October 27, 2020 – Special Board Meeting/Workshop

001time is now 6 36 p.m i call this meeting to order of the goose creek consolidated independent school district board of trustees tonight is a special meeting and board workshop and uh it is october 27 2020 and howard's here so we are all good to go uh at this time i'll ask assistant secretary mr klim was this meeting properly posted yes it was and do we have a quorum yes we do all present okay at this time we're going to move straight into our agenda the second item on the agenda citizens participation it is the time that the board will hear public concerns or public comments from those who have properly signed up to address the board at regular board meetings the board shall permit public comment regardless of whether the topic is an item

002on the agenda posted with notice of the meeting at all other board meetings public comments shall be limited to open session items on the agenda posted with notice of the meeting each speaker is reminded that he or she is limited in his or her presentation to a maximum of three minutes which could be further limited or reduced by the presiding officer and that he or she should respect confidentiality concerns and refrain from attacking the personal character of any individual staff member or board member and addressing concerns or comments pursuant to state law and board policy be local i'm sorry be legal the board cannot consider or take action on concerns at this meeting unless they pertain to an item on the posted agenda for this meeting any deliberation or decision on an item that is

003not posted for consideration at this meeting shall be limited to a proposal to place the subject on the agenda of a future meeting we have seven individuals signed up to speak tonight so um we will not limit the time to less than three minutes but we will limit to three minutes and uh who wants to be my time keeper howard you want to do that or all right so mr sampson will give a one-minute warning when your three minutes is approaching its end our first request for uh public comment tonight is dr victoria marone i'd like to just thank you for your time your dedication to this board the district and our community i myself am on a few boards and this community i know it can be very taxing so thank you as we

004continue through this dual pandemic and times of uncertainties you'll continue to face hard times and feelings of frustration as well as happiness i am not here tonight to condemn or question anything related to the community committee but just to share some advice not that you asked of it but you'll never make everyone happy and that's okay to some that is a priority thought in some individuals minds but please consider transparency be unbiased and maintain an equity focused lens and all that you do i do realize you face great pressure and extremely negative feedback just as i have for speaking up and for many people that takes a huge toll on you your mind your body and your soul take time to reflect on what's best for the students and their future take time to care

005for yourselves and your families god bless you and all that you do and every decision that you make that's all thank you dr moran i'll yield whatever time flipped over though to either the crawford good evening um i would like to make a point about the committee and how the members are being chosen um i would hope that anybody who cares enough to sign up and apply for this committee that would be considered for it and and i'm really concerned about um the committee being sectioned off into um districts um because this really involves the whole goose creek independent school district um so basically that's all i have to say and thank you for your time thank you miss crawford our next speaker on the list is mr steve sivik i'm sorry say your last

006name for me because i think i say it different every time sit back thank you i'm sorry mr steve ceveck and mr sampson we'll give you a one minute warning uh good evening to the board dr o'brien appreciate you allowing me it's time to talk i've got a few little questions here about applying for the committee and one i'm concerned with is asking the people who are signing up for it to choose whether they're poor or against or undecided feel like this good way in the choosing of the people that are wanting to be on the committee i think everybody should have a chance to get committee that won't be no matter what their preference is i also feel that segregating it by districts is not balanced at all either that it should be this

007concerns every school in the district and should be looked at applicants should be looked at as a member of the district not like the school district itself and not individual districts and that's that's basically what my my concerns just that everybody that wants to be involved should be involved and that it shouldn't be free from this distance free from this district free from this should be everybody that signs up okay thank you mr sebek the next speaker on our list is zaneda flores good evening good evening dr o'brien and the board members i do have concerns about how the application questions were set up at first when i signed up it it asked if i was against or for the name change and then i think there were i think it went in and it

008got modified afterward and then you had a third choice if you're undecided uh i just wanna know what was the reason why that changed uh was there a concern were you looking at oh man there's more people against the name change so maybe we should change and add a third question to have more of the type i don't for me it's just i just want to make sure that we select if people hardly participate so if they do then that's a very concerned citizen or a parent or taxpayer right so they should all have the opportunity to be part of the committee after we do all of our research data collection and then we come to the conclusion it shouldn't matter if i was for or against the name change the data is not going

009to lie for us to decide that was my only concern i was just wondering why the the changes of the questions and the extension of the deadline [Music] thank you miss flores our next speaker is marga matthews good evening miss matthews i just wanted to remind you that you'll be given a one minute warning by uh mr sampson okay good evening everybody um first and foremost four more kids four foremost the questionnaire was biased from the start why is that they are asking if you're you for or against school name changes why not ask what why is your interest have you interacted with students and have you attended any of the good creek schools how is someone going to be judged by the answers they gave who is picking the committee members are all districts

010going to be represented how many members total allowed how can we trust the board members that are biased if they are picking a committee member due to their bias interactions on facebook for name changes if not enough volunteers for committee what next will you allow for the ones that put their application in be part of the committee and also since short time frame for committee gatherings does the board have data to view already and where is this data from and who put it together what resources did they use what schools who put it together lots of questions and no answers i feel this is being rushed to deter us from getting answers there's an agenda here and i hope it's not to fool us to thinking the board really wants to help the community because

011what i have witnessed is some board members are self-serving and have their own agenda and will try at all costs to not help the community that voted them in this feels doomed from the start and i hope and i pray i'm wrong i have a lot of questions and i want a lot of answers because that's what y'all are supposed to give to us is answers when we ask for them so before all this committee comes to being picked i want these answers given to us so we don't feel like we were uh judged wrongly because from the start that's what i feel like y'all are judging everyone that comes over here she tries to speak up and speak for the community i feel like y'all are just judging us from the start just because

012we choose to be one side or another and people that are back there board members speaking and saying stuff that is against and they're just showing how they serve themselves and not the community is very disgusting and i do not appreciate that we're the community we are the ones that represent the community so we want to be heard and not be talked about in front of us like we're we're not worth anything are to be listened to we want a voice and i demand a voice do you understand we voted y'all in and i demand for y'all to listen to us and i want answers thank you thank you miss matthews the next speaker on our list is mr harvey ponder i suck at everything that ladies say about it y'all accountable to us so

013just if you would keep that in mind um i've got a couple of questions myself um the first one like i said before um what's the hurry why don't we have to get this done like right now you set pretty rigid deadlines for this committee and the process but now you already have changed you already changed the deadline for the committee it was 11 days it's 14 days now it's now october 31st what's what's the hurry why do you have to have it done so so much right now but then you're going to change everything i don't understand that what difference does it make what district you live in whether you're in in district what one two three four they're all baytown schools right there's a potential to rename all the schools in baytown right

014what difference does it make how many applicants do you have to date and how many do you need and how big is this committee going to be it's going to be big enough to fit in this whole road or is it going to be three or four people making decisions for everybody we kind of need to know that kind of stuff i understand your your uh desire for equal representation who's far changing the name of lee or crockett or whatever but how are you gonna measure what are you gonna measure that against against what maybe somebody wants to rename robbery league maybe somebody doesn't want an aimcraft how are you going to decide you're going to have a 50 50 split you want to have a 33 33 33 split what what are you what

015are you going to measure it with because if you use a matrix to determine your your criteria for smiling somebody on the on the committee it's pretty easy to to manipulate that matrix what are you going to do if somebody lies on the committee on the application says i'm a i'm a die hard anti-league fan or promoter whatever you want to call it he gets on the committee and he changes his mind just like that is there any repercussions for that it's it's i just think again i think we're going a little too fast to do this but it's got an impact on a lot of people on a lot of lives and i would think that you'd want something a little bit more deliberate a little bit more methodical to go through this process

