EDU-EDN Info Briefing 1:30PM 01-15-2021

001aloha i'm senator michelle kidani thank you everyone for joining us here today for our joint briefing of the senate and house education discussion regarding learning loss by students within the do e and our public charter school we have joining us today representatives from the department of education and charter school commission we will start first with the department of education and then proceed straight to the charter school commission for their presentations before taking questions from the members during question and answer representative woodson will call on members of the house to ask their questions and i will call on any senators that have questions so members if you would like to ask a question please use the chat function and message your chair directly with that superintendent kishimoto please start with your presentation mahalo aloha chair kadani

002uh joe woodson and members of the committee there are a few of us in a shared space so we'll be moving our mask on and off just for added safety i'm christina kishimoto superintendent of the department of education uh thank you for the opportunity to share with you our mitigation strategies to address learning loss with me today i have a team uh that includes deputy superintendent philosomy assistant superintendent for the office of curriculum and instructional design terry ushijima assistant superintendent for the office of strategy innovation and performance rodney luke and assistant superintendent for the office of student support services heidi armstrong if we look at slide two and my understanding was uh are you able to see the slides no dr kishimoto you may share screen though okay nanir kalani is uh it's actually uh

003driving the slides for us thank you so we're on slides two uh learning loss is directly related to our mission of teaching and learning thus it has been a concern since the onset of the closure of our school facilities that drastically changed conditions for learning this is an equity issue facing all education providers nationwide and we as a national network are all working together to figure this out in terms of defining learning laws and establishing best practices to respond to the conditions at hand which has altered how and where students learn the role of the family how we organize our staff and the resources needed to pro and the resources needed to provide access and ensure student learning success prior to the pandemic we were already actively designing instructional programs aimed at mitigating the learning

004gap experienced by vulnerable learners students with disabilities english language learners and economically disadvantaged students distance learning has brought to the forefront the gaps that exist amongst our students particularly the technology gap and the family resource gap by design we are better in at in-person instruction therefore not only did we need to have an operational shift to distance learning but we also needed and continue to need quality ongoing training on quality online teaching content and engagement to effectively deliver instruction virtually we needed to ensure students were able to access learning from home a number of our students lacked an adequate device reliable and consistent internet access and an adult capable of assisting in instruction in this new learning environment additionally distance learning has led to an additional subgroup of students who struggle academically we have wrapped

005our work around learning loss with around a larger essential question the question we're using to guide our work is how do we create a personalized learning a personalized education program that will address the holistic needs of our students while ensuring they acquire the essential knowledge and skills of the current grade level and this is our big picture question as we go to slide three i want to just uh share with you that in october the board adopted the metrics to monitor evaluate and report the department's plans for reopening schools during the 2020-21 school year the department designed an interactive data dashboard to visually track analyze and display key covert related performance indicators requested by the board the dashboard includes data on more than a dozen metrics across three levels statewide by complex area and by

006school including areas ranging from quarterly student student grades universal screeners and attendance attendance and learning models as well as student access to devices this online resource is updated as as data is collected throughout the year we want to extend our mahalo to our teachers school leaders complex area superintendents and assistant superintendents for their ongoing diligence and commitment of inputting and using the data to strengthen their practice this truly has been a tri-level focus well we are budgeting for our core needs we are also cognizant that funding will be needed for the unknowns that the pandemic may create in the near future if we go to slide four i'm gonna have deputy superintendent speak to some of our data outcomes that we have at this time so aloha everyone i'm just checking to make sure you

007can hear me fine um so this is the student performance data using the universal screeners last year a federal waiver was granted to suspend statewide assessments for school year 1920 due to the pandemic without the statewide assessment data teachers will are utilizing periodic assessments to target instruction where it is needed most these periodic assessments are referred to as universal screeners and are typically used to see where the students are at the beginning of the year monitor progress at the mid-year and assess growth towards the end of the school year this information is valuable for teachers in schools to provide support for students based on their present level of performance approximately 90 percent of the elementary and middle schools administered the universal screeners at the beginning of the school year that's about 200 schools of the

008220 element 223 elementary and middle schools the data shows that the number and percentage of students who performed two or more grade levels below during the first quarter the data is only reflective of the schools that used i ready or star specific screeners in which the data has been captured in the longitudinal data system next slide report card marks or grades are another indicator of student performance and the marks indicate which students are meeting learning expectations and which ones are not teachers work who work closest with their students use their professional judgment of student performance and it is the best measure of how students are progressing this table shows the number of elementary school students performing well below and the number of middle and high school students who received at least one failing grade during

009the first quarter of the school year it is important to note that the elementary school marks our standards-based this means that the expectation is that students will increase in proficiency and demonstrate growth throughout the course of the school year these are only quarter marks meant to serve as a progress report they are not final course marks students still have the opportunity to pass failing courses by the end of the semester or school year school registrars are currently finalizing second quarter grades in our student information system called infinite campus this data reflects the first quarter performance and will be updated by the end of the month together the data from the universal screeners used at the beginning of the year and the report guards used at the end of first quarter informed classroom instruction and student

010supports next slide so mitigation strategies we have six major strategies to mitigate the learning loss that have been in play since we closed our school's facilities during quarter one quarter four of last school year we have been implementing strategies throughout the pandemic and i've been flexible in designing and responding to address the learning loss along the way this slide summarizes our strategies along a timeline the numbered strategy the numbered sentences are the strategies and and create the umbrella focus for the department of education strategy one is focusing on essential knowledge and skills of the current grade level this strategy is based on our national recommendations to focus on providing schools with opportunities to learn from their current grade level content of course teachers who teach the essential knowledge and skills necessary to be successful for

011the current grade level or course content attempting to cover content that may have been missed during the fourth quarter during the previous year will likely likely widen the learning gap strategy two which is focused on formative assessments to close the achievement gap the formative assessments are used to continuously assess student progress toward meeting targeted content standards teachers use the formative assessments to identify their students individual needs to differentiate and attend to them attend to the instructional practices to accelerate learning and create learning experiences that hopefully foster student success study strategy three is continuity and quality education through distance learning the covet 19 pandemic necessitated the need for the schools to utilize distant learning models and this has led to the commitment to provide our students and teachers with the tools they need to be successful

012and the commitment to provide stu parents and families with technical support to enable them to help their children navigate through this online learning the larger vision is for schools to utilize distance learning as a way to better engage students by providing high quality and engaging learning accessible to in courses not currently available at all schools and flexibility for student choice and voice in their educational process journey this also we hope will increase student engagement and will accelerate learning strategy for in-person learning opportunities the department of education has prioritized students most vulnerable to learning laws to be on campus for in-person learning and has been providing direct services for those in most need for the start of from the start of the school during the second quarter schools began transitioning to blended lotto to the greatest

