Board of Education Special Meeting

001I pledge algiance 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. Can I have a motion to approve the agenda? So move. Second. All in favor? I motion carries. um possible discussion on um and superintendent's recommendations for personnel actions. Um Dr. Sh, do you want to make a statement before we go into that or um would you rather I'm just going to turn it over and let you if that's okay. Yeah. Good. Uh good evening members of the board and superintendent Sax. We will begin the personnel actions for Wednesday, April 30th, 2025 with the superintendent's phase 2 reorganization. Uh for the phase two personnel actions, if it pleases the board, I would like to go section

002by section to give time for discussion. Um if there is a name you would like to discuss, please indicate that during that section's reading. There will be nine sections total, and I will pause at the end of each section to give the board time for questions or comments. Uh for section one of the superintendent phase 2 reorganization, we have 36 professional personnel uh whose contract days are to be terminated on June 30th, 2025. These employees are being considered for transfer and subsequent reassignment for the 2025 to 126 questions. No. Okay. No, wait. No. Do we need to vote if we don't agree with a couple of these people? Uh I think if you want to pull them out, let's pull them out by section. That way we don't have to go about it. Yes, sir.

003any individuals that you since our lines aren't numbered. Will they pull out by name? Yes. Yes. Um it's [Music] uh Tyler Boswell and Robert Lucas. Lucas. Okay. So, um I want to make sure I'm doing this. So, we're going to vote on we're going to vote on section one. Section one uh without those two first and then we can vote on them individually. Make a motion individually. So, uh Madame President, board members, I recommend um approval of section one of the reorganization phase two plan without without the without mentioned the two mentioned. Yes, ma'am. And I have a motion uh to accept the superintendent's recommendation without the two names mentioned. So move. Second. Second. All in favor? I oppose. No. Without motion pass. So that m motion passes. Madam president, board members. Um, regarding the

004professional contract of the following employees, I'm recommending that they uh be terminated at the end of the 2024 2025 school year and considered uh transferred with subsequent reassignment for the 2025 2026 school year. Um, the first employee is um Mr. Tyler Boswell. Are we going to vote separately? Second. Um, you've heard the superintendent's recommendation. Do I have a motion? So move second. Second. All in favor? I questions. No, just a name. Motion approved. Uh, next one is Robert Rus. Madame President, board members. Um, regarding the professional contract of Mr. Robert Rukus. Uh um I'm making a recommendation that his appointment be terminated at the end of the 2024 2025 school year and considered transferred with subsequent reassignments to the 2025 2026 school year. Okay. You've heard the superintendent's recommendation. Can I have a motion? So

005move. Second. Second. All in favor? I opposed. Nay. Motion carried. Next section. Section two. Yes, ma'am. For section two, we have one service contract of employment to be terminated at the end of the 24 25 school year and considered for transfer and subsequent reassignment for the 2526 school year. I have a motion to uh accept the uh name listed in the service personnel uh termination contract. Um do you have a motion? So move second. Second. All in favor? opposed. Motion carries. Section three. Section three. We have 15 professional employees whose contracting employment is to be terminated at the end of the 2425 school year and placed on the preferred recall list. Dr. Sax is recommending that Lewis Harden's name be pulled from this section, which will give us a total of 14 staff members for

006consideration. I have a motion to accept the 14 staff members that uh Mr. Camloski mentioned. So moved. Second. Second. All in favor? I my question. Question. Um, can you explain um what's going to happen with the community and schools? Did the fund I can't remember what we're we're working on the funding for those. There is potential for those positions to come back, but we are waiting on some some funding sources from the state department to try to determine exactly how to move forward there. But that was how was that previously funded? Right. That was funded. That was one of uh Governor Justice's wife's initiatives. So um they there was partial funding that came from the state for that um out of a fund that was directly for a community school site manager. Um we have

007been in touch with the state Dr. T Dr. Sax has talked with the state to try to determine the best path forward um in order to try to provide as much support um in that area to our schools as possible with minimal disruptions to the service um that those people provide. Yeah. And and further clarification, uh we have put the the other funding for those positions in the budget and if the budget is approved with those positions, then um then those would also be rescended. So we're we're asking for expansion grants in order to be able to cover some of the costs, but but it's also pending the board's approval of the budget. And is this all of the community school site managers? There's there's seven. Yes. But I'm I'm of the understanding that it's

008because the funding was there for a few years and then it's pulled back. So we don't they don't actually give us the funding anymore. They what happens is in the first year it's fully funded and then they start they start paying it off and so it gets to the point where we've got to make sure that we can actually cover the full cost with our within the general fund or federal funding. What year is this for that? Three. I think it's more than we media schools. This is probably Dr. Dr. Alonso should be able to answer that question. I think I'm sorry. Can you answer that question? Sorry. When I was assistant principal at Orchard 2018 maybe I think this is our seventh year. My first year was the 1920 school year and we had

009I think that was the first year for Miss Yeah, it's been around for a while. Okay. Thank you. Any questions on section four? No, we voted on section three. Might just want to make sure we had a vote on Yes. I don't When you ask a question, I don't think we voted. Um, did I have a motion? Yes. Second. Can you ask a question? All in favor? I opposed. Motion carried. Section four. For section four, superintendent's phase 2 reorganization, we have two service employees whose contract of employment is be terminated at the end of the 2425 school year and they will be placed on the preferred recall list. You've heard Mr. Camos's recommendation. Can I have a motion to accept those two individuals? So move. Second. Second. All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. Section

010five. Section five. We have one professional employee whose contract days are to be terminated at the end of the 2526 school year and she's being considered for a 210-day contract with the lines with the other academic instructional mentors contract days. Mr. Kamoski's recommendation for section five. Can I have a motion? Second. Second. Second. All in favor? Opposed? Motion carries. Section six. Section six. We have the elimination of 12 central office positions effective at the end of the 2526 school year. Can I have a motion to accept the Mr. Kamoski's recommendations for elimination of positions? So move. Second. Second. All in favor? I questions. Just just a quick question. These are not Mr. Camelas's recommendations for the day. Sorry. I'm sorry, Mr. That's okay. I I do want to clarify actually that should have been 11.

011Um because with us pulling back Mr. Harden, one of those positions was actually Mr. Harden's position should be 11. I'm sorry. I apologize. Um did we vote? Okay. And all in favor, we section seven. Section seven. We have five service personnel members who are being considered for location transfer for the 2526 school year. Their contract days and job responsibilities will remain the same. Can I have a motion to accept section seven recommendations? So moved. Second. All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. And I move to the superintendent reorganization phase two. Dr. Saxs. I apologize. I need to make sure that we're right. This would be what I deem section eight. Um this is the um 61 professional staff members who would be considered for transfer. Oh, okay. Subsequent reassignment. There's no heading up there. Sorry.

012Didn't know what it was. Let me go back to that. Is this a test? The test says we're back in section number one. These are service personnel. Okay. These are professional personnel. Um, a lot of them are type one. Um, did you need me to do something here? No, I just I I just we didn't we didn't we just made this a separate section because this is the official transfer. I think I was confused because I didn't see section seven. Yeah, I didn't either. So, section seven was gone. Section seven was at the the very bottom that's highlighted in yellow. Oh, it doesn't have that on. Oh, really? No. It's on the revise. I got it. It's on the Okay, it's under. Okay. But so now we're on superintendent phase two, which is what we're

013calling section 8, which is professional transfer. Thank you. So, can I have a motion to accept the professional personnel considered for transfer? Second. Second. All in favor? Opposed? Motion carries. and section nine. Yes, ma'am. And then finally, for section nine of the phase 2 reorganization plan, we have 89 service employees who are being considered for transfer and subsequent reassignment for the 2526 school year. Can I have a motion to consider the service personnel for transfer? Second. Second. All in favor? I oppose. Motion carries. Thanks, Mr. Okay, next on the agenda, um Liz is um actually Mr. Kim is back. Okay, sorry. He's madam president. Um the executive director, Mr. Mr. Kimlowski is going to present um my recommended annual renewal of professional service administrative probationary and continuing contract actions. Thank you. Uh and so now

014we have the as Dr. Sax said the recommended personnel actions related to the annual renewal of professional service um and administrative probationary and continuing contracts. Um we have the annual renewal of our treasurer uh per code. Um that is on line two. I'd also like to draw your attention to lines three through eight. These items are the creation of a sponsored supplement for our teacher and service personnel of the finalist uh service personnel of the year finalist and winners. Um these people will be receiving a cash award um for being named a finalist and then an additional award for being the winner. We're fortunate enough to partner with local businesses for this. Um so this is a sponsored um piece of personnel action. It's not something that's coming out of the general fund. So, we're

015fortunate we have some business partnership do that. Um, beginning on line 9, we have 18 administrative probationary contracts for the 2526 school year. Uh, on line 28, we have nine administrative continuing contracts for the 2526 school year. Uh, going down to line 38, we have 299 professional probationary contracts to be awarded for the 2526 school year. Uh on line 338 uh we will be issuing 99 professional continuing contracts for the 2526 school year. And then beginning on line 438 for service personnel, we are issuing 372 probationary contracts for the 2526 school year. And finally on line 812, we are issuing 109 service continuing contracts for the 2526 school year for a total of 97 administrative, professional, and service personnel actions tonight for your consideration with Superintendent Sex's recommendation. Um, Mr. Wright needs to check something

016out. wants to make sure that um you can vote on everyone. Mr. Kamal's presentation. Can I have a motion to accept this individual's names that are being considered? So move. Second. Second. All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. question. You didn't have a question. Uh, next on the agenda is the monitoring items, budget discussion. Mr. BS, thank you, President Wong, board, and Dr. Saxs. This is our fourth work session of our for our budgets. Most of what's on here we've already talked about in several meetings and this is summarized for where we landed last as our April 30th or April 3rd meeting. So, as far as the calendar goes for the budget, we're in the home stretch basically is this work session, public notice to the uh the community and then a public hearing and

017a vote standard for May 19th. And then once that happens, we'll send to the state. So, their approvement might be various again for just a general fund. The other funds are restricted and therefore the revenues in the reed. So this page here talks about some of the requests from the board that we had in the past work sessions whittleled down to what was approved on April 3rd. One of the exceptions on there is since we had a meeting with April 3rd, there's a hygiene request to add an additional $2 per day per employee that gets the hygiene supplement. That cost would be about 125,000. So, as we go through this, can I just clarify that that's uh for um service service personnel that um uh have diapering responsibilities uh for some of our students and

018that has not been changed in quite some time. Um and so that's why I was looking at adding this to the request. The one the middle column where the dollars are that was the original request back when we first had the first meetings. The column on the on the right is the amounts that were adjusted in the April 3rd meeting. So I just want to show where we started and where we are. One area and I'll talk about it later is the housing allowance when we get to that point. But basically from the other meetings we reduced the ISSAs from four to two. We the people reduced that supplement from 10,000 to thousand. The writing program first and second grade I think stay the same. Uh the art supply, we're going to handle that out

019of step 7A funding. The field trips, we're going to handle that out of just the regular instruction activities that happen throughout the year. And then you had talked about communities and schools. Now, the portion not covered by the state grant, we are projecting to fund that out of step 7X. So that's where it's so when you add all those up, it's 4,42,788. Okay. I have a question. Yes, ma'am. Uh Mr. Mullen next here. Yep. Uh did were you uh checking out to see who actually used this for writing program? I did. It's used by all six schools still use it and are going to continue to use it. We have one school that is going to do a pilot for us. So we will have some of the kits for them um that and Bunker

020Hill is a school that wants it added this year. Okay, good. Just want to be sure. Thank you. So the next page is the superintendent initiatives. Again, these were requests during the budget process. When we met on April 3rd at summer school at 587, the board had reduced that down to 300,000. The SRO's we left the same to 240,000 student facilitators. There's three FTEEs for 243,973. And then skills you we're going to pay out of step 7 or 70, wherever it falls. I believe right now it's in 7A. And those items total to [Music] $783,973. The two items on the list that are in the yellow, those positions were added during our staffing process with the school. So they're already in the budget that we had talked about in the previous work sessions. I just

021want to highlight the new position to us but already in the budget from we and then the last page again if you recall from the staff that it was $3.2 $.2 million in requests. Senior leadership met and whittleled that down to 274,000. I think we had a small discussion about this on April 3rd and below just some of the highlights of what's in there and that's 274,264. When you add all that up, it's 5,46125. Uh we do have now our final comps from the state and our revenue projections. So it's about another million dollars there. So that leaves us what 4.4 four million459,300 coming out of reserves. I know when we met on April 3rd, you know, the goal was to get to three and a half million. What I recall from that meeting was

022back on chart with the board request with the housing review, 250 to a,000 who gets that. We we um I'm just going to speak up ahead of time, but we discussed that, but then we uh from what I remember, we had a consensus that we were going to go to minutes. You got highlighted the minutes refer 4.1. Yes, the minutes do look like 4.1 for the housing allowance. that we gonna stay at we're gonna stay at 1250. So with that we won't be at three and a half be yes. So I just want to make sure everybody one of the things that was discussed on April 3rd was the C program and I think since that activity since that meeting the legislators did not approve the ECAP bill and that was 23 positions. So by

023not having to add those positions back, we can continue the C program. I just want to make sure we discuss that tonight since that was one guidance for April 3rd. So I just want to make sure we had a consensus there. I think so. Yeah. Is everybody okay? So what that will do if we leave that in then our reserve balance. So about every $3.1 million is 1% of her reserves. So at 4.4 4 million as presented tonight. That's about one and a half percent will come off our our ending reserve balance when we get to 2025 and then into 26. But I just want to be sure we'll recur on that. Good. Yes. Okay. One other discussion that that we have had before and I've asked is this what we're going to talk about?

024I' I've actually asked Mr. us to to present this just for food for the board as we think about um our standing in the state um as it relates to um our salaries and how we compare with other counties is perhaps a strategy that that I'd like to to think about. I'm not I'm not making a recommendation tonight, but I wanted to be able to bring it up for discussion um based upon Mr. But's research and just offer it as food for thought. So annually the state puts out uh with with the budget process the average salary by county for both professional service and they rank them. So right now when you look at Berkeley County service personnel we're ranked about 16 out of the 55 counties and for ser professionals we're ranked 10 out

025of out of the counties. The thear discrepancies I guess between the levels and the service person are much much tighter on the service side between where we are in the groups ahead of us. It's a much wider margin. So, as discussing this with with Dr. Saxs earlier, you know, this would be the second year that we're keeping the housing allowance in. They're continuing it. Um, one of the foods for thought is just a food for thought is, you know, maybe taking 250 or 500 out. This extra amount that we putting into the pay table, for example, service personnel, $250 would move us from 16th to I think it was fifth and $500 into the pay table. search person that actually moves to first in the state. Now the same monies on the special side $250

026or 500 moves is just the eight because the gap is just so wide from county to county. So it's just a food for thought on a potential that we can do what the recommendation would be there is each year what we have are increased revenues from local sources tax revenue. earmark that right off the top for this type of increase that way it's sustainable moving forward into the pay table into the pay table and and you know one of the reasons that I I wanted to discuss this is that where um the housing allowance is something that you know is um you know the concern is the sustainability of the housing allowance at the amount that we are doing it above what the employees are are already getting because they're already getting is it 800

027900 000. Yes, sir. Um so the additional 1250 is, you know, the question is is how sustainable is that? What we what we're saying is is that um you know, food for thought is is that if we were to do $500 and put in the pay table, well, that's permanent. We don't, you know, unless unless we have to go and eliminate that from everyone, which that just does not happen unless you're in a crisis mode. But if you were to do $500 um even this year, then that would permanently be into the pay tables and could potentially move our service personnel to first in the state and our our professional employees to eight. Um I don't know if you crunched the numbers on what that would actually do for starting teacher salary, but I'm sure

028that might be a little bit different. But um but then you would still have let's say seven an increase of $750 for the housing allowance for next year based and that would still keep everything within the same range of numbers that we're talking about but it's actually doing a across the board pay increase to the pay tables which improves our ranking in the state of West Virginia. So I I just wanted to offer that as food for thought. Um the only difference would be the retirement because right now the housing allowance as a bonus is not subject to retirement. The pay table would be we've discussed we've discussed that before but my only concern is that um for service or professionals such a small amount per month. Exactly. And by the time you take taxes

029off of it they don't see anything. But if you're looking at the big picture for somebody that wants to retire, but um and young people don't take this the wrong way, but young people don't look at their retirement like say I would or how about you, Mr. M? Okay, good for you. Well, this isn't a 401k, but but I guess some of them it would be a 401k, but um I mean that's just something that we need to talk about. I'd also be interested to see what the employees would want, what their thoughts are because this directly impacts our staff and the implications of, you know, pennies in the paycheck throughout the month or uh a larger lump sum that they can do whatever they want with. Well, the lump sum is considered a supplemental

030payment and our guy we take 22 and a half% tax and I and I at the end of the day I I know but I would rather I'd rather them make that you know give us their opinion than us make that decision make that decision for them. I'd want to know what what majority says. Yeah. I I mean I whatever the choice is if if they gave their opinion on it I'd feel more comfortable with it. So let me ask you Mr. But if based upon that feedback from the board when we if if we get the blessing from the board for this and we publish it in the paper would there be the opportunity to get feedback from the employees as it relates to the budget and what they would be approving on whatever

031date it is to to change how that would work with the state to see that we have to have a paid tables Mr. Let's let's investigate that and find out for for like recruiting for HR. How when new prospective teachers or other professional staff are in service like is that like a talking point like like hey like we're we're x amount of the state we if we do this do it this way like could you like you broadcast that like put that on like banners and things when when most people look at web page and what they're asking about um the the starting salary is what they typically look at first. Um we do though I mean t the housing allowance I mean that is something that whenever we are talking um you know salaries

032and then the additional um you know supplemental pays that you can get I mean the housing allowance is always something that we mentioned. Um you know we're grateful for it all because every everything counts. Um, but I will say I mean I would think that most people would probably look at the salary table just because it's out there in the open and we don't necessarily have the housing allowance quote published um, you know, anywhere. Um, just also on the service side, a lot of our surrounding areas look at an hourly rate. So we'll take our salary scale and say, okay, what's our hourly rate? Is it worth making the jump across the state line? Which we where they pay hourly in Maryland, they're getting a full daily rate in West Virginia. So that daily rate

