Board Meeting (02-09-26)

001this is always one of the nicer meetings of the year because this is why we are here. And tonight we get to hear all about the good things. If you would all please stand with me for 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. Sergeant, and thank you very much. And at this point I think I'm going to pass it along to Dr. Fisher. Are you up first? I am up first. Excellent. Thanks Mr. Bragel. As you said tonight's an exciting night because we get to talk about a lot of the hard work that we do over the course of a year. And we're gonna talk a lot

002about our district achievement data. So I'm just gonna run through the agenda here real quick. We're gonna talk about our PSSA data, our Keystone data, and our college readiness data. And just a level set with everyone because I know there's some people may not be familiar with how our testing grade levels are. With a PSSA data we give the ELA and math assessment in grades 3 through 8. In science we give the PSSA in grades 5 and 8. One call out here though is because the standards changed last year and because the assessment changed there is no reportable data this year. So you might find in your board packet that the science slides are in there. Those are placeholders that we hid in the presentation but they did print out in your packet. So those

003are old data and so that there really isn't any updated data for the science this year. And then when we talk about the Keystone exams we're going to talk about their end-of-course exams. And they are given and algebra is given in eighth grade for most of our students. Biology for most of our students is given in ninth and the literature is given in tenth grade at the high school level. And then the last set of data we'll go through is the college readiness data and that focuses on a lot of our AP assessments. All right the next slide is pretty exciting and we're going to actually need two slides if we keep achieving the way we are. So these are just our grade levels that are subjects that are in the top five in the

004state. And we put the 500 school districts because I think it's really important to see that there are that many school districts in the state and to be in the top five in this many areas is pretty exciting and a great accomplishment. Overall the one call-out I'll have is just the overall all grades and all subjects for the district we're number two. And then so I think it's another really important thing to point out here is these results are by accident. There's a lot of hard work that goes into these. You know our teachers are working really hard, our students, we have a lot of support from our families and our administrators are often time leading the way in the buildings. And when thinking about administrators I know a lot of you have met all

005of our administrators but Mr. Matthew is our new assistant principal. I think this is probably our first meeting with him so we welcome him to the fun. Oh yeah and so like on this slide we talked about these are the top five. Every I really have the one of our subjects that we talk about and this is the first year in a long time that we've been able to say this is all of our subjects are in the top ten. So these are the top five but if they're not the top five they're within the top ten in the state. All right so I'm just going to talk real briefly I'm going to give you a high-level information about our pie charts as we go through. So you'll see at the top of the at

006the top of the list here Bower Hill this is Bower Hill's third grade slides. We also will call out its English language arts and I think it's really important to call out here that when we talk about a third grade slides if that's our first tested grade level but a lot of the foundations that you know help our third graders be successful established in K to 2. So I know we a lot of times celebrate our third grade teachers but we also celebrate our K to 2 teachers because they have a big contribution to the success. So there are four reporting categories for each of our subject areas. You have our advanced which is the highest highest placement, proficient, and then down to basic and below basic. And our goal ultimately is to help our

007kids achieve to the highest that they can. So if they're maybe if they if they're doing really well we want to enrich them if they are struggling in some concept areas we want to fill those to fill those gaps and help them achieve to the highest performance they can. When we talk about Bower Hill we see though that their eighty-eight point nine percent of our students are achieving at the advanced and proficient level and the other call out on this slide I just wanted to see in the bottom right hand corner just for reference these are the state these are the state averages so when we when we show like that we have 41 percent of our students performing in the advanced range we can see that 10.3 percent of our students across the state

008are performing advanced so we're exceeding those almost by 30 plus percentage points. Dundee. Yes. What does it look like to you at CB at the end? Yeah he takes it. So they're those yeah they're skilled cut scores that the state establishes and and when a student accomplishes those achievement levels they move into different categories. It's already 90 percent. No. Dr. Fisher I can't remember but do those scaled scores change every year based on what the students actually score or are they fixed from year to year? I want to I want to say they are they are fixed from year to year. Thank you. The article they will change you'll have a committee that gets together to change the cut scores. All right and the next slide will look at PVs English language arts and you'll

009see that ninety five point two percent are performing in the advanced and proficient range and again really high numbers of advanced students and the other thing I want to call out that you know I'll call it out on the next slide but PV and Bower Hill when you combine their scores they're number one in the state and the other thing that really not only are they number one in the state overall proficient advanced they're number one in the state and just advanced scores alone so that's a really nice accomplishment. Now we talked about our line graph so you'll see that we have called out PV is the red line Bower Hill is the yellow line and the state average is in is the blue line and it's really important that we take a look at

010we add that state on there and it gives us an opportunity to look at the trends so we see that some one of our subjects or one of our grades is excelling and the aim line is going up and the states is going down that means we're we're bucking that trend and we're we're doing a lot of good things but if the state line is going down and we are in turn going down it's not something that we're not we're gonna look at that and we're gonna try to improve upon it but it also says that it's a trend in assessment that year so when you take a look at this you'll see that pretty consistent achievement where you look at third grade three English language arts across the board we have some years where

011Bower Hill exceeds PV and some years where PV exceeds Bower Hill and the trend line for the state is pretty dropping pretty I would say pretty significantly this this year a little slight drop with Bower Hill PV is on the trend up but like I said you know when we combine those and we talk about our third grade in general at the state level it's a it's at number one and at this point when I talk about our English language arts slides we're going to talk about just how we respond to data so Mrs. Carfano is going to talk a little bit about what we do in third grade when we get this data and and the things that we do to help us be successful and then when I finish the math Mr. Mark

012Wiss will also talk a little bit about it so Good evening everybody we assess our students using a it's called Acadians it's a screener it's three times a year it proactively helps us to address students needs with our foundational literacy skills we also do benchmark assessments three times a year beginning middle and end of the year that information is compiled and we review it with our teachers both individual classroom teachers that we have our grade level data team meetings through that data we are able to address in the classroom our ELA skills with our teachers instructional practices but we're also able to use our RTI which is response to intervention it's a 30-minute time that's put into the school each school day for every single student using our data we're able to put those students

013into whether it's a remediation and intervention or an enrichment group so we look at all every student we also for our interventions we use standard protocol interventions and what that is is it is a hierarchy of skills that our reading specialists and our learning support teachers use daily with our students for those 30 minutes it's very intensive and structured so that we meet the needs of all the kids as they move through the grade levels we also have our progress monitoring data that's used teachers will do assessments with kids depending on the intensity of whatever Hive or RTI group that they're in some students are monitored weekly so that we get enough information to make any kind of instructional decisions quickly some students are monitored bi-weekly and then other students are monitored monthly so in

014between our beginning middle and end benchmark and screener we get information so that we can change our instruction if needed or change our RTI groups also if needed most of our intensive groups are three to five students so it really allows our teachers to focus on the skills of all the kids so all in all our our data does address all of our students and we make our instructional decisions based on them then mr. Matthew's gonna talk a little bit about kid talk because it just reiterates a lot of what mrs. Carfano talked about with our groupings hi everyone so in my three weeks I was lucky enough to be a part of the kid talk meetings it worked out nicely it's an opportunity for classroom teachers and building leaders to come together and talk

015about the students in every home room so we give the platform to the teachers we go through every student we look at their academic their social emotional needs if they're growing that's wonderful if they need new supports we look at that but we use that time together to kind of give every student a way to see them be successful in our classrooms all right perfect any questions thus far if not we'll move on to math all right so moving on to 7th grade math at Bauer Hill we have 94.4 percent of our students performing at the advanced and the proficient level and the big call out here it's pretty pretty obvious is 70 almost 77 percent of our students from that advanced range so this is the second year with our new math program we

