001I'm going to hand around a sign in sheet and just kind of keep it rotating around for anybody who trickles in. Um uh for our guests who working on an internship hours, I'll do a little bit of an intro that's review for you all. Uh welcome to our district education advisory council. This is being uh recorded because there's a state law requires us to um record all of our shack meetings. Now, that means school health advisory council, which I explained at the beginning, is that this committee serves multiple purposes because we're all trying to be efficient and not go to a thousand meetings. And so, this serves as our district sitebased team. It also serves as our school health advisory council. That's why sometimes we talk about snacks and menus and that kind of stuff.
002Um, and so, which, uh, you guys will be happy to hear when we'll talk about menus at the April meeting. Uh, we're going to do it today. Uh, >> are we gonna have a sample? >> You You might, you might. I don't know. I got some feedback about the pizza. The pizza needs improvement, but we will have the uh chef or Ephraim Terino will be here in the April meeting as well as Matt Stragger just to talk about some uh there's a lot of rules that we have to follow with the Texas Department of Agriculture. Uh, and so, you know, stuff that I don't really have think it's fun, but we'll do it because it's required. Uh, all right. Well, welcome. We we have a uh a relatively brief agenda uh today. I don't have
003a ton of slides for that, but we have individual things. And so the overview is we're going to get a quick update from uh Julian Matonis, our director of communications about our website revisions and then from Brian Grineer about our student information systems uh transfer translation migration. Uh we'll hear from Jimmy about all things CNI, etc. And then we're going to end up with me with a couple of reminders about some things we're doing districtwide as well as a reminder everybody to vote in the primaries. And so that's kind of the run of show. We might get out early. We'll see. Right now I'd like to turn it over to our first item which I think is Julianne and Brian. Right. >> Mhm. >> All right. >> Julianne. Take it away. >> I will. >>
004She's our director of communications in case you guys haven't met. >> For the purposes of this conversation, I'm your web master. Um, so big news coming in July and perhaps a little bit sooner, an allnew ahisd.net. It has been probably over a decade since the website has been overhauled. So, we are in the process right now that I'll overview with you um of working with a new vendor, a new platform on things to really freshen up the look of the website, which is sort of the digital welcome mat for our district. More people will see the website than will actually physically go to our schools. So, it's really about kind of upping our presence there. Um, so I'll kind of walk you through what I've shared with some of our staff members kind of of
005why a new one. I've told you it's old. Um, but really having a more accessible website and means of if you needed assistance with a visual device to read for you, are we meeting those standards? And are the colors meeting the contrast standards? Is it mobile responsive? Can you use it on your laptop, your iPad, and your mobile phone and still have a good experience? Yes. Um, and hopefully improved user experience from the navigation, search, and the translation function. Um, a lot of those things are built more into the website platform. So, I'm excited about that. And really just making sure our marketing and branding is stronger. I think when we look at our website now, it is much more information based, but it is not as much looking towards anybody that's perhaps a prospective
006parent or student and wanting to learn more about us. And so that's something that we're trying to focus on um with the new website. We are also kind of taking um the current website into consideration of I I call this like moving. Before you pack the boxes, you're going to weed out what you don't want to take with you. That's kind of what we're doing now. And so starting next week, they're actually going to migrate pieces of our current website to the new one. But we also will be creating, hi friends, a lot of new things that will go along with it. So, some of the things that we're really not going to take with us, we're trying not to focus on Google websites for programs and department that are not officially associated with our
007district. PDFs are not accessible documents. So, unless they're actually critical information, try to get away from that or flyers and images that again a a device reader couldn't tell the difference between text and a flat image. Um, some sites are going to come over as is. We've been working behind the scenes to really um streamline some websites the last six months. others we're going to start over and just take little pieces with us and then we're going to create things that don't exist just to make sure we're really strong in in highlighting all that's amazing about this district. Um and I keep telling everyone less is more and so hopefully it will be um a much better user experience and also an experience for those of us who manage it that it won't be so
008heavy um and as many pages because that's what's really um when you start digging down into it a lot of pages. Um, so right now design phase is underway. Site migration for the district site is going to begin next week on the 11th. And then we're going to be preparing for school migration. I'm working kind of on a site map for the high school first because they are more complicated um in terms of information and things that need to be there and then we'll work our way down. Um, so it's going to be a lot and then we're going to have people later in the spring help us. I want to say like break it. Um, but test it and test the links and see what needs to be refined and hopefully mid June we
009can launch it because the current site goes away July 1st, 2026 and then we'll be able to train additional users as the site gets ready for completion. So it's it's a lot of work but I think come June. And so I want to give you kind of a sneak peek of where we are. If you'll click on that link, Christina. So, this is a mockup of what the new front page could look like. If you'll scroll down slowly, it has a lot of It has a button bar so we can have easy access to things that are really critical. It has more room for things about us we want to highlight. It has news that we always see on the current one. We have calendar functions and feeds. We also have um a better sense
010of how do we highlight programs, traditions, community, things in our district that we're proud of. Um it's very exciting. And then they have a live feed. So if it's something more in the reminder function, we could put it into the feed. So there's lots of different functions and templates. I'm learning all the terminology right now, but this is kind of your look and it has our branding and our colors um and the things that are important to us. Um, so that's the sneak peek, but I have a job for all of you. Um, I want feedback. I want you to fill out a brief survey and tell me some things about the current website, what you're looking for, what you use most often, what you wish was there. Um, so as we're designing, we're making
011sure we're trying to incorporate what families need, what staff needs, um, and even what students need, and what you actually go to the website and want to have right at your fingertips. And so none of this is actually real. So when we start designing and saying what buttons need to go on the front page, I want a sense of what everyone thinks would be most important. So I'm going to pass this around. It's just yes or no. If you want to give me some feedback, great. I want to see your faces and say hello to everyone. >> Yeah. If you want to do that now, that is the end of the formal presentation. But if you have your questions, Yes. >> So, I'll give you a second to uh write some stuff while um you
012transfer to Brian's slides and then um if you want to keep writing during the rest of the meeting, you can. If you'll just leave your survey on your table, we'll pick them up at the end. >> Hey, let's clap for Julianne. This is a lot of work to migrate over all this. Well done. >> The work really begins though. Now, so thank you for the feedback and input. And if you want to have a conversation, like leave me your email or your phone number so we can connect. But I really want to know what's important to every stakeholder group that's in this room as we move forward. No, I was going to We've already talked about it. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Give a second. >> There's a more seamless transition than I expected on is
013a lot more efficient than I your music. >> Sure. Okay. Okay, this is an intestinal grade. >> I got my excited everything. >> I didn't read the whole class. >> Thank you. Oh my gosh. Thank you. >> So, we have a couple wrapping up. So, you welcome finish that as you need to >> and we'll switch over to Brian now. Brian, tell us what's down the pike in your next what's down. I'm just sitting here thinking, my gosh, we got so much new stuff coming next year. We're going to have a new high school. We're going to have a new website. We have I think I talked to you guys about Parent Square this year. Did I talk to you guys about Parents Square already? Uh this fall, you get bonus information here. Um starting