013extent possible with more students on campus for a blended model more students will have the opportunity for direct instruction and support from their classroom teacher in-person learning offers teachers greater opportunity to monitor build relations with their students and assess their learning strategy five one two one tutoring one-to-one tutoring when structured carefully is one of the most effective strategies to increase student learning and mitigate learning loss the department is investigating an intensive tutoring program for students in grades five through eight who are two or more years behind in ela and math and we are estimating approximately 25 000 students a focused approach on middle level students to mitigate learning loss can impact individual students who are in most need changing their trajectory of success as they continue their learning to pursue college and career options in

014high school strategy six summer learning opportunities planning for the summer learning opportunities has already begun complex area superintendents are assessing their student needs considering the types of supports that will be needed to mitigate learning loss and determining what types of summer programming would be most appropriate to offer in their complex areas last summer summer learning programs were spent were expanded to have a wider reach and scope than in the past years with a focus on serving high need and hard to reach students with added opportunities for credit recovery an advancement for secondary students sorry you couldn't hear me i'm gonna go to slide seven on slide seven we're gonna wrap up by just talking about supports for vulnerable students as we look at students holistically we designed our programs to meet their specific needs recognizing

015that those students can continuously those those needs can continuously change under these pandemic circumstances especially as we consider the impact on the family unit students who are vulnerable who were vulnerable pre-pandemic can face challenges that are exacerbated during a crisis period therefore we were intentional in revisiting our student learning support services for students who receive el services special ed services 504 homeless services and other support services we made it a priority to ensure that our students with disabilities could be on campus for their learning and that their teachers received the supports they needed to effectively deliver instruction and support services both virtually and in person in addition to academic services transportation and related services continued for our students with special needs as appropriate active communications with the families continue to be a priority to ensure

016that we address specific needs that arose due to the disruption to their normal routine our schools continue to address the needs of their students who are vulnerable to vulnerable to learning loss through models that best meet their student needs and instructional capacity and we'll wrap up on slide eight our schools have been faced with the seemingly insurmountable task of mitigating the impact of a global pandemic and addressing health and safety needs while educating our students and they have done so with true resiliency and tremendous dedication we continue to be hyper responsive to student needs by actively designing supports using data to make student-centered decisions mahalo for your continued support my team and i are available to answer your questions and to engage in this dialogue today i'm sorry i didn't hear chair kidani i'm not

017sure if you're asking we're ready for the charter school okay thank you so much good afternoon chair kidani chair woodson vice chairs members of the committee thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to come and share with you today i'd like to introduce a couple of people that are joining us our interim i'm i'm sorry i'm yvonne lau the interim executive director of the state public charter school commission i have pj for who is our interim deputy director who will be doing our presentation today i also have two special guests lydia trinidad principal from kuala puu school on molokai and winston sakurai principal school director at kauhau elementary on the windward side of oahu so i'm going to turn it over to pj at this point and he'll be sharing his screen with

018a short powerpoint presentation there we go aloha everybody wait can we you can hear me correct okay uh so i do need to be able to share my screen and i'm not seeing there we go and wait where is it oh hold on one second i had it up and then it went away my apologies there it is okay um so where we are is slide one so today thank you for having us uh we put together a short little presentation based on the two questions that were asked of us and we put this information out to our schools since we do have 37 separate schools and governing boards that operate we asked our schools to get us the information based on the two questions as um as we can and as you can see

019uh 20 of our 37 schools were able to reply to us with data and i gave you some information based on where that data has come from and two of the schools that did report i just want to make a note already did have some form of distance or virtual learning as a method of their instructional delivery prior to the pandemic impact so we did have some schools that were already in virtual and distance learning mode prior to the pandemic um and of this we have more than two but of the 20 that replied two of those schools were already involved in that so quickly looking at the data uh our schools use a variety of ways and means to assess students and where they're at the data we received from the 20 schools had

020a variety of such tools as well so universal screeners such as star renaissance learning nwea iready those are some of the screeners they use also some of the some of the data is based on the grades and the student performance just completion of assignments assessments etc that are school based and school focused so it's not just a universal screener that was used based on the 20 schools that turned in information you can look there the students that were at or in danger of failing that was one of the questions of the 20 schools seven of the schools only have about zero to ten percent of their students that are in danger of failing so they're they're showing that they're doing and performing well you can see there then between 11 and 30 percent students struggling

021that's another seven schools and then uh 31 to 50 is two schools of the twenty they reported and then uh schools that have over or more than 51 percent of their students that are in danger of failing there are four schools of the 20 that reported that data um a key piece to keep in mind is that our schools are as you know they're all over the place as far as the state and in various areas and they are community based but three of the four schools with significant percentage of students in danger of failing are in high poverty rural areas so i don't want to make a generalized statement because unfortunately that's that's something that we might expect unfortunately however it has been very challenging for those schools uh so i just want to

022make that clear and then of the seven schools um that are not reporting significant loss that zero to ten percent four of them actually are in um what would be considered urban areas uh close to honolulu or in highly populated areas and the other three are in what would be considered maybe suburban areas so not quite um they're not as remote as some of those other schools so that's a very broad over overview of the data that was sent in to us we've compiled it in a spreadsheet we do have two school leaders to talk about the challenges they've faced as they have embarked on this journey and worked to help their schools and their students and their communities i do want to make a point that the school leaders and their governing boards have

023worked diligently throughout this whole process to try and create a positive learning environment for their communities each of the 37 school leaders and governing boards that work with them have met frequently and more frequently in many cases to try and meet the needs and the ever-shifting arena that we've been working in with this pandemic but without further ado right now what i'd like to do is keep this screen up and then i'm gonna have um uh lydia trinidad talk about kuala lupu on molokai and then winston sakurai will share his experience with ka ohau here on oahu so lydia um aloha representative kidani woodson and i want to say aloha to my neighbor representative declined to see her name on um as you know molokai uh we've had we've kept our coveted numbers relatively low

024and that's fortunate for us i want to report that since october we have october to december was our first full full quarter where we did not have to shut down at all so we're really on a roll right now and um although our percentages of failing rate seems rather high i think because we are face to face and we struggle to keep face to face we've been able to mitigate or prevent higher loss of learning i think looking at the data this is actually kind of normal we're not the strongest school academically but our attendance tends to be um we meet the attendance requirement of being in the 90 so our children are coming to school face to face uh what's made this work is that i think during this pandemic our partnerships with the

025department because of meals transportation with technology and trying to get technology support even from the department have made schools even more prominent in their very basic needs so we can meet the academic needs so i think i think if we can keep the funding for the schools strong we can actually we're actually looking forward to testing i should not say that but we're actually looking forward to we think we can do well but you know teachers are working really hard they wanted the children in school in fact we went from 30 students who are in virtual we're down to half with their parents asking their kids they're coming back face to face um for for this third quarter and into the fourth quarter so as long as we can keep the pandemic under control i

