NPSD School Board Education, Curriculum and Instruction Committee Meeting 2-1-22

001okay all of our streams are synced dr g the meeting is yours i would like to call to order the february 1st meeting of the eci committee if i could have everyone begin with the pledge of allegiance i pledge 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 thank you okay can i start with the approval of the minutes so moved all in favor aye minutes approved tonight's meeting is our regularly scheduled committee meeting and in order to meet the requirements of pennsylvania sunshine law it is necessary to record the names of any citizens who wish to speak we will have an opportunity to speak at the end of the eci committee meeting to assure

002compliance with this requirement it's essential that all those who do plan to address the committee this evening state their name and municipality members of the audience are asked to limit their questions and comments to no more than three minutes and this limit will permit time for all those who wish to speak to the committee whenever members of the audience exceed this limit the committee chair may ask the individual to yield to the next speaker again we will have time for that at the end of this meeting and so we will move forward with the cultural proficiency and equity updates from our north penn school district schools and i will turn it over to dr waters and dr bauer so that you can let us know who we will be hearing from this evening all right

003thank you good evening everybody i am really excited tonight that um we're going to be focusing on what is happening in our schools this is why we do what we do for the students of north penn um and so it is my pleasure to kind of start with dr hart our director of curriculum and equity who will kind of set the stage for tonight and what you can expect and then she will be turning it over to our director of elementary education dr mckenna who has the honor of uh introducing our amazing principals who are joining us today to share a little bit about uh the schools and what they do um with their staff to just make sure that their students are having a great experience each and every day so dr hart thank

004you so much dr waters good evening everyone um miss dr watershare this evening we have four elementary principals who are going to spend about 10 minutes or so i'm highlighting the cultural proficiency and equity work that they've been engaged in with members of their school community i want to take just a minute or two to talk a little bit about the way in which the presentations are structured they're going to spend a little bit of time talking about their schools highlighting the goals that they have set for the year um share the steps that they've taken um both from a professional learning perspective as well as sort of instructionally um and then they'll kind of end with um embed throughout their presentation the impact that their work has had um on their students and families

005and while some of the focus might be a little bit different within each of the presentations one of the things that you will absolutely notice um through each of the presentations is the commitment to making sure that students see themselves and are making academic progress they will also highlight the dynamic interplay between academic progress and the sense of belonging and identity and so we had a drive run of the presentations i was really pleased to see all the terrific things that are happening and i think that you will um as well um at the end of each presentation uh principles will give you an opportunity uh to make comments and ask questions um so if there are things that um you want to kind of explore or questions about things that may not have been

006so clear you'll have an opportunity to do that so having said that um i'd like to turn the mic over to dr mckenna good evening again mike mckenna director of elementary education as dr waters mentioned i have the honor of introducing four of our amazing elementary principals tonight up first we have mrs tanya swaively who's in her in her 14th year in education mrs waverly is now approaching her fourth year in the north penn school district all while leading inglewood elementary school which i always add is uh where i proudly attended many many years ago as well so i'll turn it over to mrs swaively hi everyone i am so excited to share all of the hard work that our school staff have been doing to really make sure that inglewood is a positive inclusive

007and nurturing learning environment for all of our students and families next slide please thank you what you can see on this slide are our inglewood school goals for our title one school plan so every summer a group of inglewood teachers and myself come together and we have what we call our data retreat where we analyze all of our student data and we determine areas of need and areas for growth you can see our whole school ela goal and math goal as well as our equity goals for ela and math so the way we determine our equity goals is we really analyze all of our student subgroups and then we create a goal based on an area of need i do want to point out that even though these are our school goals we're continuing to

008monitor the growth and progress of all of our students and as we look at their data throughout the school year we determine what students might need additional support or even intervention in a small group setting next slide please so the way we determine to meet our goals is during this data retreat we come up with two areas that we really want to focus on for the school year so this year we determined that we were going to focus on domain 1e from the danielson framework which is designing coherent instruction and also engaging students in learning so we really wanted to look at designing instruction that meets the unique needs and talents of all of our students and really be thoughtful in planning our instruction for all of our students as well we also believe it's

009really important to have lessons that are engaging and are relevant to our students so our next goal that we're also working on is really making sure that we're creating lessons that are actively engaging every one of our learners next slide please another way that we're working towards achieving our goals is we're utilizing the book teach like a pirate by dave burgess during our professional development sessions and this really dives deeper into our goal of designing coherent instruction for all of our students so it's really great for what i'm seeing inside um having conversations around this book is really focusing on the importance of building relationships with all of our students and creating instruction that is engaging and really tailored to meet the needs of all of our groups of students with putting relationships and that

010enthusiasm at the forefront of our day-to-day lessons that we provide for our students next slide please one other way we're working on achieving our goals is we had an opportunity to participate in universal design for learning which stands for udl um professional development through the iu and this has been such a wonderful training we just started the second session and we are able to have a group of special education co-teachers and their general education teachers really come together and we sit and we action plan on how we can remove barriers for all of our students we work on training for culturally responsive practices that support learner variability and we really look at equity through a broad lens we look at how can we meet the needs of all of our students who come into our

011school building each day one thing that i really enjoyed seeing and being part of with this training is seeing one of our fifth grade teachers and her co-teacher and they said we really want to get students opinions around student engagement and we want to ask them through a survey how they feel our lessons are in terms of engagement so we really just asked students what can we do for you to make this lesson more valuable to you or to be more engaging for you are there any barriers that you might be aware of that we don't know that we can change to help support you learn and grow each day so it has been really wonderful to just give our students all of our students a voice and then come back together as a school

012team and see okay what can we change to our instruction to make sure that all of our students are showing progress next slide please we also use the datawise process where we come together about every six weeks and we look at all of our student data and it's a cyclical process where we look at our instruction we develop action plans and we really look at data through the equity lens so we look at all of our students and we really drill down to where our students are showing that they need some extra support so we put a plan together with grade level teams we provide that intervention and then we come back in about six weeks and we have discussions about how is it going what do we have to do to change our instruction

013to help make sure that all of our students are reaching their highest potential along with that we also have our weekly mtss meetings which stands for a multi-tiered system of supports and this framework helps us come together to have discussions and provide targeted support for any students who may be struggling behaviorally or academically next slide please so along with that with our action plan we have professional development that's focused on engaging and expanding the internet intellectual capacity for all of our students we're continuing to use our data to drive our instruction and we're creating action plans where we're coming together as grade level teams to really look at how our students are progressing one other thing that we did this year was one of our kindergarten teachers just received a grant through the north penn

014school district educational foundation which we were very excited about so we are providing our students with the opportunity to borrow what we call our book bags which have bilingual picture books and we're hoping that this helps create that literacy rich environment in both the students first language and english so we are able to purchase about 100 bilingual picture books in over 20 different languages and we're excited to share that with our youngest learners and their families next page we are also a pbis school that stands for positive behavioral interventions and supports so we have a fantastic group of staff members that come together together all of the time and they look at how our students and staff are feeling and they determine ways that we can make our school a safe and positive learning environment

015for our staff and for our students we also have a data team which is a group of teachers who utilize a program called swiss and they're able to analyze our behavioral trends utilizing this program so this swiss system collects all of our office discipline referral and we're able to use this to create action-driven decisions to create a safe and learning environment for all of our students and at inglewood we always remember to talk about the importance of being kind being safe and persevering next slide please i wanted to take the opportunity to also talk about what our cultural proficiency and equity team and our pi parent representative are doing for our schools they're doing such wonderful things to make our school a positive and welcoming environment for all of our students some things i did