016all right thank you mr ponder and our seventh speaker on the list tonight is kimberly kostik miss kostek you will be given a one minute reminder by mr sampson when your time is expiring good evening members of the board and dr o'brien you know you can't see me smiling oh you don't want us to see you smiling well yeah you can't and i'd hate that because i went down behind your shield so we can understand you get in trouble for i don't know i'm not wearing one i'm further away no so i just first i want to say all i have is a post-it note and y'all should be really impressed with me on that because we know that i never came but we were just supposed to know because i wanted to listen first

017because that's what i've been doing a lot of with this community um and i had for years and years and i listened to the students i listen to the teachers i listen to the parents i listen to the board and i listen to the community and i just wanted to listen at first and um there were a lot of really key words that i heard different people saying i want to say the first speaker doctor and she she had it hit it right on the head you all have huge undertaking there's been a lot going on and i can also tell you that we are not where we need to be when it comes to coping just yet um we're still working on it but there's still a lot of attention that needs to go

018towards that but i heard a word and it stopped me in my tracks and that was segregation like wow that i wrote that down on my post-it note and that's crazy that we were talking about actually they made that was a good point segregating our community to be able to pull from district from different areas within our district and that is the reason why you know i get it we re-zone and we try to make sure that things are as equal as possible but yet that doesn't happen and that is a complaint a lot of times and it makes sense um where the money and whatnot who and so that was just a really powerful word that stuck out to me that i think should have some attention and i sit on several committees within

019this district and i have throughout the years and one thing that i can say that actually makes a committee more powerful is subcommittees that this might need to be something that is larger that can be broken up into different sections to be able to allow people to focus on the things maybe that they are more passionate about from the historical sides of um the name of a school or the academics or the the emotional learning which is something that i the social and emotional aspects is something that i would be very interested in so these are things that i think could be best or well served if they were broken up into subcommittees within a larger committee so i know you are here to approve a charter tonight which is also a little confusing because

020the application's still open and how can you fully approve when something was discussed before about needing to know how many applicants there were in total before you could finally make that decision with the application still open it's hard to do thank you for your time thank you miss kostik that concludes our citizens participation for the evening so we will move on to item number three action item a consideration of facility names committee charter dr o'brien the administration has completed the charter proposal uh with consultation of a third party consultant mr bollinger is here this evening to answer any questions that you may have i believe that you've had it over the weekend and had a time to evaluate the charter as presented as stated the third party facilitator has made recommendations that will enhance the

021committee as far as its effectiveness and as far as its efficiency in conducting a thorough investigation of this matter and making a recommendation or presenting findings back to you at the end of that time but this time we'll entertain questions mr bulger i invite you to come up if the board has any questions for you otherwise administration does recommend approval of the action are you coming yeah you're deciding miss leaf will be joining him as will dr mccall evening team thank you for coming [Music] okay so in our board book is the actual charter because i know we received via email some guidelines and charter and so this is the charter that you're asking for approval on this evening yes ma'am right okay and of course all of our seven public participants had questions that

022uh pertain to parts of this um namely my concern is the selection of participants again i'm still uncomfortable with limiting the number i know that um dealing with a third party facilitator that's created the need to do this so i'm wondering has there been any kind of discussion or investigation into a different type of facilitator moderator that or system that would permit a larger group just i guess first i should have asked how many so far you have in an application i know it was well over 35 when we spoke last week yeah so i can answer some of those questions so i think in looking at other committees that typically the the number tends to be between 30 and 40. so that that's when we have a committee work where they're having discussion they're

023having dialogue making decisions between 30 and 40 um have typically been what we've used and what other districts have used i think it's also important to note that citizens whether they're on the committee or not they'll have an opportunity to express the employees they of course they have citizens participation in the charter there is an opportunity where based off the committee work there will be a forum where they can solicit feedback through a survey and so they'll have an opportunity to provide input in that manner and so it's i know it's difficult i know that there are people feel strongly about this and so really our intent is just to make it as fair as process fair as possible and so that's that's why the recommendation was between 30 and 40. right now we have

02495 people that have applied um i think it's important to know the question came up why did we extend it another week and so i want to address that so when we when we initially put it out we said it was going to be a two-week process and there were several concerns that were raised we were we were using business days so so 10 business days is how we were counting as two weeks but we were several people had concerns over that so to be fair and to provide enough opportunity to apply we extended another week okay and can you speak to the selection process the um has there been any other investigation into handling this in a different manner more like town hall public forums i don't want to bring up mega school but

025sure so i think the question is i mean if it's a committee or if it's a public forum so if it's a public forum then then we would open it up to to whoever wants to speak and that's what a public forum is to do committee work takes more time um we did receive a feedback that the process seemed rushed and so that's why we extended the timeline we also added additional meetings from three to six meetings if needed and so we're based off that feedback we did make adjustments to make sure that there's additional time allotted but um in the research stage of your question the research that we performed we noted that committees tend to be about 30 to 40 and then there's usually an opportunity for the public to provide comment based

026off the committee's recommendations and then the committee meets again to receive that feedback make adjustments and then do a final report so so that's what our proposal was in the charter and ms leith you could probably answer to how long it usually takes to do a zoning rezoning committee plan i'm trying to remember six or eight weeks was about what we spent on that the last time we did elementaries would you speak to that just a little bit because at the current date we have we're looking at about three months right for this committee so it wouldn't be shorter it'd be longer yeah well i think this is less yeah green there you go alright uh just to speak to the rezoning process that we had before it did take several meetings and and i

027actually had the timeline out uh and i think it was up around i didn't count them dr o'brien that actually happened today just by chance i think it was like maybe six meetings with additional meetings built in only if needed and then of course we had a public forum that was inserted into that process like matt was talking about and then from the public forum the input was taken back to the committee and uh processed through the committee and then the recommendation came out to the board from that committee so the input from the community was interjected through the committee process and you recommended that mr bollinger just now you said that either through survey during the course of these meetings and or a public forum during the course of the meetings if called upon

028by the committee you could still solicit and engage more information from the community beyond the 35 or 40 members that are on this committee is that correct yeah we we have it similar to to how we've had other committees with with rezone and we have it built in after the committee meet several times and again the recommendation was up to six meetings for for the re for the facilities names committee um there's an opportunity either if it's an electronic survey whatever the format is we would we would provide some recommendations or some committee work for citizens to review and then provide feedback on and then the goal is for the committee to come back look at those comments and then make further determinations have further dialogue and eventually lead to a final report in february

029one question i think was um what's wrong with a hundred and committee members and could you speak to each of the i know you've talked to four or five possible facilitators can you talk to their response about that if you have comments yes and so we had an opportunity to speak to three actually three different potential facilitators that wanted to assist us they've all actually gone through similar decisions that had to be made in communities not necessarily this but putting together a committee in order to help guide that decision-making process one of the concerns that they shared or all of them shared is that when you have too many people in the room a lot of times it can kind of get into the analysis paralysis to where everybody's expressing their concerns but people are

030not moving forward to try to come to any sort of resolution and that is that was a concern mentioned by every single potential facilitator that we had an opportunity to speak with um also these facilitators that we've been speaking with come from considerable larger districts and so um with that they do have some experience with even larger populations that may have been interested in serving on these committees to make some decisions but they knew they had to limit the amount of participants but also make sure that there was a good representation of the community to make sure that everyone felt like their voices were heard in one way or another through representation i can remember i've seen the when we did rezoning i've seen it both ways we did just these forums that honestly at

