001Thank you everybody for joining us this evening. Today is June 17th, 2025 here for the purposes of Salt Lake City School District Board of Education. There we go. I'll go ahead and start over. Thank you everybody for joining us this evening. Uh we are here for the purposes of a Salt Lake City School District Board of Education meeting. Today is June 17th, 2025. Uh thank you for allowing us some extra time while we worked ourselves out of the closed session. Um, I do want to welcome everybody who's here. Um, with that, I want to make sure that we recognize our association presidents who are with us. Uh, for classified association groups, we have buildings and grounds, president Leo Compo. For child nutrition, President Tanya Slaughter for SLEA, the Salt Lake Education Association, we have President
002Mike Harmon in shorts because it's hot outside. And Vice President Chelsea A Costa. uh for SLASA, the Salt Lake Association of School Administrators. We are joined by President Adrien Loato. Adrien, thank you for being here with us. Uh moving along, we uh need us have the pledge of allegiance. And I'll go ahead and lead us in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, thank you for that. Um, moving to our consent agenda. We do have a board member request to pull item number three, human resources report. Um, I'll entertain a motion that reflects that request. I move that we approve the consent agenda except for item three
003and move that item to action. I second. All right, we've got a motion and a second on the table. Any discussion? Okay, seeing none, we'll start with a roll call vote uh with board member Williams. Bryce Williams, yes. Charlotte Fe Jefferson, yes. Ashley Anderson, yes. Nate Salazar, yes. Muhammad, yes. Amanda Longo, yes. Brian, are you uh on the Zoom? With that, that gives me an opportunity to mention that Vice President Jensen's participating remotely as you just probably heard that. So, um, we'll go ahead and and skip his vote. We do have enough to move forward. Um, and also, uh, student board member Helina is also excused this evening. Um, that motion does pass. U, moving along to our request to speak. We do not have any signups this evening. Uh so we will move into
004our reports agenda. Um item number one is our honors diploma proposal. Dr. Grant, will you please introduce us? Sure. Um Dr. Hall is going to present for us tonight. Um we've been looking carefully at graduation requirements across the district, what ex we're expecting of our students and and maybe what we ought to expect of our students. And um as Dr. Hall shared in the materials that are attached to the agenda. Um we're an unusual district in the minimum that we have um asked our students to to to do in order to graduate as well as without a secondary diploma of some kind, an honors diploma that recognizes extra effort and more attention paid to academics and schooling um and taking classes. Uh Dr. Hall will go through this, but just wanted to This is a
005first presentation of this to the board to consider and there's a lot to consider in this and Dr. Hall has those pieces of different ways districts have done it, different ways we could possibly do it should the board be interested in moving forward and exploring this. Thank you. Okay, thank you. And I will go very quickly because we do have time on the agenda for further discussion in July. Um, we just wanted in terms of full transparency for you and for especially your constituents to make sure that this was something that was heard so that uh if you have any thoughts or feedback or receive uh questions that you're able to be prepared for a July discussion. So again, I don't intend to go deeply, but you do have a lot of information. As the
006superintendent said, we are looking at some ways of meeting our board goals and one of the ways that we can look at that is what is required for graduation in our in our district. One of the things that we know is that we would like to as a board goal increase attendance. We want to reduce absenteeism from 28 to 10%. And we'd like to have a 90% participation rate across all of our families and community um members as we look at this. And one of the things that encourages kids to come to school is needing to take a class when they come to school. Another thing that we're looking at is really wanting to make sure that students are prepared for college and career. Um we know that in this state, for instance, uh colleges
007don't require a second language, but in many other states they do. um or if we wanted to look at students who might be taking additional CTE classes or additional math or science classes. These are ways that that the board could send a message or encourage those things um by increasing from the minimum number of classes that students have to take. So currently um we offer as is required by the state this is the state minimum 24 credits to graduate. Students have the potential to earn up to eight credits a year if they do not take seminary. If they take a full schedule of eight classes um or 28 with seminary and during 2425 depending on the comprehensive high school anywhere between 70 and uh 75% of seniors had incomplete schedules. They had a schedule where
008they did not need to take all eight classes. though they weren't in school time full-time. They're the only only about 25 to 30% of our seniors attended school full-time as a senior. So, we understand that there is room in the schedule and that we've had some missed learning opportunities and that we have some opportunities to encourage students to do more. In Utah, there are 41 districts and of the 41 districts, there are only six districts that require 24 units to graduate. uh Daget, North Summit, Rich, Sevir, Tintech, and the Salt Lake City School District. So, we are the only one on the Wasace front. Um the other districts all require more than 35 units to graduate. And you have at the end of your PowerPoint presentation, I won't present it or uh project it because
009it's small, but we went through and looked at every district's graduation requirements to see both how many units in addition to the 24 required credits they require. And also if they put that just into electives and say it's 27, take another three of whatever you want. or if they say specifically, you know, you need to take an additional math class, an additional CTE class, and the rest is whatever you want. So, um, they have a lot of different ways of looking at this. And again, as we looked at data across the state wanting to see what the other districts are doing in Utah, there are a couple of different ways that they can look and do look at different diplomas. So, for instance, they might have a standard or a basic diploma at 24 units.
010And that would be, for instance, just a district diploma. It might say the Salt Lake City School District diploma. And that means that they have met the requirements um but that they didn't meet the advanced requirements. And in some districts, if you want a school diploma, so if you want your school to say your diploma to say east or west or Highland, then you would meet the 27 um requirements. Or they might have an honors or an advanced. So, anybody receiving 24 or more credits can receive their school diploma, but if they do 27 or 30 or 32 or they do um 28 but they add a science and a math, you could design this in any way. There is a lot of opportunity because again the state law is 24 is the minimum. that
011is what's listed in I2 the chart that I have at the end of this per uh per not this uh presentation but um but those those are the state required courses they are changing for the class of 20 uh for the freshman of 2526 excuse me 26 27 but for right now those are the current requirements and so there are a lot of different ways um sometimes a district might have a different diploma requirement for an alternative school All of these are things that you could consider. So, you have several things to consider. And of course, one is nothing. Don't even come back in July, Tiffany. We don't care. Move on. I'm I'm fine. That's good. I I have no ego on the table for this. But other options would be to increase our graduation
012or required graduation credits to 25 or more. Um you could specify where those credits would be added. um or you could just add them to elective credits. You could identify specific expectations for a diploma. Um there are districts, again, as I looked through and went through all of the district requirements, some of them again just more credit, some of them um more credit, a full schedule and a GPA requirement. I you know, and and others just specific credits in certain areas. So, those are all things open for your consideration and for feedback from your constituents. A couple of additional uh considerations that you might have would be timeline. Would you want to do that over time? Um would you want to start that? We know that we have a lot of things beginning next year
013u from this legislative session. So, we have some new things already happening for the freshman class of not this year but the year after. Would you like to wait for a while? Would you like to uh have them come in? In talking with our information technology, they would prefer that we did not just for and I I agree with this very much, just for consistency sake, not to say this year it's 25, next year it's 26, the next year it's 27. So that's not what I mean about phasing in but but not saying next year you know saying two years from now this would be the requirement or three years from now this would be the requirement. Another question is staffing. Would this affect staffing? Would it cost more to do this? And the answer
014is no. In talking both with Mr. Quants and Mr. Kersley our schools are staffed on the idea that we have students with full schedules. So when again I look at having 70% of seniors without a full schedule or 75% of seniors without a full schedule, we do have staffing as if they had a full schedule. So, while some things might shift, like if people all of a sudden decided that they wanted to take two years of French or four years of French, that might change some staffing within a department, but the staffing numbers themselves are already on the table. And so, when we think about staffing and scheduling, those are those considerations there. And again, that's all I have for you tonight. Just wanted to put this on the table in front of you, give
015you some information, and let you think about that. And um unless you say not just no but heck no, I will see you in July. Thank you, Dr. Holl. Before we get started, Dr. Grant, just wanted to highlight one piece of this too as we're looking at the tradeoffs on this. There's an opportunity cost to not doing something with your time in high school. Um there's the loss of CTE exploration and classes that way. there's the loss of concurrent enrollment that is really cheap when you're in high school. Um so these this um these seniors that don't have full schedules, it's a piece that worries me a great deal because of the opportunity cost. They're choosing not to have full schedules. They're missing out on these huge opportunities that could grant them some more in
016the world as they're making their way out of high school. So that's another piece I just wanted to highlight there. And then also it's nice to have kids class rather than in hallways in between classes should they not be scheduled. So that's another thing we're looking at too as we're proposing this. Thank you Dr. Grant. You're welcome. Um any questions, observations, Ashley? I don't necessarily need the answer to the questions tonight because as you pointed out this is a report and we'll discuss it. But I'm thinking specifically about West which I represent that area and we have you know some academic considerations that have been rising um conversationally about how credits are assigned and weighted grades is another and also even the process just for scheduling the student day to make sure students can get
017all the classes they need without having these empty periods. So I'm curious for the next discussion how this will fall in the hierarchy of those other academic topics. Like I would rather before moving ahead on an honors diploma make sure we've addressed our weighted grades like for as one example and I don't know if those things are in concert with one another. And the second would be I would be curious you mentioned an option where the board designates where credits would be required and I would be curious how that intersects with special programs. So like for example, going above the number of state required CTE credits is considered in conflict with the IB diploma program at West by many students and families. So I would be really cautious about how the board approaches even conversationally
018the idea we would designate where those credits have to be and get information from you about how such a designation would impact the specialty academic programs that we already offer. So again, I don't need to answer those tonight, but bookmarking those talking points for the next meeting. Great. Thank you. Great, great questions to bring up and I'll I'll make sure those are in the presentation next time. Thank you. Any other questions? Bryce, I just have a a comment um for the board, not necessarily Dr. Hall. Um I think it's important that we are having this conversation. Um I know it was 20 years ago, but I think about my senior year of high school. I think I had three classes. Um that's a lot. Good for you. Yeah, three. Um, and one of them was
019student government. So, I think there, as the superintendent was saying, I think there is a lot of missed opportunity there. Um, I think in many ways, as I chose to go on to a university, there was some stuff I wasn't fresh on when I entered a university setting. So, I think having this conversation is really important to see how we can best um serve our students in that way. Great. Thanks, Bryce, Molly, and then Brian. Thank you Dr. Hall. Um you know it is so great because actually it is interesting. It is at that age where the kids actually get in trouble. That's like when they are you know out experiencing drugs and having because they are bored literally speaking but if it is like something out there that actually is required of them to
020continue to attend the classes and so because a lot of times when my daughter was graduating I was like aren't you supposed to be in the class? No I'm done with the class. H is that right? You see what I'm saying? So it is really that especially as our kids are dealing with this right now. It's like a great fight, you know, between the youth and uh you know uh the drugs that are just like available out there. So um I think it's going to be really really beneficial. Thank you. Thank you, Muhammad. And Brian, let's test to see if your uh your sound's working. Can you hear me? Oh, we can. Okay, you can hear me. Yeah. Okay, great. Um, this would be a similar situation to Ashley's that I don't need the answers
021now, but it seems to me that we have two questions that are really being presented here. There's the honors diploma, but then when you go back to that one slide, it talks about the um standard diploma and then the school diploma. So would be would we be looking at what constitutes a standard diploma, a school diploma, and then a honors diploma on top of that? I'll I'll just that one. Those those um sorry I'm looking at you backwards over my shoulder, board member, but um those are just options. Those are things that that other districts have done or presented that I just wanted to make sure that that um you were aware of that there were different ways that districts have done this. So, you could do any or none or all of those options.
