001February 18th in the boardroom order at 60. Then we'll stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, Robin, starting show. >> Okay, I apologize in advance for how long you're going to hear me talk tonight. Um, all right. So, I am here to bring some information that a committee of a lot of people actually across the district worked to put together over the past few weeks. Uh since I started 4day school week has been something that's kind of popped up in conversations in various realms. Um earlier this year Amy well the district office had sent out a calendar survey to families and staff and from that kind
002of reignited the interest of a 4-day week because we got a lot of comments and support for it. So, we thought we would put a committee together, do some exploration of research, what neighboring districts do, and what it could potentially look like here. And so, really, that's what I'm here tonight to do is just present our findings. Um, it was made very clear to the committee that this wasn't uh we're moving to a 4-day week. It's something that we really were just exploring and I asked them as one of our norms to just really keep an open mind. um because I'm assuming some were on the committee because they are in favor of a 4-day week, but I wanted to make sure we were coming at it from a place of really curiosity and looking
003at what's best for kids. So, I hopefully my clicker goes up or down, John. Down. >> Okay. Um so, as always, I think it's important that we start with our vision. I won't read that to you uh word for word, but as you recall, we've created a portrait of a grad, which really shows both in picture and in words our mission for the district. Um, and we really want to see Dayton as a community hub. And I do think that pieces of a 4-day week could support part of that. Um, and then our core values of community, integrity, and hope. So, really just trying to keep that at the forefront as we look at some of this information. Um, you have a lot of paperwork in front of you. I'll tell you when to reference
004that. And then there is a parking lot up here and you have sticky notes throughout. So, if as I'm going over some things, you have a question, I would jot it on a sticky note and you can put it up there at the end and we can get to some of them as well. That way I have them all compiled and can type up what the questions were and answer the ones that I may not be able to answer. Um, so why even explore a 4 day week? So with the team I asked why are we looking at this in the first place? What have been some of the things that have come up over the past few years? One big piece was staffing and recruitment. A lot of districts on a 4-day week report
005that they are able to attract teachers and retain teachers because it's intriguing to work in a 4-day week. Um, student attendance and engagement for me that really was the biggest one because since co no one in the state of Oregon that I can find has really figured out how to get attendance back to where it was. So, I started thinking maybe we need to look outside the box. Could this be that outside the box thinking? Um, targeted use of Friday time. So, if staff are working on Friday, which in the model I'm presenting, they are, um, how can we really intentionally utilize that time to continue our work with our literacy initiative, to continue our goals around professionalism, collaboration. Um, and I do think there is some value there to having that longer chunk of
006committed time to really dive deep. Uh, especially with the new requirements coming next year from the state around how we're monitoring our success and what screeners we're using, having time to really use that data is going to be important. And then financial consideration. So, does it potentially save the district some money to move into a 4-day week? does it? >> Um, what we've >> Well, and I can say based on the research, the financial savings is not as great as they once were. So, there's typically some financial savings, but not the amount that that one reason alone would be why you would a week in my opinion. All right. So in front of you, you have a pros and cons paper just because I know it's hard to read a lot up on the screen.
007And then the next slide is similar pros and cons taken directly from our staff survey. So the one with the pink on top is pros and cons that the committee came up with based on the research that we did, based on the districts that we interviewed, um, and kind of put that all in one place. And then these pros and cons came from a follow-up staff survey I sent where we had 54 respondents. 58% said yes, we would we won a 4-day week. 32% said maybe and 9% said no. So I took all of their narrative comments and used AI to help generate some themes. Um, so I'm going to give you just a minute or two to look at that because you'll see there's a lot of overlap and then maybe share out what
008are some of the things you're noticing or what might align with what your worries or benefits might be. >> Robin, were they both summarized using AI? >> Um, this one, no, >> these are exact like verbatim comments from the survey. >> These are not from the survey. These were like us summarizing big picture as a committee. What were some of the things we heard? >> My apologies. Okay. The other one is a staff survey. That one you did summarize. >> And I do have the verbatim comments I can share as well. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yep. We have three buses that pick up from the grade school, but I don't know the percentage. Yeah. What are you thinking with the busing, Terry? >> Well, I was just curious, you know, how many kids it