033you see on the side of the school bus has a dollar amount attached to it. So even increasing that $5 looks like a lot to a person per day. Here's what I've seen occurring. They would like the pay table increase, but they'd also like the housing on that one. So it's either or. I guess I I would I would also This is not for this budget season. Maybe for next budget season. I'd love to explore what options we could have as far as a retention bonus of some kind because our biggest thing is we can get new teachers in but they stay for a little bit and then they leave. So what can we do as as a school system to do some level whether it's I don't know if it's a financial one specifically

034is there another form of of retention that we can hold on to offer retention bonus. you you can't do a retention bonus, but what you could possibly do is increase the step at a certain year of experience. Okay? But that would but that would apply to that would apply to anybody with years of experience. But but that would be the whole point is if you put in five years at the county, you're going to do that increase. I if I'm looking at it as a brand new teacher, I'm sitting there going, I'm counting it down to get to that five years and then I'm counting it down to get to that 10 and then the 15, whatever those increments are. Even if agreed and whatever those increments are, I think I think I'd like to

035to review that at some point because I think we need to honor those who have honored us with their service and honored our community. Be a deeper dive and that's why I'm talking about it now. since, you know, January of next year. I'd rather, you know, put that bug in your Aussie ear now. So, and let me ask you the other thing, Mr. Buts, is is that um even if uh you know, as we think about, you know, creative ways to put more money into the pockets of our our dedicated employees, nothing would prevent us from from that strategy you're talking about is the increase that we see each year is is that we dedicate x amount to putting toward a pay table or something like that. Correct. So um maybe that's something that we

036could also you know continue to flesh out as to what is is manageable is that we're just going to commit that any you know for any increased revenue that we receive that x amount of it is going to you know I think we have some sort of equation if if there's an increase in revenue minus the increase in inflationary costs whatever a certain percentage that we're going to put back toward employee salaries or benefits. Mr. Murphy has a question. U just something to consider. Um you could do a hybrid um to help with the young people. I know Dr. Skoolie has mentioned the pay table is what Mr. Kenowski um and they look at that first. So that's an incentive to attract people. But looking at the workforce, the November housing allowance check is a

037big big motivator to the employees. What you could think about is in your pay table rolling the housing allowance over at year 25 to help the retiree build up the highest five years. And then that would that would be in their multiplier. But you keep you keep the housing allowance at the lower end to help with the uh the November cash for Christmas for the younger employees. You mean do the you just keep it and and just roll the money in. Pardon me. You got to treat everybody the same. But I I do want to remind you going back to Dr. Sax's comment. You got to remember last year we the board dedicated 6 million out of reserves. This year it's 4.5. So until you get that to zero, there's nothing to put into the

038table as you make different choices because our revenue increase this year is not 4.5 million. I don't expect it to be 4.5 next year. So we're the whole last two years. At some point we do have to get that right as we move forward. Mr. Um I guess we talked about the rankings. Does anybody know what we rank in terms of cost of living in the state? Are we first or second last? So that's truly housing. We're talking about Yeah, housing I think we're one Jefferson one. Jefferson's one. Yeah. Okay. Okay. quick. So I think a general consensus of where we are today on the budget as it sits now 4 and a.5 million. Um what I want to present now real quick is what what we want to put in the paper. You know

039when I put this together I was under the three and a half million at this point. So I have to adjust what's going to go in the paper for those two items and now I'm get after that. So my recommendation is this is what we put in the paper plus the adjustment for the housing and the one service and hygiene as we're added tonight. When will that what line would that will be under uh instruction? Okay. idea and the expected right 162,879 and the offset to that would be at the very bottom estimated budgetary reserves of 215 that would be reduced for those amounts. So where we are tonight and we're at a $310 million budget plus the allowance the hygiene and personnel action. Mr. Ro put in the paper and in anticipation of our

040May 19th public hearing and final approval. The next page on it is debt service and this is what we're paying with the bonds and it's a debt service is 10,846950 in revenues two $2 million in reserve carryover for $12,846 950 $950 debt service fund. That's the pay for our current debt that we had the last month that we sold cuz the other one drops off this May. Then the last payment is our special revenue fund. This is a restricted fund including child nutrition. That's $35,4,880. And again, this is restricted and restricted expenditures out. So this is what we put in the paper and sent to the state for their approval. What's the um reserve percentage now if that's approved with the additions tonight? I think probably 11 or 12. We you know obviously until we

041finish 2025 we won't know carried over there was 41 six. So we're like 35 before we actually finish 2025. So we're 35 in four and a half million off 30 days. what we were presented last time. Well, that's a hard one to assess because every I mean there's other districts that are having to dig into their so everybody want to change and it could change. Yeah, it's not like the word county 3%'s minimum 5% recommended by the state and 16.67 67 is recommended. Yeah. And you recommend 100%. 16%. I'm teasing. Thank you. Well, I'm not. I know you're not. I am. We appreciate all your effort. We do very much. It's just hard to do it all. It's not enough money. Yeah. It's just hard to do anything that you want to do. Yeah. And

042I would also like to commend Mr. But I, you know, this is the first time that I've gone through this process with him for the last seven or eight years. I've always done it with someone else. And you know, every time you work with someone new, you learn something a little bit different. And Mr. but has really really tried uh to very very hard to uh make the the goals of of that I've set forth but also this board put forth to make it work for the budget and um even even after some of our meetings we've debriefed and he's tried to come up with solutions to you know the challenges that we were trying to address and I just really appreciate your leadership in this process sir so thank you never retired you're not

043allowed Not anytime soon. No, it's monitoring. It's like we're using the green houses. I'm glad I brought the minutes. [Music] in any capacity. Okay, perfect. Perfect. Because I want to make sure that we'll have our LSIP presentations now. Uh, Winchester Avenue. Uh, the Charity Bower. Um, good evening, Dr. Saxs, board members, visitors, Winchester Avenue crew, you know what it is. Um, I'm just going to present our LSIC information. Um, there is a lot. We've done a lot this school year. I'm very proud of our success. Just going to jump right in. This is the leadership team. Our LSIC, our chair is actually here. Mrs. Rain, she teaches second grade. We also have several other members. Uh, Miss Avera is also here. She's our school coordinator and interventionist. Mrs. Stephanie Deal is also our student facilitator,

044like our assistant principal. And Brooke Okonnell is our PTO nonp president. Um, but these are all the members that have been a part of the great plan Master Avenue. Our meeting dates are there. Next. In this plan, you're going to hear um these goals. These were shared with me in September by the state. These were goals that were met made before I joined Winchester Avenue. Um but the West Virginia Department of Education goal was 35% of students will be on grade level by June 2028. And then for I Ready, we would have 75 students make typical growth, 30% of students make stretch growth. And then for goal two, we were going to reduce chronic absences and lessen major discipline referrals by major discipline referrals by 10%. And then our last goal was that all elements

045will work together to help our students meet the limit limitless opportunities that we can provide to them. And from these goals, I created priorities that I felt after observing Winchester Avenue and then hearing what the plan was, I made these our five priorities for the year. Behavior, attendance, PLC's, instruction, and student engagement. You're going to see throughout this presentation um I'm going to share what the goal was, our plan for the goal, and what our next steps are in that goal. Um so for goal number one, it was for behavior. We implemented a PBIS program where there are rewards and consequences. Um there are rewards each nine weeks. If you do not have a certain amount of writeups or the red owls, if you do not have nine red owls, you're able to attend. If

046you have nine reds or more, you go to retach and we work on uh retaching you the things that you are struggling in. And with this system being implemented, uh we saw a lot of gains and you'll see that on the next slide, but our next steps are we're going to up it with really communicating to the parents what our desire is. The students seem to understand it right now, but being sure the parents understand just our entire PBIS system. Um but because of this, you'll see on this screen that our major and minor referrals have decreased greatly. Um at the bottom screen, total total referrals for last school year was 61. As of right now, we only have 33. Um and we have decreased rate ups by 45.9%. So it is moving in a

047more positive manner. We're going to go on to goal number two where it was to increase attendance. Our plan was on the right screen. We have that tracker that is in the planners of the students and the students and the parents are able to track how many days they miss. it's really hard to remember from August to June, how many days you've missed. So they have that in their planner and they can reference it. Um the next steps though is we're going to have that communication log so that uh staff are then documenting when they make that meaningful contact. It could be phone call, seesaw, whatever we have to do to get in contact with the parent. And because of that, you'll see on the next slide that our data um our daily dependence has

048increased from 91.55 to 92.82. And then our chronically absent percentage has decreased from 25.64 to 21.62. So we have decreased by 15.6%. So the first two goals were met. Um and we're still moving in. Let's give Charity and her staff a big round of applause. Talking really fast. wrong. Yeah, it's there. So, role number three is PLC's and that's where um administration, teachers, interventionists, and the instructional systems come together and we look at the data. Um the teams were meeting, but administration wasn't always present for those meetings, but I make it a priority to be present for those meetings. Um and the next step for that is we've altered the meetings that they will be at the end of the school day because when we have principal meetings or instructional meetings I miss out on

049PLC's and if that's the end of the day I'll be able to meet those needs and um also we are implementing vertical planning next school year as well so the grades can talk among kindergarten first second grades. Um next goal is instruction and staff consistently meeting with their tiered groups. Um, our plan was I'm very visual around the school. I'm everywhere. I do walkthroughs. My president is very well known. But I also want professional development for that. Many of our funds were already distributed to different professional developments. So, next year that's going to be a priority for us. But, um, there were videos that were shared where I recorded myself. I went in and modeled lessons. Um, at the bottom has the rubric of my expectations of how guided groups should go as well. And

050I just really check in with that a lot. But I do want to mention that instruction and student engagement are being very much prioritized for next school year. We have the discipline under control. We have the attendance under control. So the foundation is there. So we can only go up from here. Um and this is the student engagement goal also. Students being actively participating in instruction and not compliant. Um behaviors are not throughout the school. Um students may be well behaved but they're just quiet. They're not really engaged. Um we don't have that higher level thinking. We don't have the academic discussion. But those are things that we are going to implement next school year. I was actually talking with Miss Kelly Masinople who's our state representative talked with us with the state and uh

051we have plans for Carrie Meldrum um who is awesome in professional development and just really having that focus on higher level questioning so we can just really see the teachers facilitate the lessons and not hijack the lessons. Um so that's a priority for next school year as well. Um next we're going into some trend data for I Ready. This is the readings and you can see from diagnostic one which was in the fall to diagnostic 2 which was in the winter we have increased in all areas. Um and then in the third grade column at the bottom on the right the typical and the stretch growth that is what it will correlate to on the West Virginia summitive assessment. So it is still not where we would like it to be but we are moving

052in a much better direction out of the single digits is what we're moving. Um and if you look on the next slide and and and I want you to know that that is commendable. Um the typical growth alone is is something that is exciting to see and to know that you all will probably hit somewhere between the typical and the stretch is something that is should be absolutely celebrated. So kudos to you. Kudos to your third grade teacher. Kudos to your your K1 and two teachers because it's a team effort. And many of our friends have already completed the last diagnostic for the year. I know. I saw I saw your uh your ELA scores. Okay. Real good. Watch them come in. I'm very pleased. Yeah. Kindergarten we're ending at 67%. So we went from

053on the previous slide, we went from 18 to 67. Wow. First grade 18 to 57. second grade 27 to 54 and then third grade 53 to 62. It did say the same for the second diagnostic, but I mean that's correct. Um, good job. Yeah. Oh my gosh, good job. I want to say the staff is the same. We've only the first grade team has changed. They are awesome people. They just needed a leader. That's the main these are the domains like splitting out the reading a little bit more. So for diagnostic one, that's where we fell. For diagnostic two, you can see all of them increased. Nothing is decreasing. We're moving in a better manner. Next slide. Okay. Um for math, the diagnostic one, we've been seeing math they struggle greatly, which was very surprising

054to me. But I will say with the I Ready roll out, we've already seen lots of gains. We went from you all can read. I'm not going to read the slide with you, but column one to column two, we have increased. And then our typical growth in stretch grow for math for third grade is tremendous. It's remarkable. Mrs. Bar, I want to give her a shout out. Carrie Bar is our third grade teacher. She's been awesome the entire time I've been there. Teacher of the year is what she is. She really is spectacular. I'm sad we're losing. Next, we have the math domains for column one and column two. We have the diagnostics. And they're again all increasing out of the single digits onto bigger and better things. The last one, these are our GSA,

055that's the trend data from 2021 until now. Um, we can see there's still growth, but if we look at the projected numbers for 2425 for reading and mass scores, it's already exceeded the three prior years. So, I'm very pleased from what I've seen. I really think once we got behavior under control, we have system in place, communication is much better. Um, our c culture and climate is beautiful. Like, I love my job. I love my staff. It's just beautiful. Next slide. This is how we address all of what I've talked about in our strategic plan. I have frequent check-ins for admin. I have walkthroughs, observations I'm completing for for professional development. I've really been able to, you know, step into those PLC's, hear where struggling learners are, see where the behaviors are. Then I'm able

056to check in with those students throughout the day. And our interventionists are able to do the co-eing and the tier two and three um supports. um for professional development. Again, this is going to be a big focus for next school year um with the CSI funds that we do receive. That is my plan is professional development. Um especially for our aids and our assistants, instructional assistance. I mean, this is just my little plug. We really need that in the county. They have a heart for the students. They just don't know how to do it. Um and then other we have Project Learn after school each day, after school math club, and then our third grade leadership team is awesome. Um I'm going to go on to the next slide, and this is our culture and

057climate. This is actually a document from the state. Um in the first column that was year 2022 there were toxic atmosphere. There was division among staff. If we move on to now the staff were over overwhelmingly describing a positive school environment with collegial relationships that support the mission of the school. During interviews, the teachers reported the principal takes proactive role in fairly and consistently addressing practices to improve student behavior, which has made a significant difference in classrooms, allowing teachers more time to focus on instruction. So, like I've said, the entire culture has shifted at Winchester Avenue and we all know who we were. Next page, this is professional development on the school level. What has already been offered um modeled by me in the interventionist at my schools teach me so much. They have been

058in education way longer than me. I go to them for I ready help. I go to them for what did you do to help in reading? What can you do for math? I go to them for this presentation and they fix it. Like thank you so much. Um and then Miss Carrie, as I said, she's been in our school. And then also model schools. I love our model schools cohort. Um I'm actually in it with Dr. Smith as well. I think our group must be the best. I don't know. Model schools, please stay. Dr. Marcoen for president. um school level what is planned those are the early higher level thinking um relationships matter that's a very big thing for me for children people in my life relationships matter and I think when you have a

059good relationship they're more willing to do what you ask them to do and then as I said training for instructional assistance next slide um these are facility needs you can read can we are you are you talking about your ecats yes okay we have a plan for that I know I believe in Um, I'm sorry. I'm very What needs have you previously pack at the store and received? We received a lot actually. There's been a lot of changes. You can read them. The surveillance system is awesome. We have new flooring, new paint. It's beautiful. And those are some things that we do need. Um, the security system upgrade. The gymnasium walls are leaking. Um, swings. My kids really want swings and I don't know what I've got to do to get swings, but we're getting

060swings before I leave because I want to win avenue when I have swings. Also, grass. I would like to increase that playground that grows from the ground. And then retaining wall. We're planning to replace that. So, I know that's already happening this summer. And then lastly, our celebrations. There's so much to celebrate. Um, our VTO is wonderful. I want to give them a plug because we have secured a $10,000 grant from Senator Barrett and we have an outdoor playground they're currently working on. Um, yeah, sorry. Outdoor classroom and it's a pavilion. We've got century things. There's going to be a garden. The kids are really excited about it. Um, and then you can see there's been lots of events. I do think our community is coming in more than they have. Um, our school's great.

