001Um actually if we can just go ahead and go to first slide we're ready to go. Uh so hopefully this all feels very familiar to people um by now uh as we've been doing this evaluation this same way um for I think almost three years now. Um so where we are in the evaluation cycle and actually I'm going to just go to the next slide which has the visual of it. Um so each year um the board does four individual formative evaluations with Dr. Battle um and then we do two semiannual board feedback um that's this session and then a final summit of evaluation. So you can see we are here on uh we have done feedback uh direct feedback to Dr. rebuttal on quarter 1 and quarter two progress reports. And now we're going
002to do a summation of that feedback for the public. So next slide and we can keep going. Uh so as a reminder the the information that the board receives from Dr. battle includes a self-evaluation on each of our four focused outcomes, literacy, numeracy, social emotional learning and transitions. And when possible, it includes as much data as possible. Um, and so that includes benchmarks and teacups and teas uh and attendance um and then implementation evidence. And so in particular tonight, we'll talk more about attendance and implementation evidence than we will um some of the other things as we don't have that information yet for this year. Okay, next slide. Um, and then in that process, we read the evidence as given to us. We comment on particular things we are encouraged by. We ask questions about
003things that we have wonderings about. Uh, and then in this process is when we sum up uh sum that up for everyone and and u make that also publicly available. and then we'll keep going and now we'll get into the results. So, um for the first outcome on literacy and what we do when we review these particular uh highlights, these are things that both were in the report from Dr. for battle, but also are things that multiple board members commented on and things that they are feeling encouraged by, things that um they feel like are putting us on the right track to meet the annual evaluation goals. So in particular around um instructional collaboration, collaborative planning structures, um high school supports was something that was mentioned a couple of times by board members uh in
004particular walkthroughs and um instructional leadership team planning meetings. Um and then there are a number of times that you'll see in here mentions of Nashville Pier and the work that Nashville Pier is doing to evaluate uh in an ongoing way initiatives that the district is working on. Uh unit internalization is something that um board me board members recognize that the the district has added over time as there have been um needs for additional work with teachers to uh establish that coherence. Um and so uh a number of things in that in particular ELA teachers uh doing some inter unit internalization. Um and then uh this year the district has added to the personalized student dashboard as web screener data for third grade families. So that is the information that uh third grade families get as
005part of uh taking a number of tests looking at um passage on to fourth grade. Um a frequent mention in feedback about things that folks are feeling very encouraged by is the accelerating scholar program. Um we've seen growth in the number of students from 24 25 to this year and again from quarter 1 to quarter 2. Um a lot of focus there on early literacy. We know from previous studies that have been done with the district that um when we see uh investment in that over time we do tend to see um improvement in student outcomes. Um and then the Pencil Foundation who has partnered with the district um in previous years also relaunched partnership in quarter two adding an additional 9,000 students. Um and the enriching scholars and promising scholars programs. Um I I
006think the thing that board members most frequently um commented on related to these two is the the way in which the district has responded to um the needs of educators and students and change these programs to make sure that they're working they're continuing to work at the level um that we need. And an evidence piece for that is the moving from a larger number of sites to a smaller number of sites uh over time in the promising scholars program and doing um updates for enriching scholars as well on numerousy. Um a number of mentions of uh the district doing a deep dive for teachers uh in fifth grade in particular on multiplying fractions. also some work in third grade on fractions um because that was identified as a need. This is something we also have
007heard about when Dr. Williams and and team have presents to us around benchmark data. Um the uh the district Dr. Battle mentioned in uh in the feedback report a networkkedorked improvement community. That essentially means a bunch of math coaches all working together on particular problems in schools to improve those things over time and doing real-time feedback both with each other and with researchers. Um that was exciting to hear about. Uh and then all of this work is getting national recognition. uh in particular the district having hosted uh a cohort of folks from learning forward which is a national professional learning group um to shine on what the work is that the district is doing here. Um and so we're always super glad to hear about that. Next um on social emotional learning on attendance all
008of the metrics um seem to be trending in a positive direction over last year. So that's um both daily attendance and chronic absence things moving in the right direction. Um on navigators I think we um continue to see that uh Dr. Battle and team respond to feedback on the navigators both from board members and from others in terms of refinements and giving exemplars and giving additional data analysis to make sure that that program is working as effectively as it can. And then we've had ongoing growth over time in preventative supports in the advocacy and peace centers. Um and I think folks have been excited as well to see that adults are getting supports through those centers as well. Um within the uh social emotional learning category as well. Uh I think we are all excited