009really affects, but they used to be I mean, some of these bus routes used to be an hour. I mean, sitting on that bus for an hour. >> So, I'm like, you know, you got you got long day and then you got somebody sitting on a bus for two hours. >> I mean, you could alleviate that with more buses. >> Yeah. >> And shorten the routes. That costs money, but it would be an advantage for those kids who are riding the bus to make short of bus routes. But if we're only affect, you know, I don't know how many kids are actually going to ride the bus anymore. >> Yeah. >> How many kids we would really be affecting? That's why we said it with the thought. Mhm. >> Our registration registration could sign that
010on the the daycare. Couldn't we use some of our students at child development and have a daycare at the grade school? >> You've got caf there for meals. You got a gym there for exercise. >> Yeah. >> And relieve that stress and have a very low tester. I'm confined with whatever it takes. And Robin will talk more on this, but in talking to our leadership team today, a 4 day week would be a no-go if there wasn't intentional targeting of students who needed intervention or extension and that we could bring them in on a Friday for a fifth day of uh learning. >> And if you notice on the the staff survey results, there's a few of these that are highlighted pink. And I highlighted those because those were concerns that other districts anticipated that
011ended up not really being a factor in the end. Um, and child care was one. I know in Sheridan that was a really big uh concern and push back from the community and it through preschools in the area in home child care the enrichment time on the Friday it really just shook out to not be an issue. And now when they survey the community, 95% of parents said, "We don't want to leave the 4-day week." So those were just some of the areas when we talked with Amity and Sheridan in particular that they were like, "Yeah, we thought this was going to be an issue like the longer day at the elementary school and in the end it just really wasn't the issue we thought it was going to be." Well, I don't mean to
012focus on buses, but as I think this through, I got a thought in my head. Um, you know, on the Friday, I mean, Larry, you just brought it up. If we're going to provide child care services, couldn't we also run a bus or two on Friday? >> Yes, that would be my recommendation >> to pick them up. >> Yeah, >> that's why the cost isn't really as >> Yeah. Yeah. >> I mean, I I just I'm sorry. I just think if it's a break even, >> you know, it's a wash. We have to save a bunch of Yeah. >> Sorry. >> Well, um, so I'm curious about whether you sent out a parent survey. >> Not yet. And the reason behind the initial one, >> well, the initial one. And so the committee's thinking was
013>> let's have this meeting first and really decide is this a road we keep going down before we gather more parent and student feedback. Especially with students, you say 4 day week and they're like, "Oh, we're going to a 4 day week." But uh Maria did call how many families, Maria? like oh 20 Spanish standard speaking families and 14 >> to gather more targeted information because they were really not well represented in the initial survey results but that would be a key piece to a next step. >> So is that are you going to present those findings tonight? >> I send those to her >> yeah she had that data. >> Yeah. So, I asked for her notes, but they're in Spanish, but she said eight of the families were not in favor of this
01414 sped families she called, eight were not in favor predominantly for child care issues. And then students with more high needs concerns. And then um nine out of the or 11 out of the 20 Spanish speaking families were also not in favor. their bigger concerns were that they work in agriculture and would child care become an issue and food insecurity would that become an issue? Um, so I sent this to Amy um early on and this was done I think it was done June 30th but it was by UFO >> um for a school workload may not be best for students and um the key findings were that there was not statistically large positive effects found for student outcomes. Um rural districts have been studied uh more which we are. It says in rural districts
015um decrease math and reading achievement for page eight increase increases math scores increases on time and five-year graduation rates. So that was a positive and decreases on-time progression increases chronic absences for high school students. Um, and I think one of my concerns is so you take um you you already are taking a day a week where the students aren't in school. So then there's a sickness uh or an absence and then all of a sudden you've missed some big chunks of instructional time. And I I'm I'm concerned about that. And then I'm concerned about I you know I don't think I think there are some parents that could make um that time at home you know useful. But if both parents are working, which a lot of times is the case, um then these then
016the kids are going to be on their screens, they're going to be watching TV, they're going to be potentially completely unsupervised. And I just I I have big concern about that. Yep. And I'll keep moving us forward just for time sake, but you jumped ahead, which is spot on. Um, we did a we had one of our sub teams on the committee do a bunch of digging into the Uvo research, so I've got some of that up here as well. Yeah. Uh, there we go. Um, okay. So the districts that we looked most closely at partially because we all had connections to so it was easier to gather information was AMD Pidel and Sheridan. So they are all on a 4-day week. Sheridan and Amity much more recent or Sheridan and Peridell much more recently.