014next school year, so July, August, uh we have a new communication um solution for for the district. We're getting all of our communication essentially on one platform. And what we heard from parents was, "I got too many channels coming at me. I got this teacher's emailing me and this one's using Remind and this one's using Blooms and sometimes I get text messages." We're uh we purchased something called Parent Square, which is a great product which is going to bring that all under uh one app for you. So your Monday mail will come through Parent Square. Uh uh classroom communications will come through Parent Square. if you have kids in extracurricular activities, clubs, that stuff will come through parent square. And then it also manages like our um uh phones, phone calling. So if you get
015calls saying, "Hey, your kid wasn't in class today." That's that all goes through there. >> Um it's going to be exciting. I'm really thinking you guys are going to like it. We're going to pilot it at the um at Howard and at the junior school sometime after spring break. So, if you have a kid at Howard or at the junior school or if you teach there, uh um you're going to get a sneak peek on that. So, more information to come on that. On top of that, you may or may not have heard we are also um migrating to a new student information system and enterprise resource management system. So essentially the way we do business in the district um is switching from powers school. So if you're a parent, you're familiar with uh hack
016that's powers school or migrating over to a new solution called skyward. Some point somebody had a great idea. Let's do it both at once. So my uh fall this year has been nothing but skyward migration. It's a huge project. I think >> huge. It is going to touch every single person in this district including families because we're taking all of the data we have in in Power School and we have to migrate that data from one system to a brand new system and part of that is making sure that uh data is right and clean and accurate. There's some stuff that doesn't come over that we have to rebuild. Uh what I wanted to do is just kind of give you an update. And when I say an update, like a 30,000 foot view update
017of of where we're at in that process and and where we're heading. So, uh, you can also use this to guess where Brian actually used AI to make the slides look pretty neat. >> Got four of them. >> This isn't one of them. This is like this is high quality for me, though, right? But if you guess this slide, you're right. >> Wow. >> Uh, so first, why we're doing this? We we started this conversation. Gosh, it's been it was like 3 years ago. I remember sitting down when we used to have a conference room down in the tech department before construction started. Uh really going through um looking at what we could do better in the district and we looked at a number of different solutions for our for our system. I'm just going
018to call it CIS, but student information system and we landed on on Skyward. Uh some of the big reasons why we're doing this is one it's going to improve on kind of our internal processes and workflows. Uh what we're going to see is for instance if we're onboarding a new teacher you know it starts off with an application uh once an application fills is filled out that will you know create a essentially a a notification to our HR department. You got this sitting in there. they're going to do their things which will then notify campus principles to do their things which will then notify technology department to get them in into the system with all their accounts and passwords and things like that. So there's going to be some improved processes um and uh productivity
019that this is going to bring us within within the district itself. Um their their customer support and just the the the The amount of positive feedback we've received about Skyward uh uh has been tremendous. Uh one thing that I think our current system lacks is is that support. Um it's it's it's it's tough. It takes a long time. A lot of times they want to charge you for hey, you know, I need to spend a half hour figuring out this problem. Well, we can do that, but that's going to cost you $900 to to to do that. Uh Skyward is is uh much more willing to work with districts and they have a great support. So that that was a big feature. Uh improved functionality with current and upcoming systems. Um I had just mentioned
020parent square. Uh Skyward and Parent Square are going to you know work in in sync >> in sync with each other. There was another word I was looking for. Uh so much so that parent square is actually like a preferred >> uh uh don't want to say veteran but a partner thank you with with Skyward. So Parent Square is going to work great with them. Uh Eastfed uh through our special education department uh that works with it and information kind of flows from one system to the other. Uh and then finally and and really most importantly it's this is going to save the district a lot of money. like one year of Skyward is or I'm sorry one year of parent of parents work one year of power school is almost what we pay three
021years of Skyward right so it's there's a tremendous cost savings for the district as well >> so the considerations actually kind of in in reverse order >> yeah yeah well that's the way AI put him that way I'm just going to blame AI but how's that um so kind of a 30-foot timeline of what we've been doing this fall has been nothing but consultation meetings. Um, on the student side, I'm kind of leading up the student side and then Matt Strader, our chief financial officer, is taking care of the uh um the uh finance side of it. But we're in a lot of these meetings together because it's really all one big projects. But it it has been, I kid you not, I've probably had at least 40 meetings just this fall. Some of them
022have been, you know, a half hour check-in. Some of them have been, you know, 4hour. We need to go through a checklist of these three things. We had like a 130 page um document that they walked us through just kind of taking into account how we do business currently in in the district so that we can get Skyward set up um to do what we needed to do. Um so, a lot of time this fall has just been spent on consultation. uh this spring uh is really we're starting this is all kind of out of out of order but training is going to be the big part right we're really starting to kick off training uh between finance and CIS we have over 95 trainings scheduled already um and those trainings last from like the
023first one was a few weeks ago so January through almost the end of next school year because we we time these trainings um when it's appropriate. So if we have a submission that we have to submit to the state, we got to send all kinds of data to the state uh throughout the year. If there's a submission due in December, um we're going to have training for those people right at that time. So that first of all, people aren't really drinking from a fire hose because you can't really take it all in at once anyhow. Um, but we have over 80 at least scheduled throughout the year. Uh, those trainings, there's going to be some face-to-face training in the district. A lot of it has been webinars, uh, where we get groups of people together
024that, hey, I need these people to learn this piece of Skyward. Um, we bring them in for a webinar with with Skyward. Uh, and then they have something called their knowledge hub, which is great because that's um on demand training. uh and we can push that out. So, you know, as you start coming on board, um teachers and and parents really because there'll be training in there for parents on how to use essentially their version of hack. Um we'll be pushing those out um to everyone. Um also this spring, well, we've done course selection in e school, which is our powers school is our current system, right? So kids have selected courses, course selections all done in e school, but course scheduling is going to be done in Skyward. So that's a big piece of
025training that's coming up for our academic deans. And I think there's some counselors that are going to be involved with that to to learn the scheduling feature of of um Skyward in the next few weeks. Anyhow, um all of our high school courses are coming over. will migrate from um from Power School to Skyward. However, none of our elementary courses are coming over. So, we have to rebuild a lot of the courses, which is a good thing, right? Because over the years, you know, we we have, you know, a math course at Woodridge maybe called math and over at Cambridge it's called mathematics. and it those kinds of things when you're dealing with data cause issues. So, it's a it's a chance for us to um clean up um clean up. Um so, we'll be