061Any questions for Miss Valley? Yes. I know you worked on your discipline. What's the mobility rate? Because you do have a lot of renters, rental properties in your neighborhood. So, do you have a high mobility rate of students coming and going? Yes. Yes, we do. Um, but I do think because it's a clear-cut mission and a clear-cut vision that is shared out and um, the priorities actually throughout the school year were shared out through video, through meetings, through what I call hallway huddles where we just have a quick meeting like, hey, I saw this wasn't going well. I want to remind you what our priority is. And with discipline, this is something we really need to work on. And I think because the kids, the teachers hear it so much, they give it to the

062children. Um, so the message is being talked about more than it has been in the past. uh in professional development on the county level and I guess this is a question Dr. Saxs may answer but uh we've we've noticed in the surveys and that the professional develop is not highly regarded by the receivers of it. Um I can speak to that. Go ahead. I just I as I mean I was a teacher and this is a principal and a principal and all the trainings we go through it's usually a one day thing and information is coming very very fast and it and I'm a firm believer if you don't implement it within the next week we usually lose it. So like it's really hard when it's in the middle of the year for professional development

063because most of the time we're just trying to make it. Um, but I I just think it needs to be really indepth, especially with special education when they're dealing with these students that are struggling with behaviors and it's things that are even out of the students control. If you don't know how to handle it, you will get yourself into trouble. So, like it just needs to be more than one day. Really immerse them in the professional development and then challenge them to apply it the next week and maybe share stories like what did you apply this week from the professional development you learned last week? other questions. I don't have a question. I just have a I have a comment. I was so excited to see you as principal and I was so anxious to

064see what this looked like at the end and by far and away you floated out of the water. Um, as someone who get in the classroom, I want to work at the school [Music] because the directions, the the leadership you're showing is phenomenal. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for leading our kids. Thank you for leading our staff. Appreciate it so much. When you say um engaged, quiet, but not engaged, how are the grades? Well, we well the testing is Oh, we have grades aren't the thing right now. Yeah. So, I'm not sure I understand. You're talking like report card grades, standard. She's just talking about like, you know, because we we sort of implement the standardsbased grading at the primary schools, but is different than ABC, right? Can you just explain that

065maybe a little bit? Yeah. Okay. There's emerging. So they would get a E on the report card and then progressing and then they've mastered it. Um I will say like when I say compliant, they're kind of they're quiet, but when I observe I observe more than most people do. I feel even with body language and things like you can write whatever and then the teacher's talking and you're just like and they're quiet so they kind of get away with it because our behaviors have been so monstrous that this child in the corner that's fighting for their life is going to get the attention but the child that's quiet might get left behind. So I want to make sure we have a balance, right? That's really what my big thing was. I can't speak to active

066affecting grades because I don't generally feel better. Um I do think though that because there's a different model at the primary school primary level, what you don't see though as much of you don't really see great inflation like that in that topic because you know um when when you're when you're assessing their actual skill, it's it's based upon a rubric. whereas an A or a B or a C is based upon a a percentage score, you know, and so it's a the ABC D grading scale is somewhat arbitrary. Whereas when you're on a when you're on a st a a mastery based grading system, it's much more u much more accurate to the skill level of the student. I I get that. But my problem with some of that is sometimes you you don't um

067necessarily realize how far the student is behind or ahead until you you're doing or until you see. But that's when the teacher has to be more in tune. Yes. And when we're in those guided groups for reading or in math and they're pulling them and they see their capabilities, then they can adjust their teaching to fit the needs of that student. I will say though, I do feel like with complacency or whatever or being compliant, we they probably don't reach the mastery as quick as they could. But like if you're a good teacher, as I'm saying, they're going to tune into that to be like, I think you're capable of better. And even those personalized pathways, when they take that diagnostic, it puts them on a personalized pathway. And one thing that I did do

068a little bit this year, but I want to be better about when they're not passing the lessons, I go in and check with the teacher. I send them an email. I've done that just once this year. Not as often as I should have, but then they can check in with them and be like, "Look, you don't seem engaged in this because you're not you've attempted this quiz five times. They can only do it twice and it won't let them in, but they'll be able to have that conversation with the student with that personalized pathway." Okay? And then really in small group is where you get to know your kids. If you're doing those guided groups, which we're working to have everybody doing that, you'll know where your children are. And and I think it also

069brings up another good point because, you know, some of the the the concentration, the focus needs to be on grade level instruction. Yes. And so if we continue to um believe that we have to lower the catch up and play catchup, then we're never going to be able to get the students at grade level. So, it's also about strengthening that core instruction and and so that we're we're not making excuses for our students. That's the one thing I have to say about Miss Ballard is that one of the things you didn't hear tonight, she wasn't she didn't make one excuse for where where they had been or or or or where they were. It was here are the solutions. Here's what we're doing about it. And um that's tremendous. Well, you know, my concern is

070I don't I don't want to see a child that's struggling. Um, well, we're not really in tune with how bad they're struggling till we It's too late. It's too late. Well, well, the thing that we have in place to help with that is a sad teams, you know, those are item, but um teachers bring those struggling learners to us. The intervention is they're getting pulled out for tier three. My interventionists are very good about it. They might spot something before the content teacher does. Okay? And then we're able to have a staff meeting with the family to be like, "Look, they're already in tier three. We tried these different things. They're not getting where they need to be." Um and we might meet again and then it might be okay we need to refer you

071to this. So that does catch some friends. Okay. Thank you. Good presentation. Just one quick question. Who is the mentor who put you on the path of your success? You have me do this today? No. Developing you. Oh, Miss Miss Curry. Miss Chris Curry. Okay. Oh, she Oh, she's um wonderful. Oh, I know. Yes. Wonderful. And actually, I got reconnected with her because of this. Because the church that helped our school, I went over to visit the one day and there she was. She came in just to meet with me and we cried and took pictures of the she's my favorite person on the planet. She's a fantastic educator. She is very well in your professional. In my professional, it would be Dr. Emma Trudeau. She was an awesome mentor for me. And Miss Erica

072Props. She's my go-to like caller any time of day. One of your staff this time too. Sorry. She was raising her hand on behalf of me. I was wondering if I could comment. Okay. Hi. Ask your boss. Again, my name is Oh, she's a parent. Okay. Sorry. I'm here representing. So again, my name is Brooke Okonnell. I have had the privilege to serve as the PTO president the past three years at Winchester Avenue. And I'm really sad that third grade is not going to be there next year. So, it was sad to know that I'm wrapping up my service at Winchester Avenue sooner than what I thought. But I just want to say that Principal Ballard truly has shifted the atmosphere throughout every hallway, every classroom, every area in that building from the relationships with

073teachers, relationships with families, family engagement, the students, and and again, as a PTO mom, I have, you know, and a community business partner. Now I have the privilege that a lot of parents don't parents and guardians that I get to go into the school. I'm there every week probably two three times a week popping in doing things and I have served as the bridge between families and the school. So, I'm talking to everybody and truly I'm very confident saying that our families also feel the shift in that place and you are doing such great things and she truly is building for future generations at school. She is equipping her staff to be the best teachers, the best the best mentors, the best coaches for our children in schools and our family. And you know, our

074not to throw out a lot of statistics here, but Winchester app is the second most highest impoverished school in our county, but you wouldn't know it. Our kids and our families and our school and our staff are rich with things that nobody could take away with us. We have love. We have kindness. We have grace. We have inspiration and encouragement. So, I'm I'm sad I only had her for one year, but I I just wanted to just say from the bottom of my heart, it has been an honor serving at Winchester Avenue. It has built me in ways that I can never express fully. My son, I know he's going to be equipped to go to Orchard View. I just want to just commend her and all of these teachers and staff sitting here. They

075have truly partnered with me to to lead Winchester Avenue better than what I did. So, I just wanted you to know that I saw Dr. Smith feverishly taking By the way, I I was just talking to someone um about our skills youth uh training for a conference for teachers and I've been looking for a motivational speaker and I thought I need mom over here to kind of be a motivational speaker at our teaching conference. engagement committee. Um, and I just hosted a first family and community engagement tea time and workshop on building strong families and schools at um um oh, what school was that at? Berkeley Heights. Um so, and it was great. Miss Penny Cave said all my survey reviews were good. So, I would love to come and and speak and inspire your

076staff at Berkeley County Schools, your families. You let me know. Dr. Dr. Woods is right back there. He's the man. Thank you, Dr. Smith. All right. So, you have to follow. That's a tough tone down. I see. She'll be here for you next year. Yeah. All right. Deal. Yeah, that's a good trade. Um, no, but I'll just, you know, not to go on and on about charity, but yeah, she's been great to work with, you know, do the theater school for us and, uh, she's just been someone I can reach out as like I would call a friend. So, that's pretty quick just in her first year. So, um, with that being said, uh, thank you board members, senior staff, colleagues, friends, guests. Uh, I've really been looking forward to the opportunity to, you know,

077share the great things going on at Orchard View Intermediate. It's my 10th year there. Hard for me to believe. Um, we have 711 students. Um, including preK, we have 770 students. Uh, 96 professional and service personnel. Um, of that population, 41 students are English uh, language learners and we have 146 students that are special education. Um, as you see displayed, we have a strong leadership team. Um, each member represents a different department or grade level. So, we are well represented. We have um, you know, met and had great discussion with instruction. Good instruction always has the lead. of course our strategic plan as the skeleton for that. Oh, and I also want to thank Paula Hoffman for being here. She's member of our LSIC interventionist and does great things in the building. Um, as you

078can see, we had established our 2425 strategic plans and uh, you know, kind of as Charity had mentioned, we aligned it with what the state, you know, has as expectations. um you know our goals don't change that much as far as um what we're trying to achieve yeartoear. What changes is what we're doing in the building to make that happen. So um I won't read through everything but I will highlight the fact that you know as uh Dr. Sax mentions, you know, grade level instruction. Um, I'll, you know, touch on this a little later in the future slides, but, you know, our goal has been stretch growth, uh, which would be 150% or one and a half years for both reading and math. Um, the purpose behind that is to close those achievement gaps. Um,

079you know, so that students can as they go from grade to grade eventually meet grade level expectations and continue. Uh we also added uh special education as a specific goal and the reason we did that is you know we had recognized that our special education students you know in comparison to county and other state uh the state as a whole uh we just weren't seeing that achievement at the rate that we expect or need to have. Uh so we really wanted to make a concerted effort to focus on that. Again I'll I'll share some of the strategies in future slides on um how we're doing that. Um but again reading and math have been our main focuses for improvement as we move along to go to the next slide. Okay, just a quick summary of

080our meeting notes. As I mentioned um you know good instruction and our uh strategic plan always is what we start with and what kind of sets the tone. Uh with that comes um you know planning that started occurring last year actually u in the fall uh with a kind of a revamp of our master schedule. So what we did was we increased as many opportunities for code talk classes as opposed to pulling special education students out of the general education classroom. So we saw value the feedback from uh the organizations we work with the state education system solutions model schools was that that's where we're going to get the greatest bang for our buck. So uh we have increased those opportunities for uh co-taught classes uh that's including has included gifted which I'll give a

081shout out to Jill Livingston then she does an amazing job. We've seen great growth in those classes. Uh so when we talk about special education, we see it both in LD, you know, each each uh specific area. All right. Um we have, you know, I ready has been a huge focus. We've been using the resources. We've been getting those 45 minutes of personalized instruction weekly and we continue to look for increasing the um level of success. So, you know, we're aiming for 80% success. Uh PBIS also continues to be uh a main focus for our school and I'll be touching on that a little bit later. Um and we have I'm you know one of the things I've been most proud of is the number of walkthroughs that we've completed. Um you know that that

082both you know just internally as well as outside of the building uh central office folks Louisis Mullenex David Dilly Dr. Saxs we I've really appreciated uh the folks that have been coming. So, uh, please continue to do so and you don't even have to give us a notice. Just come on by. You can go. All right. Discipline data. This was just as of the first semester. Um, you know, we saw the greatest number in fifth grade um at the midyear point. Now, these, you know, range from any number of types of referrals. Uh, but this would be um, you know, just the numbers we had at the midpoint. We'll be reviewing this, you know, to conclude the the year to see how we uh completed the spring semester and discuss best practices. But again, PBIS

083is always our lead. We uh really incentivize the behaviors we want to see as opposed to just consequencing the, you know, the negative behaviors. So, we're always operating from that standpoint. It's how we talk to kids. It's how we, you know, our approach. And um you know yeah I'll touch on this on public study attendance data um you know you can take a look at the percentages the first column um is for attendance year to date the second column is that chronically absent so of course we want the first column to be a high percentage and we want to decrease the uh second column. Um, I will highlight uh Amber Groves, but you know, really our whole attendance team. Amber Groves is a member of our uh communities and schools. She's our coordinator. Uh, we

084really value her work. Um, making home visits, uh, just doing anything possible to break down the barriers that are preventing kids from coming to school. Um, those are those numbers. Okay. And then this is what um, I was mentioning with the strategic plan. So here, you know, we're going to go through a number of slides that show the trend data and it's going to either be GSA, which is our state test, or I ready, which is our formative benchmark assessment. So again, you know, what we're looking to do is go from, you know, each uh column from year to year and increasing those percentages. I'm real proud of that percent for third grade. Uh that was 41% versus uh 25% the previous year. Fourth grade also increased and we saw you know fifth grade was

085comparable but uh just a you know it was pretty even from uh the year prior to last year. Okay, I ready data with reading um again once you know you'll see an increase from the fall assessment to the spring or winter assessment and we're currently in the process of completing our spring diagnostic. So, we've been pleased with the results that we've been seeing uh come in. Um you can see the typical growth percentage as well as the stretch growth. Well, let's let's uh stay there for a second. So, for your third grade reading, if you look at uh your previous year, um fall, right? Your I'm sorry, you look at your GSA for reading, right, from last year, your third grade was at 41%. Now, that that's a different cohort of students obviously. Correct. So,

086um but for this year, your typical growth uh based upon I Ready for the GSA would be 26% or possibly 34 if you hit your stretch. Correct. Yes. And again, different cohort of students. It is. If we take a look at our cohort of students though, you have those students who scored at 41% last year. In their fourth grade year, if they were to have typical growth, they would be at 38% proficiency or 42%. So, they've they've had what we would probably call, you know, typical growth, you know, of keeping the same proficiency. Yeah. And then your fourth grade students from last year that were at 30 43% in their fifth grade year 32 to 38. So, um you're you're not you're not falling behind, but it's probably not growing at the rate that we

087would hope to see. What would you what would you say would you attribute to that? I would attribute that to so our third grade currently we have seven third grade classrooms. Um when we go to fourth grade, we go to 11. Uh next year it will be 12. Um, so part of it, no excuse. I think it's easier to work with a smaller group of of team members. Um, also they're capped at 25 a third grade. You get the fourth and fifth grade and you know our fifth not, you know, fifth grade we're at 28 kids in every classroom. And um, fourth grade to start this year, we had to hire a teacher, you know, at the midnight hour. Uh yeah, not excuses, but I think just the the the volume of students makes a

088difference. Um you know, third grade currently is just students from Berkeley Heights. You know, when we go to fourth grade, we um add Winchester Avenue, we add Rosemont. Um obviously starting next year, as you mentioned, we will have Winchester Avenue's third grade. Um and Berkeley Heights, correct? And Berkeley Heights, not Rosemont's third grade. Yeah. So I would say that's that's a piece to it. Um the third grade also had predominantly worked together for a longer period of time. When we talked about teacher retention, consistency is a key piece to that. Um you know just with again the number of fourth grade classrooms and how it's grown, we've had to add new members and it takes you know some time to acclimate and gel. Yeah. Well, I did have um just want to make sure I'm

089reading this right. So 2122 the third grade was 19.33, but then when those same students went to the fourth grade in 2223, they went up 6%. Is that accurate? Yes. Okay. And then they went up another six. So they keep going up at least. Yeah. And the third graders from the next year they went up five. It looks like there's five or six% every year that well when they went to fourth grade they went to fifth grade but still I think it's positive that there's a growth from those same students it's a good sign that they are going up. Why do you what do you attribute uh in fifth grade to kind of stand still? you know, I've been here 10 years. Um, and I've always felt like there's a a leveling out. A leveling

090out. And I'm not sure if that's, you know, if we see that countywide or not. I think we do see that. Yeah. Um, it's a great question. It's something that we have discussed. Um, it's, you know, the the answer is probably a number of variables. Um but yeah, that that is something that we've recognized, we discuss, we we uh you know, review best practices. Um yeah, fifth our fifth graders at this point of the year, they're they're middle school, you know, you know, so it's there's a lot of growth and development that I think goes into it. Um but yeah, that we have recognized the same. Dr. I I think I go back to some of the um some of the the recommendations that uh the children's literacy initiative brought up which is right I

091think that you know when when you take in the support that we're able to provide for classroom teachers um and especially around the expectations of what I would call the big rock standards would it be in third grade fourth grade or fifth grade and of course the complexity of of what students need to know in fifth grade. There's there's, you know, there's an increase in complexity. So, if you're already starting to fall behind. Yeah. And you're not providing what I would say is the optimal core instruction, then we're our gaps are going to continue. And so, I think that that's part of the issue in fifth grade. And that's also why um the what we're hoping that we can address in support of our schools next year is to help strengthen not only the expectation

092for strong core one core I'm sorry strong tier one core instruction but is to um make sure that the professional development is important for that as well. Agreed. I think the curriculum you hit the nail on the head. You know I was working with a student earlier today actually. It had to do with data plot lines and there I I just recognized probably five different opportunities where she if she made one mistake the answer was going to be wrong, you know, and so we we talked through that. But it it comes back to good teaching and um you know giving the the student the opportunity to do the talking as much as possible, explain their thinking, hearing their peers, you know, having discussions about hey, how many think that that solution is right? So it

093it always comes back down to good instruction. Um and and the curriculum in fifth grade is, you know, it's more challenging. It's, you know, another layer of uh expectations. Just want to make sure I'm reading that right too for that last slide. Um for third grade diagnostic 2 40% and then projected 26%. Yeah, I'm going to have if if you can answer that that's that's great. But if not, I'm gonna have Mr. Mer good explanation for that. And actually third grade the projected you know just a little bit about this because of some of the scores that you look at if you look at from diagnostic one to diagnostic 2 you're looking at I ready that's their information that they're using and so what you're seeing is with that percentage you're seeing the percentage of

094kids that are in the green either be the dark green or the light green. Um, so let's say on diagnostic two you're a student and maybe in the f well diagnostic one you were a student and that you were not in the green you're in the yellow. Well let's say you ended you started you ended up in the green on diagnostic two then we're going to count you as on grade level but you might be at the early part of that grade. So by the time you take the generative summitative assessment you're on grade level but you might be at the early part of that year and not actually being able to be proficient on the on the test. So you could have a student in green at the early beginning of the year, but

095yet they're going to be a level two on our general summit assessment, which is not quite proficient. So, but what what it's showing is what I really wanted you to see both sets of data because I want you to see that we're we're catching them up. Our goal is 150% for our students in we want to reach that stretch growth because then what you'll see over time is that we should be catching our kids up. So when you see that number, the diagnostic moving from diagnostic one to two, you should see that increase because that's more kids that we're getting to where they need to be. Okay. So you're really almost looking at apples and oranges now. That makes sense. I think so. Yeah, I think so. So if I'm understanding correctly, grade three, we're

096hitting beyond that stretch road. No. No. I'm I'm so confused. So, so let me when you think of 40% there's 40% of the students that are on grade level. Oh, these are percentage of students. Yeah. So, the percentage of students that are on grade level. Okay. On grade level. Gotcha. On grade level doesn't necessarily mean that they are proficient in those third grade level standards. So the core so the ivory projected score says okay based upon the number of students that you have that are that are actually um at or exceeding grade level standards that that's going to be your proficiency. And so we're capturing students that are of that early on grade level because if you're early if you have to master third grade standards, okay? And there's this this um uh the word

097I'm looking for this uh range of third grade skill. If you're on the early grade level down here, you haven't mastered a majority of the third grade skills yet. So you're not proficient with third grade skills. Okay. And so you're not in with that. But it's going to put you in that green category when you look at our report. Yeah. Interesting. A little better explained slightly. But you know, that's where you but the teachers can run a report and they can see like you like we were looking at some of the students today and you can see where they were green, dark green in some areas, light green in others, but they might had a yellow in vocabulary or whatever. And then when you look at it, they were early like third grade and then

