001all right happy New Year um I call this meeting to order um I will be substituting for Sher arod um who is out sick um we have a quorum um and so a quorum has been established um I would like to ask um our former colleague member emeritus Christian bugs to lead us in the pledge of [Music] allegiance to the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all and I like to take a point of personal privilege to congratulate our former colleague uh board member chair bugs in her new role as president bugs of uh president of princial president and CEO of principal and pencil so you will be missed but we are more than happy and more more more importantly
002more proud of you um in your new role Contin your ABI for metro schools so thank you all right I um need a motion to adopt the agenda as uh approved may I have a motion please so moved there's a motion may I have a second second second it has been moved and seconded um all in favor say I I okay I any opposed okay the adoption of the agenda passes we will now move on to Awards and recognitions all right thank you Vice chair player and good evening um to all of our board members we've had a good first couple of days back in school it it's exciting to be with you again as we kick off the 2024 school year tonight I'm excited to recognize a legendary coach who continues to make his
003student athletes and his school better every day tonight we will be recognizing one of our finest Pearl cone High School head coach football football coach Tony brunetti led the Firebirds to the tsaa state championship in division 4A in an undefeated season that ended with a victory over upperman in the Blue Cross Bowl on December 2nd this was a tremendous achievement by coach bernetti and his team and staff with wonderful support from family members fans principal Miriam Harrington faculty and staff our very own support Hub um athletic department and the entire Pearl con Community this is Pearl con's first state championship since 1997 and Metro's first since 2008 which shows how hard it is to get to the top of the mountain in a state that is full of good football programs but I a feeling
004it won't take us long us that long to get there again for his great work coach bernetti was named the high school coach of the year last month by the Tennessee Titans the Titans have been a great partner to our schools in many ways including helping us put in turf fields for our high schools and pearl cone was among the first of those last fall so it is very fitting that the Firebirds inaugural season on Turf ended in a state championship and this honor for coach bretti and the award from the Titans means coach bernetti is a nominee for the NFL's 2023 Don schula High School Coach of the Year award and one more thing to congratulate coach bernady for he also was named the first High School sports Person of the Year by the
005Tennessee in these are amazing and very well-deserved accomplishments and I'd like to congratulate coach bernetti and ask him and Josh Corey from the Titans as well as any other Pearl cone and Titans Representatives with us here tonight to come up for a photo and to give him a huge Applause as he comes coach bernetti let us recognize you one two more thank you again congratulations and thank you to coach bernetti for all your great work with your student athletes at Pearl cone and with that Vice chair player I'll turn it back over to you now now that we finish Awards and recognitions uh we will go on to director's report which will have core tenants identifying and eliminating equities I'm going over the equity road map update all right thank you again um Vice chair
006players and board members um I'm going to be welcoming up um our executive officer for diversity equity and inclusion as for Hughes to provide an equity road map update in just a few minutes but I wanted to First ground the conversation we're going to be having Equity is not the role of one person one department or one initiative it is a core tenant of this district and all of the work we do is rooted in identifying in and eliminating inequities throughout the entire District to ensure every student has an opportunity to be the best most successful version of themselves throughout the last few years we have seen improvements across all student groups we're coming off the second year of being named a level five School District in TAS growth and we outpaced the state last
007year in nearly all major TCAP categories our Equity road map is rooted in Building Systems and structures to make sure the equity we seek in terms of outcomes is apparent and relevant to the daily lives of our teachers students sta students and staff while we are focused on Equity broadly for all groups of students we've also had to prioritize and tackle some of the biggest issues first regarding the largest student population groups who have been historically disadvantaged that's reflected by our work with Community meetings with key leaders throughout the city who reflect our student population and looking at data showing results there are state and federal designations for which student groups we monitor in terms of gaps and results and for which we are held accountable and we hold our teams accountable to ensure positive
008results there are also some student population groups who may have unique needs but for whom we do not or cannot collect information about those demographic profiles now let me be clear there is nobody who's going to hold us more accountable to ensuring the needs of our students are met than ourselves we developed our focused outcomes to ensure that we do just that not waiting for State Testing results or feedback to make corrective actions throughout the year to improve results there are still persistent gaps in achievement and outcomes seen throughout the nation caused by pervasive societal factors outside of our control however we can and we will and we are working to ensure that we address what is within our Locust of control through systems our structures coaching and feedback designed to improve our craft and
009ensure every student is known in speaking with board members some of you have requested an update on our specific Equity work aligned to the equity road map signature initiative and so with that I'd like to welcome and turn the mic over to Ashford to provide some context for where we've been working to advance equity and where we plan to go in the future Ash thank you Dr batt good evening board uh I greet you a Happy New Year I hope you all had a joyous time I know my son and uh board member mckenny son spend a lot of time via technology keeping in tck with each other over the break so uh happy to see everyone here um I come with you the last two times I've been before you first two years ago
010I really came to present an understanding of what the equity role map was how we forged that document and what it meant for us in identifying terminology language strategies and practices that we wanted to move forward last year I came to you with the Mantra of us doing now and building towards looking at what we were doing taking stepbystep analysis in order to ensure that we were creating the learning environments where all students were thriving and moving forward today I want to begin grounding Us in the understanding of the Mantra that Dr B and our district is using now know where you are but don't stay there and really this quote really helped us to really see where we are moving and processing towards along that Journey so we're going to talk about a little
011bit about the narrative and the work that's being taking place uh within our district uh this past year since we last spoke and I want to draw attention to this last uh sentence to you when we talk about this journey this means that we must commit to the journey while also committing to the work a lot of the work that we're doing around Equity is dealing with changing hearts and minds but ensuring that we're focused on Str changing strategies and day and and day our practices in order that we're providing every and each student what they need to be most successful we always want to start with the grounding of this core tenant which are serve as our values what we believe in and our commitments as a district while we identify and really highlight