026doing some course catalog construction this this time as well. Uh during the spring as well, we will do a migration of data on April 1st, I think, is when we first do this, right? And what they're going to do is they're going to take a snapshot of our database of our echool solution and they're going to take that information and they're going to bring it over to to um to Skyward. Now, that means a couple of things for us. Uh it means at that point going forward, anything that we do in um any like new information we put into e school, we're going to have to like if we get a new kid that registers, we got to remember that because we're going to have to manually put them in into Skyward. That's nothing you
027guys need to worry about. But just know there's a lot of stuff going on in the background here. uh once data gets migrated over they're going to do a big migration of of demographics in June. Uh so from through once that gets pulled in then we have to spend the month of June reviewing that data and looking at that. Now this is going to have a few changes on how um we've traditionally conducted um business in in the district specifically tied to registration. Right. We are going to have to shut down registration for the 2627 school year right around March 1st. And really, I don't want anyone to register for 2627 before March 1st cuz truth be told, you're going to have to do it again in July. But we're going to shut that down
028March 1st. And then we'll open online registration for every student in our district sometime towards the start of July. And that means every family needs to get in. And I mean, you guys do this every year anyhow, but you have kind of a larger window to do it. It's just that window is going to shrink down. You'll have to get into Skyward and there'll be information that goes out to families about what you need to do. You'll need to register, you know, as a returning student or a new student for 2627. You're going to have probably have to fill out forms that you haven't had to fill out for for years or new forms that we're going to put in there. um we'll need, you know, uh um proof of residency documents uploaded there. Uh
029so it's going to be kind of this first year we're really going to need the community behind us on just kind of an understanding that we're moving to a nude system. This kind of a oneshot deal and then going forward returning student registration is going to be a little bit easier for you. But more information will come for that in well towards towards summertime anyhow for for families. Um each year you'll have to get in there. You'll have to update emergency contacts each year. That's just part of the registration process. Um but that's really kind of where we're at right now other than a lot of meetings on the calendar. >> So the highlight I think like prep for parents like what do I get? Well, uh, like he said, it's going to impact you
030eventually. That's number one. Number two, it's impacting your teachers. So, you know, I parents do a great job of loving on teachers. Like, just know this is going on. And kind of like even the background teachers, I think, need to know like data clerks and secretaries are hitting this first. So, it's going to impact them. So, they need a little love. >> And the last thing is like Brian needs a lot of love >> because this is a big lift. But, we figured like, you know, we're all community. People need to know what's going on even if it doesn't directly impact you yet. Yeah. >> And we figured that's quite easy. >> So, and really I went to a conference last summer. I went to a session on a district that did exactly this. I
031said, "Hey, you got one piece of advice. What What do you got for me?" You joked around. I said, "Retire is I said just communicate. Make sure you're communicating constantly with people." So, I I wanted to get this in front of you just to kind of give you a heads up. There's nothing that you need to worry about right now. Uh, but just know that this is this is coming up and there's changes to everything from grade book to hack to everything in the district. >> Thank Brian. >> Yan. >> All right. Now we shift gears to Dr. Walker, right? And some heavy thinking. >> All right. Yeah, heavy thinking. All right. So, I have 31 slides and there's data on 27 of them. So you know like I'm up here that's what we're going
032to talk about but this is two parts. The first one is just a state of the district at the end of quarter 2. So we have first nine weeks second nine weeks. So we're going to look at a bunch of different things again from a top level district perspective and then at the end we'll pause. We always do signaling which is you all giving feedback on are we on track? Are there are some adjustments we need to make. So, we'll do that. And then the second part of my time with you, y'all, we're going to do a deep dive on math. And I'm going to preview with you some of the information that I'll be sharing with teachers about math, uh, about some changes we'll be making for next year because we need one more
033new thing, right? >> Why not, >> right? All right. So, we're going to start with kind of just baseline information. This is enrollment in our district. You all know we're in a new a new age. Parents have always had choices. They have even more choices now. So this is enrollment is a a rolling target because every day kids enroll. Every day kids move. So it's a moving target. October this was taken what we call snapshot. It's the last Friday in October. So snapshot date this year we had 4,736 kids. snapshot last year, 4,735. That's pretty stable. This number I want us to watch. This is the number of new students that enrolled from the end of over the summer until school starts. So two years ago, we were at 351, 314, 263. Like that may
034be a change in just population demographics or it might be a trend. So that's something for us to watch. I was reading an article that said because of COVID birth rates did decrease and those students would be coming into our school now. So it's worth watching. January I took these numbers from the second day of school after the winter break. And new students here, this is the number of new students since November 1st till January. So this has been fairly stable over the last three years. And here's our enrollment numbers again. fairly stable there. So to me I see this as a good thing. We want stable numbers. You've seen in the news all the schools that are being closed across our city and the fact that our enrollment remains robust I think is a
035very good thing. All right. Second thing is again first we have to have students enroll in our schools. Second thing is we need to them to show up in our schools every day and that's attendance. So attendance rates historically in Almo Heights state rate is about 93%. We've been at 96. So uh this is over the in 6 weeks chunks our goal is to stay at that 96. First 6 weeks we were at 97.2 higher than prior two years. Second nine weeks 96.7 higher than prior years. third nine weeks it dipped a little bit but historically it does that's when cold flu season vacation hits and so overall we are above the state great improvement getting kids to be here you all I think we've talked about this before every day a student misses school
036that cost us as a district $50 we lose out in funding because we're funded not on enrollment we're funded by attendance so it makes sense financially that attendance matters, but more than that, if a child misses a day in school, we can never replicate that moment of instruction. We can give makeup work and send things home and try to catch someone up, but they were never in the room when it happened. So, they missed that. Third is there is such a strong correlation between belonging and attendance. is students who come to school feel like they belong at school. And so in talking to teachers, when we do talk about attendance, it is when a child's absent, especially if it's more than one day, it's reaching out to say, "Anything? You weren't here today. We missed
037you. Come back tomorrow. Our class isn't the same if you aren't here." Like that matters with attendance. So that's enrollment. That's attendance. This is discipline. So another thing when we talk about what matters with students achievement discipline's a part of that. So this is the number of discipline incidents and these are called reportable ps this means there's been a change in placement. So it's not cell phone infractions it's l not lunch detention it is a student has inschool suspension out of school suspension or is removed to district alternative educational placement DAP. Now, you'll notice that there is an IT uptick over prior years here. Here's the why. >> The phones. >> No, this doesn't have phones in there. It's just I What it is is in elementary one, the law changed. And what we could
038give a student a consequence of ISS for and the number of days. That's one. So we do have students in elementary who are be being given consequences of inschool suspension. Second is we're getting better about coding it especially at the elementary. At the elementary if they have a student who was just removed from class sitting in the office they weren't coding it. Technically that's in school suspension. They were not in their room. So this is not an apples to apples comparison. Next year it will be. But this is one of the things that we do track at the end of each quarter just looking to see how of our our discipline um how is that impacting just the operation of schools. All right, those are kind of foundational operational pieces. Now we're turning to my