031some point someone became very chaotic because they were very passionate and i mean i appreciate people being passionate about music and i also saw when we did the reasoning when we had board members were included and i've seen it when it's been purely the community i tend to agree a little bit that the committee doesn't need to be so vague we talked about strategic climbing when we had that initial meeting we had a bunch of people there but then they broke down into individual committees that met on their own terms on their own time but all the members could be a part of that so i i personally i don't think there's a problem with having 30 to 40 people on this committee because we do want it to go somewhere whichever way it ends

032up we want it to go somewhere and to be a positive outcome for the community so if we wind up limiting it to the 35 members and i said it just says in here from interested and qualifying individuals by the board of trustees so we would be responsible for choosing um does it specifically say in here yeah it does okay submit to the office five names from application cool and you're limiting those to our district so i would only be choosing five names from applicants that are from the district that i was elected from so the way we have in the charter is that each board member would select a certain number of members either from their district or from individuals who are employed and they tell any of the additional required required okay so

033local representative of local business or organization which would cover stakeholders and business reps they would come from the pool of applicants and be chosen as one of the five um same thing with staff members citizens with children in the district and if the citizen is a goose creek alumnus with no other tie currently to the district so that that was newly added so i can clarify that so the criteria is they must reside or be employed within goose green boundaries that's that's the criteria down below where it says selection of participants it says in addition to the previously mentioned membership criteria the following may also be considered but not required so we're basically just giving suggestions okay so really that that's unimportant what it the the requirement is reside or be employed within district boundaries

034period that's the requirements correct okay and so the others are just suggestions for who those could possibly be so let me can i can i jump in and ask the question on the back of that [Music] the people that have signed in to answer the questionnaire we understand where they live what district they're a part of one thing that this survey didn't capture was when they say that they do work within the district if they're i didn't see any way that we would be able to see where they worked in history so if we're choosing people from our individual seven districts how do we figure that part out sure i think i understand the question so so the way that it would work is uh mr carter you would see the applicants from your district

035whatever that is and then all board members would see the applicants who are not represented by a board member so if i work in the district but i but i do not reside in the district then you would see those names as well so those who work in the district wouldn't necessarily be tied to a specific district area like district 1 district 2 that kind of thing that's correct so if i'm for example if i'm a teacher at a junior school but i don't live in baytown or highlands then you would be able to see that applicant so would it not be prudent to perhaps publish the whole list of applicants to each board member and then it wouldn't matter what district they lived in or worked in or individually and simply board members could

036choose five out of there if certain board member chose if mr clinton and i chose the same person then one of us would choose another one or or what have you i just don't know why we're trying to limit residency to district the district that we represent i i'm just um not sure how all that flows yeah i think i think um two things on that so one is the intent is to have representation uh from all areas and so that's the intent if all the applicants for example came from district five um i think that would be under scrutiny you know that only so so the intent was i would think though that if all if the only people who applied to this committee were from district five that's the community that's concerned about

037this issue that should be represented so that i'd like you for that i'm sorry i would like to hear uh mr bollinger would you continue please sure uh so so my point was that um so that was the intent was just to have fair representation from all districts that being said the board would like to pick five from from the entire pool of applicants i don't think that's a concern at all so that's the decision the board wants to take we can make that adjustment very well mr cotter did you have another comment i'm just with hoping to hear the rest of that that was all right i i kind of agree with that um i think we're told at our last meeting that every district had no people that applied and that we would

038have known our district i agree with you in saying that you don't want all the entrepreneurs to come from one area it's something that's going to affect the whole world i think at the last meeting there were some districts that did not have five at that time we we do now have five from every district i just want to make sure everyone has their mic on when they speak oh my name is sorry do you want me to say that again or that's better okay fine my only issue with that augustine would be that if if we're choosing from our our specific district and then any others that are not represented not represented by a specific district member you still could have no representation from that board members district or you could have no representation

039from stakeholders and individuals that weren't represented by a specific member so there was a comment about if we have x y z amount of application right now we have 95 right so what's the problem with giving the list to each board member and you go through it and decide who you want to be on your committee whether it's in district 5 4 3 whatever and then that way there's no as the lady said there's no segregation of district 1 district 2 3. i'm just that's just a suggestion i think that's the the whole point if you have people if you have enough people from each district that have applied for example if you have at least five from mr poppiness from this woods from everybody right then that would be an equal representation of the

040whole district okay yeah and and the other hand is that it's not against having five people or whatever it's that if you have say i have 10 people who applied for me then i would have to make a decision for my district who the five people i want to have represent on this committee am i right or wrong right oh basically i guess it's the same thing as having the 95 and you look in there and you say well this person live my district whatever it gives you a better understanding of how many people right now we got 95 people so if we gonna do five from each district then evidently we just have to pick the five that we want and then that gives everybody equal representation from their district because the districts we

041have are not quasi segregated it's just a whole two street district so you can look at it from that standpoint i don't think we you know it's just you know district one two three four five so we have if we got five members we want on the book of committee and fine and we go like that instead of trying to in other words i think what we someone was talking about having uh in other words i wanted to choose a person out of the justice dish that i may know and not know me and i can do that but if we do it the way we're doing it now it's basically the way we've done it all the time buy from my district five from clemson and these are people that represent their district and

042then also is making a better understanding on each part of each district what do they want to do and bring it all to the board at least we'll have that representation instead of you know a person from a different district like when i first when we first started this i only had three and my question was if i got three do i have to take two from the outside of my district that don't understand my district but now i got the five or six i have so i'm in favor of doing the five from east district and that gives us 35 people which to me is more than enough to make a decision but i had one question on the application when one of the speakers was saying that asking a question about are you

043in favor of this changing this name of this name my opinion i i didn't feel good about that because it shouldn't have been asked that question about are you in favor of this or that it should have been are you interested in being on the committee but for the changing of names or giving names but to ask that pointed question was saying are you in favor of changing this it shouldn't matter you know all those have our own opinions so that's where i'm at so they can probably hide that information for us when they give us a list right sure so i'm gonna go back to the intent and then that i can share the solution so the intent is uh to have balance on the committee and so that's that's what we've been talking

044about from the beginning to make sure every voice is heard and i think a follow-up to that question it asked if they were in favor or not and then they had to explain why and so we thought that would give board members some some feedback as far as what the rationale is what their thinking is what their motivation is so that was the intent that being said if the board doesn't want to see that data we won't show that data we can just show you the names and however we want to move forward we can move forward in that manner the comment about that is if they filled out the application we ought to see the application and they took the time to fill it out as it was presented i have a question for

045clarification and perhaps a thought the 35 individuals that we're going to select it going to through our facilitators thought process are they thinking 35 that filled out the application plus five or six more stakeholders at large if you will or 35 would include those stakeholders so the the the magic number from from our research and also talking to consultants is between 30 and 40 total okay and so we also we receive some questions as far as other stakeholders like business owners or staff members and and we wanted to make sure again our goal is to to keep the process as fair as possible and so our thought was that you have to go through the application process regardless of your staff member regardless if you're a business owner or if you're a resident you have

046to go through the application process in order to be considered the magic number is 35. yes sir and as a thought just throwing this out to the other board members maybe we should consider choosing four from our district and the fifth one of the greater i'm going to use the term at large just because they're not in a distance just consider that a way to ensure that representation is there and there are a couple of people a board member and a speaker tonight be afraid that we might just you know not include those folks because they're not from our district well and technically according to the choose five from your district that leaves all of those non-represented or non-specifics out whether they've applied or not so the alternate could be you select five from your

