001good evening welcome to the work session of The Rose Tree Media School Board um I'd like to start by uh just mentioning that last week and our budget work session um there was an oversight where uh maybe someone or someone wasn't able to get in and we we do apologize for that it is fortunate that all of our meetings are live streamed um they are recorded and put on our YouTube channel so everyone has access to them um live as well with the live stream um and so we do want to uh just put that out there um that that was a an oversight on our part um and we want to start this meeting by uh seeing if there are any questions about the budget um I know there were two people here if
002someone wasn't here uh has a question we can do that or we can take a couple of questions from the audience right now yes I want to thank Dr Scott for getting me that information about the legal fees broken out of the professional and Technical Services what I would like to ask Dr Scott at the next budget meeting I would like to see how that is compares to the 2023 legal budget yeah but I do want to thank you and acknowledge that and I think I thank you you're welcome thank you okay I think we're good um let's move on to finance and operations work session the chairs thank you okay um just turning it over to Ryan baldino and Dennis [Music] the additional information good evening um good evening we had uh we had
003a bit opening on March 2nd for the tennis court resurfacing project uh budget was 300 000 and the low bid which included the alternates was 348 200. so we're a bit over on the base a bit basement with 300 and without the alternates we would have been at 319 but we did add the tennis course because they I mean it's giving me the fencing because they are in pretty bad shape questions so recommend award to SB Conrad at the legislative meeting thank God rest of the atoms if there were no questions on the change orders we'll just move right to discussions about the modular platforms right so over at Glenwood sorry sorry all right so over at Glenwood we are proposing uh to set up the site for six modulars in the back um they
004will have bathrooms in restrooms inside the each classroom so we will be hooking up to the you see which ejector that is in the backs there it will bring Water and Electric out of the bottom uh garage everything will be encased in stone for um a stone bed for um our storm water management um currently the size of the school right now is it 465. yeah 465 it's five over what we projected and we're supposed to increase each year so this year we're going to put two mods next year we're going to put two mods five five six sorry yeah um and then the third year we'll have the sixth second set third set of two classrooms for a total of six classrooms yes 22-23 and then the summer 23 we're gonna put the first
005two mods then 23 24 the summer of 24 we're gonna put two more mods attach them and then 24 25 we're going to attach the last set to all of them there will be a canopy and a walkway that'll take them to a card access door at the bottom lower level of Glenwood thank you for instance what would it be like if aren't going to be in there or some other activities right now it's looking like their classroom however when we meet with their principals that will be as to their discretion as to how they want to use that space um there's some different options and benefits to either so um you know we know we need them and then as we meet with the principles they can work out those daily need to be
006done to the school um the common areas in order to accommodations like cafeteria Library gym s so when we have the meeting with the principals we will have to make adjustments as to to the schedules for for eating in London um so that would be the only real change um the other spaces will be fine yes let me jump in so the first things we're going to try to General are okay there's several things you should do within the building um yes we need a bigger kitchen at Glenwood right we need a bigger cafeteria we know that and we're sort of landlocked where we are with that so the first steps we have to do is take a look at the schedule we need to schedule more monetary we're also looking at the different ways
007of getting young kids to do lines faster we're also have to look at art on a cart music on a cart all of these things can help mitigate um large schools so we'll be looking at all of those things in lieu of building a bigger kitchen so you won't be able to get that done by myself Wendy's money so could you come back with a patient piece of us about what those modifications are to the schedule to the classrooms Etc just so that we have a real understanding of what the impact is yeah no more questions can I ask a question sure by the way um um so well I understand where we have all these mods because of enrollment projections um how will we you know will Transportation be an issue or are we
008going to have the adequate number of buses as well to get all these students to school Yeah we actually just had our um preliminary meeting today and we're Gathering numbers of those students and one of the um I brought up that point today and one concern we have we're having enough drivers for the buses but that aside potentially yes we will need more buses I was told today that the buses are very crowded already as we speak so most likely we will need um new buses we are also I had a meeting last week with some folks in the transportation department and we need to look into with Tom hallberg's support ways to advertise and attract bus drivers is it possible that redistricting would come into play for some students it's on the table we're
009looking at projections right now that was another number that I asked for today is how many kids value specifications um new developments are coming in and you know it's really tricky trying to get this number these numbers accurate numbers as you know because we're getting a lot of new families into the borough right so they're coming from all over and different spots so um it's a moving Target but yes redistricting will be on the table it's obviously you know an option right now but we haven't we haven't discussed that just yet because we know at some point we will need to but we would like to do it once Ron just another thing that you may want to mention um we do have an estimate there's a um I want to just mention that real
010quick while wiring all right so the preliminary numbers that are coming in for delivery and installation and uh the general conditions is going to be uh around 87 000. building and deck foundations is twenty one thousand the aluminum decks ramps and steps um and those ramps and steps will be moved which each time I have mods delivered it'll get moved and free to use but the concrete walkways and the canopies will remain for the kids um and that's uh 92 000 the concrete walkway is 34 800. um then I just got these numbers in the temporary roadway for delivery it's going to be 12 500. the stone PAD as it stands right now but we have to see when we come out of the Conservation District that they make any changes uh is eleven thousand