098they're going to fall at a two%. I mean, they're going to fall at a two in our GSA because they're working on grade level. They're just not quite where they need to be. And I think it's also important to understand that the diagnostic is not a summitative assessment of student learning. It's informative for the teachers to modify instruction. Sure. Sure. And so we don't ever want to look at a diagnostic as saying this is the proficiency level of the students right now. But it does give us a a a range of where they are within the band of the standards they need to know. The projected I Ready the I Ready projected WB the West Virginia GSA score is based upon a correlation research analysis of when students fall in and on our diagnostic they

099fall in this range there's a high level of accuracy that this is what they're going to score. So they've done a correlation study and so I would say that if if you look at the 40% yes that would be inflated if you're looking at it from a proficiency standpoint but we really shouldn't look at it as a proficiency standpoint but it's a what percentage of students are actually on grade level uh within that that that range but the the typical and the stretch is uh is would not be inflated. uh they're going to pro most likely fall within 26 to 34% in proficiency. So hope that hope that helps. No, it does. I was looking at it differently than Yeah, that helps. Proceed. All right. Thank you. Yeah, visually it'd be so much I think

100a lot of the questions that you may have would be answered if you could actually see an example of what one of the reports looks like. I think that would uh help out a lot. Just the I'm a visual learner. pass around. I'll continue. This next slide has the breakdown of the individual domains as it applies to reading. Um again, what recognized is an increase in percent from the fall to the winter diagnostic. And so again, we've been reviewing that, taking a look at our successes and areas of need. That's where our instruction is focused upon. Okay, we covered reading. We're looking at math and again this is trend data for the state assessment um increases in both third and fourth grade. And again, we saw you know parallel just kind of a leveling out

101from 20 22 to 23 um to the pre last year. Okay, here's that same slide we just were discussing, but in regards to the math, um, so you see the breakdown of typical growth, you know, years versus stretch growth. Um, you know, one of the thing, um, we focused on one classroom in particular in third grade. It's a code class um, you know, with students with learning disabilities. And we've been really impressed with the growth of uh the special education population versus the general education population. So whereas it may be presumed that the special education population wouldn't grow at the same rate as general ed, we actually saw the special ed group grow greater than the general ed group. Right? So just, you know, think about that. That was huge success. That was one of

102our uh goals, you know, um focuses of and we're just really really pleased with what the code talk results are showing. And this is also your first year with the new math adoption. Correct. It is. It is. Yeah. With the I Ready curriculum to go with the formative assessments um that this is our first year. Yep. Good point. So, our teachers have accepted it, adopted it. Yeah. there's no curriculum that is going to be the magic wand, you know, but um I believe we believe that. But you and I think the other difference is is that you you've had I would say more support around this adoption than you would have had with the ELA that we have currently needed. So 100% agreed. Yep. That that makes a big difference. It goes back to what

103Charity was mentioning with what makes effective professional development. It's it's uh focused and ongoing, you know, not just a one-stop shop. Uh the next slide breaks down the high math domains. Um you can see that for numbers and operations through geometry. Um again, we're pleased to see increased percentages from fall to winter and that is what we are expecting to see for the spring. When will the spring test be given? When will the spring test number three be given? Um, so the third diagnostic, we actually started ours last week. There's a window. I believe it includes the GSA GSA. No, no, no. I'm talking about Oh, it was LA. We did ours last week. Uh, we started it last week. We do still have some classes finishing up this week and May 9th, I believe,

104is when it has to be done for the county. But each school has some a little flexibility of when they um administer it. So, I'll be anxious to see those results. Me, too. Yeah, I'm excited. I've been I've been peeking at it, but I I I really look forward to seeing when all the results are in. Um and then next week, if you're wondering, you know, is when we are review is starting our general summit of state testing. Okay. Again, uh just quick review of the strategic plan just so you have an idea of kind of where it comes from, how we do things. We have representatives from each grade level and department. We also really value the input from those outside the building. Okay? So, they can come in education system solutions, model schools,

105um our board office support staff and you know, we take that input that um and and that's what creates our our strategic plan. Of course, the data is what's key. you know, we take a look at our achievement scores, um, our attendance discipline, and that's what forms what we do at Orchard View. Uh, we just received our climate and, um, climate survey results, but, um, I, you know, we received them out, it was like at the end of the day last Friday. So, uh, we received our results for students, staff, and parents. um you know, work review got we received results for each of those. We've since shared with the board office um and we will be really digging into that. They're pretty lengthy reports. You bring them to staff but um just to have

106but haven't had a chance to really really uh whittle down to it. But I tell you what, you come to Orchard View and you know, you might not be able to put a number on it, but I think you're going to find I know that you're going to find it to be a very positive and people are happy. kids, staff, guests, parents. Um we have a real great culture. Um you can feel it and uh without asking guests, they just share that this is a great school. It really, you know, it's good good vibes. Um and that's not me. That's that's everybody else. It really is. So I won't take credit for that. I try to model it as best as I can, but it's really just how we treat people, you know, how we

107communicate. Um great student involvement. We have so many after school clubs. the parking lot is more full, you know, after school than it is during the school day. You know, come by sometime. There's a lot going on. We partner with the rec center. We we we just have a great we are invested in the community. Um so, a lot of great programs and we're only increasing that. Um I I feel like we have I'm not saying feel we have great relationships with our parents. It doesn't matter if we're um you know communicating a success or a challenge or a need like we we just we get the job done and it just it takes time though, right? It's how you communicate. It's given the other you know everyone involved an opportunity to voice their their

108thoughts. Uh professional development, we're going to have a survey to get staff impact uh input as far as what what do our needs look like? Um uh we'll also use that in uh coordination with data and I'm real excited about I believe our county's uh move to having more individualized professional development opportunities. I think that will really hit the mark and it will give the veteran teacher what they need. It will give that first year teacher what they need and um you know I think that will really work out well and that's what we do for our students. So um you know that's what we'll do for our staff. Um again I mentioned co teach co-eing has been a huge focus our station. So, if you're thinking with both reading and math, we have our

109guided group where the teachers working with a small group. Um, you have uh, you know, partner at work, you know, we we have a really good method of that. And, you know, when we've had the state come by for a visit or any outside folks, we love to bring them to our co-eing classrooms and challenge them to determine who's the special education teacher or interventionist and who's the general ed teacher and they can't figure it out, right? So that that that is a testament that both teachers are equally involved. Um there's not it's not like a one teach one assist. It's more you know we're moving toward that parallel teaching um where you know no one can tell. So that that's that's a good indicator. Can you um tell the board what PB PBIS is?

110Yeah. Yeah. So it's positive behaviors interventions and supports. Yeah. And we've always had um you know nineweek rewards. We call them wing flames where kids who are in good standing with behavior um you know have a some type of a celebration. But you know Jackie what we realized was that you know our students they they can't wait nine weeks you know they don't they're not looking past lunchtime you know so we need to find ways to increase in greater frequency throughout the day. So we use a ticket system. um kids can earn an opportunity, you know, elementary kind of primary, you know, kids sit by the class for lunch and things of that nature. You know, it's pretty regimented versus middle and high school. So, they love being able to sit with a buddy from

111another class. So, you know, giving them the cafe space, uh you know, they can earn that as an opportunity, uh to eat with some buddies, uh they love it. And I tell you, Mr. Elliott, he's our assistant principal. He's just really led the way with that along with our whole team. But he's, you know, if you ever come by lunchtime, there's a lot going on in a good way. So, yeah, that that's that's key. And big shout out to our maintenance department. They've been phenomenal. I mean, I'll put in a maintenance request and like someone's there fixing it the next day. And um I know they have a high volume. I I can only imagine, but they have been just awesome. We got uh our third grade uh wing uh relocked. We did that for

112kind of safety purposes and efficiency. Uh we've had the the gym was repainted. It was in, you know, great need of that. Looks about, you know, fabulous. Just lightens it up. Uh we had a gentleman uh there last week uh looking at upgrading the surveillance cameras, so it's a greater uh pixels. We've been, you know, uh increased our opportunity to really kind of look into things. Uh we've done a Wayne's coat repainting of the hall and u I think the only real items that we're looking to have completed we our uh lobby needs some retiled uh that's in the works and because we're increasing with the number of staff you know we need some more parking spaces. So we're going we're uh we've had someone come out to give an estimate and kind of get

113an idea of what we were thinking for that. But yeah, great job maintenance department. Uh, as I mentioned earlier, celebrations, our special ed group, um, outperforming general education group, uh, on high ready growth percentages. That's outstanding. Um, that targeted third grade talk classroom I mentioned previously. Again, they have, you know, great percent of increase of as far as proficiency. We're real proud of our battle of the books. um they came in first place for the fourth grade. That's great. Kelly Johnson, Cassidy Barry were, you know, led that charge. Uh we had a state finalist for science fair. Shout out to Miss R. Three regional finalists for social studies fair. Shout out to Denise Pierce. Third grade in the math field day. Um Jill Livingston and just continue to increase extracurricular activities. And uh it's we

114we we give something that any kids will enjoy. Wide range questions for Dr. Smith. I was wondering um seems like a lot of unexcused absence here. Yes. So we've taken a look at as you may or may not know there was a code for A1 um that was taken away from previous years. this was the first year where we could not use um if the student was going on a trip. Um, oh, and so that that's that we've taken a hit on that, you know, and you know, we have such a wide range of um just a diverse population, you know, and I can't tell you how many times there, you know, you more times than I could count on a hand that I had a family that was they were going to El Salvador

115and, you know, they're going for, you know, they're going and the kids going and, you know, we just had to kind of eat that and I was just curious. Yeah. Now that they are aware of that change, do you think it's going to be a massive change for next year? It will improve. It will only improve. Yeah, it will only improve. That that was going to be a big kind of uh just cultural change for our families. I didn't know if there were families that were still going to go. I don't I think we'll see that to lower degree. Yeah, it will still exist, but I expect that to trend down. Okay. I don't think it'll change. simply because for example some places where you go that's the the maybe the cheapest time to go

116or it's not it's not 110 degrees when you go orgative10 so and and you're going to go you're going to go when it's best for your family but I did have a quick question what percentage of your teachers are are non-certified is a is it a it's not a large number um and I would actually say any that aren't certified um I I could count on a hand um and they are pursuing avenues to be certified. Uh and I also just mentioned, you know, I'm just real proud of our teacher retention, our staff retention from year to year. You know, especially, I'd say the last three to four years. Uh we have retained our staff. Um they they want to be there. They they they they like the building. They like, you know, it's very

117colleial. So, good question. No, go ahead. Um, you're here tonight because you're a targeted school by the State Department and from what I'm hearing, it's special ed and attendance. What else? Anything else? Uh, actually, I mean, the the three subgroups that I'm I know of, special education, African-American, socioeconomic. So, okay. Um this will be the this coming fall will be the third year for the teacher aids for the third grade success act. Correct. Um what there's going to be a test at the end of third grade. What's going to be the what are you all planning on there? I mean will kids be held back if they don't pass the test? I know certain children will be accepted. I mean allowed to move on who fail the test special ed probably and some other groups.

118But what what preparation are you getting ready for that'll be different from this year the third grade graduate? Yeah. Well, you know, first thing we have to be as proactive as possible. So, you know, as um you know, we we use that student assistant team to identify students early that we have a concern of whether or not they're going to be ready by the end of the year. Um you know, have the skills necessary to be able to be promoted to the next grade. So, it's it's about starting it early. It's not waiting for the test at the end of the year, right? That's we're already behind the a we do that. Um well I think there's going to be some you know communication with it there will be some county guidance you know so

119we have some uniformity from intermediate school to intermediate that has third grade um but it will be new for us and you know one of the things that we are using through the SAT process that student assistant team is the it's called the lighter scale and so it's basically a checklist of items that you look at for that particular student you you know, one of the categories includes, you know, has that student already been retained before? Um, but you know, the challenge I've always had and the the the um challenge I give is, okay, if we're retaining the student, what are we going to do differently this year that we didn't do this year? Okay, may maybe there are answers and maybe there's intervention or there's other support services or um therapy, you know, it

120could be any number of things, but that question has to be answered first. you know, what are we going to do different? And if we can't answer that, well, it it's I find it hard. Um, you know, it makes that hard. So, the other thing I just wanted to share is is that so we have our um u our our success camps that are starting this year, right, for K1 two and three as well. Um, I think we have something like 300 students already registered for those. And that is not a credit recovery model, but it's a closing the gap model. So, it's taking the skills that students haven't yet mastered and it's it's reteing them, it's providing them that those um instructional supports over the summer months so that as they go from kindergarten

121to first grade that where they they've lacked, then they're now ready more to be on grade level in first grade. The same thing with between first and second. So, our hope is is that that support network of for for some of those students is going to make a a big difference in the number of retentions that we may have to look at for third grade. Um, and uh but we definitely expect that we're going to have more retentions uh at with because of the third grade success act in third grade. Um and that's all the more reason why we have to um be very aggressive with a sense of urgency to address some of the findings with you know CLI had and and to improve core instruction and that sort of thing. So yes good

122that's a good question. The the um how Miss Ballard how many students do you have in your school? Pardon? Yeah. What what what I um what always worries me about the reconfigured schools, the intermediate, the six of them, is that in your fourth grade, fourth grade, for example, you have 12 classrooms, at least 300 students. Yeah. 290 currently. Yeah. And so you children get lost in a mob. I I I shared a book with you about the ideal numbers 150 that be aware of but the uh and so I've always thought I Mr. Arvon when he switched around he and I buted heads around he sat down beside me and said Mr. Murphy I'm sitting here to make you behave and I got up and I said well I thank you for saving my seat

123because I'm going to go up there and bust your chops and and and and proceeded. I've always felt that in this primary intermediate setup, the children are lost because of the factory system process and and I I've I've ins I've always argued we should retain well now would be prek five and I'm just I'm not asking you a question. I don't want to put you on the spot. I do remember when you had the fourth and fifth grade, you said the problem was you no sooner get to know the kids than they're gone. Yeah. At least now you have the third. But but but I just worry about this approach that we have where you're going to have 300 children where a child is going to be going from a school of 150 to a

124class of 300. Yeah. And they're and they're just lost. They have to compete for the the dance groups and they have and and they have to be re some of them are rejected, right? And and you just don't have that that isolation for that smaller group and where you're not swallowed up in the in the in the mass. Yeah. So I I'm not asking for your I'm just expressing a concern. Um intermediate. Yeah. You really have to make a concerted effort to build those relationships. uh and you know and that's where those extracurricular activities really you know I get to meet so many kids that I might not have normally during the course of a school day just because of a special interest of you know the staff or myself sharing could you comment I

125just found out the other day that first grade through 8th we only have 120ome special uh gifted children identified and I know we have 400 children over 400 who are autistic. How is it difficult to even get the child that you think is gifted staff? Um you mean like to get them tested and qualified? Yeah. uh you know I think it's a challenge for any special you know I think no matter which direction or which uh category of special education it's a pretty rigorous process and it takes time um you know and you know sometimes a student misses that criteria you know based on a test score and um you know that's tough that's tough conversation with parents and and and the teachers that feel that they you know are qualified and meet the needs

126of having that enrichment but um again I really valued the opportunity that students not identified by having the gifted teacher co-e have benefited from it. I mean that's just been amazing and uh really valued and and you know you know just keep so we want to do the best that we can to continue to be able to provide that type of model. Thank you. Thanks Dr. S. No I said one small question. Yes sir. Because you just said that last week you did the I already testing or And then the next this coming week is GSA. Yeah. So we wanted to have a week push. Okay. Yeah. This was very much discussed and considered. You know there's a lot of activities at the end of the year. You know field day we have field trips.