047district and then one alternate from the community stakeholder representation making it a total of 42 which would be a little bit larger committee but you do have the chance that some members won't show up and things that nature i don't think it would be out of hand at 42 where where all of the speakers said 100 they wouldn't do the committee if there was 100 people on the committee they would not facilitate that sounds like a good plan i wouldn't want to call that an alternate though because yeah i'm not an alternative business a business representative so you said essentially five plus one that's what i said essentially i'm not i'm just talking yeah and we're just trying to facilitate that where it would be accommodating to you and and be a good representation you

048know the only reason i throw that out there is because we've had stakeholders business stakeholders in every committee we've ever formed to my knowledge they're often sometimes a ceo of a bank or a an oil industry corporation someone who pays taxes in this community and they they actually are very interested in what we do with our school so that's the reason why we feel like it's important to keep that that possibility out there but certainly i'm not making a recommendation i'm just saying that the committee needs to be manageable according to the facilitators that we talked to well i think that makes the most sense when we're considering the fact that we want to include stakeholders business owner taxpayers supporters of the school district so modifying this selection of participants to be five from your

049district and one additional salary say at large member from the unrepresented group of stakeholders and business owners so we would get our list plus those to choose from just so i understand the stakeholders the the at-large individuals they would have to apply or they would not have to apply they could be named i agreed with the way you explained it to me that everybody needed to apply i got it do you know offhand i do how many that you might have had that were considered unrepresented by a specific district yeah i believe the number is around 12 to 15. i don't have the exact number of changes each day but i think the last time i looked at it it was 12. that'd be enough yeah i remember to pick one so i've got a

050question to take you back i don't know [Music] number one how do facilitators or potential facilities happen we have spoken to let's say close to 10 facilitators [Music] uh mr carter can you repeat that one more time sure with these potential facilitators have we discussed the size of the committee with them have we discussed the size of the committee yes sir we have with each one and we're going off the recommendations that the good committee work is typically done with a manageable number of 30 to 40. right so then my third question is how many of these facilitators would be willing to facilitate results how many i'm i was asked for a feature question so that's why i'm doing that um so you were asked no no you're fine but i think they came here

051um in the four years so i'm repeating it so you asked how many facilitators agree to facilitate a large group we have not found one to do that yet great thank you sir i appreciate it okay so are there any other questions about the charter as presented and the charter as recommended change i mean have we it would be need to be in your motion okay are there any other questions on any of the other sections of the charter itself membership criteria we discussed must either reside or be employed in the district boundaries must commit to a minimum of three and a maximum of six evening meetings in person during november through february 2021 maintain civil discourse and respect for other opinions keep committee discussions and considerations confidential for the duration of the committee meeting

052to protect the integrity of the process i'm sorry i have i do have a question right here because we did talk about uh in the guidelines that you were the committee meetings are going to be closed to the public for the purposes of keeping them on track but then there will be public forums where the committee can present its work so to speak or give an update and take feedback so say mid process yes so two things on that so we felt like it was important to keep the meetings closed again to protect the integrity of the process the discussion i'm also a safety element we don't we don't want a committee member who's reluctant to speak up um due to repercussions of any manner but but in the effort of transparency we are recording

053those meetings and the audio will be available to the public so so if i'm not on the committee i can i can hear the audio um of the of the facilitator and the conversation that's happening if they're having a small table group you wouldn't be able to hear that conversation but you would be able to hear the majority of the committee and then yes there will be an opportunity to provide feedback our recommendation is to do an electronic survey based off of committee work and recommendations that are put out to the public and that way we can receive that input and that gives everyone a fair chance to to respond to that okay sorry about that quick question if all of these are going to be recorded and being comfortably available yeah that's a good

054question um so there is going to be an audio recording which when you hear the facilitator and then you would hear large group share outs but also with with discussions if we're speaking about something that's sensitive um the last thing that that we would want is for someone to share something that was shared in the committee work out in the public if it was just a candid conversation so that's why we put that requirement in there um so that was our thinking thank you okay well thank you can i add to that question because i didn't like my response so also so for example if if i'm having dialogue with a committee and let's say that it's an exchange and then i participate in citizens participation and i talk about the committee conversation that i

055had we felt like that's really breaking the trust of the committee and so that's why we put that clause in there just to protect some of the we want to make sure that conversations are authentic and the people have a safe place to express their their opinions and their values well i i think that's good i think we understand the intent here and like um i would entertain a motion to accept this charter with the amended selection of participation participants i would make a motion that we accept the charter as presented from administration with the following change under selection of participants second bullet to say each board member will submit to the office of the superintendent five names from their district and an additional one name from the members at large with with all i'm

056sorry and the committee will not exceed 42 in that same bullet and keeping in there that the names would come from the application pool yes yes did anybody get that should we do that all again all right okay so i have a motion on the floor from mr klim for the charter i have a second from this guy are there any other questions or concerns comments at this time about the charter as amended to be accepted hearing none all in favor of the motion please raise your right hand or say i that is seven four i have zero against and zero abstaining motion passes thank you very much thank you thank you team thank you thank you at the adjournment miss pres madam president we'd recommend a five minute recess for um for intermission and

057we can set up a few other things here okay so but at this time we could go ahead and adjourn the special meeting and take a five minute recess all right so that's recommended any in any objections okay the time is 7 30 p.m october 27 2020 and this meeting is adjourned we so the time is 7 40 for 7 45 and we are returning for a goose creek consolidated innocent school district board workshop dr o'brien i would like to turn it over to you to introduce our presenter dr roger cleveland yes ma'am thank you dr cleveland currently serves as the director for faculty development and diversity initiatives at eastern kentucky kentucky university prior to going to eku he was professor at kentucky state university and director of the creed service center center for research

058on eradication of educational disparities cleveland is a transformational speaker moderator and advisor he has a unique vision that he is striving to spread across the entire country we can be a more equitable and diverse society free of the prejudices that divide us he has dedicated his life to helping organizations and schools understand the need for equity and spreading this simple message diversity and equity is the key to unlocking the potential of every person to moving them to critical consciousness his work with educators administrators and leaders across the nation is addressing equity and inclusion issues at the core of our communities for more than 20 years his passion has put him at the forefront of building equitable communities and addressing implicit bias racial equity and cultural responsiveness to help school systems and organizations move forward in

0592005 dr cleveland founded millennium learning concepts to advance our country by starting the dialogue about diversity equity and multicultural education dr cleveland is dedicated to building systems with strong foundations for his clients which can then be sustained long after he leaves the team dr cleveland was born in cincinnati ohio grew up in middlesboro kentucky and resides in lexington kentucky with his wife audra and their three children maya taylor and dorian in 2015 dr cleveland president of millennium learning concepts was honored to be appointed to the state board of directors of the kentucky center for african american heritage and the fayette county public schools equity council he was appointed to the lexington fayette county human rights commission in 2014 and in 2013 he was grateful to receive the fayette county public schools equity council's pg people's

060award in equity and diversity he spent more than 15 years in higher education his extensive professional career has spanned from director of instructional equity and federal programs for the kentucky department of education to serving a faculty role at moorhead state university eastern kentucky university and middle tennessee state university please help me welcome dr roger cleveland thank you sir is this one can you hear me okay okay dr o'brien supposed to hit like three lines and um it sounds like i should be retired by now right sounds like i'm getting there uh first of all i want to thank you all for inviting me last time i think i was uh sitting in my office i talked to you all and i'm about zoomed out so i'm glad i'm kind of glad i want to come