039love language and that's academic data. So this is MAP. We're going to look at it a few different ways. Parents reports are being sent home for elementary and middle school on the 6th. So you'll get your parent report about your data on the sixth. This is districtwide. So, oh, this is report cards. My goodness, I got ahead of myself, but still academic. Still love it. Um, this is the number of students who had one or more failing grade. So again, three years of data by campus and then overall ISD. You'll notice as we come over here to what I can almost point to, we see an increase. >> Here's the why there. We worked really hard last year and rewrote some grading guidelines and changed some things. One, so that teachers didn't feel like they
040had to give a student a 70 to say if the child earned a 30, a 40, a 50, they get the earned grade. The reason is if we go to communicate, wow, this child is really needing some support. They might need a special ed evaluation and you look at their grades and they're passing everything. There's not evidence that we need to move forward with specially designed instruction. >> There's also a disconnect when the information we send on parent report cards is my child has made A's all year and they failed STAR. So, we've really worked hard to make sure that grades are a true and accurate reflection of content mastery. Now, that doesn't mean there's hands off if a child's failing. Well, teachers need to intervene and make sure that if you're sending home a
041failing grade, you can speak to the parent and say, "Jimmy earned a 68. I provided after school tutoring. I did this and this." That is an earned grade. So that's part of why we're seeing I actually think and this is just high candid talk. If I look at Woodridge last year in second nine weeks, this is all third graders, all fourth graders, all four fifth graders at four different academic areas. There were only 10 failing grades. To me, I think we're getting uh more realistic when we're up there in the 20s and the 40s. Questions about that? teachers, do you want to chime anything here? >> I'm glad to see that that information because that 70, you know, did not help those kids and this will focus more on on helping them. >> Thanks for
042sharing. All right, now we're on map. >> So, uh I think I feel like I skipped something. All right, I'm gonna start here. So this is looking at growth and here our goal is that we want our median or middle score to be at the 50th percentile or higher. That means our middle score is right at national norm. This is beginning of year to middle of year. That's what boi is. Our goal is 50th k to8 math. Our middle score was at the 63rd percentile. That means our middle score higher than 63% appears in the US. When we look at reading 62nd, science 66, high school algebra 69, geometry 50, algebra 265, biology, y'all, those are really strong growth scores. And that's what we want to see because growth is the momentum that's going to
043lead us to achievement. If you have slow growth, you're going to have low achievement. So seeing high growth that's exactly what we want to see. This next set of numbers is like golf. Low is good. This is the percentage of students who are in the bottom 20% of national norms. Our Alamo high school goal is to be at 10% or lower. So again, same categories. Beginning of year in K to8 math, 8% of our kids were in that bottom quentile. Now it's six. The green means we've met our goal. Reading, we went from 9 to 6. Science 6 to 5. High school algebra is unique. This is students who self- select not to be in the accelerated math track. So here we went from 25 to 24. Geometry 14 15. That's about the same. High
044school algebra 12 to 10. High school biology 10 to 8. Y'all, that is moving the needle when we see that across all of these content areas that we're having fewer and fewer students score in that bottom quentile. So, nice uh nice data there as well. All right, this is looking at map scores projected to star. So, based on how kids did on math, how are they expected to score on star? This is math. our goal for the district because on STAR there's three levels of passing approaches which is the lowest level kind of like making a C meets which is rock solid making a B or masters which is like making an A. So if the if it's shaded green that means we've already met our goal because we want 90% of our kids it
045approaches the font in green means that there was greater than a 2 percentage point increase just to explain the colors but when we look at third grade last year on star 82% of kids were at approaches 31% at masters beginning of year we had 78% of kids at approaches Now we're at 84. Masters, we were at 11. Now we're at 14. Y'all, let's take a look at fifth grade. 92% approaches. Middle of year, 92% of our kids. Look at the masters. We were at 22. Now we're at 40% of kids in fourth grade at approaches or higher projected for star. It's really nice growth there. You can see the changes here. All right, just take a snapshot of the colors you see with math. Here's reading. Look how much more green we see on reading
046than we do in math. Again, our growth is really strong. But in reading, look at the number of grade levels that are already at 90% at approaches, 30% at masters. I'm going to highlight here eighth grade reading. 53% of kids already projected to be at the master's level in eighth grade reading. Y'all, that's phenomenal. But there's still some work to do here. All right, I'm going to I've given you a lot. I've talked about enrollment, attendance, discipline, grades, MAP scores. That's a lot. But you can't separate out attendance and discipline from academic achievement. And we certainly can't separate out growth from achievement. So when you look at all of that together, how are we doing at this point in the year? So I'm going to ask you just to turn and talk with the neighbor
047around you. And what I the feedback I'd like are, are we on track? Are there some adjustments being made? or you think we need to make is there wow we really need some support there this one area we need to move more resources there more attention do a deep dive on that I don't think we have anything in crisis but if there is anything from your eyes that you feel like is a crisis in Almo Heights we sure would like to hear it so I'm going to ask Frank to put two minutes on the timer and if you'll just turn and talk based on all of that how are we doing right now Go. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat. Thank you. Sorry. Yeah. All right. Pull us back together and four and a
048half one. All right. Uh, who wants to share out? Like I'd love to hear your thoughts. There was a lot of talk going on here. Great conversation. I just turn it towards the whole group. Who wants to share out? We said we're on track. >> Yeah, Eric, can you speak to that a little bit? >> Um, just the shift in like grading guidelines. I know that we felt that and um as the math department at the junior school, we were always numbers people and we were never I don't want to shade any other department, but we were never really the grade inflators. Um, we were always the bad cops and things like that when it came to that. So to see that the report cards that that I know that feels kind of disheartening sometimes
049to see like oh now there's 33 kids who are failing. No, it's an accurate representation of where students are and we're not falsely advertising them to parents or anybody else that they're ready for the next step or or anything. So that feels like a a good shift even though sometimes it >> we know what's coming along with that. Um, but just generally speaking that we feel like the changes that have been taking place have got us more on track than maybe where we were before. >> Yeah, I love that. Thanks for sharing. Who else want to share with the group? >> Yeah, I >> um as I said myself, I believe we're currently on track because most of the people mostly my friends, they not in classes and we are doing absolutely great in our
050school. uh the only thing I just want to have a little bit little bit note is that uh most of the time that student have absence in their own class is actually tied very personally. Mhm. >> Uh I have a friend one uh she's from my algebra class. She used to have some sort of uh conflict. She what basically what she told me u from one class I I just want to be a little bit private. But after she told me I remember that next day for some reason she didn't just skip to school. >> So I used to so I just text her back hey are you doing all right? She said oh yeah don't worry I will come back to Mumbai tomorrow and all this sort of stuff. So I think we shall
051kind of advance our uh well more I wouldn't say marketing but more advertise our wellness culture. >> About that but generally about the grades itself I believe pretty much on no changes needed so far. >> Thanks for sharing and I appreciate that like we need to take care of each other when we're not here and notice and reach out. Well done. >> Thank you. What else? >> Karen Bryant, trustee, I'm gonna put you on the spot, my friend. >> Well, we were saying that adjustments may be being made just in terms of that year-over-year growth. Um, looking at that approaches category and really honing in on what is needed for those um for those students and moving them up the ladder. >> Yeah. >> But overall, good. Stephen Logan, I'm going to put you on