011dollars the plumbing connections uh both Water and Sewer is thirty eight thousand and the tear down and return delivery is ninety thousand I do not have electric yet I'm that's due into me next week um so the preliminary including the uh the 30 the 36 months operating lease is at 528 thousand dollars yes how much noise this is one time the the the beginning of the lease will be a lot less because we're only going to have two of the mods and then next year it'll be more and then that third year we'll be at the the 3 200 a month for all all of the mods but we're going to start off with just having the that we that's why we're doing it this way we need the two classrooms we only want to
012pay for two classrooms all the road work all the other stuff that's that's the one time the only time we're gonna have to pay is when we take it all back out again and make a grass so that was my my next for so many reasons but we're looking at get more stuff we're taking them out so at the end of three years if we are you still have to then keep playing with more that I mean it's a gift to keep on giving in that respect yeah yes the 3200 a month is that of course except for six okay okay so we're we're not having the six delivered we're only going to have the two projects yes thank you great jacket and laid out with all these so we're not all writing down this
013cause and everything and every year but to have a whole presentation on it if possible I think one other question in relation to the month if there is something kind of like a warranty or whatnot on them right something were to happen can we pay for any damage or any issues that they might have or is that something that they are the modular owners cover how does that work the repairs anything like on the HVAC system they cover for the repairs so they'll come out they change the filters they check the unit they PM the unit uh for as long as we have the lease so we haven't passed the three years we go into year four or five it'll continue and they'll still be responsible for roof leaks or anything of that nature we're
014responsible for anything for electrical powering going to it the water going to it um the sewer underground sewer and then um they're responsible for the roofing insurance is there more insurance that we need for this does that happen um yes so when we would do our annual insurance we would have to add additional lease space and then we give we normally give them like the dimensions and all that and they added into our current policy move on if there were not any other questions on the other agenda items we'll just go to Mr Sandy for a brief technical projects okay I think as you can see we're well into our way and bidding and getting contracts awarded we have two more bids coming in one is comes in tomorrow our general construction package March 10th
015and we have our mechanical electrical Plumbing package coming in on March 16th and since they are after this meeting I'm asking the board to consider those for approval at your legislative meeting I will have the big calculations done as quickly as possible and get them to you okay um we also have another bid opening in April and this relates to the overcrowding but we have a bid opening on April 6th to convert one class one science classroom in Glenwood and rostie Elementary into a classroom so it'll be two more classrooms you'll have and that'll be done this summer science labs correct yes standard classroom right and then we have two more projects that have to be scheduled for bidding we have our emergency generator which I told you before is it going to happen until
016summer of 2024 anyway and our transportation lighting bid package would have to go out and they'll be scheduled for the next month we'll have those scheduled okay yes I understand but that's for two more classes so you're retrofitting so you need two more classes that we need and then we also need immediately two additional modulars right yes correct yes that's correct um just let me clarify we will still be doing science labs they will just not be done in a science lab the labs and experiments will be done in the classroom and um no because um right now the classroom teacher will take their class walk their class down to the science lab and do science their science lessons in the lab only the experiments the lessons themselves are done in the classroom so they
017would just be done in the in the science lab now they will just be done in the classroom so it's not as if they are there's one science teacher rotating around the building on a card right all right are there a question and just to follow up with the bid opening tomorrow once we get the bid tabulation I'm not sure if you can have them by end of the day we'll just definitely have better today and then I'll send them out so that everybody hold on we skip past it because there's no cost to us but the girls softball team picked up the new scoreboard I love how these guys get together and they keep track of Battlefield make it by certain things are there any other questions that looks like we're good thank you
018all right so uh next up is education and wellness um I think we're going to start with Dr Garner the director of student services have one item for consent agendas so if there's any questions let me know looks like we're good um and so we'll move on um what the curriculum and instruction we have a presentation a couple of presentations we actually have one we put together okay Mr Harrison if you want to get started hello everyone I feel like I was just here last month okay well I'm here to talk to you about um something I've been finding very exciting this as you can tell I get excited about a lot of things right so last month I was excited about um restorative practices the month before that was cameras now I'm excited about
019the I'm excited about how we are working with our community Through The rtmsd Advisory Council all right so that's what I want to talk to you about as brief as I can um The Advisory Council you've probably heard of it we're meeting every month um but and I'll get into the details of our meetings but I just wanted to give a little background as to why we're having this Council if you recall last year we had a couple different events in our district the first one was we had a dignity Workshop where we invited the community in and we facilitated workshops with our community um facilitated by our teachers all about what we're doing with dignity after that we in the spring we held some Community meetings um with a variety of different uh parents