022Um that's just some of the different ways districts have laid that out for their students. Okay. And when this is brought back, that's when we'll have the opportunity to discuss, you know, what we do want to pursue. All right. Thank you, Amanda. I just want to reiterate that I think this is an exciting um proposal. Uh it's definitely untapped uh area that the kids um getting that incentive will hopefully help re-engage um and finish out their school their high school year engaged in maximizing things. So, I'm excited about this. Um, I guess the question that I have and maybe it's been stated and I'm overlooking it is I'm assuming that this is brand new information for the district as a whole. There hasn't really been any um information sent out. This is completely a brand
023new concept that's out there or has there been some kind of dialogue? Sorry. Um, that there's been kind of feedback or any kind of like interest bubble going on. I guess um I I would say that there have been general conversations as the superintendent outlined about um students missing some educational academic learning opportunities especially around classes like CE or fine arts or um knowing how to do things that you may never take a class in as an adult. uh we have talked about some of the things like having students without full schedules and what what do you do when that happens if it if it's in the middle of the schedule do they leave and go home and come back and what does that look like? Um it has been a conversation around attendance because
024if you have a hole in your schedule sometimes you come to your first class then you leave for a while and coming back to that last class could be and we've um just uh kind of just opened this discussion but it has not gone much further than that and uh principles the high school principles um knew that this presentation was uh happening tonight. We did send that out to them ahead of time. Dr. Taylor and Miss Sutherland have communicated with principles about this. So, this is just a, like I said, a preliminary piece as we look at that across the Wasatch front and see that that we're the the district with the lowest um graduation requirements across the Wasatch front. Wondering if that is something that we would want to address. And I heard kind
025of an aspect as board members doing our part in this, fleshing out the level of interest is us going out to our constituents and really um assessing the information as well so that we're all coming back to the table at the next presentation to have a robust um collaborative dialogue. So, thank you. Awesome. That'd be great. Charlotte, anything to add? Well, thank you board members. Um unless there's nothing else, we can move on to our next uh agenda section. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Hall. Uh moving along to our discussion agenda. Um the first item there is strategic plan for student achievement revisions. So I don't have we don't have a PowerPoint on this one. Um but shared with you in the materials in the board agenda the previous strategic plan and new one. You might
026see we've gone to what is it? Portrait, not landscape. Um but um also a lot of changes in what we've included in the actual plan. We broke apart I wanted to just mention a couple of pieces that were big changes on this. One is that we broke apart the operational aspects in terms of the actions we're going to take for each of the goals over the next few years. Um on the goals and the metrics themselves. One of our pieces on this and in even taking this up is the board feedback that we've gotten over the last few months as you've read through as you've heard from each of the pillar leads on how things are going in each of those pillars. Um, and as we've heard the need to maybe align things a little
027more clearly so that people can get their arms around the plan and how we're doing with this. So um we do not have for all of the pillars and goals right now implementation plans um in some folks have them written down some are still working to finalize those all of them will be overseen by our new associate superintendent analy who will update those and kind of I haven't pushed having those plans in place because I wanted her to have some say what they look like and what her pattern of follow up um with goal owners would be. So, we've really tried to capture some of the differences between the old one and the new one and present this as a different way to look at the plan and a more streamlined way to look at
028the plan and all the goals. If you'll remember, we had 39 different objectives. Some of those have been brought together. Some have been put in different places so there's more coherence around what is our learning agenda and what does thatclude? So, we've added some pieces in there um and moved them from the pillar that was about sustainability and facilities, for example. So, um with that, just open a board feedback and questions and ideas. We do have a few people out of town this week that are goal owners. Um if they're out of town, I'll try and answer best I can. Um otherwise, those who do own the different goals can speak to those. Any questions on the presented revisions? Ashley, I think it's a little bit hard to ask questions about all of these without
029knowing what the implementation plan is. That's why I asked about it. So, I look forward to seeing what those are to kind of be a check against what the document is. Um, but I have questions about things that are really broad, like, you know, and they're things that I thought we were doing. So, for example, it says something like a 100% of schools will use PBIS or MTSS. How is that different than what we're doing now? It's not. That's the same goal as we had before. We just moved it into a different part so that it's in, if I remember right, pillar one under equity because we thought it was about um equitable treatment of students and how we're managing discipline issues rather than under the last pillar which was sustainability. It was kind of
030a catchall. The last pillar ended up being a catch all. And so we ended up moving that into the equity pillar. Okay. So in looking at approving it, one of the things I would be looking for is something like where it says that it says we will do that by 2029. So when I'm reading the plan, I don't have a good baseline of what is happening in the school district now. Right? Because it's my understanding we are doing that. And then the reason implementation plans are a thing I'm curious about moving forward is I'm not sure it says, you know, a 100% of schools will communicate absenteeism data to stakeholders on a quarterly basis. I don't totally know what that means to communicate that data. You know, does that mean via P school? Does that
031mean counselors are going to reach out if students are absent? Does that mean if a parent is habitually excusing absences and a student has reached chronic absenteeism, they get a letter? I'm just curious, you know, with some detail what those things mean and I think that will come with the implementation plan. So, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but those are the things I'm wondering about, especially for those big topics of, you know, 100% 90%. in the in the revisions. Yeah, we um so one of the things we do need to prepare for you and it's not quite done. Um my team's on this hopefully we'll get this done soon is to have for you a dashboard with all of these metrics showing a baseline that started last year or whatever 2024 2023 well
032kind of changed that 2024 to 2029. So starting 2024, what it looks like this year and then as we get more data that we update that that would be live so it's constantly available for you to review um and see where we're going. So we're trying to put that in place for you to look at. So that'll give you that sense of the baseline and how close we are to these and um getting them done. The other piece on the um looking at the different aspects I'm gonna see if Dr. Taylor I know was on there. I believe um and maybe he could um speak to some of those implementation things you're asking about about the attendance Ashley because um he's overseeing that part of the strategic plan if we still have him on Zoom.
033Oh, we do. Okay, we'll ping him here and see if you can join. While you're doing that, I could say the one other thing. Um when I'm looking at the dates we have in there by 2029 100% of admin will be sestag trained and that's something I'd like to see you know yesterday like it's a training we have people in the district who can train on it seag is the threat assessment protocol that we have in the district I don't see any reason why all administrators could not be seag trained by the start of the next school year as one example so I think that that's there are some things like that where I think it's perfect that we've moved that goal right up on to 100 because we should have 100% of people trained
034in that. But I would like to see that happen sooner than multiple academic years from now. And that's my one other comment while Dr. Taylor gets on. Okay. I did want to mention one more piece on that. Thank you for raising up. And I do think we're pretty I think we're at like 95 97 and I don't know might be missing three people if I remember right. Um I'll give you their names next time and probably shame them. Um that's don't say I'm just kidding. But um but I think we're pretty close to that. But yes, I agree with you. And um then just on the attendance and how we're implementing there is one thing we wanted to do is try and pull out we had written down a lot of the activities. We had
035written down a lot of the activities to meet those goals and then those activities had different expectations like by this date we'll have this and this and this and this and it really is kind of unwork. in that form for the review and oversight of the board. You're not overseeing our activities. You're overseeing how close we are to getting to these goals and are we moving in the right direction. So, we were trying to separate those out. We will share the implementation plans. Um I just think they won't I don't know if maybe by our next meeting July 15th maybe we will have those in hand. And Dr. Taylor, are you hearing us on there? I'm hear go in and out if you're trying to speak to me. There you go. Yes. Did you hear
036that question from board member Anderson about attendance and how we're updating that quarterly with stakeholders, how that's going to be done? of absence. Oh, we're um we're kind of getting you in and out. Maybe Dr. Taylor, if you turn off your camera, we can hear just your voice possibly. It doesn't seem to be streaming very well. That's not working either. Are there any other questions? And let's see if you can Amanda. Um, I haven't typed up all my thoughts, so we're going to go organic here. Um, so thematically, this is something that I've run into uh when I was participating on SEC's, but and I know you're working with what was already established and then just kind of tweaking it. But one of the things that um I would be interested in you all kind
037of looking at again before when we come back for this next reading is generally um goals are slated for the um like the 80% of students or 75% of students your highest um performers for lack of better words. Whether it's attendance, whether it's um academics which inadvertently leaves out the lowest performers. And so figuring out how to, you know, I'm super grateful that there are some in there like the CTE pathway that's all 100% of students will have a college and career path college and career pathway um on a college and career pathway. So, I'm ecstatic to see 100% for all students on that piece, which does encompass, you know, our kids with more challenges. Um, but a lot of the others are the the traditional goals, which is the majority, not the at risk.