127So we're trying to find that sweet spot of you know it it does take a lot very concerted effort to okay when do we want the kids to take this diagnostic so that we don't have them you know experience fatigue or you know lose that endurance which is they're going to have to do it. So it's a very balanced approach and um you know we've done it differently from year to year but we feel very confident with where we are with it. That's a great question though. Thank you. All right. [Music] Good morning. Good morning. All right. So, go ahead and get started. Uh, obviously here to present for LSIC. Uh, leadership team is our LSIC team. We do have three teachers here, Miss Duncan, Miss Ker, Miss Sanders. Uh, two of our assistant principles

128came in, Mr. Lamb, and Mr. Lake. um for support. I did not force them. So, just so everyone clear here, uh we had some we had some meeting dates already. We've had a good bit early on. Um we planning for a pretty big holiday event. Um it was called something that we're no longer allowed to use. We got a cease and desist letter. We're not going to mention it here. Um but we're going to change the name of it for next year. Um and it was really successful. We had a we had a great time doing it and was really able to uh help a lot of families. How many families? Yes, it was 48. So we did the entire family and the meals too. 48 families we was able to support with gifts and

129and meals and different things. So it was a really cool event. That's wonderful. Um Yep. And then uh next so this is our our priority standards and this is something that we developed with the state department when they came in. When I came in in July uh we met with Miss Massenople and she helped develop these priority standards that were the focal point for our year. who had an instructional goal and a discipline goal. Um for the instructional goal, it was to provide monitoring and analyzing school to identify areas for instructional improvements and support needed for teachers. Um the second thing was the discipline goal and that's basically to make sure that the kids were safe and they felt safe within that school. Um and we we created um a a uh stat we created

130a survey for all students to be able to take uh four times this year. They took it every nine weeks. Um within that survey we didn't have we had 20 students that said they felt unsafe. So what we did with those students is we had them meet with the counselors. when they met with the counselors, the result we got were uh the culture and climate of the of the United States at that point with school shootings and different things that were going on had them feel anxious about being in school in general. So, it wasn't necessarily our school they were they felt unsafe at, it was just in general they felt unsafe. Um, so we had them meet with the counselors. Then we set meetings up with them so they could continually kind of meet

131and feel more comfortable within school and just kind of talk about some of the things that are going on obviously within the United States within schools. So that was really beneficial just to find out some of those kids that we really needed to touch base with more. Um, and we found that to be very helpful. So these are some of the action steps that we uh did for the priority document for for the discipline and for the instruction. Uh we set up assistant principal weekly meetings, clearly identified the roles of our assistant principles to make sure everybody knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing. Um we re relocated the offices of the assistant principles. So all of our assistant principles were in different wings. So we have one in sixth grade, one in

132seventh grade, one in eighth grade, which for all the students made it ideal and for our teachers support like and I'll give them a chance to speak in a little bit about how they feel just having those APs right there at their at their beck and call they need they have offices students know where their offices are. Um it's really became beneficial for everybody and it's also kept kids out of the hallway um and just streamlined a lot of our our processes which has been nice. Um, we also have talked about walkthrough expectations with our AP and what that looks like. Um, as as we've worked with model schools in different different forms. Um, we've been able to kind of discuss some of those things and what we're looking for uh for instructional purposes. Um,

133intervention uh newly created class this year for us. Um, so when I came in, it was kind of given to us from the state saying, "Hey, you have to have this intervention class. Uh, we we're not going to give you anything. We just got to figure out what you're going to do with it." So, we really designed it this year to be I Ready um along with some other things that we kind of threw in there to help out. Um we're redesigning that for next year. Um it's going to be a completely different look next year for us. Um this year we have it during our lunchtime period which is not not the greatest time to have an intervention class um because it's harder for us to get out and monitor those specific classes because

134we're at lunch duties and recess duties and those types of things. So next year we're really really excited to have this different period of time uh where each grade level is going to have their own period throughout the day where they have intervention. Our interventionist will be working with every grade level as opposed to just certain grade levels. Um and we will really be able to individualize the intervention. So we're going to look at Ready GSA testing. We're going to group them based on their standards and then we're going to move them every nine weeks if not earlier. But usually about every nine weeks, we're reook at the data and say who needs to be moved, who needs to go up to an enrichment class. Um, within that same time frame, who needs to be

135at a lower intervention class? So, we're going to move them and and give them opportunity to say, you've earned the right to move out of this class. Let's move you up. You did a great job. So, it's kind of like that one thing they could something to shoot for every nine weeks to move up. Schoolwide culture. Um, we've set clear expectations for our school, for our classroom, for our teachers, our discipline procedures. Um, that was that was the majority of our our first semester. Um, is just making sure every day we're going over these expectations with with students and staff. Um, and just and just reiterating those things like broken record every day. Do this, do that, please do this, please do that every day. and our teachers have done a great job of buying

136in and really getting our students to buy in and be a part of of of the positive culture we're trying to create. So, we'll go over a little bit of the data, discipline data, um through April 8th that we have. Um you're going to see these numbers and they're going to be high. Um we're not here to to sugar coat it. It's it's they're going to be high numbers. Um, as far as number of referrals, the the reason they're high is because we put everything in the system. So, I've worked at multiple different schools in our county and I know that not everybody puts everything in the system because we have different classroom management setups and we have different ways of doing things. Um, but at North when I got there, um, there was a

137lot of things that teachers didn't know how to do as far as putting stuff in the system. So the first thing we did is teach them how to put recurs in the system and we wanted to just track everything for the state to be able to see everything. We wanted to be transparent with the state. We wanted to make sure they seen it. So we put things in there from uh classroom management issues up through uh some of the red flag stuff you get for technology. So we just make sure everything is tracked. Now, going into next year, we are going to try to put some tiered interventions in place to where teachers can take some of that ownership back and have more control of their classroom so that we're not having to make sure

138we're there. So, they will be able to control their classroom, have a little bit more say with their classroom management plans and working through some of those tiered services there. Um, Kevin, for the discipline referrals, uh, when you input that in a system, does it allow you to designate uh how severe this referral is or Yeah, there's level ones, level twos, level threes, level fours. Um, and it could be as small as a uh teacher reprimand or administrator reprimand. So, it's not always a suspension or an in school. Sometimes it's just a just a meeting with me and the student, but we're tracking it. Could be referred to a counselor. Yes, it could be referral home. Yes. I just wanted to make sure the state realizes that. Yeah. Yeah. We we talked to Miss Mas

139Noble. She's seen all of our stuff. She's happy with everything that they've seen. They've been great. And I'm if I'm remembering correctly, if I can talk, um the uh gentleman with and I'm remembering his name. Yeah. Jeffrey Kelly. Um he also said that he was expecting this year's numbers to be very high because of of this. So and he's he's with he's the head of the department of accountability. So I just want to make sure that and we've talked to Mr. Kelly, we've talked to Miss Masino, but we've talked to everybody at the State Department. Um we've shown them these numbers. We've had discussions about different things in regards to that. And that's part of the reason why we're talking about some of these changes for next year to make sure we're we're tracking it,

140but we're also curving some of it, giving some of that some some of that some of that power back to the teachers to be able to control those things. Right. Sorry if I interrupted you. No, you're fine. Ask questions. It makes it easier. Uh, attendance data. So, attendance year to date um are chronically absent and then unexcused within the last 30 days. Um, it's not it's not ideal. It's not where I'd like to be. Our sixth grade's pretty good um for chronically absent um and for attendance year to date, but the rest of them we need to do. We need to be better with those. I'd like to see us on average right around 22 23 if not lower. Um so so we're working with that. Mr. Lamb, who's our assistant principal, is here. He

141he he's primarily our attendance guy and he does a really good job with Miss Cox and and how Vaner over at the attendance office. How does that compare to last year's community data? Uh, so I'm not 100% sure how it compares to last year's because a lot of the a lot of the data wasn't like for discipline data, for attendance data, it all it wasn't all ideally put in the way we'd like to track it. We can't we can't. So everything Yeah. So everything we're doing this year is to hopefully be able to track it from here forward. So I can make sure next year when we pull discipline data, you'll see last year's data where we're at, where we're going. Um, and it just makes it easier to to Mr. Based off the reports

142that I get from Miss Cox monthly, we've improved every month but February. Uh, in February, we were about even with where we were previously. Okay. Okay. Um, do are are home visits done? Y, so our security officer actually does some of them. Um, she she's great. like she does she goes way above and beyond, but she she goes and does met her that she Miss Cox does home visits. Miss Kosik, one of our social workers, does some home visits as well as our security officer. And typically, we don't let any one person go alone. We like to try to make sure people go and and she like Miss Cox likes to go and help and be a part of so she usually goes with them. You have a communities and schools person? Yes, Miss Griffin.

143And she is amazing. Okay. Does she Does she help with some of those visits? She helps with some of those visits as well as well. So, we have like we have a lot of people that's involved and wants to be wants to help our kids be successful. Um, we've actually Miss Griffin has actually picked kids up to bring them to school and we've had to make sure she knows that. Yeah, we've had to make sure she knows that we need to get Miss Cox to go with her. Um, so just so everybody's safe and there's no issues. So, but yeah, they they've done a great job jumping in and trying to help pick pick the attendance, make sure our kids are there to be successful. I once went did a home visit and I brought

144I brought someone with me and I got attacked by a parent. So I know that sometimes you got have some backup. Yeah. Walked into walked into a room I couldn't have been in that barricade. All right. So I already trend on it. So we finished ideally we finished about 85% of our kids have finished the diagnostic three. So I wanted to put it in there. We did our third diagnostic last week. Um we actually did our diagnostic just like we wanted to do the GSA. So we actually did testing rooms. We did a two-hour delay schedule. We set it up to mimic the GSA. So that way we could see any issues, see any problems, and then start adjusting for the GSA testing. And I we got a lot of compliments from teachers, from students

145um that our students really took it serious because it was set up the same way. So moving forward, we might try to keep that same uh same atmosphere for the kids because a big part of our thing at North has been uh changing expectations and changing atmospheres and and them understanding what a testing atmosphere is supposed to be like um as opposed to just a normal classroom because as we all know like that's that's all a different setting. So we've tried to establish that um with our diagnostics. We've seen some growth. Um, ideally we'd like to see more growth obviously, but we've seen some some growth. We've seen our kids try. Um, which has been half the battle. Um, this year we've really focused on getting our kids to put forth effort. Um, so a

146lot of our we we're a renaissance school this year. So, a lot of our renaissance program and development and awards have been based on them putting forth the effort and them us being able to track the effort and then we've rewarded them for that. Um, so we do see some of that growth there. Um, we have we've had great I Ready training. It's our first year with I Ready. Um, I think some of our teachers were a little hesitant at first with Ready, but I think we've had a lot of buyin. Um, Mr. Brock has been great. He come he's been there seven times, I believe, and he's been awesome every time. He comes in during our PLC's and does more of an individualized training. So, he's actually meeting with like six to eight teachers

147uh within an hour and then doing it again two, three, four times a day. Um so he's done a great job of of helping us get ready and understand that ready. Um we have the focus PLC PD for teachers that we've done um where where we have our assistant principles as well as our academic mentor meeting with our teachers really discussing PLC's discussing the next transition for us our next shift. Um obviously this year was huge for discipline huge for getting things under control and just being able to teach. Next year, we're really focusing on, like I talked about before, our inter our intervention, which we're excited about because we're going to go down and hopefully pull those kids out that are two, three below. But then we're also really focusing on those that core

148instruction. Uh we've heard a lot about it tonight. Um we we talked about it is is hitting that standards mastery and making sure our kids are seeing the standards that they need to see to be successful in the test. Um, right now if I had to guess from the stuff that we've seen, like we're not teaching our kids standards, uh, because we care so much about our kids and we're trying to help them, like it's almost hurting them because we're going down to that grade level to try to pull them up at at the core subjects. So when they get to the test, they haven't seen the standards they need to see to be successful. So, we need to find a way with our intervention period, which is what we're trying to do, is give

149that time to pull them up and then really push our teachers to say no matter what, we got to get them grade level standards and get them to understand that those processes. Uh, some of our domains just from I already um pretty pretty good. Um, overall we've had success throughout the year. Like I said, our kids have tried, our kids have put forth the effort. Um, they've grown uh throughout the year. good. Um the math similar obviously a little lower. Um but as you see from the first diagnostic to the last diagnostic that we just did last week, we've had growth. Um and we we are excited. I I think I'm more excited than most is to see um where we fall in the GSA. We did the ready diagnostic last week. We've already started

150the GSA this week. Um, and our and our kids from from talking to my APS who were there last year have spent way more time on their testing already this year than they did previously. So, we're excited to see what that result looks like for us. Kids taking it serious. Yes. Kids taking it way more serious, understanding that it matters. Yeah, we've had we had kids good and bad. We had kids going home from already upset and frustrated um because they didn't do as good as they wanted to do, which is good. sad for them but it's good to understand that they care. Um just to see them see them care is good. Uh math domains similar um just just pro progressing uh over over time. Um they did like I said good job of

151of moving forward. Geometry is a little tough for them. It stays stay stagnant there. That but that helps you identify what you might want to focus on for professional development for teachers around content delivery. Yeah. Um I know that we have some the content mathmies coming up in June. Um and that's one of the focuses of that geometry because it's not just it's not just at north that we see that issue. Yeah. Well, it's one of the big things we talked about with with our intervention class like we're going these kids will be grouped in these areas to where they really need help and focusing on some of these areas to pull them up. All right. So the GSA trend data, so we have 21, 22, 22, 23, and 23, 24. And then we have

152our projected proficiency for this year. Um the projected proficiency comes from I already um but it is projected at the typical rate of where they would be this year. I didn't I didn't go above and beyond and put stretch. I want to make sure we're at the bare minimum. Hopefully, this is what we'd like to see. Um which is small growth. Um like I said, we're not seeing huge growth, but but for us, pretty good. It's commendable growth. Well, we're happy to see any growth right now just with where focus wasn't on growth so much this year. And so the fact that there is growth on top of getting that established that that baseline the foundation well I think I mean that's good. I think what we're seeing right now is is growth based on

153compliance, growth based on culture, growth based on just being able to learn. Um, so I'm hoping next year that we'll see substantial growth based on some of the pushes we're going to make and shifts we're going to make towards focusing on instruction, focusing on intervention and core core standards. Well, you can have growth just by making sure that the kids are in in attendance. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yep. So, and then also like some things we've done this year to really focus um and get our kids focused more and understanding more about some of this stuff. Uh, student data notebooks was huge for us this year. We started implementing every every uh student had a notebook. Every teacher u meets with their kids once a week and goes over what's in this notebook which is their

154data which is anywhere from grades, attendance, GSA stuff, um I read stuff. So any any of those uh goals that they're trying to set for themsel actually um within their student notebook set goals um and they had to be smart goals. So, we used school AI to develop uh a program so that students could log on and actually it walked them through how to make a smart goal for their notebook. So, just having them use resources that otherwise they probably would use for the wrong thing so that they're able to use that for the right thing. So, and then also like one of the other things they've done individual test talks and they've done great with that like just having having kids talk about what testing is, what that looks like, what their expectations are.

155Does it matter? Um, one of the biggest things and as a parent of kids in our schools, um, for years I've had conversations with my kids about it does matter. I know it's not a grade, but it matters. It matter because it's the perception of you. It's who you are, what you put into it. It's your effort. So, um, it doesn't always matter, I know, for for a grade, but it matters for what we're trying to do for the kids. Uh, the math data. So projected proficiency here um is the main thing we're looking at after the last year. Um again some growth. Seventh grade is on the lower end right now. We're hoping um they they're usually our seventh grade is usually pretty strong from from past. So we're hoping they pull out here

156and do well. Um but again we're not upset with what we're looking at. We're happy that our kids are are putting forth the effort. What do you attribute to the I mean obviously it's a different cohort for eighth grade. So it's your seventh your seventh your eighth grade cohort you know they scored at 17% last year so they obviously have you know some pretty significant growth for that cohort but what did you what would you have attributed the the such low percentages for in the previous three years for eighth grade? I know you weren't there, so it's hard for you to answer, but Oh, okay. behaviorist. So, you couldn't I mean, it was like fight club. So, I would be standing out in the hall and you couldn't even hold a conversation with one student

157without something happening behind you. Now, we're able to actually build the relationships in the hallways and I get to see the kids at morning bus duty because I'm the early person. I get to see them in the hallways. I get to see them after school because I dismiss of the other side. So I see when I cover different classes, it's like night and day. Walking into a classroom now or even into one of the hallways, the kids aren't running down the hall. You we have to tell them over and over again to the right, to the right, to the right, whatever. But it's no longer take your hood off, take your AirPod out, stop touching that person, put your phone. You you have the randoms, right? And you have you have the repeat offenders, but

158it is completely different than it's ever been since I've been there since 2018. Well, Mr. Murphy and I were over there and spent some time with Mr. Fitznogle and it it's night and day. It was amazing. So, kudos to Mr. Pitnogle. You mentioned Mr. Jackson is teaching a cohort of eighth graders. Yes. Seventh grade. They were the public. Yeah. So, M Yeah, Mr. Jackson's one of our strong math teachers who is teaching um the eighth grade cohort because of the star program and happened to mix and match some of that. Yeah. So, he's he's a strong strong man teacher. I had a debrief board members from uh some individuals from the state department that came in and did their their last um state state department diagnostic and um it was funny because they had a

159a staff member that came with them that was not at the original visit and apparently they said um why are we here? Because they didn't have the context of the of the first visit. So that was um that was very uh reassuring to hear that. So yeah. Well, let's let's not be naive like it's still a middle school and we still have issues. So and we're still interested on a daily basis. Those referral numbers show it. Yes. Yes. There's no lack of business. Yeah. At least u I know there referrals u many referrals but still you acknowledge those and Yeah. work with them. Oh yeah. we when we have referrals and we call kids down um we we sit down and talk to kids like it's not it's not usually unless it's a cut and

160dry situation where we know like the kid messed up uh like we still try to have conversations like I I am a firm believer so restorative practice I know can be an ugly word um but I am a firm believer in the consequences and and accountability but I'm also a firm believer in having conversations with kids to make sure they understand like there's other routes there's other opportunities um and that's something we've been trying to do with our ISS program as well is transition that over into more of they come in there, they have conversations, they talk about what they can do to not get in the same situation over and over and over. So, and that's been beneficial to us this year as well. I want to say the same thing that I I

161said uh regarding Miss Ballard, and that is that one of the things I appreciate is that um you and your staff have owned the challenges and you haven't made excuses, but you you've really you're you're you're setting the direction and you're you're focused on it. I very much appreciate that uh from your staff, but as you from you as a leader. I appreciate it. All right. uh climate. Obviously, they talked a little bit about the culture and climate. Um I pulled some things from last year's survey, just the most positive from each section, the most negative from each section. You guys can read over that. But here's why we'll give them the opportunity and we'll let our teachers come up and maybe say a couple words just about because they were there to experience the

162last couple years and comparison to this year. They can speak on the climate and culture of what's currently happening. Um we do have our new climate survey that just came back. So once we get that, we'll dive through it and really see what's going on and really focus some of our efforts. Um, like on this one, we'll focus some of our efforts on what we need to focus on for next year and what we need to fix and kind of improve. So because I I know I'm not always the easiest person, so I'm sure there's some things in there to fix. I'm an oddity. I've been at North for 20 years. I've been I've seen the good. I've seen the bad. I've seen the ugly. This year is so different. I can breathe. I can

163teach. I brought my own kid to North because I saw the good things that were going to happen. And she loves it at North. Like it's so different. I don't have to fight discipline every day. I don't have to fight language every day. I literally can, you know, like look, here's your warning. They know I mean business and they know that if I send it elsewhere, it's going to be dealt with and they're not just going to get away with it. It's huge. Um, I've been able to I'm farther along in my CSOS than I've been in years. I've also I've left the last several school years very very depleted and burned out because not only am I teaching my students, I'm teaching the other sixth grade science students because we can't keep people in

164position. Don't have certified people in the position. And so I'm doing a double duty kind of a deal. I didn't have to do that this year. I have a certified competent person in the other position who actually team teaches with me, who actually co-plans with me, and I get that give and take that I haven't had in years. And it's huge. I I actually just signed up for Skills, which I haven't done in probably a decade because I'm not burning up this year. I'm ready to learn more. And I just I can't speak enough of it. I'm so pleased with what I've seen and the changes I've seen. It's been awesome. Um, so I was a student at North a while ago. Yeah. Per civics. And he was actually a teacher when I was at

165North. So, I've seen the differences, but I was a sub a couple years ago at North and there have been tremendous changes and we feel like, like she said, we can teach and not have to worry about so many behaviors. I'm in and off to them room and think those kids even know expectations and consequences for their actions. Um I just love being there and again I'm not burned out. Last year I was burned out. I got burned out this year and I signed up for skills and I'm pretty excited about next year and see North and our Kristen's program was a huge portion of that because I um use social media to partner with businesses and we got 88 families. Wonderful. And not just the 48 kids in our school, the entire family. Yeah,

166the entire parenting, the other siblings, there were meals. It was fantastic. Yeah, we couldn't talk without her. Um I one of the things that I've enjoyed most at North this year is having Julie Old Bill there that really helped us with our professional development. I feel like once you've been teaching for a certain amount of time, you have the same professional development over and over again. And she really has helped us break down um Cambian. And I've worked uh handinhand with another eighth grade teacher who is not in my content area who is in English actually for us to be able to work some of the questions for state testing into bell ringers or small little exit tickets or little activities but she can take some of my content um I can take some of

167the things that she couldn't cover um as far as um because she was going there was some ELA content she was worried about that I could put into social studies and I just feel like having um Julie there has really amped up what's happening inside the classroom because we've learned a lot of things with technology. We learned a lot of um things with um Cambian. And then the other thing I really want to say is that having our assistant principles on our floor has been instrumental in setting the tone and the tenor for our students because they know they're not messing around. And I also love the feedback that I get from them. So let's just say, you know, Mr. something happens and I write a student up for a repeated cell phone violation, they

168will not listen to me. They will not put it away. We're not responsible for Mr. Panagago. We don't have to take the the cell phone. Mr. Lake will come. He'll come to my room. He'll pull the student, not embarrass him in front of the class, go have a conversation with them. And then if that's it, that's it. You know, the next time we can do a a call home. But the thing that's great is he usually pulls us by the end of the day, if not by the beginning of the next to say, "Hey, I just wanted to let you know this is what happened with this student." We never had that before at the school. So, you never knew what happened. Sometimes you would feel like, well, did something happen? Was there any recourse?