012identifying and eliminating INE equities all four of our core tenants or Equity plays these are intersectional to the work that we're doing and they all work amongst each other but invaluable that we have based with the leadership of Dr battle and your leadership really highlighted that we really are taking a datadriven analysis of identifying and eliminating inequities here again we continue to talk about what our focused outcomes are when we talk about goals and how are we using strategies to reach our ultimate goals around literacy seal numeracy and transitions we know through the data and processing these are key elements to ensure that our schools that our children and our families have what they have to be successful while they're in our buildings and when they're not in our buildings and these are the processes
013and identi that we utilize as we're shaping this work in our community across every school looking again at our signature initiatives while again we highlight the equity road map is that aspirational document that is really given us a call to action all of our signature initiatives really work to each other all of these are Equity plays aligning strategies processes in order to change systems to change the people within our systems and to change positive outcomes for all of our students our road map really is aligned with around three strategies three Frameworks you hear about the next two which we've aligned to ensure that we get the best out of everybody not only our students but our Educators as well so when we talk about where we are in the utilization of the equity role M
014we first start with the framework around the lens and again as Dr batt said not just with in the Dei division but across all divisions how are we looking at our practices and procedures through a lens that is inclusive do we have the the right people at the table do we have an inquiry based process to ensure that we're getting the most out of everything that we're doing drawing attention to the five domains when we look at Equity within our district we're not just talking about specific goals we also are talking about strategies the equity strategies are what we're doing they serve as the vehicle by which we're helping to uplift our focused outcomes on a day in and day out basis really the first three are the ones this last year that we have
015really worked with our Educators with families on to double down on culturally relevant teaching and learning schoolwide systems and institutionalized structure family caregiver and Community Partnerships you'll hear about this later on in the presentation but we've really worked to incorporate to make certain that we have practices processes and support because we know that our teachers and our students need the support necessary to thrive within the school environment a quick glance at our timeline over the last years I've shown some of this in the past we know year one was Co highlighting what year uh what year zero was Co highlighting year one22 2122 we really look at the completion and the creation of the equity road map and the launching of that across all of our systems looking at year two in that 2022 2023
016year really providing the support for our instructional leadership teams and you hear me talk about this much further every school has an instructional leadership team that is working off of a leadership Playbook and five core leadership plays we have really been working hard with our leadership teams to ensure we have Equitable practices and alignment with that work to our Focus outcomes second semester which we're really excited about from 2223 we began to develop our Dei 2.0 really working with instructional leadership teams departments on culturally relevant pedagogy what does that look like in practice uh vitally important and then we began our Equity collaboration tours really looking at how do we connect with Community to Ure we hear boots on the ground feedback from what's taking place and what is needed to continue to expand and
017uh enhance the work that we're doing within the district curent year again along with dii foundational trainings we have social emotional learning trainings mtss support trainings that are still going on that are not just onetime things and especially we are now beginning to continuously now that we have even better data over these last years since Co to really align the data with the strategies to ensure that the resources are all connecting to help every each and every student so I Shar this slide to talk about the types of Support over these last years that we began when we started off with the launch of the robat we really were in the phase of hearing it communicating what it meant to have the same terminology what Equity look like in practice year two as we've been
018in that phase we've been acquiring applying and intern internalizing these strategies along with our uh uh other signature initiatives you'll see moving forward that now we are in the process of believing it and we have got a long way from getting feedback from Educators and family that we're now moving in that direction where we're going with the equity role back from here is hopefully moving towards living it where we're now integrating the work and it becomes business as usual therefore now we begin to look out to the Future to see what's on the horizon and not just sometimes focus on what's right in front of us but this is our Collective journey and how we're moving along that network over periods of time so where are we now again working with a comprehensive coaching and
019training plan across all districts and across all tiers and when we talk about the comprehensive training plan again we know that one training One professional development does not work that's why we're putting things in continuums of time so we have continuous learning that we have coaching because we know know that our coaches play a significant role in the support of our Educators we talk about our established Community engagement and listening sessions we know that many districts many schools across our district are having conversations with community and families but under Dr battle's leadership we took it upon ourselves to say what can senior cabinet do in collaboration with our board members to ensure that our community and we're hearing directly from them particularly some of our communities that are having perceived challenges and we begin to
020take on and then most important one of the most important things is a significant expansion of opportunities that drive Student Success again I go back to all the work that has been taking place within our district and I want to pause for a second to talk about I know board chair alod is not here but I know Bor theama mckenny was in uh um San Diego with us for the Council of great City Schools it's important for the board and the community to know that our district really is a beacon of light and a district that other districts are learning from at that convening myself and Dr uh McKenna were actually on a panel with three other large districts uh focused on a discussion around expanding Equity Dr battle gave a panel discussion uh to
021superintendance our division of schools Dr Bellum and his team gave a panel discussion as other District were learning about our leadership playbooks and the thing that we were doing to grow leaders within our school district uh I serve I'm fortunate to serve from Equity lens as the co-chair of the equity division on the Council of great City schools with 21 other cities so I say all that to say as we move the needle with where we are in our district we are not only championing the work here but other cities are looking to us to get answers and how we're doing the work and how we're leveraging the skills and the leadership development to move things forward for our students again where we are we talk about those foundational trainings from just a couple of
022departments not extensive to all but these are vitally important based on how are we achieving and supporting our focused outcomes we have the DI foundation's trainings theal essential trainings which are year round and again understanding that we have been adaptive in how we present professional learning opportunities building professional learning communities where they're more than just a oneoff we want to make certain that we're building capacity where these trainings go on year round and the schools themselves have the support they need to host these trains and continuous learning with their departments principal cohorts over the last year we have held three particular cohorts for principles executive principles with tassel credit totaling 29 principles two of those cohorts are focused on Dei principles for principles helping principles to analyze data uh across student groupings from a equity