009to know that we had the potential of continuing to have school nurses at every building. We've seen continued high return to class rates. I think it's 95% of students returning to class um quickly and able to get back into the things they need to get into. Additional scheduled procedures, medication, administration, and then also um actually seeing staff being able to get served by those nurses as well. Uh and looking at transition. So this is transition from uh early education to elementary, from elementary to middle, from middle to high and then beyond. Um the board has talked a lot about the reimagined work in particular at MLK and head. Um, and this had come up a number of times in board feedback um, about making sure that the community was being well engaged and there were
010a couple of really great community meetings this fall that a couple of us were able to attend. Commented on that. Um, excited to see the name announcement moving forward. um and a lot of uh reaction to community feedback on um the school. The MLK middle at Head um as a thematic magnet with honors courses. University MNS continues to be something everyone is very excited about and proud of. Um, and the addition of Nashville State and TECAT to that program, um, was something that got several mentions from board members, um, as being something we were, uh, glad to see was able to happen and and was a exemplar. And then we were literally just talking about, uh, college day and, uh, MNPS 21 day. I think I might have said that the wrong way. There might
011have been a slightly different way that that was said, but basically on the 21st, everyone in the fall, everybody took the ACT. Um, seniors had an opportunity for retake. Uh, over 6,000 students that are participating in ACT prep through mastery prep, which is offered as part of uh, college and career readiness. Um, and the preac administered in middle schools and then administered again um, to 9th graders in high school. All of this setting our students up for success as they go to take the ACT for credit in junior and senior year. Um and then we have a sort of catchall category we call the focused outcome of all of the things. Um so this is where we're able to put some of the extra things that um we know are critical to making sure that
012literacy, numeracy, and transitions are able to move along. We always um have some focus on the leadership framework. In particular um in the second quarter, Dr. Karen Map who's a nationally recognized uh community and family engagement researcher leader um came and and met with both the support hub and families uh and community leaders and uh school support organization leaders. Um ongoing school visits. We know that um Dr. battle and the cabinet uh and executive directors are in schools every week. But in particular in quarter 2, seeing that there were an additional 20 school visits with schools that had um some sort of designation by the federal or state accountability programs felt like something that uh folks were excited to know was happening. um ongoing from the student success and opportunity perspective, thinking about um professional
013learning on all of the things that we know can lead to student success but aren't um always within uh this the structure that all school districts do. So focusing on asset based practices, culturally responsive learning and well-being. Um and then a particularly intensive focus at some of our schools of innovation. I think um board members seem to always be happy to see when there's an overlay in those schools as well. Uh and then I mentioned Pier previously. So those are all the things that we all saw in uh in the evaluation feedback from Dr. battle that we were particularly excited to see things we have asked about previously that we then um see start to happen. Any questions and discussion of any of those things the highlights? Anything I missed from anybody's I was really
014excited about that category. Really so great. I love to get it all. Okay. Uh next we're going to talk a little bit about our um considerations and our feedback. So um we always do these in the form of two kinds of questions. So how the board can support are things that in board member comments um what board members are saying is hey that's really awesome. I'd like to see that continue. What do I do to help make sure that continues? Um and the how can I learn more about is literally hey that seems really interesting. I'd like to know more about that. how do I get involved or a particular question? Um those things we frequently see then show up in director's reports and and that type of thing. So in this category for literacy
015um I mentioned this earlier but the accelerating scholars expansion and the pencil partnership. Um and then there's been continued interest from the board in particular in the Paloma Learning family tutoring platform. So we know tutoring has had a big impact on students and seeing the way that we're doing that uh in different categories I think is something board members are interested in. Um in terms of learning um the instructional collaboration cycles are something that we know um and the overall professional learning initiative. So board feedback was generally like, wow, we're doing a ton of professional learning and that's amazing. And I think the for the board to continue and uh to learn more about how those professional learning initiatives are then leading to student outcomes um is something that uh always comes up in feedback.