061in person but i told uh dr bolander i was like i'm a little leery about getting on the plane but it was okay it was okay so uh appreciate you all inviting and uh and i think you know we call this a training but i really want to call this a a conversation uh we can't interact like really want to because of uh uh colvin things like that but i do want to have some conversation uh more so than be standing here talking to you all is that okay so we'll jump right into it and so uh that's what we're going to talk about real quickly when i was uh speaking to you all back in august we talked about equity and the thorough definition of what we meant by education equity so i'm just

062doing a little quick flashback on that that's what good teachers do and then we'll talk about why equity policy and then the last part is um one way to address the equity issues and gaps and things like that and disproportionality is assessing where you are as it relates to equity and so those things right the first two is just content the last one is more proposal i want to share with you all so here's a question i want to ask and i just want a couple of you all to uh answer this question and you can give me your like your 30-second elevator speech okay uh for the sake of time so question i have for you all what do we want for all of our students in the goose creek consolidated independent school district

063what do you want when from the time kids start preschool they leave high school in this district what do you want uh from the all those students once they leave here you want to have an enthusiasm to learn say it again to have to create a enthusiasm for learning so you can it just doesn't stop with us keeps going okay all right i saw another handle here yes sir yes when they finish what you know what about one okay number two we want them okay that was what i was gonna say was uh we want them to have a foundation for success in whatever they choose to pursue okay anyone else the tools to be successful in their when they leave us okay so what i heard you all saying is that you want your

064students to be educated and not school and there's a distinct difference schooling is going to school for 13 years and acquiring knowledge okay being educated is going to school for 13 years acquiring knowledge and be able to apply that knowledge once they leave here so we want them to have be well educated right but making sure they have skin in the game also so they can acquire knowledge but if you can't apply it those are two different things right we know knowledge tells us that a tomato is a fruit but wisdom tells you nothing but tomatoes and fruit salad right it's just because you know you know how to apply it and so that question is important because there's only two things i hang my hat on i never tell a principal how to run

065a building i tell teach all these things in the classroom i will say this if you don't have a culture that's conducive for learning okay good luck if you don't have equitable practices in your school good luck those two things have to be in place okay now how do you go about doing that that's what the leadership and teacher leaders and things like that is a draw superintendent and that kind of stuff so but those things have to be in place flashback we talked about education everybody last time i know you did some more research all the homework you wasn't busy right um so once a couple of you all to share off this uh answer a couple of these questions what does education everybody look like and sound like in the classroom in the

066central office or in a board meeting you can pick out anyone you want but what does it look like and sound like when we talk about equity cause i'm not looking for like the webster addiction definition just your thoughts about what you think about equity and education equity what does it look like in a classroom what does it sound like in a classroom what does it look like at a board meeting what does it look like in central office a place that take a place at the table yeah with uh in education you want the same for each child that's in the room whether you whatever the founding of central office you want equity for employment and people in their workforce how they are or is equal to each other and um same thing in

067the board me you want that's really what i was talking about for a place at the table you want to be able to sit down and be treated and be understood with the same as anyone else in the world okay anyone else i think in the classroom it's a lot about it's more about meeting the kids where they are not making sure every student has the exact same thing in front of them that what does this kid need for me you know what do they need from me and then what does this kid over here need for me and meeting them where they are and taking into consideration their background their prior knowledge and okay i'm just so looking like it's individualized instruction right and differentiation and then sounding like students have voice and choice

068okay we got a classroom taken care of we got a little bit of the board taking care of some degree what about central office a little bit more about the board what does it look like and sound like dr cleveland i'm uh through webex i'm sorry i can't be there in person but uh one of the things that i i wonder about is the speed of equity in a boardroom setting um you know when you look at the beneficiaries of the inequity versus the hardships of those on the losing end of equity for me equity in a board room in a central office has to do with a relentless pursuit of riding that wrong understanding that it's going to make the beneficiaries uncomfortable in that process okay i did the last part writing he said

069writing the rounds right right writing the wrong understanding that it's going to make the beneficiaries of the inequity uncomfortable in the process all right thank you one more i was going to make a comment about the classroom just in that's what i do but i think that one of the biggest things in dealing with equity is is going into the classroom and knowing that you're not going to be just because you're the teacher you're not going to be right all the time you don't have the answers to everything there's a lot of times when you discover things that aren't there and i think that applies also to the central office to the board meeting you have to come in knowing that you're not always going to be right you know and you're it might be

070your passion it might be what you believe in but sometimes that can change um when you hear the experience of other people and i think more prominently that happens in the classroom because we're dealing with people with human beings that oftentimes don't have a voice to your point there's a quote that i use sometimes with our pre-service teachers that it says when teachers are teaching they're learning and what students are learning they're teaching that's how it should look like in a classroom and you are the students are constructing knowledge because as a teacher you only bring in one perspective you have 30 students in your classroom so yes okay thank you sir you know this is like i know my best to stand like one place you know that's all right thank you sir so

071here's the definition we used last time education equity means educational practices policies facilities active support curriculum instructions school resources school climate cultural expectations these factors are such that all students have an echo opportunity fairness and access you notice i voted access and i'm gonna talk about that in a second three jacket of excellence regardless of race social status gender disabilities language giftedness natural origin religion other characteristics and i'm far going further with that you had mentioned two things i don't know if you all heard it he didn't say those words but what i heard you saying is one is people are getting access people's voice and representation particularly around central office and board okay that's what i heard you say i want to miss represent you but that's kind of things i heard i took

072away from your comments so that's the definition that we're using that but there's a number of a few other definitions of equity also so that's kind of like your did you study and do your homework thing so you all did a good job all right all right also these are just some basic areas we're focusing on equity this is not exhaustive list but these are some things that we should be doing for sure and providing professional development for our educators is areas around culturally responsive teaching you have a very diverse school district and students need to see themselves in the curriculum okay they need to see themselves in the curriculum instructional equity which you just mentioned a second ago okay individualized instruction differentiator that's into it that's instructional equity trauma-informed care this is really critical

073um um i was talking to uh i think it was mr bollinger earlier we're talking about the pandemic and things of that nature a good way to understand equity is this and i was tied back to trauma also and with you all students and all the students around the country is that you know we're in this storm together okay we're going through this storm and the storm is made up of coveted 19 social injustices and economic strain and this is one big storm people are going through but everybody's not going through the storm the same way some people are going through the storm in the ocean and some people are like an ocean wire so they feel it rocking a little bit was not too bad and then some people are in a a big

074yacht and they're feeling the storm some but not too bad and then something that people are like a traditional boat and then some people are in a row boat and then some people are on a life raft and then some people on a black preserver so everybody's feeling so in other words we are situated differently through this storm we're going through and our students are going to come to goose creek in different ways and different places you cannot use universal strategies with different groups of students and the way they're going through these things so they don't come here with different trauma and things of that nature and so are educators and things of that nature so think of equity about how people are going through all the stuff we're going through right now in the

075country particularly the pandemic but you everybody don't know the exact same thing do they all right so think of that as a way to providing equity also it's what students need and what families need also but access is really important and a definition of that implicit bias social emotional learning i think one of the your speakers earlier talked about social emotional learning and trauma different instruction structure all those things are important depth of knowledge and when those things are missing doesn't show up in some of your data and things of that nature so why why do we need the equity policy the why and i'm gonna give you a couple reasons why i think and it's not the only these are not the only reasons so here's some of you all's uh district data and

076um if you look at there's not alarming gaps there's gaps in achievement gaps they're not alarming but the one that's probably the greatest concern is special education correct and this is nothing new to you all right and it's one of the things that i'm going to share with you on a second it says the board has to know board has to know the data the board has to know the data because you cannot develop and set policy if we're not aware of what's going on in the classrooms and things of that nature but special education is one that uh i'm sure it's already on the superintendent's radar but also not only teachers administrators counselors things like that but also the board has to know these data also because there's a story behind the stats right