023lens and looking at how we can continue to make better aligned decisions for all students regardless of their background uh vitally important we've hosted this last year over six book studies toing about 125 staffers these book studies are executive principle requested book studies focused on things such as uh dealing with unconscious bias how are we looking at data from an equity lens what are we doing to have coaching for Equity so again these uh book studies are last three to four months and they are really are an immersive dive based off of what principles say they need to help instructional leadership team and other leaders in the building and then another really exciting opportunity that we've jumped into is this process with the national Equity project the national Equity project is a National Organization that
024works with a variety of school districts they also work with government entities really helping them hone in on what does it mean to be a more Equitable organization early this summer we worked with uh two cords of 60 Educators the Educators were either uh part of our teacher Leadership Institute or they were recommended by the principles to really dive into a two-day immersive understanding of identifying students cultural identity and how to use that to the advantage in education really got a lot of great feedback from that but this is just one example of a partnership that we're utilizing to incorporate training over time and we've taken that two-day immersive training and working with our division of schools and our PD Department to ensure that that learning we gravitate that to learning that we can continue
025to utilize moving forward and again highlighting our instructional leadership teams these 23 total schools represent the number of schools that the Dei division has been working towards but again we know that across our district we have an instructional leadership team in all of our schools so we have been making process moving forward that again we work closely with those five leadership plays that have been aligned in our leadership Playbook to ensure that the Dei work is align with the division of schools work every day we're working across 15 different uh divisions across five different departments because we understand as Dr batt said earlier Equity cannot live with just one person or one department so we make certain that we have a collective Equity ideology when we make uh professional development when we're having ideas around
026strategy and looking for best outcomes and again I draw your attention to two additional cohorts that we're working with with the national Equity project one of the cohorts is around coaching again these are from our e coaches Ela coaches our social studies and math coaches we were in this past fall a again a two-day immersive uh coaching practice called coaching for Equity uh we have a followup to that immersive practice uh January the 23rd this spring we're immersed with many of our other coaches in E mtss and data to go through that same process we also are fortunate enough to work uh with this organization as we uh work with our targeted cohorts for educators our first being African-American Educators that is going to start in February where are we so I think to when
027we first started this process and I know board member Nal mckenny was one of the first board members to participate in our very first Community Equity listening tour we met at uh the mosque uh we have also had uh board member frea player has been there board member Sharon Gentry has been the one I believe also board member Cheryl May has attended one as well and these are opportunities that we meet with specific targeted Community groups to come together to hear about what are they hearing from their families and their students so that we can afford to make better decisions that has been a a great process for us to listen and to learn but also for us to collaborate in the ways by which we come back to our district to say this is
028what we're hearing how do we ensure that from every level everybody is hearing the same thing while we have had this take place over the last year we have our first quarter of listening session set up again as well uh so look forward to that uh process but we've been using the you said we heard we did protocol I can't tell you the number of participants that were astonished or just had grateful for that we did that protocol that when we when they told us things we went back to our teams and came back and said well since we heard this from you these are the steps that we have taken since then and it has been a positive interaction since we first held that last January poting you many of you we have shared
029plenty of data on a lot of these but I wanted to highlight this tier one instruction about where we are I can never say enough the importance of our literacy reimagine piece in being one of our most important racial Equity strategies within our district just this past summer uh with math to the nth we trained all of our uh math uh Educators on our new math curriculum and really we have been working with our math team and our El te Ela team constantly to ensure that the instruction and the Dei principles are locked in tight together we also have been focused on Extended Learning time knowing that many of our students we need more education more learning Beyond just the regular hour so we have expanded and been really doubling down on our Scholars portfolio
030also looking towards our ACL and academic integration this has just been really important that both theal department has been providing schools withal Snippets so at the beginning of any staff meetings that they have that uh leaders can utilize theseal practices to incorporate day in and day out to continue to build their capacity to do this on their own and and then I will be remiss Without Really touching on our College and Career Readiness we know that early on in the process around Equity that continued to be a major conversation but that team has really done a Yan's job over the last year and a half going on two years to really shape and shift the process to ensure that every family understands what access they have to our total platform of es es epol in
031order to increase their learning opportunity we have made certain that the communication is well that students on the front end know all the opportunities they have and this still is a growing process but we have made tremendous strides and making certain that students understand what they have access to and that they're gaining access to these opportunities this is just some really some quick uh data information again not comprehensive of the total uh PDS that we're doing professional learning opportunities that we're encompassing across the district but we talk about those foundational cores that we continue to make certain that we give uh working with our HR and talent management every new teacher that comes in goes through these foundational trainings and we continue to ensure that we Encompass and grow these better and better I wanted
032to highlight um just some quick conversations around what are we hearing from our Educators once they go through some of our trainings and I just want to highlight two from one of our book clubs and then one from our di 2.0 training from our book club one of our Educators I feel like I now know I now have an equity radar and I feel like it strengthens with every deep dive study that I do from my Dei 2.0 training which is focused on culturally relevant pedagogy this training is so important and crucial for any teacher even if you don't work with a diverse population it presented more questions and Curiosities in myself and I want to dig even deeper and I want to Circle back and give a quotation from one of our participants within
033uh our uh Equity road map tours many of you know her Sabina uh yand uh who is the executive director of the American Muslim advisory Council uh asked about her experience within our tours this was what Sabina highlighted the Muslim Community is grateful for Dr battle's leadership and for meeting with different Community groups along with her senior cabinet members through these direct conversations we can openly discuss the issues facing Muslim Students and staff and mnps and are working together towards Equitable Solutions so again looking at how the interaction interface with our community is leading to more trust and more ways that we can understand each other for the betterment of our students and our families these again are our Equity commitments and really when we talk about Equity to demystify the word we're really talking