016want to highlight was our parents representatives and our cpne team have monthly diverse bulletin boards in the spring for the spring book fair we're looking at highlighting diversity and inclusion books we have a story walk that they have been working so hard on during our announcements we make sure that we celebrate our students different cultures and celebrations we also share out any resources for our staff members too we have a faculty diverse book lending library in our faculty room we also have what is called we signed up for the equal opportunity book box where we provide they send us monthly books that have diverse characters and just talk about different cultures we also changed our home and school meetings they are now virtual and one positive thing that we saw from the virtual school meetings

017is we're really able to get more parents to join who in the past they might not have been able to join but now it's so much easier to log on virtually to attend our virtual home and school meetings next slide please this is just an example of the last story walk that we had we had used the book i believe that i can and we really encourage families to come on our school grounds before or after school to walk through the different pages of this book and we really wanted them to work with their students on talking about setting a growth mindset and setting different goals for themselves the wonderful thing about this is parents and families were able to come to our school at any time so even on the weekend or before or

018after school they were able to come so it was really wonderful to have that opportunity where families in the past might not have been able to actually come in during school hours so this is a great opportunity because it's there um anytime for families to visit next slide please i did want to highlight that this year we took it our story walks to the the next level and students were so excited because we had if you see the qr codes we had students that read each page in their first language so when families would come by they would scan the qr code and you could listen to that student read it in a different language so that was a really great idea that our pi and cp e committee came up with this year next

019slide please we also have our cp e team they put together a multicultural bookshare in our library i'm in our faculty room i mean where family or teachers can come to the faculty room and look at the different books and sign them out and look at different lessons that correspond with those books next slide we also are believe in the importance of that constant communication so we do have a s'more newsletter that is sent out with a phone call from me every sunday around 3 30 and the wonderful thing about s'more is that it's ada compliant and it's also able to be translated in multiple languages so we're really just trying to make sure that we're communicating efficiently and effectively with all of our families next slide these were just some trainings that myself personally

020was involved in this year just to continue to grow as a building leader and educator the one was called constructing the innocent classroom and i also was able to attend a virtual virtual equity summit as well so those are all of the things that all of our staff and families are working at to make sure that our students feel like inglewood is a safe and positive learning environment for them okay a question from mr fusco for that presentation um i'm surprised there was no mention of the diversity dinner which is an annual event it used to be prior to that i've enjoyed attending many times in the past yes you know what that is a great point because our uh cp e committee we're talking about ways we could maybe do that safely outside doing

021something so we're really talking about what we could maybe put together in the spring i definitely look forward to whenever that can certainly get started up again um i was wondering if since there was and probably this is going to be the same question for the rest of the group and probably using the same sources i would assume um but you did reference the the data analysis a number of times and you briefly talked about swiss in its relation to disciplined data but could you talk just a little bit more about what other sources of data you're using to determine your baselines and your targets yes so we are constantly looking at different ela and math data so for example this past data meeting we looked at all of our star data where we were

022able to really dive deep into the different standards and the way the star reports break down that the diff it breaks down each standard and you can look at overall trends through the grade level and see how students are progressing sorry i gotta get that is there any data coming from the pbis program that's being utilized for any of this one yes so what we do and we this is the first year that inglewood is really on board with getting our team together on putting it in the swiss system so what we are doing now is we collect any behavioral referrals that come to me and we have a data team that comes together and they look at the overall trends throughout the school building so this is something that starting in february we're going

023to be able to share out with our staff but the wonderful thing about swiss is you can click and really drill down and see oh at three o'clock on friday at dismissal time that is when we're getting a lot of student behavior so we're gonna have to go out at dismissal time and provide some what we call booster lessons around our expectations during that time so it's really helpful because we see behavior trends that we might not realize on a day-to-day basis but once you plug it into the system it lays it all out there for you nicely so we're really excited to move ahead and really starting to use that to help drive our behavioral data and our decision making is that as narrow as like the classroom level like yes it can drive

024down by the classroom levels and even to the student level that helps us see any trends yes okay great okay thank you you're welcome question from dr wanda lewis campbell thank you mr swagley i like how you're utilizing your data um and i also wanted to comment that i really like the idea of having students read on your book walks in a different language um the pie meetings what could you just tell us what were was the time of your pie meetings in the past prior to you going on zoom yeah so in in the past we would meet um we had a parent representative that would be either before school hours i know we met in the summer once with her as well we have our cp and e meetings too they're typically held

025around 8 30 in the morning before the students and everyone come in and i asked that because i think it's great that you changed because a lot of parents who work and parents who could not get on that early in the morning that was one of their biggest complaints that they couldn't attend those meetings and they wanted to so made it seem like they weren't interested when they were but now you're accommodating them and i really like that and it'd be interesting to see what their input would be down the road thank you yes that's a great thing you're welcome yeah the thing about the virtual meetings we have parents that could join on their way to and from work it's so much nicer when you could just hop on the computer for those meetings

026so thank you so just a quick comment thank you um miss sweetly certainly there were there was a lot of your in your presentation that i think highlighted and connected to our comprehensive goals as well as what we are hoping to see around um what needs to happen with cut equity and cultural proficiency i appreciated that you're using this more i'm a big fan of the fact that you literally can use the app and just translate it with a click um so i'm hoping that that's something that is i'm being utilized by other principals as well i'm glad to see that you are pushing yourself as a professional um attending the um constructing the innocent classroom i also attended that so i'm very familiar with the content that came out of that in there about

027dismantling racial bias and um appreciate that you are pushing yourself to continue to learn and grow um you mentioned the equal opportunity book box and i just you know what i heard from your presentation was just a lot of good ideas which i'm sure we're going to hear through the next the the future presentation um i hope um and i know um i thought i saw um oh there he is mr mckenna one here his box moved over here um and so um you know i think what i hope as i'm listening to these presentations is that some of these ideas are not just isolated and that they become that we look at a more systematic approach that we say to ourselves you know what every family deserves to have their communication be able to

028be translated and therefore we're all going to use s'more or an app similar um every family every child in north penn school district deserves to see themselves in literature and so we're all going to analyze our library collections and look at things like equal opportunity bookbox or other ways in which we so i'm hoping that as we go through these presentations and as you hear more dr mckenna that we can start thinking about what are some of the systematic things that we need to be doing across all of the elementary schools um because there's a lot of good ideas it seems and certainly every elementary school has its own unique um piece of them which is important it's important to keep that identity in that community feel but there's also some really good things that

029i think could happen across schools as well so thank you for sharing all that with us we appreciate it and um who is up next thank you thanks tanya just a quick follow-up uh you know being new that's actually one of the conversations we have often is consistency across our 13 elementary schools uh and a conversation i've had a lot and looking at the different initiatives and programming and uh uh offerings that each building uh does have so definitely part of our conversations on a consistent basis and definitely will continue to look at that across all of our elementary schools as well next up is uh mrs christina carter in her 10th year in education she's been working in north penn school district for about three and a half years now all while leading am

030culp elementary so this time i'll turn it over to mrs carter thank you so thank you all so much for having me i have the pleasure of really going over the great work that our team and i have been working on around cultural proficiency and equity um at cope elementary school for the next slide so as my colleague mrs wavely explained the work we have done around developing our equity goals we've really just been tasked as a title one school by the district and the state to really look at our data with our teams as she said and really look at the inequities that exist and although we look at all of our students we as a group look to see what student that we would like what student group we would like to focus

031on so that we can help with some improvements we know we provide a high level of instruction in our schools and our staff are high qualified teachers so we really ask the questions of why we see these inequities and what are the barriers in place that we need to work on removing so that they can achieve at the same level that we know that they are absolutely capable of doing next slide please so who does the work of cultural proficiency so i think it's very important to always emphasize that not one person carries the weight of doing the work around cpne it's a responsibility of each and every person within our building every teacher every staff member but highlighted on this slide are some of the key individuals in the building and teams who really