017AMD's been on it um for a while and we even had Regge, the former sumer superintendent of Amity, come meet with our group last week to talk about what they did when they built it and some of the things that went well and some of the pitfalls that he would recommend you think about if you were to go that way. Um and then here's the research and I can share this slide deck with you and I'll get it to you because these are all live links. So this uh committee or part of the committee focused pretty much mostly on what Uveo has been doing because it's a hub of 4 day week research all in one place and they saw some of the same things that there are some negative impacts not major um what
018they found was that negative impacts were greater in urban areas versus rural. So rural had less negative impact when they moved to the 4-day week than an urban uh district. Um and that there were some areas that went up like you were saying. There's some metrics that got a little better, but then other metrics that went down. Uh another key takeaway was seat time. So they recommend I believe 145 instructional day minimum um with increasing the daily seat time so that your overall seat time goes up. Uh the schedule I will show you goes above that amount. Um and the involvement of community members is key which I think we already knew. There was one other piece that jumped out at me. I'm not seeing it there now. But all of these different articles you'll
019have access to. There's even more, but you had to pay like $25 to read some of the articles. So, we didn't dig as deep into those ones. Um, but I also did just some initial research outside of what the UFO has done. Similar findings that rural districts were less impacted and that with intentional planning of how you could use a Friday, some districts are actually seeing large gains. rural districts in particular, but what they determined that key factor was was how do you utilize that fifth day? And part of that was you need to bring kids in. So I think that's another piece that I found in the research is that if you aren't bringing kids in on that fifth day, you're likely going to see a drop in performance. >> You need their stuff.
020>> Shared and I like their model opens it to everyone. They have different enrichment options and they provide busing and food and supervision and any kid can sign up and come in. Um, but that's just how they do it. We would have to figure out logistics what can we offer. >> So it' be it's kind of like an optional day so to speak. Do they get a lot of turnout on that? They said that initially the turnout was really high and over time because this is their third year in it. I believe it has dwindled a little bit but they do run some of like the high dosage tutoring that we all need to offer through the early literacy grant with targeted outreach and when they have the targeted outreach those kids are showing up
021more regularly. So >> it's like a combination of mandatory and optional. these kids are >> required to come and then on top of that if you would like to come you will have opportunities for enrichment. >> It makes me think of summer school like there's certain chunks of summer school really targeting kids and more or less saying like you need to get here and then there's the fun things that kids sign up for. Um but I think it's all in how you outreach and help to get them here. Do we think that the demographics of and I know you're gonna think this is a stupid question on preferences but Sheridan and Dayton and Amity are the same because I'm not convinced that they are um as far as it's right you said that's we have
022the same number as a percentage of them do we have the same number of families that you know >> we have a higher in front of view you have all four at a glance profiles. Um so you can see the breakdown of demographics on the I think sorry I printed some one way or I stapled some one way. So Dayton is the only one where you need to turn the page and then you see you have all the circles regular attenders English language learners all of that aligns and we're jumping ahead a little bit. That's okay. Um, so you can see our how we compare in enrollment. So Sheridan's the largest district, 10,087 kids. Let me see if's on the other side. >> Students with disabilities is on the front. 16% in Dayton. Okay. And
023then 17 >> in Sheridan, 15 in Amity. >> Yep. And 12 in Pedell. So we are the second largest district, but we all have fairly comparable numbers of students with disabilities. >> English learners is the biggest >> difference in demographic by far. >> Yep. Students experiencing poverty. Sheridan has 37%, we're at 34, at 23. >> Okay. So, >> so we are comparable, but sizewise is where we start to be less comparable when you jump from like Sheridan to Pyale. >> Got it. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I know. >> And then we'll come back to this too to dig a little deeper on how are they performing versus how are we performing. Um, so up here I tried to and I think this is in your date and packet. Yep. So the second page in your
024date and packet because it's a came out a little blurry. I took our current seat time. So that top box is what we currently offer. Um, and then I compared it to what it could look like on a 4-day school week with an 8-hour student contact day. That is a little longer than other neighboring districts go, but mathematically I thought it was clean to as a starting point. It's not that I'm saying that's the schedule we should run. Um, so you can see for example, kinder through fifth grade in our current model goes to school 951 hours. In this model, once you take out recess and lunch, um they would be in school for 1,23 hours. So, they gain 75ish hours, not quite 100. Um and then the same is true for the other grades.