034about leadership development human development and really this is what I have contemplated as the for seeds of our adaptive leadership we know sometimes leadership offers technical responses but in our district when we're talking about Equity we need both technical responses and those adaptive responses that really get to root cause issue so we talk about capacity building this is our commitment to doing that across all tiers and all schools we talk about building connections those building Equity network connections when we talk to Educators it is vital that they feel they have within their cohort within their cluster those connections to continue to build upon in increasing efficiency and maximizing the strategies they have as a cluster we talk about and these last two are vitally important because there's sometimes tension between head and heart and practices
035but we talk about building cognition shifts in beliefs and values and the building of confidence self-efficacy and shifts in practice we know that we have to do both at the same time and this is our commitment across our Equity road map and across all encounters that we have in the district to see that through again our focused outcomes are our Equity commitments our five domains are ways by which we utilize strategies to uplift and support our focused outcomes where are we going as Dr battle alluded to earlier in her note every student group has made gains over the last two years indicating that the road map strategies in conjunction with other key strategies and initiatives is increasing opportunities for success for all students and again knowing where we are going in the equity role map
036we continue to evolve we now have a greater data portfolio we now are aligning strategies to be more cohesive with Direct Tools for implementation so that we can ensure that we're thinking about the best practices available and the best outcomes for our students and this has been informed by our support Hub leaders but also our educator student and family engagement processes how can the board support uh attend the equity Road mapap Community listening sessions continue to be a champion for Equity within your districts continue to actively advocate for the efforts of the Dei Division and then importantly support the Investments that directly continue to impact the focused outcomes uh within our district as I leave on this note I hearken back to the quote that we first started out with right we understand that this
037must change Hearts but there is a sense of urgency in education that requires us to commit to the work while changing hearts and this means we must commit to the journey while also committing to the work and over this last year we are still on the journey but we are definitely committed to the work of processing and moving our strategies forward in the support that every student has what they need to be most successful Dr battle I will stop there and turn it back over to you all right thank thank you so much um Ashford for um the update regarding our Equity road map uh which is one of our signature initiatives and vice chair player I turn it back over to you all right thank you Dr battle and Mr Hughes is there any
038questions or comments uh chair chair me board member Maz chair chair together so first of all thank you Ashford and I think you might need some water after that presentation that was really well done thank you for that a quick question for you do we already have dates on the calendar for the equity road map listening sessions I I'll share those with the board members okay those were phenomenal and I learned a lot from those so I'm so glad to see that we're continuing that effort uh but thank you for the presentation it was really well done thank you um member Tyler hey thank you so so much for this presentation um so I guess this a lot of this was really big picture and I appreciate that because it gives us an idea of
039where we're going and that's what we need to know I would love to hear a little bit more specifics about how are we ensuring that we're actually integrating this Equity lens across the district like what are we doing to ensure that we've moved beyond the we've introduced this we've given you develop professional development on this we've ensured that we've circled back around we're creating a culture by bringing principl so that they're creating that culture in their own schools all these are wonderful steps but what are we doing to ensure that it actually takes and that it's going to be per permeating the entire district and not just a couple schools here and there yeah Asher if you can talk if you want to talk about specific efforts from your department I'm happy to chime in
040from a more Global District level if need it okay uh so from the Dei team perspective now again we don't like to just say what's happening with Dei alone because we work with a myriad of departments but for the last year we've really been working with our coaches and our division of schools uh to really and our executive directors to ensure when there's our school Improvement plans when things are taking place that we have an eye for what are what are they being evaluated on what are some of the rubric that we're looking at to ensure that this is taking place so Asal does their walkthroughs we've worked with them to incorporate here are two principles from the in equity lens that we want to ensure going forward so we've been working across departments for
041those organizations and entities that are in the schools every day many of our coaches our executive directors and their team to help give feedback all we seeing that in the evaluation our teachers processing through this and still still early in the phase we are seeing pockets of great growth but we know we have more to go and that's why we say we know where we are now but we're consistently processing forward we have a a cohort that we've been working with that we can really see and look at the data to show the Deep dive in this work and as we show the progress and process net we're working again across departments to say hey our coaches those within the division of schools here's how we're doubling down on these efforts and as we expand
042on what evaluation looks like that's when we'll be able to really say across the district all we seeing is run with Fidelity everywhere across our district and I can chime in with two specific strategies I could give you a number um of them but um two in two in particular um one um when we leverage our Panorama survey we have specific questions where we're engaging with all of our stakeholders around um how our Equity waterm strategies are being integrated in everything that we do and everything we touch which is in alignment to our Focus outcomes that is one example um another example is um we launched our leadership framework um a few years ago which is applicable to every employee in the district because we see all of our employees as leaders and so uh
043we have a consistent leadership framework and our leadership framework work and this is quite frankly an adjustment we've we've made as we've gotten um deeper um in our um Equity Road mapap Journey um it speaks specifically to our Equity work and our Equity Road mapap and so our leadership framework can be crosswalk to everything that we do from um our coaching and feedback perspective um so you can think about that in terms of our recruitment you can think of it in terms of our retention which we know is greatly important we can you can think about it terms of instructional um delivery feedback you can think of it in terms of our student based budgeting model our Matrix with regards to how we um deliver resources and quite frankly how we make decisions um based
044upon what's best um for our students and so when you think about specific strategies like definitely and we our brains have been picked so much from other districts across this country around how we leverage our survey data um to to to Monitor and to get that feedback but also so grounding ourselves in our leadership framework which has its own leadership place around how that plays out and the decisions and the work that we engage in every day and do we have a mechanism in place for um teachers or staff members who are in schools that have concerns that want to reach out but don't feel comfortable doing it at the school level how are we addressing that I think Ashford you could probably speak to that even better than I can I think that still