032have taken leadership roles around working on cultural proficiency and equity and by having all of these individuals working we can create a systematic approach of making sure our students feel seen feel hurt and make it a place that all feel accepted so on this slide we really want to talk about who are the people on our cp and e task force so often it's such an abstract name when we hear cultural proficiency and equity task force but really these are the key individuals who are doing the heavy lifting each and every day i wanted to put a face to the name so you know it's not just me but it's really our teachers who are there just making sure that they are having those courageous conversations around the work and making sure that students feel

033like this is a place for them to come to school every day next slide please some of the work that our task force works on they actually meet together once a month to collaborate on initiatives they are a big part of the professional developments that we deliver they even share out lessons around the cultural sufficiency topics of each month they highlight the different works that classroom teachers are doing to help students feel accepted and included in our school in the newsletter and one of their things that they are absolutely proud of noting that it's pre-coveted so you don't see any masks but during ramadan when the fast is occurring they make sure that our students have a normalized experience that they can fast while their friends are eating lunch and be in the same lunchroom

034and their friends see them but they can work on other activities as they make sure that they don't break their fast at that time and so our staff has become very i'm sensitive to this and make sure that they have different things that they can still have fun with each other and be around their peers currently they're working on the no place for hate initiative they're working on a project to implement across the school so that all students feel accepted they feel included and that we have a place of accepting of one's different backgrounds and cultures and religions excellent so that same task force takes a lot of the work of our professional development of our professional development in our building so we have over the past few years that i've been there we have

035building and district pds um we have different modules that we've worked on around implicit bias as you see or group stereotypes but then over the past two years we've been working on the district initiatives around the culturally responsive framework and they work on delivering those um professional developments but they've also brought in other teachers who helped to deliver the data so we know that they're not the only ones who carry the weight the nana trickles down to their colleagues and their colleagues feel comfortable also delivering having these conversations that once they were uncomfortable having now they're more than comfortable actually talking about areas that they can improve data to help all of our students next slide please so i feel as though when our staff is being professionally developed it's very important that i continue

036to be professionally developed myself as an active practitioner in the work as my colleague also um said we both attended the same training and it was such a great opportunity to see how we can dismantle those races racial bias even as a leader what i'm looking for when i go into the classroom or seeing the good in all of our students because sometimes we may have a student that might be a little bit more difficult but how can we see the assets that they bring into the space i've taken this training and i've turned it around to our staff where we've identified some of our students who need a little bit more love and how do we find their good and how do we help them to be successful within our space also i had

037the privilege of attending the um pennsylvania school board equity summit it was a great opportunity to learn about how to bring in student voice within our community in our school so that students have a say but also how do we include the parents and have a strong parent engagement involved involvement as well thank you next time so one of our points of pride and something i absolutely love are our morning announcements our school climate coordinator and our counselor each morning have a recorded announcement that's played in the classrooms and they highlight different individuals through facts and quotes from the different topics that we have around culture proficiency that the district has set each month but we also have added in ones that feature some of the key holidays um that are within the cult community

038so we also focus on languages so i get to be the guest speaker on um or the future guest on friday announcements where i have students and staff teach me a new language and in turn i turn it around and teach those languages to our students because what is the best way to help others truly engage with each other and learn is by saying a simple hello and in elementary a hello goes a long way and starts a friendship in a relationship and we just have such a great environment now where i hear students saying hello in different languages or they're speaking in different numbers or celebrating different holidays or saying um using the different terms in the each language so on the next slide um we are going to see a quick video of

039the students actually teaching me how to speak bengali so you'll hear that they correct me quite a bit but i am learning along with them but i love them all for it and go ahead and play okay how do you say good morning um well isn't that different you guys say it two different ways that's what i learned this morning that one way is bengali because they have a muslim background and then the other way is because we have bengali with a hindi background so your different religions give you a different background and how you say certain things just like in english language depending on your different background you may say different words or phrases differently thank you so much for watching our students are so proud of their culture they're so proud to just

040share even little bits of themselves and now you hear other students just really having conversations and wanting to learn how to say different things so that's one of our areas that we still are so proud of next slide please so something else that we've really been working on is implementing some additional mental health supports so we've all heard about the safe to say notification system that students or families can complete when they are concerned about um different topics but we've had over the last year especially during the pandemic we had some consistent safe to say reports by individuals about themselves around suicidal ideation or depression and it was really related around some of their cultural background pressures that are placed on them being in a school that's not in their dominant culture and i really

041work with our pie parent that parent and equity leader to identify what are some barriers that our families are experiencing why they don't want to utilize some of the counseling services within our building and we talked about that there's a stigma around mental health but when doing the research we found that when you have a therapist that mirrors the culture or experience of the individuals who need it they're more likely to accept it so she was able to connect me with a community resource aparna is one of our family therapists who is from north penn graduated one of our very own who actually comes in and works on student processing groups each friday with our students the students have asked for her to come back because they really have found a place where they can

042be heard and they can express their thinking in a safe way she also using our title one funds and our community engagement funds was able to do two parent workshops so we were able to do parent workshops to help the families understand what students are often going through as they are trying to integrate into that non-dominant culture and how it's okay for them to have these different experiences and how families can support them thank you also as mentioned before we are a pbis school so that is our positive behaviors interventions and support i have a team of 13 individuals who on a monthly basis actually review the student data they enter it into the swiss system um once a week and they look at what are the behaviors that are significant and what are um

043interventions we can put in place through the booster lessons mentioned before and what are some rewards where we can reward our students who are doing all the expectations that we've had who have met all the expectations we've asked of them within the school community so by monthly something i'm proud of our team they do a presentation to the school staff on student risk of referral so that disproportionality they focus on race gender and academic ability they identify the groups that are over and under identified for discipline so as you see here we have november to january when they did the presentation some of our points of pride are that we decrease the risk of identification for our black and african american students we decrease the risk for our white students and we found that our

044special education students have a very low risk of referral now we know we're not perfect and we still need to grow we're all still on that path of growth and one of the areas we still want to grow in is that our hispanic and latin ex students were having an increased risk so we're working to identify what that is and how we can continue to provide supports thank you so over the past two years it feels like so long ago but it started literally right before the pandemic we were going through the beyond dyslexia pilot um and this was in partnership with our ela supervisor another principal and reading specialists and coaches we attended a training as a leadership team first to understand how we can support students who may have dyslexia or reading needs

045through the structured literacy approach by learning this we really found how we can reduce the special education referrals by just implementing this approach within our early literacy in kindergarten through second grade we were then able to come back and utilize resources from the grant to end up doing a training for our teachers around creating lessons in this approach and finding curriculum that align to it so that we can meet the needs of our students and over the past year we have really found that we see the results of this as our students are growing they have language acquisition and understanding and have automaticity in their letters and sounds and we're seeing that students are not being brought up for mtss who may have been brought up before because we're implementing this within our curriculum we've

046even been able to provide additional resources in our star intervention block thank you i want to touch on the work our reading specialists have been doing in conjunction with our pie parents and our home and school this is where our school meets our community and looking at the needs so this work has taken about a little over a year where our pi parent went to our homeless one presented about some culturally responsive books that represent mirrors and windows where students can see themselves or see other cultures through what they're reading our reading specialists were able to find this read across america initiative through um the nea and we were able to work with our home in school to purchase us each of the books featured each month and their own particular topic so like october

047is the topic of creating change the change you want to see and how to create a kind place every single classroom um was able to receive a book called change sings by amanda gorman and there were lessons that our reading specialists work to provide them so that they can see things in a different way and each month has a different focus so this month is a focus more around black history month which is really great thank you so i can't emphasize enough how important our parents in equity collaboration is to the building since they have been introduced to us our two parents have been absolutely amazing and helping us to see things um in a different perspective and see things how parents may see them with the school i mentioned many of the ways that