016have seen that after usually a year of you know learning through a new program we'll see you will see some bumps in our achievement and while we've had really consistent scores these are these are really really high for us so have to have 77 percent of our students in advanced moving on to PV you'll see very similar results the one thing I want to call it here not only the advanced number but we have no below basic students so we're moving you know we're constantly trying to move this the students up different categories up there in that below basic category and the way that we're giving them supports to continually move them to whether it be yellow or green or blue and then when we look at the line graph you'll see you know pretty

017nice picture here you know pretty consistently but like over the last the last play four or five years we see some pretty steady movements with really high achievement and again well we combine both Bower Hill and PV scores number one in the state in math and Dr. Marks is gonna talk a little bit about our math processes or do one quick question so comparing the trend lines for math and ELA they we've you know obviously sizably stepped up but follow the state trend pretty much in math ELA with the state coming down drastically it looks like you know this was a bounce back from COVID in math what happened with the state overall I mean I know that's probably not not anyone's department here but I'm just curious if there's any ideas or thoughts when

018they go down and we go up we like it though I'm just curious they're focusing now on reading I yes isn't this with a lot of mandates and unfortunately you'll now be required to follow as well I'm sorry I'm jumping in on that's right go ahead you answer yeah so so yeah there are new mandates and I yeah I think one of the one of the great things is a lot of the mandates are coming out are already common practices that we have there really aren't any changes that we'll need to make with the mandates coming out other than reporting them to the state and that's always usually what happens they just want to verify that things are happening but things have always been happening and I said this at the beginning it's not an

019accident we know when we take these tests at the end of the year we know that our kids are gonna perform pretty well we don't know if it's gonna be 77 percent kids performing advanced or if it's gonna be 65 but we know that they have the skills that they need based on all the assessments that we do throughout the year and you know the the benchmarking that we do all right dr. Marcus hello everybody so with with our math program I really think their math results is really two ingredients to success and I think starts with our curriculum it also involves our teachers I'm gonna start with the curriculum our saw this math program is has been awesome our teachers really enjoy it we get a lot of results from our students obviously but

020the great thing about the program is it teaches students multiple strategies when they're learning the different content of their math program at each grade level so they're learning multiple strategies it's helping them conceptualize their learning and there's a strong emphasis on writing to explain in math so not only are students able to solve algorithms but they're also able to explain their thinking when when you know presented with different problems our teachers do a great job planning together so I think there's constant collaboration in each grade level to look at you know what we're teaching how we're teaching it what students are learning what what they're struggling with and within those conversations that our teachers are able to do a lot of differentiation within the classroom and within that 75 minute math block every day students

021are constantly looking not only to extend students thinking but reteach when when kids are struggling I know mr. Matthew talked earlier about kid talk that's a big component of a two so when we have our kid talk meetings every month we get a number of people to the table to talk about you know what what what do we need to do to provide different learning opportunities for kids that need it most and that collaboration has really helped with with all of our grade levels but it's been great to see that the results continue to be strong it was in Valley Annabelle real all right moving on to McMurray great for English language arts the first pie graph just shows that McMurray's English language arts in fourth grade has students achieving at 84.4 percent proficient advance

022again we're significantly outperforming the state in the advanced category and I think that will highlight on here is 1.3 percent of our students in that below basic category and it just goes to show you once again that we're we're meeting the kids where they are trying to continually reduce that number of students performing in those lowest categories and continually boost their performance and then when we take a look at the line graph you'll see that we're following similar trends to the state however we bounce back a little bit this past this past year and I think it's also important to note that each of these data points I didn't point this out on the first slide but each of these data points are different groups of kids you know so while we're developing trends you

023know what we see like when we see movement in those on those data points there are whole different groups of kids that we're talking about and you know different groups of kids have different the strengths and and needs and I will touch upon you keep it there I will touch upon ELA program so McMurray has consistently been a novel based program over the patent since my time in the district for a very long time and we've since transitioned to the same English language arts program that we're using in our K to 3 with a lot of success and just the initial the initial feedback from our teachers I know mr. Stoll will talk a little bit about this but the initial feedback from our teachers just in the first semester of using it is there's

024so much more exposure to text that our kids are getting and they're doing we're noticing in a lot of our benchmarking scores scores that are higher than we've ever seen and they're continually building on what what the strengths we have in our third grade so we're we're very pleased so far with the initial response that our students are having our teachers are the hard work they're doing with our programming moving on to math in fourth grade 80 0.9 percent of our students are in that advanced and proficient arrange and pretty consistent nice large chunk of that pie is still those those students in the advanced category and this is a really pretty picture even though it follows the trends of the state we still see that there's really consistent growth with McMurray and you know

025one thing I want to call out here is two years ago when we look at that twenty twenty two thousand twenty three data seventy eight point four McMurray was number 23 in the state and that was that's pretty decent story to tell however this year they're number one in the state so there's been a lot of hard work mr. mr. Stoll will talk a little bit about that when we get to his talk about what he's doing it with our teachers in math but that's a really big celebration for us moving on to the fifth grade English language out to you 79.6 percent in the advanced and proficient category and you'll notice that if you if you look at the the state averages you know the the numbers are also like the advanced numbers aren't

026as high as you know as in our other pies and the pie chart so it's a it's a trend in the state that the advanced categories are a little lower and then moving on to our line graph I had a slight dip I guess said earlier in the presentation that it's a concern anytime we see a dip it's a concern that we want to that we want to talk about but the state is also trending in that direction and as I mentioned with the LA program we're really we're really hopeful and encouraged that the in what we're seeing with our kids right now with all the instruction and the opportunities to have multiple reads of text we're expecting to see some some changes in this data and moving it a little bit in the upward

027range that being said McMurray's still in the top ten there's still I think a number eight in the state when it taught when we talk about English language arts in grade five and then moving on to fifth grade the 84.4 percent of our students are in the advanced and proficient range and again just the the things that we continually call out you know a lot of advanced students and then really small numbers there in the below basic category and then our line graph again it shows you know over the past five years that we've had some really nice consistent gains when we look at a fifth grade math scores similar trends to the state and you know we're like I said we're excited about a lot of the progress that we're making it in the

028area of math so mr. Stoll we'll just talk a little bit about our practices of McMurray thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight to talk about our successes of our students and our staff but first and foremost we're just amazingly fortunate so the desired outcomes that we've talked about I mean they're derived from a shared commitment from our students our staff and our families the programs and resources that we have at our disposal and we use them consistently and with intention to really meet our students where they are and take them to reach their utmost potential so again our students come to us wonderfully prepared with a solid educational foundation not only from their homes but also Bower Hill and Pleasant Valley and again our kids receive very high-level instruction they participate in

029our intervention programs both reading and math when they need support they participate and engage in enrichment opportunities that are challenging and again all of our efforts are a result of intentional effort really put into cultivating our school culture and climate as well as maintaining our elementary identity we put a tremendous number of structures into place with intention that focused on the needs of our kids from the design to our schedule or the design of our schedule our inclusion model our team planning kid talk data meetings just to name a few and those things have really enabled us to achieve the results that we have as far as our ELA curriculum revision and implementation we're really excited about it our teachers love the new resources and materials the revisions given us the opportunity to maintain a

030more consistent experience and pace across the entire grade level both fourth and fifth grade it has allowed our teachers to more easily differentiate for our students with the leveled readers and the passages our kids have more hands-on experience with with text than they ever have before and again being able to offer those in addition to our weekly selections and they all align with the great majority of them align with our accelerated reader program as well which is highly motivating for our students our kids have been exposed to a greater variety of genres than than than they were during our novel based approach our students thus far this school year have have read expository text realistic and historical fiction our inventive text drama poetry and narrative nonfiction but perhaps most importantly is is the daily opportunities