052the spot because one of the differences between MAP and STAR is that MAP is only reading multiple choices does not have extended constructive response and writing has been an area focused read. When you just speak to the high school English department what you all are doing to support student writing. >> Yeah, we so I started here four years ago uh and I actually was a history teacher who had an English credential and they hired me to teach English. I felt really incompetent. Um, but I've been with Mary K. Mley and James Miller and uh Ben Keenan who were all very like excellent subject matter experts and excellent teachers. And so the the yeah the writing part so we started when I when I first came on we did a lot of projects and then we
053realized third quarter they weren't where they needed to be. And so each year we've pulled it back further and further to now on day one they're coming in and they're doing um concrete idea to abstract meaning writing on like the second or third day of school and they're getting like a 75 on the writing and it wakes up the advanced kids real quick to be like oh wait a minute like what what do you mean I did it wrong? What do I have to do? Uh, and so we build from that from just a claim statement to the the paragraph and they're right now like they're the stuff they're putting in like I won't tell them this but the stuff they're putting in blows away the stuff that the kids a couple years ago were
054putting in this time of the year because we built uh from the claim uh and then we stole the perfect paragraph structure with the upper grades are using uh which is from UT I think uh which is just a guarantee that you're going to you're going to be able to make a claim backed up and the the junior squad uses I don't We don't use the race thing. >> I think they use race. >> Yeah. Uh reason. I can't remember what it is, but but yeah. So, we're uh it's claim evidence, two two pieces of commentary. Evidence, two pieces of commentary, and then we add a conclusion at the end. And so, that's where we've really been with the writing because that's the one thing that we we have to prepare them for. And so,
055really hitting them hard being like, "No, that's not that's not what we're looking for." >> What I love about that approach is are our writing scores going to go up? Yeah, they will. But more importantly, are students going to leave us with stronger writing skills that will prepare them for life? Yes, that's the why. >> We've also gone from doing maybe four grammar units a year to doubling that to eight. So, we're doing two grammar units per quarter and we are cheating on the reassessments a little bit because we've decided that grammar is so so important that we do not want reassessments to be getting in the way from students mastering the content. And so we allow them to reassess until they hit masterree, you know, just come on. Like it's so important in their
056daily grades. They're like mood. They don't even show up. So you know, I mean, >> all right. So thank you for sharing and thank you for just being I appreciate the authenticity always. So I Anyone else want to share out? We have I feel like as a group would you say we're on track. >> Of course there are areas I was talking with Miss Champion Mercedes over here like we're looking at top level data. You have to know below the surface. Every number is a name. Every classroom is different. And there are all kinds of adjustments that are happening period to period daytoday class to class. >> But as you look at all of this, if you were to point out one academic area that we needed to focus on, what would you say it
057is? Come on, say it with me. Yes. >> So, uh, we're going to talk about math. And for my math teachers in the room, this is a little bit about when I I'm going to each math. We have 90 math teachers in our district. I'm going campus to campus to talk to them. This is a preview of what we'll be talking about um, when I come to you as well. So, for context, you have to know that in Almo Heights, we exceed star math scores. We exceed the state and every grade level. You have to know also that we exceed state and national math scores on PSAT, SAT, and ACT. Just for context, because I'm going to put some data up here, and if you look at it out of context, you might go, "Oh
058my gosh, we're we're terrible at math." We're not. We just can do better. So, here is SAT scores. This is the percentage of our seniors last year who left us with college level benchmark scores. They're ready for college as evidenced by their SAT score. What was our lowest scoring area? >> Yes. All right. I'm going to show you ACT now. Percentage of our seniors who left us last year meeting benchmark levels. What was our lowest scoring area? >> Math. I'm going to show you star scores. You got a prediction for what you're going to see. >> What's our lowest scoring area? >> Math. This is when we look at that. Remember I said the approaches meets and masters. When we dig a little bit deeper and we look at it by demographics, we also see
059some differences when we break it down by demographics. I'm going to show you. So remember this number 83. This is all students. I'm going to show you students that are identified as economically disadvantaged. That number decreases 20 percentage points. So, we do have some work to do. This is a slide from I heard Commissioner Morath speaking two weeks ago, a week ago, >> and that's why this picture is a little blurry because I took it with my camera in my seat. But this is a really interesting study from 2024 and they looked at long-term impacts of different child well-being improvements. So the finding was strong performance in math in elementary school is tied to a 3% increase in future earnings which is two to three times more than other factors. So you increase health it
060does impact future earnings. parent child relationship, reading test scores. Look at the impact of math. >> Now, just think about that if you just run it through. So, you have stronger math scores. That's going to change where you go to school. That's going to change what you decide to major in. And some of the fields that are fastest growing and uh tethered to strong incomes do have math. Engineering, uh medical, business, all have math. So you can see why this at least on just a common sense makes sense. This is elementary. I'm going to show you middle school. This is breaks it down again by demographics. And this is earnings at age 30 from middle childhood. So it took it up to 8th grade. Again, what has the biggest increase on future earnings? It's math,
061health, pure relationships, reading, and math. And the strongest is math. So when we talk about if we can improve math, it's not just about test scores, it's about changing the trajectory of students in their lives. If we can get them to feel better about themselves with math and have stronger outcomes. >> So you've looked at a lot of our math data today. Like if you were to say one word that describes math, what would you say? >> Persevering. >> Yeah, persevering. I'm gonna say it's also we've had years that fourth grade scores were really high and the next year they took a dip. Like it's not consistent. It's not consistent across the district, across grade levels, across classrooms. And that's what I want to get to is consistent high expectations, high outcomes. So it doesn't
062matter what teacher you get. It doesn't matter if you're at Cambridge or Woodridge or what class, but we all have high quality instruction in every classroom. Can I Yeah. Sorry not to interject entirely, but uh if I told my 14-year-old son that he will make more money in 30 years if he actually cares about his math class, he might care. >> Like >> I'm I I'm wondering if we need to like tell them that because I know >> like literally because like tell the teacher tell them >> because he's like it's fine. I got 89. It's fine. I got 79. like I'm never going to use this again. I'm like but maybe I'll make more money though. >> Does it matter? >> You're going to make more money in 30 years. I mean I don't
063know. Just absolutely tell them figuring out what's going to motivate students. >> So for students we definitely need uh to do a change more consistent instruction focusing on teachers and this is a research of the opportunity myth. This is from 2018 but I think it is it's a national study but teachers you can amend this if you think it's true. Teachers spend seven hours per week developing instructional materials but only have 3.75 hours per week in their master schedule. >> Teachers, does the amount of time you're spending prepping exceed the amount of time you're given? >> Yes, >> of course. >> Additionally, this was a study that was done because if teachers are developing their own materials or they're going out and looking for something, teachers pay teachers or I found it on the internet.
