001What is this? [clears throat] >> Oh. Oh, you mean the student rep? She's usually here. >> She when I like you. >> What the heck are you talking about? Judy. [clears throat] Ryan, he knows me too well. >> You have a Ring Zorbell camera. >> You know the best part. [laughter] >> You know, >> I need a We didn't know how stupid you were told about it. Send a picture >> almost immediately. Kelly, >> were you there? >> Holly Holly took pictures and I'm like, you can't send them. >> Yeah, Mark, you're the the brainchild behind it. >> My question though, >> Mark, can you answer that? >> I'm not trying. They're trying to bring you out of the show. [snorts] That's why I said that to my kids. Why me? And they're like, Tim
002does not upset you. >> Act like you don't care. It's okay. old school. What? Good evening. Welcome to the first school of 2026. At this time we stand to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all >> here. >> Mr. [clears throat] M >> here >> Dr. >> here. Mr. Wy >> here. >> Mr. Lizard >> here. >> Mr. Sure. >> Executive session prior to tonight's meeting personnel safety and legal matters. >> I have no report this evening. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> And we're going to be starting with their site. Thank you, Dr. Sprinker. Thank you, Dr. It is a privilege to be here uh giving the state of the union for curriculum instruction for Black. Um lots of great things going on and
003lots of projects that we're working on. So, I'm excited to teach you. Of course, we start with our mission to empower all students to achieve their best every day in preparation for tomorrow. And our district vision to be a model of excellence and a global community where our students thrive, our educators inspire, and our community goes grow stronger together. These are our Vancouver core values. Community, ownership, unity, growth, achievement, respect, and service. This evening I'm going to start with black college and career ready and I'm going to review some of the assessments taken by students last. Uh we had 107 students take AP exams. If you're not familiar with AP exams, it is a designated course. You take a test and if you score a certain level in the course, usually a four or a
004five, you can receive college credit. Uh the number of students taking AP exams in Black is declining. I will share that information that it's going to circle back to that when we talk about college and high school. But we had 35% of our students score a three, 34% score of four and 11 score five. So 80% of our students are scoring three or higher that took the exam. We had 90 students taking the SAT. Again, there's a decline because many colleges are requiring the SAT. That was a change after CO. Our average score was a 1087. [clears throat] 15 students scored above the 1200 and in the basic score of 1450 was our highest. The naughty exam is really a trade um SAT most of our students take that in the CTC and 75% of
005those students were confident or advanced. We did have two students taken at the high school for boag. One score competent in that area and an incredible number of students received industry certifications. Those are like safety quality assurance. 490 got those in the CC but 129 [clears throat] got them at the high school in our tech program. So if you're ever interested in seeing teched, it is so impressive. They do wonderful things in that and students have that opportunity to stay at Black and receive those certifications. We have dual enrollment in CCBC. You can see the numbers of students enrolled in those programs there which is a wonderful way for students to start their college education. And we have 14 A I'm sorry 15 AP courses offered at the high school. Now you will see an
006asterisk by some of those courses. Those are also college in the high school. So with these courses, students can take them, take the AP test, and possibly earn credit. But probably what I like to refer to as the crown jewel of Blackhawk is college in the high school. And the reason why college in the high school I think is so impressive is it's really a credit to our faculty. Because this wasn't a top- down initiative. Let's make college in the high school credits. These were teachers that said, "I think that I can partner with the university and offer college credit for our classes." You can see we have 14 available. You can see the universities that sponsor the class. And I totally if you look at the number of students enrolled in college in the
007high school, if all of those students applied for credit, they could have earned, 1477 college credits this year. It's perfectly reasonable for a student to finish a year of college while they're in Black Rockck High School. And you will see Black Rockck students graduating early, a semester early, a year early, graduating in four years with a masters, all because of this work with our staff that have made this possible. And what you're seeing with the AP, especially of courses that have both, if you're a parent, you're going to make the decision, am I just going to enroll in the college of the high school and get the college credits or roll the dice with the AP exam? So, a lot of times parents are just going to enroll in the college credits. Now, not all