031that our students have to to respond to text in the written form the writing extensions that that that stimulate or that simulate the text dependent analysis prompts and require our students to use those those crucial and important writing skills have really been second to none and so I would say that was that's one of the things that our teachers are our most appreciative of with regard to the new resources any any questions for elementary in the k-to-5 I guess how few things one just congrats on great results I mean across the board this this is phenomenal and I should have led with I want to thank you all for coming I appreciate any time all the principals and assistant principals up show up here I know you guys have long busy days so it is

032greatly appreciated and spoiler alert I'm gonna ask the same thing for the secondary schools too but just for the elementary team you know obviously great results just are there one or two takeaways and any of you could answer all of you could answer just things that you know any weeds you want to get into just as you move forward like next steps things you want to any any additional items you may want to work on look at things like that well I can just speak to I think that like dr. Fisher said we've always been a kind of head ahead of the game when we talk about our literacy instructional practices interventions they've been in place for many many years now the state is catching up and requiring them I think for me I would

033still like to focus on pushing ahead with that not just with our interventions but also with enrichment and pushing the kids that need a little bit more push throughout throughout their day so I can speak to that I think stay in the course of the practice we have in place is great and the interventions like mrs. Carfano that are amazing you know I think one of the challenges we're seeing at the elementary level this year is online testing and just preparing kids for taking assessments online that's just a different format than what they're used to we've got the word we're not stealing our instructional time to prepare them for that but we are we are mindful that they need some practice with it I think that's something that we're definitely looking at this year for

034sure but we don't want to throw all the practices out the window that we've been used to didn't see in the success because there's a lot of great things that obviously have occurred the result of the work that we've done so yeah appreciate that thank you like I said obviously great results just curious what's what's in everyone's mind as they look forward so thank you okay now on to secondary on a 70 slide deck we have about 50 slides to go through so I apologize you'll be listening to me talk quite a bit over the next bit of time but moving on to the middle school and looking at our sixth grade PSSA Mike already explained what the pie looks like but of course we always like to see more blue and less red and

035that's where we're trending with sixth grade with 85 percent of our students this was a big class there are sixth grades one of our biggest classes we've about 320 kids that were in this testing grade they're in seventh now of course but it's a big group so to get to a point where at 45 percent advanced or 85 percent overall we're pretty pleased with that and it jumped up from 31.4 percent advanced in 2024 and I know that's something the middle school will address when we talk looking at the the line graph there was a little bit of a dip it's down about one percentage point but the state went down too so as we look at that it's generally in line with what the state's doing another data point that we used to include

036in our PowerPoint it's called PVOS if anybody's familiar with it obviously the admin are all shaking their head that would have added 20 plus more slides to an already pretty dense slide deck so we've taken that out but no there is another point it's around growth data achievement data is one point in time on this exam growth data looks at across years at how students do so anytime we see a dip we automatically flip to our our PVOS side of things and look at how we've done with growth so when I'll talk about that as we go this is the first time though in the last 13 years that every grade level every subject area met and or exceeded growth every now and then we have a grade level dip into it we call it

037red because it's teller coated but we've had a grade level it was often lit they are they are blue finally now so calling out the colors which means exceeded and we had some grade levels hit and miss into the red green or blue so this is the first time that every grade level hit blue in PVOS so even when you you see a dip we're cycling back to that data measure as well to make sure that our students are on track and meeting their expected achievement with with that level of data so looking at sixth grade I said there was a little dip but that sixth grade did meet their PVOS so we looked at that and they ranked two in 2025 going on to math 75.8 percent of our students are advanced or proficient

038and I think when you look at some of the numbers from the state it it is a little disheartening when you see we're three times some in some cases two times more advanced than some of the other districts in the state but we also do break this down with our comparable districts as well looking at math there was a little bit of a dip in 2021 in sixth grade and we've rebounded nicely haven't met where we were in 2023 just yet but again maintaining generally what's happened in the state this is an example where when we went back to PVOS seeing that there was a little bit of a dip and it it's not a hundred percent with what the state was doing sixth grade was above the expectations so they were in blue when

039we looked at our PVOS data sixth grade also this year so we'll be interested to see how the data looks next year adopted a new curriculum it if you remember last spring we adopted all Cengage so sixth seventh and eighth grade will all be on the same math program for the first time since sixth grade to move to middle school so we're looking forward and I know Mr. Hennegan will address the changes that our teachers have been working on with that new program as well seventh grade ELA ranked fourth overall in the state we were 35.8 oops I hit the button excuse me 35.8% advanced but the red got deleted here unfortunately because we did have a point three in below basic but I mean when you have almost 300 students that's that's pretty impressive

040when especially when compared with the state again another example where we dipped with the state about the same we dug into PVOS to make sure it was an out of line in with that data point in seventh grade was above their expectations for growth so this will be every time there's a dip though we worry when it's a one-year dip if it happens over time we start to dig in a little bit more into was there a staffing change was there a curriculum change in this case there wasn't knowing that they were above the their expected growth we're okay with that but we'll watch it looking into next year to ensure that we're maintaining the achievement we expect seventh grade math 76.1 advanced or proficient a little again a little bit different than the state

041this is a downward trend when the state was relatively even in PVOS again we were well above so knowing that we aren't concerned but it will be something that we watch looking into this year's scores and it will be something that Mike addresses when he talks about math seventh grade math ranked fourth in the state last year they were number one so knowing there was a little dip in that respect is something we're watching and monitoring eighth grade ELA 85.3 percent advanced or proficient this was also of a class of about 300 kids about 277 so not as large as the sixth grade they ranked fifth overall in the state with 37.1 percent of our students achieve in and danced when you look at the bar graphed again it's relatively even we took a little

042bit of a dip so did the state eighth grade mass we were at 68.6 almost 69 percent advanced or proficient this is an example where you start to dig into the state numbers and it's a little scary around the state how students are doing the mathematics and also an example where you see the the bar graph dipped pretty significantly and or the line graph in 2021 and it's it's it's going up a little more quickly than the state did in this case our students met their PVOS expectation so this eighth grade is it is an area that Mr. Hennigan will address as we get to the end so we get to keystones all of our eighth graders generally take the keystone exam it's an end of course exam and it's a graduation requirement in the

043state of Pennsylvania students in eighth grade take it we do have a few ninth graders that take a different math class in eighth grade but it's a really small end of students in this case there aren't state rankings this data state rankings the way the keystones work is keystone data is banked until students are in 11th grade so any ranking that would come out now around keystones is is so old that it's way beyond data we were addressing at this point but we feel it's important to use the data that we're to present the data that we're using now or we use to plan for this school year so these are all of our current ninth graders and how they performed on the keystone exam last spring and we had eighty point five percent of

044our students achieving advanced or proficient so this is this is more real-time than any kind of banked keystone data would be because it it gets held since the graduation requirement until all of that class is in 11th grade so even if you took the we do have some sixth and seventh graders take algebra but that gets banked until that that child's in 11th grade I know it sounds confusing it's just that's why there that there's no real-time ranking around the keystones so this was an example where we went down from eighty eight point two and twenty twenty four to eighty last spring but when you look across the line graph Mike Hennegan and I have been arguing whether 24 is the anomaly or that was that was our point where we were we really finally

045hit our stride so it is something we will watch these students met their P boss projection but keeping it it's it's relatively stable achievement were rarely historically achieved but full disclosure I preferred the eighty eight point two um but it is an area we'll continue to dig into and watch this was a space where when we talk about veteran teachers we had a teacher out on leave she's back there were some changes and who was teaching what last year so we expect to be in a pretty good space this year I mean this the person filling in was great it's just the difference that we've been talking about of a teacher with a lot of historical knowledge and experience and a veteran teacher to a new teacher new teachers amazing to a veteran teacher just