048they've been working with us to support us and working with our um cp e task force but also really working on what you see here is a bulletin board to engage families each month in alignment with what our monthly themes are they create a board so for january it was peacemakers so they go through and put all the things that help our school community to be peacemakers what parents can utilize and you can see that there's a qr code so when our families walk into more of the public line lobby before you walk into the school they're able to scan the qr code and get different facts about the topics that they're featuring each month also they have been really great in helping us think about neural diversity within our students and how we can

049make sure that we include our special needs students in different events in the school in the district and how we can make sure that they feel welcomed and represented in the process thank you so that is all that i have this evening please let me know if you have any questions but thank you so much for hearing the great work of the cult staffing community thank you um i just will you know again just an excellent presentation and a reminder for us that there's so many things happening in the district in pocket that is reflective of what i think us the four of us on this committee who came in as a board hoping that our vision for equity diversity equity and inclusion would be seen and when i see things like um you recognizing

050that there are students who need mental health support and that it may be helpful for you to use a family therapist that can mirror their culture um and providing parent workshops that are focused on um you know navigating immigrant family dynamics and normalizing children of immigrant experiences um i like i'm just like i'm so thrilled to see that work and even to see the children who are sitting at the table during a time that they might fast and for um staff members to recognize that it would be helpful for them to have some crayons or coloring pages or something a way that they could engage with their friends but also feel comfortable fasting and not just sitting there watching everyone eat i mean just that you're using the equity lens in every part of your

051building was very clear to me throughout your presentation in addition to your focus on academics the use of scarborough's reading group and the structured literacy approach to move achievement so um just an excellent job and another example of uh the great work that's happening in our school so are there any questions from the committee or other comments uh mr mcbain thank you dr g i just wanted to also point out that i'm just very impressed that we're looking not just in our own building for answers we're looking at uh some of the the most recent literature that's come out on these things you know teach like a pirate is one of those really motivational kind of books for educators like myself that have been around for a little while uh that might need to be

052reminded of of you know what it was like in my youth with all the passion i might have brought to the classroom um and so certainly seeing look at dr bauer laughing i can't believe uh you get that motivational piece there and you know we need that right we need to look outside of our district and look at uh what other people are finding as they try to do some summer work in other places i'm just very happy to see um that we can be both very local and specific to our buildings and also use expertise at the same time thank you any other comments or questions i'm just gonna i'm i'm blown away i'm wondering how much you all are taking notes from each other because yeah so much you know great initiatives that

053are that are taking place here you know i loved in particular the the language component with each month and just those little lessons i mean i'm somebody who actually thinks that we should be actually teaching foreign languages at the elementary level so even just that introductory piece um is great and i could go on a tangent so i'm not going to but you know just phenomenal work thank you so much yeah i have my hand raised to also also echo those sentiments and christian i know you noticed that they're doing sign language even at that level so it's impressive i did i did actually whatever it's worth september is actually deaf awareness month so maybe thank you that's we can add that next year all right sorry yeah no that was impressive as well as

054i like the qr code so today it's so refreshing so parents don't have to grab a pen and paper write it down just take a picture with their phones uh of the qr code to get more information from whatever it is they may need so yeah you all are doing a fantastic job and i too uh agree with dr g said it so many things are transferable across all of the schools and that's great thank you thank you so much okay dr mckenna all right uh next up is mrs heather mann and her 27th year in education she's been a principal in north penn for 13 years and she's in her fourth year at bridal path elementary so i'll turn it over to mrs mann all right thank you thank you been here a little

055longer than my other friends but i still love them just as much um so yes i'm heather mann i'm the principal here at bridalpath um our focus is on our mustang pride you can see we're the home of the mustangs and mustang pride means um that we uh believe in being positive uh being respectful being inclusive being dependable and being engaged so next slide so to begin um it's always important to kind of know who exactly is in the room so this is who we are here um you know at bridal path so in making decisions about our diversity equity and inclusion work this is always where we need to start so next slide um so kind of you know in order to make these things happen like my colleagues have shared this is something

056that requires very much a team effort so there are two different teams here at bridalpath um that are our driving forces um behind our our work here and basically uh we this first team uh is our pbis core team this is our positive behavior interventions and supports which have been mentioned by the other uh schools as well and their role is really to support that school-wide messaging around our foundational beliefs which i will share here in a moment so next slide so this is the second team that helps to make that magic happen which is our cultural proficiency and equity task force um and this team also that is their primary goal that in our school we utilize our pbis structure as the umbrella under which everything um falls so that our diversity uh equity

057and inclusion work is supported by our people our pbis work i do want to have a special shout out here to betsy winter hall this is comprised of staff members as well as parents and um betsy actually represents our school on the special education um the key communicators group that is brand new so we're very proud of that and if you next slide uh shout out to karen skioli who is our pie member uh but i wanted to note about karen is she's actually a grandparent here at bridalpath uh she's a former north penn teacher so karen is like the gift that keeps on giving uh she's a wonderful addition to our team so we're so so thankful um for all of our parents that that serve with us uh so next slide so um

058i talked here a little bit about uh the fact that we have some foundational beliefs and so here this this is what what they are um and at the center of it is this idea that students have to have a sense of belonging you know they need to have a sense of community that this is a place you know where they belong and part of how we do that here is the second bullet that's listed is really talking about that system and the bold between student and adult behavior focusing on that access for everybody is very intentional because working on the system is just as much if not even more so about the adults um than it is the students you know sometimes and then the last bullet is about that explicit teaching in terms

059of making everything preventative and proactive so when we're talking about pro-social we want to be sure that we're looking at it from that equity lens to say well how are we exactly engaging and motivating all of those students that are in our demographic data that i shared initially so next slide um so i know my colleagues talked a little bit about you know we are definitely you know data you know data driven so anytime we start action planning um around our our beliefs uh is we always start with our data so this piece you know has been around for a little while but the team really felt that you know um based on the direction that we were headed um with looking at sense of belonging we really felt that this data we wanted to

060continue to include it because sort of the theme we were identifying here is our need to include diverse ideas and perspectives as a constant in in the system so next slide please so this is something else that we administered actually in the fall to our fourth fifth and sixth grade students it's called the psychological sense of school membership um and the survey prompts that are listed here on the slide actually are um were our areas of consideration because we really looked at this as um some concern around student-to-student relationships teacher-to-student relationships when we didn't have those larger percentages of students kind of agreeing you know or mostly agreeing um you know with these statements all right next slide so this has also been referenced but we also took a look at our office discipline referral

061data so this is what occurs when students are not meeting our expectations um and we really needed to to take a look at you know so are we providing equal access to teaching our expectations to re-teaching them you know if you know if necessary um what uh in terms of defining the behaviors have we defined them clearly for you know for students um have we talked to making sure that we're at the forefront of our conversation with students so what kinds of problem-solving skills like around the second step and are we being sure that we're explicit in are we talking about those how to calm down steps how to you prob solving steps that we're teaching students um because it's in those reflective conferences um that's where the learning happens you know the the point

062isn't the office discipline referral it's really the conversation that comes afterwards um so for instance you know we said well hey you know here are some of the categories that that's where some of the questions came well i think we need to revisit some of our second step strategies because physical contact is one of those behavior categories that's kind of up there you know with a a you know relatively higher number um of referrals and then our locations that means we need to booster the expectations around those locations and i'll show you an example of that a little bit later in the presentation so next slide uh so i'm not going to talk too much about this because i know we did talk a little bit about data wise but this is the process that