008students enroll for college credit. They might just take the class. Um, that is because some colleges don't accept as many. Some programs are so specific in colleges. Kids know, you know, they're not going to take these credits, so I'm not going to pay for them. But if they did, that's how many they could earn. We haven't done a great job tracking how many credits earned, but starting this year, we're going to make sure we know exactly how many students enroll for the credit. So, I think as a parent, it's benefited my family greatly. I think it's one of the best things that we do, and it really is a credit to our faculty at Blackwood High School. So now I'm going to move on to the curriculum cycle. Uh last year Dr. Bernett did a
009great job kind of launching the curriculum cycle here at Blackwater. During the cycle we're looking at educational programming, evaluating, re revising, and implementing changes based on our student data as well as feedback from our faculty. During this year, we're looking specifically at ELA 9 to 12 and we're looking at reading for K to 8. So when we look at reading in the high in the middle school, you know, obviously K to4 reading is self-explanatory. By the time students are in seventh and eighth grade, that reading class is not reading instruction, phonics, but they call it reading at high. So we're looking just specifically at the reading aspects in the middle school as well. If you've read anything about reading instruction, it's actually incredibly controversial. There's actually an article called the reading horse. Over the years,
010there have been dozens of approaches to teaching reading. What's kind of fascinating about that is that decades ago, great research was conducted and we know that the best way to teach reading is through explicit systematic phonic instruction. So, the debate is settled. Everyone knows that's how we need to approach reading. and PTE has recently mandated um structural literacy across the Congo. Fortunately for us, we're a little bit ahead of the curve. We got a grant to start this work long before CO. So these mandates come in 2728 and I think we'll be well prepared. Uh the first mandate is to adopt evidence-based reading curriculum that integrates structured literacy. Both our reading series wonder and our phonics program has been reviewed to meet the the requirements of structured literacy. So we're in good shape. The one
011area that we do need to address curriculum wise is reading instruction at Highland for students who are significantly below their peers. What research tells us about phonics in the middle school is that you can't take a primary program and throw it in a middle school and expect it to be successful for phonic instruction. So, we're piloting a program at Highland this year to meet that need. Uh, a second mandate would be to screen K to3 students for competency. We've already been doing that for years with Dibbles K to 2. We're just going to bump it to third grade to meet that state requirement. And the last issue is reading deficiency and intervention plans. By 2728, every student will need an individualized plan if they have a reading deficiency. I don't know exactly what the components
012of that will be. The academy releases a lot of information, but part of that of course will include our title one instruction. So we are well prepared for those. Now what I'd like to kind of do is go through our three areas, the high school, the middle school, and the elementary just to talk about the different curriculum uh initiatives that we have going for first ELA and 9 to 12. So the teachers provided what they considered the best research practices uh in high school, a variety of fiction and non-fiction. Uh one of the major focuses for us this year is addressing the needs of students with 21st century lifelong skill, media literacy, job skills, applications, resumes. Um continuing to following the scope of sequence for grammar usage and mechanics, research writing and robust vocabulary. As
013you know, there's a keystone in 10th grade. So that's an important focus at our high school. Uh again focusing on that keystone preparation and scaffolding and differentiation to support our all learners. It this is the course offering in ELA at the high school. There are three levels in English for each grade. There's [clears throat] also a robust catalog of electives. Not every elective runs every year, some every other year, and some electives only run if there's an interest. But there is a variety of electives offered for our students at the high school. So we have some successes to celebrate at the h at the high school. One of which is the addition of CHS public speaking. And I love this celebration because 67 students are enrolled in that college. So I think that is definitely
014a success to celebrate. Uh they adopted a new book outliers that they are very happy with. The senior exit interviews is a wonderful um opportunity for our seniors. Um before Thanksgiving, each senior creates a resume. They create a PowerPoint of their future plans and they meet with a team of teachers and administrators. They come in, they're t their professional attire, they shake hands, do their presentation for the faculty. It's a wonderful way to bridge that next step. Some of our students have less of those experiences and the courses they take or the programming they do, their activities. Other students, it's it's a very difficult challenge to come in and present to a group of adults, but it's a wonderful opportunity. I was a part of it this year. It was a great day. I'm looking