016Um, Lead in Literacy, which is a pre-ervice training partnership, I think falls in that same category of of continued professional learning and and knowing more about how those things ultimately impact student outcomes. Um, and then uh several dimensions of the uh approach to AI usage. So I think you know AI is this newer category of things that board members are interested in making sure that as we get a more and more of a focus on AI and I know we had an AI summit and some other things that uh that we do learn more about how AI usage is working to benefit students and teachers. Uh I mentioned the network improvement community work before. Um I in particular had some excitement about that and want to make sure that um we can have continued support
017for that if it's something that seems to be working well to help improve uh quality of math coaching. Um and then I think everyone uh feels excited about the leadership role on math and in particular um I mentioned the learning forward work but the implementation of highquality instructional materials and math implementation. Um, so we would just want to make sure we're doing whatever we can to continue to invest in that work, um, and see that it's paying off. Uh, I talked already about professional learning and student outcomes. Um, and in particular, there was a question here on um, uh, English learners and exceptional education coaches and math coaches working together. So, we know that's happening. Just learning a little bit more about what that means and what that looks like in practice on social and
018emotional learning. Um, I the expansion of school nurses I think has felt like a positive. Making sure that we continue to do that, making sure that we have school nurses available. We know that every school has coverage. Um, whether that means an individual nurse there or a partnership. Um, I think board members would love to continue to see that be an individual at every school as that's possible. Uh uh as I mentioned earlier, lots of interest incl and what that looks like, whether that's through advocacy peace centers um or the Metro Health Partnerships um navigators continues to be a thing that people have excitement about and want to make sure um is consistent across schools uh and within schools. um and the sort of iterations that the district has done on that is something that
019um people feel positively about and would like to continue to hear more about. And then similarly to the how is professional learning related then to student outcomes is the same type of thing around the support. So we know we have lots of different things going on. It's very hard to measure. It's very hard then to say what the outcomes are related to those things. But to the extent that we can be making those lines drawn and then that that helps us make decisions on investments, um that is something that uh board members continue to uh want to engage with the district on. Um on transitions, I think lots of excitement about AVID in general. Um, and as AVID expands to more schools, as there's a uh there are some potential shifts in the focus of
020the of practice and and more folks are able to be in AVID, just learn continuing to learn more about and then support that. And the same with university MNS. Um, I talked about the MLK head transition and we know there have been some involvement of parents and and families and students in those subcommittees and planning committees and so continuing to hear more about how that's going and and the ability for folks to weigh in on uh implementation as it starts to occur um more extensively. Um and then sort of both of the last two things are about uh the expansion continued expansion continued implementation of university MNPS through any sort of changes or increases in partnership that we maintain um the partnerships that exist and and some interest in particular in making sure that um
021we are maintaining high quality partnerships with uh our H.B.CU. Lastly on all uh you know pier comes up so frequently making sure that we are able to sustain that work that we're able to have the money to continue to learn. I know um we're all looking forward to the upcoming peer uh learning and peer convening that's happening and and all the things we can learn from that and the sort of specifics. So, I'm sort of jumping back and forth here, but I think we'll learn a lot more um at that convening about how working group findings are actually translating into concrete improvements, which is that first bullet on the second thing. Um lots of interest in continuing to support the work of um I'm going to get the naming wrong, so I'm not going to
022try, but the student support and outcomes um the culturally responsive assetbased work across schools. Um, in the learning more about we know that there were changes mentioned to the school choice process this year. Some of that was prek related, some of that was related to some other things. Just continuing to learn about how that has uh improved the experience. Um, what we're learning from enrollment uh in that especially in that prek to kindergarten cohort as that has done has had some changes. Um and then um as we talk about community engagement and community input um just a a a sort of standard reporting of uh how many folks are going to events and this type of thing and and what we're seeing across the community and how that then is shaping what we do in
023terms of conversation. And that's it. that um is the feedback questions, things that the board is particularly focused on as we finish up quarter two from quarter 1 and quarter two and headed into well obviously we are now in quarter four um of the school year. But from our evaluation perspective getting into the evaluation of the work of quarter 3 and quarter 4. Any other questions discussion? This is really more um I don't say generic but high level. Um when you talk about the the AI approach um since I think we'll it'll be good to explore how to we how do we break that down to the public? It's one of the things I'm getting more questions about um as a Churchwell marker. I talked to one of my old professors from Fisk and we
024had a whole discussion about how to use AI particularly in um high school going into college that transition how do you work but I think that's something where I've noticed more of going out in public more of the questions it has of and how do we how do we relate that to the public because AI is so much and the initial thought of when people think AI oh chat GGP is writing my papers And that's how I think the public thinks of it, but not as a true tool of how do I generate work? How do I use this as part of the learning process and not just a tool just to um to circumvent my work? And so I think um something we can discuss of how do we use it in teaching computer