026think we can keep our numbers and our academic achievement as well as our social engagement and social emotional health of our children well thank you hello tara kadani chair woodson and members of the house and senate education committee um educators across the state and nation have been working so hard during this pandemic and i'm proud to stand side by side with them early last year we saw what was happening and got in touch with principals and superintendents on the east coast uh who shared their experiences with us what their plans were for shutting down schools and so in order to be proactive we actually started on february 26th preparing for extended school closure we asked our teachers to create 20 days of remote learning plans during spring break we did video conference training and then

027we also distributed ipads to students we talked to families and got them engaged in in terms of this is going to be a different learning environment in the spring we were able to get in contact with 100 of our parents uh during this time and the preparation paid off so 94 of our students attended virtual school daily which is actually even higher than our physical day-to-day attendance rate and the panorama survey also showed that 94 of our students were engaged during this time uh 99 of the students turned in assignments regularly and we were able to conduct 899 virtual class meetings totaling uh 12 000 34 hours and what we found through this whole process is that good teachers are always good teachers and the technology actually amplifies that and amplifies really good teaching and

028students who are sometimes not engaged in traditional classrooms actually strive in a virtual classroom we had a student that's chronically tardy and absent and was present every single day on time for our virtual classes so preparation was key for our teachers and educational assistants and we found that students now even as early as first grade are composing emails turning in online assignments and even advocating for themselves and these are these are remarkable skills that uh even myself as a child wasn't doing that and so we find this fascinating and we think they're gonna be well prepared for the future even though it's a distressing time for everybody we met every day as a staff teachers governing boards during the summer in preparation for reopening and we were actually able to finally reopen on november 23rd

029for a full face-to-face learning we followed all of the doh guidelines we created additional classes took up every space on campus for classrooms uh our library and technology teachers went back to the classroom to lower the class sizes and we're so happy that the team came together and made all of this work you know the success of all this is really the teachers the parents the students all are doing their best to make uh the success of not only just uh surviving the pandemic but also thriving during their pandemic and so we're so glad that they were able to not only use you know leverage technology but also return back face-to-face uh to us on campus so thank you for uh giving me the time to share a little bit about our school and so

030thank you winston and lydia uh and in closing really uh unless yvonne is going to jump on really fast to bring it together i think the the key piece has been that all of our 37 charter schools um which serve their unique communities have been working with as lydia and winston both pointed out with their communities to a certain extent there's been some challenges here and there but they have worked hard to listen and try to meet their needs it's not been perfect but uh we've all been learning constantly and i do want to give a quick thank you to all of our governing board members who are all volunteers who have given up countless hours in governing board meetings to make sure that all processes and procedures have been followed appropriately and that they

031have met with their school directors and approved plans and listened to plans and listen to presentations from parents and community members so the whole team has come together and i really want to applaud them for that yvonne i joined a pj and thanking all of them for all of their hard work and especially to winston and lydia for joining us today we're happy to take any questions at this time thank you yvonne um can i ask that you send us a physical copy of the slides that were shared today please absolutely we'll do and and members let me remind you now if you have questions please for house members direct them to chair woodson on the chat and for senators direct your questions to me on chat chair woodson would you like to start with

032the questions please thank you madam chair um house members are there any questions to start off okay we don't have any questions right now madam chair i will wait um we actually just have one question that came in from vice chair capela thank you so much chair um and thank you to everyone who presented um i know it's a trying time for all of us i have a question actually about the impact of budget cuts on staffing reductions um for the doe so my office and i've been looking at the numbers and here's what i've seen to begin the doe is looking at a budget cut that is proportionately far larger than any other department and when you combine all of the numbers including the cuts that the department had to take last year the

033new proposed cuts furloughs etc you're looking at at least a 400 million dollar funding drop um my question is this though if all of the cuts um that were on the table that are on the table are allowed to stand what will the reduction be in staffing faced by the doe when my office crunches these numbers we think that you're looking at a potential force reduction of 1 700 to 2000 positions including 1 300 teachers and 1 500 1 300 to 1 500 teachers um which is far larger than what you've told all of us and what you've been telling the legislature and the public so i just wanted to know if you could speak to that at all thank you vice chair this is christina kishimoto there there are uh board agenda items that

034are being published in about one hour or so maybe two hours for the board meeting on the 21st of january i will share that there is very detailed information there by school that you'll be able to see by school and by complex area we've already released it by state office of the number of cuts and the type of position cuts we've been estimated that our cuts will be between one thousand and fifteen hundred of which at least half of those will be teachers the data that's being uh published today which has to go to the board first legally ha will confirm that that is in fact correct that we have in fact i'll just state we have over 300 positions that will potentially be cut of which over 800 are teacher positions this is separate

035from any further conversations about furloughs which has been held as a separate conversation a labor negotiations question so if there were to be furloughs on top of this where we would have to account for some kind of labor savings i should call them labor savings instead of furloughs at this point if there were additional labor savings that were imposed on the department remember it's about 120 additional million dollars per full year that the department might be accountable to in additional labor savings then yes the numbers would go up exponentially from there right now based on the 164 million dollar cut to our budget for the next biennium each year and the current year 2021 one 100 million dollar cut uh this is this is what we have accounted for and are preparing for potentially unless

036there are answers let me just clarify though this budget uh this board meeting will include a conversation that i will be having with the board including a vote i'm asking them uh that they are going to be taking on a budget proposal for how the federal funds that we've just had released to us i'm sorry just notified we haven't had the funds released from the federal government yet uh i have a budget proposal for that that will help mitigate some of that capacity loss and so we'll have um we'll have to update those numbers after the 21st once i know what their vote is on my proposed budget and i'm referring to the 183.6 million dollar funds coming to the doe as part of so2 okay thank you thank you dr kishimoto so the numbers

037that vice chair was referring to it sounds like it does reflect also furloughs or our labor savings as dr kishimoto will be referring to we will have a separate informational briefing as it relates to budget so members are there any questions about learning loss house members if not uh madam chair will kick it back over to you and then i'll ask questions thereafter that's okay okay i don't have uh any senate members asking questions on chat i think that um with the question that was previously asked i would just like to ask dr kishimoto and i i do realize we're having a separate info briefing um on on budget but i would just like a superintendent to clarify the 183.6 million dollars that the feds have designated for hawaii which we have not yet received

038um is uh to be is sr money which is supposed to be used at the school level is that correct superintendent uh it is approved for uh for education and there are some uh specific areas that are highlighted in that legislation that emphasizes the new types of learning through technology the learning loss uh ppe um type of expenses it does allow us to replace some of the lost dollars to the school level through weighted student formula that's that's the hawaii version of what the feds would be calling out as allowable expenses and then there is a fair share for the charter so charters are encumbered in these funds there's about 10 million dollars that would be the approximate amount of fair share through these monies and just to further clarify superintendent are there any other

