um Comm is also helping us Crystal and her team on building a communication plan a social marketing uh strategy to get these kind of videos out in the public the K moments the things that we're looking for if you don't mind I'm not going to go through this
093uh little snake timeline here but you can see the different colors generally represent how we're kind of dividing up the Milestone work the dark blue is the kind of the things that we started with over the past year or so the orange gets us into developing these partnership networks with co-b with um construct my future all of the the construction trades companies that's where we're doing right now uh Kylie and her team are helping us right now build the website uh promote through social media and some of the other things that they know that I'm too old to know and then the light blue is where we're really launching into this spring we're going to be looking at enrollment strategies recruiting students starting to market the Workforce Development programs one full year in advance and
094then we'll finalize with the the rush and the orange you see in the Orange is that all of August 2025 this whole next school year is where we really ramp up here's what you have at your school here are the opportunities you have and then uh have students get excited about uh the program launch in Aug 26 how did I do miss Martin very good okay so it is 5 till 7 we have one more thing so if you have question pressing question let's all just say great job because he did a great job not give a lot of commentary we won't get out of here by 7:30 and let the other team have time to do it okay so we'll start with you Carol thank you Scott that was great I I was in
095on the first part of it and saw it this one is even better I love seeing the student and go Northwest class uh yes Mr madoo uh incredible work here um I really like the fact that you're focusing on Transportation um I also like the fact that you know your students um just with you bringing them up some words that I thought were important um ecosystem of support and sustainability dreams having a communication plan um and underrepresented youth um and may I ask one question okay and so I'm going to ask this question it is a hard question um and it pertains to underrepresented youth um and of course your communication plan so how do you plan to communicate these opportunities to underrepresented families maybe families who are not privileged enough to maybe maybe if
096the family might not be able to read and write English as proficient as some of us can um do you guys have a plan for that yeah so so I'll I'll share in short uh that our communication team have great expertise in this very specific uh field but I will say generally as a principal former principal high school that there are ways that each site know intimately how to connect with their families we're going to capitalize on the unique ways each school does that but we have to go beyond that you heard me talk about the kco moment there is not one answer to your question but we have to really do a blitz of all marketing uh formats to make sure that every student and every family has an opportunity to see and learn
097about this and that that can include a title one parent night where they ask us to come and just share what's coming in the next year or so uh it certainly can happen at eighth grade the Middle School families start to learn what they're going to uh what they're going to have access to at the high school level you heard me talk about the KC moment the social media and the website so there's it's not fair to say that there's just one thing that you can do but I will share with you that it is going to be a continual Focus that every parent has access and can see what their students can do cuz that's where we're already talking a couple of families specifically these internship programs and the families are so interested but
098the unique challenges of getting access to those families or that that's our that's our next struggle point to make sure that we do that on scale awesome and those Title One Nights that require the family to go to the school or yeah generally title one you have to do a parent night and so depending on the focus of the school and how well they Market it that can be one Avenue uh PTSA nights there there are a whole bunch of different ways uh you can I mean we're not we're certainly not opposed to getting a microphone and going in a gym and saying hey we're going to talk about this come come listen to us but at the end of the day you have you understand and we all do that there's not one thing
099that we're going to be able to do to accomplish reaching out to uh Outreach to every parent excellent and I did just want to flag real quickly um some families might not be able to go to the schools maybe they're working hard to put food on the table a roof over the heads they don't have that privilege um so that's a challenge for the district but thank you real quick I will say great job I had several Goosebump moments listening to you I'm just always so very proud of okcps and the extent to which we go to offer a world class education to anybody that wants it anybody that goes out and looks for it and gets it and from you know college to Career it's just it's wonderful thank you for all you're doing
100thank you Meg no Meg's good one uh thank you for the wonderful presentation um in the future can we get a video of Renee and Eva the process like maybe six months from now or 12 months from now not just for us the board but for the of uh for the uh audience or people that watching on on online right now on stream I I would like to see the process and and see how their life have changed and to find out whether they're proud of the work that that they're doing uh you can count on that yes Mr Shelton yes I was just going to uh first of all thank you for your presentation I heard you say this at least on one or two occasions federal grants uh Jessica talked about uh underrepresented