046often brings a little bit more to the table so switching to the high school this year was the first year that every ninth grader took the biology keystone historically we do have students in eighth grade take biology at the high school now so there are some students that are against the take it early but in this case every ninth grader was scheduled for biology historically they also they could have also taken physical science we made a deliberate decision a couple years ago to have every ninth grader take biology and we do think that potentially is I forgot to let the middle school talk I'm just on a roll this is my last education committee where I get to do this so I started talking about biology and sorry turning it over to mr. Sikorsky in

047the middle school and how he'll address what their current work is at the middle school thank you dr. Murphy first I just want to acknowledge and congratulate the teachers in our district because looking at that slide that had from third grade to eighth grade and how many areas were in the top five in the state with 500 districts I mean that's a testament to the work that our teachers are doing on a daily basis so publicly just want to acknowledge them and what they do on an everyday with our students and I also want to thank and appreciate the board because we were in an education committee meeting talking about and responding to our data and one of the ideas that we had you know in for language arts was looking at our sixth grade

048and making a decision to not just have an ELA class that we historically always offered but splitting that up into a separate reading course and a writing course so this year's seventh graders when they were in sixth grade that a reading course and a writing course and we saw an almost 19% increase in advanced scores which is unheard of I've even you know we've in the years I've been doing this I've never seen an increase like that so it just reaffirms that we made the right decision and that it's it's best for our students so thank you for your support in that regard and just in terms of picking some weeds and and what we're looking at focuses for this current school year across grade bands in sixth to eighth grade is really looking at

049evidence-based writing and that's an area of focus for us and I think our CSU a great job when they're responding to text by being able to locate and cite evidence that supports that site evidence from that text but we're trying to take that next step into getting kids to make sure that they can justify and support their claims so yes you have this evidence but can you justify the support why you chose that and how it relates back to the prompt you know that's a that's a key next step from sixth seventh and eighth grade that that we found within our data and lastly we are always trying to be very cognizant that we have a balanced approach to exposing our kids to both nonfiction and fiction text text sources because there's different ways to

050be able to approach it to respond to it to comprehend it and to respond to it whether in writing or early so those are just areas of focus for us at the middle school as we respond to our data thank you for answering my question without making me ask it again that's okay that it is a pleasure to be here I we a lot of times have schools reach out to us they want to be gonna pick our brains a little bit about you know what we're doing at the middle school and Adams always nice enough to let me take those calls so I'm like yeah I'll talk to I like talking about the schedule and the performance and all that so you know this is I really enjoyed this opportunity here so our math

051program at the middle school was really based upon two things number one the belief that algebra one is the keystone to all math and science instruction from here on out the students will take and if you think about it in your experiences is true if you have the belief I can't do math I can't do algebra think of how much is closed to you in the world in terms of your options in science and math so that mastery of algebra is really everything we structure six seventh and eighth towards in terms of that instruction and then also the belief that we need to meet students where they are at this point in time you know as you follow the trends in math across the state you'll see from third grade depth to eighth grade statewide

052you go from 53 percent proficient to 30 percent proficient and there are merely reasons for that but our response to that data needs to be middle school math is hard for a lot of kids and they need supports they need adults who can support them in doing that I probably told this story before but I know we have a lot of new board members I remember walking through the halls during our study lab one time and in a lot of the other disciplines it was basically a study hall and you would see the teacher sitting you know quietly the kids sitting quietly and you walk past the math room and you see lines of kids out the door with the teacher marking furiously like on their pages looking at the clock seeing how many more

053kids they can help so our schedule is really structured upon giving I say having math teachers always doing something mathy with their time whether it is a extra course or math applications course where coming out of the specials rotation students who have our low proficient or basic or below will be put into that course where they get come a 30-day math boost their special rotation with a math teacher to be able to you go over some testing concepts or to you know work on the work that they're doing in their regular curriculum our math lab where instead of a regular study lab or math teachers have that math lab where we have a small group of identified students who the teachers from the previous year said would benefit from that support but we allow enough

054time for them to have drop-ins as well so we'll put about 10 or 12 kids in there and they can meet with those kids to justify allotting that time also to know hey other kids can come in and get that support as well because that's what the kids need at this point we can't let them go in math we can't let them you know have that belief that like I can't do this and if you look at our numbers the solid majority of them can do it it can do it very very well we just have to devote that in that time and again the response in this to the data is recognizing okay who are the students now who benefit the most from that type of support the other thing too we were the

055math was the first department to utilize the firefly test which everybody now has done it it's been a great district initiative to make sure that we are all doing this getting this practice and as stressful as it was to do it you know the first time through it's really prepared us to do the online PSSA very well so we've done that and our algebra team is planning on doing the algebra firefly as well between PSSAs and keystone tests to give them that prep also Cengage that is the sixth grade math curriculum and we were very excited because that's a very rigorous math curriculum it's the one that honestly it's not for salesman it's for math teachers math teachers are the ones who love Cengage and so sixth seventh eighth we're very excited that the sixth

056grade has really adopted that and you know we have an awesome team that cares about their kids and is always asking for different opportunities oh you know I hear that they need teachers for you know to test out to learn more about the items that they're doing on the next test you know can we go to this like that is the type of teachers that we have in our building so so so it's exciting thank you I'm glad you actually addressed a couple questions or about the math and I think that was one of the biggest you know specific details that I noticed was a with an eighth grade 30 percent of our students in the state mm-hmm aren't proficient like that's a scary number and yeah you do notice and I don't want any

057of this to sound or unappreciative like I said I think the numbers are great you guys are doing a great job I'm just I'm a detailed numbers person so I look at them and I guess I'm just curious also yeah how you guys are responding and some of the criteria that you are using so when I see you know like seventh and eighth seventh eighth grade math specifically I mean even from our students to the state it's a pretty precipitous drop I'm like what is happening in that one year that are you know what can we do better you know what is being taught that you know is being missed I guess it kind of my like for Peters in particular or I guess for you guys Peters in particular I mean we have a

058class you know in 2024 there was 83% you know advanced proficient mm-hmm go to eighth grade it's 69% so I'm just kind of curious that's a you know what is being taught and then what do we how else I know you you already mentioned several things but I think yeah I mean part of it is again to to Dr. Brewer's point earlier you know we have had some staffing in terms of you know long-term substitutes very skilled the teacher who happened to be on maternity leave is one of the best teachers I've worked with in 27 years that is what it is but that yeah that's part of in terms of looking at that data the state trend is something that we look at and also to you know the factored ranking just to see

059where are we relative to the state in that area that that that 83 number I the data is what it is I'll use the example you know I used to golf a lot and the older my kids got the less I golfed but we all have that score that we shot our career best score and we shot it we owned it but a whole lot of stuff had to go right for that to work now do we still keep striving for that do we still know what we did and we still need to you know keep again that math applications course you know do we need to identify the right kids do we need to make sure that we're getting them the support so we need to you know make sure we have the right

060kids in the math lab we have to you do all this thing yes but I would say that 83 a lot of stuff went right to get there and you know we know what it was you know largely but we know we just have to keep keep pursuing that and keep keep working at it that's so I can respond in it like in a technical way so every grade level and testing they're different tests and they're gonna have different norms and so you're gonna see variations between grades just based on the makeup of the test key boss that Jen spoke about earlier is the is a very robust statistical model that takes the variation in those different tests tested years and will look at will project based on a multiple data points in a child's