015forward to it next year. And another one of their successes is their electives. The areas of growth through our needs assessment we've determined is growth on our standardized state and local assessments. That's always a focus. That's a major focus of all of our curriculum revision this year. Um, incorporating more real world practical skills for career readiness. They really want to focus that on the English courses for students who might be going to the workforce, not necessarily college. They want to make sure they're getting the English skills they need in those courses. One of our very interesting topics, which is probably a different presentation, but we're exploring AI. Of course, the English department and AI sometimes are not [laughter] and cohesive, but they're looking at opportunities to use AI. What's that going to look like and
016how will that we prepare students for the future and modifying instruction with the intent of improving key study scores using datadriven analysis? We have some very interesting um data analysis that we're using AI to do. So, our specific steps at the high school, we've introduced Firefly. E has released this benchmark assessment. It's written by the same authors of the um Keystone exam. So the questions are the same. The goal is to take this firefly assessment two or three months before you take the Keystone so the teacher knows exactly where the students are. You can prepare a course of action to help them be the most successful that they can be on that exam. Um again they want to focus on real world real world practical skills including media literacy, information literacy and career readiness skills
017whether that be just in some courses filling out a job application in other courses a more advanced resume and exploring the role of AI in English courses. When we moved to Highland, again, Highland was us focusing on the reading aspect of ELA, not necessarily the grammar and writing. Uh they their research based best practices included closed reading and annotations of text, differentiating for various reading levels because we know that students in might be in the same classroom reading on a variety of levels. Cross text comparison using literature andformational text combining reading, writing, discussion and research and vocabulary is a main focus at the middle school. Some of our successes this celebrate is their work on think alouds to demonstrate analytical thinking. Robust vocabulary is always an important aspect of our middle school instruction. engaging no
018models, the time spent in literature and writing, and consistent language in reading and writing. In the middle school, our opportunities for growth that we're focusing on is our growth in standardized state and local assessments. the diversity of current selections, rigorous material that can be differentiated hopefully with AI to help us with that library resources, reading interventions and supports for students who struggle and consistent alignment in all grade levels with PSSA standards. Specifically at the middle school, we're piloting STAR reading as a universal screener. We have not had a screener at the middle school to determine reading levels in a while. I did use STAR in the past. We're going to pilot it five to eight because we really need to determine if one of our obstacles in growth on those assessments is whether kids are
019able to read. But we need to provide more courses to provide that chronic support for middle school students. That's what STAR will be um looking at. we're going to try it in the spring and see the kind of information we get. Probably the most important aspect um at the middle school is we need that phonic curriculum particularly for our special education students who might still be struggling to learn to read. We're piloting a new program called Spire. Uh we went and saw it in another district. Uh that would be specifically for special education students in that need. Uh we're looking at two different new resources either common lit or into literature. Uh we have introduced MTSS right now in fifth grade multi-tier system of support. So if we have a student of need, we have
020to give them an opportunity to get more support depending on that need. That data from STAR will be helpful for that. We're particularly focused on writing curriculum and I'll talk more about that in K4 as well and using AI for data analysis. We have a lot of different data points now. Um AI provides a wonderful tool for analysis um to an analyze your data. And last our K4 uh best practices is the implementation of systemic phonics and phmic awareness accessing complex grade level text. We deliver data evidence-based comprehension instruction. We teach vocabulary morphology and writing explicitly and excuse me. We use targeted small groups driven by data and we support fluency and the grade three to four shift from learning to read to reading to learn. As I discussed, one of our successes in K
021to 4 is that we already have made that um jump to structured literacy based on the science and reading uh principles. Our reading series already provides much of the researchbased instruction that we need. The teachers are using high quality text and explicit evidence. Uh there's reliable assessments. We use dibbles. We use bats. We have star K to4 to give us data information. We need uh student writing and engagement are improving and the core evidence of based practices of text dependent questions, comprehension skills and morphology are being said. the area that we need to grow. Of course, we want to improve those assessments, but this year in this curriculum revision, we really want to work in K4 on writing. Often, writing becomes on the back burner, the curriculum because you're focused on that comprehension, you're focused