039restrictions on the funds that we will receive from the federal government as to whether or not we are prohibited from furloughing or laying off any teachers so there there will be continued guidance every state superintendent is part of a network that's asked for additional guidance around the maintenance of effort language that's in this legislation and how that will be interpreted in terms of the state's responsibility to maintain some kind of base to the department so that the monies are not supplanting but it does allow for us to put some of that money into what would look like supplanting and so there are lots of flexibilities to this but there is a maintenance of effort requirement the the the strict interpretation of the dollars is that it must go i think we've heard this from our

040congressional delegation as well that it must be expended in the department of ed and uh as long as we can show that it is addressing covet related matters but also learning loss overall which does not have to be strictly covert related but it can meet all of our learning needs and it provides lots of flexibility for us to design around that and learning needs include staffing and so we can put some of that money towards back into school so that they can retain some of their staff and and this would include also uh the need for the ppes etc superintendent yes um i looked at that as part of my budget proposal to the board and there are areas that are noted in that board item that shows all of the allowable expenses how it

041relates to hawaii's situation of how our funding works and where we are recommending ppe's is uh it's one area that i have am recommending um an allocation to uh so that we don't have any question as to whether we have enough funds to cover all of our schools it is about a million dollars a month to provide ppe's just for the department of ed thank you chair woodson i still do not have any questions from senators although i do have some i will let you proceed with your questions thank you madam chair we have a question from representative gates thank you chairwoodson uh superintendent kishimoto um my question for you i had a instance where um a constituent who's a teacher uh tested positive for kovid and um was having trouble finding resources and help

042through doe um to cope with the symptoms and on the illness she was under and so my question to you is uh what support does doe offer teachers who test positive and kind and if you can elaborate on what is the procedures uh when a teacher tests positive or a student at that thank you representative gates thank you for your question i am going to ask deputy universami who is the person that chairs our covert response team for the doe and works hand in hand with the department of health to answer that question representative gates um i'm not sure um if i'm i may get more specificity um because are we talking about what were the next steps after she did test positive or is it that she needed some personal support um in uh

043remediating her health i'm not quite sure which one how to proceed yeah i guess you could start with um what was the procedure after um that person tested positive but also the it was a a heart-wrenching situation where both of the teacher and her spouse tested positive and they both are teachers and so and they also had two young kids and it was you know a situation where they were in dire need of you know i guess child care or um you know any health support in that matter okay so um so so let me start with systemically is that once they are identified or or presumed that they may have been exposed and there might be a health risk we do ask them to quarantine and isolate and get help from their private provider

044and it's the private provider that will give them the personal guidance about because we are not necessarily privy to other health conditions that might mitigate how they should care for themselves and their family including their children what we do we do do at the school level is um look at the uh the cleaning of the areas um to ensure that um there's no transmission in the school that we're we're taking care of that piece and then also looking at um even though this person is uh in isolation the question then becomes if they are confirmed positive then they're taking sick leave and if they're still being examined or there's still a question we might consider telework for them when it comes to the personal uh [Music] care of their their students we actually look to

045the department of health to help us with what are some of the available services for families that are out there we are not necessarily current on every available resource so we actually look to other agencies to support the family in general in giving guidance especially in rural areas or areas that uh because it you know it's the whole state right and um the the resources varies from states um from different parts of the state so just know that we do what we can through the covay response team to uh find out as much as we can and someone is willing to share with us and then point them to resources that are available in the community to help them also know that there is a teleteller health desk in which we have been publicizing since

046the beginning of uh co-responding covet in which people can call and get information and get support and and that was set up to to be able to respond to individual cases and i'm not sure if that person um knows about that and we are more than happy to share that number again with you so you can pass it on to the individual thank you that was exactly the information i i wanted to have in case you know another uh situation like this arises and uh student uh parents are reaching out as well as teachers reaching out to what do they do once that happened so i appreciate it and representative said we will get that number to you so that um you can share it with that individual but we also want people to know

047that it is on our website we try to publish it as much as possible so anyone who needs it can get access to that that service great to hear thank you thank you thank you sir uh members any other questions from the house side if not vice chair capela thank you very much chair um so i have a question about campus safety um for the doe and i've received multiple reports from multiple islands um that principles are not always necessarily following doh recommendations regarding colvin with regard to best practices on campus safety school closures etc what is the doe doing to guarantee that teachers are involved in the creation and implementation of campus safety protocols and then beyond that what can teachers do if health regulations are not being followed how can they ensure that

048these concerns and their own concerns are being addressed so vice chair capela um i i do not have my safety team on uh we were uh informed we were talking about learning law so i have my uh education side of the house on uh so i'm gonna take the this question myself there there has been throughout this process i personally have been on air in the media uh principals have been sharing information out there and complex area superintendents as well that if the community sees an incident that they believe is not following health and safety guidance that uh the complex area superintendent can be contacted the school principal you know depending you know who the complaint is about um there is also out of the office of facilities a hotline um the hotline has been

049quiet actually the where we've gotten a couple of calls has been directly to a school principal about you know somebody maybe running across campus and didn't have a mask on or a complex area superintendent getting questions about protocols and whether protocol has been violated and so we've been able to mitigate this and we're keeping this at the uh we're addressing this at the tri-level closest to where the complaint stems so if it's related to a school to that school principle if it's concerning the school principal's decisions to that complex area if it's about how the complex area of superintendent is making decisions about health and safety it comes up to one of the assistant superintendents to handle thank you very much dr cashmoto thank you chair thank you vice chair uh members any other questions

050if not madam sheriff it's okay i will ask a question about learning loss this question is for the department of education if you can please if you're able to put back up the slide that was labeled student performance data universal screener then there if you can put the slide that back up and that slide four i believe that chair is referring to yes this is the one thank you so much so um this particular chart it's indicating with regards to some of your universal screeners that it says here that for elementary school regarding english and math it says 23 percent of students are two grade levels behind or more and then also in middle school the data suggests again it says here 40 for english and 35 for math in terms of students that are

051two years or more behind where they need to be with regards to their learning my question is um how does this compare to uh pre-covet conditions in terms of where these learners should be in their process and two you made reference earlier dr kishimoto of a national network i'm also curious to know how hawaii as a state is faring against some of our mainland counterparts thank you chairwoodson i'm going to ask terry usuma from our curriculum team to answer the the first part of that related to where we are as compared to previous year good afternoon thank you for that question when we look at previous data on the universal screeners the english language arts data for and the math data for the elementary grades are fairly comparable to what we have seen uh the

052previous year around first quarter however um you know there it's it's not a straight comparison because you have to also look at the total number of students that were screened in each of the areas but roughly it looks comparable for the middle grades it looks like we have a higher percentage of students who are behind oh it and it's been a gradual increase in the number of students who have been behind but this year the data shows that for math especially it is higher and for ela it um is also higher than the past so the need has the number of students who are performing two or more grade levels behind seems to be increasing even more for the middle level grades okay thank you for that and how does that compare to a national