063is utilized um once we have so actually the prepare phase which is the first step in this process is looking at all of that data that i was just um you know just sharing and then you move along the cycle until uh you get to that developing you know an action plan stage so next slide all right um so over these next few slides these are some of the actionable steps um that based on the data and based on our you know action planning that we made some conscious decisions about these are some changes that we think we need to make to the entire system so one of the things because one of our beliefs was we really need to develop this sense of belonging for all students here at bridalpath is we developed this

064mustang pride pledge so this um is something that is obviously the purpose is to boost that sense of community but we um say this together every single day on the morning you know on the morning announcements um as a way to make sure that we're starting off the day being um very overt about hey this is what we're about here and this is these are the ways that i might be able to meet these expectations today all right next slide um so another step we decided to take is we have had mustang pride expectations prior to this year um but we did make some conscious decisions this year uh based again on our our belief structure that we needed to maybe update them so previously our eye in mustang pride was for um integrity and

065our e was for effort and we thought there was some overlap in that so we made the decision um to have our eye before inclusive and our e be for engaged because in our conversation around our data we said you know being inclusive of all students and being engaged in opportunities here at school those things are critical to sense of belonging so on the screen you see an example of this is um one of the locations where every location around the school has a specific um expectation for what does it look like and sound like to show mustang pride in that location um so very good next slide uh so here's something else that um we added uh as a way to really it's called flooding the system with um in pbis land i guess

066if you will but it's really about increasing the amount of recognition that we're offering to students so this is called our mustang pride spotlight opportunity this happens every single week in a variety of locations around the school and it involves all staff around the school so really the the difference between the way we've been recognizing students in the past and what we wanted to do to be intentional about making sure that we're recognizing that we see the students really working toward expectations is the fact that it involved all staff not just opportunities to meet pride expectations in the classroom which is which was the structure you know previously so we have a mustang pride it's a podium of pride that you come sign your name uh when you have been recognized and then we have

067a photo opportunity every single week that we share with families so that's what you see on the screen right now all right next slide so something we additionally um did this year um in partnership with our cp e are amazing like parent partners i can't echo that enough is we added a diversity equity and inclusion section to there's a weekly communication that is published for families it is called our mustang message and um we wanted to make sure that we were helping families to know and understand not only what we are doing here at school but ways that we can help to en engage them so one of the ways the pictures that are featured here um the one that is of the um lunch bag is actually a breakfast bag that was part of

068our dr martin luther king um day of service project and this is to benefit mana on main street and this is something that was a collaborative project between home and school um the other uh picture is actually of our winter holidays uh we did a fact finding tour where we were focusing on um i think what eight eight or nine different winter holidays where the goal wasn't simply we're just decorating doors to you know not that it's not a great thing for the school it'll upgrade but we said there needs to be um some purpose behind where and some learning um objectives behind why we're going to be decorating the doors so um classrooms actually went around on a tour and then they filled out a google form you know what was a fact that

069you learned about chinese new year that you didn't know before or about st nicholas day for instance um so some of the these things that are listed on the slide are are just um part of the things you know that we have been doing the monthly focus like uh ms carter was just talking about we are also um participating you know in that but one of the things that i did want to highlight as a wonderful addition from rcp e partners is the family read aloud opportunities that we have well it's virtual read aloud opportunities that we're inviting families into the classrooms to share books that reflect and celebrate their culture and one of the wonderful outcomes that one of the parents shared at our last cp e meeting was actually that you know she

070made an observation that being in the classrooms and the books that she has chosen to share you know with those classrooms that teachers are explicitly talking about this idea of hey when we talk about all in bridal path we mean all all means everyone and and really making sure that that i for inclusive is the foundation of of the conversation or the the way that they're starting conversations about the different books that they're sharing so that has been um a wonderful success uh so far all right so next slide so in terms of professional development um it's critical that you know what we're talking about with the staff you know we're talking about with the students so everything that we're doing needs to be around you know supporting that belief system so uh this was

071actually a session that i attended at the equity summit over the summer um i was fortunate to um see the authors present belonging through a culture of dignity and this book actually became pretty much of a driving force in helping us to design our action plan around cultural proficiency this year uh and the four tenets that are listed here the indicators of belonging um really were selected intentionally because we wanted to be sure that the concepts that we were focusing on in the book really had a direct correlation to that belief system because that that is what we are trying what we want to communicate you know out um to the the uh community at large and we really that statement at the bottom is like what will this look like and sound like in

072your environment really talked a lot with staff at the beginning of the year and then continuing on through our our monthly cp e times together in terms of well how are you um continuing to support what what does exactly does it look like how are your students feeling appreciated in the classroom and what kinds of activities are happening and we had a great actually a really good um opportunity this last session to be able for people to share some of these things out so that has been um has been you know a success next slide um so one of the other uh key concepts in the in the book actually is called it's a pgd it's about positive greetings at the door it's really a relationship building strategy it's also referenced um very frequently throughout

073the pbis research um and so this is something that we have um instituted back at the beginning of the school year there are all kinds of different options for how you're like implementing this but you know really the bottom line for the team in terms of sharing with the staff is you know this is a way for you to personally interact with every student every single day and so i think that the outcome that i'm most proud about with this strategy is students are now independently greeting one another in the hallway they're greening one another you know um outside you know coming in out of car rider you know line and that is just something that i'm just so pleased to see as not something that was really prevalent before and that that was one

074of the the observations that our team had made and said we we need to start problem solving around what do we do um to really help students understand that that like personal greeting that's one of the reasons why being positive you know we talk about making eye contact or nodding acknowledging that you see someone you know in the hallway um that that's an important skill that we're teaching the the students all right next slide so um we also had the opportunity as um a pbis core team uh for some of us to attend the virtual sessions at the papbs mtss is equity conference uh back in november i believe um and so two of the sessions that we actually highlighted with the staff uh because again these are very in line with our foundational belief

075um are the two that are listed on your screen so the first one um aligning your classroom uh practices to your swivel frame school-wide pbis framework and it's a little small for you to read on the screen but really the idea behind this session um was being very um specific about um the language and the structure of your expectations so we have a school-wide matrix identifying or explaining to students what does this look like and sound like so that we have access to that for all kids but this session is talking about how do you translate that into the classroom and the thing that i wanted to bring to the staff about this is that what is listed there um it for instance says well so what does group work look like and sound like

076right um what is it that um how it how do i transition what do i do if i feel upset about something i feel frustrated about something about reinforcing what are those second step skills that can really help me and so it really takes it to the next step in terms of identifying how students can successfully engage in the academic work right um you know by having some of those worries if you will taken off of their plate um the taking pbis to the next level this session was really um again very in line with our foundational beliefs here because it was really talking about looking making sure that you're understanding that these internal factors that are listed here um in terms of the sense of belonging emotional well-being cognitively being cognitively engaged and having

077that sense of safety that that's where you need to start okay with students because if those things they if you see the iceberg image it's those are the things that are below the surface and so it is you're not going to be able to get to those above the surface things unless you're very attentive um and purposeful in what you're doing to develop those internal factors and that that's the foundation that leads um to other outcomes so for instance like it would be the foundation for things like improved attendance behavior on engagement um academic growth reduction in the number of behavior incidences that you know that occur leading to like long-term outcomes which would be like self-regulation of emotions you know independently kids being able to self-regulate taking ownership of your learning developing grit and

078perseverance that all of these things on the slide here this is the place where you need to start which is why this is where we are you know foundationally all right so i think that takes us to the last uh slide here so really in closing you know our overarching theme for our diversity equity and inclusion work is is really about you know developing that sense of belonging um making sure that kids are on you know understand that you know you are going to be included in in who we are and and and the things that are important here at bridal path no matter what right no matter what and that we're doing what we can to provide access and access is going to look very different depending on the students and so we have