064if we're pulling from different places, is it all at the full expectation of the standard? >> And they did a study where they looked at not what the teacher was teaching, but the work that was actually put in front of the student to do. And in nationally, only 17% of the level of the lessons were at grade level. They replicated that across Texas. Woo! 19%. So when we have teachers pulling from different sources, the quality and caliber of those different sources may differ. When we I hate it when people say research says, but I'm getting ready to do it. Research says here are the things that imp that support high quality math classroom instruction. Time on task. This means not just the amount of time given to a math block in elementary or a math
065class, but the amount of time actually in the class thinking about math. Not the color that I'm going to put on my bar graph, but thinking about math, engaged in math. That teacher efficacy. And this really is in secondary. Erikica chose math because she loves math. She studied math. In elementary, many of our elementary teachers teach all the subjects, but they really love literacy or they really love science. And if you yourself don't think you're a math person, that comes through in your teaching. So teacher efficacy impacts student achievement. Consistent routines, sense of belonging with math. That's what I was just saying. If you think, "Oh, I'm not a math person. Uh, there's no way I'm doing that accelerated math in junior school. there's no way I'm going to major in math. >> If you
066don't feel like you belong in math, that's impacting your choices and opportunities going forward. Conceptual rather than procedural. When we teach kids shortcuts, after a couple years, those shortcuts fall apart. But if you can teach them the why behind why things work, that last academic discourse, giving kids time to talk, high quality instructional materials, which is what I'm really going to focus on the next few slides, and vertical alignment. Half of our kids who graduate have been with us since elementary. We should be aligned. If they're going to be with us from kinder to 12th grade, we shouldn't be teaching them 10 different ways to solve problems. It should be a consistent way you approach it year over year. So, we have an opportunity. Our last adoption for math materials was in 2014. That means
067our math materials are fragmented. They're not being used consistently. They're kind of tired. And it's time for a new math adoption. We were just awarded a grant from, it's called the Lyft grant from the state of Texas, $554,000 to support professional learning in math. And there's also additional funding that'll support a new adoption through Blue Bonnet Math, which I'll talk about in a second. And when we look at other adoption possibilities, there's a change the state now all instructional materials have to be improved by the state board of ed. So that has really narrowed our options that we can choose from. So part of this opportunity now, part of what we need is black and white clarity. So that classroom to classroom, the way we're teaching, the way we're explaining the rigor of problems we're
068giving kids to solve, that that's consistent. That needs some black and white uh directness, I guess. But we also need our teachers to maintain that creativity because if it is just boring and blah, no one's paying attention and we're losing it. So we need both. We need consistency and clarity and man, we need creativity so that teachers can design for that group that's in front of them this year. So at times I think teachers can feel like they're having to be hunter gatherers when it comes to figuring out what math mi what math materials are you going to put in front of kids. We want to shift that to kind this is a cheesy kind of metaphor here but or analogy but just go with it. More of a hello. We're going to give teachers
069everything you need for your curriculum. The manipulatives, the homework, the vocabulary. You make it your own. But we're giving you everything you need so you don't need to go home and scour the internet and figure it out. What am I going to put in front of my kids tomorrow? So I said board of ed approves materials. Our kids are with us from elementary all the way through high school. We need consistent materials. So when we look at math, there are not many things. This is what we have right now as envisions. It was improved for English. It was not approved for Spanish. Well, we can't have dual language Spanish immersion classes having one curriculum and English classes having another. So, we can't use that product. We want something that we could use consistently all the
070way through and something that has an affordable price that's sustainable. So, all of these are prices per student per year. We have to order even though our enrollments, you know, 4,600, we have to order enough for about 5,000 because things get lost, things get broken, things get uh damaged. We get $829,000 for two years. Friendly numbers, $415,000 each year from the state. Wow, that's a lot. that has to pay for all student, all teacher instructional materials, every math class, every English class, every social studies class, every science class, preK, uh, and intervention credit recovery intervention materials, all the training, like that money goes very quickly. So, when you think about a material that would be $75 per child per year, $415,000 goes really quickly. If we use something from state board of ed, there's some
071additional funding. If we use blue bonnet, there's even more funding on top of that. With our adoption, what we've heard from families is, my gosh, it sure would be nice if you would define these words kids are using. Wouldn't it be nice if when we send home homework that there's something to help parents support their kids doing the math? >> Yes, please. >> Right. We've also heard from teachers, especially new teachers. Erica Melly, I don't mean to keep picking on you, my friend, but Erica's been a math teacher with us for years. Like, she knows where those misconceptions are going to be and how to frontload them and address them. You're a brand new teacher. You don't know what's going to be hard for kids until you're in the moment and they're looking back at
072you with blank faces. So we need something that identifies where are the common misconceptions and what do you do as a teacher to address them. So one of the products that we are seriously considering is Blue Bonnet which is put out by the state. I've talked to 15 different districts that use it to get firsthand what do you think about it? What's working? In addition, we have a math group that's looked at the materials. And y'all, we went to Bernie ISD today to be in Carrington Elementary in classrooms that are using Bloom Bonnet to see it firsthand because even though it is an affordable option, we will not put anything in front of our kids unless it is a high quality instructional material. And the best people that will tell us if it is, it's
073not the publisher, it's the teachers who have had years using it. So, we are going out of our way to make sure what we do decide on is high quality. Here's what communication looks like. Um, in February, like I said, I'm going to every single campus talking to teachers about a math adoption. We're bringing math samples for them to get their hands on and look at, getting feedback. In March, there'll be parent communication through Dana, Dr. Basher's superintendent update. It'll have a link in there so that parents can get in there and see the materials, see what homework will look like. In March, there'll be a board presentation to the board and then we'll order materials in March. I don't know if you'll know, but this summer we got a lot of construction going on
074and figuring out when and where we're going to receive 70 pallets of new math books is a challenge. So, we want to get our order in early so we can get the materials when we need them. >> Yeah. Was there Blue Bonnet sounds very familiar? Was there like a negative connotation with that original book? >> Yeah, it was. It was about >> What was the issue with that? >> It was in the reading side. It wasn't in math and it hinged on um religious texts that are embedded on the reading side. >> It is not on the math side. Math is a completely different product. But that was >> so you can pick and choose. >> Absolutely. And we're taking the whole thing. >> Correct. Okay. Yeah, that's a great clarification. Thanks for that. All