077there's the story behind that it doesn't tell why all these students are are struggling or some are doing well and things of that nature and you want to see a natural progression to meets and masters and this one's uh mathematics these are all students and things that i just once again look at special education and there's a gap between african-american white students small gap between white students hispanic students asian students and things of that nature but special education is a glaring one which leads me to the question about access dr o'brien of your director of special engineer not because they're probably the expert at this not me but this is a clevelandism and there's no research behind it nothing like that i just think a lot of times as soon as we start um labeling

078students around special education we have a ton of ldd ohi we have all kinds of different acronyms which you know sometimes we don't use all of them we never use abt they ain't been taught but we don't put them in but anyway research does tell us that most students are in special education have an average iq which means with the right accommodations they can do well they have to get access to the same rigorous content all other students are getting they have to be delivered in a different way and people who teach special education they have a good understanding of equity because they are taller in undergrad they have to do it every single day so we can make sure that all our students regardless of their backgrounds where they are that they get access

079to rigorous content and depth of knowledge and things of that nature is really important and the last one is a little discipline data and uh when we look at discipline data we're looking for a disproportionality and making sure that whatever percentage students are of the district that the percentage of suspensions and explosions things like that is not higher than that that's what we call that disproportionality and so there's a little bit with uh african american students percentage-wise i think they're making about 17 of the enrollment of the just 15 or the 17 of the roman 17 and they make up 28 of the uh of incidents or infractions recall and so hispanic students are right around 63 64 but they're 50 of the uh incidents and then white students around 15 percent are sold and

080they're a little over also so you would say there's a little bit of disproportionate between for african-american students and white students not large but there is a there is disproportionality and so we always want to know the story behind that information so district equity policy so that was the why just looking at disportionality and achieving gas while we want to look at equity and look at equity policies all right okay here's some things why we should consider equity uh equity policy an equity policy provides a district an opportunity to eliminate any policy structures and practices that perpetuate inequities and contribute to disproportionality of access and outcomes and equity policy calls for equitable distribution of financial capital and human resources through an annual budget allocation process an equity policy helps to develop a plan with clear

081and measurable accountability standards and procedures to be shared with the public and submitted to the board annually for approval and so those are some reasons other reasons other than the data that we just showed you but other reasons why you should consider an equity policy and how we go about doing that it's really important also things to consider when developing an equitable school district school board must have a strong commitment to equity when you start talking about equity policies everybody may be on board so the board may be uh has some opposition um but take that consideration adopt the equity policy as a board commit to develop a goals and policy with a strong equity lens and identify and dismantle the policies that support disparities school board members must be willing to engage in their

082own personal journeys expand their knowledge and understand issues of race gender identity gender identity scs things like that in other words um everyone should have some kind of conversation about our biases because everyone has biases okay and our biases impact our perceptions of other people that make you a bad person it makes you a human uh it's implicit bias meaning is unconscious and so we may do say things or whatever so it's not like a teacher is at school you know sunday night like i can't wait to get to school monday morning so i suspend some latino kids no but if you don't understand your bias and not aware of them you may do something to trigger the behavior for a student to do something and then students suspended and so we have to think

083about our journeys where we're from our background things like that and how that plays out when you're working or on the board of a very diverse district like develop partnerships and allies to achieve equity be able to initiate and create structural changes that change status quo and support equity for all so there's this thing to consider as we go through um i had a great conversation with mr bollinger and who else was uh uh it was a doctor or self-esteem yes hr yes sir yes great conversation about equity policies and things like that you know the quite honestly this the simple thing is if you wanted to get equity policy you all can probably create one create one in a month just do it and have a couple of meetings a work session two board

084meetings you have one now you'll have one but will be operationalized or will support the things you want to do that's a whole other story okay um so that's why i want to share some other information so these are the things i want you to consider if you're going to do equity policy is go through a really it's a rigorous process because the date i just showed you on academics and discipline what i'm going to propose now will tell you the story behind that okay where we are what we're doing and things like that so there's things that the district's already doing to address issues around discipline achievement things of that nature but it paints a picture it gives you a baseline on equity issues when you go through this so this is called an

085epiodetic okay and some of the things you want to uh consider i want to skip this i'm going to do that since i have the clicker i want to get to this i'm going to talk about the equity audit process um this will be proposing that you conduct a comprehensive analysis potential systemic inequities and disparities determine where high leverage policies and structures of practice can be addressed mitigate inequities support a system-wide development of knowledge and skills among adults to facilitate the culture i talked about earlier of ongoing equity and teaching learning and culture and professional development tied to that when you go through this process which i'll walk you through it a second what comes out of that is you create an equity policy does is anchor okay all the practices in your classrooms in

086the central office that's the leverage that the superintendent can use center office staff news and things that nature it's in policy okay and anytime you find a good strategy the best way to keep that going is to formalize it the way when the formalizer you put it in policy and that's the board's role the primary role you know uh is to develop policy so through this process you would develop an equity policy create an equity plan and while i was telling that was that you don't want to have two plans right you got a strategic plan or a comprehensive plan district plan right so you have two plans and everybody says which one is the gospel right and you don't want to have two plans but you do want to have an equity plan but

087you you embed that eight-way plan and equity strategies within your strategic plan but if somebody comes by and says what are y'all doing about equity you can pull all the stuff out of this diffusion plan around tied to equity and show them actually what you're doing around equity that would be your equity plan but really you're working off one plan uh you just do a crosswalk of those two and then create an equity score card that's the one that requires a little courage all right because what you're saying is that whatever you put in your plan you're going to address let's say you're going to re you're going to increase the number of students from [Music] uh meets the masters to three percent of whatever whatever these things you said you want to do uh

088or reduce suspensions by three percent whatever it is so you create a scorecard as a live document and it shows how you're working on the scorecard and it's there it's on your website and things of that nature that shows how you're working towards and this is you and you know you'd be realistic also you know you can't say you're going to do something that you know it's going to take three years and you know you're going to do it six months this is hard work you know that's why everybody can't do it you know this is hard work so um the equity scorecard and then like technical assistance and consultation what that look what does the process look like and i um i was telling man i just finished a year and gosh i guess

089about two months working with um a lease school district and we went through this whole process and part of the first process was discovery and so we i've had uh several conversations with um hd superintendent over the in a league so we had conversations first um and the basic conversations were about what's going on in schools and getting the superintendent's perspective and the board's perspective so i usually jump into it we did some discovery had conversations about that the second part is is where the work starts and that's called a desk audit and doing that you know not on site but i would ask uh dr o'brien i said i need these kind of documents i need achievement data discipline data previous climate surveys policies faculty handbooks and all this stuff and most that's electronic

090right and so the first thing we do is we look at all that information and kind of do it like a red flag analysis what are some great things that's going on in bruce creek what are some things we need to work on opportunities are growth and we do write that up as a narrative and say what that does that information helps us when we actually come and visit the district it helps us develop interview questions it helps us develop the survey so you it's called a desk before before we ever come to the district and the second part of that is we destroy the distributed analyze equity climate survey and we survey students we surveyed families certified staff classified staff or you all may call them support staff central office staff that's where you

091get the quantitative data so we survey all we survey from fourth graders all the way to 12th grade okay and so we analyze that data that also gives them more information before we ever come to the district and then you come to then we come to the district and we visit schools okay so we may have a team of four or five visiting three or four schools and another three or four visiting schools and uh it may take two or three days and doing that we'll have like one or two people at central office interviewing to draw the staff also and we're on campus what we're doing is interviewing um students staff families teachers uh focus group interviews so maybe like six or seven people in a group now with uh kovid you know that