025They all gain seat time, and that's taking out lunch and passing periods at the secondary level. in OD requires that in grade K through sorry I'm trying to read up there K through 8 is 900 hours 9 through 11 is 990 hours and grades 12 is 966 hours so we're well above the OD minimum threshold >> okay so we're getting more hours because we have less passing times >> we're getting more hours because a couple of things so when take out the late start Monday, you're gaining two hours every day of student time there. Um, and then on a week, so for this upcoming week, for example, school would go all day on Friday because there's a Monday holiday. So students would still they would report to school Tuesday through Friday. Staff know ahead of
026time they're working any Friday that falls in a week like that. And then you take out a little bit of um some of the PD time in inservices because you're gaining professional development time in those Fridays. So there's Yeah. And Sheridan, I believe when they did the math, they came out like 14 extra hours of seat time >> and the days a little longer, right? >> Yeah. And the days are a little longer. >> Okay. Got it. >> Yep. Um, and then let's see what's the next. Oh, and then the other piece that's not factored in here is for OD's sake, you can also count 30 hours of professional development time in seat time and 30 hours of conference time in seat time. And this is not including those hours. So that would push us
027up even higher. Um, so this is to kind of give you an idea of what the day by day would look like. I'm one minute off 7th period, so I'd need to fix that. But this could be what the secondary bell schedule looks like. So first period, kids start at 7:45. They have an hourlong class, so we gain 10 minutes each class period. I kept the 4-minute passing period the same. That's what we currently operate with. Um, and in this model, lunch goes back down to a half an hour. This year, lunch is longer. So, again, those would be things we would dive deeper into, but just to give you kind of a snapshot. And then Sheridan shared their bell schedule, but it's like the fullon matrix of their elementary school. So, I have that
028linked in the first slide or one of the first slides here. Uh, it just was a lot to print, but it shows you the breakdown of when they have breakfast, when they walk to read, when they do SEAL, when they're doing like their math rotations, their reading rotations, cuz they run in a really high functioning RTI model. So, based on the six week data, four-week data that they're collecting, kids are constantly moving groupings based on where they're testing. So, if they go up, they go to the higher reading group. If they go back down, they get more targeted skills. So you would see all of that in their um bell schedule. >> So if this is secondary, what time is the grade school clos? >> I calculated on the same start times, but that likely
029would not be the case. They >> Yeah. by about 10 minutes. >> We start 15 minutes later and get out 15 minutes or >> Yeah. >> So right now go to the high school first. >> Okay. You got it. >> Except for in the afternoon they pick us up first. Yeah, >> it's like a little constant loop. >> Questions on seat time or bell schedules. >> So the seat time that is is showing the four days, but it doesn't include the students who would come for the fifth day of intervention. So >> that would add depending on how long students were at school on the Friday, whatever that model would be, however many hours. Yep. And I >> do we get a count that >> we talked about this in earlier today in the leadership
030meeting. I don't know that we could because you would need licensed staff teaching to count for seat time, I believe. And if you have licensed staff and PD and classified staff working with kids, that's that's where I would need to do more research. >> Could you remind me what the OD required hours were again? >> Yeah. Um, so 900 for grades K8. It's making me wonder if I need glasses. 990 for grades 9 through 11. And then 966 for 12th graders. >> 96. So we >> we're short. >> We're not meeting that >> in our current model. Well, again, that's not factoring in conferences and PD time. So that adds more seat times. >> You add that in. Everybody adds that in first. >> That sounds like a scam. >> I know. But >> the
031map >> there's the way the law language. >> I'm just saying it is what it is. That is not Sat. >> I know. I think they the reasoning that I um discovered when I looked into that um was that the partnership between parents and the teacher and the school has to be in place in order to get the rest of this >> sure >> functioning. Um because I also wondered like why exactly. >> Um so I think it's just mislabeled as >> Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, change the number down to >> right >> 8:50, you know, or something and call it actual seat time, you know, rather than Yeah, whatever. Okay. Thanks. >> There's also a lot of other elementary school like can't count lunch and recess for um three through five. You can
032count recess for K through two. And there's like just all these >> Well, I'm glad I'm not figuring this out then. Yes, >> it's in our division 22 report to the down >> if anyone wants to dig into it. >> Yeah, I sent Dana. I was like, I'm gonna need help with the elementary hours because that was way less cut and dry. >> Um, okay. Calendar. I didn't get a screenshot of it in there, but in your date and packet, the last two pages, just again to give us my brain needs like to be able to see things big picture to understand it. So Molly put together a proposed staff calendar. So the one that has like the pink and green is what staff calendar would look like and then the one behind it with
