001Yeah, I know. That's it. All right. Welcome everybody to the May 14th, 2025 regular school board meeting. We will now stand and say the pledge of allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands nation. Okay. Well, again, welcome everybody. Full house tonight. That's awesome. Um, can I please get a motion to adopt the agenda? A motion to adopt the agenda. And I will second. Okay. All those in favor? I I please get a motion to adopt the consent agenda. I'll make a motion to adopt the consent agenda. And I'll second. Okay. All those in favor? I I All right. That was quick. We like it. Um, the Asic Ledge Lodge Educator of the Year. We're going to have to wait on a little bit.
002So, we're going to move on to hire student recognition, student leaders. Love it. Good evening everybody. Really happy to be able to recognize our self-managers at Irene Ryder this year. The self-manager program is one extension of our leadership program at IR and it's the most recognition emphasis where we're recognizing students that meet that bar that objective of our meridian mindsets and how those those expectations play out in our everyday um learning culture at school. So these all of these students underwent a pretty intense um application process. So, I'll pass out these applications that that initiate the process. Um, this application process begins with the classroom teacher. Here's here's a few more. And, uh, classroom teachers work with each student leader and determine according to this rubric if they qualify to apply for self-manager. And after
003that, they seek uh, three adult references. And then after that I conduct an interview with them. And so it's an excellent way for these student leaders to see their way through the commitment of what it means to be a self-manager at Irene Ryder. And there's a couple elements to that. When we ask the PLC question, what do we do when we know that students are getting it? We provide that extra for them to do that extra leadership role for them to participate in. And this would be an example of that when it comes to social and emotional learning and um citizenship at Irene Reed. And so without further ado, I'm going to ask that these self-managers introduce themselves with their name and the why. Why did they go to all this trouble to become a
004self-manager? Well, we're going to start. My name is Brett Teruza and I wanted to be a self-manager because I want to the be a role model for younger kids. I'm Cole Anderson and I became a self-manager to help younger kids. Hi, my name is Ben Lund and I want to be a self manager so I could be a good role model role model for our uh school. My name is I want to be a self teacher so you can get free. My name is Paige and I became a self manager to uh let's say get more independence from the classroom. Uh my name is Emma Ruiz and uh I became myself manager so I could see I already grow different ways. My name is PK and I wanted to become a self manager for freedom.
005My name is Kelly and I wanted to become a self manager to um get trust on the staff. My name is Tai and I wanted to be a self manager so I could help the school flourish and get more leadership jobs. Hi, my name is Ellen Lorenzo and I'm self manager to be a volunteer. Hi, my name is Ellie. I want to become a self manager to set up business. Um, my name is Aubrey Miller. I want to become a self manager to help out with young kids. My name is Grace Benjamin and I wanted to be a self manager to have more freedom and to help around questions. Yeah. Yeah. Do you guys help out like in library or in P or what classes do you guys all get to Yeah. Yeah. Uh TK
0062 TK classes, specialty classes, anything to do with kids or the arts. Like kindergarten helpers, second grade PE. That's awesome. I do library. Um, we also do office helping out. Awesome. I'm an office helper on Monday. Um, once a month I help out with like kinder buddies and I basically every day help out. Yeah. Uh sometimes we used to like give like new teachers or like like learning to become teachers like a tool around like the school. My turn. Okay. I love some of the words that you all shared. Um first of course being role model to gain trust to watch the school flourish. So servant leadership is huge. I love that. And then of course leadership. So, I want to thank all of you for taking that leap and giving back to the community
007that you are attending. Uh, we're so happy to have you. And I'm just curious, um, how many of you would like to do leadership roles in middle school and high school? It takes all of you to make these fun things and extra activities that we do in the middle school and high school. It takes all the participation and support from you and for you to be ambassadors to other students to get involved. So, thank you. Yes. I would just say like I think it's so cool that you guys put in the effort, the extra thing to like apply for this and get interviewed. Like that shows some amazing initiatives. So, I think that's so cool and such an amazing quality. Um, and Neil, I'll just say I'm proud of you. Love you. One thing I'll
008just add real quick that some students don't make the cut the first time. So the teacher says actually we got this that this and that to work on and then there's another opportunity presented and then we have a few few stories like that this year. Good job with it. I think great, you know, the little kids have somebody to look up to like you guys, you know, and especially some kids that might be apprehensive about going to school and what to do and have somebody to look up to. I think it's a cool thing and great thing you're doing. Great job. Excellent. We have a spot for you. postpone the next meeting. postpone as well. We're not doing straight out. Thank you so much for coming. Okay. Well, um we're going to move on to