038Typically we we we capture shown the at risk by increasing the number the percentage of students that are achieving the goals that we establish. But our traditional lowest performers who are our at risk students you know including special education but not only um it's not a focused um plan towards targeting their outcomes per se. And so inadvertently the strategic plan overlooks that population. And so if we actually had a goal that or goals that strategically are focusing on our lowest performers, then maybe we are more intentionally through that process um wrapping them into these efforts that are going on. Does that make sense? It does. Um one way to address that is to disagregate the data so that there's an average, but there's also the data by different subgroups of students. So, we could have
039what does attendance look like for special education students or for our low-inccome students or students of different race and ethnicity. Then, um that gives I mean that's the power of what NCB did, right? It gave an accountability to what people are doing as they're trying to raise attend Um, the goal isn't just to get those kids very closest to getting into the, you know, green lights on attendance or something. It's to move everybody into better attendance. I don't think ultimate goal is. It's just one of those like inadvertent um outcomes. I guess I do think disagregating data provides some accountability on that. Yeah, maybe we I think it can be a way, but I think we have to look at how we're disagregating it. So, like if we're talking special education, we obviously know that
040there's um we have self-contained, we have behavior, we have academic support, we have essential elements, and whenever you're saying only 8% of not you per se, only 8% of the students with uh special with disabilities aren't accessing X, that could be the entire essential elements population. So like if we're not dec breaking that data down breaking it apart um thoroughly enough it's still there's a populace that um is well it's only 8% well but it's an entire it could potentially be an entire population within that population. Does that make sense? So, it's just one of those pieces that like it's in my opinion contributed to um certain groups of students um thank you not being wrapped into the strategic plan or other initiatives. Thanks. I'll I'll talk with our team about some pieces that Brian
041Yes. This would go over to and I was just thinking again about um the the upcoming followup with this over under objective 3.1 students, family and community members will feel more connected to the district and informed about district programs, achievements and operations. Um, it talks about having this community survey, increasing news media stories, and then also establishing partnerships. Is there like a explanation of what those partnerships are? It seems like that would be helpful because um sometimes when we get into these board meetings, it seems like we have a disconnect on the information that's getting to the public like with the sports playing fields or you know other things. Is there what are we talking about when we say partnerships with community organizations? This one was this is a goal that falls under the lake
042education foundation. So James oversees this goal. So this is primarily about partnerships with nonprofits and businesses and other organizations around. So do you want to add to that? Okay that for us here there's also the the community partnerships as he's talking about the businesses and things come under SLE. Yes. Thank you, Superintendent. Um, board vice president Jensen, I wanted to just add that I talked about this a little bit in the update that I gave on my pillar. Um, and specifically where that goal that you're talking about refers to the comm's council that we're trying to create, starting out with five other organizations that serve residents across the city, trying to collaborate and share resources um with a twofold goal. One, to expand our reach of of our messaging, you know, through community organizations that
043are already trusted partners and being able to offer the same um relationship in reverse to to those organizations. Ryan, I'm sorry. I'm looking 2.1. My apologies. I was looking at 2.1 there about the community partnership. So, I misspoke and thankfully Yandre has corrected us because she asking about 3.1, right? 3.1. Yes. My apologies. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? I have 30 seconds left. If I could use my time. Um I have two things that I forgot to ask about and one is the section where it says two CTE credits would be required and that's something that as I pointed out to Dr. Hall the IB diploma community gets very anxious when we talk about things like that because it comes into conflict with their programs. So I'd like to make sure that when we
044put forth a new goal it doesn't compete with what we're already encouraging students to do. And the second is about what Brian raised which is 3.1 which is that says we'll do a community survey in 2029. We'll have a whole new cohort in and out of high school between now and then. So, what I would rather us be doing is having a tool that measures change. Like rather than a one-time one and done community survey, we should be looking at trends in the change of that community experience. Believe we do have that community survey is a trend line. Is that right? I mean it is the yearly um as you some of you may remember in 2024 Y2 Analytics ran a community survey in preparation for the bond. We did have some questions in there
045about messaging about how informed people were, especially people who live in the city um are part of our community but do not have a child here so aren't receiving our messages directly through their own emails. Um and that that was our baseline that we used. Um and so in 2029 the idea would be a broader survey. um we can look into how we can survey community members broadly. Um it is just a little more challenging um as opposed to say adding questions to our school climate surveys that could add um some perspective and we could measure the change with within stakeholders internally. Uh but it would be harder to do that more broadly if that makes sense. I'll look into how we can do that. respond to that. I remember in the old draft it
046does say Y2 would repeat that and we've talked in the past about how it was odd the strategic plan referenced a contractor when actually we didn't have an RFP out for that, right? And so would that be within the existing scope of service. So that's what I'm sort of referencing is that was grounded with the idea that Y2 would be running a comparison on exactly what they had done and they experts rather than we're just going to send out one survey and measure that against nothing. I just think we could explain a little bit more clearly what that actually means and what it's intended to measure that it's not the climate survey. It's what Y2 had already done. Thank you. That's good feedback. I can work on that. I just want to mention too Ashley
047just to ask you as follow up on that CTE one. So we do have the goals of having 50% of our students completing CTE which would be the three credits or 75 with two credits. But you find that problematic for some students? Yeah, if you're an IB diploma student, it is very challenging to complete your IB diploma requirements while also doing more than the one statemandated CTE credit. Now, West offers, as do many other schools in the state, I don't know if Highland does, the career option where you can do a career pathway and do the career program CP through IB. But if you're doing the diploma program, you cannot complete a CTE pathway as we have them laid out and finish your IB diploma all within the confines of four years. And so it's
048not to say that it's not a you can say we don't anticipate above X percentage doing an IB diploma, right? And this goal would be if you're not doing something like an IB diploma, we'd like to see you complete a pathway. But when we get into 100% of students will do X and it comes in conflict with what we offer, people people begin to fill in the blanks of like IB is going away, which is not what the intent of this plan is, right? But that's what the those things kind of bubble up out of decisions like that. Let's not increase that to 100%. That's not the message we want. We will not increase that to 100%. Dr. Taylor, can we hear you now? Perhaps. I hope so. Is this any better? That's way better.
049Perfect. Thank you. Did you hear the question on attendance there? No, I missed it. It was broken up. So, if you can repeat it for me, then I can address it. Um, I was saying, Dr. Taylor, that I was looking forward to the implementation plans. Um, and one of the items that would be implemented is quarterly feedback about absenteeism. And my question was in future reports if we would hear or if you could speak today about what that would look like. Does that mean counselors sending messages home to families? Does that mean we're just making sure people have access to power school? Like what are the mechanisms by which we would communicate about that chronic absenteeism into households? That would be dependent on the individual schools plan. We're trying to leave flexibility for schools to
050be able to implement things that work for their you the for the neighborhoods they are serving. So yes, it could be counselors reaching out. It could be a combination of visits. It could be notices through uh parent messenger or student messenger. It could be taking advantage of existing district tools to make sure that we're on a consistent regular basis sharing this information with parents and keeping those families and community members updated. Thank you, Dr. Taylor. Any other questions? I've got a maybe a question that's probably more geared towards Allen. Um, you know, with new initiatives or new goals, there's always new investments, you know. Um, how are we navigating these revisions along with the reality that we'll have to be making investments and that we might be needing to look at programs that might be
051duplicating some of the initiatives and implementations that we're looking at potentially um and and if those haven't taken place, how might we start looking at what type of investment we need to be making to achieve these goals? Right. So, specifically to these revisions, um we haven't had those conversations as of yet as what additional resources may be needed. Um we are constantly reviewing um and are making efforts to even do a better job of reviewing where we're spending our money currently and find those areas where maybe it's not um having a positive effect uh towards the goals or towards student outcomes so we can look at those uh programs and repurpose those funds to something more productive. Um but clearly always when there when there's new goals, new initiatives, um as we go through these,
052you know, the details of of how we're going to get those uh get towards those goals, um any additional resources would be brought needed would be brought before the board in a in a conversation, kind of an update to a particular pillar. Uh here's a need, here's a proposal for the board to consider. um whether it's repurposing funds, uh additional funds needed or using, you know, new state funds or or grants or or what have you, um those uses would come to the board. Thank you. Um Dr. Grant, my question to you is what do our next steps look like? Well, if you're fine with the general idea of moving in this direction as a board, um, and I think our next steps are to respond to the questions you raised so far, any of
053the particulars that you've raised. Um, I mean, we've really kind of changed this to try and again get your arms around it. Um, and then we'll have the I don't know if I can promise the implementation plans, but I'll almost promise the implementation plans. We'll try at least give some examples to you before our next meeting because I know we have some done um in mid July and then we would want to eventually have the board approve this update. We approved an update last year. We're updating again. We set this up to be a working document that we could do that with over time and keep it real and forefront. The other piece is to get to you the dashboard that shows where we are on these items. So I don't have a for that
054right now. Charlotte, that's that's what I was wondering about. Um, how do we um monitor the progress toward the goals? So, the dashboard will really help. Yes. And then we were doing the pillar updates this last spring. Our idea is to do those again and keep those pillar updates going and maybe we could even do them earlier in the year. we could see what's useful for you as board members rather than we we put them in in the springtime. Um but to give you a good update on things, we continue to report on those in board meetings. Okay. And the other part of that was do we have benchmarks like each year be you know on our way to 2029 or are we just like where we want to be you know each year or
055are we just looking at that longer term goal? We're just writing down the longer term goal here. That's for each of the goal owners to figure out in their implementation plan what are their what are they getting done this year what are they getting done next year to get closer to this outcome. So that would be that would show up I mean the dashboard we want to be live so that you'll see each time the data is updated how close we are along with it. Um and then in the reports to the board those updates one other um I guess the goal they're not the goalkeepers. What are they called? What are you calling them? I call them owners. Okay. The goal owners. Goalkeepers. I like that. That works. Anyway, um I think as we're
056working towards these goals, maybe they can identify obstacles, you know, or things that are or additional resources or I mean is that part of it? Um yeah, you know, because to you as a board and saying, you know, we have done this and this and this and we really need this, but it's going to take more resources. It's a barrier right now. I mean, I I think that's our responsibility to bring those forward if we're going to try and meet these goals. Yeah, that's right. Mohamad, did you have anything to add? Let's start second round with Amanda. Are you ready? Okay. Ready for me? Um the other point now that um is on the pillar three family school and community partnerships and communication along the lines of um community collaboration um and off of the
057USBA meeting that I attended a maybe a sub goal to objective 11 um could potentially also be uh family centered engagement activities held by schools like some kind of adding some kind of percentage particip participation in that because you got you're stating you're citing PTA PTO's and then the school community councils but um those aren't necessarily direct engagement with the school communities and the families um and so and those USBA meetings that I attended but that was one of the things that they really worked on was concerted effort on engaging with the parents and the f like the families and such so that with that engagement then the families were more connected and dialed in to those to the schools. goals to more likely um support and facilitate this the child's um um engagement and
058thus attendance and success in the school. So, um, as a lot of board members have been talking about those particular interests and that presentation and this particular pillar, that seems like a a a item that could be tapped into an effort that could be um put forth to help with some of the areas that we've talked about being problematic in areas of interest. So, a thought to consider. Definitely. We didn't put it in as a metric because schools don't typically measure attendance at math night or back to school night or those sorts of things. So, um, we didn't put it in as a metric to grow it that way or necessarily to increase the number of those things because I'm not sure that's what we're trying to do either is create the increase the number
059of family nights or something that are done at the schools. I don't know how the wording needs to be. I just I I just I feel like that one where if it's only focused on and PTAs and PTOs, it's actually falling short of what could be tapped into um that we're not tapping into because those only encompass a a a se a a limited um function, I guess, is the term I'm looking for. And so I know I'm not wording it well, but ultimately I think that there could be more of a concerted effort around that to to just build more I don't know. It's just it's an area that I think that is um untapped. And I assumed that you were talking about things like parent nights, family nights. Were you or are you
060thinking of different things? It could be along those lines. Let me pull up my pause the clock. Okay, let me see if I can get over to my um notes from NSBA. Um so, one of the things that they had talked about uh here. I mean, it can be as simple as like they're they're hosting community barbecues. It's and it could be a back to school night concept or it's a Saturday like um Wish I would have highlighted this. I apologize. And maybe I can send some follow-up information. Um but other sorts of family activities of that sort you're thinking about. Yeah. It's it's it's kind of a a relationship building with the families. Okay. Um so it's a lot of what we do kind of as child- centered where this would be more family