020and family members to find out what their thoughts were about how we're doing things in our schools so from there we've received a lot of feedback and from that feedback we we figured you know what we need to hear more voices in our community so that's how we got to the advisory Council right so what I did um I sent out invitations to probably over 60 parents all the parents who participated in those two events and I invited them to be part of the advisory Council okay and that's that was over the summer um and anyone who demonstrated an interest in this work that we're doing with educational Equity was invited to join and I guess the next slide I can't see what's happening behind me um the next slide will tell you about the
021first meeting that we had and out of all those people who I invited we had 29 parents commit to joining The Advisory Council 10 students um 16 teachers and 11 administrators so just to get some clarity about the teachers and administrators as you know we have a district Equity team um and we have building Equity teams at each School so this advisory Council was a focus for our district Equity team this year um so in lieu of having several meetings about with our district Equity team we we focus on participation advisory Council okay so that's how that worked so in the first meeting we had 29 parents 10 students 16 teachers 11 administrators and the whole goal was let's get together and set some agreements up on how we're going to participate in these meetings
022um you know some of the topics could be controversial as you know you know some people have different opinions about things and that's quite all right we want to hear from every single person in our community and it's okay to have different opinions but the purpose of the first meeting was to get everyone together and agree on how we're going to respect each other and honor the Dignity of everybody in these rooms when we're having these meetings okay so we got some help from the dciu to help facilitate that we had a third party come in so there was no I guess perception that we were trying to do things a certain way um and that worked out really well and if you think about what we did when I talked about last week or
023last month about our sort of practices we utilized circles um for this first meeting and it went really well went really well and we have agreements and the next slide are the agreements I'm not going to go through all these agreements okay but there's a ton of agreements that we all the adults all the kids the teachers everyone in that room agree that this is how we're going to participate in our meetings Okay so that was the first meeting so that got us underway meeting number two happened um in October and this was the meeting where we talked about our educational Equity policy and we had 14 parents seven teachers four students and three administrators attend the meeting and we basically collaborated with everyone in the room uh we had small group sessions where people
024took a look at a draft policy and they they provided feedback they gave us suggestions they told us to take this out put this in and after that meeting we took all that feedback and we actually sat in this room and we went through it all and we created a policy we created the policy based on the the feedback from our community from our students for a faculty of staff um and thank you because in January you approved that policy and that gives us the framework for how we're moving forward with educational Equity so thank you for that um I that's a big deal I don't know if everyone realizes how big of a deal that is that as a school district we created together and approved an educational Equity policy there's not too many
025school districts in our area who have an educational Equity policy and I believe the success of this little project was a result of collaboration so thank you for that so that was our that was our second meeting um third meeting happened to turn into two meetings because it was a it was really powerful um it was about establishing Clarity and navigating gender identity and expression in our schools um so the first meeting was on November 1st we had nine parents six teachers four students for administrators um started off the meeting with reviewing some information about definitions about gender um and then we basically got into a circle and we we had a couple parents there who have had kids come through our school district who were transgender and they they talked to us about their
026experience it was really powerful um so you can just imagine that there are people in that Circle of all different beliefs um and it was just really powerful to hear a parent tell their story because there was there was a human being talking about what happened to their family in our district and it was by the way it was a positive experience okay it was a very positive experience so we didn't get a chance to finish and everyone wanted them to to finish right so we met again um and at that second meeting we had six parents four teachers four students and four administrators and basically we talked again um and here are some of the outcomes that we we um learned from this meeting and we want to make sure that we're ensuring State
027spaces for kids through teacher relationships and clubs right we talked a lot about how our kids where the safe spaces at in our schools um curriculum some of the suggestions were minimize category categorizing genders and binary comparisons um a big topic was the elementary um the elementary instruction of the maturation like the puberty video I don't know if you guys are all familiar with that right so really solid conversation about that um watch the videos it was very interesting right we have great feedback um and we're going to do some we're going to make some changes with that as a matter of fact I met this morning with our principal our elementary school principals and we have a plan in place and how we're going to include all the stakeholders in um making some changes
028with the video and how we're doing that all right so that was a big topic of discussion during those meetings um so that was meeting number three establishing Clarity and navigating gender identity expression in schools I want to pause are there any questions up to this point about any of our meetings one question I have um and I know it can be difficult but you start off wanting sexy reaching out to 60.99 showed up and every meetings with fewer and fewer yes and that can happen totally understandable in many ways but one of the thoughts about continuing how to get more involvement um okay good question and I I failed to mention this so after everyone signed up we wanted to have I guess a certain number of people at each meeting we couldn't have