045a work in progress but yes we we do have uh Anonymous surveys uh that uh Educators can take uh we've been working again and I continue to lean on our partnership with the division of schools and our professional learning department and finding ways to evaluate the work that we're doing in a true evaluation stance uh right now we've been gathering information directly from participants but we try to find ways so that the information is anonymous and our uh Educators feel comfortable with giving and releasing that feedback whether good or bad and we walk through that when we look at our mtss data when we look at the data from the that we do on any regular basis and that's what's helping us to become better in our delivery process yeah you can think about this
046kind of in a tier model I'm glad you brought up mtss because we have um our district strategies which are foundational to every to all the work that we do I mean in a district in a large Urban School District like mmps Equity is our work that is the work that we engage in every day so we're we've thought about it one in kind of like a tier one approach what is foundational to our work as a school district but we've also allowed for if you if you look back through the um where we've been and where we're going a lot of those opportunities have been individual schools instructional leadership teams or leaders within um the district saying hey I'm I'm ready um for this next level um of our work or I've noticed something
047here's a challenge that I want to learn more about so that I can plug in and help us resolve whatever the opportunity may be in their own classroom or school or network um and so we've kind of thought about it in um tier approaches um ashra showed that Continuum at the beginning of his presentation and so we believe that there are multiple Avenues by which you can engage in this Equity um work and so it is about changing hearts and Minds it's about believing and then it's about integrating that work in everything we do and we want to um have kind of a multi-tier support uh process so that we can meet everyone where they are and help develop them okay thank you um and then I noticed that um I love the community meetings
048to to gather feedback I would assume that students are also welcome to come to those as well as community members since they're considered community members to date we have them for Community leaders to gather leaders just Community leers which are also many times parents of students um and and we've also had some of those leaders who are graduates of of our schools um as well anyway so so that's where we've started and um again we have been in a do now build towards um these conversations are leading us somewhere which include multiple stakeholder um touch points but we wanted to start somewhere and really build from that to make sure that we're speaking to and engaging with all the right um leaders across the community to have a robust plan okay and then I um
049so I am I to assume from that that there will be an opening up to not just Community leaders at some point but to the community at some point we we're working on um kind of this is phase three of those um Community meetings and as sh shared the protocol um it was vitally important that um our initial meetings were an opportunity for us to hear um from um the community and our community leaders and so uh quite frankly while myself and my cabinet were there we didn't really Pres present or ask a question unless it was a direct question it was really a facilitated conversation for us to um hear um from the community and so we've been building from that so the second time um we convened we were able to say like
050this is what we heard right here's some things that we have in place in this um third phase we're really moving into a co-design um model and some of the cohort meetings that we'll continue to iterate on so this is a brand new kind of pilot if you will um to make sure that you know we have the touch points we're out in the community quite frankly our community leaders are setting the dates and the locations and the times we're going um regardless of how far late it is um we're going because it's important um person to be out in the community to get um that information so it's continuing to evolve I can see it I can see us building a really strong structure and model that we can then replicate okay and then
051I'm just kind of looking at the slide about where we are right now um where you were talking about the tier one instruction Extended Learning Time seal academic integration and then the College and Career Readiness um do we have metrics that we're attaching to these that were that are aspirational for us and in which case um are those going to be shared with us is that how are we going to so um so our Focus outcomes are are where we are they are um one aspirational they are both so our district Focus outcome is driven by individual schools Focus outcomes which are driven by our individual student outcomes so we will continue to double down on those focused outcomes part of our success when you think about two years of being a level five highest
052literacy scores when you think about all those metrics that are moving in the right direction part of that formula is our ability to focus on the outcomes that uh we want on behalf of all of our student and all of our student groups in addition to that when you think about our Equity Matrix um and we've had multiple conversations um around this whether it was some of our uniform strategies U with regards to mental schools or imagine whether that was uh tur Fields whether that was our Equity lab um work where we now have those dual enrollment courses and all of those decisions and their resource deployment are based on one those focused outcomes and really understanding where acceleration is needed um two specific um other specific specific um examples when you think about our
053tier one instruction part of that um uh push and implementation around literacy reimagine was to decrease the variance um there so that we can understand then you know based upon our good foundational work how do we intervene if a student is not there what came out of that was part of that was our Scholars portfolio um of which we have now a pretty robust uh portfolio with our promise in accelerating and enriching Scholars so when you think specifically about enriching Scholars um if you notice that that's not a strategy for every school that is very specific to accelerate outcomes where we see um what we know is a national Challenge and closing that achievement Gap the good news for us is that we are growing all of our students and so there's a um there's
054a fine kind of design if you will because what we don't want to subject ourselves to is not growing all of our students that matters typically when you're talking about growth um we tend to be um very minimal in our assessment of that of thinking that's just for our low performance students absolutely not our our our our students who are in the bottom buckets middle buckets and high buckets deserve the opportunity to continue um to grow and so we're being very strategic with that Matrix and how given the aspirational goals we have through our Focus outcomes how do we accelerate all of our student groups towards it thank you um and then I know we usually you are always do a really really good job about ensuring that when you break down data for us
055that you break it down into different groups so that we can look at it in a variety of of lenses and a variety of ways and I really appreciate that and I want to encourage you will continue to see that um in fact you will have um a few upcoming director updates um that are focused on our academic work um you'll see some around our Advance academics work with University mmps literacy reimagine and we always even with oural work when it comes to um disproportionality that is all broken down by um our student groups which are grounded in our Focus outcomes yeah so we'll continue um to do that and you will see some upcoming um updates um to the board and to the community great I hope that does that include um our because
056I know you guys have worked really hard on expanding access to epos and advanced academics AB particular and super excited to share that so I'm I'm looking forward to hearing more about that we learn more about it okay thank you so much appreciate the work you do and um what you're doing for us to help us see everything through a lens that that permeates every single decision we make instead of being seen as a silo that's separate so thank you remember BL um I just I want to reiterate that same point I think which is you Dr battle you say this and when we talked about focused outcomes we talked about the director evaluation we talk about other things and every time that you we have one of these director's reports and there is a