169Am I being listened to? So, I feel like the students feel like they're being listened to, but we also do as I feel heard and supported and that's huge. I actually feel like the having the assistant principles at the on on every grade level is a good idea for every school. Now, I know I'll probably get cards and letters about that. It's it just it's just works. Yeah, it's it's worked well for us. I'm not going to speak for other schools, but it's definitely worked well for us. It's something we've benefited from. Um and again, like they as transparent as we try to be with you guys, uh we try to be with them as well. We try to make sure they understand everything that we're doing, why we're doing it. If there's something they

170want to question, we have an open door. They're welcome to come ask us, talk about it. And if they don't agree, we don't always we're not always going to agree. Uh, and we try to explain that and they do a good job of coming in with open minds and we usually leave on the same team because I tell them all the time, you can come in, we can argue, we can fight, but when we walk out this door, we're on the same team. We're on the same we're going to play on the same team. We're going to battle together and we're going to win together. Well, I feel like that's huge, too, because even if I don't agree with the decision because we're not always going to agree. At least I understand where they're coming

171from and why they did it. And, you know, as long as you know the rational behind it, you can support it. Yes. So, that's huge. And you were heard. Yeah, I was heard. Exactly. And you've been empowered this this last year. I I I've heard that a little bit throughout this. You guys were empowered to do things. Yeah. Okay. You have to put in a lot of those referrals. I get it. But that empowered you. It empowered you to get your classroom back. And I think also it sets a tone because once they know that they're going to be held accountable and that you're not just going to let things slide, you know, through the cracks that they know they can't get away with it, they stop. some of those minor behaviors that are literally

172like what I call lack of mal behaviors because you once you get one under control the next starts once they're there they can't get away with it just stops good and then you can go about what you need to do and you can teach your class oh wait what you were hired to do right exactly kind of like the olden days right about this our APs have done a great job when we do have more of a classroom disruption not just of one kid our APs have done a good job of getting into those rooms observing during those times making sure they're addressing that class um as a whole because if it's more than just a couple kids that need to be addressed, they don't let it get out of hand. Um Miss Holloway is

173one thing if he's not here. She's done a great job getting in to those classrooms in sixth grade and really establishing that first semester. Um so just it's been a great support as well. They've done a good job. Thank you. And then we'll talk about the last couple of things real quick. Uh professional development. Um we've established some schedules um for collaborative teacher teams to focus on their improvement instructional planning. Um we've developed this year where they meet right now every Wednesday um and they really talk about some of those things um for instructional purposes. Uh classroom management support. Um we we've really had a big focus on that this year and really understanding what classroom management is. Um how it's to be used, the benefits of it. Um, we had all our teachers turn

174in classroom management plans at the beginning of the year just so we could look at them and say like this is this needs to be changed. We need to see this. We need to see that. So, we need to see what they're doing to kind of curb some of the behaviors too. Are you calling home? Are you messaging? Are you having conversations as opposed to just saying, "I'm not dealing with it today. Write it up." We don't just want to throw kids into a write up right away. We want to make sure we work through a process first. Um, we've had a big focus on cambium this year. Uh, towards the second semester, I'll say once we got in the second semester, Miss Massenople came in and really got us focused on the Cambium. Uh,

175we really are looking forward to using that on a regular basis next year to kind of measure where our students are with that already using that for like they talked about bell ringers. Um, throwing it into their instruction so we can really get them used to that because just being used to the PBM and the site helps for the testing. So if you've never been on it um and you've never used it then it's really hard to get on and just do a test. Can you explain a little bit of that what Cambian is to so the board understands? Yeah, it's just a website where they go on and they have modules and they have different things that they can pull out like the teachers can pull out to use or they can get the

176students on it to use it as well as um uh for different for different things like there's modules, there's different things in there they can jump in and use to help the kids similar to it's actually it's actually it gives them the format that the questions are in on the GSA. It gives them familiarity with how twisted up on the test because there's because there's certain things about the GSA that like okay so if your if your kids have never been on the site and they get on and take a test well it might be as small as how do I open the calculator that's why they missed the question not because they didn't understand how to get to the answer they couldn't even get the calculator open because they never been taught how to

177do that so frustrating so we we've been trying to use it with the kids so they at least have seen the site they know how it works they know what where the processes are to be able to do things so when they do the test they're comfortable. If you have like an activity where it's like drag and drop. Yes. They need to know how to drag and drop, how to do how to use the the ruler in in geometry or whatever. Text to speech if you're ELL student. I mean, not knowing how to do those things could completely impede your obviously what your score is if it's supposed to be something you're happy you have and you don't know how to access it. So, just give them that access has been the biggest thing and

178and the kids that I think have done a really good job of of picking up with that and just learning it. Um because I'm sure you've all seen kids just they get frustrated they just h whatever stop I'm move forward I don't care it doesn't matter because I can't figure it out they use car what it's just used throughout the county it's it's I believe all the schools have access to KVMs good I didn't realize that you can even put in your standard so if you notice that the students are really struggling with a certain standard or you want to focus or hone in on it you can actually go into and do a test authoring and copy paste your standards you want to focus on and it will create an entire set of questions

179that you can then either push out to the whole class. You can assign to a couple students that are struggling with it and have them work on it so they get used to the language. That's phenomenal. So we can take what we're doing on already and we can see what standards they're exactly not doing great in and push that over in the camium as well. That's fantastic. Yeah. So um that's one more I got one more uh facilities. I don't have any facilities at this point. I know that I had heard um after we had done these slides that the only other thing I can think of that we may need is is a little bit more uh support for handicap accessibility. Yes. Um so just want to throw that out there. That might be

180the only thing we may need. But um I know we're door Yes. Being able to open and close door Dr. school. He will look into that and we will assess that in short order. But uh but overall we're getting I believe we got approved for the gym to get redone which is nice. It needs it a lot. Um but overall our facilities in pretty good shape. Um and anytime we've had issues, maintenance department is amazing. They showed up, took care of it, helped us out. So, um, celebrations, improved academic achievement, uh, consistent behavior management, strengthened culture, uh, the administrative communication has been pretty strong, um, from our APs to our teachers. Um, we we I try to be I try to be short and to the point, as you can tell, probably. I don't try

181to when I talk to the teachers, I don't just send out random emails with a bunch of stuff. I try to make sure we're we're communicating it's about something they need to know. Um, and then just ongoing daily support. U, we've had great support from the board office, great support from the state department. Miss Clutner comes by and hangs out and talks to me and gives me great support. Sometimes motivation when needed. Uh, she's been awesome. Um, so it's it's we've had awesome support. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Questions for Mr. U. What's the next step with our relationship with the state board in this process? I know that we're on the agenda for May. I don't know how much we're allowed to say at this point. What was your What was your specific

182question? The next step for What's the next step? What was the next step? Oh, I'm sorry. Um the So, we are on the agenda for May 14th. In fact, at when you were going to conclude, I was going to actually uh make sure the board was aware of that because uh they have invited um myself and Mr. Fitz Nogle, Miss Clutner, Dr. Woods. And then of course if any board member would like to go, uh we do plan to be there for them to review the the final the report and um to possibly consider uh releasing, you know, North from uh the status. Uh two other questions. Um Peter school communication. Yep. I mean what do you do it? I talk to Mr. Goldies uh pretty regularly. Um him and I used to work together

183so we have a good relationship so it's easy. Um so if I need something or if I I just talked to him this morning honestly about uh m the honors matrix and it's been great coming to sixth grade and getting some of those things together and making sure we're we're lined up with the right right information. So uh he's been open. He's been great. Um anything I've needed I've talked to him. Uh high school wise a little tougher. Um, we got three high schools. So, so we do have I I have pretty good communication with most of the high schools. I I haven't had any issues getting a hold of any of the high schools, talking to anybody. I know most of the people at the high school. So, it's been pretty easy. Um, in

184that vein, are you talking about look, we're seeing this problem from your school coming over here. Um, what can you what can we do to solve it before it escalates here? We have Yeah. I mean, so like talking about like Eagle School, um the the because they're our main feeder. I know OVI sends us a couple of kids. Um but Eagle is our main feeder school. Um but the conversations right now like there's some of that. Um but but he's dealing with a lot of the same stuff. So So I'm giving him some strategies that we're trying to implement that we are seeing that are successful with our kids, but that doesn't always correlate to elementary level, intermediate level. So, so trying to get they got to kind of come up with some of their

185own, but we try to help. We try to give some information on what's working, what's not working. He tries to do the same. Um, but but again, like as they grow, we all know like kids, they they change behaviors and and are harder to deal with. Something I I detected your from your teachers, every so often, we're always trying to find ways to save money. And uh one of the things that always comes up in middle school is why do they get two planning periods? I know why. Exactly. But uh so you have to make sure that the policy makers, the board is aware of the benefit for children or students at this age. They're they're they're all over the place. Uh why you need the two planning periods. One's not a planning period. is

186a team meeting and the other is your planning period but people don't realize that just a word of caution needs to be re-emphasize. Questions for Mr. Pit. Thank you. Very much appreciated Mr. Barney. I saw the look on his face. I know probably when I mentioned putting the assistant principles and everything. Did you get that newspaper article? She said something about the look on your face. Oh, no. No. Um, yes, Dr. Smith. Yeah, because he he had this look. He's like, "Why is nobody else?" It was very clapping. Maybe it's not over yet. Okay. You have fans, Mark. What's that? You have fans. Dr. Smith was clapping and we were gonna clap. Yes. Yeah, that's right. I must say I I listen to some of the things I I'll leave with this and I wasn't

187going to do that, but I listened to I've been at South Middle School for 11 years. I served as assistant principal for five years now. I've been the principal for six years. And I and I I know the struggle that Mr. Pitagle has has worked through and all his staff. And um I saw those referral numbers and I remember those referral numbers as an assistant principal. Maybe not quite that high, but they were high. Scott Gust and I battling through referrals at numbers that were and just trying to create a situation that that was just a little bit different just on that level, just getting that under control. Um and so here I am 11 years later and and not knowing anything 11 years before about discipline, how to deal with it, how to navigate

188it, and and and doing our best to navigate it. I I appreciate the work that's been put in um and appreciate the progress that's been made. Um it helps us all, all our schools and all our when we're all doing things and working together and having success. It helps it helps everybody. So, my hat off to all of you for your work and the struggle that you endured last spring getting where you are today. And that's not me saying I am where I am. I think we've done pretty well in discipline. I I wish I could I wish I could figure out the academic piece, the testing piece, but we'll talk about that here in a minute. So, hats off to Mr. Fitzog and his crew um for doing the good work to get get

189some of those discipline situations under control. It's not easy. I'm Mark Barney. I'm the principal of South Middle School. And I just lost my I just There it is. Just lost my template. Leadership team, me, assistant principles, team leaders. Um a component that I didn't put on there It was a little unclear on LSIC leadership team, but our LSIC, we have those folks, but we also incorporate um community members. So, war, we are in war two of Martinsburg and we incorporate folks from W 2, a name that comes to mind that works with us on some things. Um Robin Drew acted as one. She's a former teacher, retired teacher, but um we have a teacher on staff who lives in W 2. and it was important to her to incorporate people right around the school

190who live in that ward as as part of some of the things that we try to do there at South Middle School. Um the strategic plan goals. So that first one up there is an overarching goal relative to being on grade level or um showing one and a half years of growth in reading and mathematics. Um I I identified the other two as goal two and goal two. I should have put an A and a B because we are an ATS school. Additional target support from the state. And that second goal too is proficiency associated with students with disabilities. We are an ATS school because of that cell. That special education cell has not performed to the level that they would like. So that got us in that designation. That is the cell that has

191given us um grief. So we're striving if you look at that second goal too, we're striving for proficiency at 21% in reading, 16% in math. that would be up from oh 16 and 12. So that's that's our goal there. That would that would go a long way in getting us out of that designation which truthfully in the nature of federal programs and the way of the world the way of our country right now I don't even know what that's going to look like but ultimately this is our third year and we want to get out of that designation. Um, and then down there, goal three is is a growth goal, not a proficiency goal. By June 2025, 100% of students in grade 68 South Middle School will demonstrate at least one and a half years

192worth of academic growth in reading and mathematics as measured by ISL. You can go ahead. I threw this one in here. Um, and I probably I probably maybe should have just stayed with the discipline data, but in our strategic plan, I always include a discipline goal. As I said earlier, I've spent a lot of time at South Middle School. I experienced the days where discipline referrals were through the roof and worked really really hard as an assistant and as principal to establish systems and communication that creates a situation where those numbers would come down. So we try to we try to keep kids in school with our discipline and that is reflective in that goal. So trying to keep kids when we have to deal with discipline trying to use practices that keep them in

193the building. Can't always do it but we strive really really hard to do so. Um there's some discipline data from the first semester. So out of school suspensions in sixth grade at 11 that that number that's first semester that number's gone up. Uh seventh grade 23 814 and that number of referrals on the outside. It is worth noting our in school suspension is used at a high level. Since the first semester it's been used a lot more. We we came when we came out of bad weather we hit a stretch where we start having some big problems discipline wise. Um I I attribute it to a lack of routine there for a good period of time. We had some breaks, then we'd have a half a day, whole day, and then some breaks. Um we

194ran into some snags with our discipline. We also late Easter, late spring break. Um we had some rough patches right up against uh spring break and I attributed that to we're just we're just tired of each other. We're at a point where we're just tired of each other and everybody's in each other everybody's throat and we just want out of here for a week. So, and since we've been back, it's been pretty good. Um, but we we did that's like I said, that's first semester. That second semester, those numbers will be a little little higher. Go ahead. Attendance a big struggle for us. Um, our daily rate there hovering around 92 for all three grades. Our chronically absent is is a problem that we work hard to address. We go out and visit. We incentivize

195and are chronically absent. It is a struggle for us as I think it's it seems to be a struggle across the county this this is you know attendance is a struggle discipline I feel like we've done a pretty good job of getting a hold of our climate culture is very strong this is this is the area where um figuring out what exactly to do has been a it's a sore spot for me you tell me something to do that's going going to fix this problem. I'll do it. We're going to fix this problem. This area has been a little bit of a struggle in my time as principal. Um so if you look at that trend, um 2122, sixth grade is the example, 32 to 36 to 37. So there's growth there. Um with that

196one exception, there's growth across that board in reading. We do we use armor time. Trojans are accountable, respectful, mindful, organized, and ready. We have a period around lunch where they spend 42 minutes in what we call armor. Um, and we work on reading skills. We pull kids. We're a title one school um to get extra support in reading. Um, we look at we look at trends in our LL scores to try to drive some remediation to try to drive some work to do to get those scores up. Um, and we're really looking at right now and going into next year um our exposure to non-fiction text. Our kids struggle with that. Uh, one of our assistant principles, Kathy Dumire, is a former language arts teacher and very strong one. Her test scores reflect very high

197at Hesville Middle School. Um, she is doing a lot of leg work with our language arts and reading teachers to try to focus in on that exposure to non-fiction text and hopes that that's going to, and I hate to use the word hope because I feel like I don't have a concrete this is where we're going to go and this is what we're going to do. Um but exposure to non-fictional texts to try to increase those scores and reading. Uh math there's there's some promise there. There's some drop there. Um seventh grade made some made some great strides last year. Um same same type concept. Skill plans in EXL. We use those armor groups. We use our title one teachers, our title one math teachers to pull back kids to try to give them some

198extra support. Um, Mrs. Laskkey worked with us this year on those candium questions and Mr. Fitzville spoke to and Miss Warner, our seventh grade, our seventh grade math teacher, she introduced thinking classrooms, um, which we hope to expand upon next year uh, in our math classes. Il data, we're looking on that right column. We're looking for that 150 points um, of growth. That's diagnostic one, diagnostic two. We are in the midst of diagnostic three right now. Like everybody else who's been up here, we're in the midst of diagnostic three, and we're also starting that West Virginia General Summit of Assessment. So, there's our growth of the year. Looking for 150. Sixth grade's looking like they might have a shot. The other two, not so much. Why do you think Why do you think that is?