02960 people at each meeting to be productive right so I asked people give me their top three topics right so then we we actually narrowed down the topics and we made the groups purposely smaller right so we went from like having 29 parents and you can see some of the numbers there uh the meeting in December you'll see coming up was a very lightly attended meeting right there weren't there were supposed to be more people there but some people didn't show up um same with most of these meetings like last minute people have things to do they get sick so it was purposeful to have smaller groups but yes December wasn't it could have been bigger right so but that's why there's numbers we listed all the topics ahead of time so that people could
030choose which topics that we were expecting smallages yes the first one was the large one it says the rules yeah that helps to know that it was somewhere purposefully designed oh yeah not you know 29 people can be illegally that was big conversations I just wanted to make sure that it was not from any unintentional lack of including people from our communities that we have that yeah some people were more interested in other topics than some topics than others um so that's why you see those numbers like that that's a good question um you know how did more people get involved so for this year um because of the the nature of the conversations and the concerns about people not respecting each other um we require that if you want to participate you had to
031go to that first meeting and understand the agreements okay um and then all the meetings thereafter were people who attended that meeting and they were provided with you know the options of which means they want to go to there are some parents who attend all of them there are some parents who are just going to one or two um but it's open for whoever for the people who initially came on that first meeting because they understand what the Agreements are um you know do we need to do that next year if we decide to do this Maybe not maybe we can open it up um we have to consider that but I worry that if if you weren't involved in that first meeting and you didn't like get to meet the people and it's different
032right for you to go in into these meetings so I'm wondering about well first of all thank you for um going through this and having the experience of parents telling stories to each other I think that's a really important feature and I'm wondering if there's a way to get those those exact stories but have that kind of Storytelling more widely exposed to parents and other stakeholders in the districts and that so that everybody has a chance to experience it even if it's not quite as intense as it would be in a small group like that I'm thinking of the used truth survey where the parents fill it out but there isn't anything tying the parents experience to the answers you know that's true you know it's just numbers so is there some anything you're considering
033around getting stories out better um no but I will um we we still have a lot of debriefing to do at the end of this year to talk about what our plans are going to be for next year and I I know Bill and Chris you may feel differently or you may feel the same but when you when you hear these stories it impacts you no matter what your beliefs are right and it really helps you understand um how a person experiences our schools based on their context so yes you know if there's a way for us to develop programming that will allow people to come and participate in those types of meetings I would love to do that and that's what that's what this was right and that's what the meetings were last year
034they're in stores so what comes back to these groups with the educational equity and created this policy which you're right is a huge accomplishment um and is there more to do on that front with that cluster group and more so I'm wondering what the transgender group are they going to tackle the transgender policy and see if we need updates there do we look at gender inclusive restrooms in our schools what what's next yeah so all those all those topics were discussed well the transgender policy was not discussed that wasn't brought up at all but we did have conversations about bathrooms um and our schools have bathrooms so they have gender neutral classes you know um and the people were appreciative of that who returned to the meeting so they were part of the discussion um
035and like we these are the notes this is a general overview of what was discussed um but the biggest takeaway from that meeting was from the elementary school parents who wanted to talk about the maturation video and how we're presenting that so the next next steps are to continue to um analyze and then respond right so we'll look at our youth truth data which we are having more conversations around belonging and then we'll have to look at this data and information and then see where there's follow-up there's certainly the stories are great the discussion is great but then there has to be some sort of action with that yeah so that's what we're you know that's what we're getting to so I think we'll let route continue with the presentation we can talk about some
036of those actions that are occurring and that will continue to occur thank you okay so um that was comparison yeah it keeps on going off thank you uh the next meeting was the review of the ELA curriculum correct is that right okay that just happened last month um during that presentation we had a teacher from each academic level each School level uh present an overview of what is happening um in the English language arts at the different levels um you can see the names of Rachel pensley Alexa says off and kiji wolf we have five parents five teachers six students and seven administrators attend um and if you go to the next slide they started off with telling us about an overview of what is happening at the schools and then we opened it up
037and we asked everyone who was in attendance for feedback questions um and basically when you take a look at the questions that were asked in elementary um it wasn't a very large discussion about elementary uh questions focused on the reading programs there's a parent who asked about um what's the name of the uh the program that we use readers Workshop but who is Lucy coffins now there's a question about Lucy Calkins um so they were these are the questions that were asked there around Elementary level in Middle School questions focused on how or if students or input is considered for book selections and programs used in classes so again those two topics Elementary Middle School weren't really um there weren't too many hard-hitting questions but when we got to the high school the questions got