057presentation it identifies which core tenants we're talking about and every time we're talking about any sort of student data identify and eliminate inequities is listed as the one of one of a couple of core tenants that are focused on and so I just want to recognize that I think sometimes folks have a tendency to want to see specific data called out I'm one of those people um and I'm going to touch on a couple of these points in a second but but but you you all have woven this in everywhere very nicely uh such that it is not it's not as if Equity is a thing to be done separately it is that Equity is what we do um and ensuring that we're serving all kids in the ways they need to be served is
058sort of is what happens um the one thing on the on the data point that I would I would encourage us to think about doing I I might have expected to see in here some of the things you referred to so some of the sort of pan a data on belonging or or these yeah go ahead so but you're not but you're sort of purposeful in that absolutely because we have some updates that are coming specifically around those data points um so you'll see so for instance we've just finished our last round of Benchmark we're in the process of finishing our fast um assessments you're going to see data points um around that um you're going to see data points around where we are with the attendance you're going to see where we are with
059our EPO so those are not it it it is a it is integrated see if I it is integrated it's a part of there's no there's no point of having an equity role map if it's not in concert with what your what your goals um are and this is something that um we our brains get picked on a lot and I often share aside when I present of how difficult it is to not just have random acts of like love and support and focus right like it's it could go everywhere if you're not if not careful what we're trying to design and curate is a system in structures that are always pointing all everything we do is always pointing in the right direction it it when we're in our cabinet meetings if it does not
060help accelerate literacy numeracy seal which includes our attendance and our transitions we almost like it's a priority but like everything has to work towards that acceleration and that goes alongside with the equity role mapap in our signature initiatives um it helps us really integrate really be focused provide the supports and resources for all of our leaders to make sure that they're connected um to that work and at least exploring how we continue to to move the needle um forward so that's a um Tina maybe Mason maybe Rita or um Dr U or Lisa conversation about how we pull it all together because if we're not careful it becomes Ash right this is a Collective effort to move the needle forward on behalf of everyone and I've seen that mistake made over and over and over
061again this is about our coordinated and Collective effort to move focused outcomes forward for our students and so we're in a good space because all students are growing but we are very intentional around monitoring our student groups providing updates to this board and the community around where we have persistent um achievement um gaps so we will continue to do that but I I just wanted to jump ahead and say because it's coming um that that data and information is coming we're not we still need a couple weeks on getting all the uh academic data um in but we're working towards it so that you will have that at your disposal and this will be an ongoing conversation so consider this Equity role Map update just a kickoff to the equity conversations we're going to continue
062to have through the end of the school year through the summer and into next school year as well yeah and I I see it as much through I mean I again every time we talk about data we're talking about in a disaggregated form we're talking about all the different ways we're thinking about Equity among different groups we're talking about how are we addressing you know every time one of us asks a question that is how are we dealing with this Gap or that thing we talk back back to the same sort of you know set of signature initiative things you all are talking about leadership Playbook Etc the uh the one area that I I have had more questioning is around the idea of the From theal perspective the idea of belonging and um you
063mentioned teacher retention and some of these other things um so I've sort of a two-part question on that which is one is is that some you know are some of those things things that we could have more information about uh o in reporting over time and to when you all see you talked about sort of folks raising their hand on hey I'd love to do these kinds of trainings and other things if you see in Panorama data Etc that there is something going on in a particular school what happens then yeah I don't think there's a day that goes by that we're not um having um those uh conversations again it's kind of a multi-tier support um based upon what we're saying if we see something that's a trend across um multiple schools or multiple
064tiers we um address and provide supports and strategies um accordingly um we also have individual tiered um um visits and support sessions for um each of our our schools um as needed I mean that's based upon um our need but we are consistently digging into the data and determining um what strategies want to working because we always like we the the beautiful thing about metronational public schools is we typically don't have to look externally there's usually some good work happening somewhere in our district that we can lean on um our principles um and our instructional leadership teams and our coaches and through our PD we often lean on um our leaders to share um their best practices so um and I it's better probably for Rita or Mason to speak to this but in our
065P sessions um Ed our executive directors principal supervisors principles um work collectively collectively to identify where there might be some opportunities for acceleration and then that team um and Stephanie waa who's over our professional learning team design learning experiences to help get at um what those what the feedback is um actually um telling us I personally When I visit schools um this is the kind of clarity we have it is no surprise that we're talking about our Focus outcomes like it is it is expected that we're going to talk about where we are with literacy where we are with numeracy where we are with ourl including our attendance and our transition planning um and part of that is the feedback um and I'm just I'm looking in my document here part of that is the
066feedback um around things like our Panorama survey now I do want to give one caveat about our Panorama survey uh because of new state laws we are very limited in our ability uh right now to both administer and rely on our Panorama survey so our student Support Services team in collaboration with my office are creating other avenues by which we will lift student voice and get their feedback um and so we are not going to um let that allow was not to uplift student voice and get their feedback we're okay on the staff and teacher end it's the student end where um state laws are very limiting um for us but we're building out um those Avenues um right now um around how we're going to continue to engage and get feedback around belonging the
067culture of diversity the student engagement the relationships The Voice um so on and so forth I the approach is it makes a ton of sense it's obviously really well integrated and aligned in everything you do I think part of it is helping to make sure that the community understands it and this has been really helpful for that so thank you yeah and I will say as part of um I think when you're talking about Dei work that's just kind of the quick and easy way to go around the goals but that's something we've talked about in some of our community um meetings um as well and like we've really found that we're really asking a different question with with regards to that but we'll we'll we'll continue to listen and really dig into that um
068and and being responsive uh but we've been able to identify some Trends and what I mean our stakeholders our community leaders are sharing back with us around one their engagement with our um Dei um work and kind of looking towards both long-term and short-term you know collaborative strategies um which is exciting to to to really hear um but we're learning more through that engagement and are addressing that through um these Community engagement tours no sorry sorry member Nal keny hey I just want to say um I have had the opportunity to probably attend all of the equity road map tours and be able to participate and listen in on those discussions and I want to say that um while formal and informal in cases because where we intend somewhere to go in One Direction it