092would be something to think about i don't know how we'll you know do that uh with face to face and things like that so we have to be where you are um so we've got to take that into consideration classroom observations and so that's when we spend like i said two or three days sometimes forwards it depends on we collect all the data that you can collect at the time we're there and then so once i'm leaving campus i'm leaving baytown last person i'm seeing fall leave is dr o'brien i'll say that this is what some things that we notice and so what we do is say commendations there's some great things that's going on with this creek and there's some opportunities for growth as it relates to equity so he already knows has an

093ideal kind of was going to be in the report and then i send him a draft report okay so we don't want to surprise the board or the superintendent okay because there may be some information that doesn't make any sense to him or we need to explain it or we let something out they made some great programs in the district we we missed we didn't highlight it so uh we had those conversations with them and then after that we the report is about you get about four to six weeks uh and it has those components findings opportunities of growth recommendations commendations resources and next steps then the work starts i just you know we're doing that you know then the work starts with the district um and what comes out of that is um we

094would like for every resource tool development so you look at the report look at all the information the data and things like that and that's when the board gets together and we start having conversations about okay what will this policy look like based on because i don't want you to write a develop an equity policy based on a leaf or cypress fairbanks or texas city or somebody you know this is your that you're unique you're not like them right so uh and i know ta has an example out there but it's not let's say it doesn't capture goose creek right some things you can pull some things like uh we need something actually different so equity plan equity score card the last one i don't think i mentioned to y'all before is the equity council

095what are the equity councils and the the equity score card and equity council some people do those some people don't uh they usually usually do the policy and the plan for sure they actually score card in the council uh some people do it some people the equity council is basically uh where i live we've had equity council for like 21 years an equity council is made up of 15 people in the community who serve as advisory board and make recommendations to the superintendent of the board they can't make the superintendent do anything they can't make the board anything their advisory committee but their focus is to keep equity on the radar that's their primary purpose and people select these people in different ways sometimes like well we have five board members so each board member

096picks one person from the community and then they everybody add the paper and all these kind of things you have to apply but you have to show that you've been a champion for every diversity for me you can't just come out of blue one day and you want to be on this committee and you haven't been to a board meeting you didn't talk about equity really know you you know and then all of a sudden you won't be on our equity council so you have to apply and have a committee that will actually uh select the 15 people and if you're interested in that i can show you the process and i can send the information to you all uh but the first two usually comes out of this process of the everyday audit it's

097equity policy and every plan and we still can't provide technical assistance to help you uh do that like i'm still uh i think a-league is doing their first or second read of their equity policy uh next month uh but next thing we're going to do is work with them on their equity scorecard so after a year we're still working with them doing stuff anyway okay so we talked about a lot i went through that kind of quick questions because usually better when we have actual conversations i have a question you talked about um there was a part on there about uh professional development is that for the staff and the teachers and the administration yes and who conducts that uh it's up to the superintendent and his staff i mean i did something for ailee

098some people did about other people do other part like trauma and things like that so it depends on but you may have the expertise right here in the district depends on what the topic is i mean you may have somebody that's really strong in social emotional learning so why bring somebody outside the district to do the training you have somebody in here to do that but you know it could be somebody outside or could be inspired in the district it just depends you know and usually like it's a central office and secretary usually knows folks who can do what and you know who can how many people are on your equity council and you can email me and i'll and if you want to like you want to see like a copy of the equity

099score card uh some information about equity councils or you want to see like a report from an equity audit you can get that awesome so what i would say is you all are still processing is that uh you know i i think every school district in the united states should have equity policy part of the education is that a lot of times people hear equity they assume we're talking about race and we talk about equity we're talking about access fairness okay and equitable opportunities not equal opportunities now when you look at your data and whether it bubbles up in your data it is a certain group of students and that you need to address that that's an inequity but the thought of it is looking at the definitions about access and fairness and things of

100that nature so uh in other words you could be in an all-white district you still have equity policy even in all american districts all of them they still have equity policy and equal practices one of the things that that i did the last few weeks is i went through and started looking at other districts and what they do and and the equity council is a pretty common thing among districts that have adopted these policies in addition to that they have an equity officer yes and can you explain a little bit more about that role uh that person um or persons they usually you know it's all an entire office and so where i live in lexington kentucky we have fayette county public schools they have they've had an equity officer like probably about 10 years

101or so not longer and their role is to facilitate all the work around equity at the central office level and be a resource for schools but and also they make sure that the equity plan is operationalized not only in central office but through the schools also and so once there's an equity plan it's not the chief equity officer's job to do that work for the principal but if the principal needs a resource or needs more information you're the expert so you should be able to share that for example you go to one of our board meetings uh he reports to the board every single board meeting the chief equity officer every board meeting they do an equity report they share data every single board meeting they share data during their work session okay they try

102to keep the board informed about what's going on as it relates to equity so i think like austin has one dallas has a uh equity officer uh i'm not sure around or worse for they matter of fact i just thought this one from fort worth a a couple of days ago yes they have one they have a whole office and those are very large districts also um but even smaller districts they do have equity officers some like a district like both sides they probably have five six seven people in that office because it's so large uh and then some smaller industries may have like one or two people three people whatever but usually districts aren't moving towards that okay having that that position that wrong so what are your thoughts about this is a board

103question you can't chime in dr bryant [Music] so where are you all at about equity in general and considering that equity policy and those kinds of things i have a question i guess maybe looking for some clarification and better understanding of equity in education often the way that i see this and i may be coming at this from the wrong direction is that if we having a have a group that we have identified that needs more resources in order to improve their access um how how do you how do you balance that because it seems like and i know we've had situations before where we lowered the teacher student ratio in classrooms in certain schools in order to improve scores improve the education and bring those schools back up excuse me but when it seems

104like when you go down that road you're pulling resources from somewhere else and how does that not ripple how does that not affect the access or the achievement and of the students that maybe now we're in a 25 to 1 classroom so that we can have a 15 to 1 classroom over here how do you balance that well i'll give you an example of how equity works with uh y'all have some title one schools correct quite a few why is he right do all those title one schools get the same amount of money it's based on need correct and so one school on the west side of baytown who may only have like 20 pre-reduced lunch and another just another school on the other side of town i'm i'm just making it looks like that

105doesn't exist okay yeah we don't have that so you don't make it up right closer to 69 75 somewhere in there yeah but there's a difference in percentage right well he can't go to the feds and say or to the state and say i want more money you can't take this money away from this school because this school has higher percentage students on previous lunch okay because title one is an equity issue they don't give the districts the same amount of money and they don't give schools the same amount of money it's based on the need and so we have this thing and i don't know your finance guy in here yeah there he is there she is she knows better than i am but you know texas kentucky's different right so we have this

106thing called when all the money has been given out to schools and things like that and when there's any money left over which is a rarity these days it's called section seven money and when this money is left over they give it up to the schools but it's based on the needs of the students so if you have an affluent school now this does exist in my city we have fluent schools on the south in the town we're not going to give them money where they have a ton of resources already and this school over here is struggling and those students are struggling so that's how he did now people get upset but it's still the right thing to do around the one thing i said you have opposition you might have opposition but any