079to be very flexible in terms of our approach in making sure that we're providing any kind of scaffolding and support that students need to get to that you know to get to that end goal so if we do feel like dancing bob can press the play button on the youtube link in the bottom um and uh we can you know dance it out for some mustang pride i swear you were joking and if i had known this is a pdf file i would have had that what's the song what was the song i'll find it i've got a feeling yeah all right well keep talking and we'll see what happens in the video it's all good it's all good but we do enjoy celebrating we do enjoy celebration here at bridal pass so thank you

080everyone i'd be happy to answer any questions thank you very much mrs mann um you know my own children went to bridal path so it holds a special place in my heart the teachers there are um pretty amazing um and i um you know was just very fortunate for my kids to have that sense of community and belonging there and so you know we appreciate the focus continuing to be on that um if there are any questions from any of the committee members um yeah i just wanted to say um i'm just looking for little tidbits here and there what you all are doing that that piques my interest as well as the overall goals that you're working on and you know i've been noticing that a lot of schools are doing what you said

081you're doing uh the greeting at the beginning of the day meeting the student each teacher greeting that student helping to jumpstart their day to be a good day for them and i would venture to say it's probably a good thing for the teacher as well to jumpstart his or her day and so you know i'm just saying i noticed that around the country schools are doing something similar to each student being greeted by their teacher at the beginning of the day so i was glad to see that so one of the things that i could add to that is if you have a student that's having some particular no trouble maybe they had a hard day the day before that positive greeting at the door is the opportunity to kind of hit the reset button

082to you know be transparent about hey there were some problems yesterday but today is a new day and here's how we're going to go forward and offer recommendations or suggestions for how you can collaboratively kind of go forward in your day so highly recommend it if it's not you know not something that other people have tried out thank you i would just one note or question um and that is relative to the parents and equity um committees you know i think continuing to expand those committees is important so that you have you know more than one person representing your the families that are your school and that may require outreach it may require you know you actually calling a parent and asking them to join and this isn't really directed directly to you generally speaking

083um you know we want to just make sure that we're able to have that um you know the true outreach because sometimes you don't feel comfortable as a parent knowing when you can be involved or participate and so that outreach is important and so i think the more we can expand that um so that we have as much representation at as many seats at the table as possible i think is really important because um and i think one of your colleagues talked about how you know the parent the parents from the parents and equity committee or you know from your school bring a different perspective um to you so i think that just continuing to focus on expanding that is important very good thank you okay so dr mckenna we are [Music] all right last

084but not least is mr wes heinel he's uh in his 13th year in education and his third year north bend and his third year leading hatfield elementary school so i'm going to turn it over to wes thank you dr mckenna good evening tonight i'll be sharing about how we're utilizing key elements of our district's cultural proficiency and equity plan specifically geared towards systems teaching and learning i selected this quote from james baldwin to lead because i think it should be fueling our culturally responsive work we must strive every day to do better and develop actionable examples of collective improvement because it's a moral issue to expect too little from children ultimately it is essential for our school community to both identify and support those populations statistically proven to be marginalized such an effort must be

085fueled by cultural and instructional initiatives so as you're aware we're a school-wide title one building and our hawks represent an extremely dynamic diverse transient population it's also important to provide a breakdown in total nearly 40 percent of our population are black and brown students however this data does not adequately tell our story next slide please we have a strong contingent of students with special needs about 12 in addition to our inclusive context we have an emotional support program for students in grades one through four as well as a k-4 autistic support program additionally out of all of our elementary schools we have the largest english language english language learner population about 15 percent of our school are beginner l students and over a quarter rls what people do not typically realize though is our transient

086population 145 kilos of either newly enrolled this year or transferred out so 30 percent of our rosters represent change this impacts us tremendously in terms of vertical integration and recognizing need it's evident by the reality that about one in five current sixth graders were enrolled at hatfield when they were in kindergarten our transient reality magnifies the importance of our mtss process as well as our instructional decisions we have a hit rate meaning the accuracy of students referred to our team that actually end up qualifying for special ed services of 100 this year and 97 percent a year ago and while every north penn school utilizes an mtss process we need to make a profound impact in a limited amount of time very frequently with that it's very crucial to delineate when an l student is

087struggling due to a language barrier versus a learning disability especially when a child arrives at hatfield with limited data and or educational experience in essence our level of intentionality is significant because of the complexity of our population next slide please before delving into our instructionally transformational work we need to highlight the impact that we make culturally in addition to our community interactions when a child embraces themselves alongside their peers they're most comfortable in their learning environment for our newcomers this is extremely essential and helps prioritize our expectation for every person at hatfield to feel safe and respected when they come to learn here are a few photos from our cultural fashion show that's held annually students proudly wear a vast array of beautiful outfits in doing so they share the importance of their families traditions

088next slide please we strive to have our main lobby represent a welcoming place we've discussed procuring signage in numerous languages something that would benefit every north penn building on a monthly basis we rotate a variety of themes often including multicultural picture books available in our library the showcase featured at the bottom here is based on the lunar new year which begins today next slide please last year our home in school selected multicultural books to contribute to our school library as gifts in recognition of the class of 2027. inscriptions were made to commemorate the life events of every staff member such as loved ones who passed away and for me personally with my second son being born last year this gesture holds a special place in my heart in prior years we held an annual literacy

089night geared towards getting families into classrooms as well as books in the hands of children last year we developed our first ever story walk alongside of our pie representation the local low sponsored us and provided some physical materials for assembly the selection all are welcome addresses daily in building and at home experiences of various races family compositions cultures religions and ability levels next slide please we have dedicated parents who serve on our home and school and pie committee family involvement is a challenge especially during the pandemic we truly believe that families want to participate we must ensure that knowing how to is not a barrier for them as a result we use a variety of methods to best engage with families as you see here for example i have a link to our school website

090and our weekly messengers are translated into nine languages next slide please our social and emotional work is ongoing we're in year two the mciu pbis consortium and we're planning a kickoff this fall we've drafted a new new vision statement and a new mission steam we've also retooled our hawks motto as you can see here and you might notice some of the recent changes and essential points of emphasis are bolded here next slide please while our context is more stressful than ever it takes courage and vulnerability to truly look at where we are instructionally and where we need to be it's about having the will and the power to take the steps for change so we must acknowledge that we must do so incrementally both in the short and long term at hatfield we undertake the

091mentality that all students can and will learn we prioritize a growth mindset more than concentrating on predetermined levels in regards to continuous improvement we're stressing a link between culturally responsive teaching principles number one and number three we do so by harping on a circle of control we can't control a new student's social emotional or academic preparedness level however we can evaluate our practices and collaborate by a team approach to best meeting wide range of needs disproportionate achievement are symptoms of an underlying problem opportunity gaps which is how educators systematically educate different groups teaching is an extremely personal thing so obviously these discussions are not easy next slide please on an instructional level data wise-oriented problems of practice were drafted and revised during data days in october and january with another one planned at the end

092of march this is how we're reshaping the curriculum to center instruction instruction on all students needs note i did not actually embed examples of our ela and math problems of practice here on the slide since student-specific data is included however if desired i can pass them along to members of the eci team we've also been working with district math coaches as well as hatfield's math committee and school nutrition services to soon roll out of plans to better incentivize students and maximize our math i ready my path digital program which is a personalized learning platform since our student population is very much ever evolving it's critical for us to maximize instructional support such as interventionists tutors eld assistants special ed paraprofessionals and 101s in a team-oriented atmosphere the job can be all cannot be shouldered by