038a little bit uh I guess more I'm not going to say intense but they're really good questions we had a really great discussion and feedback from from our students and our parents so much of the discussion was around the high school as high school students were present you know some of the questions asked um were like you know why why so much Shakespeare you know why we teach this one Shakespeare um how are our books selected have we collaborated with our schools to talk about their collections right so these are all questions that you know we need to answer and they were answered at the meeting um and I'm going to get to what we're doing now after that in a second but student feedback here's something that's really interesting the students talked about a
039typical day um and they mentioned that some of the some of the books that they're reading um are kind of like negative right it's a lot of negative in the books and one student point out like you know they were they were learning something in Western Civ about like torture devices or something that happened like during the Inquisition period all right and then they would go to the next class and learn about like slavery and things like that so um never thought about that you know what what's a typical day of a student look like well I mean some of them let us know that you know sometimes it was very hard going like from negative thing to a negative thing so that was really interesting and that feedback was really was really helpful for
040us I'm really helpful for the high school folks who were there um talking about it also talked about like what how are we determining um how are we including books with diverse Characters themes and authors in our curriculum so these were the questions that were highlighted at the high school and much of our discussion took place around High School questions okay so what I'm happy to report is um the next day the day after it was the next day we met as administrators and then the high school team met and they talked about the feedback that was given about the English language arts program at the high school um so there was some work previously done at the high school a couple years ago looking at tools to audit our curriculum and we're going to
041revisit that to see how we're doing when it comes to the diversity of our books and our authors and what's in our curriculum and then there was a dvcee workshop it was just uncanny how this whole thing timed out because this Workshop occurred um just like a few days after uh our meeting and it was promoting belonging through literacy literacy instruction um with Erica leak who was a presenter and that was through the dvce we had some teachers participate in that and next Tuesday we have about 14 teachers signed up to see it again and it's going to happen um Tuesday five to seven and basically we were able to record that session so teachers are going to watch the recording and then we're going to sit down for two hours and discuss action planning
042like how how does this impact us how are we going to move forward now that we have this information and part of the information that that was um taught in that Workshop they provided a tool you know they provided a tool to see to help us um audit our curriculum right and that's a bigger picture issue too um and you know as we move forward with working our curriculum and using ubd uh formula to do that we're going to incorporate a tool in there to make sure that we're we're looking at everything to an equity lens especially our curriculum and that's what Dr congrat and Mrs Constantine is working along with Bill okay yes sir so a couple of questions that came from the kids were how do I make my life easier um no
043Shakespeare later reads that's our responses Administration for kids funding easier work and we're taking a little more feedback from kids how do we respond to that I don't know if they were saying they wanted easier work um I think the question was that the question actually came from yeah so that question about Shakespeare after he came from a parent right um and then what the students were talking about was the emotional thank you for clarifying that yeah yeah and I think a couple things that I took from that particular session um first of all the conversation did take a turn that we didn't expect we didn't expect kids to talk about learning about traumatic events over and over again throughout the day and it's sort of that takes on them by the end of the
044day I was really impressed with how articulate our students were at expressing that they gave very specific details so it was um phenomenal feedback um the other thing I was really also pleased with was the fact that our teachers are looking at their curriculum for Windows and mirrors they're using a language of equity that we weren't using probably a few years ago this is next level when we get to the student voice and we're really talking about relevant text relevant curriculum not necessarily easier you still want to ask kids to think critically creatively all that good stuff but um again through more relevant um text based on student voice and then responses okay that's okay um so I know that students said that some of this material was very heavy but do we have any
045feedback from students who have lived experiences as a group about whom that material might um you know effect specific teachers have that feedback for particular topics for instance we read To Kill a Mockingbird in ninth grade it's been part of the curriculum and our teachers have surveyed students the past several years because it's something that we talked about very specifically for the past several years and and we looked at we've asked the teachers to share survey results with us and we've had discussions on that and students say they want to read it of specific groups which I was a little bit surprised about what they've done though is a partnered um To Kill a Mockingbird with just Mercy so their partner texts so um they compare themes of those two books so I thought that
046was interesting but that is something that um again it's there's some philosophical thing but we're really letting student voice lead us through that and um so that's you know that's kind of how we landed so we don't have so we have done that with specific books and specific groups of kids um globally we don't have it ask that question but it is specific to particular topics and and text because my concern is that I mean overall we have um we you know the diversity in our schools is maybe not as expansive in as some other schools and that if we're letting kind of that group the entire group determine what some of those materials might be then it excludes you know the opportunity for for other students to be to feel seen and heard and