033the yellow is what parents would get for actual school days. So the pink days are days staff would work. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> And with the >> green on that one is days off cuz it's like spring break and Yeah. Okay. >> And then orange is holiday. >> Holidays. Okay. Thank you. So, is this just forformational purposes? um recommending a 4 day school week. >> Tonight is really just more forformational purposes to kind of lay out what we were able to compile with the committee and then get a little more direction like do we keep going down this road and exploring and start to really tease apart details. So >> sure want to know survey to the community >> get their input. >> Yep. So then Robin at the next at the March meeting
034there will be calendar options. >> Yes. >> That have been uh devised and potentially could include a 4-day option if the board wants that to keep going. And then the staff and parents would essentially give their input on those as well before we brought them to the board. >> Y and I did ask the former superintendent of AMD. am like thinking about the work that it took to get this off the ground. Is it reasonable to think at this time in the school year we could put together a 48 week to launch for next year? And he said yes. He said, "You're a little behind where you might want to be, but if you're methodical and think through some of the things that we've learned from other districts, he thought it was feasible because I'm
035like, do we even look at this for next year or is it's something that would have to bump another year." And again, no decision made on that. Just questions. >> Do we have information comparing block schedule to 4 day? >> Yes. So then last part of this, we'll go through the block schedule. Okay. And that is going to talk about um kids scores and how like I mean that that to me is kind of the big issue if students improve more here or more here. I think that's you know >> and with the block schedule information. I don't have the research to show block scores versus >> I know like 15 years ago the research was in favor of a block schedule as far as student outcomes go. I don't know if that research has
036changed. >> Yeah. >> And it's really hard for um anyone to run a correlation, you know what I mean? Because there's so many different factors at play with schools in addition to the schedule. But um there's there was enough evidence 15 or so years ago to indicate that a block schedule had the leg up on other types of schedules. >> Y if >> and compared >> the lesson design is done differently. Yeah. Yeah, >> it is in a 60-minute or 45minut class. >> That's the big thing. What's the research demonstrating? So, I mean, from the numbers here, I know maybe we don't have great comparables. I don't see enough in the numbers to have each staff or things. I think it puts a significant strain on on families, especially families that are already struggling with
037daycare issues. >> Y >> and I know that school is not supposed to be daycare, but sadly for some it is. >> Yeah. And when we talked about, and we I'll have some mockups, too. A non-negotiable in our mind is that if we were to go to a 4-day week, we are offering opportunities for kids on Friday. We're providing busing, we're providing food. Um, and we're really using that as a targeted time to either help students that have some gaps to fill or enrichment for students who are on grade level. So, that would be a piece of the planning. Um, and that is what Sheridan does. I that AMD did not offer that and Pedale I don't believe offers that either. So looking at the data you can see like between us and Sheridan, our
038regular attenders both dropped 5% last year for an average of 66%. Um, their lang grade three language arts went up 17% to 34. Ours went down a little, so they're beating us in that metric. math, they're at 12 or 13, really close. On track, Sheridan saw a significant decrease where we saw a significant increase for the nth grade on track work. Um, and I pulled the data today and right now we're sitting at above 90% of our nth graders on track. So, I anticipate we'll beat that again. >> Great. >> Yep. It's very exciting. Um, and then our on-time graduation is higher, but remember that metric is the year prior. And I did look at the more recent metrics and Sheridan saw a huge jump in their graduation rate. I can't remember the percentage, but
039I want to say it was double digits. So, that was good news for them. Um, and then completion. And then looking at AMD, similar. They're beating us in attendance. We're higher in language arts. Math were higher. So, yeah, there's nothing that jumps out at me as >> Yeah. here. But I also would be interested to compare to more districts with some more time. Like who else in Oregon is doing this that aren't just right around us? >> Honestly, I'm inclined to believe that it's less about a 4 day a block schedule a traditional. It's more about engagement >> both student and staff. Y and just to add on to what Craig's saying, for me it's about the elbow room to get creative with how to serve students and the ability to give uh students more
040time. So what you try to do as a district is typically the historical formula for educating has been instruction is a constant, time is a constant, and student learning is a variable. Right? It either happens or it doesn't. And what you try to do is change the formula so that instruction is a variable, time is a variable, and the learning is the constant. That's the expectation, right? And so we can change instruction. I don't want to say pretty easily, but within the framework that we have if we do sufficient professional development, it's hard to change time, right? Because there's certain bell schedules and days and and blocks of time that are just kind of dictated. And within that, you only have so much wiggle room. So the the real leverage, whether it be a block
041schedule or a 4 day week, is how do you utilize your creativity to maximize, especially for our historically underserved students, that time so that they're getting these additional hours plus however many more hundreds of hours or whatever that you can squeeze out to maximize their learning. >> Yeah. And I think that consistency because like Mondays are pretty hard with the late start and the really shortened class periods. I do think sometimes that's a barrier, but the professional development time is necessary, especially when we're going to need to be monitoring data much more closely next year and in the years to follow. So that's kind of a rub for me as well, you know, >> and I do think Craig, to your point, the the Sheridan scores and the increases that they're seeing in literacy in