069veers into another Direction um I really appreciate the intentionality of Dr battle um and her team and board members who attend these presentations to really listen um to what community members are saying and and work to implement that one thing that I have seen and I've been in the district for a very long time is I have not seen the level of Engagement that we have seen at senior level staff um coming in so that's Dr battle and her cabinet and so you have a team of about 10 or 15 people going to community meetings after hours after they've worked an entire day um to meet community members where they are and to really listen and engage and listen to what the concerns are to help them better support uh families and students within our
070district um and so even even in the different communities that we have visited I agree with Dr batt that we have seen some overarching themes um that that that are across all of our districts that we're really working to address and really working to implement um and I've also seen how each one of um the uh Dr battle's team and cabinet members have thought about that in a way on how can I improve uh human resource or curriculum and instruction or all of our different departments across and and what what would that look like to better support um our faculty and staff as well as our students and families across the district um and so I know we're still kind of in our infancy but this work is extremely important and and I believe that
071it has made an impact in in the work that we are doing um the fact that we are rolling students off of our priority schools list um the fact that we are that we have seen students grow from our lowest learners to our highest Learners um and we're not widening the achievement Gap we are consistently keeping it going and we're thinking about ways in which we can accelerate to close that Gap um so I really appreciate the way that we are are aligning what our focused outcomes are from our district to our school level to our individual student to be able to support really that ideology that every student is known truly we are looking at every single students with within our district and how we can best support um support them and support their
072success within our district so thank you to Dr battle and your team and um Mr Hughes um and your team and the work that you guys are doing to to truly implment this across the district and I'll just add one of those conversations where we talked about how we can work together um um to um retain and recruit staff to represent the students who um are reflected in that student group so like good stuff is is coming out of it both um our opening on both ends I think um so because we're able to share like in a more smaller intimate way like what the challenges um really are and um what the community can really help us with in messaging and and Recruitment and marketing and then how we're going to meet um Leaders
073with the experiences that they deserve so um it's been very [Music] fruitful thank you Dr battle thank you Mr Hughes um for your presentation um now we'll move on to public participation um according to our policy we ask the public to speak on items that are um on the agenda and relevant to the agenda um each member will have roughly three minutes um Dr will uh ring the bell when your time is expired um and so now we will go into public participation uh Miss Laos or Leos correct me for the prop uh Laos oh okay was right the first time and on the form to sign up it did not allow me it made me choose one of the contractors there wasn't another option um to speak on so but I do want to
074speak about the equity road map as it pertains to MLK I just couldn't choose that on the online form good evening chair members of the board my name is Sarah LA and I live in District 8 I've also been a school counselor at MLK for the past 12 years and part of my current job responsibilities include working with prospective families and analyzing MLK application and enrollment data I am choosing to speak tonight to add my voice to the Myriad others who have reached out to request that mmps reconsider its decision to phase out seventh and eighth grade at MLK I'm specifically proposing that MLK expand to include sixth grade such that m MPS opens up more academic magnet seats for middle schoolers as you may be aware the current enrollment at MLK is slightly more
075than 1200 students yet our building capacity is 1,500 students we are at 80% capacity with nine empty classrooms our seventh and eighth grade classes average 125 students the whole class size uh respectively our nth grade class more than doubles in size such that we are generally projected to have 280 students in each 9th through 12th grade class that being said our nth grade class for the past two years has been closer to 220 students meaning we are currently under enrolled by more than 50 students in n9th and also 10th grade any qualified 9th through 12th grade applicant has been offered the opportunity to attend MLK this means we have not had any 9th through 12th grade students on our waiting list to pull from from the start of school for over five years conversely we
076had 76 students on our waiting list for seventh grade and 50 on on our waiting list for 8th grade at the start of school in August 2023 there's clearly a demand for Middle School academic magnet seats that MLK is unable to accommodate by phasing out seventh and eth grade at MLK the district is reducing academic Magnet Middle School seats by more than 40% if MLK was to phase out seventh and eth graders it will bring our 9th through 12th grade enrollment down to 950 students that's 63% of our building capacity losing one quarter of our student body would also mean losing a quarter of our faculty we currently have 60 classroom teachers at MLK so this would mean losing 15 teachers in addition to losing our eight Middle School core teachers that would mean losing
077an additional more seven teachers from high school thus far I have been in support of the MLK reimagine plan as an educator and a parent I believe the decision to keep fifth grade at the elementary level is wise and as it pertains to MLK I've been hopeful that the district would decide to expand access to academic Middle School seats by adding a sixth grade class at MLK in the 2526 school year adding 125 sixth grade students would bring MLK's total enrollment to roughly 1,345 students or 90% capacity we would still be able to accommodate up to 280 students in 9th through 12th grade to reach our total building capacity of students according to the mnps no okay thank you you could um at the beginning I was kind of can I have a few 30
078more seconds I'll allow you 30 seconds to finish up thank you according to the mmps open data portal the current sixth grade enrollment in mmps is 5,446 students but this cohort of students had an enrollment of 6,000 when they were in fourth grade is my understanding the district loses most Middle School student or most students between elementary and middle there are currently 6,000 fourth graders enr across mmps these fourth graders would be the first class of sixth graders if MLK were to add 125 sixth grade seats which would equate to just 2% of available sixth grade seats in the district this is an objectively small amount of impact to mmps middle schools in general but would provide an attractive option for families looking to enroll in an academic Magnet Middle perhaps instead of losing more
079than 500 students between elementary and middle school and mmps each year we could open up 25 additional seats in sixth grade and increase District retention student retention rates the waiting list data for MLK Middle School at MLK and Megs supports this assertion thank you thank you for your time all right Mr bartis good evening Dr battle good evening school board members uh like my colleague Miss La um the option for speaking on the equity M was not on the Forum so that is what I'm here to speak about with you uh I am here representing the MLK World Language Department as chair to express our concerns over these uh proposed changes to remove the Middle School from the M from MLK and the negative impact it would have on the academic opportunities available to Future