101which are Target uh Target audiences of our federal government right now um just making sure that we're going to be sustainable if if dollars are pulled and moved or or whatever so I'm sure you all have a plan but but uh we don't want to wait till money's pulled and then we're scrambling to figure out what the uh new plan is okay um great job man talk about you've got stretch collaboration this came from like nobody even knew what was going to happen and you've got it down to an organized like a 20 minute slid deck there good job so thank you guys for the work you're [Applause] doing yeah quick I just wanted to say thank you to uh superintendent Erin Collins for your collaboration it really means a lot okay 2.03 enterprise resource
102planning system transition update uh this will be Sydney Ward our CFO and Clint everheart Executive Director of Finance and I have no idea what that title means so I'm really excited to find out well thank you superintendent poke uh board chair Lewis and members of the board thank you for the opportunity to speak I'm not Sydney I'm Brad Herer uh Sydney's over here um we kind of made a shift on you impromptu too so uh Clint everheart is our I think the title changed slightly uh in the last couple of weeks but is our controller Executive Director of Finance um who has been leading our kind of Erp implementation Erp stands for enterprise resource planning and I failed to mention this too we've followed two really powerful presentations and this is not powerful this is
103boring behind the scenes work um but it is very important for the district and how we transition into the 21st century technologically for both finance and Human Resources talent management um we uh if you've been in the district a while we've had a legacy system uh that was implemented in two 2001 SA P which is all the behind the scenes Finance payroll uh all of our behind the scenes the way we do business um that system is um rather cumbersome and uh hard to work through and so we are through the board um or through the bond that was passed in 2022 part of that was to update our enterprise resource planning system our Erp okay and so Clint is going to walk us through kind of a timeline of what that entails and what
104uh just to give the board an update of the work that uh finance and talent management have been doing over the last several months um so I'll kick it over to Clint all right thank you um I will do my best to make sure we get out of here on time because I know that'll be a big concern but I want to make sure we can do that so get going um like Brad said Erp stands for enterprise resource planning um a lot of times you'll just hear people saying Erp and that's what that is it's also been given we went through a process where we had several departments um put in suggestions for names of the project uh the final decision was made for it to be Inspire I should have had all those
105letters capitalized because it is a acronym it's Integrated Network for school performance information and resource excellence that is a mouthful that's why we say Inspire that's much more inspiring to to hear um first I want wanted to start off by kind of giving the reasoning behind why we are switching uh as Brad said the district's been using the current uh Erp system for over two decades now to give that a little bit of a perspective for everyone we were on Windows XP when this was rolled out that and Windows XP came out the same year USB flash drives Bluetooth yeah that all came out that was they're babies they came out in 2000 so a little bit before but um those were just new technology the iPod was the thing that came out in 2001
106that has been discontinued since I mean we didn't have smartphones um so yeah it's been a while um the other main reason not just because it's been a while is because the sap system uh which is the current Erp system that we're using is sunsetting which means that after um 2027 that's that system will no longer be supported so the big problems with that would be that all the tax codes and everything that goes into that uh keeping up to date with our W2s w4s uh that will no longer be supported by the current system so it kind of kind of forces your hand that you need to to look for another system at that point so where we where we are and and how we got here um the pro the process probably started
107actually a little over a year ago uh there was a long process to try and figure out how to get an RFP put together uh we actually were able bble to utilize the state to help us with that process and uh uh got to give compliments to our purchasing team and Marty the director of purchasing um also had a lot of work and time put into into that getting an RFP out there we were able to get that out onto the street and we had several vendors that went ahead and um put bids in for it uh it was primarily two different Financial systems or oracal or munice that were represented there and then back in June of last year we were able to have um all those vendors kind of come give a pres
108presentation let us uh kind of see what they are expecting to do what they can offer and uh after that was over all of us mainly uh like HR and the finance side we all got together and Sierra Cedar was the vendor that was unanimous almost unanimously chosen as the vendor to work with us in implementing the new system which will be Oracle yes um from there kind of moved into around the October time frame we started having design workshops um for that it was meetings usually about three hours long that several of us were in to give you an idea of the time commitment on that it was about a month to a month and a half of time that we were going through the design workshops and there were several of us that