053average if you have that information i don't have the exact numbers but that's something that we are definitely exploring and i think now that we're at the midpoint of the school year all the states are looking to see where are we at this point but we know that learning loss is across the nation a big concern there was one study that was published earlier by the nwea and they looked at their particular screener and their results stated that they didn't see so much of an impact in learning loss for english language arts but they did see some learning laws for math and they use their own information but we have to be very cautious with that information also because it uh the the insides or the number of students that were tested was not the

054same and it's very possible that the report did not include some of the students who were from our most vulnerable populations because they perhaps may not have had the same type of access to these assessments at the beginning of the school year okay thank you for that information and this is most certainly a very challenging situation um but we're where we are with with loss of learning there seems to be some loss it really exacerbates something that i try to allude to from time to time and um that is when we look at where we are with preparing our students for the future in them in an objective sense we have to ask ourselves are our students truly prepared however we're defining that and so i go back to [Music] our nape scores for the

055viewers that are not familiar nape stands for the national assessment of educational progress and it's a standardized test and i'm not one of these individuals that are for um testing testing and over testing but it is a mandated standardized test in which uh states are see how uh their students do compared to one another and so it's an apples to apples comparison okay so hawaii as a state when you look at our nape scores uh we are below average and that is a level that we have been at for quite some time and then when you expand that out again when you're talking about preparedness you can also take a look at uh the pisa assessment which is voluntary um about 77 70 80 countries participate in that assessment and again it's apples to apples

056comparison except for state to state comparisons it's it's assessing uh country to country comparison and so for the united states of america the pisa assessment states that we are as a nation ranks around 27th or 28th out of about again 80 countries we have made some progress as it relates to uh reading but we're stagnant with regards to other metrics and so i feel it's it's important that we keep this front of mind again because we're talking about core competencies like reading math at times science and english so these are things that our students need to be need to be able to perform well at and sometimes i believe it's kind of hard to to when you throw out those rankings of those numbers to get a real life application and so what that means

057in a in an actual setting is as an example you take a country like singapore okay so singapore much smaller than the united states of america of course but still you can do a a direct comparison okay so singapore many would argue have a very high highly effective puppet school system that is able to prepare their kids at the international level and so as a comparison let's take singapore to an average american student okay so if you take as an example an average american student the material that that student learned by the time they graduate high school is the equivalent to what a singaporean student learns by the 10th grade and so already there is a two-year gap in normal situations so what does that mean for our kids it means that if those two

058students the american and the singaporean student attend college say they attend the same college that means that the singaporean student uh has two years of additional higher education than that of the american student or if they go into the workforce that that means that the singaporean student has two years of skills and training that the american student doesn't have and so these type of reference points i think are important and i would like to see more focus on these types of metrics because they don't say everything but they are most certainly important indicators that i feel we need to do a better job on and like i said before this is not really a teacher problem it's not a principal problem it's that our system is not set up to support teachers and principals like

059you see in some of these high-performing systems so it's how we structure our system that we need to take a look at um it's not comfortable to hear it's not comfortable to say but it is the truth and uh there's research that backs this up countless white papers countless resources back back to stuff so i i just want everyone to be mindful that that's where we are i would love to hear any types of comments or responses to that analysis from doe or charter schools the chair was sent by may uh superintendent kishimoto again i i will say that i i think your um your overview is spot on the u.s as a nation struggles in competitiveness especially in the area of math and middle school math performance also lags when we're comparing across countries

060we also know that the more diverse especially racially and economically our student population within the u.s that are concentrated in a district the more challenges there have been in closing that achievement gap again is typically in those areas math and middle school performance overall is where we see that lag a lot of our work has been focused over the past year on the type of supports that are needed in the middle school area and how we rethink engagement of students in the middle grades you can't just keep doing the same thing and so i don't mind a hard conversation a hard truth that i think you're referring to and uh making reference to and i think that there is this incredible opportunity we have by having this kind of dialogue and by um designing having

061the the leeway to design differently to think about how we continue to expand on things that have been happening here because of support we've got we've gotten to to change up design around early college allowing students after especially after 10th grade to start their college education while in high school at no cost to the student it empowers our poor students to have access it also gives them that confidence that they in fact can do college level work but it also changes our mindset about how we prepare kids for college level work by 10th grade by the end of 10th grade that they are in fact ready to engage so i think that the crisis that we're in has also provided an opportunity across our public school system which includes all of us including charter schools

062to think about how we design how we take advantage of where we're seeing um surprising impacts of this design design that we've been forced into do we need to have students spend six or more hours in a day in seats in classrooms to accomplish the entire curriculum are there multiple ways in which we can deliver that curriculum leverage leveraging technology so that there are some differentiated pathways we have students who are receiving special ed services where we didn't know if they could be successful or would be successful using technology because that wasn't necessarily part of their design or students that were struggling learners where we tend to say give them more skill building give them more time in their classroom and the fact is that via technology some of those more struggling students have really

063blossomed via technology and i think someone on the charter school scott was talking about some of those examples that they've seen in their own schools and so i think we we have a lot to solve but we also have this opportunity because of the budget and health crisis but we also have this opportunity to leverage the crisis to say what do we adopt as permanent changes as opposed to saying these were these are temporary changes my biggest and i'll end with this my biggest fear is going back to the old normal because all of the old normal didn't work for all kids part of it did and part of our changes that we've been making work really well we're really excited about the early college and a lot of the progress we're making in some

064key areas but there are some new um areas of work that i think we've we've we've learned more about and and we need to start moving that into our new normal and i'll toss it to yvonne if she wants to add just from the charter perspective or her team you know just because i know there's so much learning across the board here agree with everything that superintendent um just shared out i think um from from you you've heard from two of our charter school principals and i do think that they're you know the the pandemic forced um all of us into thinking differently about education and we've always that's always been on some something that we've always said we had to do and the pandemic really has forced us into that and i do think

065that there are a lot of learnings that are happening wherein uh like superintendent said we can't go back to you know when we return when we there's no returning to the previous normal it's going to be a new normal and i think a lot of the things that we are learning our schools are learning and what students are capable of doing is is what i think the positive of this is coming out and that i do think like there's a lot of um things that we learned that we can do differently that i hope we can move forward on so um i share with would send the the data and the information you shared out is spot on we've got a lot of work to do to get our students moving in the right direction

066but i do think that our schools when they work together when the community is together and they work with their parents i think that's the key um so many of our parents are also struggling but kudos to all of them for for putting in the effort and i think where you're able to see that and where the faculty and the administration and the governing boards and you know educators are able to work together that's when they're able to make up for the challenges um and i think it's that learning that we're gonna move forward on so thank you so much and i appreciate everyone's hard work on that chair if i may can i can i just add one more point because i i would be remiss if i didn't add a point that i