042particular are due to exactly what Robin said, the time that they're taking to pull data and sit with their teachers and their leadership team and review the data and plan for what they're doing about it. Um, and whether that's due to a 4 day week or however you carve time, that's that's really the key, right? Is not seat time >> MTSS model. And I can speak more clearly to Sheridan because I worked there for so long and I was a part of the roll out of some of that work. Um, but they're seeing also, you know, a boost in staff morale. I guess that's not shown here. Attendance went way up for staff. Sub costs went down. So some of those other factors that aren't directly tied on here to metric. Okay. Um, sorry, I'm
043not trying to move too quick, but we still have a lot of slides. Uh, so a hypothetical Friday, again, this was just from my mind. What could it look like for staff? So, if staff work a six-hour day on Fridays to get their 40 hours in the week, 7:30 to 9:30 could be professional development/PLC time, >> they're working eight and a half hours >> the other days. Yeah. >> Um, and so this kind of sticks with the rotations that we try to do in our Monday schedule. So we often have some professional development time at secondary. It's well over an hour every Monday. And then embedding in those PLC rotations. Um so working on the literacy focus, working on the professionalism, curriculum development, team alignment, all those things we've already been working on. Um, then
0449:30 to 11:30 could be time to work on grading, time to plan, potentially some time to attend IEPs, although we would need more time than just that. We know that. Um, and a big win there in my opinion, especially at secondary, is with that intentional grading and planning time, we're providing higher quality feedback to kids, not just a score on a piece of paper, but here's some notes. I have questions about this. think about redoing that. You just have that time and space to really dive a little deeper into that. A lunch in there. And then just one other idea I had would be could we embed some time for parent outreach. I feel like from just conversations, communication seems to be better this year, but that's always an area of growth for us. So,
045how can we be really intentional with how we're reaching out to parents about kids having individual needs or larger events, what have you? Um, and then I threw together just some ideas of what that might look like for kids. So, say kids report at 9:00 a.m. have some connection and check-in time. Uh there was some research supporting that SEAL piece of using part of the Friday for that breakfast. Uh could be some mentoring support academic recovery at this at secondary that could look like credit recovery at all levels. That can look like using to do some targeted math and reading interventions or common lit or using our star data or whatever test we move to. Uh missing work time so like some homework help. uh then we could have enrichment. Um and a piece that
046I like that Charlie brought up on the committee is that CTE piece because right now we don't really have a an aligned schedule with any neighboring district to do some trades of programs. So McMill for example opened well they're not a great example because they're not 40 week but they have a cosmetology program a program we don't have. If we had time and space to say, "Okay, we have five, we'll send five kids to engage in your cosmetology program, for example, you send five kids to engage in our culinary program that you're not able to run." Some of that um opportunity for kids, I think could be huge. And to Chris's question earlier about could things count as seat time. At the leadership meeting today, we talked about can we get creative and give someone
047a double prep during the work week and have them do a session or something on a Friday for kids so that it could be count as credit at the secondary level or something. So there's some options to get creative too with having licensed staff working on Fridays. And then in the younger looking one aimed at elementary school again breaking up the day but a lot of that I would envision ties to the early literacy work. We got additional funds for early literacy. Um so we've got a lot of high dosage tutoring happening. We've got a lot more staff trained and we have a process for that training a process for that data tracking. So to me, that's one of the really big pieces we would want to focus in on. At the grade school, especially
048with all grade levels being below average in a lot of ways on our testing, we would have a way to track, okay, are they gaining? Are they more prepared for the test and beyond? Um, so those are just some 4hour chunks of time. So if you think four hours for most Fridays of the year, if you look back at that student calendar, that's a lot of additional time we can be providing for kids. Um, okay, moving into the block schedule portion. But before I do that, questions, next step, like anything jumping out about the 40 week that you want me to take back to the committee that I can answer? >> I had a question. I was kind of waiting till you're done, so I didn't want to interrupt, but >> um why did these
049school districts ultimately end up deciding to change >> and what they were hoping to gain out of it, >> did they realize that? I think shared in my conversations with Adam who's the principal at the K8 school and was a big part of it. The initial conversation centered around staff and student attendance that they really felt like they couldn't get a handle on like the sub shortage and then kids just weren't getting to school regularly and so they started to explore are other districts seeing an increase in attendance? is this something we want to try to help mitigate some of the attendance issues. I think that's where it really began for them. Um but then they decided to do what not other neighboring districts were due and then dig in next. So, okay, well, if