047she'll understood yeah that's the you know that's the theme of Windows and mirrors that we strive for and quite honestly this is one of those things that's ongoing and you know I don't know if it's you know our work is really tricky to get it right every time and you might have it right this year then the following year you have a different group of kids and then it doesn't feel right to that group so it's something that we have to constantly examine that's why I was very proud of um the group of teachers with To Kill a Mockingbird that they're so thoughtful and intentional each year about the group of students that are in front of them thank you okay um yeah so my question about the Shakespeare issue um I kind of chuckled
048to myself because you know you know I've heard of Shakespeare every year and I don't think it's that um there's an inherent problem with Shakespeare so I wanted to kind of follow up with it is it you know the language is extraordinarily dense and extreme extremely difficult to really read through but you know I understand that some of the themes and the lessons are Thailand yes and I think I guess the question is did the parents or the students have an issue with um the dense language and how difficult it is to weed through the dense language or is it if their students are looking for potentially more contemporary literature that may have those same themes or or lessons so to speak yes they are looking for more contemporary texts with those same themes okay
049kill our Shakespeare okay thank you there's um the final slide shows the rest of our scheduled meetings we actually have one next week on March 15th we'll be reviewing our professional training topics related to educational Equity dignity and belonging Wednesday May 17th we'll talk about the youth truth survey results and then we'll have a conclusion um on June 14th and we'll talk about how things went and then what our next steps are going to be as a council so thank you for the opportunity of putting this group together and supporting it along the way and again just to recap we have some things and tangible things that have come out of this besides just to connect connection with each other the educational Equity policy was developed and passed we are revising the way in which
050we present the maturation video and we're changing the resources we use and updating that as well and we're updating and reviewing our language foreign things are coming out of it so we should be proud thank you thank you and everyone in the administration for all the work on this okay so I guess State assessment updates picking Rod couldn't be with us tonight so um we're just gonna give you a little um highlight here at the end um date tempting season is upon us so we just wanted to share those dates with you um English language arts there's April dates 25th through the 28th we are skipping at the elementary school take your child to work day so we are skipping that so that they can go to their um parents profession that day um and
051then come back and finish up so math then is in early May um followed by science right after May important um our Keystone exams also are coming up um you can see springton Lake for those students who are still in Algebra 1 will be in late May and our high school will start the 15th um in 10th grade our biology and literature will be in May 15th through the 19th um just some communication um we will be out of the CI office sending an April communication out to parents um obviously talk about the assessments the schedule ways to help students um and also those procedures to opt out um which are obviously to contact UM Dr penra his information will be in that letter um to schedule a time to come in and review the
052assessments and then obviously there is a signature from guardians and parents I'm also on the live stream and I apologize live stream I forgot my own were there any questions about this season again sure the Keystone exam sort of what is the status of those exams like you remember years and years ago I mean people were going crazy about them right the that they met so much in terms of whether somebody would graduate and all that and things have changed right but they are still one Pathway to graduation proficiency or on the exams um there are multiple and Dr Keith Wright is certainly the expert in that yeah um but it is one of the pathways to graduation so yes they continue to be important I would have to dig up our slide I think
053it was September or October we talked about those pathways but there's various ones I mean Surplus certainly you're right the um the state is sort of backed off where they started with cases I had a question about fiesta is just curious because you talk about communicating to parents and helping them prepare I'm curious about communication to the students themselves I know when my kids were little there was a lot of hype and even some pressure around pssas how has that evolved and what do the kids hear now what's your messaging well they certainly know that the assessments are are in the spring and they you know closer to the date the teachers certainly talk about them but there is no longer this friend you would say um practice is embedded into their instructions so um
054in that that increase in number talks um looking at problems um that are in the type of authentic real world problem-solving critical thinking way that the questions on the pssa are so and that should continue from whether it's September November or May right so um it's no longer I mean I I was there with you Susan Wright so I remember we had a trek rally at media Elementary where the cheerleaders came in town um and it was the pssa prep rally and and even though that was supposed to be a fun event yes you're right it was a lot of you know oh tomorrow is the so we certainly um continue to give them experiences throughout the year that are again talk about critical thinking problem solving because those really are the types of questions
055they're getting um on the pssa now but quite honestly our teachers and public schools in general put in a very unfair position um I don't know anywhere we know all all we know about education is that punitive measures generally don't work and yet all of us are put under the pressure of it if our kids don't be performed then we are punished so that pressure certainly trickles down to our students and it doesn't make for a healthy environment so we try to fight that and um as Krista said place things where they need to be throughout the year and massage that but it's very it is very difficult especially for our teachers that feel the pressure all the time of this particular Sports and we use those scores for information to improve our programming we