009PLC presentations and first up is MP3. Well, hi again. I'm Sarah. I represent the steam team at MP3 and my counterpart Jeff Kirko happens to be in Spain right now with his son. So, I brought with me Sarah Hersige. I teach math at MP3 for the first three or fourth graders. So we are on the same PLC team but the presentation and the work that we're doing as a school is really all the same all the same work. So Oh yeah and our schoolwide focus this year has been on speaking and listening and student engagement strategies across all contacts. Okay. So what do we want our students to know and be able to do? We were working on connecting those speaking listening skill uh standards to every content specific area um and the standards because
010every single standard across the board ties into those speaking and listening skills. Uh we worked on students being able to engage in collaborative collaborative discussions and build on ideas, summarize and analyze information from different media, present organized ideas with supporting evidence. And then um they also enhanced presentations with multimedia and they adapted speeches to context. Right. So at the beginning of the year, we started off with a learning walk at our school and we were looking for strategies and structures that were engaging students in um academic talk. So um we followed that up with our first waiver days, brought back those new strategies from the waiver days and shared them with our you know we all went to different sessions, right? So, we came back, shared all of our different takeaways from those sessions and
011started applying those new strategies. Um, all along the way, we've been tracking student engagement in our classrooms and um looking for not just contributions, but actual or not just comments, but actual contribution contributions to the discussion so that they're using academic vocabulary and really staying on topic and pushing the conversation further. Yeah. No. So, um, one thing that we did as a staff was we wrote down on our little sticky notes all the things that we had already tried and things that have gone well. And then after looking through what our colleagues had tried, we committed to trying some new strategies as well. Um and we wanted to be really clear with our expectations for students on the um what was expected of them. What so we started employing rubrics to uh help support that
012and then it was nice for them to see all of their teachers trying similar strategies. And there was a lot of hey I already did that today. And I was like great then you'll be an expert at it. you can teach me something that you learned in art or in technology um and apply it in a new way in math class because obviously the academic vocabulary in math is going to be different than what you're doing in art class. Then we took a second semester learning walk and on this day we were focusing our experience um on the students that were scoring either a one or a two on the SBA and I Ready. So our lower performing kids um we each chose I think two to three kids and we were specifically looking at
013what their experience was like in the classroom. So not just what the teacher is doing and saying, but what is that student saying and doing during that time period of like 10 to 15 minutes and really listening to the words they were using? Were they using academic vocabulary? Were they not participating at all? Like what at what level were they engaging? And then we asked these three questions at the bottom. Uh what are you learning? Why is it important? And how do you know you're successful? And so, uh, we got a a variety of answers for for those that really were very telling for us. It was a great experience. So, obviously, since we are in different classes teaching a variety of levels, we're going to have different ways of having students reflect and tracking
014the data. Uh, in my class, I tried something called a rocket write, where they had four minutes to write as much as they could about what we had done in math class. They could draw me pictures. They could write sentences. They could do a diagram. One student threw me up at the board and them at the table writing furiously. I was like, "Okay." Um, other teachers had more open-ended exit tickets. Um, there's definitely, you know, we have our cute little five-star rubric that they're using in the uh lower elementary writing class where they're assessing themselves on the same standards every time. Um, we had one where it was another kind of openended open-ended check for understanding where they just filled in what they felt confident about, what they needed help with, and what would also
015be helpful to them. Um, and then smileys are always a great one with like the first and second graders, like how did you do with participating in the art talk? Did you actually use art vocabulary today? Um, and having them really spend a couple minutes thinking about how they engaged in the learning that day. Kids are all smiles all the time, but some are a little more thoughtful about it, right? And these are just some of our data tracking um pieces on the on the teacher end. So um the first one, the one on the left was shared in my last presentation a month ago. The other one is just an example of a rubric. There's several that we've got, but um that one came from our tech teacher Rebecca Montgomery. So just some examples
016the ways that we are tracking as well. And then obviously what do we do if they don't know it and what do we do if they do? We have a variety of student engagement strategies where they can expand upon the learning or we can take a step back. Uh Sarah was the first to try this color wheel right here and it's so cool. So they um were given a piece of artwork to discuss and in order to come up with which like prompt or sentence stem they're using, they spin the little uh paper clip and then they were going to discuss the artwork. and it gave them the chance to really like dive into something instead of just having a basic level conversation. They're doing things like saying, "Oh, you bring up an interesting point.