061centered that inadvertently um wraps back into helping that child be successful. It's the best way I can explain it. and I gave you some more information on it. But that's just something that I've been kind of circling on as we've really just we keep circling around that conversation in these meetings over these past months. So, um if there's a way to support that with our schools, it might be worthwhile. Thanks, Amanda. And before and so I've got Dr. Taylor's hand, I've got Yandre. Um but before I jump into there, Amanda, if I could dovetail on what you're saying, I think I believe What we've been talking about is how do we support, you know, marginalized folks in our communities and families. How do we support title one schools in a different way, in a more
062meaningful way? Um, we've talked about family school collaboration specialists and study sessions and what it looks like to bring those types of efforts and positions back to our district. Um, and so I, if I'm hearing you right, I'm in concert with you that those are the types of things that we need to be looking into because I think you're right that, you know, the PTA, the PTO, the SEC's, they have a very specific function, right? And I think historically in my experience, um, you know, working families don't always have the the time or the ability, the bandwidth to participate in those functions. But if there were opportunities that were presented and facilitated in a more meaningful way that meets parents where they're at, that we could potentially bring those folks back into the mix and
063into the fold and how we're operating and addressing student needs. And I found the example that I was going to but one of the things it was do weekend activities where parents come to a different engagement activity and then the kids they provide their daycare to help out with the kids thing. So it's it's it's directed at parents. It's directed at parents um to re-engage them into what's happening at the schools kind of thing. So there's different ways it could be done but that was one of the concepts that they had thrown out. Interesting Bryce. That was my time at that. Not sure if we go to Dr. Taylor or Yandre first. Yandre, let's go with you in person and then Dr. Taylor. Sure. Thank you. Um, board member Longwell, I wanted to ease your
064mind. Um, as we were putting the revisions together, I spoke with Dr. Bri um, Connley, who is our incoming director of equity, and while she technically hasn't started her position yet, I didn't want to make edits to this section without consulting her. We discussed having a goal focused on family engagement activities, but feeling she felt that she needed some time to get her feet under her and get familiar with how our schools um make sure those happen, especially at the secondary level. She has her experience as an elementary school principal. Um I know you were in attendance at the Emerson STEM night. Um Dr. Connelly also put a really successful event at Whittier that was very similar with community partners and even some of the kids in our um in our programs at the secondary
065level came in and did demonstrations um and that's the sort of thing she wants to implement in a future um edit of of the strategic plan. So just know that that is on on the mind of course u knowing how important that is but we wanted to make sure that this was something meaningful um and measurable that we were bringing to the board in this iteration. Wonderful. Thank you, Dr. Kaylin. I already covered it. Okay. Thank you. Um any other comment? Actually, I have um one more thought which is as we have new board members and we're going through amending the strategic plan as part of like a process. We're now a little bit in the weeds of going through like different tenants of it which were already approved. So, one thing that I think
066would be helpful before the next meeting where we discuss this would be a redline version of the rather than just looking at a brand new thing as in comparison to the old thing, especially if I was a new board member and I hadn't approved the old thing, right? I if there was a redline version of that, it would help me make a comparison. And it also invites a question which is we're talking a lot about what stayed in. Can you talk about something you took out and why we took it out and how we got to the place we are where these are really the focus? Yeah, we took out Um, we took out some on buildings and grounds, Isaac. Right. We took out um Oh, well, we took out the CTE buildings and grounds
067one that was about getting classrooms up to industry standards because that was already part of the architectural plans that we have for the high schools and that that was about new rebuilds and what we're doing that way. So, we took that one out. We tried to mark the ones that we did. I think we didn't take many out. Um, we did edit a lot. I'm wondering if there's so much change in format and style and things that the red line wasn't going to work as a good comparison document to even try and read through. It was unwieldy. I wonder if there's if you would like maybe just the goal and objectives and how they've changed. Maybe I I'm not sure how to do it because it honestly I think one example you gave is a
068great one and because the CTE classrooms not being to industry standard in the high schools that's removed because it's something we're doing now but now we don't have a document that reminds us that we're doing it now. So that's why I'm just I'm not saying a redline version is the only way we could do it. But I'm more curious about what's gone than I am about problematizing what state and making sure that if something's gone because we already did it, we actually adhere to documenting that we did it. And we confirm our bond process means we met that part of our strategic plan that we already approved. And then as we make amendments, we don't lose sight of things that were accomplished, right? That they're still part of the plan and actually they're an accomplishment
069rather than something that is erased. So I don't know if a redline version is the way to do it. I'm requesting that version to be able to make a side-by-side comparison um effectively in the next discussion, but whatever way is easiest for that to be produced. Obviously, you know, that's a lot of work to suggest amending it. So, I would appreciate any sort of documentation of that. Okay. Thank you. Any further comments or discussion? Thank you for a really good discussion on the revisions and thank you Dr. to you and your team uh for taking all the steps that we have to get us to this point. Right. Um the next item on our discussion agenda is board evaluation criteria. Uh board members, Brian and I sent out um a one drive document of the
070USBA criteria that Richard stole um had presented to us after our um board train that we had um not too long ago. um just to kind of highlight for the community and the public. Um it's broken into about five different sections of continuous improvement, advocacy, um community engagement, collaborative collaborative relationships, accountability, and then um a foundation of governance of effective governance. Um there's about 36 questions on there. Um Brian and I didn't necessarily edit any of them. We just wanted to give you um what was there, but I think Brian and I also felt like there is a good representation of what we might need as a board um to set a baseline as was suggested to us in that training um for this current year and what we would build upon to get more
071specific in a subsequent year. Um but with that, we did ask for feedback and I did hear from a couple of folks um who said they wanted to to bring up some suggestions for this evening. Um I don't know how much necessarily need to spend on it, but nonetheless, I think a lot of the work could be done offline and asynchronously. Um, but I do want to, you know, just reiterate to the public and to our board, um, that we are planning to have a board evaluation um, conducted in the month of July. And so, this gets us ready for that. This is kind of our first reading to use some of the language that we've been talking about in our board norms conversations of the criteria. uh we'll have a second reading and ideally
072an adoption of criteria um in our July 15th meeting. Um and then we'll be taking um independently taking um the time to uh to self-evaluate our board um and uh with results that'll be presented in our August 2nd retreat. Um so that's all stuff that we've covered, but this is the opportunity to weigh in on the criteria specifically um and suggestions or additions, things that you think are irrelevant or might need to be removed. Amanda. Um, as you know, I sent an email and just stated that I I roughly stated I like the criteria in the USBA document. However, I think that our criteria should be based on our handbook and our policies and procedures. So, we're we're evaluating oursel on established expectations of ourselves versus a USPA criteria that's not necessarily specific to us.
073Um, Being said, there can be things that are applicable regardless. Um I I've got some others that I'll just kind of mention um as possible add-ons. Um but and we've kind of talked about this, but um really emphasizing that all board members regularly, meaningfully prepared participate in um I would I mean rough I said all, but then I would say 90 plus% of board meetings, trainings, study sessions, etc. Um and that and we talked about the uh rolling for future agendas that we uh establish a like 12 months each rolling board agenda that's live and well planned out and contributes towards our achieving our board goals and strategic plan and other duties um of our board. So, we're kind of evaluating oursel on how well we're planning out our agendas and having these meetings and
074how well they are uh contributing to our main objectives as board members. Um and then strategically how well we do at strategically tracking discussions and comments kind of playing off the prior one um to consider uh the role in conversation around these topics. So um we've had a couple of circumstances where we've lost track of prior conversations. So um like how well are we staying on track with that um left off conversations so we are um not losing sight of that. um another clarity and expectations of presentations to the board. So how well are we communicating out what we are needing as board members in these presentations to us so that you know we're not both left um um in constrination with each other while we're trying to do the effective work between district and
075board. Um so we need to do how well we're doing on our communication of our expectations. Um and I guess the other thing it's been kind of round about of the topics that I've discussed that um how well we are assessing initiatives and requests based on what is our communities and our precincts and our constituents um is right for our communities versus what we feel like at top level down is right where it may not be. So, how well we are being prepared and um uh doing the work to understand what the needs of our communities are as we're trying to represent um our precincts as we're making these decisions. So, those are kind of some broad points that I think we should also be considering. Perfect. Thank you. Um do you have a sense
076of how those well broadly stated how you might frame those into a a question or a criteria that we would collectively evaluate ourselves on or would you be willing to submit something to Brian and I? Yeah, I could because obviously this is we've got work to do to format all this and structure it for what makes sense for us. Wordsmith in here either, but but we would we want to present your suggestions probably in a redline document from what we've presented already. Um that would inform what kind of decision we make on July 15th. Yeah, I can come up with some okay ideas and then see what you think. Great. Thank you, Amanda. Any other thoughts, um feedback, ideas for the criteria? I just, you know, when I first read this, it was such a
077big document. I was like, "Wow, these are a lot of expectations." And so, but it it it's really something to aspire to. Um, but I want to make sure that we aren't overwhelming ourselves as well with so much criteria, you know. Um, so I might be able to some of it that I could that might want to strike or and I do like what Amanda said about having it reflect what we have in our own board handbook. You know, make sure it does and then take some of the additional criteria. Perfect. Yeah, if you could, similar to Amanda, let Brian and myself know um what things you think you'd want to strike and suggestions. That would be awesome. May go ahead. I appreciate that, Amanda. And um Charlotte as well. Amanda, I think that when
078you were referring to the board handbook, I think you know when you scroll down to the bottom, you get um to the board policy B1. And that's where it's talking about responsibilities and ethics and I mean those are reflected in the board handbook. But I think that a lot of the questions that show up on the evaluation really are um looking at those um points that are either in the handbook or in that board policy B1. Thank you. Any other thoughts? We could skip to round two. Let's go to round two. And Amanda, I saw that you had a thought. I was just gonna simply respond with I hadn't micro analyzed it yet to flush out that. So, it very well could be, Brian. Um, okay. A piece that I wanted to make sure that
079we were diligent about ensuring it follow. Oh, that Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Oh, so this is we would fill this out individually as board members and is it a rating like on a scale from one to five? How do you do we think we're doing this? like board member the board uses data just for example the board uses data and reports and assessing progress identifying areas needing improvement and creating refining the district's strategic plan. Is that a yes or a no or is that like well we do it a little bit we do it mo you know on a scale I don't know if I'll come up to the first one but it's more or less of it's not like a prescribed one through 10 liker type scale. They actually have it as stars,
080believe it or not, from strongly disagree to strongly agree with two options in the middle of no opinion leaning disagree, no opinion leaning agree. And so that is seems to be the the kind of standard response that you would give except for about six or so um where they're asking for written responses. Um so Richard come and present based on that strongly agree to strongly disagree kind of scale. Okay. Got it. All right. Um please board members send Brian and myself feedback um based on the criteria that you have. Um I'll make sure to share this um with Allen so that it gets attached to the minutes when those are produced publicly. And of course, Brian and I will do our due diligence to make sure that we're encapsulating all of your suggestions in a
081red line document that we'll talk about on July 15th. Thanks everybody. Um, moving to item number three, focused graduation pathway proposal. Dr. Hall is coming up here again to present to us. Thank you. Okay, this is uh yet a second uh presentation for you today about some ways we are looking at graduation moving forward. This one is specific to some legislation that was passed this last session and it was put into board rule around uh what the USB is calling a focused graduation pathway. And the purpose of this pathway is to look at students who are missing core credits and to consider ways that we could keep them engaged in participating in school and preparing to graduate. most specifically our four uh core areas of math, science, social studies, and English. This would give students
082an alternate way if they were significantly behind in those units to graduate with their cohort and to graduate as a high school graduate, not moving into adult school so that they can be better prepared for any of the post-secary opportunities that they are taking on. So to participate in the focused graduation pathway, a student has to be significantly deficient in those core credits. So as a junior, they have to be six credits behind or as a senior, three credits behind. And again, that isn't in the overall 24. That is six or three credits behind in English, math, science, or social studies. So, a student who has completed all of their core classes but none of their electives, this is not the program for them. This is a program specifically designed to help students meet the
083requirements for those four content areas. They have to be at least 16 years old. Again, typically a junior or senior. And the idea here is not for students to graduate early and leave, but in fact that they would stay in school, continue and graduate with their class. And a last requirement is that they must demonstrate that they have a ninth grade reading level. So um I come in, I am a junior, I have a ninth grade reading level, and I am missing two years of English language arts. Maybe I've come from um another country. Maybe I've transferred in with homeschool. Those are some of the reasons that a student might find themselves in this situation. The crux of the focused graduation pathway is that students will then take the GED, which normally students have to