022on electronic skills. We feel we're solid on that. We want to look at a framework that we can teach writing um consistently from K to 5. Uh we also want to expand academic vocabulary instruction. We want to improve that writing stamina with explicit instruction. Increase handwriting phonic and spelling routines and sentence level work. We also want to make sure that we're aligning supports. Tier one would be the instruction everyone gets. Tier [clears throat] two would be students that need more help. And we want to really look at spelling tests. a role. Research tells us that spelling tests really are not as effective as they once were. So, how we would replace that in so we're specifically um focusing on the writing aspects of the curriculum. We're introducing dibbles in third grade to meet the PTE
023mandate. We're going to continue tier 2 interventions. Um tier 2 intervention for K to2 is title one. So, we need to have other interventions in place for students who don't receive title one or grade four that doesn't have title one. [clears throat] We'll be using that Firefly assessment three through the high school, which is a benchmark design instruction. And probably one of my favorite things that we're trying out is a tool called Project Read AI. Um, it was introduced to us by Jen. game. What it does is a student takes their phonic assessment in youth lab which arms our instructional piece. [snorts] Uh the teacher can take a picture of their assessment or enter the data and project read AI gives a personalized plan for that student's instruction the next week. It gives them groups
024what book they should read, what phonics skill they should practice. It really is incredible. It's so incredible. The other grades are like once you find it for us. It's really cool. But we're piloting that. It's been a success. So, just kind of an update. This is everything that we're piloting in the spring. Um, [clears throat] Spire, which is that um reading phonic instruction for our middle school students. Common lit and into literature are the two programs we're looking at for common lit is actually the teachers from the high school are also interested in piloting that six through nine into literature. We're looking at six through eight. We have the star reading is being piloted. It's already used in K to 4. We're piloting it in the middle school firefly. We're piloting that in 3 to
02510. We're looking at a writing curriculum called Heggerity Writing, but I think we probably are not going to adopt a curriculum, more of a framework of how um this writing instruction will look and project readings end. So, just looking ahead, we're looking to be compliant with our curriculum, especially with our mandates. We're looking for coherence among within the grade and among the grade. And of course, continuous improvement. We're not continually asking what can we do better or not serving our students. So, we'll be looking at aligning to the literacy requirements. We're going to continue to look at that data. We're adding more data pieces. We have our data warehouse that we're training on so that we're making the best decision for our students and we're strategically planning based upon the evidence that we have. Thank
026you very much. Um, any questions or comments? Excellent. Thank you for all your work on this team's hard work. I know many teachers are involved. Um I sat in on some of our sessions um at various task force actually um the moving and changing occurring with learning and with that focus on resources. It's providing opportunities for our teachers last. So, thank you for all that work and thank you all. Thank you. comments or questions. >> I know there are so many words. >> I love the information. [laughter] >> Oh, absolutely. Yeah. You know what I it's such a What's this for? [clears throat] >> It's just a really wonderful experience to work with the faculty because they're all it I mean the the committees that I work with everybody's excited talking about things. I mean
027it's really um they're really embracing a lot of the change. So it's great. That's great. Okay. So, I have a few things to go over. Um, first of all, let's go back to December 4th, December 5th. I apologize for the video mishap on that. Sometimes there are technical problems. Mr. I must have gone wrong with that. that across and we set it up one time is two times is we need a different solution. So you know our will be okay. Um but we have various plan B and plan C's just regarding the records for it for our assets or appreciations and understanding for that. Um a couple other things the public school facility grant program opened on five will close on 313. Um there's quite a range that is available for that. discussing our opportunities
028um that we may have and what we need to roll out to apply for that grant program. Um we also have u an opportunity in front of us to parent for veteran certified students. So students know that school and this benefit students that they actually can um their parents as they go into secondary working with a gentleman from that there are students um that benefit they may have the opportunity when I bring that to your attention to act on as well. Um lastly, the fourth grade I've been talking a little bit has been honorally selected by um the national assessment of education program US history and basically they have national students occur on February 11th grade. He did not select children. They did and opportunity to take a national >> pretty much got it all.