056really try to do our best not to use um not use those punitive damages but they are part of teacher evaluations and it's tied into tied into law now fortunately for us you know every teacher in the building we get a building score for our pssas unfortunately our kids perform really well so a teacher's individual um evaluation as it relates to pssa scores is minimal because we do so well in general but the threat's still there and it has made for an unhealthy environment in public schools across the country just out of curiosity if you had to push back online instead of tests like you you've been well eighth grade's ridiculous yeah right it's silly um our top math students they do so incredibly well on the Keystone Algebra 1 Test and those same students
057don't do as well on the 8th grade pssa standards which are less rigorous it's a logical it doesn't make sense because we're teaching the kids algebra not exactly those particular 8th grade standards so while our eighth graders perform so well you can look at it as if they're not and it's really um it's really unfair it's unfair to the kids that um the amount of testing that they have to take it's really unfair so we talked about this before that I'm sure for decades now but um but Chris you just said was basically we're teaching to the test in some ways because we're going every year it's built into the curriculum we'll make sure the questions being asked this contest is built-in test but then Bill what you're saying is the tests aren't necessarily indicative
058of proper learning so where's the where's the discount oh I'm sorry no you go I definitely don't think we're teaching today right we're the way students are asked to think now right to create to um communicate with one another those should be in um multi-step authentic problems right whether it's math or or the literature they're reading um and so that should be part of how teaching and learning is done it's also how the questions in many cases um the pssa is starting to be written right that's been a change every year so um it's not that you know and it matches our standards right so we are teaching the standards that should be assessed now what Bill had mentioned with eighth grade becomes tricky because in our very Advanced students hit an algebra class in
059eighth grade they might not have seen eighth grade standards for quite a while and so and then they're assessed on those as well so you know it's up to us to Circle back and and provide them with as many opportunities to review and practice and extend as possible and again just to piggyback of what Christie just said we teach the standards and the test is aligned to The Standard the standards have changed the test has changed so what they're asking students to do is very rigorous and we talked a little bit about that um earlier in the year we showed some sample problems that multi-step problems that second graders fourth graders are asked so we are when we have we've adapted to that so when people say you're teaching to the test well we teach
060to the standard and the test test of the standards I don't mind the accountability I don't like the punitive measures attached to it right that's not an incentive to grow so when you when you have a threat over people right that's not um it doesn't make for a great climate and best conditions for learning that's the issue I have I'm all for teaching to a standard and seeing how we do on them it really affects those teachers in those classes in those years more so yeah yeah so if you're uh if you're an elementary teacher you would love to teach second grade right second grade's the best the kids can read and they're not being tested foreign so just to finish up cni um and this is kind of just a little highlight so um
061in June I will present the end of your data we do a mid-year Benchmark um K-8 I'm only doing some highlights for elementary um we just finished the school-wide TDA at the middle school um so which is our text dependent analysis we're we're writing those it's a universal written Benchmark that we do um so we're going to be collecting those through our mtss team and our teams and having those data discussions coming inspiration so I just wanted to give you a few highlights from our winter data conferences and these are for our students um who participated in our Benchmark testing um and so I just tried to give you a little highlight from each grade level we've seen some great roads with our Primary students and I know this was something that we had discussed
062thank you um sorry live stream um so our kindergarten students and our first grade students really coming in post-pandemic um so at our kindergarten our early numeracy skills we are at um 80.9 proficient and we actually were able to move from 188 students the beginning of the year that being grade level proficient to 224 mid-year so great growth my most exciting for our students tested in first grade was um our key anchor for their phonics we were 91.2 proficient which we have not seen probably even post or a pre-pandemic those numbers are much much higher so and we moved up to 320 students hitting that level of proficient proficiency or advance so we'll be a great group there um we're at 75.6 proficient or Advanced um with our mid-year math data and that is the
063highest we have been [Music] building which is great um looking at our data conferences obviously are run by our mtss framework and we're really looking for how are we doing with our curriculum right are there gaps in that curriculum tier one um and then we look at what are our needs and instruction that tier two um so we're always looking for that 85th percent proficiency according to our mtss model and in third grade we've had no grade level interventions needed district-wide in math which we have not seen in in quite a while um in fourth grade we had added 23 additional students moved into that advanced band which is very difficult when you start looking at the projection for pssa Proficiency in advance um and our highest level Proficiency in fifth grade in math since
0642019. we had a lot of growth these are just tiny snapshots we certainly have areas that we want to continue to support and all at the end of the year show you that Year's growth we'll be able to get through on it yeah you may have said it by saying the 85 at third grade is that the basic proficiency Baseline that's the lowest you're going to be it says are we good with 85 is that sucks that's part of that is when you think about the mtss pyramid so what we do is when we're evaluating really are are kids accessing their learning through our curriculum and instruction and so we want to make sure that at a minimum 85 are hitting that right that's the biggest group and then we can say all right who
065is not right we don't need a grade level intervention because the majority of our grade level is mastering right so now who is not who is in that next band that tier two band which is usually in our district you know less than 10 of our students you need the additional dose for curriculum for the instruction presented in some other way um so yeah don't think of it as like this is our average or but that's our guide to say yes our curriculum um our Core Curriculum is hitting where it needs to be and now let's look at the students who aren't accessing it for whatever reason s correct that is all we have um from cni except um yes so we do have before I get to technology we have a contract for um