084have uh removed themselves from school and enrolled in an adult education program in order to complete the GED as a graduation pathway or as a a high school completion indicator. But uh with this program, the student remains a student in the school and can take all or specific content areas to make up that credit. So in passing the English language arts uh GED test, they could earn up to four credits of language arts. So if they were missing three, then they could replace three. If they were missing four, they could replace four, and so forth. um for the next two years. Of course, that would be our 3.0 social studies credit, but then as students move forward and that um requirement changes, it would be the 3.5. Students would receive a pass fail grade for
085this. This is not a letter grade, so it doesn't get into grade waiting or any of those things. And they still are required to meet all 24 units. So, as I said earlier, they still have to take digital studies and financial literacy and CTE and PE and their elective classes. So, all of those other classes still have to be met and taken at their school. So, this is just around those four uh content areas. Students also have to have a conference at the school with parents. They have to have parental consent for this. and everybody agrees and signs that they think that this is the best option. It is a voluntary program for testing. Students have to take a practice test before they take the official test. We are working towards Horizonte becoming an official
086testing center. We have put those applications in and now we're working through some uh contract issues with Pearson. There is a cost to do this. The test is $36 per content area and a practice test is $8 per content area. And of course, this happened after our fee schedule went in because that's how things work. And so what we would look at toward uh 2526 is working with the schools and the foundations to pay for those assessments because they are not on our fee schedule, but then looking toward adding that to the fee schedule in the future. This is kind of a um a question mark for all districts. You know, how many students will complete this? How many students is this the right pathway for? Those are unknown quantities at this point because it
087is a specific type of student. Having that ninth grade reading requirement, being a junior or senior, and only looking at those core content areas. Now, the benefit to a student who does this is that they are counted as a graduate. They get to walk at their homeschool graduation and they still have their GPA with all of their opportunities after graduation. And in fact, the GED test um indicates not only so 145 being a passing score, but 100 to 75 to a 200 point score, many colleges will recognize that and grant students credit hours at the college. So, this is a rigorous test and a rigorous method for completing this uh process toward graduation. So, the reason that we're bringing this to you um is that if you had additional questions and wanted to have this
088item come back to you in July, we would like to have this up and ready for schools to be able to implement in the fall. And of course there are many steps in process for that to happen including meeting with schools and setting up their um classes and support systems and working with horizontant to make sure that we know how all of these things are going to work out. This is a work in progress for it for us. We are doing a lot of this work over the summer. But one of the state requirements is that the school board approve that the district move forward with this GED option, this focused graduation pathway, including the GED for students graduation, that the board approved that the district move forward in this way. So, as we are
089creating procedures and preparing to submit our application to USB for approval to implement in the fall, we are bringing this to you for your questions and discussion so that we can receive that schoolboard permission to move forward with this application to the state. Thank you. What questions do we have? Go ahead and start us off, Dr. Hall. It might not be a question for you, but maybe for Yandere as you followed the legislative session this year. Um, I really appreciate you acknowledging that this is kind of a state not kind of it is a state requirement um that um that we have to take on or discuss. I guess we don't have to vote on it if we don't want to, but that probably wouldn't look super good. But nonetheless, um do you have a
090sense of the context of kind of the endgame or the motivation that the state legislature had in wanting to provide this type of structure or resource for school boards and districts. So I can start. I don't know um Miss Chatwin if you have any any other backroom conversation but or not I mean you know like like like I didn't mean like well any stuff that I don't know but um I know as I've talked with other districts and with principles as we think about how this would be used. One of the things that we know is that we have u more students coming into the United States and into our schools with non-traditional educational backgrounds. And so, uh, were they to come and I can think of just a couple of examples in in recent
091years where students have come to us and not had their educational records for a variety of reasons. They've come through refugee camps or they've come through schools that were destroyed and and all of the records with them. And so as we continue to work with students who may not have that fuller diploma the way that some of them do um this would be a way that we could ensure that they are able to graduate with their class to demonstrate what they know. Uh, so I think I think that idea and it's it's something that as we continue to reinvent education moving forward um into our our future generations of students, they are asking for and looking for more flexibility. Um, this might also be a pathway for someone who attends school in a public school
092system halfime and competes on an Olympic team halfime. And so maybe I am really good at English language arts and I think to myself, I will just take this, do those four units, and and my other classes, I'll be able to fit around my training schedule. Um, I mean, we're we're close enough to some of those venues that we have students who are in uh in those those training venues that we have students in that predicament. So, I I think that it's just another way of adding some flexibility. I think several years ago, the GED test or that GED option was not viewed as something that was particularly rigorous, but in subsequent renewals or um revisions of that test as as you saw on this slide, um schools, colleges are recognizing this as a way
093of not just saying you have the basic skills for graduating high school, but you are, you know, at a 165, you don't need to take the remedial classes. So those initial um before English 101, the English 98, or the English 99, um a 165 would put you right in that 101, and a 175, you could begin to earn some preliminary credit with that. So I think that change in the perception of the test through those revisions has made it a more attractive alternate option. Great. I appreciate you mentioning that and the reason you, you know, touched on it perfectly is the rigorous element. Um, believe it or not, I was working on the desk at the library at my job today and a parent walked in and said, "What's up with this, you know, this
094item on your agenda for a graduation pathway?" and she was pointing to the rigor, you know, and so I think I can go back when I see her, I'm sure again sometime this week, you know, that that things are changing and evolving. Yeah. That it's it's a different opportunity and and not every student again qualifies for it. And uh you know, because you have to have that ninth grade reading level and and then also remembering this isn't I passed the GED and I get my high school diploma. it's I pass the GED, whatever sections I need, and I complete all of the other requirements for graduation um in a satisfactory method as well. So, it's it's a GED plus um which is why they call it that focused pathway. That focus is on completing those
095core requirements, but everything else is still a a high school requirement. Charlotte. Yeah. I along the what Nate was just talking about about the rigor. I mean, would it incentivize students to slack off and I mean, you know, and not do their core. I don't know. I'm just do you think it would um you know I think that's a really interesting question and like I said I think all of us have a little bit of a question mark um it isn't so I I think there are a couple of things and and one of these will come up again in our discussion next year when we talk about price like do we charge the students to take that as well because you know again this year we've kind of missed that window for our fee
096schedule, but to take the entire test is expensive or or even portions of it are expensive. So, I think that that's a piece. Um I I think a second piece to the slacking, we've given this a lot of thought because I'm going to tell you, many of us were kind of a little maybe upset when this first came out, but um in thinking about slacking off, you have to pass it. And it's not a given. I mean, on a regular basis, people sign up for the GED and do not pass and um have to take those practice tests and take um practice courses or support courses to be ready for this. So, it it's not something that most students would be able to walk in and just say, you know what, I'm going to just
097100% double down five minutes before graduation, then I'm going to pass all four. Um and and they might. and and they may or may not pass all four and be qualified and and ready to graduate. So, I I don't think um that that's that's a right off the bat kind of a piece. I think that putting that ninth grade reading level that we would ascertain uh beforehand is another piece to that. So if somebody hasn't been paying attention and hasn't been focusing on developing comprehension and decoding skills, then perhaps they don't even uh qualify to go down this pathway from the get-go. And it's also something that parents and counselors would meet and talk about and uh need to agree that this is the right pathway for students. So all of that is to say
098I don't know. But I I don't think somebody could completely slack off and still use this as a way to graduate because in slacking off you still have this is 13 units. Um you you still have another 11 units that you have to complete in order to graduate from high school. So I think there's some some check and balance in there a little bit and in some ways we don't have an option. It's state law now. So um one other so the ninth grade reading level thing um do do our current graduates have to take a a reading level test like not to graduate? we do in this district as it's a board goal um provide and and continue to test students reading ability. We use that to help place them in reading classes where
099that's appropriate, but they do not have to take and pass a reading test to graduate. They would have to take and pass a reading test. And we're planning on using the Cassus, which is the one that adult education uses right now for the same reason. So, it's been uh or for the same use. So, it's been identified as an appropriate tool to make that distinction. Um, but but you have to pass that to get into this program, but you do not have to demonstrate that to graduate from high school. Okay. Yeah, I would be interested in knowing what our seniors reading levels are, like looking at that data just because I'm curious. Amanda. Um, uh, sorry. Ultimately, I love it. I mean, it's a great way to help break down barriers and if a student
100has the uh aptitude to be able to complete these GEDs and um given a a pathway to graduate instead of being um having barriers in place to prevent that, then we're helping them be hopefully a tra a successful trajectory, which is phenomenal. Um and for clarity purposes, based on your presentation, what I'm reading is a student could technically um test out on 15.5 credits because those are the the core credits and then they would have to take the remaining 10.5 um credits to graduate out. Um, and then, uh, the other piece that I was curious about was, um, if these are junior and senior students doing a very complex GED test, but the reading levels are only nth grade, has that been flushed out as to the likelihood of success and passing the test? Great
101question. And just for clarity sake on your first point, um I put that 3.5 there because at that moment I was really thinking hard about the class of 26 27 when that begins. Um so for for our next juniors and seniors it would be three um of social studies and then eventually 3.5 of social studies. So right now it is 13 and 11, but you're correct. It would be 13.5 and 10.5 as this moves forward. Um, as for the ninth grade reading level, that is a requirement and it is something that the GED also says that if you are not reading at a nth grade level, you will not be successful moving forward with the GED. That's why that requirement is in place. Um, the other piece to that is the practice test that the
102student has to demonstrate on a practice test that they are prepared to take the official test. So, if I came in and squeaked in at a ninth grade reading level, but took and and failed a practice test, then I wouldn't be considered ready to take the GED at that point, and I would be counseledled into a GE prep class, some uh preparatory classes. And that's one of the things that Horizonte has in place and that we're um looking at or or we'll be discussing this summer about what that would look like at other schools for support in that way. But um yes, a ninth grade uh reading level is considered the minimum reading level for students to enter into this process with potential to be successful. And obviously if they're coming in out of country,
103there's a high probability that the the level that they test score at for reading could be a lot lower even though their u knowledge level is a lot higher. And so putting those interventions in place so that they can fill that bar break that barrier down to get to the point that they could accomplish. Yes. Uh graduating through this mechanism. So I mean just circulating back I think it's a great opportunity for students that um aren't able to be successful through the the traditional route for whatever variable is going on. Anything we can do to kind of break down those those barriers and help as many students have a successful education no matter the structure. Um, as long as that outcome does help them build towards a successful future is phenomenal. Absolutely. It's it's an
104opportunity. It's an opportunity to to to get to the end of the road in a different way that might meet somebody else's needs better. And that's fantastic. Thank you. Um, so I was really happy this was on the agenda. I asked about whether we were doing something about this a few meetings ago, but when I asked that question, in addition to saying the GRE several times instead of the GED, I asked if we knew what the bill number was because I've never been able to find it. So, if you could point me to that bill number, that would be amazing. Um, and while you're pulling that up, because I see you're doing what I was trying to do, could we also talk about how the shift would coincide with the timeline for the proposed honors
105diploma and whether in your ideal world those things would happen together? I'm thinking about wanting to communicate clear ranges of options to families of secondary students and make sure that those options are clear rather than being made kind of one at a time. and recognizing this requires compliance, you know, maybe more immediately, would it be ideal for those things to happen at once? I do not think that either uh that those two things are necessarily related. Um if for instance the uh the honors diploma if an honors diploma is put into place as an option not a requirement for students. Um again as as we said in that presentation lots of different ways the board could choose to pick that up or or not choose to pick that up. But in our original conception, it
106is the idea of you have a diploma and then you get an honors diploma if you do more or additional. And so that would not um interact with that at all. Were the the board for instance to say uh for instance say we would like it to be 27 units and that includes and this is I'm making this up, okay? But let's say that it u you say one of those is math. So now we have four years of a math requirement. You could be in your purview then to say and the GED test would count for four instead of you know our additional one as well. So I I don't see um either one of those sort of being dependent on the other and that you would have the ability to to choose what