061testing history where that child is going is projected to perform based on their past performance they they convert they turn the data to T scores and what then then what they they do is they're looking at where does that child fall in the distribution within a seventh grade test and where are they gonna fall in a distribution projected at distribution in the eighth grade tests so that they kind of quiet that noise between the difference of tests and so when you look and you're gonna see that all like that in the seventh eighth grade math their PVAS scores for that grade level that they at least met the gross standard of one year in some cases like seeded so I start to worry like because it's kind of like you're peeling an onion that you

062want to look at you want to stay kind of similar along a trajectory knowing that testing years you really are not apples to and you have different cohorts of kids and so that PVAS clears up all that noise and so if you can look and see that you're making year-to-year gains and PVAS you know you're going in the right direction that because you could have children you can have a hundred percent advanced and still get not a year's worth in growth and get low PVAS right because you can have kids a distribution of advances like a window like this you had all your kids in advance up here and the next year they get down they still met advance in that bar but they're down here you're gonna get a negative PVAS so it's when

063we look I'm comfortable when I look at them the scores that we are green or blue and PVAS which shows that we're making adequate that being said you know we always we always want to you know have more of our kids but I feel comfortable that it's not a it's it's not an instructional issue no and like I said you can see it it's correlating with the state as well so that's why I said there's something in you know so some curriculum and stuff that and that's what maybe it's a as the state had discussions around that where well they did they really remember so we remember the big math drop-off and I forget what year it was where everybody was like a hundred percent on the state and then because they re-normed the test

064okay and it was a like put a big line and said don't compare it back here don't look at this that in math just when they redid it I have a feeling another redo is gonna be happening re-norming this test but yeah math was one of the ones that really got gunsing I also just wanted to know real quickly that it is a little bit of a guessing game for us every year if people don't realize because we don't get the individual test we don't get to see how individual kids performed and what areas they met we just get the the results right so it is it would start being really concerning to us like when I can't remember if it was Dr. Fish or Dr. Murphy like about the trends because if you look

065at eighth grade math and you have that outlier you and so on but we still with the last year score we outperformed in 2021 2022 2023 and just not 2024 like results so for us we're always like the minute the scores come out we're always like oh my gosh like but you know what are the differences what do we have to focus on in her name I think the good news is we even though you see a little bit of a drop and it's and it's it's not trend wise that we feel really good about what we're doing and now we just have to focus in on are we doing what plate of ideas can we try to take that we haven't that can get us to that back to that next level where were

066you know questions asked number one in the state and it's just it's a challenge for us every year so we try to we try to respond in the best way we can but it is a little bit of a guessing game when we don't get to see the actual student results or the test test rate is you were not even allowed to look at the test so like if you could see a child's PSA PSSA and see where they struggled it can help you break this is they didn't do well on fractions or they didn't do well on pre-algebra and it it's kind of okay so as a district we don't get individual results of a bit individuals for okay oh yet to see where where they lacked or where they did well yeah it

067was this was the problem okay very loud we see high level would you be able to see trends in there that we you know as a as a cohort we really bombed on you on TDAs or on actions or on adding you know to just the numbers so we can see those so we know where to go what concepts though yeah and it makes it more to us thank you for indulging me something else that's odd about eighth grade is most of our eighth graders are taking an algebra course they're not taking a grade eight math course so they're taking two math tests they still obviously have to do well on those eighth grade standards and know those standards and concepts to be able to take algebra it's just it's it's a nut we're focused

068predominantly on the algebra side okay and again I said it was the state so that's why I assume the state is actually hoping the distribution is thins out as they get old is that correct or no and you know what they want less advanced as they get older we think that they have committees that look at this and they argue back and forth about where the cut score should be and it's probably like Game of Thrones when these these committees and so I do feel like there's gonna be another committee that changes you know we have sample questions every year that are field questions and whatnot but I do I feel like because we've had so many years of not in the state of not achieving that's there might be something inherent in this in

069the test or in this and where they're putting the cut scores yeah now this is exciting this is you can come to one of our meetings and we talk about this fun stuff one question on the PVOS does that get looked this is if that shows projected growth for the next year correct in to compare is that looked at on a per student basis a per class basis how's how does that get assessed all day a bus it's fascinating you can get lost in there you can you a per student you could look if you want to do a trajectory and look for an individual child for a cohort of kids teacher level teacher level it's used for teacher value it's fascinating data very robust data and it's helpful for us when we run into

070these situations we this is a first time ever that we every one of our tested grades and subjects has been at least met the growth standard or above I've been doing this a long time it's one of my favorite things like to look yeah yeah and I've never really seen another district that's been all green or blue and and so it is the first time like in my whole life that it's ever been achieved so something really good happened I don't know because they step back and let Jen and Mike take all that do all the academic work but it's a it's a pretty cool thing to look at I'd be happy to sit down okay because I'm just curious if it does get looked at a per student level do we then flag like

071hey this student was advanced for third through seventh grade and now they're basic like do we flag that and notice those trends and sort of pull up like hey what happened with this student we definitely do and what and to add on to that they actually will give you probably probability numbers they'll take those they'll take a student and so you know this band of students and the list their names have an 80% probability of scoring in the proficient range so we know like okay these 80% is that there we need to make sure that these kids are meeting rather than 80% probability they need to be making sure they're meeting that standard and that we're challenging them but on the inverse of that you know it'll say these are the students that are have

072low probability to meeting that and that's when you know like as Mike said what are the additional supports that we can get into into place for these students within their schedule to increase that probability and the PVAS data is saying that we're doing that by showing the years were at least a year's worth of growth which is really encouraging for us for students who underperform expectation is there what happens there is there a conversation with teachers guidance counselor or like what's that step that you have like of those 80% of students are supposed to if you have 20 students let's say yeah well I mean the minute that the scores are released the teachers are emailing texting us calling us they want to see how their kids did and so there's a lot of celebration

073and a little bit of crying right because you you always look there's always kids that are gonna surprise you both ways where you're high five and it's saying I can't believe so and so God and this like I you know all the work we and then you're all there's unfortunately disappointment usually every year where you're like this I this student we got them to you know as far as we thought they were gonna you know reach the proficiency or guns level and we you know we kind of let them down so we we look at for that next grade level what are the additional measures that we can do to really push that kid over the edge the following year whether it's through course worker interventions thank you thank you as well I had one

074final question actually for the group how much emphasis do you guys put on the results of one day's test for this stuff I mean and again you saw the data you know who's the best efficient you're also grading them every day so I'm very curious that your thoughts on you know how much emphasis this this should take even though I know it means a lot in that formation of pop man yeah one thing that that we share with our kids is that the tests are important because it tells a piece of our story but does it tell our whole story the answer is no right so to your point right our kids are engaging each and every day orally and written through any any number of different types of assessment right whether they be they

075be summative or cumulative and making sure that our kids we're using those assessments that occur on it on a daily basis to inform our instruction and meet them where they are and take them where they have the potential to go so are they important yes do we use it to identify the gaps that may exist within our curriculum the answer is yes right do we use it as prerequisites at times for course selection yes it tells a piece of our story but it doesn't tell the whole story anything for the middle school I'm sorry I jumped right over your response into the ice but I just got so excited until I keep going okay I already I already touched on biology but I'll hit it back again seventy seven point two percent of our students

076were advanced or proficient on the keystone bio exam as I said all of our ninth graders took biology for the first time last school year so our new trajectory for science is everybody is in biology chemistry physics generally and then a fourth year science it's of their choice we had some scheduling things that we learned about with our Western area kids so there might be a few kids that didn't have chem as 10th graders but generally it's biochem physics this was it this was an example where we saw a little bit of a dip and more of a dip than what happened in the state in this case with our P boss data our students met their P boss goal but this is an area where we are focusing the challenge here is there will