029just that I will in the next week or so want everybody to know that it was a process of uploading the students. They they chose us and they chose I I forget how many it is across the country and how many schools it is in the state of Pennsylvania, but it's a lot and this is how they get national um school data. But uh I will reach out to the families. I will talk to the students. I will go around the fourth three classrooms explain the whole process. I've just had to wait because I've had to upload and do different things step by step with them and we're finally to that process to be ready to go on February 11th. >> I believe that's that's our next Thank you. FL takes great pride in our
030students achievements and in the extracurricular opportunities available across all grade levels. For most up-to-date information on school happenings, please visit your school's website. And as far as um agenda items for public we have requested to speak on that would be 2.1 I think correct. >> Yeah. >> Hi Champ McKim Patterson Township. Um I did get a chance to review the plan and I don't know I had a lot of questions can break them off this week next week. >> Sure. It's on >> Yeah, I can do that. I did have a lot I have to pick. So, I'm trying to pick I guess the most pressing ones I have. Um, MTS. Um, we are happy to listen to any comments that you wanted to share tonight and we appreciate you coming. We don't we won't
031be answering any of those questions this evening, but as Meron said, if you would like to contact her, she'd be happy more than happy to answer as many questions as you have. We would be answering them live, but I do want to have them on the record for the public. Um, and I said, I'm not going to list them all timeless. So, um, MTSS I'm familiar with. So, um, like I said, I'll send you the list or if that's who you want me to send it to. Okay. Um, [clears throat] I am familiar with that. I was wondering if Blackhawk has the middle school placed on a statement plan which is typically tied to um, MTSS. So, I had a question on that. Um, I also wanted to see if I know that in the
032past in the elementary school for reading interventions. I know that Patterson wasn't always um get getting access to the same things all the time for the students. So, I was not willing to ask about that if this new plan how that would work with the current changes. Um, I also want to know how students I understand what was explained in K4 and for our middle school. Um, and the word differentiation. It can look a lot of different ways. So I I'm going to be uh interested in learning more about specifically how they plan to differentiate like you know for example sometimes in a classroom the teacher may separate into groups um and differentiating you know in in a class session are all students doing different things in groups or all students essentially doing the same
033thing in at the same time but in groups so differentiation can mean a lot of different things. So I am curious about what that look like. Um because my main question in relation to the differentiation is um since that top group of advanced students 3 through 10 ELA straight down trend I am interested in specifically how that group will be addressed. There's not many of those students. So, if you're in like a class, for example, let's say there's 25 kids in the class, maybe one or two of those students show up in that class, how are they being differentiated for? Um, is differentiation going to be a pull out in different grade levels like MTSS can be too loud? I'm not sure structurally in school day, if they're looking at blocking, you know, writing and
034reading to do that. guys are looking at like a little lunch is that like a 25 minute extra period um before lunch or at the end of the day where they you know surface that so I'm I'm curious about how differentiation will work and what um [clears throat] and I I guess my last email is um how are teachers going to be trained on all of this on formative assessment specific skills for differentiating within a class set where all students use their energy as a group or if there's a pull out, how will that be measured and monitored by teacher group? What if the teacher is scoring? If you're giving Firefly, if you're giving star test in middle school, how often are those being given? And what if consistent groups aren't making progress? What will
035the next step be for that group um or that particular person's group? Um, so these are all some of the questions I had received a little deeper. I have a selfish concern because I really my student is in fourth grade and will be in fifth grade next year. So we'll entirely miss out on the writing st. So I also curious how current current integrators will get that's >> yes All right. >> Um, so we had a meeting uh earlier this week. Um, kind of going over the primarily the project for Burn Newing Horizons. I apologize. I just wanted to note that although there's no report on our this evening, our prepared for being titled. [clears throat] >> Yes, thank you. Um, so, uh, the, uh, we do have a now have an itemized list where
036before when, uh, we first had the, uh, resolution that came in, we didn't have, um, you know, an itemized list where it was just kind of a lump sum ask. So, we finally do have have an itemized list. Um, and I know that we'll we'll have uh the BBI coming soon to to try resolution again. Um, >> so Adam and David last [snorts] time that, excuse me, the interview hasn't working issue and one of the main questions and concerns we had was there was in sequence for this project um and I'll share that um There you go. Okay. Um so one expectation is that you can see the microscopic but um the all right so it came down to uh multiple that's not the total so you may want to wait till the end but