075right, you guys, that was a lot about math. Um, turn and talk just with someone near you for about 30 seconds about what questions like what is aligning with what your experience is whether as a parent or a teacher about the direction we're headed. You're like, "Yeah, that's good. What are some lingering questions you have?" So, just turn and talk for 30 seconds and then we'll have a group discussion. Whoever Yes. Sorry, I apologize. That's right. All right, I'm going to pull us back together in five, four, three. >> Oh, look at that. Overachievers. Nice. All right. any feedback or thoughts or questions about like this is Brian was talking about the shift to Skyward being a big a big lift like this shift it's 90 teachers in our district uh it's it's a big
076lift as well so tell me your thoughts like what's rumbling in your mind >> and everything is very >> I think alignment is a good idea >> yeah alignment thanks for that >> I'm thinking more like on a financial and I know you went through how much it cost and everything But I don't know. I just feel like money's tight, right? Um, how much are you really getting? >> Do the PTO's need to step in and help pay for things? >> Well, I don't know if I just mentioned, but we got $554,000 in a grant. So, that's going to help offset >> because Yeah, this isn't cheap. >> And if we get it, I want teachers to have every manipulative they need. I want to provide release time for teachers to plan and work and
077learning days because I can't just hand you a curriculum and say, "Byron, figure it out." Um, so that I think is but absolutely, yeah, money is part of it. >> Jimmy, you talked about books being delivered and I know that in some of our classes they've moved really more to um, you know, >> app based, tech based, whatever, online learning systems. So, does Blue Bonnet offer that or are we going to have to order books every single year? >> So, it's a both and. Okay, >> there are it is all available online, but what I like about it is they do break it down by module. So students have one small narrow workbook that's a writein for each unit. So that's and there's one homework book that kind of goes back and forth or pages
078are torn out. Um so that it is much more paper than some of our previous adoptions, but it does have an online component as well. I have a question on the lessons plan slide >> I guess for the teachers. Um >> I guess is the sheer amount of time being spent on lessons plans to create something creative? Is there not like a boiler plate that's already handed out? Are y'all like are y'all having to create this from scratch every year? is that I I've never created a lesson plan. So I I honestly don't know. >> Yeah. I want I for speaking from the high school perspective, one of the benefits of working here is that there isn't. >> And so I could go to a district where they did give me prebuilt lessons. And so
079I mean me personally, I made the choice to come here uh over other places because I wanted to have that freedom. So you know, I signed up for that a little bit. And then the answer is yeah. I think a lot of the teachers at the high school that we, you know, we do collaborative stuff. So like on a team like I'm the team lead for 9th grade advance. So you know it takes some of off the plate of the other teachers but we do want to do uh creative stuff and so we reuse things but sometimes I'll spend like I I'm going to be out for 2 days and so I'm going to go spend like 2 hours building something for my students to do for the next two days cuz I don't want
080them to lose the learning. But yeah I I could just give them something I already have made from last year but it doesn't feel right. >> There is an adopted resource. There is Savas. >> Yes. So there is an adoption for every course that does have a textbook and a a teacher edition. So that is available. Um but we are moving in a way just to have more alignment and expect more fidelity in math to the new adoption. >> Well, because I I just bring it up because I I appreciate the creativity and starting from scratch, but also just >> we totally do have and that's correct. we have access to it and if I ever needed like if I needed to I could just go in and I can pick it out and I
081can assign it. It's all there and it's it's real straightforward and then I could just focus on you know the teaching aspect of it and so it's kind we have the support. Uh a lot of us take that on. Uh but you know, >> are there flaws in that though from a consistency level? Like you and another teacher that's teaching the exact same thing like is there a consistency concern there between what each class >> I think it depends on the content. I think it depends on the content. I will say like math-wise um >> I think we found more fidelity amongst PLC groups that if I'm teaching it like if I'm using something then my counterpart like so I'm teaching algebra this year. uh all algebra. This is my first year doing that. My
082counterpart is also teaching algebra, but she's teaching seven advanced. What I'm doing in my classroom, she's also doing in her classroom. You could literally pick a kid up from my class and move her across the hall and she's going to get the exact same thing from maybe slightly different because we're obviously different human beings, but there's a lot more consistency between the materials, the approach, the vocabulary, the assessments, even down to the grading. I was having a conversation in the hall with her today like, "Hey, I know you have stuff in advance, but I need you to talk. Like, are you cool if we give partial credit for this, for that?" Like those things. So, I think we're finding that we're the alignment piece is shifting that way. Um, I think that if you would
083have talked to us 10 years ago, we were not quite where like well, we just weren't where we are now in terms of alignment and uh fidelity between classrooms of the materials that are being used. There's three of us on this team and we all do the same thing every single day. Same assessments, same assignments. We grade together to look at work samples to make sure we're all grading grading in the same way. >> Is there like one person in English or one person in math from like an administrative level that is I guess what you have a million stats. Is there anything that shifts that correlation there that you know what let's say what Cambridge is doing is given the same outcome that Woodward is doing that giving what you're doing now in 9th
084grade those eighth graders that are moving into ninth grade are showing the exact same or is there kind of a is it dislocated a little bit as far as consistency goes when we and again I I love the creativity I love Alamo Heights because of the creativity But is there a portion of that that's doing a little bit of injustice to the students without having that consistency there? >> Well, it's definitely of course well depends on which class they have because I know freshman sophomores still going to have uh lower classes than the juniors and um seniors have >> same. Yeah, sorry. >> Oh, sorry. Um so the question is about could you just repeat that? I apologize. just consistency like with with the amount of creativity that we're able to give, does it >>
085does it mess with the consistency of the of what the students are learning? >> Yeah, definitely. >> I I currently one of my really favorite classes we have in my school is AP environmental science and I was drawn to be in this class simply because I want to be a scientist in the future. I want a career in that. uh bil creativity itself is because our teacher is like to pull up um several different notes during the class itself. Um and it's it's just never getting boring face and all notes and task they were doing especially when the teacher itself she gives us some explanation selections about that topic or specific unit. So with I would say it's really good. I'm not sure exactly my English class. Well, actually, no. In English, it's also great.