077also be a new test this spring with all of the new science deal standards so it's going to be hard to see where we were last year see where we are in the spring and kind of decide what the concerns were we have some new teachers in biology this spring so there's a lot of different layers going on right now so this is something that we will watch over the next couple years with the new standards with the new test with new staff and making sure that we're hitting I mean we have historically been number one in the state in biology this is an area where we will continue to watch knowing there are a lot of new moving parts kind of making it challenging to watch it this time keystone this is an example

078where we were talking about a keystone lit about advanced scores it is darn near impossible to get advanced on the keystone lit even it never breaks out of I think statewide like 20% as a school with the highest scoring school this is just one that is hard and I don't know because I was never in the room when they're scoring if it's because it's writing it's subjective but this is an example where only 6% of the state is advanced and this is a low advanced part of the pie for us and this is something we fought about for 13 years 16.5% of our kids are advanced so that's way under where we typically score but it's also the first time ever that we've been exceeding our expectations in it with our p-boss data so this

079is one where I'd love to be in the room when they're fighting over the cut scores in understanding how this test is scored because even our highest forming district out east is it is barely breaking 20% advanced in this exam so this has been our area of focus for a long time we were really excited to finally hit that blue mark for the first time we we were red quite a bit we started to teeter into green and we finally hit blue but this has been an area that we've we focused on for quite some time we're proud of p-boss but it's it's an area where we want to continue to pull the lever and understand what happened with advanced and looking at that it's relatively even since 2021 with how our students score and

080generally how students score in the state so going into there's going to be a ton of slides around AP so I'll try and go through them and stop in our areas of focus and I'm gonna tap in with there's a couple points because it's areas we've been focusing on for quite some time that I will pause a little bit more but just to give you some insight art we have a very robust AP program we ranked gold by the College Board this year what that means is for only four they're out of 684 schools in the state only 4% in Pennsylvania ranked gold 7% US and Canada so it's pretty exciting we were platinum last year full disclosure so I take that as a little bit of a stab in the heart but we'll talk

081about some of the new opportunities we've offered to students that that potentially impacted that ranking as we go through 83% of our students who took an exam scored a three or higher and the ultimate goal of an AP exam it's an end of end of year test it is completely based on coursework that teachers teach so it's it's all guided by the College Board but the ultimate goal is to score a three that's considered passing but those credits or that score from passing that are then applied to potential college credit but that depends on the school and that's something the family spend time with our counselors researching because excuse me some schools won't accept a three for for credit some schools one of four or five so that's something that we we do look at

082our goal is fours and fives and we'll talk through that as we go through but the ultimate goal for passing is considered a three and just high level we had 537 students take 1241 exams that is a lot of tests that's not normal that doesn't happen in most districts that's one of the reasons we're gold we have our ultimate goal was that every kid at least tried one because there's something to be said about sitting for high-stakes tests and getting to the end and seeing how well you did because they're nationally norm beyond the college credit we want every kid to try once to get that experience because we know so many of our students are going to college and this is truly about pairing for that next step there's not much to say about

083some of these slides when you look at our AP calc exit that nearly 100% of our students got a three or higher but actually really 98% of them got a four or higher is is pretty astonishing and something to brag about and again one other thing I want to note when you look at these slides is how many students are in the class and then how many students take the test that also is not typical when you go to a high school a lot of kids may take and sit for a test in some districts the district pays for parents we would go broke if we paid for all of these tests but in some districts people do that so you'll see that most of the kids take the test but in that case oftentimes

084because the district pays for it we don't this is this is an investment families make they want the college credit it's something they that this community values and our students tend to do very well and I mean nearly a hundred percent of the students getting a four or higher is amazing when do students have to declare if they're going to take so that changed in the last three years they have to declare in the fall that was a decision made by college boards about three three years ago I believe maybe four that they felt if kids had to commit to take the test in the fall they'd have a better attention span than committing it was it used to be around this time of year that kids used to sign up to take the test

085because they're all in May so that switched and that's where we'll see when we talk about some of our what especially when we did world language we think in some cases kids are like I'm done I haven't really done what I needed to do but they can't they generally sit for the test no matter what but you declare I believe it's October is the deadline to take a test in May for the students who don't take the test do we ever ask why is there is the general answer the money is it it's just they don't want to like I'm just curious for the few who sign up for the rigors of an AP course that can get credits like what why not see that through it's a little bit of it could be that

086they they declare to go to a school like they choose to go to Notre Dame and Notre Dame won't take the test it could be that they just didn't want to take off they did they made a decision that they're going to focus on their area of passion they're a math science kid so they're not going to take the English test it's generally a very personal decision the family makes sometimes it could be based on them deciding which one they'll do better and not wanting to spend the money because they're a math science kid and don't like English as much but there are fee waivers if there's a barrier around cost for families that can't pay for them okay all right thank you welcome kelp BC is one of our highest level math it's the

087second of the highest level math class this is an example where every kid in the class took the test and every kid in the class got a three or higher moving on to statistics this is a this is one where we took a little bit of a dip again it's like two percentage points but if we still look at it but generally when what we like to look at is how did our mean score compare to that in Pennsylvania and the globe because this is bigger than just the United States these are taken worldwide and generally we typically far exceed the mean scores in both cases AP biology is an example where we are seeing less students and this we think this had an impact on our gold or platinum status we've started to offer

088CHS courses college in the high school which are our classes taught we're collaborating directly with the university and with LaRose with with Chatham with Pitt and parents pay to get that credit automatically without an endgame of the test we chose to put those courses predominantly in places where there isn't an a coordinating AP exam because you don't when it's a high school class our teachers do an amazing job there's no endgame to really understand how well they did and how well they'll do in college with the AP exam you see kids got three or higher it's a solid indicator that they they mastered the content in a CHS class it's typically a teacher's grade now that the college does work with our teachers just not in the same way that it works with college board

089we started to offer over the last couple years CHS anatomy and physiology which has taken away some of the enrollment in our biology classes because the students that want to go into medicine are opting into the CHS they're getting I believe twenty two hundred dollars worth of credits to Chatham is what we figured out because I think they get six credits at the end of the day from Chatham so it still is a cost savings for the family it's a rigorous class they do amazing really cool things we got a grant a few years ago to buy really great labs and things for them to work on but that's deaf we feel like that's been the impact of to go from 85 kids in 2020 or excuse me I lost my breath down to 58

090kids in 2025 our scores did go up so I don't mean to harp on it but I just wanted to call out why we think there was a dip in enrollment there chemistry is another amazing beyond the fact that 100% got three or higher again you're looking at like almost 30% of the kids getting fives this is another very rigorous test where kids get up to eight credits in some cases from a college or university and I mean mrs. Kendrick crushed it and you'll see since when she retires it will be a loss for us AP environmental science if you paid attention to the Education Committee meetings over the last couple years is one that I've called out this is an area we're focusing on this because we have historically underperformed the mean average for

091the state this in the globe in some cases this is the first time we we've got to a space where we've met it so the area as a focus area it's we're it's working but we will continue to maintain a focus on this it did have a 20 percentage point increase we're happy with these scores but we know we can continue to do better AP physics one many years ago was was a really hard class we started offering it when we partnered with the National Math Science Institute and it was one we got a ton of calls a ton of concerns a ton of complaints and to be in a space where 95% of the students are walking away with a three or higher is a huge celebration and our teachers have done amazing their