067think uh ivan and i are would both agree on you know one of the challenges we're in right now is the the predictability and stability of funding for public ed and we're not designed to do long-term planning we do uh annual or by annual uh planning in the and and so we're not designed to say that over the course of the next five ten years we're going to redesign ourselves to be an early college system and this is what we need each year we're not designed that way because there isn't predictability and stability in that funding and i do think that that is you know a related matter even though this is not the funding conversation but it is a related matter in terms of of that predictability if you look at what tennessee just

068announced this morning um they're gonna announce they they announced a whole tutoring uh one-to-one tutoring program much like we have announced uh that that we'll focus on as a as the next step with our learning loss mitigation but they've also announced additional pay for their teachers to make it more competitive right and so they're saying yes they have a budget crisis but if they don't infuse money into the school system and create stability and longevity in terms of the ability for for longer term planning that that they might lose lose momentum on the kind of things that we would like to do to to really have this change uh be long-term and be permanent and not not an interim step all right thank you dr kishibano thank you both for your comments um i've taken

069a lot of time i'm going to kick it over to uh cherokee dani i will just say i concur with regards to the funding discussion uh we look forward to continuing that conversation once we have our next informational briefing back to you madam cherokidani thank you chair i think i just wanted to add to that conversation and where we are in the global uh i guess steps of usa and how we how we match up and what dr kishimoto said about our our students at 10th grade you know prepared for college you know one of the things that we have started in the high schools is the early college and um unfortunately what i what i did see in the budget was a 50 cut to that and i think these are some of the

070things that we have to look at when we start discussing the budget but on to the questions at hand with regarding to learning loss i was curious and i wanted to ask winston sakurai the student that did not do well in person but did really well virtually when you guys went back transition back to school how did that student fare he he well the student actually is doing a lot better and the reason why is because the teacher was able to establish that relationship which is probably one of the most important things in terms of actually educating a child if a child believes in the teacher looks up to the teacher they'll do anything for the teacher and and during the online time he was there to be able to connect with that teacher and

071so that's where we see them thriving uh when they're coming back to school so yes uh uh it's a student that we've been working with for a while that's transferred in last year and then we're able to get them up to speed for this year so thank you for the question great that that's really great to hear um superintendent i and this also for yvonne after um what are the plans to assess students and learning for the remaining two quarters and what are if you have plans do you know what the cost would be so i'm going to have brent and luke from our office of uh strategy innovation performance uh speak to the the plans um i'm not sure that i have the financials in front of me uh chair kadani but we can

072we can give you that follow-up as a follow-up good afternoon chair kidani and and members um in regards to our plans in regards to moving forward with assessments uh piggybacking a little bit about what deputy shared i mean it's always uh keeping the the finger at the pulse in regards to classroom teachers so that is always ongoing as we look at informal types of assessments um one being being the universal screener and usually the universal screener is done three times a year typically so it's done in the in the beginning like what we've done to get a handle in regards to student learning and and being able to structure uh the instructional design of what students need and then it's also done at the middle of the school year and also at the end of

073the school year so it's done usually uh three times a year um so that's one piece in regards to the diagnostic and then um we also know that that teachers are providing ongoing assessments whether it's through a universal screener it's through observations it's it's daily assignments and so forth so although that's not uh uh assessment in a sense it is an assessment in regards to the teacher's um awareness of where students are at to provide the instructional needs for all students the only thing i will add is that we are still obligated to offer also the smarter balance assessment so even though we had a waiver a year ago across the nation we have heard both from the outgoing administration and the incoming administration that that assessment will continue to happen and so there are

074modifications we're making uh that we're exploring about length of the the assessment and so forth and that but that will give us the same areas of uh feedback uh on how students are doing this year compared to the assessment data we had from two years ago the summative assessment so superintendent is the um i'm sorry go ahead yvonne go ahead and ask your question yeah so so one of the questions i had as to how you're going to uh you know help with the remedial activities for those students that are failing is is the department planning to hire teachers or contract tutors or what for summer learning programs learning hubs so i'm going to have philosophy sami answer a question she and uh terry usuma and heidi armstrong can can answer this question um they

075are working together as a team with all of the principles and complex areas superintendents um so allah senator um great question we have uh started the planning process with our complex serious leaders to determine not only which students will need help during the summer but what types of designs make sense for what they are experiencing and what they believe our students will need during those summer months and we tend to think of them as extended learning time um the the agreement that we had in the leadership team meeting was that we would give the the complex area leaders timed um up to the end of january to have conversations with their principals the schools to take a look at the current midterm data grades that tell them which students are still floundering and may need

076help during the summer to also then think about given their unique context and what what they found out worked last summer and what they might want to carry forward what are some new innovation or designs that they want to carry forward in the summer we have put money aside for that but we have not decided exactly what the design will be because we want to ensure that the the influence from the schools and the complex area have a voice and influence in terms of what that design looks like we do believe that there will be summer learning programming that will be done it may look different be depending on the needs and the focus of the students and we can give you more detailed information as we get that back from the complex areas and

077their designs thank you yvonne you want to answer that question and then we'll go back to the first question and let you answer that sure i i just wanted to note that all of our charter schools all are as public schools also take the smarter balance assessment so that will be as that's administered our charter schools will be administering those assessments as well and they will you know get that information and the data back on how well or not well their students are doing each individual school has their own assessments you've heard the variety of universal screeners and other kinds of formative assessment tools i'm going to ask pj and perhaps winston and lydia to help fill in some of that information for us right so as much as our school our schools will all

078take the standardized test that's required of us and make sure that you know we do our best on that that being said i mean many of our charter schools uh make it clear that standardized testing only shows a certain portion or what where our students are at and so many of them also develop their own assessments of student performance and student learning and so we throughout this pandemic but anyways as part of our role as the authorizer we continue to encourage our schools to capture that information and be able to share that it's an important piece of the chartering movement so it's not just the standardized score but we also paint a picture with other elements for some of our play space or project-based schools and some of the student work that they portfolios that

079they put together so it's not just a matter of um where they're performing on the standardized test though those are important and those those do show a picture it's those other elements that our charter schools also work at painting an entire picture of the student not just that um standardized performance piece uh winston and lydia do you want to jump in on that i i'll just share a couple of things we use uh some online uh programs such as ixl and seesaw where we actually keep that open during the summer so students uh even last summer we kept the google classroom and those online platforms on so students could actually progress uh and actually learn during the summer but we're using that data actually to see how they're progressing so the skills development that we're

080seeing actually even during the pandemic when we're shut down students actually did three times as much online in these programs that is not a replacement for teachers at all but actually help them to mitigate any kind of loss of of instruction uh or skill development and just going back to what chair woodson says you know our our families here look at the test scores uh and expect the test scores to be at the highest and we try to provide uh that as part of our programming uh the core content is so important uh and it's not an uh either or uh but it's a it's a both and what we do that where we do that uh core content the direct instruction we do the project-based learning to supplement the critical skills development and we