080students we are the only Public High School in Tennessee to offer five different languages French German Latin Mandarin Chinese and Spanish as well as their respective advanced placement courses and students have the opportunities to engage in each language's respective Honor Society take part in National contest and study abroad the middle school is an integral part of our school and the language programs we offer with students beginning their studies in seventh grade research strongly supports the earlier a student begins their studies the more likely they are to succeed in developing intermediate and advanced Proficiency in the language of their choice were the middle school to be dissolved there is no question in my mind that this would negatively impact the language ches available to our students as there are currently no plans to expand languages available
081at head magnet and students would not be begin their study in French German Latin or Chinese until 9th grade our students who continue to the upper levels of MLK's World language courses are prepared to pass the entrance and placement exams in the language at the college at or university level they are taking the skills they learn to a highly advanced level where they can use the language in a profession where bilingual skills are an asset for example international business engineering research medicine and education our seven World language teachers hold a combined teaching of experience of over 130 years many of us hold master's degrees have been advanced placement graders served on our state's board of directors presented at State and national conferences and have served on Metro nationville Public Schools content Council several of us
082take on five and six preps and teach 7th grade through 12th grade how many other teachers in the district are willing to take on this workload we are deeply committed to our students and we do so because we know it is the right thing for them and the benefits language study can bring to their personal lives I respectfully request that this proposal be reconsider reconsidered as is the wrong path for mk's future we should work towards building new opportunities for our future students not put existing programs in Jeopardy thank you for your time thank you um Mr Raglin Mr Raglin right Miss uh ferson or firon Sorry Miss firon all right uh that will be the end of public participation um we have approved the consent agenda by the adoption of agenda so the consent
083agenda gets approved by default since there wasn't any changes to the um agenda we will move on to board reports uh we did have a capital needs committee meeting before this um which you'll see earlier we started to have initial discussion of the capital needs of the district um and the rank of the the of the um facility scores um for all of our schools and then initial um draft of the budget requests that we would um we will submit to Metro General government we will vote on the capital budget requests at our next meeting um for that decision to move forward into the capital budgeting process uh we will now move on to announcements we will begin with District 4 yes and it's a school night it is a school night literally so my
084comments will be limited happy New Year everyone hope you had a great start to your New Year and a great start to the uh to the uh returning to school um just a couple of announcements um I will be hosting a coffee and conversations um in District 4 on I wasn't ready to go first y'all um on January the 17th um I will post that information online so that you'll have it available online um otherwise have a wonderful rest of your week um and hope to see you at our next board meeting thank you thank you District Six yeah I'm like you this has really thrown me off a little bit here okay uh so thank you chair um it is MLK week y'all I'm excited about this so I'm just going to give a
085quick reminder of the events that are happening over the next few days um Wednesday tomorrow will be the kickoff of our MLK week of events it will start with our Banner day that will be held at Hadley Community Center from 5: to 7:30 and this is an opportunity for organizations to create banners that will be used in in our annual March it'll be a great event so please come out and support that uh on Thursday will be our MLK Gayla the doors will open at 5:30 and I've just been notified that it's a soldout event so if you don't have your tickets so sad too bad check the pictures online later um on Friday we will have the labor and human rights breakfast at from 7:30 till 9:30 tickets are still available for that online
086and it will be held at scared benit Center uh it would be a they have great food so trust me you'll want to come if you are available on Saturday we're excited to have our youth Symposium and intergenerational panel our very own Dr battle will be um participating in that event as well uh and our very own School Board student Schoolboard member Elena Mitchell will be a part of the intergenerational panel and we will have students from the Hillsboro Sunrise group participating in the workshop event so we will have a lot of our kids that will be represented at that event and we will also present to our uh t-shirt design winter winner um her award and a certificate for Designing our t-shirts for the 2024 season and that of course is an 11th grader
087at Glencliff High School woohoo so we're excited about that on Sunday will be our Women of Faith panel and again very own Dr battle will be participating in that event along with uh TSU president Dr Glenda Glover and uh Nashville State president Dr shanana Jackson that will be at scarrett Bennett that begins at from from 3:00 till 5 I believe um and on Monday we will have our annual march to Gentry and convocation uh the March will be held at Jefferson Street Baptist Church events will start at 7:30 : a.m. and the March will begin precisely at 9: the convocation will begin at 10:00 a.m. at Gentry Center featuring our keynote speaker Nikki Giovani and uh just as an FYI the weather is supposed to take a turn by Monday uh I'm looking at the
088weather reports right now we're supposed to have am showers but unless we have some dangerous uh situations we will we will move forward with the pl for Monday so bring your heavy coat on your long johns and um that will that will conclude Monday will conclude our uh week of events with convocation but don't forget we will have a historic um event at Vanderbilt right after that I think it starts at 3:00 the Fisk University gymnast will participate in a historical um event at Vanderbilt where all the I believe it is all of the the coaches from these uh gymnastics teams will be here in Nashville for a special gymnastics event so that will be at 3:00 on Monday so uh go and support those young ladies if you have an opportunity to do so
089and we will begin having District Six Community meetings again in February I will post those events online and I want to give a big shout out to Dr battle and your entire team for helping pull together the youth Symposium it has been it's going to be an amazing event it it will be excuse me I did not say that did I the youth Symposium will be held at MLK academic Magnet School on 17th Avenue North and it will be an amazing event we hope that everybody comes out and one thing about that we will have breakfast will be available free of charge for those who register in advance if you don't register don't come in there asking me where your donut is the information is available able on our uh website at MLK nashville.com you
090can sign up to attend and attend the workshops but I encourage everyone to come out please encourage your young people to come out it'll be some great workshops that uh they don't want to miss so thank you thank you uh my announcement for district seven is gold Lady Bulldogs District 8 I'm just I'm on the MLK Day website so I'm going to defer and say everyone go attend the MLK Day events thank you District n um tomorrow is your last chance to come and see the SpongeBob musical at James Lawson High School doors open at 6 o'clock the show is going to begin at 7 and it is completely free although all donations are very welcome at any point in time to support our um Visual and Performing Arts Department um and just a note
091to remind everybody they were chosen across the entire State as one of the as one of two theater groups that would get to perform again and and they're the musical one's a play the other's a musical and so this is an extremely high quality performance I encourage you to come I think it's going to be amazing thank you you be no further business we are adjourned this has been a service of the Metro Nashville network if you would like to see this presentation again or for more information on this and other programs visit nashville.gov