050we have this Friday time, how can we best utilize it for staff and students? And then that became more of the driving factor. I would say AMD um when he came to talk to us, it sounded like it was more tied to staff morale in some ways, like getting that work life balance, getting staff some focus time because they have staff work every other Friday for a full day. So, same amount of hours but broken up. Um, so they thought there was a lot of value in staff staying because they were in a four-day week and then a lot of value in what they were able to do on those Fridays to help move initiatives forward because one example he gave was it's really hard to bring in like a coach for example. We bring
051in our literacy coach, but we have to sub out all those teachers and build a rotation. whereas when you have 6 hours of dedicated time, you can bring that person in and really go a lot deeper. So those were some of the highlights that he talked about. I can't speak as well to Pedale just cuz I didn't do the research on Pyale, but I could ask that team um why they moved to it because when I looked back, they've only been in this model for a couple of years. So I'm curious what their driving factor was. So they were I don't want to misummarize this so correct me but >> they were able to find some increased flexibility in how they utilize their time. That does sound positive. >> Yeah. >> But am I correct
052in remembering none of them and really no studies show significant increases in like student achievement or learning. Yeah. >> Necessarily. The one that I read this afternoon just because I was trying to gather more that I would be interested in under like researching further, the one most compelling piece I saw was districts that did show growth, much higher growth. How did they structure that Friday time? And so I think to me if this was the road we kept going down, that's be something I would be most interested in understanding because it seems like they were able to get staff where they needed them to be with the work they were doing and then also support kids. Like we need to look at not just a 4 day week, but a 4 day week that doesn't
053offer options for students versus a 4-day week that >> requires and offers options for students to see the difference >> because a lot of the earlier research just doesn't exist. So it is more recent studies. >> Okay. >> Yeah. But from UFO, you're correct. What that committee found was that it wasn't significant. >> Yeah. >> Increases. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yep. you um asked the question about like public perception. You know, we've had a lot of change. We're still trying to kind of find our rhythm. I think I think we're moving in a good direction. >> Um I have >> uh my biggest concern is is kids being home by themselves on on Fridays. So, that's like just overall that's my biggest thing, especially if a parent isn't home. >> Yeah. >> Um but
054even really sometimes when they are, it's just still just a lot of free time. Yeah. >> Um but the other question is like are we going to sort of throw our community again for another loop and we're already I feel like we're already you know swimming upstream to a certain extent and a 4 day work week even though the teachers will be there on Friday. There's a perception and you know it's like of course teachers want that like why wouldn't they want that? So, it's going to be, I would think, hard to battle that, especially when we have so many other >> battles we're fighting. >> Yeah. And I think that again if we continue to explore that's where we need to have community forums get people here and that's what the AMD superintendent recommended
055as well cuz we are we said you know we got 94 responses or whatever it was which is a high number for us in my time here >> but it's still you know a small portion so how do we get people to engage in the conversation but he said once it went out there like this is a real poss possibility then the community started to give more input because it wasn't just a well what are your thoughts on this um so I say I would be interested to hear more from the community and that is one I know you can see it from AI but a comment over and over even from staff was that concern how do we make sure kids are safe and have food and have child care so it was nice
056to see that that's really in their for the forefront of their minds Um, also can we ask Maria like if there was other input that she got when she called those families? >> Yeah, >> it was mainly that like families were worried about like child care on Fridays if they have work and also with the SPE families is like especially with the kids with finding needs. It's really hard to find a support worker at home. So they parents already have that done because we've been doing the five days >> forever. So they are just worried about uh the ability to find that and also the IC limits and the goals are going to be met, how that's going to happen, how that's going to change state and uh service. >> Yeah. >> And uh food
057and security. That was another one. >> Thank you. All right, I'll keep moving us forward. This is going to be a speed session. Um, so this is actually information we brought to everyone last year, I believe. So, I kept pieces of it because I thought it would help because you probably recognize some of it. Uh, so master schedule involves three steps. Forecasting, building the schedule, maintenance, upkeep. We miraculously redid all three of those steps in under a month recently. So, we're really good at this now. Um, and what we learned, especially this last go round, is just how important it is for admin to be heavily involved in those parts. Uh, because there's pieces to the puzzle that we are really knowledgeable about and if we're not at that table every step of the way,