199I have a good answer for you. I was curious if you had if you had a um and I'll just be honest with with the board. I am not as familiar with LL. I've tried to become more familiar with it this year, but I was just curious if you had a a rationale as to why sixth grade had had more growth than let's say seventh or eth. Um a point to consider of them coming from I Ready to EXL. that group that group coming from using I Ready to Ex because they because they had had I Ready the first year. Oh, I never thought about that. Do you Well, I guess do you think that do you do you feel like the seventh grade and eighth grade implementation um had as much fidelity to as

200the sixth grade perhaps? I mean, I don't want that to Maybe not as much. Maybe not as much. Um they can start at lower level. I think that's that's a big is more on grade level. Yeah. I already is going to provide I already for like what we were seeing at North for for example they're going to expose them to more grade level content versus sure. Okay. Because North struggle is different because they were so far behind. They're playing catchup. These kids could be at grade level, but they're they're doing questions at a lower Sure. level. Thank you, Mark. I didn't mean to put you on the spot there, but I was just sorry. Um, and full disclosure, the the the meat of the work with EXL, Miss Dire with it. That is full disclosure.

201That's dayto-day. That's they they do a lot more of the meat and potatoes work with teachers on the data from those scores for sure. Um these are the strands and and noted on the strands are the diagnostic one uh the strand and then if you go out to diagnostic two you can see the increase within a specific strand. I thought that was worth noting on each one of those. Go ahead math. Why do why do you if you could go back one um writing strategies just looking at that where are you Pat sixth grade sixth grade one down you're looking at 429 to 53 going back just the teacher the Well I would say and I'll get there to the end I wish I could start with talking about our staff our our staff is

202they're exceptional. They work hard. They're they try hard. You put something in front of them and talk to them about ways to attack it, they're going to go attack it. Um that sixth grade group, they're they are exceptional. They stay with us for a while. Um the sixth grade teacher is usually elementary trained. I think sometimes in reading that presents a little differently than someone who's content specific in seventh and eighth grade. I do believe that that presents differently. Um and they go across our social studies, our social studies, both of our social studies and sixth grade work um closely with our reading and language arts on bringing some of those skills across that curriculum and that's something we want to put a lot of focus on for next year too. Um, but those two

203ladies who teach social space in sixth grade, they also have a strong background in teaching reading language arts. And I think it benefits when you're doing specific activities in a social space classroom to bring that skill in. I I just see the re writing strategy McGra mechanics number game is just impressive. I'm not sure. How does um how does EXL assess the writing strategies? Do they actually do writing components on EXL? No, I'm not not going to be able to. Oh, I'm sorry. Do you know Holly? I I've never I'm just wondering how it was how it was being assessed because that's not definitely like like I doesn't assess writing and so I was just curious how how it actually if they actually submit like a writing sample and then they Yeah. I've never looked

204at the writing. I don't know. I can't answer. Okay. In fact, I think that's the writing. Yeah. I mean, it's missing my birthday. It could be like short. I don't actually. He didn't remember and I don't remember it either being ever on there and I this year and I it's a strand. It's new. I'm saying maybe it's new. I mean, it's it's it's definitely an important component of what we need to be assessing because strong writers build strong readers. Yeah. And and in fact, that's one of the things that CLI had identified was is that we we needed to strengthen our our writing core um both at the primary, intermediate, and middle school level. And of course, you know, we've been piloting the the the writing program at the at the U elementary level. So,

205but so I'm glad to see that it's being assessed. I think I just I just was curious how it was how it was being done because I do think that we have to do a better job of assessing writing in our middle school grades. And so I was happy to see it to be honest with you. So something something was showing improvement. I mean I'm talking about this within that with writing. That's that's really good. So when were we doing your diagnostic? We're doing we're closing it out right now to start. Okay. Yeah. We did we did science eighth grade. It's only 8th grade Tuesday of this week. Um, and we're we go into our math and our reading over the next couple weeks. We stretch them out. We usually pick a Tuesday or Thursday,

206do math. Next week, Tuesday or Thursday, we'll do reading. Don't try to hit them too hard. But this does hit a little bit because you did. Your window was up against GSA. uh trend data in math. That's that's where I was when we went back. Um that seventh grade group showing a lot of promise that seventh grade um I would attribute if you were going to ask me to the work being done with thinking classroom in seventh grade math and the quality of instruction taking place in seventh grade math. Um although the quality of math instruction across the building is it's it's top tier. Go ahead. That's great. And your and your math strands. Okay. Um, again, worth noting across that second diagnostic, and I don't have the third, I don't have the data out

207of the third yet, but the increases are they're pretty strong. They're pretty significant. Really good. Yeah. And I will tell and I had this conversation with Dr. Sax at the beginning of the year. I my struggle is I see that I excel. I see things happening and and I don't I want to see that translate to GSA and I'm struggling to find that that struggling to find is I being done to do something there. We're putting it in but it's not it's not showing up. Yeah. I I I I do believe um and this is something I think I've been kind of feel like I've been pretty vocal about actually is that um I don't know that there is a high correlation uh between EXL there. It's not a good indicator of how well they're

208going to do on GSA because considering like for example and and I'm not I'm not saying one is better than the other. I'm saying that I Ready has done correlation studies to GSA. When you ask EXL for those correlation studies, it's they're they're not directly linked to our GSA assessment either. And so, um, I think that it can I think it can provide a false sense of of maybe where you're at and and not being able to truly hone in on some of the skills that our students are going to be most heavily assessed on when it comes to the GSA. And, you know, a lot of people will say, okay, well, if you're if you're if you're trying to take a critical look at, you know, how often something is is tested in the

209GSA and then that's what you're going to spend a majority of your time on, well, that's teaching to the test. I I say no, it's not teaching the test. It's preparing our students to be successful on the assessment because I think that it is malfeasants to not give our students the best opportunity to perform the best on those assessments. Um and um I think like for example using uh the Cambium software for example is a prime example. Yeah. if they we we don't want to set up our students for for failure because they don't know how to pull up the ruler or how to or the calculator or whatever. And so, um yeah, Mark, you know, Mark and I we did have that conversation. I would love had a number of times and I know

210that it's it's eaten at you. Yeah, it does. It does because you put in, you know, you you plan for this kid to get this support here, for this to happen here, for this, and you feel like you're pushing all your chips in on it. that's going to translate into success on that GSA and that while there is success our trend data I sent at the beginning of the year it's there it's not what we'd like it to be and I don't necessarily think it translates well Il showing this is here and this is over here soon since uh north is piloting um ready is there a chance that the middle schools would we are we've already made the decision I apologize we've already made the decision to not use next how your staff feel

211about that. I think they'll be fine. Okay. I'm sure they're frustrated as well. As much as hard and they're not, you know, frustrated. Yes. I can't imagine they're doers. When the districts when they're doers and the thing is that when the district provides the resource, they're going to say, "Okay, let's make it work." Yeah. And um but but this this learning but the the shift in I ready from that was a that was a process that Miss Klepner met with the middle school principles and there was a collective agreement that this was going to be the direction we were going to go next year. So we we've talked with our principles about it and we're um you know also making sure that because it will be a new platform for our middle schools next year

212is that we have strong embedded professional development support just like Mr. Pitle said he had the the I Ready support specialist in his school eight different times very very strategically with purpose scheduled. We're going to make sure we do the exact same thing for our middle all of our middle schools next year with the roll out. Good. Uh increased so reviewing the strategic plan talking about the increase of rigor throughout lessons that's been a theme that's been a theme since we started working with model schools. Um those became pretty heavy conversations last year. They've continued throughout this year. Um higher level higher level questioning not just a sit and be compliant assignment more interactive more discussion. We we push on that. Do we always get it the way we want it? No. But we we

213do push on it. We lean on it and our staff is is receptive to trying different things to try to enhance what they're trying to do with kids. Um increased use of technology for creative thinking. One thing comes to mind for me is a social eighth grade social studies class this year. They were talking about the Dread Scott case and our eighth grade social studies teacher used AI and he used our artist got involved in this with him too because he needed the he needed the capacity with the with the u with the technology. He needs some help there. But and she went in and helped and did the lesson with him. But it the kid was a lawyer for Dread Scott. The kid didn't know anything about Dread Scott. didn't know and that that

214platform what they were using that AI platform took them from you just give me a little baseline information and it starts it starts giving you then you give me a little bit more and all of a sudden you saw a kid who went from limited knowledge on this topic of Dread Scott as a lawyer to defend his case and it just kept building and it just kept building through this questioning and the platform wouldn't let you just sit there and check out either it would it would alert the teacher hey such and so's been sitting for five minutes um but using that technology in a in a in a way that's as a good resource to enhance their learning. Um that's something we want to we want to continue to harness the use of AI

215in the classroom to try to build the skill set of the students. Um and again I spoke to it that um exposure and analysis of non-fiction text. I think it's an area that's hurting us on on GSA and and we need to we need to enhance that. Do you um I mean your social studies, your science um sports magazines. I mean I I don't know if people buy magazines anymore just current events on the computer. Yeah. Getting but that I mean those kind of things getting them out of the novel. We just have to do this novel as a whole group is what we're trying to where we're trying to move them. Yes. And that that that becomes relevant. What you're saying becomes relevant in doing that. Um this is where I feel like my

216work really matters. Um and I feel like all my work matters, but I feel like when I show you test scores and we work really hard to try to increase them and we can't get there, that's where I get it's it's kind it's disappointing. But from day one, we set out to create an environment that students and staff want to be part of. Um, a positive environment for kids, a good experience for kids, and a positive environment for staff, and a good experience for staff. I tell people it starts with the three of us up front, Mrs. Miss Height, Mrs. Dire, and myself. We genuinely like each other. We we just genuinely like and care about each other. And I feel like that resonates throughout the building and it matters. It matters to adults, but

217I also think kids see it and sense it and it really matters to our kids. Um, and so I I am very proud of the climate and culture that we have created and sustained at South Middle School. And I get I get a little nervous about that six years in. How do you how do you keep going, Mark? How do you keep that up? Um, I don't know how to answer it, but just try to keep doing what you're doing and try to build a little bit here and build a little bit there. But the other piece of that that's really important to me is keeping them. We've we've attracted a lot of really really good teachers to our school from other parts of the county and outside this outside of this area even. um

218and keeping them there has become very important in our work and allowing us to build on some of these other things that we're talking about that we want to see improvement in testing. If I have to if I have to go over with 10 new teachers every year, 15 new teachers every year, all the expectations of the building, how this works and how that works and how that runs, it takes away from the ability to work on the things that truthfully really matter but that we lose and some of these other nuts and bolts type thing. So keeping them there um and not having to retrain all the time is is really really important and I think I feel that our commitment to that is evident in our school community beyond the building itself. I

219I do believe that in the county right now I've heard people say because we're they're trying to make these changes with Dr. sex leadership, the morale is down and you know the the uncertainty and everything. I don't mean to get you in trouble with your supervisor here, but you you're a straight shooter from your viewpoint and of course you're only looking at your staff. What do you hear? Are you speaking to specifically the changes that are happening relative to staffing, the the the uncertainty, the the the transferring and everything else? I mean, I I know he's going out of his way to go out and explain things to people. Yes, absolutely. Yes. But I I I've just people would call me back and said, "Murphy, what are you all up to?" and stuff and I

220try to answer the question, but what are you what are you hearing from your your level? I just say in my building, my people, I spoke to him about this when I left the meeting one time. I think it's important that my people hear some of this from me because I have this relationship with my people and it's important that I communicate some of what's happening to my people within his guidelines because he has he has expectations of me relative to that communication. But I I felt that it was very important that there were aspects of what they needed to know that needed to come from me. And I think that has helped because we have that relationship and we've had that relationship for a long period of time to ease some of the concerns.

221Naturally people I have concerns. Naturally people have concerns. I've conveyed my concerns to Dr. Saxs. Um but I think my communicating to them the way I communicate with them has has helped to ease those concerns. There are a couple still that are hanging there that are that are still where are we going to go? What are we going to do? Um I think it's a having an open relationship, a good relationship and some open dialogue with people and a lot of trust that happened six years ago is important today. It became very important through what what's trying to what's happening with the county with the changes that are being made. I don't know if that satisfies I mean no I just I don't I don't want you to tell me an answer. I just wanted

222to hear hear your perspective. I mean gifted at speak openly. Absolutely. gifted as a as an example. I I was fortunate enough I have I have certified gifted teachers. So I I came back with a proposal that would take care of my building. That's where I got to be. And they were very receptive to my proposal to help my building. And it also ease those those staff the staff member impacted by gifted that that eased her right back into where we need to be. I was able to do that because of what I had available and my thought process on what we could do to make it work. And I really appreciate that because you know uh when when we make proposals and and then there are concerns or challenges or problems that are brought

223to my attention coming with a possible solution to me shows extreme leadership and uh so I really appreciate it. I know there's been some things that that Mr. Barney and I we've talked about that we haven't been able to right, you know, I would say address because it may be more specific to what South needs and I have to make sure we're being equitable. But I I will say that Mr. Barney especially was gifted was a problem solver. He he solved that problem and and it helped the greater it actually helped the greater cause and the greater good for the restructuring of gifted uh across the across the district. But I would also say and and I want you to please speak freely because Mr. Murphy you know has this but I do think it's

224reasonable to say that because of change can always be hard. Absolutely. And that that does bring a certain level of angst and um uh concern because of the unknown of how it's going to look or how this is going to work. Um but it but I I will say one of the things that we've tried to do is is to reassure our principles that um as we try things that if it's not going to work then we can always go back and try to fix it together. So but I would say that there's probably angst out there still. Yeah. Well and I'll say this too. Um for years and years there's been no transfers in this county unless it's been special ed. So they're not used to that. And as we all said, change is

225hard. Doesn't mean it's bad thing. It just means that it's difficult for some people to adjust to because of the unknown. There's one topic I'm not we're not aligned on at all. And he we we've talked about what and I I know what it is. No, we trade off chess pieces. Do this, do that. Maybe not. you know, we've had this we got to have these conversations a little bit more, but I mean, not here right now. No, but you have that open door with him. He has that open door. And I think that's that's crucial, too, because just as much as you have an open door with all of your staff, he has an open door with with all all staff. Yes. But especially the principles. Yes. Who are that gate feel comfortable bridge

226between? And it's also um as a board we don't always agree with Dr. Sax either. No. that we're each other. That's how hard this I mean it has to be. We can't massage. Wait a minute. You don't try to call. No, I No, I'm I'm doing all with M Mr. Wright over here. He made eye contact. I saw that. But I also think that it's important. I know that we're we're talking about the relationships between the superintendent and our principles, but I would also say that the relationships between the principles and their supervisor, Mrs. Klepner, um you know, Mark, you know that you can count on her to triage a situation or to help you work through a situation as well. And uh um and then of course we now have Dr. Woods. And really

227that's any member of of our administrative team. I think that u one of the things I'm very proud of is that we do have a uh a heart of service and a spirit of of customer service to our administrators and to our schools. And you know, my hope is is that that that there is a that there is a um a sense that that that does exist. You know, would you would you agree? Would you do you think that that's accurate? is that if you need something from the district office is that you get the support today is a good example. I mean now I will tell you I am a little alarmed that it's 8:20 and I'm still standing here. I'm not full disclosure. I I was told to be here at 5:00 and

228when I knew I wasn't going to be able to make it by 5:00 I was absolutely I was I was in a bad spot like I can't do this to you to you. So I called you and you and said, "Hey, this is what's going on." Um what was going on was Yeah. Um, once I got through that, I said, "Well, I'm just gonna go ahead and go." Now, I didn't expect to be three hours later saying, and I'm not real happy about that, but what are we gonna do? So, yes, here I There's no place for that. There's no place to work in the morning. So, yeah. It's your lucky day. And I appreciate the latitude on the situation today. I appreciate I appreciate it. Um, and moving on. Yes. We want to get

229out of here. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. 4:30 is early and being over there at 6, it's even early. It's early, too. Um, the professional development, we work with our grade level teams. I didn't say at the beginning, the grade level teams, we meet as a leadership team, but we also meet with our grade level teams every week because I think it's important that they all get access to us every week. Um, but we also incorporate a data driven meeting in between those team level meetings, those sixth, seventh, and eighth grade meetings. And that's that's a conversation about that second planning you're talking about that we are active and involved in. Um, it's kind of out the window now what I'm getting ready to say, but um, we focused on skills that align the the skill strands

230that align with the West Virginia General Summit Assessment. Again, we did that work. Are we seeing that work translate into results on the GSA? So far, we have it more focus on it this year. I can let you know in two weeks what the results look like. um school level PD talked about the nature of the um non-fiction text and the uh the math in the classrooms. The survey we got back last week from the state. I don't know if they've seen that yet. Which one are you talking about? The school culture and climate. Yeah. Uh no, they No, they have not because I think you provide that to them. In that survey, there was an opportunity for our staff to um state their needs and and and this is reflective. Are you talking about

231the professional development needs? They well there was a there was a professional development survey by handover and then there was the West Virginia Department of Ed culture survey. Department of Ed culture survey had a stand. Okay. Yes. And the and the feedback from our staff was meeting academic standards. We need help there. closing the achievement gap which I would say we I need help there. I do need help there. I'm well you're not the only one using this to do this to do this and hope hope again that this becomes the result and not getting where I want to get with it and it's it's frustrating because you feel like your work's not not producing anything. Do you communicate amongst yourselves as principles what's working here? Do you share ideas? at a pretty good level.