037it did go down to about 15 million but you can see how it's broken down into various sections they have the base project um where they have additional irons um which are added there also Facebook alternates that may various times um cost and potential additional costs um looking at some of these names here um and ways that they're trying to to state. So they have a project cost at 148 and their total cost sitting at 1659 include [clears throat] those trying to possible. Yeah. So it'll be $250 last thing that came up during much of I think that applied exactly the additional hoping that further include additional items. >> [snorts] >> discussion of prioritizing those priority for a slight question on any of those things. Um I hope they also just came out. So hopefully
038that part of the discussion board [clears throat] on [clears throat] that give us money they get in the future. Um, so how do they get down or gas changes? are kind of beneficial of course we don't have the same again they're putting in same we'll >> [clears throat] >> So when it's already the base project and then the additional scope items is the base project just to repair and replace based on the damage that was done by the mold. >> Yeah. So it does have a lot of extensive and work the major reason why there was you know you know 80% of the building. Um so it does cover all that and the additions are are some other things. There was some uh some speculation on what they ping fixtures and how much that will
039contribute to any future mold um just because the replacement of some of the HVAC equipment would help to deify any sweating of those pictures. But there's still some things in the project that are being done or that they would like to do maybe with the additional scope that is not related to the mold damage or to prevent anything in the future. are just separate projects or separate wants of >> of so I guess my question is if this wasn't if this issue hadn't occurred but they wanted to make these types of upgrades at new horizons how is that typically that would pass would that still come back to the districts for these additional projects that they want to do or is that usually something that would be taken out of their general fund or or
040how does that work? No. So in the past um they have handled the target of their projects through the budget that may impact us the budget and bill to usually but generally um so I can only do these items which shows that something that um They discuss and discuss policy. So we need to approve the answer or we just say you've got a blank check this amount you can spend up to this amount and throw these other things in there if you want to. >> Yeah. From my understanding, we are moving the 15 million that spend and then any items that would be fit of the additional um would have that as long as you stay underneath that work because if they do these numbers down try This is some of them are beneficial and
041also some of those things are also today. So just in general and I truly appreciated his camper. Um he said that this is a completely unconditional process. He's aware that this is not a typical way to go about circumstance um that they're in. That's why it applaud I put this together with us will keep it as tight as humanly possible and as safe as it needs to be. Have they spoken at all to how this extent this level of damage occurred and will there be processes put into place to make sure that that can be recognized earlier? >> So that was discussed and all the all the meeting. Uh so kind of part of um of the whole reason we went with to begin with their process of network was to kind of investigate uh
042the energy to make sure that they were utilizes and all that and that could all be left by mold. So they mentioned that after the work was done there was a something called software they developed that continuously ally >> [clears throat] >> all to mention that collectively the support has given some questions and feedback to the proposed resolution that we are expecting to for their consideration. So thankful for our questions about 7.1 I'd like to wish to 2025 reorganization and work session. Thank you. Any discussion or questions about the minutes? All >> in favor of our show. Everybody. Um [clears throat] so a few things. one uh 8.1 is um some information about assessed value across the county and how that was affected when uh there was a big reassessment and so I know all
043the numbers but there was a decline of about $35 million across the county in assessed value um Lawrence County remain the same I don't think they did as much as the assessment there obviously so that will affect our um tax revenue at our current mill rates. Um we're projecting around $340,000 in reduction based on those current assessments. And so that is basically just aformational item 8.2. Um so as [clears throat] you can see is not preceding and so she's very sick. So, um, our plan is to present the, uh, December financial [clears throat] report in February. Um, 8.3, I guess bill payments. Something very exciting there. Um, 8.4. Uh, I'd like to thank the, um, county trust for the story grant. Um, so that's a generous uh grant that, you know, really [clears throat] does