058things can happen. Um, so it was really a hard experience, but a really good one to go through. Um, and I'm going to skip that equity. So we want to make sure that master schedule is giving kids opportunities no matter what their background are or is and really taking the time to determine what our values are for that master schedule and then kind of weighing those values. So 9th grade on track has been a really big value the last two years. You can see it in the results and part of what we do with nth graders drives the schedule and causes conflicts every elsewhere. So you just have to figure out how do you rank those values. >> Um these were current needs that I say uh still stand and were part of the conversation
059when we revamped the second semester schedule. Uh so last year what we talked about and started to look at was thinking about those needs. Targeted intervention time, time for CTE classes, internship, minimize transitions. could a block schedule help meet some of those needs, which I would argue yes, it could. Um, so that's when we started to explore what that might look like. Uh, so this is an example of a culinary class. So, Carpino operated in a block schedule in her previous district, so she was able to speak to the staff. Uh, but you can see she would have an A day and a bday, a prep in there, and then hour and a half classes. So, intro to culinary arts on the A days. It looks like she might have freshman seminar on a B-day,
060intro to culinary arts, event management, prep. So, those days you rotate, you go to your A day, you go to your Bday, back to your A day. In the model I'm used to, you just keep that block rolling. So, if there's a snow day, you don't you don't change it and say, "Oh, well, it was supposed to be an A day, but we're gonna move it to a bday." That's also a nightmare in the student information system. So, John was appreciate us in the corner. >> Um, but you can see it gives a teacher in especially in CTE a 90 minutes, hour and a half of time. And I know for her personally, she's a huge proponent of it because in a 50 minute schedule, you get some direct instruction. Get your knives out, set
061up your station, start to cook your thing. Oh, time to clean up, put it all away, not done. Um, so it's it's valuable for a lot of uh pathway classes. Core, it could look like um English. So you might have you have prep, three sections of English, and then rotate back again. So again, in my mind, as an English teacher, you're thinking like I didn't ever have enough time. I would get kids going, they would write an essay or start to write an essay. I would try to give them some feedback and then it's like, oh, put it in your folder and let's try to remember tomorrow what were we talking about on that essay. So, it just gives you some time in a core class to get all of your instruction out and then
062give some more individual time to kids. Um, and then in your packet, I printed again the benefits. I think it's >> separate, but I printed out some of the benefits and limitations we talked about last year. So you can see benefits of an AB block limitations versus benefits and limitations of a seven period day. And the second page is just the continuation of that first column. And last year we went over this with secondary staff as well. And I know for some the concerns were classroom management, like how do you manage a 90minute block period? Um, and then absences. And I think that's been brought up here too. So if you miss an A day and you're say you're sick all week like we all were and then are you so far behind because you've
063missed these 90minute periods over multiple days. So those were some concerns. PE had some concerns about keeping kids engaged for a 90-minute period. But then on the flip side, science had a lot of interest in it because similar thing, they have to set up their labs and by the time you get the lab rolling, you don't typically get kids through it. So Bobby, for example, often spends two, three days on a lab because you have to chunk it out so much. whereas this would likely give them enough time to get through a lab in a day or two. Um, so those are just some of the things that come to mind from that conversation last year. Um, we did run the cost last year. For some districts, a block schedule is more expensive. For us,
064it wasn't. Um, so that was kind of a non-factor. And then up here, you can see, sorry I'm going so fast. Um, I we don't have this done for a 4 day week. I can add that column. I just didn't get it all the way done, but you could see what it looked like. 7 period day with a late start versus 7 period day with no late start versus the four period days. Um, and we were looking at this through the lens of seat time, passing time, lunchtime, instructional time, as well as uh what the contract requires for prep minutes, >> including counseling counsel or uh including those other bonus days. >> I'd have to Sean did the math on this. I'd have to ask him if it's in there, the pretend seat time. >>
065Yeah, >> I doubt it has the pretend seat. >> I think Yeah, I think it does. >> I guess not, but yeah. Um, so yeah, that's >> one minute >> really fast version. Um, but we can talk about it more later. You can let Amy know, but if I need to bring back more, I can bring back more information that shows block schedule in a 4 day week and then more research on block schedule, more up-to-date research. >> There's potentially four options. do nothing. >> Four day week, >> block schedule and four day week with block schedule, right? >> And I have to have it all figured out by March. >> Yeah. >> Oh, and something and then it said, "This is better for kids if you pick it." >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Just ask
066this. >> I know, but they might not have the right. They might just make something up. >> Yeah. >> One of many. So, um we're supposed to move to our regular meeting, but can I ask like is it worth adding um this to the agenda and our discussion because we just we don't have time right now to talk about how we want to move forward. >> I just want to propose that as we move. Is that okay with everybody? Okay. Thank you, Robin. Appreciate you guys. That was great. Appreciate it. The web session