232Um, we tend to get in probably more conversation in smaller pockets, not necessarily across the whole 30 two of us. Um, but yes, I would think the mil principles. Yes. But but are you use his term siloed in the Martinsburg network or do you communicate with We go beyond that. There we go. Rihanna. Thank you. Yeah. Not not just a city school conversation. City school they said. Okay. Um facility needs recently had somebody ask about handicap access. Um handicap parking and also the two steps on the end of the building where most staff comes in. There was no handrail. Um so we now we have five five parking stalls that are handicap marked in the teacher lot and we have a nice handrail. Mr. Tyson took care of that real quick for us. Nightlocks, we

233got some support from the state, from our state delegate, delegate Hornby. Um, and we raised some money and we have night locks installed throughout the building. Um, our interior door locks are the same are the same across the building now. And our camera coverage has expanded, but we need to get in pods because the pods become a problem area. Kids realize real quickly they don't have anything out there. Um, have you put in requests for that? Yeah, they they're working on it. I had to do a GFI. Oh, oh, I see. I'm sorry. Yes. Yes. Um, I did the same thing. And I don't usually if I have a maintenance issue, if I put in a work order, if it's something bigger, I request I they they're very responsive. Mr. Nason is very responsive. Um,

234and you're also in your greenhouse. So, we just got to make sure we find a place for it. We're gonna put it. Celebrations. Um, strong climate culture. that's at the top of the list. Continued growth, our staff, our retention of staff. We have good systems in place. I feel like that was a key thing when I first took over. We didn't necessarily have systems that worked. So, we had to tweak some things. Um, and we have a staff that really wants to do well, wants our students to do well, and they're very reflective in their work, and they'll they'll take the they'll take the lead on using new strategies to enhance their craft and and and try to be better. I think that's our that's our strongest component of our school with our staff, for

235sure. questions for Mr. Barnett. He's got to get up at 4:30. Remember that, Mr. [Music] Attendance, are you all part of the network that's working with the magistrate's court to give quicker access? Uh, Mr. Veter, not part of the network. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Well, there there was a pilot program of some schools that had I don't think we're involved in that. I mean, obviously our attendance worker, Miss Parks, Latoya Parks, she spends a lot of time in mag court with our folks and I think there's a little bit of disconnect there. Not with her, but maybe with the result that you get from there because I get a lot of phone calls that says, "Well, they just said Mr. Barney to call you. You'll take care of it." Why? Your kid didn't

236come to school for 80 days. How do you do? I just ask Keep that on board. It's there. It's a truth. It's there. Um, let me ask you, and I apologize in advance. I didn't um I just I didn't know that I wanted to ask this question, but um how I know that we you and I have talked through email anyway about community and schools. What do you think could strengthen community and school services for your school? Do you feel like it has met your needs or um I think I need I think I need a little more intensive work with my staff member of communities and schools from the person from the the the from the state. I think the state. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, so so who is there

237is there was a state person assigned to them? Well, there's a state person. So, the way that the state has communities and school structured is they have regional uh communities and school specialists that help provide guidance for communities and school staff. And I think that um we've seen pockets of we have we have we have some we have some that implement it really well and then we have some that have struck. And I think that um there have been some challenges um at at South and what Mr. Barney is saying is that if it were to continue at South there would probably need to be some statewide some some of that support from that regional specialist. Is that an accurate statement you think? Um so I think schools are having issues you're doing good not

238not excuse me I didn't mean to touch I just wanted to prepare them if there were some changes that were made that they understood maybe some context there. That's it. Any other questions for Mr. Barney? Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Thank you. I want to thank everyone for participating tonight. I know it's been late and we've been here three and a half hours and um um you know, once once your group's done to sit and listen to everybody else, it's been appreciated. Thank you all. Thank you. Uh and if there's no other business, can I have a motion? Well, I I just wanted Um, I got here late and I and I came out with gay counsel. Could you talk briefly about the TIS plans and the PSS plans? Um, I I

239know it's late, but I've had a number of inquiries and address that early on with us, but it's probably good for all of us to hear you. Well, if maybe it'll be okay. I I I know that we had some hearings that were in close session and I probably described that more than I did in public, but I'd be happy to go over that real quick if you don't mind. Okay. So, um the uh leadership, academic, and technology support restructure um was really part of the the phase two of of the restructuring plan, which uh redefineses how leadership and support services are delivered to our schools. Uh this expanded what what I would call uh top level leadership adjustments to address how instructional and operational support systems must adapt to the evolving needs of our

240students, our teachers, and our school communities. So one of the questions that I think that we we've asked is well, why is this necessary? Why do we need to restructure um you know tisses so to speak? Um and the one of the the primary reasons is is because um title 2 part a funds which are intended to improve teacher and principal quality through instructional coaching, professional learning and leadership development. It needs to hit all of those things um is is very important. Um, however, previously the entire title 2 budget uh of Berkeley County Schools was consumed to fund the school-based TIS positions which were not um equitably distributed across the county either. Um, these specifically these TIS roles were not um equitably distributed based upon the student needs or school size. They were not aligned

241to any formal district needs assessment for improving student uh academic outcomes. and it focused primarily on um uh technology troubleshooting and not necessarily improving teacher effectiveness within what I would call the core the core areas of reading, math, science, and social studies. uh from a content uh content standpoint. Um and it is in my opinion that this was not really a responsible use of our our federal funds especially after COVID relief funding had expired. Um not that the work that these individuals was doing in schools was not appreciated or valued. it just wasn't aligned to a u a strategic need or what I would say is with any level of of intentionality. Um and and I think that as our our schools were growing in complexity um you know our modern classrooms are far more

242complex integrating advanced technology rigorous academic expectations and and diverse student needs you know has been something that we've been doing more of. Um, schools now require what I I think um is differentiated support in both instructional practice as well as technical operations uh especially because we are onetoone. Um but we also see that we have some major academic needs to that needs to be supported and so this uh this test position was more of a a generalist um uh position that was expected to sort of do it all without much direction. Um, previously roles were also very broad and and what I would say is is potentially um unsustainable. So the former TIS roles, you know, it did evolve into these catch-all positions covering sometimes device troubleshooting, instructional coaching, professional development at times and even

243communication support with website management um push notifications to families uh from the school. Um so this lack of clarity I think created some inconsistencies uh across the school district and I think actually undermined the impact of both the instructional support and technology operations that we were trying to to provide um here at the district level. Um when we think about um this focus support this um I think when we think about focus support that the specialization allows deeper expertise and better service. uh technology staff can focus solely on tech systems and then of course if we have these academic specialist positions they can focus exclus exclusively on curriculum instruction and teacher development. Um this ensures that support is intentional um it's effective and it's responsive to our school needs. This is also based upon um

244uh information that was gleaned um um from I would say our own needs assessment from for example the uh children's literacy initiative recommendations the the curriculum audit that they uh provided for us which involve feedback from teachers administrators ecats uh students and then of course um uh their own observations of classroom instruction um that Berkeley County schools needs targeted professional development for teachers and ECATs, stronger instructional coaching to close gaps in literacy and content rigor and systemic structures that offer job embedded professional development and targeted support uh classroom level support. Um the new academic specialist model that um we intend to implement um directly answers the recommendations from the children's literacy initiative um audit recommendations. In addition, there was the superintendent stakeholder survey uh that was uh that was uh distributed. Um and that survey

245revealed that only 39% of our staff believe that the current professional development was of high quality and only 24% felt that PD days met their actual instructional needs. Teachers and administrators overwhelmingly called uh for better coaching, ongoing uh development, and real-time support in our classrooms. And again this restructured is directly responsive to that feedback. So under this restructure um you know more specifically um this is what we are proposing is instead of the TIS position we will move to um two separate very uh intentional positions. The first are technology support specialists and in that role uh they'll focus solely on device management, troubleshooting and operational logistics within our schools. And uh for the question of how are they going to be deployed? Um each high school will have a dedicated TSS person uh for that

246high school. We will also deploy one TSS between every two middle schools. And um under this uh initial draft proposal that an individual that is assigned two schools will alternate days of service. However um in working with those those two school administrations and our technology department um if there is a better fit for that schedule. So if it's um you know each day they're split between two sites um we're we will accommodate that. Uh but one of the things that is expected is that there are defined times when they will be at the schools. So school staff know when they they should be expected. Um also one TSS shared between every two intermediate schools again alternating days or working out with the administration shared time within the the each day each individual day. Our primary

247school structure is not changing. Currently they have SISOPS which are system support uh operational specialists. I'm not not sure exact the exact acronym but they have CISOP contracts for teachers in the school to bid on. Um so these are teacher leaders that have uh technology skill but we can also provide professional development to them and they handle firstline device support in those schools. Um because that works well for the primary schools. Uh one of the concerns that had been brought up uh from this restructuring plan when shared with schools and uh the technology integration specialists themselves is what about when uh for the for the positions where the TSS is shared at the middle school and intermediate school. If the TSS is out of the building and uh there is login information on a device

248or a device is causing problems and they need that support what what can they do? Um so in order to address that um I'm also proposing that we provide um for each middle school and each intermediate school one SISOP stipen per grade level. So, um the when this when the uh TSS may not be there, then the staff knows that this this other person within the grade level that they work in is also assist with appropriate training to be able to help triage or or to address uh that device need until the TSS could could actually come in. Um I think that this plan builds redundancy for technical support when the TSS staff are off of site. Uh the academic specialist position is a role that is focused on instructional coaching, curriculum support and the

249integration of research-based instructional strategies. Um these folks will be deployed uh by um programmatic level. So elementary schools for example um I I'm sorry my notes are a little bit uh wonky here. um elementary at the elementary level, we will have two ELA and social two ELAsocial studies academic specialists and two math science academic specialists that will report directly to the executive director of elementary schools. And we will also have one ECAT academic specialist because now we have ECATs in the preK, kindergarten, first, second, and third grade level. So in order to support their professional development and their coaching and their modeling, we would have a specialist designed to support those uh those folks as well. It's very important to point out that these individuals will have defined times when they when they have assigned

250schools. So they they will be assigned a school. They will be at those schools on a regular schedule. Uh but they will be deployed based upon um our our tiered system of support for schools. So our schools that require the most attention, they will serve they will be there more times than the schools that are doing really really well. They will still have touch points there and and be able to support those schools on uh issues that they may require or professional development that they may request or what have you. Um, at the secondary level, we will have two ELA, two social, I'm sorry, two ELA and social studies academic specialists, and two math and science academic specialists, uh, supporting again our middle schools and our high schools. And we will also have one unified

251arts academic specialist that um will focus on making sure that the professional development uh the support for our unified arts programs that's music, art, PE, um STEM, STEM programming, that those uh that those teachers also have high quality professional development support from the district level as well. Um, again, you know, to to sort of uh provide some takeaways of this restructuring plan. This restructure restores what I think is is needed for our title 2 compliance, ensuring our federal funds are used as intended to improve teacher and leadership leader quality. Um, the previous TIS model just quite frankly just was not sustainable or equitable across our county. Uh, and I don't think under that structure, again, it's not the not the people. The people I think um do a fantastic job um in and supporting the

252work of their individual schools. They were assigned. However, um it never met it did not meet the the evolving needs of our schools and our school district. U these focused roles, the TSS role and the academic specialist role ensure schools get deeper uh more effective support. Um and and I think that that's an important takeaway. These changes directly implement the findings of the children's leaders literacy initiative recommendations that were provided as well as our superintendent stakeholder survey. Um and again I think that the the important thing here is that we're shifting from a a broad uh broad support to targeted aligned and needs-based service for every school and every classroom in our school district. Um, and so in summary, this restructuring is about clarity. It's about accountability and serving students more effectively. We're directly aligning

253people, resources, and our funding to where they have the greatest impact. And that's right at the point of teaching and learning. So, I hope that's uh helpful. I hope the people will tune in and listen to that. Um, one thing I I noticed that the TIS people have 210day contracts. Will that be continued in the TSS approach? The TSS's will actually have 240day contracts is is is what we're proposing because of all of the extra support that they have to be able to do with devices and device management over the summer months. Um um and and uh being able to support schools and their infrastructure needs. So the TSS position will actually be posted at 240 days. How many of them will there be? Um so the there will be um so there's there'll be

254four at the high school, three at the middle school, three at the intermediate school. Uh so that's 10, but there are already some there's also some TSS's that are already in the system. So I don't know exactly how many how many there will be in totality, but we will be adding 10 positions. Okay. Based upon the restructure. I'm sorry. I think there's two now. I think that may that may be correct. I can get that information for you to be cl to to clarify, but I know that we already have some in place, but we're adding 10 10 more in order to address the need. So, um the tisses are gone. The TIS title, the TIS title is gone. Yes, we will. Um, you know, one of the things that we did not restructure is

255that we will still have a county level uh technology implementation specialist that will help still provide professional development around technology integration, but it's more district-wide and they will also help support the role of the academic specialists and making sure that if there is new evolving technology that they are kept a breast of it so that it's a um it's a train the trainer model, if you will, that those academic specialists will continue to get uh uh refreshed uh guidance and support from the county based tests. Um but we will not have any schoolbased testes. So how many tests did we have? Um I I don't know the answer to that right off the um we would have we could I'm just like 17 or more. I know that the ones at the middle school and

256high school were I'm sorry, the middle school and intermediate schools um were solely funded out of title two. I think that the high school TSS's which they they already have. Uh oh, I'm sorry you're asking about test. I'm sorry. But we didn't have any any at the at the high school level. So, no, I just was I thought there was like 17 tiss I just wondered um there are they all going to be absorbed. I mean, they'll have to bid because there's a contract change and some of them won't want to be 240, but the academics tonight's agenda will take another job. What? Excuse me. There was some on tonight's agenda. Personality approved. Yeah. Taking another job. Exactly. Um the academic specialists um will there be um academic specialists there will be um see four

257five there'll be 10 and to answer your question not all TIS's will be qualified for the academic specialist. Yeah. Um I I I think that the TSS TSS job description may be broad enough that um there will be the possibility there. I don't I can't speak to every single situation. But I do know for example, one of the things when I when I spoke to the TIS's uh that they had brought up as a concern when we were talking about the academic specialists is that there was a clear, you know, support for core ELA, math, science, social studies, but they were concerned about unified arts. And I thought that was a very important component that we need to make sure we're supporting as well. So, and we have some Tisses that are, you know, they're

258they they've taught PE or they taught music or they taught art that would not have been able to that are do very good instructional coaching, but they weren't going to be able to fit into the requirements of an ELA math coach, but they but they absolutely would be qualified for the unified arts academic specialist also. And u Dr. schools. When will those positions be posted? Once the budget's approved after May 19th. Okay. And so they'll have clear job descriptions. Um the the TSS people and the academic specials have clear job descriptions. So when they go into those as soon as the budgets approved, we hope to put them out there and and post them to try to get people in those positions. And because obviously, you know, once you go into the trans once you're

259on transfer, every time you've been on a job, that opens up another position. We want to be able to get people in the the position they want to be in and the position that we need them in in a timely manner so that the one once all that changes occur, any new people that are trying to get in, we can get them into. So now the TSS uh let me ask this one quick. The TSS positions will be under the um direction of technology. Technology. The academic specialists will be under the direction of who? The executive directors of elementary or the executive directors of uh secondary. Okay. I just want to be sure. Yeah. And I don't know if people heard what you said back there. When will these jobs be posted? I mean the

260actual after the when the board when the board the budget is approved by the board on May 18th. May 18th. Sure. Right after 19th or right after they'll probably be right. Is it fair to say the Is it fair to say the 19th or it's fair to say the 19th? The meetings the 19th. The meetings the 19th will be on the 20th. The 20th of May. Yeah. Okay. One other concern I have that I thought about um I I am getting feedback that people were under a lot of stress and everything and Well, we all got those. Yeah, we're all getting that. It it's important that the personnel division at the board office or however this interview process and selection process goes is not cold. We we have a lot of people under pressure and

261we need to help them find the place as as the policy said their their employment is to be terminated and then and considered transfer with subsequent reassignment and we need to try not to get shortteered or or whatever. We need to make them as comfortable as possible in this process. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think we want to make sure that um the same uh the same strategy of being able to meet with each individual person that was affected because they were going to go on transfer or rift, we want to make sure that we work with them um on where they're going to go and what those what their options are. Um, now because of the the enormity of of what we have, some of those might have to be through the phone or

262what have you, but we we do want to make a uh every attempt to have a personal touch point with each affected employee. Absolutely. I guess I guess I have a question just about the the ops in the school. So, if I'm a sixth grade teacher, I'm a SIL, how and I'm teaching a math class, how then am I going to stop what I'm doing to try to help another teacher? But, but what I'm saying, but before they had a tip or somebody else that would do that? No, we always had sis ops. before we had tissues that they're used to that structure. But what to answer your question, they they would have to they would have to do it like between a break or even on their planning or something like that because they

263would be getting a supplement for it or it could be something that they would do either before school starts or after school or so they would again it would it would try to meet their schedule obviously um when the TSS is not there. I mean, there's just certain times when if you're having a if you're in the middle of class and you're teaching and something's not working, um, you may not get the response immediately, but but many of our schools don't have that structure in place and that was where the equitability of the TSS was sort of um, faltering. Um, so I think that we've tried to build in some redundancy so that there is as much triage support when there is an issue as possible. Um but to um and of course I would

264always say that you know best practices is that don't you know always have a backup plan you know something doesn't happen teachers pivot they pivot very quickly. But I get your question and it's and it's a and it's an important question because they're you're right. I mean these are teachers that are teaching and so they can't just stop teaching your class to go help a technology um issue. But but but there's other things that even the school can do to help uh with that that individual schedule and to create some time so that there are some additional support opportunities in place because even the TISA some schools elementary schools only have that tissa half a day once a week and so what do they do the other four and a half days or one day

265a week? Um, so it's not like they were there every day all day. These people are getting tired. So, can I have a motion to adjourn? Well, I I just want to compliment the budget process one year ago. You all remember how we initiated things, got got it passed. It was so much smoother. Yes, this year was great. Mr. bucks and your your process. It was so much nicer than last year. It was a pretty stressful process. We we we accomplish it, but but we we did it, but it was it wasn't as digest it and talk it out. Yes. Yes. I had a transitional thing for the board members. I think you get a copy from me. Thank you. Thank you for that. I I also want to thank the board because um you

266know each each of you all worked really hard in and not only communicating with me but uh your your um your goals and you know uh being able for each of you all have an open door policy so when I have a question or a concern or hey let's talk about this very very much appreciate it. So I appreciate your all's leadership through this process as well. Is it possible since the transit hearings are finished that we can have those coffees that we had last night that we had to give to him the uh the r the explanations? Yeah, absolutely. We don't have them and the in the organizational structure. Yeah, absolutely. I will I will get that for you um Monday. Well, I can do it Monday. Yeah, absolutely. Or I can email them

267to you. Yeah, either way. I've got the paper coming. I'll give you I'll give you the structure. I'd like to create a copy because uh I don't want to copy it on I don't have any. Okay. Yep. Be happy to I to I'm sorry. [Music] Second say we will also post on the website as well. So people It has snuck over my chair.