092mean score jumping up the 3.85 AP physics C is a senior class it's another challenging test all students took the exam there was a little bit of a dip there were a few kids that got twos but it are again our scores generally align with what's going on in PA and in this in the globe in exceeding it in most cases AP physics C it the mechanics is the second part of the test so this is a situation where it's one class period preparing for two AP tests so mrs. Lebinski has her work cut out for her but this her students a hundred percent of them got a three or higher with mean score of 4.13 AP computer science has been an area we've been focusing on and I'll pause after the next slide AP

093computer science a we saw a little bit of an increase but it's still not at the level of what we typically score this is a hard exam to take it ebbs and flows typically based on student interest if they're really interested in computer science they tend to do well in some cases it they just aren't grasping the content as much mrs. Palermo has been digging it her scores did go up they're just not at the point where we're meeting with the PA and globe do and computer science principles when we started this course I think we're probably in years six or eight it's definitely a pre-coded course our scores were much higher and we've seen them fall this year we did have a small uptick but definitely not what we're typically used to power performing

094this has been an area of focus and pausing here one of the things we've started to look at is what can we do different we partnered with math national math and science last year the woman we partnered with her name was princess Troy which sounds like a super Mario Brothers game but she dug into our scores and said this is what you need to focus on this is going well this is and mrs. Daywards did that we saw a little bit of an uptick but just still not back to where we want to so one of the things as a 612 team we started to look at is this is a ninth grade class which is unusual for AP so it's an entry-level AP class what can we do at the middle school to support

095students that that want to take AP computer science principles and what skills could we embedded them in the middle school to help students do well not just an AP computer science principles but also in computer science a and a future class that we will be asking the board if students are interested in offering next year AP computer science AP cyber security so sticking with the new trend of focusing on cyber security as a lot of kids are going into that so I just wanted to pause for a second to let mr. Sikorsky talk about this will save us another Education Committee meeting to talk about some of the courses and some of the new course offerings we are considering they don't get approved on a board agenda until we're sure kids want to take them

096but this middle school class actually would go on an agenda and kids don't sign up because it becomes one of the rotations so I'll stop talking mr. well I want to give mrs. Van Baelen a shout out here who's one of our computer application teachers who came to Mike and I with them with the idea to really help strengthen the pipeline to support the high school not only in enrollment but in terms of achievement within the computer science program she came to us proposing a course for our eighth graders a 60-day course that the eighth graders can elect to take and it would be focusing on advanced programming such as Python and Java which we currently do not touch upon at the middle school and then as dr. Murphy just mentioned cyber security basics and

097a little bit of ethical use of artificial intelligence so it's a kind of a blended course that we think would really help to support these computer science principal programs at at the high school and Mike if you want to talk about how scheduling it be in fact yeah so just if you know not really higher math you're adding something to something that's already for you have to subtract something or you could give students some choice which they really haven't had as much at the middle school level so one thing that we're gonna be you know looking to do is we add this course we're to build in you know come a little bit of a modified elective model for one of our special periods to give students in eighth grade the opportunity to pick and

098choose a little bit more you know if students are interested in taking two performance music classes which they haven't been able to do so much now they could do that if they want to take this computer applications course and the tech ed course they can do that they can take art or a music six and seventh wouldn't change at all they're still taking this full sequence through but this starts to give us a little bit of that ability to say okay you have some control over some of the exploratory courses that you're taking to help plan for the greater choices that they have to high school level so you know we're really excited about this opportunity as well okay moving on to slide 52 AP English has been an area of focus and we are

099we've finally broken through to get some amazing scores from our students a hundred and twenty five four students took the test with 90% scoring a three or higher that's a 17.5 percentage point increase in that exam so that's definitely something to celebrate AP lit equally a good story our students broke a four on their mean score with a ninety eight point six six achieving a three or higher it's a five percentage point increase but our students have generally done well on the literature exam the language exam is typically more challenging and we're excited about that moving into social studies AP European history Mr. Lawrence always does an amazing job we're at a hundred percent of our students scoring a three or higher in most cases the bulk of them scoring fours and fives micro and

100macro economics are a space where we saw a little bit of a dip but what we're proud of with this is historically we've only had one or two sections of economics AP econ it was a kind of a selected a course that few students selected to take when I looked back to a few years ago we only had about 30 some students taking it so we've tripled the number of students enrolled and that's had a little bit of an impact with the number of scored in three or higher so Mr. Bryden is working on what can he do to support the students that want to be in that class and take the exam to achieve the the scores that we are typically accustomed to in economics so in macro we still had almost seventy five

101percent of our students scoring a three or higher with a three point three mean score in micro it's about seventy four percent of students scoring a three or higher but this is an area that we'll be working on he will be rewriting the curriculum this summer which is an opportunity to do a reset he had been typically he had been teaching a curriculum written by a previous teacher so that will be an opportunity for us to do some things differently next year AP psych if this is definitely an area of focus we don't typically see scores where half of our students score three or higher this will be an area where we'll be doing things a little differently moving forward with a teacher getting trained in how to teach AP and I expect to see

102some differences in our scores over the next couple years AP US government and politics Mr. Radilla always does an amazing job with his students all of the students did generally did really well it has to be 81 out of 82 that must be a typo on this slide because one there's one percent got a two but nearly with a four point five one mean score increase or four point five one mean score excuse me AP US is a 10th grade exam so there this is an opportunity for some students to take their first AP exam 95 percent of our students got a three or higher pausing here at AP world language if you were at the education committee meeting a couple years ago we were given a challenge that we had to write a plan

103specifically to address AP world language because the scores weren't where we wanted them to we had students in classes taking tests and not getting college credit so we came up with a plan where we did a hybrid model where we were offering AP and CHS together so that if kids wanted that college credit in this elective class they could choose whether they would get take the AP exam in this case AP French it dotted out because the data is under 11 you shouldn't really report data when it's under 11 kids because if you knew three kids were taking the test you could kind of figure out what their scores are so that's why it's dotted out in this case because we only had three kids take the test with a mean score of three so

104they all scored three or higher you just don't know what that looks like you can mathematically kind of figure it out but we had less students off to take the AP because the remaining students chose to pay for the CHS credit AP German ironically even with the AP test was always our highest achieving AP exam in lit and this was an example where it's an anomaly and it wasn't we did feel we had some students in AP German double dip they paid for the test and CHS so perhaps maybe some of these students in May were like I already got the credit I'm not going to take this year's I don't know the answer to that but these scores weren't where we typically score in German which has always been our highest performing exam and

105then AP Spanish these are the highest scores we've had in AP Spanish for since implementing CHS 80% of the students scored a three or higher I know personally the student who got the five she was really excited so we were really proud of only 15 kids took the test but they generally did very well one of the data points we look like we look at is the AP college credit so this had our highest has been if as you can see in 2022 but it's not that that huge of a difference but we track how many students graduate with a three or higher on an exam and it's nearly 60 percent of our students the number of seniors who scored three or higher if that if a senior scored three or higher in a junior

106year does that count towards this total or they have to get it in their senior year for this this data point they have to get at their seat okay but there are as we will go ahead and I'll explain some of that some of the things that the AP the kids can get individual awards from these exams we had 107 students earn AP scholar 60 earn AP scholar with honors and I'm not going to read each one to you an 86 earn AP scholar with recognition I jumped over your question I thought it was in this slide where that comes in is with the the platinum status it's percentage of students that's that take a test there's a percentage of the students that pass a test and then there's a percentage of students that just

107take the class so that's configured in with the other status I didn't I didn't answer a question at all yes I thank you I was like I was curious trying to think through because I imagined some could take it their junior year so some take we have freshmen take AP computer science principles we have 10th graders that can take AP US history but then they can also opt into AP statistics so there are different tick points especially if you're advanced in math or science that you can start taking classes in 10th and 11th grade but so if we did this table and showed number of students graduating students who at some point in their high school career got an all these numbers would be hunger no this this is this is everything this this is