093only our teachers in order to prioritize direct student benefits we stagger the scheduling of start time and guided reading in addition to personalized math and ela writing support in doing so every ela and every math class across seven grade levels is scheduled to receive push and support on a daily basis next slide please with such a focus on continuous improvement we must be honest with our results and set smart goals in doing so we go beyond an appreciation of people's differences and push to acknowledge and better understand the impact that race and culture have on learning clearly we have a long way to go but we need to plan to build upon successes within our title one plan we're seeking five percent growth in ela as well as math as evidenced by our star baseline

094assessment it's important to celebrate but not be satisfied with our growth between the baseline and the second of these four assessments thus far our ela sgp ranks second among all elementary schools something to celebrate and be proud of as you can see by the numbers highlighted in yellow we're on pace to achieve these goals we just need to continue to refine our work collectively next slide please part of our commitment to equitable opportunity as well as culturally responsive principle number two is stressing that our black and hispanic students cannot be marginalized our ongoing work in ela reflects that these subgroups have the ability to achieve through disaggregation of last year's star 360 ela student growth half field exceeded the stick the district average again we're very proud of this work unfortunately our math performance reflected

095disproportional achievement for these students in grades one through six hence we have a push for all students learning needs to be more individualized and strategically planned by a small group instruction our equity goal and accountability goal is to level up students that we know need this additional support we need to strategically schedule and provide this instruction for this group of 146 learners by year's end eight percent less students will be classified as virgin intervention and four percent less is intervention in these two subgroups for our most recent checkpoint we've met our goal in terms of shifting black students beyond urgent intervention and are three-quarters of the way there for our hispanic students in conclusion i hope you can see how passionate we are about ccp hatfield and personally as a proud owner of pen alum

096how steadfast i am it might have my desire to positively impact the community in which i was raised i appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight and look forward to your questions thank you thank you very much um i think um any questions first of all from the committee um not a question but i would say there were two things that you said that struck me in particular um the first was i was not aware at all of the the high percentage of transient students that's not something we typically talk about um and you know i'm feeling uh as if i'm i'm not providing a proper service to the students um that i serve having not given that much consideration to that that fact um and i appreciate you bringing that forward and and putting that

097on the table tonight to be considered and discussed um and the second is just um something you said at the very beginning it was a rather long quote but the the one piece of it is a moral issue to expect too little from children i mean i think if anything encapsulates the purpose behind this work behind the deliberate effort to uh use data to identify these kids to identify the strategies and research-based practices and programs that we can implement to do what we can do on our end to to not assume that a student can't do any better um to look past you know whatever bias we all in some one manner another bring into a school into a classroom into you know a professional working development environments um i'm just i'm very struck by

098all this so so thank you um given us an awful lot to to to see tonight to see this work and to actually see how you know as dr g said at the beginning the vision that we that we presented to the community to say hey please put us in this spot so we can push this work to actually see it you know unfurling before us you know in these schools and and putting the seeds down for what will you know hopefully be for these students um the beginning of of uh progress in the direction that we want them all to head so thank you so um just two notes that you know i agree with mr fusco that i found myself um really uh i guess taken back by um the transient piece i

099did not you noted that one in five fifth graders had not attended kindergarten um i had and uh i mean that's really interesting um and i mean i think it's important for us as board members to really you know continue as we could we have a lot of schools in in north penn and we feel it's our job to get to know each of the schools this is one way in which we can do that and and understand the uniqueness of each individual community and how we can best serve them and so um i appreciate you bringing that conversation forward as well i also want to note that i i really i was struck by your bringing to even the granule level like we're looking at okay there's 146 students that we need to look

100at their data and we're gonna we are trying to move those students forward and i think knowing that you are looking at your data that closely and that you're setting measurable goals um i think that's exactly what you know that's how we are going to chip away at the opportunity gap and the equity gap is you know a few percent at a time and serving each child individually and giving every child what they need so um appreciated um the um your approach to sharing that with us as well are there any other questions from the committee um yeah i i agree with my colleagues um and i noticed you said you changed your mission statement what were the dynamics around that um what did you see that made you say we need to change our

101mission statement which i don't remember it verbatim but it was along the lines of empowering the students to be able to succeed in in in i'd like that in your mission statement so i was wondering what role what all came into play to make you change that so again kind of working um in the confines of the consortium and trying to have representation as we work towards our pbis initiatives and kickoff next year's multiple grade levels multiple programming uh specialists eld like having an input as to truly what we value i think you take it for granted but it's something you can actually have hours of conversation about what are the key words um and one of them was an inclusive school family you know we're not just a school we're not just a staff

102when i came to hatfield one of the things that was reiterated by dr witters and the team there was we're a family here you know that we look out we care for our community we'll go above and beyond so how do we integrate that i think also you know when it comes to opportunity to learn that rigor you know yes we need to meet kids where they are but they still need to be exposed to rigorous content and the expectations of grade level otherwise we know that those learning gaps are more inclined to go ahead and expand and you know another word that i voted there was was equitable again having that conversation um you know we're not going to justify like why kids are and are not achieving or harp on in our limited

103time what we can't control what can we do what can we try different and i would much rather not say this to us try something let's pilot it and if we strike out we strike out but if we're trying to do something different to engage kiddos to reach their individualized needs and we're constantly evolving that's our mission but don't talk about i know it's cliche don't talk about it be about it actually have examples like this is where we want to be and if we come shop short we come up short but we made sure we intentionally targeted a group who is in need and maybe don't have the families that will advocate for it thank you that to me is an example of what i like to say okay so what now what the

104action you put into place further than thank you thank you okay um i believe that concludes our presentations um dr mckenna is there anything that you need to add or kim we only go on to the student representative update if not no we that is it for this month i think we have one elementary and uh some secondary schools for next month's eci meeting okay thank you um principles for joining us please feel free to go um uh we will not be offended i certainly understand so yes please feel free to go thank you i was going to ask you if i could excuse them and i just want to also thank all of the principals for coming out tonight you did a great job um it's always nice to see the work that you're

105doing and we know especially these pandemic years i have to say plural now because it just won't end but we're getting there it's been extra challenging and so we just continue to keep plugging away and really appreciate that you keep students first despite everything else that you're dealing with in these times and um just really proud of what you shared tonight and i'm honored to work alongside you so yeah we look forward to the next several months you'll get to see many more from the rest of our 18 schools and well yeah a little more secondary next time so thank you everybody so i was going to uh comment dr uh waters had a quicker trigger finger there than i did in unmuting but really too often in these meetings um and regardless of where

106you stand on some of the issues that are discussed or debated um i'm sure as a building principal you watch the meetings and you feel as though things are being discussed that don't necessarily impact your day-to-day and while this has been challenging for everyone the last couple years i'm not sure there's a more lonely or challenging position right now than an elementary principle and i say that with the deepest respect for my secondary principles that i directly oversee but they're pulling out rulers to separate desks to contact trace to plexiglas to and everything in between and then we saw tonight all the things that they're doing to make kids lives better and to make a difference um so i just can't help but think how frustrating uh the environment of our world is right now

107for them and we got to see tonight why our schools are still doing well uh why our kids are still smiling and you can see the smile with her eyes uh right now because of the work of these folks so like dr waters said i'm just really proud to work with all of you that was a lot and it's impressive that you're doing it in this environment so just really a sincere thank you i know we say thank you in our district admin meetings but we don't say it publicly and it's a lonely place at the top at times right and you are appreciated thank you for your hard work hi thank you all right so we are going to move on to our student representative update uh so before i start with the student

108update i just want to say how much i really enjoyed of the presentations so i have a younger sister who's in elementary school and then just being able to see what happens at her elementary school with like stuff like this is just amazing and then also i loved how like diversity was kind of like talked about a lot because when i was in elementary school i felt like i kind of pushed culture away a bit to like kind of fit in but then with stuff like this that's happening at the elementary schools now i feel like it's easier for them like it's better for them to like feel more open about it and just like embrace their cultures all right so then onto the student update so i want to talk about some of the