086>> So, what do you want to say? So, what I what I was going to say is like if I understand your question correctly that um uh across the district, the thing that's indicating to us that we need to tighten stuff up is all the data that Jimmy showed how math is not as tight as the other ones. And so, I've been in some of the meetings with Jimmy's done a great job of getting math teachers around the table. And what the math teachers themselves at all the different campuses together, all the different grade levels are saying, huh, I I we're not as tight as we need to be as evidenced by the data that we see. >> And so you saw on the all the slides she showed you, >> the one subject matter
087that we need to improve on is math. And so the teachers are like, >> we need to tighten it up a little bit in alignment. And so that's the way I would answer your question is like the data that Jimmy just showed us says we need to get together in math and she's done that with the math teachers and they're kind of telling us what we need to be looking at. Right. >> And I'll add to that. I don't see it as a binary. I don't see us as either cohesive and consistent or creative. I see that was my whole we need both. >> Right. Yeah. I think it should be a good marriage. Absolutely. That's kind of what I was getting at. You're saying if like there's a if there's a fifth grade immersion
088kid at Cambridge and there's a fifth grade English kid at Woodridge and they both feed into Kim Brady's class at sixth grade, are they going to be equally as prepared to take class when they're coming from? That's what you're asking. >> Correct. >> Yeah, absolutely. That Yeah. Because if there's if there's not like a consistent boilerplate of like tangible metrics here or here and both teachers are super creative by the time that they get to the same part, are they equal or did this teacher take it one step further because they really didn't have the check boxes that they needed to hit? >> But that's what map testing does for us, right? So, we switched to map testing as a district three, four years ago. And that's where it as a parent, I will say
089I I'm and it might be changing. I don't know if you said that, but I I like map testing because it lets me see how is my child growing within the year, right, from A to B to C. And then how are each of my kids compared to kids across the state, kids within the district. And I think for you all it's been a great tool because it does offer that if there's a kids in taking math testing with one teacher and then with another all in the same grade and there's different outcomes then you know that there's something that you need to probably explore. >> I agree with what Brooke said. I think the checks and balances that you're looking for is one you heard both teachers saying they're not planning in isolation. They're
090planning with their team. It's the same in fourth grade same in fifth grade. So that is no one is being on an island completely going off script and doing their own thing. That's one check and balance. The map testing when we look at it and if we have a teacher whose scores are asynchronous with the rest of it, there's more oversight of that classroom to say what's the why here. >> So it's both outcomes and expectations of how they're planning. But it is a valid question and that's part of why we're moving in this direction. So, it's a good color >> for math. >> Yeah. For math for right now. >> Yeah. All right. Any other? >> No. >> All right. Let's clap for her. I have two more things. >> I'm supposed to say
091junior school math scores already went out. Elementary goes out and high school will be coming. >> All right. I have an ask that I will follow up with an email on, but I wanted to explain it. Now, you might be like me and you anxiously await Dana's monthly superintendent email, right? But if you're not like me, I will follow up and send this information. This is a snippet from her February email that I think was just sent out. >> Yeah. >> This week, right? >> And so, I'm doing a a call. I'm asking you guys to seriously consider dedicating some of your time outside of the school day or the workday to help us with this. So, we're doing a strategic plan update. The last time we did a real big comprehensive one was in
0922008 and we actually created this mission statement. And so, there's we had about 250 people involved with that. And this is was a time when we had a new superintendent. The board wanted to do something, you know, like really get a sense of our direction so that we can be set priorities going forward and have a plan, right? Um, so we had about 250 folks involved in that giving us feedback. Uh, Daniel wants to outdo that superintendent and make sure we have 251 people involved with this. And so I I kid, but that's basically it. So this is a really good time for us to do a quick check and I won't take too much time to explain it, but we're going around to each of the campuses to explain this to the staff. But
093you know uh budget has been a big uh deal for us in the last two years. We've cut 62 positions not to mention the second conference period at the secondary. Uh lots of it it's really impacting our teachers right. So this is a that's a big deal for us as a culture. The second thing is that um as I gave you guys an update in September, we had a ton of legislation passed that's just like a pain that's really impacting us as a culture. We've got new buildings. That's a plus. But it's like where you have new buildings, right? So the high school's been there since 1950. Are we the same identity as a high school? Right? We're going to have a new Howard eventually. We've got new buildings going all over the place. So
094this is a real good time to stop before we kind of keep our nose to the grindstoneone to check in with our community, our staff, and our parents to be like, "Hey, who are we? What do we value? What kind of priorities do we need to be setting for the next 3 to 5 years to be focused on?" And so the the ask is that if you're a staff member and a parent, please sign up for the staff member one. It just kind of makes the conversations easier. This would be focus groups uh in this room. We've got like 30 of them planned. So you sign up for whichever one works for you. If you're a parent and you're not an employee, sign up for the parent one. I'll send this out to remind you,
095but that's kind of the plug. It's really a good um opportunity for you to kind of help us to get a sense of where we are and all this stuff. We got a a whole big process, but it just starts with that uh focus group fuel. Okay, so that's my plug. I'll send you a follow-up email. Second public service announcement. Now, this is the one about voting. All right. Um before I tell you this quick kind of less than five minute public service announcement, I want to remind everybody that there are laws against electionary and that means that I as a public school employee cannot advocate for a particular candidate or measure on a ballot. So I want to assure you that anything I say I'm not doing that. Okay? But I am going to
096talk about voting which is totally legal. I can do that. Next slide. All right. So I want to make a pitch for this. Okay? So, we're starting the primary voting season starts in March, right? Or it is in March. Early voting starts February the 16th. Maybe you didn't realize this, but people drastically vote less in the primaries than they do in the general. And I'm going to explain to you why it's really important to flip that. Now, this is our from the 2024 presidential general election. This is the primary in March. The gray is how many registered voters didn't vote. Look how big that is, right? It should be flipped, right? You would you would hope that 80% of people voted, but they didn't. And no, no shade on anybody. Again, it's not as sexy
097to vote in the primary. Everybody thinks that the November is where all the action is. So, it's been low historically. This is statewide and it's for both parties. Go to the next slide. Uh, our county is not much better. In fact, it's actually worse. State of Texas, about 60% of people vote in the November election. Likewise with Bear County. But look how low it is here. This is primary, right? So you're like, "What's the big deal, Frank?" Right? We'll go to the next slide. This is a what we call in in politics a true fact. um uh in the state of Texas, most legislative districts always send one party or the other in the general election, right? So depending on where you live, so I'll use an example. And maybe that's that it's been true
098for the last 20 years at least in district 121, Texas House District 121 that encompasses most of Alamo Heights and some other places. 121 that the result the person who's been picked in November election has been a Republican for years. Doesn't matter who it is, it's always been a Republican in the November general. Okay. Now, in the primary, you know, there's a Democratic primary and there's a Republican primary, but in the general, the winner's always been a Republican. Now, it's it's different in different districts, right? There's districts in parts of San Antonio that it's always a Democrat. They might run a Republican, but in November, it's always a Democrat. Right? Okay. Now, why is that important? Because in certain districts that depending on what party always wins that district, the real race is in the
099primary, right? So right now in 121, there's a primary race. Not going to take sides, but I'm saying in the Republican there are two people running, at least two, maybe there's more. There's at least two running in the Republican primary for 121. Uh the odds based on the history are that whoever wins that primary is going to go to Austin. That's just the way it is. All right. And so depending on where you live, I mean most of you live in 121, but like I I don't live in the district, but you have to look to say, okay, so regardless of what party you identify with in November, that the real race isn't the primary. Okay, go to the next slide. Now, this is a big deal. The beauty of this notion is that in
100Texas, we have open primaries. It doesn't matter what party you identify with, you can vote in either party primary. It doesn't mean you're locked into voting for that person in November. But if I live in a place that has one party winning all the time, even if I don't identify with that party in November, it behooves me to think about voting in that party's primary because that's when I really have a say because whoever wins that primary is more than likely going to win in November. There's one more times than not that happens. Now, I will say recently in Fort Worth, um, a Democrat flipped a Republican seat, but that was a special election. And the fact that it's so alarming to everybody kind of proves the point. It's very rare. It's very rare that
101that flips. So, there's two things I want you to walk away from this little public service announcement knowing. One, just vote in the primary. Just vote in the primary. We got to get those numbers up, guys. Vote in the primary. That's number one. And number two, kind of be informed about the district you live in so that you're voting in the primary that you choose to have the biggest impact on. Those are your two takeaways. So, please get the word out. Let's get those primary percentages up and do a public service for all this cuz these laws, they really impact all of us in public education big time. And so, the primary is where you have the biggest impact. So, go forth and vote. Early voting starts February the 16th and then election day is
102Tuesday, March the 3rd. That's the end of our meeting. Thank you very much. >> Right on time. Well done. >> All right. Thanks, team. Thanks for being here. >> My cash right without pocket.