081teach character and we think all those things together high test scores students who are able to communicate and collaborate well and then those who are ethically sound and make good decisions for not just themselves but for the world those are going to be the most successful students and most successful people leading us forward um i'd like to jump in um just so you know that uh kuala poo is a total opposite of uh winston school uh but we do use many of the assessments that the doe uses such as the nwea we use also dibbles and we also use achieve 3000 as part of our assessment program all of that measures or helps us in addition to s back scores so we try to use um many different ways of measuring progress instead of just

082the expat we also are hoping that we have um we are immersion school also the o uh hawaiian immersion test so i think as charter schools we want to look beyond just the standardized test scores i think that's why we exist i think especially in this pandemic one of our key things was looking at the social emotional health of our children perhaps before anything else it was get the children in school and see how they're doing and if there's one thing that we hang our hat on is attendance perhaps not as a punitive measure but if they like school they will come they want to be here so our attendance was always pretty decent and it's even better now but parents are keeping the children at home so that they are safe they are in

083quarantine and they are conscious of their community being safe so if they're keeping their kids at home they're letting us know one thing i've seen in this pandemic on molokai is that parents do make a difference and we are shifting our thought from parents as supporters supporters but also as hey teachers let's use the parents as your as the child's personal ea and let's see if we can do even more training for the parents especially if they stay at home it's hard on the parents they want to send their children so test scores are important but i think during this time the social emotional health of children their parents and of the community sometimes have to take precedence before anything else we're happy that we can provide art we are happy that we can even

084provide pe face to face and that's where the measure during this time i feel needs to be thank you thank you i think uh we are probably a few minutes away from our uh um the end of this uh session so i will ask one more question share woodson and then i will turn it back over to you um so i guess i'm trying to find out superintendent and also probably for uh the charter schools um what data will be used to to determine the priority focus for how we do remedial activities for our students how are we substantiating what exactly our students need i think i'll answer that question again we use our achieve we use instructional data we use universal screeners such as nwea and dibbles but so all of those three and

085if we can we'll use uh s back scores too so we each school or at least kuala peru we have uh measures in place to determine which students need tier one support would be tutoring or even tier three support um and it's something that we are actually doing now and trying to get other programs do it whatever we can tutoring in school after school um we do have the 21st century funds our molokai complex has those funds um the thing the one thing that i could use help on is sometimes these federal programs require the 48 college credits and the or taking of the parapro assessments these i i cannot find 48 college credit students to work part-time or students who have taken college credits i even cannot have um the alternative is the what's

086that test um that they can take the parapro assessment that is not even offered on multi or not that i know of anyway and if we can get some of these tests or some of these requirements waived for rural areas that would be helpful so i can get tutors i actually have some money to provide tutoring i just can't get the find the bodies to fill these positions so if i could get help or some kind of temporary waiver for the parapro assessment to be offered on molokai or some kind of waiter waiver for not having the college the 48 college credits and the and the math 100 or the english that would be helpful even if it's just a temporary uh suspension of those requirements right now for we can hire substitute teachers without

087bachelors i think certain dish complexes like molokai uh we are able to get substitute teachers who do not have the bachelor's degree so um if you're asking for help that's where we could use some help in getting some of the using some of our funds for these tutoring programs that will have to be addressed by our charter school clinician yvonne good thank you dr kishimoto thank you madam chair there are many sources of data we'll be using but certainly the at the elementary level we have standard space report cards students are making progress based on those learning standards and and we can see which students are not meeting expectations at this time and will monitor whether they're going to need extra time over the summer and so elementary school principals certainly are uh very good

088at knowing how to design uh summer school um what we're going to have is the the potential of more students participating in an expanded version of summer school so it's not just the students who are falling behind in math and and literacy but also opportunities for enrichment engagement and social emotional learning support programming to have that positive transition for students so whether that includes stepping up more around arts programming over the summer for that kind of making sure students are are excited about continuing learning coming back into classrooms you know uh preparing for that kind of kind of transition that's one level as you get up the grades we have the data that we continue to monitor around uh credit completion uh at the at the secondary level and you know whether that's uh credit

089recovery uh support over the summer and providing that which will certainly happen we expanded that this past summer but also providing time and opportunity for um authentic additional credits right so new credits and and not just saying we're only doing catch-up but there may be opportunities for students to continue to do some unique learning or additional learning and continue to advance including early college we will continue work that we started we started a pilot this past year where we identified several offices in the doe that have other experts other employee groups beyond teachers so whether that's an engineer or communications person an hr person and so for our seniors who are transitioning to college or who don't have a clear pathway we are providing expanded opportunities for internships here or in the doe and and

090so we provided that last summer it was extremely successful it was small but very successful now we have a model for providing paid internships with based on students interests in some of these areas so that's also part of how we're thinking about some of some are learning uh much more broader than just thinking about credit recovery and more typical summer school design of of mitigating loss but also having that those enrichment opportunities again keeping kids connected with teachers and with the education community but schools have rich amount of data if you want additional information about the specific data that we're using rodney can answer rodney luke aslu can answer questions about the data we collect but we'll let you tell us if you want that additional information okay well i'm certain that uh if any

091of uh the members listening do want that that they can reach out directly to you chair woodson i will turn it back over to you thank you thank you madam chair uh members i have one additional question but are there any other house members that have inquiries there's no one else okay um i want to circle back to something that was discussed earlier and it's not directly related but i still think it's important to to kind of nail down some answers uh and i'm going to ask this question through a hypothetical um and it's regarding the doh safety parameters and learning models and currently right now um as it as it stands the decision as to what kind of educational delivery system to offer resides within the authority of the complex area superintendent and also

092the principal and my uh question is let's just say that we're in a situation to where the doh guidelines of a county exceeds the cove positivity rate that suggests that you should revert back to distance learning but a principal or a cas decides to keep that campus or that complex area open with full in-class instruction we know that uh families have the option of of continuing with distance learning or to move forward with some sort of blended learning model but what are the options for educators do they have to go back to campus and teach on campus if in fact we're in a situation to where there's a there's a conflict of opinion between whether or not a school should be open or not when looking at and considering the doh parameters so let me

093let me start answering that question and then i'll ask deputy running basami again as our covet lead in in terms of the team that's working directly with doh the emergency proclamation from the governor's office does not include the education system that includes all of us across system types in terms of closing down when the the counties in the state is closing down there is a separation so that there are considerations made with doh support and guidance around the scope of decision that we should be making so as an example in recent case escalation there is a discussion with the department of health around uh and and variety of education leaders who are making these decisions depending on region around the uh goal of of continuing to have stability for families and not keep changing models

094when there are some changes the department of health provides very clear guidance and direction when they are stating to us we are concerned about what the data is showing where we're projecting and the need to to shut down an area they that's not where we've been our relative case count has been low the stemming of cases from the school system that's not where the positivity rate is stemming from so they're balancing their guidance to us between community data data from the school and the overall social emotional health as well of our community our students and our families in terms of providing stability and so the the school principal and causes work together to determine within that range of decision making that doh provides how they're making a decision uh whether to open up any further