109events that were coming up at the high school so winter ball is going to be uh this month and and it's about and it's in about two weeks and then junior prom is going to be next month in in march and then also our student government association at the high school is planning our volleyball tournament at the end of february on the 23rd and then also a talent show on march 11th so also or i want to talk about some educational aspects as well so course selection is also starting up at the high school and then on one like important thing that we're uh that's been talked about a lot is dual enrollment and i've seen a lot of interest about it and that's that thanks so a couple just quick questions for you for

110you and i'll thank you we're so lucky to have such a great student breath because you really bring light to what we're hoping will happen i think and to hear your experience in elementary school and to hear you i'll tell us that maybe we are ahead you know we are headed in the right direction and us being able to um you know uh do more things and be more proactive and be intentional about the decisions that we make to support diversity equity and inclusion can impact your little sister hopefully so thank you for sharing that with us um and thank you for sharing about the you know more people being interested in dual enrollment wanted to ask you if um relative to course selections and dual enrollment do you get a sense that people really

111understand the changes in dual enrollment and the access and opportunity that they now have that they did not necessarily have for are we doing a good job of kind of getting the message out there to make you know just to make sure or the more that we need to do because this is the first year that we're really kind of shifting and changing we want to make sure that students are really fully aware of what opportunities they have yeah so i think that we've been doing a pretty good job so we've had one meeting about dual enrollment during night time so and then a lot of people showed up to that one and then also today in our english classes we all went down to the auditorium and then there we learned about course selection

112and then do there's a specific portion about dual enrollment as well so i think that's another way that we uh dual enrollment is brought up again and then another way uh i think that we could get more to talk about dual enrollment is maybe on like the morning show that could be a great opportunity to talk about dual enrollment as well okay gilmore that was for you um [Music] so thank you for that one same basic question but um we've also kind of put an emphasis on making sure that students understand sort of a a course um a mapping almost of you know where they're headed if post-secondary education is their plan um kind of in particular like what you know certain colleges are going to expect to see um is that are those conversations

113happening so the students are able to make informed decisions about you know what courses they're taking yeah and then also uh i think that every student's gonna have a meeting with their guidance counselor and then i thought got a meeting i think they're gonna talk about dual enrollment as well so i think that's like another place where that can be talked about great thank you hey any other questions for our student representatives okay so then we will move forward um i don't believe there are any additional topics okay um do we have anyone for public comment mr eller i would ask uh those who are in the participation room there if you intend to make comic con raise your hand and if not oh man hand is raised um so go ahead do you have

114the statement to repair [Music] um all right you read it again she read at the beginning of the meeting i did read it at the beginning now you're fine yeah that's the beginning okay so we do have one public comment um so mr lanier is up i will open your mic and when you're ready to begin you can begin your comments by stating your name and municipality or township thanks jason lanier lansdale barrow i first want to say that that i agree with some of what said uh dr bowers that talked about how difficult the job of being an administrative role in you know in a small school or i should say elementary school uh i can believe that's incredibly difficult i think teaching is incredibly difficult um and i i kind of was able

115to understand some of the things that were laid out here however and and i think a lot of it's really kind of positive in some ways i mean great talk about uh different cultures and it's no problem in terms of inclusiveness where i have a problem again is sort of the the uh the the dissecting language of of equity that i i see in this i mean there are some contradictory statements that were made in that regard and i like how is it that you could have uh you you're going to talk about implicit bias about something and then use the word latinx the the spanish language is full of nouns that are male and female to to kind of homogenize them for whatever purpose seems a little a little odd to me i'm not

116sure how it is that you would you would achieve equity by changing data that that sounds sort of like putting your thumb on the scale to me and that what we're doing is is not giving necessarily the need to any kid based upon uh based upon their need but based upon their color or their culture which that doesn't seem like a real real good recipe i don't know how that achieves higher uh higher education for for anybody or going into higher education more well prepared it seems it seems like there's a disconnect there uh one of the slides i think it was in at the hatfield school they talked about cultural competence i'm not exactly again i want to talk about uh different cultures and having input into uh what they're about that's great i

117think there is there is sort of a sense that we are in an american culture which is sort of a a melting pot as it was called when i was young where people are accepted for whom they are not what they look like not where they've come from but who they are and what they what they uh how they they they benefit the communities not not by separating them into groups and specializing uh a way of reacting to grid a data point based upon what they look like or or where the culture is i mean is it would it be fair to say that like that all groups of kids with red hair learn the same way all kids that are uh have a french last name uh learn the same way or or kids

118that are from germany or or or jamaica or wherever it seems silly to think that all kids of one group by one immutable standard is going to make a difference in how they learn so i think we think it's kind of treading on on on on uh some dangerous areas when we're doing these sort of things i think you kind of might create some division as opposed to sort of the inclusive uh the inclusive goal that you were talking about thank you thank you mr lonier that'll conclude public comment for i just tonight can't have this meeting end on that note um i'm not sure what meeting mr lanier was watching for the past 90 minutes i heard us talking about you know dismantling racial bias i heard people talking about all children want to

119see themselves reflected in literature all parents want to be able to read communications uh identifying data trends in behavior i didn't hear anybody mentioning about color specifically in that comment um you know scheduling meetings to be more accessible to parents um the work that we're doing is intentional the work i'm sorry not me i'm not doing this work you're doing this work the administration is doing this work the teachers are doing this work and they're doing great work and they're being deliberate they're being intentional they're using data in a productive way to see what it is we can do at the building level at the school level in the classroom make these environments more welcoming and to make the education more accessible to all students all right i don't know what world you grew up

120in we're the same age mr lanier but it was not some panacea when we were kids all right maybe it was for you and i because we happen to be white um but there are other experiences that are lived that you might want to learn a little bit more about that's all thank you i wouldn't i just find it sorry um go ahead dr juan campbell well no and i'm glad that um you are so right mr fusco we couldn't end on that um and mr lanier maybe back in your day was the melting pot where people had to assimilate and get rid of what was unique about their culture get rid of their language and everything else but we view america differently today we view it something as simple as a tapestry or a

121salad with all different parts a tomato lettuce cucumber mushroom egg everything unique and different but we're all trying to work towards a goal of having people judged by the content of their character not necessarily by their color like it was when you grew up and when i grew up so much has changed and what we saw demonstrated tonight showed the commitment of these principles to ensure that each student is empowered to succeed mr mcvean thank you i think it gets covered again and again you can't teach a child in a classroom without understanding where they're coming from you can't um no one person is going to have the experience of the other therefore it is it is in public education now it falls to us to understand students who are not understood by perhaps anybody

122else in their community to create a place where they are welcome to exchange ideas and communicate to understand that mr lanier about a year ago i spent an hour after a meeting talking with you about where you were coming from and i asked you what led you to believe that these terrible things were happening in north penn schools and you said well it's not yet but i've read that it's coming and i asked you to email me those those articles to this day you have not emailed me i've heard from you many times since then but we haven't communicated through that i'm going to invite you to instead of being the purveyor of information to us from wherever that is i invite you to join the conversation i invite you to look at the ways

123in which these policies invite people of different experiences in so we can understand where they're coming from so that we can get each student each classroom exactly where we all need it today and i hope that that is a motivator for you next time thank you all right well thank you to my colleagues um i appreciate the principles who presented in the administration i do not believe we have any further public comment and i don't believe we have anything that we would need to move to action uh the next meeting is going to be on march 1st at 6 00 p.m in virtual format and with that can i have a motion to adjourn the meeting mutagen second all right meeting adjourned have a wonderful evening everyone good night everyone thank you bob good night

124good night thank you everybody