109were physically in meetings for about two and a half weeks out of the that time frame so that time was used where CR Ceder was really trying to get to know us know what we do what our policies practices procedures are and trying to make sure that they know what we wanted with the new system and making sure it lined up with what was put into the statement of work that we had given them and then there's the the word RM there that stands for requirements traceability Matrix that's just kind of where they put all that in there together and they keep going through that they went through it in the design workshops they're going through it with us again now um but it's kind of just always kind of making sure this is what
110you want and US reaffirming yes and or adding and going oh we forgot this added that in or no we don't need that um the one sessions that we just ended was crp1 that's conference room pilot that's where they actually had uh is over the Christmas time break that they were starting to pull in some data from our system over into Oracle so that then in the crp1 um we had sessions like procurement um fixed assets uh receivables uh benefits payroll compensation and time management um they were using data that they pulled in in those sessions to kind of show us okay now we know what you or we think we know what you want here's the stuff and you that's your data in the new system it wasn't all the data but it was
111samples so that we could get start getting an idea of yes that looks right and there's obviously some tweaks there where we like oh that wasn't what we thought um and allowed us to think of some other things as well so that finished up uh Within it it's probably about three four weeks ago we're in the process now of getting data conversions done again where they're pulling even more information they're trying to get our whole general ledger detail all of our fixed assets a lot more data into the Oracle system uh before they're going to be moving on to the next step um which I'll get into shortly but I wanted to also say another thing that we're be starting in is the beginning of some in Integrations we've uh have things where we've right
112now we are actually with sap communicating with bank first our our main uh banking industry or uh vendor and I'll say CR CER has said that bank first has been the best one that they've ever worked with because they said usually it's like a six to8 week process just to get to the point of being able to start thinking that they're going to help you and it's like Bank first jumped right on it they've given them more information they're you know they're moving along to where in the next stage we may be able to start testing some of that process but there's other Integrations that we're looking at as well just um with my school bucks uh we also are trying to see about different Integrations with possible inventory softwares and really trying to open
113up and see what else that we can do that we've not done things that we haven't been able to do in the past um real quickly I'll just say one of the things that people compare it to is like we've gone from The Flintstones to the Jetson we're we're moving in the Jetson but we don't know all the spacecraft that we have options for and so with the Integrations that's what we're we're looking at working on uh real quick to give you a visual of the road we're on this is something that SRA Cedar has actually helped us with in this presentation here um we've gone through the project start design Workshops the RTM conference room pilot and that right there where the school bus is is kind of where we're at where we're working
114the getting more conversions getting um things set up to go for the next one which will be the conference room pilot 2 um and I'll come back to that here shortly another quick visual to give you this is something that CRC provides if any of these are not green that means something's come up to where um it's maybe we're looking like we may not hit the timelines that we want the Milestone dates that we want want and so right now this is uh from two weeks ago a little under two weeks ago when we had a steering committee meeting everything's green that means everything's on track they think um everything's on track to end and hit the Milestones when we would like not to paint the full Rosie picture just also wanted to say they
115do also have things that are current risk that could potentially do or could sidet trck it and get some of those things to turn a different color than green um resource vacancies we have some spots in in finance that we've we've had recently open um also I know with uh director of communications but those are different things that are key parts that can uh can be a challenge to work through um with that I will also say one of the things that have come from that is um Sher Crawford over here uh she can waave over there she is going to be assuming yeah I am very thankful she's going to be assuming some more of the responsibilities of the Project Lead going forward and uh so as we continue to move parts around for
116that uh another item that they had was Data conversions this there's a whole lot of data that we have we have two decades worth of data in there and different things and they're trying to work through all that and figure out we have a a contracted worker that is working on pulling yeah with the fourth party uh we're having to work with our current vendor to make sure they give us the data which has been a little bit of a challenge yeah because they know they're going away yeah um we've also been able to have a few from our hris team step up and are are able to they're working on pulling some of the data so that's helping to relieve some of that that risk there and mitigate some of that and then the