107resources you have extra things like that you move it to the schools that have the most neediest going students speak to that a little bit is that that's exactly what we've done the last five or six years we've used a third-party vendor to desegregate data report to us where those as we call them hot spots are and then we apply just like miss wood said we'll lower the classroom count of students we will add staff we've even we've gone everywhere from one teacher and a paraprofessional where there was one teacher before to two teachers depending upon the need of the student where that rises and um and they basically give us a scatter plot across our whole community and they measure that need based upon their their socioeconomic factors and and we if we for

108example add a physician such as a campus improvement specialist and it's covered under qualified under title title funding and then we have another campus that doesn't have the funding available for that if the need is still there but the students didn't quite measure up statistically if you will we'll have we'll fund that additionally with district funds versus the federal or state funds i think i think that's what i was kind of getting at is outside of title one because yeah i understand title one and how it's spread around based on need but when you need to go above and beyond title one funding like like dr o'brien was referencing how do you how do you balance that how do you justify taking funding away from a successful campus or program to technically not take it

109away because it's not there yet right i mean i guess i'm referencing like regular district budgeting and staff ratios etc you know so if if the need is that one school and the pot of money is at central office hasn't been distributed anywhere else so it's not like the school doesn't necessarily need it you're taking away from it they don't have it yet because you have to justify you're gonna let let kids who don't have a need suffer okay you struggle and i will say this and like i said you'll have opposition around equity but if you don't have equitable practices and equal resources all i can say is good luck you're going to continue to have gaps and matter of fact the gaps will get widened because of we already know i go to

110brianals and everybody who's on the teaching learning side of this we already know the impact what code 19 is going to have on education and our students so we know the learning you want anything to do with teachers principals superintendents and things like that there's going to be a widening because of this and so it widens because of access and things of that nature and a whole lot of things i can't get into all of that so do we let those students continue to struggle or one group of students already doing well you know i'll speak to the one thing that does is a red flag for all of us and we're aware of is the special ed that you referenced that is somewhat linked to philosophy at the state level we had a point

111in time in the state of texas where modifications were given or assessment and things that nature and then that was stripped completely every kid will take the same test you know so uh that you know will definitely cause the scores to plunge if a kid with needs that aren't being met for the testing assessment instrument and they're given the same instrument the scores are going to plummet so we're on the uphill battle with uh overcoming that but that was implemented years ago and we're still working on uh the the challenges of um that that assessment instrument or the philosophy surrounding that assessment instrument i think also in regards to what ms woods was saying we look at it from the perspective if we look at it from the state level you know the amount of

112money we get for for example even things such as career technology is is different and if you look at the federal level the federal government understands that there's a need for school districts and so they give more money for populations such as migrant workers special ed funding esl those are federal programs and i think that if the federal government and the state government recognizes that there's certain populations within any given school district that need additional funds for them to be able to be successful which at the end we all can i think we all agreed that what we want is our kids to have be successful um beyond what we however we impact our lives um i think at the local level we have to understand that do we have pockets we have demographics we

113have areas that are going to need that and i mean honestly i see it as a situation where if i'll take my own children you know i have four kids and each of them have strengths and each of my weaknesses and sometimes i spend a little bit money on money on this one because they need something additional and this one doesn't and i think that that's one of the things that we have to really understand when we're dealing with our all of our students in in our district when everyone went virtual um last spring and this fall our district did a survey about the homes who had technology at home well we had a lot of students who had technology well they didn't buy 46 000 pieces of technology for every student they bought technology

114for students who needed it you know uh never heard a complaint about anything like that but if a student really needed it regardless what their income was or whatever they got them a piece of technology for virtual learning the other question that is if you keep it equal approach what's your strategy to address the needs of students who are struggling you could just give everybody the same thing what's the what's the alternative what are you going to do for those students who are struggling uh you you make the point of internet access which is a great one and it's a great way of looking at equity in our current situation and and i understand how in that situation you absolutely you want to you know reach the students who don't have access to the internet

115this is a tangible they don't have access to the internet so we're going to do for them what we don't necessarily have to do for other students who have that access already so that to me is an equity instance but that's an equity of outcome how do you [Music] i want to say okay so how do you keep from you're leveling up the playing field but how do you level up the playing field without without leveling out the outcome i'll give you exactly that makes sense yeah it makes a lot of sense i'll give you the example in my definition i had equity you notice i had gift in this right i have giftedness in there those are some of the highest performing students in the district right so you don't close the achievement gap

116by holding the kids who are gifted or who in honors or ap down here until others catch up you continue to challenge them but you got to give them these students something different and sometimes more so you can close a gap like this but you don't hold them back okay and doing that i would also say that i use the pandemic as an example but the reality is you all have kids in this district who's been going through academic pandemic from day one before kobe ever started he just wasn't a virus poverty or whatever it was so this that so i use that as an example but there's been plenty of examples of why students are struggling you know maybe you know issue outside the classroom and so you provide those those supports to do

117that but if that's not the answer you got to have another answer because uh if you do equal education it's not half of all children any other questions but good questions that's kind of conversation i want to have those discussions like that so you can have a better understanding but i'll i'll just say this i hang my head on two things school culture the environment and equitable practices it's hard to as dargo brian says heart if kids don't get access to the content and then we assess them also they never saw why should we expect them to be at meats or masters it don't make any sense anything else will give the order all hearts and minds clear one one thing uh when you we talk about equitable circumstances kids school funding what is the

118response to and i think maybe getting way off or you know teachers or as hiring administrators or hiring things of that nature well you all you always want to have uh you want your staff as much as possible to mirror your student enrollment okay so you want representation at every level central all the schools teachers principals things of that nature so you want uh representation such as alluding to high-end practices you also want um [Music] you know this is tough to do but you want some of your your best teachers in your most struggling schools you know that's that's tough to do you know uh you want that so where's where teachers are representation is also issues around equity also but i i they have a direct or indirect effect on students i tend to

119focus more on the practice of students most particularly in the classroom so would that be a kind of a goal for us in your hiring practices to try to go after the best of the best in order to be able to equalize you know some of them i call them star features yeah you want yeah you want to diversify your your uh your teaching core um and you don't you want to get anyone because they are a certain ethnicity or whatever you want them to be qualified highly qualified but if you're trying to diversify your staff and your teaching corps and principles things like that and there's an opportunity to hire diversity into your district you do it so that's that's the next question was when you look at what we're talking about equitable does

120that fall in line with diversity also yes it does like we look at that kind of stuff in the assessment look at it uh your demographics or your teaching core leadership anything else i know y'all had a long day thank you so much no problem thank you all appreciate it thank you thank you [Music] that would conclude dr cleveland's presentation to us on equity leaves us some homework to do which we executive council will embrace that work to do to bring you back information in the future we also are all ears to any direction you might give us as a board well i like the idea of having some examples of other equity policies that may apply to different districts in different circumstances but that we can kind of get a good idea of what

121one looks like the scorecard did you say we could find those on your website i can send them to uh mr bollinger okay yeah that would be great that way if they could share them with us we could study some of those and get an idea of how we would like our policies to look i know i googled equity policy equity and education and have seen some other things that are out there golf maps on it which could give an idea of what types of framework we would want for a policy if we were to adopt one or form when it would be counseled so are there any other questions or comments anybody else we're having i have dr cleveland here in person i think moving forward with the development of this policy and the

122council possibly we continue to work with him virtually uh so he doesn't have to make the plain trip every single year comments or questions but we could engage in his services moving forward as we further developed this over the months to come i like the direction of equity on it to discover and see what's going on and things we can learn and help form the policy [Music] your comments i guess we can adjourn this workshop mr glenn will you allow it well um are we going to allow it before nine o'clock i mean is that 40 8 40 pm quickly someone drop the gavel we are adjourned