108by the time they're a senior they would have got a three or higher on a test okay so this would count for a test that yeah okay okay now I just okay your seniors this is the snap photos seniors correct they're not yeah we're taking now but if a senior now took it as a junior account okay understood sorry math question we're going to get or I just wasn't listening very well I'm sorry we're on slide 63 um just looking at our class of 2025 overall we had 321 students graduate with our class 84% went on to a four-year school 8% went on to two years or trade or technical that's going up um 7% sought employment were undecided that's gone up a little bit since 2020 and 1% of our students went into the

109military and that's three students went to the air force and one to the navy that kind of ebbs and flows off and on every year as well um we've been tracking where our students go our top three have always been pit penn state wvu wvu dropped out and with a new scholarship with w and j they have ticked up pretty quickly um which is um where's our we've know our our students generally like to stay closer to home um we see that and then we also know that our families follow where the money goes that's that's their number one driver when it comes to where our students go we've been pushed historically to the highly selective schools which will be in the next slide but it this is the first time wvu hasn't been in

110the top five and then we've also added in some of the tech schools knowing that we've you know doubled the buses to western area these are other notable schools where our students have gone um purdue case western these are the highly selective schools and challenging to get into we already know the class of 2026 has two students that got into noter dame so we'll see some of that next year but these are just some highlights of schools that are tougher to get into and how our students um dead and then finally some celebrations for this class um we had national merit finalists we had 41 students signed letter of intent to play college athletics 20 of our western area students earned their nocty exams and the biggest thing is 26 percent of our students graduated

111with at least 15 college credits which is a really a huge accomplishment i mean in some cases we know kids are already juniors when they're starting college because of the ap classes because they took classes next door at ccbc or because of our chs program and that's something the community values and we value being able to offer those things to our students so pausing to let the high school respond to the data so i don't jump right over that dr pavlik and just have a short 45 minute presentation just kidding um actually much of what we have to say i think has been covered in other areas i'll talk just real quickly about biology um we have um this year instituted a new curriculum um they were on pause for a year because last year

112was still the old keystone test i can tell you the teachers and the students are excited about the curriculum this year it is more about depth and less about breadth which was always a struggle for them trying to get through so much content to make sure students were prepared for the test that has led to a lot more opportunities for the steels phenomenon based learning for opportunities for more hands-on learning so they're really excited about it they are also using the firefly assessment in that course just preparing students and kind of tracking how they're doing so it is we have no idea once the test is given we assume we're going to do well again but again but it's a new test so so we shall see but we have a lot of eyes on

113that we're watching it closely in terms of some of the other things i'm going to let joey talk a little bit about the new courses that we're offering and what we're doing in terms of adding to sort of what we're doing around technology hi guys uh so like jen had mentioned before we are going to propose an ap cyber security class um so that will be an entry an option for another ninth grade ap class so it's one of the ap has the career excuse me kickstart classes which really do focus on getting kids career ready able to go out into the workforce um if you look at some of the statistics around cyber security there are lots and lots of jobs i'm not going to cite a number that i'll probably get wrong but

114um it's in the hundreds of thousands of jobs um and there's like four percent of kids out of high school that would be prepared to take those jobs so this is an option for kids to kind of just get their feet wet see if this is something that would be interest that they would be interested in um and then moving forward hopefully um you know we can advance that pathway right we can see if there's credentialing if there's a way for kids to be able to have hands-on learning in the cyber security world um we looked into some of those opportunities we're learning there's lots of handcuffs because of people's security right so they're not really willing to let 16 year olds come on in and see you know how they do things but um

115so that's we will be proposing mrs staywards wrote that up um so that's really exciting in our technology education department we are going to propose two chs elective options chs manufacturing engineering it's a mouthful and um cad two chs cad two so what's really cool is the department is trying to do some pathways right to really get kids to focus on where they would like to go after high school right so like they came up with an engineering pathway a manufacturing pathway robotics architecture and then like a school to career pathway and tried to list like courses that they should take not necessarily in order because sometimes the way scheduling works it doesn't work out that way but some recommended pathways and those chs classes would be the captains thank you yeah um and those

116chs classes will be through um robert morris university um who we already have a contract with um because we offer chs marketing that has also been another fest that we offered um to to just address our takeaways from our ap data and kind of our response to data we meet with those teachers those are probably the most excited teachers in july the very beginning of july when their scores come out they do ap actually gives us a little bit more in terms of where our kids struggled on the test and and more overall data to help drive instruction we meet um individually with teachers in each of those courses and kind of go over their data and what their plan is for the year and what areas they need to focus so that that is

117an ongoing um usually it's celebrations sometimes it's like what happened um you know what are we going to do um and and kind of talk through it so on that end um you know we have been helped to really build a robust ap program but things are changing and so in terms of takeaways mr o'neill to to answer that question um we see a lot of shifting and where our kids are going when they leave us it historically has been uh high school has been a pathway to college but we've seen more students heading to tech school we've heard students who graduated who are in college and are doing okay saying i think i'm going to now try a trade you know i'm not really feeling this i'm not sure um this is where i

118want to go and so we're starting to not starting but we're in the process of really broadening our options for students and making them more exposed to real world sort of experiences that we are right now as part of a committee reimagining high school or reimagining 12th grade working on some of those ideas we had a focus group actually last week with students and with staff two separate focus groups and some of what we're hearing from them is you know the need for more flexibility and more opportunities really to get out there a lot more technology based which likely that's one of our areas of focus so trying to find ways that we can connect more as as joey said with the community getting our kids out sort of like what we do with our

119medical mentorship program and continue to expand those offerings we want to make sure we're meeting the needs of all of our students and we may see changes we've added a lot of chs options in our elective courses that ap doesn't offer that that allows kids to kind of specialize in certain areas or at least get some exposure to in certain areas so we may see some shifts in our data but it's all with a purpose so just kind of sharing that overall vision with you i'm sure you'll be hearing more from us in the months ahead and the work that we're doing along those lines and thank you and i do want to say i appreciate all of your efforts please share it with all your teams your staff i mean great great results across

120the board so thank you all we're really proud of all the work our middle school and high school teachers and really excited over what at all the foundation they leave for us at the elementary school we wouldn't be able to have the ap scores that we have or the data that we have so it wasn't for all their hard work as well i also think when you look at shelly's celebration of excellence this is a lot of like oh my goodness like a lot of academics and whatnot but our kids have joy and they're doing amazing things and they're in sports and that's why i think we're constantly reminding ourselves with our celebration of excellence school has to be a place where kids are joyful and having fun or they're not going to learn like

121we can teach but for children to learn it's this combination of good instruction motivation and joy and i think you're creating those environments for that to happen so i appreciate all of you that's it well nothing actually along those lines when we did our student focus group and they had to identify things that they were really proud of things that they really appreciated in school one of the things that was overwhelming from the students was that they felt safe and supported at school and that they appreciated the high expectations and this was a very diverse group of students so we were really proud we had an outside presenter come in and meet with the students so that they you know could really be open and honest and you know looking at the areas where we

122need to grow they're great areas to be focused on so what is going on in all of these buildings is definitely impacting our students when they get to the high school well i said it was going to be good news and you certainly didn't disappoint any comments from our attending public and thank you i agree as far as closing remarks i certainly don't want to overlook all the work that the students and that our students put into it and all the support their parents give them but that doesn't change the fact that you are all doing an absolutely wonderful job thank you very much and please share that that thanks with your staff we recognize it's been a long day for all of you so i don't want to keep you we recognize that it's

123lots of long days for your staff it is much appreciated by all of us and by the whole community so thank you very much if there's nothing else have a good evening everybody