095but in general we're saying if there are concerns about escalating cases as we watch that we will hold to not opening any further but we don't want to close reopen close reopen and destabilize our community and so that's that's a lot of the the balancing uh that is happening and i'll have um deputy owner some provide additional comment if i miss any major points and then see if there's further specific areas you want us to respond to yes and and thank you so we just put out a recent advisory yesterday as we knew that the the changes in the covet community spread was going to trigger some questioning about school models and we reminded folks that the threshold set by doh with um looking at what cdc was reporting at the time were were to

096use to be used to assist not to mandate because if it was a mandate you would see private public and charter schools all closing down because now it's a health mandate so it's just a reminder that it is act the thresholds are actually a way to assist on people to look at the leaders to take a look at the data um the second thing is that um that the doh in in conversing with them yesterday was uh to really agree on that there are other factors that we should be looking at our ability to hold and maintain the mitigation strat the mitigation strategies from cdc the five mitigation strategies everybody knows what they are but more importantly and and this is something that i'm not i can i can pass the link to you was

097yesterday cdc came out with a new study um and uh i can share the link with you but bottom line is the discussion um of the study says cdc recommends that k-12 schools be the last setting to close after all mitigation measures have been employed and the first to reopen when they can do so safely cdc officers tools and it goes on to but basically what there's what the study showed was that um that in-person learning is not necessarily related to uh the spread of uh coven in the community and that is that is an important factor in being able to weigh whether or not our school should stay open or uh keep pulling back all right thank you i have a follow-up question but uh madam chair kidani has a thank you chair yeah

098i i just wanted to note that uh the dui public schools are kind of at a disadvantage in knowing this like the charter schools you know and let their families know right away because they know by school in the doe we go by complex areas so the families are at a disadvantage um to make that decision for themselves for the safety of their families and i just wanted to point that out because it's one of the things that i've uh said over and over that i think the reporting should be by schools thank you thank you madam chair it is most certainly a very challenging circumstance right you're trying to balance learning with safety and it's most certainly not easy if the department education can answer this question we are also hearing reports that if

099a school is in class instruction full-time and there are educators that are requesting that they continue conducting their teaching through a uh uh um a long distance learning apparati that that request is getting denied or they have to take they define us the teachers have to take sick leave um in order to for the for the school to honor that request i know if that's true but i would like to to hear if if the department is hearing any of that and uh if it is true my concern is of course that there's a lot of reports that are being issued and this is a obviously a brand new virus but we do know for a fact that the virus can be transmitted from child to child and from child to adult and so if

100there are teachers that are concerned with their safety they might have as an example seniors in their household or they might themselves have a pre-existing condition i just humbly request that there be some consideration and flexibility giving to those educators that find themselves in that circumstance the department of health guidelines does not do does not recommend point in time counts it says you're supposed to look at the infection rate over time and so we are also hearing right now that principles going back with full class instruction and that they are moving forward with things like assemblies and so in my mind that doesn't seem to be appropriate although that is a report i have not verified it but i would love to hear if the department has heard any of that so we have a

101telework policy that is continuously being looked at and we collect telework data uh in terms of how much how many employees are turned down for uh telework requests and why they were turned down and whether accommodations can be made so that's a you know it's a living breathing policy we're constantly going back to it we are collecting and monitoring that data and we are as a leadership team continuously talking about how we provide the in-person supports to struggling students and balance that with requests to work via technology or via teleteller work uh which would run contrary to meeting the needs for for the in-person instruction and so school principals are constantly looking at their staffing models and complex superintendents are involved with that and then at the state level we're looking at that our office

102of talent management reviews that as we go into this semester we are looking at where it is safe and we're ready to open up more in person knowing that we do have students who are struggling via technology learning that we don't want to have them lose an entire year and so there's prioritization being made as that happens schools are making decisions about how that learning structure is is designed at the school level knowing that that's not going to look the same as pre-covert times at this point so no one is filling up a classroom fully in their pre-covert format they are students more students being given time on campus doh still has guidance that we are under where we can only have up to 50 of students anyway at one time we still have to

103meet all the distancing we still have to have universal masking there are very few health exceptions for that in fact you go into our special ed classrooms i know as armstrong hasn't spoken in this session but she has lots of information she could write as well and special ed but you go into our special ed classrooms um and uh students with significant physical needs or are in masks um and so the tremendous work you know that everyone is doing to have universal masking and we hold that very very seriously um and so it's it's that balance uh whether there are um uh assembly assemblies and what someone is calling an assembly you know that's we're going to keep getting questions we get them all the time we will continue to get them as we keep

104rolling out the support structure for our students there is um a memo that i sent out in this week around you know gatherings and not having those large group gatherings we still have that on hold uh the what we are looking at is uh delaying the decisions around graduations because my heart breaks with parents and kids who who would love to have that ceremony and so how we can have that ceremony uh we are we're gonna hold off a little bit to see you know how far we can go with with having that gathering at the end of the year to some extent uh with certain conditions you know to see if we can do that or whether we're still going to have to do some kind of virtual uh uh graduation but we just

105provided guidance around that those kind of group gatherings we're still holding to that again we can answer to specific situations um you know if you have something specific to to send to us uh where you've heard something uh but we we have we have quite an extensive network of a team with the tri-level as we hear something whether it's a complaint or a question or is this okay that depending who gets that that gets that gets pushed right into the network so that we're supporting one another with those decisions and providing continued clarity of information um in a complex situation of how we make these decisions um in during this health pandemic i hope that that gives you at least the framework and context by which we're doing this we are we have not opened

106ourselves up beyond what is this the the already established doh guidance uh that continues into this semester yeah thank you dr keisha but all uh just for reference members the current uh infection number is uh 3.7 the average so that suggests uh blended learning model not full in class instruction these are hard questions and just know that we appreciate everything that you folks are doing the department of education and charter schools it is not an easy task the work that you do is crucially important because it's about the future but we still have to ask these hard questions so that's why we're doing that i think we're going to wrap up here i want to also make reference though for the members and the audience's edification there was a report recently by unicef called averting

107a lost generation and it speaks to the covet 19 pandemic and the negative impacts uh these negative impacts have in fact been global and we know that 600 million students as of november have been negatively impacted because of learning loss and that's because of school closures and so this is something that everyone around the globe is dealing with and here in hawaii we most certainly have the talent we have the know-how to make sure that we move forward in the future so we have to keep pressing on i wanted to thank everyone for being on this call madam chair um it's it's always a privilege and honor to work with you and your team i look forward to doing so uh this year and um with that i am going to turn it back over

108to cherokee dhani for any last remarks thank you chair woodson i just wanted to thank you for coming up with this idea i think it was a great discussion thank you all of all of you for participating and i look forward even to receiving the slides from from you that we can distribute to the members thank you so much be safe have a great weekend thank you thank you everybody thank you aloha everyone you