117last one is with or organizational Readiness that is really working at the communicating getting the the word out to individuals and and we are a bit behind on on that part trying to get Communications out um but CRC is going to have their their main uh lead for organizational Readiness here on site next week uh so we're hoping hoping that will give us a kind of a boost in that area where we're heading uh kind of again got the map there to the left uh next thing's conference room pilot this is the one where we're actually going to be able to on our side start having the data in there and we're going to be able to be the ones testing through it so um like for a procurement item being able to go from
118when it's a purchase requisition to being released to purchase order that the whole process we'll be able to kind of see it all the way through but we'll be the ones within Oracle doing that work and so that help us to see again if it's if if it's meeting what we think it is our needs for that or if it needs to be something you know something needs to be tweaked on that uh from there if you follow the road along there's going to be system integration testing user acceptance testing uh key1 payroll parallel testing that one we want to make sure that we can run payroll and people are paid we do not want to go live and not be able to do that um end user training and then eventually go live but
119as you can see there's a lot of lot of steps a lot of times where and we're going to slowly Branch out and be having more and more people involved in this uh with each of these testing uh situations but it's it's each is an an important step to make sure that it's going to meet our needs and that it's also working properly for us so that is uh the new system that we're working on its name again is Inspire and uh free to open it up to questions if you have any okay thank you that was great all right Meg nothing ju no no I would say it was great if I knew what he was talking about all right Carol well I work with sap so I know what kind of a challenge
120that was for you all and for anyone who did work with sap in the district and I'm very happy for you and for the district that we can find something that is not so difficult part of our not only the sunsetting of sap was kind of the the drop dead but you know currently there's multiple softwares that we use that end up being manually put into sap um which with this new system we will have integration so that once an applicant and I'm speaking from the HR side but once an applicant fills out an application and then we do a request to hire that person will that information follows that person all the way through and this is a cloud-based application too so you'll be able to as an employee or you know see your
121leave balances on your phone all of that information will be uh at your you know fingertips instead of having to wonder how to decipher your pay tub and all of that so just the efficiencies that this 20year upgrade uh will'll bring is is really exciting for for us so I'm excited for the update and um I just Googled really quick what is sap software sap software helps businesses man manage their operations by centralizing data and automating workflows so we're updating that so uh thank you again and I'm excited for that it's a great program if you're a manufacturing yeah company we're not man I mean we are in a manufacturing if you're County we're manufacturing graduates but that's not the same type of system well and even sap has gone to they have their own
122cloudbased version which is why they're sunsetting the one that we have hoping you'll moveed to that and yeah it's it's not meant for a school district it was pretty telling too that you know sap um had the opportunity to to bid and chose not to bid on the program because that's not their that's not what they their wheelhouse so laor all right very well done um thank you and your team Sydney for thinking the way you guys think um I know we talk about student out comes all the time and probably nobody really attaches you guys to it but I see a very clear dotted line to you take care of the teachers they get their paycheck they teach our kids you take care of the cafeteria workers they get paid they feed our kids
123Transportation Pi scrubs our data so if nobody else says it to you thank you for serving Scholars and taking care of our kids well and I want to thank publicly the finance team and the human resources team because when Clint talked about the hours of additional time that they spent in the design sessions and the conference through Pilots that's during their normal work day so the work that they had to do in their normal jobs was either done in the evenings or the weekends and we really appreciate all that work because it has been really hundreds and hundreds of hours that they've been in meetings like all day um finan and Human Resources so thank you yeah okay superintendent pul you got 10 minutes you got anything you want to say I just want to
124say thank you thank you thank you um and to the board thank you for entrusting us uh to make our leadership visible uh this was a little different for us but I have shared with others that this evening is transformational for okcps because of the transparency we have a theory of action that we're living by and that's in regards of the data being available and readily accessible and then the capacity of the leadership of the people we're working with if they're not there it's our responsibility then to get them there and then third and finally in regards of our theory of action is accountability is not a bad word it's the right word for student outcomes and so I want to personally say thank you for our people to have an opportunity to be vulnerable
125on tonight and show you uh where we're going but I say also you hadn't seen anything yet this is just the beginning and I am grateful for it thank you all right and we have wrapped it up a little bit early good job everybody uh I'll make a motion to adjourn I need second Carl second it call for the vote all in favor say I I any opposed say nay hearing none the motion carries the board is adjourned