044support some of the other fund. And then 8.5 is our um act one opt out resolution. Um and this is uh basically open up right away but this is our decision basically to not raise um taxes above the capital index which for the next year is 4.7%. So, can I would like to make a motion to add the financial consent items to the agenda for the January 15th session item 8.3 to 84. >> Thank you. We have a motion. [snorts] Thank you. Any discussion on the finance items agenda hearing none here? >> Any motion carries? >> I'd like to make a motion to approve personnel consent items 9.1 and 9.2. two. >> I'll second. >> Thank you. >> I carries the board to our employees who retiring. I like to thank ours and our dedicated
045service many years. So many number. This one's dead. >> Thank you. Thank you. Uh we do have another student who is going to participate as a gymnast in the county. So, um, I'd like to make a motion to add approval of high school student as an independent individual gymnast representing Blackhawk for the 2025 2026 WPIL season to the agenda for the January 15, 2026 voting session. >> Thank you, assistant. Any discussion questions about this? All in favor? I >> motion carries >> that report. >> Thank you very much. >> Like to make a motion to approve the first reads of polic 14.1 and 14.2. >> I could have a second. [snorts] for and in terms of discussion of questions I would ask could you give us a brief um explanation please thank you of course
046so the state sets um bidding costs cost and various other costs fast districts should go by. Districts of course can go higher they cannot go lower than state threshold. Uh so the state raised their threshold to 248. So if you look through these two policies modifications based upon motion on the floor any other questions [snorts] all in favor motion carries. Next week we'll move to the open consent agenda for tonight section 16 business. And at this time we'd like to invite public. [snorts] I want to talk about the curable presentation. Right. First, I want to say I'm very pleased to see that ELA reading are being thoughtfully. It's encouraging to see that Nibles is expanding to third grade and I would be interested to know whether or not that might be used at a higher
047level, maybe um fifth grade for students that are more than two years behind in reading. The strong focus in grade eight of work on the science of reading utilized programs such as dibbles have been highly effective. Students are reading earlier, more fluently, and with stronger comprehension than in the past. And how do I know? I'm an AR and I hear it. And it makes a big difference. This progress is truly something to celebrate. These improvements will likely have a farreaching impact across this district. Strong readers tend to be stronger students overall. It's difficult to succeed in most academic areas without solid reading skills. As a result, improved reading proficiency [snorts] should also lead to fewer students struggling in other content areas and over time may reduce the need for additional learning support. This could positively
048influence special education trends that are often discussed at our own meetings. One of the most impressive aspects of this presentation is how the plan intentionally extends to the middle school and the high school levels. Students who are weak and non-readers often fall significantly behind their peers once they leave elementary school. I've seen this firsthand having taught students in this district from prek through sixth grade. By sixth grade, when students should be reading to learn, too many are still learning to read. By strengthening early foundational skills, fewer students will reach middle school but not the reading skills they need. I'm especially relieved to see that there is a clear plan to support students who are already at the middle school so they are not overlooked. As a previous sixth grade learning support home teacher, [snorts] I
049understand how critical this is and I sincerely appreciate the intentional planning for these students. This work will not only benefit our high school teachers as well. Having students arrive ready to read, analyze, and learn rather than struggle would be transformative. Providing more time to explore other topics and skills will only expand the knowledge base for all of our students. The long-term potential for our students as they move through and ultimately leave Black Rockck is exciting to consider. Having been a curriculum council member most of the years I worked in this district, I would be remiss if I didn't say thank you to the teachers and administrators who have have invested the time and the effort and the expertise to develop such a thoughtful comprehensive plan. Curriculum [clears throat] planning is hard work. Everyone should appreciate
050this effort and I definitely appreciate it as a parent of a child who struggled with big the entire 13 years that he went to school here. It's not an indicator always of what your future success level will be because he's certainly very successful as several people sitting up here probably know but it was a struggle and I have kick his hand every day and so if that saves one family from that it's worth it. Thank you. [snorts and clears throat] >> Thank you. Any other comments on it? 16.2. The next meeting of the team is on January 15, 2026. That will be a voting session. And at this time, Let's make a motion for >> any questions for session. All in >> favor. [clears throat] Check it out. It takes capture.