107you would do. If for instance you said 27 and those three are elective then it would mean that the student would have to do these you know they could take the GED for these 13 and then the remaining 14 they would still need to complete at the high school. So I think those are are kind of two different conversations that uh you have the ability and the authority to fix. If you change something over here you could do something with over there. Um, as for the actual bill, when I I guess when I always look at it, I am looking at um board rule R27722 and that ties back into um 53E U 3501. And I I can send those or or add those to our uh presentation for the minutes, but I can certainly
108chase those back to the actual piece of legislation where this started. that would be really helpful. Thank you so much. You bet. Any other questions for Dr. Hall? I'm seeing none and just kind of the nature of the conversation um and kind of dovtailing on our our board norms conversation. Is this an item that we feel we would want to have another reading on or is this an item that we feel comfortable adding to our consent agenda at the next meeting? Um, I would feel comfortable adding it. What would we be approving if I'm understanding Dr. Hall correctly is that we're applying to comply with this. It's not it's about the application. So, I would be comfortable moving it to consent, but further I would also be comfortable moving it to the action agenda to
109give, you know, staff the appropriate direction that they can complete the required application to follow board rule. Am I hearing a motion, Ashley? Yes. But I would like to ask first, Dr. Hall, we've gotten into problems in the past where if I was to move, you know, the pathway proposal to action when we do get to the action agenda, is there um language or a specific part of that attachment that reflects what the content of the application is or is it just giving you direction to apply? um it is direction to apply. And so in fact the uh application itself just says um that the local board has um approved and and so I think that and then we would um put that into our administrative procedures as an additional way of helping students move
110forward to graduation. Okay. Um, with that in mind, I would move that we send the focus graduation pathway proposal as attached in exhibit 33 to the action agenda. A second. We got a motion by Ashley and a second by Vice President Judson. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll start with a roll call vote with board member Charlotte Ferson. Charlotte Ferson, yes. Ashley Anderson, yes. Nate Salazar, yes. You're up, Brian. Oh, Brian Jensen. Yes. Amanda Lumble. Yes. Bryce. Yes. Mohammed, you missed a vote, but we was to move uh this topic, the focus graduation pathway proposal to get a yes there. All right, that passes. Uh Dr. Hall, if we have more questions on the action agenda, we'll we'll bring it up. Great. Thank you very much. All right, moving along. Item number four of the
111discussion agenda item is high school rebuild field options. Uh Dr. Grant, I'm assuming um Isaac Castel would come to present to us. Um I do want to highlight um that Jen Newell from the mayor's office let us know that she won't be here this evening. Um but I'm sure Isaac and Dr. Grant and our board owe her a huge thanks for helping facilitate the information we're about to hear tonight. So thank you, Jen. Hope you're enjoying your evening. Is that working? Okay. Well, thank you again for letting me talk tonight about this. Um, in the, uh, letter, uh, provided some recommendations for fields. Uh, we do have more information that everybody's wait been waiting on, so I'll get to that as quickly as I can. Um we're recommending um we build or improve fields at
112Dworth Clayton uh for Highland and Salt Lake City Rosewood Park which is at 1400 North 1200 West. Um we are tenatively in agreement with the the city and parks and public lands to utilize that space. Um that park currently has a baseball field, a multi-use field and a cricket field. uh they had multiple uh multi-use fields and a softball field previously. Um but they feel that this is appropriate and they're willing to work with us on it. Um it decreases the cost to us tremendously because there's already bathrooms uh an existing baseball field that really needs an infield redone and some fence repairs and then most of the work would be on the softball field that is missing currently. Um, sorry I'm giving you a 30,000 foot view from the beginning, but um, total budget
113for these all of these recommend recommendations is four and a half million. I mentioned n.5 million because when I was out of town, you guys gave the go-ahhead for the Glendale, which was projected to be between four and $5 million. So, I'm just trying to give you the full impact of of these decisions. Um, Clayton, again, just a quick review. the this is the area. Uh we've removed some things uh the you know the type of dugout and scoreboard and things like that. We got a lot of feedback from people during these meetings um saying we don't need those. Everything's electronic now. There's no need for a scoreboard. Things of that nature. Um the the projected cost for Clayton is $1.5 million. Um Dworth uh we've reduced that cost by about a half million dollars
114down to two million. Um, the reason that one is so significant is that field is in horrible condition. Um, the there's goat heads all the way through it and if anybody's played baseball or any sport and slid on a goat head, it's miserable. So, we just don't know how deep that impact is going to be and we just want to make sure we provide the field that's going to last forever and will be a benefit to the teams now and the community forever. Um, here is a photo of the Rosewood Park property. Um this is an old photo so you can uh you can see in the red that represents where the new softball field will go. Um that's actually all grass right now. We're going to have we're we've matten walked site to identify
115uh changes that'll need to happen in the irrigation system to install that and then put fencing around that. Um the the the bathrooms and stuff are just up behind this tree right here that you can't see above the blue and red. Um, but again, it's in really good condition. We I don't believe it's going to take a lot to get us to where we need to be, and it's going to be a magnificent facility for both softball and baseball for West High School for years to come. Um, there there was one caveat from the city on this is that they they are giving up an additional uh resource and we've uh tenatively told them that they could utilize Mary Jackson field in a similar manner um for soccer and other events that they have there.
116Uh the agreement right now that we're in is they'll basically maintain the weekly mowings and things of their properties. We'll do the same at our properties. We'll be responsible for building the fields and then uh and storage and then we'll turn it over to them in the end. uh they're amanable to allowing the um the booster clubs to do their vending and stuff even though that's generally not okay for um at parks without permitting. Um it's a great opportunity for us to make some improvements uh for both of us and again Jennifer is not here tonight but we want to thank them uh and all of those in parks and public lands in the mayor's office for their willingness to meet and talk to us about this in the last 11th hour. Um, I do
117want to reiterate that these are all I'm sorry, I had a photo of the Mary Jackson property just so you're aware of what we're talking about space-wise. Um, I just want to reiterate that I appreciate your guys's uh, thoughtfulness on this. We appreciate the public's input. Uh, we know this isn't perfect. Uh, there were a lot of other options that we went through and looked at. Um, and we're not looking to do the easy thing. We're trying to do what's right for both the community and the sports teams. Um and and I will mention the one specifically Sugar House Park is that we would have been it would have cost us more to reinvest in that one and they don't have space for a softball field on site. So um that was the purpose of
118the recommendation for Clayton and Dworth. Any questions? Bryce. Yes. It's just a reiteration and I believe I have the answer already, but looking at the Mary W. Jackson property, it's just that field. Nothing to do with the building. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Yep. Any other questions? Actually, I have a question. Um, as we've talked about, these are really general cost estimates and a lot of that is sort of beyond your control because you haven't been able you know to like put out for the, you know, the actual work that will need to be done to get a real bid. Um, one thing that has come to us from the community is that we do a lot of things and then we change them before we've reaped the benefits from doing them. So we repair a
119field and then we have to tear it up to do something else. We fix something over here but then there remains a drainage problem. So on and so forth. So going forward, do we have a plan to do two things? One to bring more regular itemized expenses of this to the board so we know like where we are on track with paying it, how much the foundation was able to contribute, etc. And also, do we have a plan to sort of give us a presentation of where we are on our athletic fields more generally so we're not kind of redoing these costs year-over-year and getting into that those crosshairs with the community? Yes, we've actually had uh discussions in cabinet about uh regular updates to to the board at least once a month. Uh that
120I'll be up here telling you where we're at with the projects that we're working on and and hopefully be able to give you a a projected 10-year plan of what these fields look like and what the needs are going forward. Um it's uh a lot of the challenges that you mentioned about, you know, we build something new and there's continuing issues. Some of the challenges we run into is we we try to give you guys the best estimate we can on certain projects. When those projects come in, there's this word that I use as a swear word called VA value engineering. It basically says you don't have the money to do what you want, so let's try and get it the best we can. Um these estimates I'm giving you, I'm trying to do everything
121I can to prepare you for worst case scenario so I'm not coming back and asking for money later. um and that we're going to uh be able to provide what is wanted and needed at the most reasonable price. I'm My goal is not to spend every one of these dollars. My goal is to come back and say, "Hey, we saved $2 million on this deal." Um or that the foundation raised an extra million we weren't accounting for. So, thanks, James. Um but no, that that's what that's what we've discussed in our plan going forward. And if I could add to that, using the rest of my time, I think that it's not about these specific fields, but just our athletic fields and complexes in general, especially as we're looking toward building these field houses and
122being more in alignment with other districts. I think one thing that's been unfortunate about this particular process and probably frustrating for you at times is that auxiliary services is carrying a lot of water for something that is not just a matter of auxiliary services. It's the athletics departments that also need to do things like figure out how we will have adequate parking during seasons to address the safety of storage and how we're going to store equipment especially when it's proximal to elementary school students. Making sure middle school sports get to continue even though we have to temporarily use less field space and working with UHSAA. I think that our district really unfortunately has a pretty big blind spot in athletics at times and a lot of variation between what happens in different schools and it
123relies on very vocal parents to have changes happen rather than providing robust athletics like as a baseline and that's not a matter of our properties or Isaac's work right it's like many departments need to come together and we've only heard from you about it which I think is you know challenging because you are getting a lot of questions coming up to that are not just about this in a vacuum. They're about what's happening with athletics really broadly. So, I think I'm very grateful that we've moved forward with a city option that will be a huge cost savings and a long-term asset and it won't disrupt elementary schools um as significantly. But I think as we move forward, I would just clarify it's not my ask only for an update about these fields, but just what's
124the state of our athletics fields in general? Because unless we have a specific parent or our kids play a specific sport or we hear from one club, we kind of don't have a good picture about what's being offered school to school, especially when there are coach vacancies, you know, and a lot of coach attrition. So, I really appreciate you working on this, but I think there's more we could hear about um from others in the district doing compatible work as well. So, thank you very much. Thank you. Amanda, just a couple of things like uh Just for clarification, I was looking back at our prior meetings and the estimated ask previously was about nine and a half million for this these specific like baseball and softball for Weston Highland High School. And so now you've
125got it will down to four and a half million. Correct. Yes. So all the diligence that you've been going through like that ask you you've reduced it substantially. Um, which thank you and I'm sure that the constituents appreciate that as well. Um, I think I had another question there, but I wanted to emphasize that the, you know, you did mention this this the cost savings that I want to make sure that the public understands that it's a significant I mean, it's almost half what you were initially thinking it would be and then you're also saying that you're going on the conservative side of overestimating so hopefully become under budget which would potentially more on this um necessary cost essentially. Um and I guess not much to go with it, but just thank you for all
126the work that you've done. I know that this has been extremely stressful for you and there's been a lot of push back, but I think ultimately um it's been a a good thing for us and for you and for the community because um through the process you've figured out a a more cost-effective solution. We've heard community feedback on hopefully ensuring that the process goes in a way that we are um coming up with uh temporary solutions that um are effective and efficient for our sports teams and our students as they're going through a pretty rough transition. You know, it's going to be a great outcome, but the process is going to be rough. So, just thank you for your diligence on it and your efforts. Thank you, Isaac. I would just chime in and echo
127the thanks. Um I know the heart and the emotion that he put into this um is very apparent to me as an emotional type of person myself. So, thank you for your due diligence with this. Um a question that I asked the superintendent um that I'll ask you and you know where I'm going with this, but seven years for West High um to be on these fields um is a significant amount of time. It's multiple generations of West High students and athletes. I think it's a huge asset for the city. I think it's a huge asset for the west side. Um, a huge asset for West High School as we we move to build them a new worldass high school. Um, and the one ask that I had of the superintendent that I just wanted
128to share here is that I really hope that we can brand these fields so that they feel like, you know, West High West High's home. You know, I really want these Panthers, Bryce, I know I'm a leopard, but I want these Panthers to feel like this is their home field and anything that we can do as a board to support that effort, not only for West, but for Highland at their fields, too, at the the Clayton at Dillworth. Um, but I just think it's such a huge benefit um that we we really go out and show these kids that we want this to feel like their home field and whatever that means with branding or colors, how we design things. Um, I think that would be really really super beneficial and meaningful and cool. Thank
129you. Charlotte, I just wanted to say that it's it's heartening to see that the city and, you know, Salt Lake City and the Salt Lake City School District are working together like this in mutually beneficial ways. So, I like seeing that. I will mention Charlotte's the one that mentioned Rosewood Park many discussions ago. So, hold on, Charlotte. Great. Well, I know we need to make a decision on this tonight. Um, we've heard this. I know this specific information is new to us. Um, but nonetheless, um, Isaac, I know we got to get going. You're under a time crunch to get some fields u repurposed and I'm sure there's a lot that goes into that seating and making sure the grass is where it needs to be, getting rid of some goat heads in some places.