066University of Delaware that Mr fewer presented for us to do the calculus message so yeah it's back in cni in the educational women's so also I want to bring to your attention that just today we did not include this in the materials because it just came to us today from Delaware County Community College I'm a memo of understanding for our dual enrollment courses so um I would be looking to just put this on the legislation since we've discussed these Partnerships before and um I'd like to just put these on the legislative agenda all right thanks and the mmu for that University questions about that um there are no contracts for technology to jump to technology I did just want to give you an update because I have said it many many times we have finally
067received all of our interactive projectors yay it's been a year with shipping delays they are here um and so this is wave two they will be installed the completion of grades three through five which is still Rose Tree Elementary Indian Lane Elementary in Glenwood will be installed over spring break so then all of our um uh grade level classrooms will be complete at the elementary level and weight three can begin which will be our special education classrooms our Encore classrooms and in instructional spaces additional instructions instructional spaces at the elementary school that's awesome just a question units wow um you're very patient yeah do the teachers I don't remember do they need additional training on how to use those interactive days in a while right they do and so we've um thanks to our instructional
068coaches um we are have been very communicate very well you know when it's coming when the dates are um and then we really do um a blitz it's with them so we we spread out so that we're hitting all the teachers um and then really Evan O'Neill Deanna Stefan spend many many because you don't know until you get up there with that pen and you get students using that pen and and you realize oh I just wrote you know over the what I wasn't supposed to and until you're really Hands-On that they need the training yeah they're teaching so that's really what our instructional Team level and Smith has also been helping and then I'll go in they take me as a last resort and they can't get the um our instructional coaches but yeah
069so we're excited to finish up all of our instructional staff at the elementary I mean they it is a big undertaking so again our wave three will be all will be the remainder of the building that our instructional spaces and then we'll begin to talk about pets are there uh any other questions yes um Kristen can I ask you a little bit about the uh relationship with the University of Delaware what exactly is that and what is the food for um the fee is what is I believe and Mr doc you might have to help me out with I believe it is that one-time fee because our teachers will be teaching the University of Delaware Force so there's a professional development piece involved in that um and then there is also a fee that will
070be waived as long as we have a minimum of 10 students participating in the course so we actually are paying for the U of D's curriculum for the professional development of it yes for the professional development great thank you all right I think we're we're good with education and Wellness all right um my question um do we have an update about the springton lake projector we do have um we we met with um accompany Kirsten we also met with them for the um the work in here as well um so we do have we're waiting on a quote yeah we we really take to look took a look at that space beyond really just the projector that became unglued and over the screen that became unglued and you know obviously the projector the mechanism malfunctioned
071as well so that all will need to be replaced but really that space instructionally what can our students see when they're in certain parts of that room what is used for adult learning or board meetings what can we see what can the community see um so we asked for a quote that would allow us to um just replace it there but then also what would if we could add some screens on the side we'll have to replace the mechanism to actually have a full a projector now that is permanent so it's not one on a table when that building was renovated and that beautiful Skylight was put in the technology for projectors really wasn't there right the bulbs you just could not see and now they're we're doing the laser projectors that last up to
07210 years and that the worry about that kind of reflection is no longer a worry so we can actually in stall a projector that is permanent to that group all right thank you um let's move on to Human Resources um Mr Halbert is not here tonight he is at a teacher recruitment event finding us some great features because we know there is a teacher shortage so uh Susan Anderson UTIs will be filling in direct your questions to her please I'll do my very best and I apologize for using my phone but that's the one place today where I've been able to access all the documents I've given up online um but so yes I spoke with um you know Tom before he went off um he's very excited in this this is the first time
073he's got to go to this conference since before covid but in the past it's been quite fruitful um so fingers and toes crossed as for um what's on the what the folks will be on the agenda for legislative nothing he um seems to be unusual but I want to give him a moment because we all had a chance to live with any questions or concerns that you have a status she is like a institution over there she's the teacher that everyone sort of loves to hate but really loves me if you ask some sort of individually not in front of their friends I think she knows that about herself and uh my kids really loved her so I'm sorry I was super good and every single kid who came through there has a tote bag
074that Mike is called we have one too and um I do believe my daughter's inherited Mike's talent but it's a great bag and we will treasure it for it for a long time no of course I should note that when we get to legislative obviously we're looking here we have some people who are retiring who've been with us for many years and so we will certainly give them the credit that they deserve at that legislative either questions concerns okay well if anything should come up as always you know please don't hesitate to reach out all right so if there are no more questions that concludes the work session for the Western Union School Board good night