025programming or how do we use it to computations to move a experiment faster to get to a deeper degree than actually just writing a paper. Um so this is something just in general um just as a high level note of how do we articulate that to the public of AI is just not just check GP it's a larger bigger um conversation in academics than as we may know as writing an email I don't know exactly where that belongs but this is more of a public conversation type thing >> yeah there may be an opportunity for um as I heard uh discussions of AI in sort of broadly across the country and in not necessarily in districts but sort of what people are thinking about it falls into a couple of categories. AI being used to
026help teachers with instruction. So ways to that AI is being utilized to inform instruction, inform planning, um allow teachers to come up with rubrics and and this type of thing. um the ways that students are using AI. Some of that is the ways that you talked about um but also um how students are even using AI to help themselves create tests uh pre-ESTs for themselves, this type of thing. But then there's a whole category of things I think we haven't that I know the district is working on. I've talked about maybe one or two of them, but ways that AI can improve can help improve performance um and efficiency at the district operations level. And so those are sort of the I hear about it in teaching, learning, and operations. Um, it might be fun
027at some point to have a a presentation around what we're doing in each of those categories because I know a lot of that was at the I know that was discussion in a lot of ways at the AI summit that you all had. Um, and uh I know I wasn't able to be there and if folks weren't able to be there, it's you know to get some sort of report out from that maybe. Um yeah, just to chime in, I am um I have a lot of concerns around AI that are more environmental impact concerns as well as the thoughtfulness around how are we using it so that it is a tool and not a crutch. And I articulated that in my evaluation. Um, but I think that one of the things I would like
028to see us do is part of our process of contracting with groups that use AI, I would like to see some environmental questions on there. Where are you? Where is your data warehouse? How are you um how much and these are questions that I have already spoken to you about, Dr. Battle in the past. Um, but I I have real concerns around the tradeoffs behind what AI can bring and what it does to the world around us. In addition to some concerns around ensuring that we're using it in an appropriate way for student learning so that it's not a crutch and it doesn't take away their ability to think critically. Um, and I've shared some studies around around that. And I I feel like we've been on the same page when we've been talking about
029this all along. But I do think I would like to be able to publicly say I have a lot of concerns around AI for a lot of different reasons. And um, I think we need to be extremely thoughtful about how we move forward in the space and responsible about the kinds of questions we ask the people we partner with and how we utilize it. So just had to say it publicly even though we've already spoken privately. So thank you. Any other questions or discussions related to topics um highlighted here in the evaluation? Um if not just two quick um sort of oh sorry go ahead >> Dr. Obama McKini. Yeah, I don't have anything um specifically in the evaluation, but another consideration or I would like to learn more about is around um exceptional education,
030early identifiification, that transition between when we're getting students identified and the types of supports that they're needing. Um, prior to that, as well as considerations that we need to think about moving forward given um, we had to increase the number of of supports that or teachers or staff to be able to support that that uh, department. Yeah. So, I would like to hear more about it um, and how we can support and the considerations we need to think about moving forward. >> Great. And I know you um have noted that in your individual feedback. And so um sometimes things that are noted in individual feedback, if they aren't hit multiple times, they won't appear um in this discussion. So it's always good to highlight those things as they come up. Um two points about the
031evaluation process as a whole. Um so one is you all will have an email with some um additional information that um sort of were very specific questions that were answered and um so I've sent that to everyone to see. Um and then um the second thing is that um based on some feedback that I've received um about frequency and time, I think everyone really enjoys getting all the information. um it can take a while to go through it and to also feel as though you're giving consistently strong feedback um uh especially when some of the things feel like we know that they're happening. We have these conversations at the board table etc. And so um you all will be hearing from me um with an opportunity to give feedback on any changes to the evaluation
032process for uh the next school year. any Yeah, go ahead, Robert. >> I I just want to take a moment to just thank Dr. Battle and her team for putting together the report um because it is very extensive. It provides us with um information that I actually use during community meetings. So, I'm able to share that out with the community and and help support the work that we're doing. Uh, and then I also want to thank you, uh, board member O'Hara Block, um, for rounding us up and, uh, and getting all of our, uh, comments and accurately expressing, uh, our thoughts around the evaluation. So, I appreciate that. Thank you. >> I think it's fun. So, happy to do it. If there are no further comments, I go ahead. Yeah. >> Oh, this is just
033for the board about the school nurses. is something um just to put in our minds for next next session advocating for expanding what a school nurse is um and being creative of is an RN, LPN, a PA, a retire MD where um we all like school nurses, but also there's a short shortage of nurses. So, can we get creative from the state legislature standpoint of what does it mean to be a medical professional providing those services? um just giving the um employee crisis with that that one's put out there for us. I have heard that from schools as well. >> Okay. With no further questions or discussion, chair player will hit the gap on my behalf and we will call this meeting done. Thank you.