130So, uh, board, we do uh, need to make a decision on this tonight and I would entertain a motion to move this item to the action table. I move that we ex Okay, sorry. I move that we um move the high school rebuild field options to the action agenda. Second. Got a motion in a second. Any further discussion? I would just ask that we specify exactly what that means, which is that we would be building or improving fields at Dworth and Clayton for Highland High and at Rosewood City Park um for West High baseball and softball. And that's the content of what we're doing, right? Yes, I will I will add that to my motion. Thank you, Charlotte. Thank you, Ashley. Um any further discussion? Okay, seeing none, uh we'll start with a roll call
131vote uh with board member Anderson. Ash Anderson, yes. Salazar, yes. Yes. Ryan Jensen, yes. Amanda, yes. Bryce Williams, yes. Charlotte Ferson, yes. That passes and we'll revisit it on the action agenda. Moving to Thank Moving to item number five, we have Slicky Bryant program report. Dr. Grant, we're gonna turn to Dr. Taylor on here. It looks like Dr. Taylor, it's easier. you without the picture on, I'm afraid. Is that right? So far. Yeah. So far. Okay. He was he was going to try and share screen. Okay. Dr. Taylor, are you able to share your screen on there or would you rather have it shared here? We'll have to get him back. While we're working out technical difficulties, could we um take care of our items on the action agenda and then return to this discussion
132item if the board is okay with that? Yeah. Um the first item that we have on the action Unless Dr. Taylor's ready. Dr. Taylor, are you ready? Dr. Taylor, are you on there? Do we want to just work the action agendas items until we hear his voice? Yeah, let's let's do that. Um, while we're waiting for Dr. Taylor, um, the first item just to kind of jump to the action agenda is item number three, the HR report. Um, member Anderson, would you like to start us off? Start us off. Someone else could make a motion. I And then that's I'll make a motion to approve the HR services report. Um, but previously Yeah. As posted previously posted as consent agenda one. We got a motion and a second from Longwell and board member Bade. Um,
133any discussion? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and start with a roll call vote with board member B. Yes. Brian Jensen, yes. Amanda Williams, yes. Bryce Williams, no. Charlotte Fe Jefferson abstain. Ashley Anderson. No Salazar. Yes. All right. That motion passes. U moving on. Uh we have the focused graduation pathway application. Is there a motion on the table? I move that we approve the focus graduation pathway um application as proposed by Dr. Tiffany Hall. Amanda will second. Okay. Any further discussion? We have a motion from Ashley and a second from Amanda. Seeing none, we'll start with a roll call vote with Vice President Jensen. Uh Brian Jensen, yes. Amanda, yes. Bryce Williams, yes. Charlotte Ferson, yes. Ashley Anderson, yes. Yes. Mhm. Yes. That motion passes. Um the third item that we have is the high school
134rebuild specifically at uh Clayton and Dworth adaptations for softball and baseball along with Rosewood Park investment for softball and baseball. I move that we build or improve fields at Dworth and Clayton for Highland High and at Rosewood City Park for West High. Second. A motion to second. Any further discussion? only I didn't say for baseball and softball which is specifically what these are for. Yeah, if that the record could reflect that's what they're for. Thank you board member Anderson. Um seeing no further discussion, we'll start a roll call vote with board member Longwell. Amanda Longwell, yes. Bryce Williams, yes. Charlotte Ferson, yes. Ashley Anderson, yes. Nick Salazar, yes. Yes. Brian Jetson, yes. And when I was listening, I appreciated Isaac explaining that there had been the community input that helped them with this. Thank you,
135Brian. All right. Well, that leads us um with just our presentation from Dr. Taylor on the discussion and thank you Ashley for the recommendation to move to action. Dr. Taylor, we're not yet able to hear you. Can you hear me now? There we go. Okay, let's see how long we can ride this. We're ready for you. Okay, hopefully everyone can hear me. Yep. Yes. Okay. This is a simple model overview for the Slicky model which is the Salt Lake Center for Science Education. It was a partnership. It's a partnership that exists between a charter school that we have in our district as well as one of our district middle schools. Please note that the information here is focused on the model itself and the partnership between the two campuses. It's not an evaluation of personnel.
136It's not a comparison with any other model. And it's a very narrow in focus. It's simply hearing from the parents, hearing from teachers, hearing from students and the administration about the concerns or the quality of the program. Next one. Next slide. Which talks about over the past three months we've held roughly. Dr. Taylor, your audio went out again. We aren't hearing anything right now. Dr. In the interest of time and also knowing that we have Slicky family here with us this evening, is there anybody else or yourself that could lead us through the presentation and maybe Dr. Taylor's audio would be better towards the end to answer any questions you might have. I know we we did push this from our last Yep. Um I can give it a try. Yeah. Yeah. You know what?
137It's not It keeps knocking me off. I can't hear you. How about if you talk through my phone and then we'll click the slides for you. Okay. So, we're on slide three. We're on slide three right now. Go ahead. We talked we talked about over the past three months in terms of listening sessions that's been helping number of people that interact with in regards to this topic. five different formats one-on-one small group with we had several meetings with the SIC with the SCC PTA as well as the issuing the issuance of surveys there are six tenants that are basically embedded into this model when you look at those things that are embedded and serve as common elements of the of the model and the implementation of that model this is where we centered our discussion
138There are six basic commonalities that emerged across all groups. One was a desire for clarity, consistency in roles, expectations and the model tenants. Another commonality was shared commitment to the students success and equity. Another one was recognition of the value of a mile as well as concerns of communication breakdowns across the system, ongoing issues with equity and access programming choices there and tensions between progressive and traditional philosophies. Next slide. We identified several barriers One was governor's confusion around SIC, SEC and decision-m authority. Was it one SIC for both campuses? Would each individual campus have its own SIC? Disruptions due to leadership turnover, limited collaboration across campuses, incoherent program structures, and inconsistent implementation. a perception of a lack of stakeholder involvement with some key decisions that were made this year and a divide of the model's
139purpose and execution. We had several key challenges to emerge that we had to address or we will need to address. Rebuilding. How do we rebuild trust among staff, campuses and leadership? the clarification of governance and policy structures, reaffirming or redefining the slicky model, addressing achievement gaps with a focus on equity, ensuring equal access to high school, and sustaining and supporting teacher leadership. What recommendations emerged out of this? When you look at four key areas, you'll see under the model review and governance, we would like to initiate a collaborative model review with representative stakeholders, identify shared goals and non-negotiables, clarify the SCT, which is a school collaboration team, SEC roles and joint leadership responsibilities, and publish clear decision-making protocols. Under communication collaboration, implement regular updates and transparent rationale changes. Create feedback loops for all major initiatives.
140Reinstate or reaffirm joint PD and cross-c campus planning. Foster relationships between middle and high school staff under equity leadership and school improvement plan. Review and revise lottery and tracking systems. Audit speed placements and course offerings. Define leadership competences for slicky content that's related to our ECAP provisions. Re-engage staff in school improvement development and monitoring. Under experential learning, align field trips with curriculum and testing calendars and expand experential learning to include literacy, arts and inclusive practices. There has to be a joint commitment to be shared to have shared goals by all parties and that deals with our partnerships that we have existing in the building. Clearly outlining goals, identifying key performance indicators for those joint partnerships, regularly communicate and then we have provisions for reviewing results. Any questions? Yeah, I actually um I think I have
141more I'm sorry I have time myself. I may use my full three minutes. Um so I don't know if it's necessarily a question but more of an observation and um a statement. So um I've been on the in two weeks I will have been on the board uh or appointed to the board four years ago and the first time I met with Britney Pal she gave me this exact uh piece of paper with the slicky model. that was also um on the slides on here today and I've received this a couple of times but this is the original paper that she gave me um and I've been studying this uh for quite a while over the last four years and I do believe that we uh we Sixie has a model here um on this
142paper um I do understand um and recognize that there is a a partnership with Bryant and um over the course I'd say of the last year I've been hearing some of these um questions or problems or things that Dr. Taylor is bringing up as we um have gone through this presentation today. I and Dr. Taylor, I may have misheard you, but I heard something around repurposing and redesigning the slicky model. The model already exists right here. I think it's a pretty good model. Um as we're talking about these different issues that are going on, not one time in that presentation did I hear anything about what's best for kids. And that's really concerning to me. um that it's very focused on uh relationship between uh teachers, relationships between administrations across campus and I think that
143is important but children um are our children were not mentioned in this model um recognizing some of the problems that are um there as well. Um and I know uh tonight's purpose is not to take any action but I think the board um after tonight needs to think about doing some sort of study to take action. Um, the other thing that I I recognize between the two campuses is that there are different um populations, different needs, things like that that happen. Um and while I'm not saying that this needs to happen right now, one of the things I would suggest studying down the road is uh possibly um dissolving the partnership in order to u meet the needs of individuals at each uh meet the needs of individuals, families, students as well as um staff
144and administration uh to making sure to make sure that we are serving uh the needs of students at both campuses. Um I don't know if that is something that uh both campuses would be interesting interested in in dissolving the partnership and um trying to meet the needs of um individual sites but again tonight we've been told that it's not the purpose to make a decision on the partnership but I think it is something that we should study further. [Music] actually um I share some similar thoughts to Bryce where I'm not quite sure how we came to the conclusions that are in this presentation at least based on what I'm hearing by way of community feedback um from both the Slickie campus as well as the Slicky Bryant campus and the survey results that um I
145received a copy of had a sample size of 14 which is concerning to me given the size of Bryant and it's also unclear to me what the sample size was of Bryant and whether that also um pulled slicky high students like I'm not sure either that the survey set forth questions about the slickie model without first identifying what the slicky model is and as Bryson has pointed out you know there's clear tenants of that and we didn't survey around those tenants we just kind of asked general questions and not understanding that survey design I also don't know how the focus group feedback was coded meaning we don't just like listen to the feedback from focus group and then go on vibes and come on a conclusion right we decide what types of responses mean something
146in a code so that we can measure trends of responses and figure out do we actually have a sample that is significant or did we not get a good sample and I don't really feel like I have great um data presented to make a decision and I'm not really sure how we came to this conclusion and I'm also not sure actually that we surveyed about what the slicky model actually is and why there's been conflict about how to implement that model at a public middle school as opposed to a charter school which have two different kind purviews and where there are pros and cons of having a partnership in the first place. So, I've asked those questions and you know, the response so far has been that we didn't really use a research design and
147we didn't code it as you might in a formal study, but I don't know how to use that information qualitatively if it wasn't coded and I don't understand how we came to the summary that we have. So like um Bryce, I agree that we should actually be seeking feedback on how to make a decision because the feedback I'm hearing from community members on both campuses is that they do prefer to dissolve the partnership as it's not sustainable in its current iteration. And that's from people who think that for vastly different reasons. It's not because there's consensus about why that might be or what is preferable, but just there seems to be consensus it's not working. And I would go back to the meeting where this partnership was made. um faculty were surveyed, do you absolutely
148not want to do this? Would it be okay with you if we did it or do you really definitely want to, you know, not do it? Maybe I said that in the wrong order, but you understand what I mean. Clear options were given and it we went with the majority feedback and I don't see that we're asking that kind of clear question. Do you want the partnership to continue? Are you okay if it continues but you don't actually mind if it dissolves or do you want the partnership to dissolve? And that type of you know inverse question of how we initiated the partnership I think would be helpful to ask and we should be moving forward with you know if we didn't collect feedback that we can show you what the data analysis was I
149don't know what we do with that information if that makes sense. So again, that's not a question so much as a comment about the issues I'm having parsing this I don't have as in depth of a comment just um I guess in a roundabout way agreeing with what they're saying because I'm looking at the presentation and I don't really have a clear I don't feel like it clearly understanding um what we're trying to accomplish to Right. Um, so I don't know simplistically there needs to be more more clarity on this particular project because it it it seems like there's a lot of gray area around this discussion around these issues and such that I'm not even clear on what we're doing here to be frank. I guess my question to you Dr. Grant or to
150Dr. Taylor is I mean I think I have a good sense along with Ashton and Bryce of of why we're here and I agree with Bryce that um you know the focus needs to be on kids and their success. Um so I'm I'm saddened that that we're at this place from what my understanding is and I guess from the administrative standpoint um Dr. Grant where where do you see this going next or Dr. Taylor Dr. Taylor, do you want to take that up or Yeah. One of the basic recommendations we're looking at implementing is to have that joint committee form and they come forward with recommendations in regards to program. So what would that look like for this next school year? Basically the same process we implemented when we did the middle school study. We
151will form a committee. That committee then would meet to review the programming, take all information that we've already gathered and then come forward with a set of recommendations in regards that. So they might recommend to dissolve the partnership. I think I hear that. Um and so Dr. My understanding just based on that is that I think in essence because of the unique nature of the partnership um one its formation how it's sustained itself over these many years um to how they evolve um is dependent on um on the folks responsible for its administered you know how it's administered um how education is administered and what values um my understanding what Slicky is and how um it impacts education and kids um in a in a unique and meaningful way. Um not to say that our
152other schools and other schools in the valley or the state or the country don't do that. Um but I do think it's a unique model to us. Um is the future is dependent on those two schools making a recommendation about how they move forward. And I think what Dr. Taylor is um working toward is doing this in a way that has a process to it. That if we're going to revisit this board decision a while ago and revisit what these two schools are, um that we actually institute a process to do that rather than what's happened this year is just a lot of information and swirling and really some conflict around it. Um but that's not how you get to a decision. you actually get to a decision in a more measured deliberative way. So
153what he's talking about in terms of putting a committee together is not to be more ownorous with people in taking this up, but rather let's put in place the process we would put in place to make any change like this in a school and bring to the board a recommendation on that. So um this can be done in a way at the beginning of the year so people know what's ahead for this school year and the next school year um that way. So that's my understanding of the plan and what Dr. Taylor is trying to accomplish in setting it up this way. Thank you, Bryce. How much time do I have? Okay. And I will emphasize my comments um to also include um that I also believe that there are some potential missteps of this
154board and how that has played out for Slickie Bryant and for the high school Slicky. Um and my question to Dr. Taylor or even to you Dr. grant. Um what are missteps that we need to either fix or amend um through the decision that we made through policy um to help facilitate a more smooth conversation or recommendation that needs to be developed by the the partners in the schools. Dr. Taylor I think in in terms of the process itself uh let me say at this juncture I can't identify specific missteps without going back reviewing it for that purpose. The there was some communication errors but it was not by the board. So we just need to clean that process up and get the right people at the table. If I can go back and just
155with a little bit of historical understanding, I think it was very difficult to manage a school model in a charter and a non-charter um it actually sets up some different conditions. Um that make it a little more difficult to manage. I'm not sure as a district um we supported that in the ways it needed to outside of the charter setting. um which has more authority around its structure. And so I think that that was a challenge. I think we need to think carefully in doing something similar again if we're going to mix models across these two different kinds of schools that we actually are really deliberate about what we offer and what kind of supports we put together in order to do that. Um so I think that one was a made it a particularly
156complex kind of model to over time. It was very dependent on who was in the seats and all. And um and what I'm trying to do as superintendent is make sure the things we're putting in place are institutionalized so they stay and they're not just part of the people who are there at the time but are part of what we do as a district. So that would be one piece should we move forward in this sort of model. Um, with my remaining time, um, I just want to echo and emphasize again what Bryson had mentioned that, um, as we as a board, a district, as two schools, um, move recommendations forward, um, that we do center kids in in the discussion um, and in the recommendation about what's best for kids. Um, you know, Bryce
157and I, um, have been talking a mantra for a long time that adult problems too often in any school setting, not just our district, um get in the way of student success and student outcomes. And um if we can keep that value, um moving forward, I I would highly encourage and and respect that being centered um our students being centered and the work that you have ahead of you. We'll go ahead and close discussion on on that item and move into the Did we not do a second round of discussion on this item? We didn't do a second round. I didn't see any, but we can. Ashley, go ahead. Yeah, I would just caution that as we talk about needing to create a model to make a decision, it was my understanding all along that
158the surveys and the focus groups were the model and were the working group to formulate some sort of decision and pathway to move forward. They gave us an option to do that but unfortunately we did not produce a high quality survey and we did not obtain a stat statistically significant sample of students and families or faculty and administrators for that matter in in at least what was presented to us. And so the way this has unfolded is we're now doing the same amount of work twice and people are becoming more and more frustrated. And unfortunately this un is underscored by some of the concerns I've raised about restructuring our research department that without a clear research department we can't facilitate this type of research and information sharing and I think that one thing that's also
159being unsaid here is that many tenants of the slicky model are actually embedded within our strategic plan like for example experiential learning is something that they were pioneering that then in our strategic plan we said we want all kids to have access to. So instead of only thinking about the challenges that have happened between two campuses, we also aren't highlighting that on some level schools have become more innovative in what we're asking them to do so that they can take on some of that work whether or not they're slick seed they should be having access to a campy trip. So, I think we're not only are we failing to collect and produce information that facilitates decision-m, we are also not highlighting the real opportunities and growth that have come from the existing partnership, but that
160no longer necessarily need a partnership to be sustained. And we should be encouraging all schools to do some of those things rather than saying actually no, we're just not. Do you know what I'm trying to say? we're not coming at this positively and we're also not looking it, you know, dead in the eye of what the real conflict is. And I think it's unfortunate that we're repeating the process twice and that we'll start the new year without the option to move forward unless staff present a different recommendation for us. Any other comments or questions? Seeing none, we'll move on to superintendent report. Just another shout out and thank you to staff and um our district leaders here for putting on the professional development of the last week. It was um well attended which I appreciated
161because it pulled in school teams from across the district and administrators and teachers and it was well done. I keep hearing shoutouts to how much teachers enjoyed the training. So shout out to the team on that. Thank you Dr. Grant. Alan, do you have a BA report? Simply to note, so uh our next UASBO Utah Association of School Business Officials meeting is on July 7th. So that's um between now and our next meeting. So just inform I'll be attending that for that day and we'll report back on that on our July 15th. Okay. Charlotte. Um I had um the privilege of giving or accepting the graduates at Sky View Academy. Um and that that was a really um that was a really great experience for me. Tiffany Hall, Dr. Hall was there. Um, one of
162the speakers was was from my community. I knew the family and um he was a former formerly incarcerated um man there and but he was is now working to help um these graduates I mean the help them complete their high school graduation. so to and from their activities. And if you're driving in your car, please be safe when you see to and from their activities. And if you're driving in your car, please be safe when you see students out and about. At times they may not usually be out and about. Um, also, as gun violence and political violence continue to be really prevalent in the news, it's a reminder to me that hardening our schools does not preclude violence, which is not only found on our campuses, but in any kind of public space. and
163that I implore, you know, the lawmakers who do have authority to address gun violence and access to guns. So, please do so because that's the only thing that's going to make, you know, our communities safer. And in more pleasant news, Allan, our business administrator, has committed to the battle of the books this year. So, he is he has completed his first book. He has a button. I didn't know buttons were available. Dr. Hall has assured me that she will give me access to my requisite buttons. And for people who haven't done that, I encourage you to go through the list. It's really fun to read. Yes. Can I say that actually we've proposed a board versus cabinet battle of the books and I think if the board wants to vote to participate. We could do
164that and you too can earn buttons and read some great books. I think you already got your unanimous support competition. Yeah. All right. You're on cabinet Bryce. Yeah. Um Ashley shared a similar thing that I wanted to share. I just wanted to express my uh sadness and frustration and anger around uh the two a lot going on. Um and just knowing that communicating to the public that we as a district are just doing our our efforts to maintain stability for students um who are the most the reason we are are all here. So, um, despite the, um, craziness out there, um, hopefully people can kind of work through that and not let that overwhelm them as the world is working through it. Thank you, Brian. Do you have a report? when but I don't I
165would but I collect the the comments in the battle of the books and yeah I'm I'm ready to do that. Thank you. Um my report is very similar to what has been said by by my colleagues up here. Um in particular to what Ashley said um hardening our schools is not the approach. I think we're learning that in these very difficult and politically charged times right now. Um so I think um you know, Superintendent Allen, I know we've had discussions at JLC meetings about the challenges associated with some of these efforts and initiatives um and if there's um more that we can do to to advocate um for um something different um I think we should do that. Um, I also do want to send my condolences um to our community, to our city and
166our state, our county um for the violence that we've seen this weekend. Um, it's hard when um we have a history in our country of of non-violent demonstration to see what we're seeing right now. Um, and I just have to to mention and send, you know, love and prayer to Afa Aloo um who lost his life this weekend. Um, I know that his influence was felt um throughout Utah, throughout the country, throughout um Polynesian communities and cultures around this world. Um, he was a creator. He was an artist. Um, a very very dedicated father, a man of faith, and um, we can't not um, I can't not leave this board meeting. And I don't think we can't leave this boardroom uh, without celebrating and calling out his name. Um, and I don't want this violence
167to get in the way of the very, very important work that's involved in demonstrating and speaking out uh for what people believe in, regardless of where you fit on that spectrum. Um, violence is not the answer um in any stretch of the imagination. And so the more that we can do to um celebrate each other, to center students and families, our communities, to work from our shared values and not our differences, we are modeling that as adults for our students and for our communities and families. Um so I encourage us to continue to do that. Um and I'm just really grateful that I get to serve with each and every one of you um at this table and in this room and in our district. So thank you for that. Um, we do have a
168need for a close session this evening. Nate, Nate, Brian, I just say we need to work on this technology. It's been cutting in and out, especially at the very end. So, anyway, thanks. Thanks, Brian. Charlotte, one last thing. Um, I also wanted to mention, um, I wanted to let our families know who are affected by the increase increasing ICE um detentions. Um there's a lot of fear. There's a lot of um I mean families are yeah there's it's just uh terrorizing and um I want the families to know that we care about them and and the kids to know that they're they're welcome in our schools um and that they need to know their rights um but um I stand with them. Thank you. Um with that, thank you everybody. We do have a need
169for a closed session. Um and I would entertain a motion to do that. I move that the board return to closed executive session to discuss the pending or reasonably imminent litigation and the character or professional competence of an individual and that the board immediately adjourn at the conclusion of that closed session. Second. We have a motion and a second on the table. Is there any discussion to the motion? Okay, seeing none, we'll start the roll call vote with board member F Jefferson. Charlotte Ferson, yes. Ashley Anderson, yes. Nazer, yes. Mohammed, yes. Ryan Johnson, yes. Yes. That motion passes. Thank you public for joining us this evening. Thank you.