017I also think this." Um, I find the more sentence stems we give them, the better they do. Uh we also have like readers theater happening in Glenda Elgar's class where the third graders are presenting to their families and they're given this chance to show off their amazing fluency that they've been developing. Uh and we have, you know, like personal whiteboards in my class. If I give them a a stem to start with, I'll have some kids who are moving on and they're providing additional ways to show an answer while others might still be struggling with the first one and I have a chance to like really quick check, you know, they all show me their boards and then I can make a note of who I need to check in with first when we get
018going on our next task. Um, but almost always before they're showing me an answer, they're talking with a table partner or their whole group is discussing. Sometimes the whole table only has one whiteboard to show me. So then they have to come to a consensus and that it's hard sometimes. Um but it's brought up some really good math talk within my classroom. And I feel like just throughout the year we've tried so many different strategies that we really are engaging kids in a at a higher level than they have been. Yeah. have a lot of pictures from our classrooms of all the different ways kids are engaging. I I want to share just a little bit and then just I had a pretty good conversation with Michelle yesterday about this whole process and just I
019I want to give kudos to you and the rest of your team for really diving in on engagement using speaking and listening and then taking your first iteration of the learning blog recognizing students aren't giving you just yes or no or I did you know we did talk about it and really pushing and then Um Adrian's back there the the waiver day where we had all of our staff teach other staff just a ton of strategies around engagement. So hearing how you did that and then went to the data of the students who aren't performing to standard yet and saying what can you do and and I understand from Michelle you as a staff pick two or three each to focus on and just what are you be in their shoes what are they doing
020just a really great process to start with something ask questions be curious and then engage in different things so really appreciate the work in that in that area so nice job I guess will also guide our workers. Yeah. So, when you're saying you're engaging the students at a higher level consistently, um what's their buy in on this if it's a little bit different than what they've been used to? I don't know. I think some of them kind of get used to letting others do all the talking and then when it becomes the expectation that everyone is going to participate then they're finding value in their own voice as well. It's been really interesting to have discussions with some of our kids who have been happy to be the voice of everyone and really talking about
021how being a part of a community of learners is letting other people shine and other people talk. And so you don't have to be the one to answer every time. Um, and I have seen such a positive impact with some of our kids on that. And you know, in the past we I definitely have been like enamored with the like precocious ones who want to answer every question, but it is to the detriment of the quiet ones who need a little extra time to think or who just haven't had a chance to be as heard. So, I think that sometimes it feels uncomfortable for the quiet ones, but Sarah's right, like if we consistently expect them to engage and to be a part of it. Nobody has really pushed back on that yet. Everybody knows
022they're there to learn and they want to be there. So, I think Jeff even said at one of our TLC meetings that those the not the overt talker, but the overt talkers realize if I only get one chance to say something, I'm not going to answer that one. I'm gonna wait. That's true. He did. He brought that up and I think that's true in my classroom too. Like we have kind of held some of the kids to like I'm going to hear from everybody before I come back to you. So that gives some of those ones who have been a little more cautious. They know like in the beginning, oh this one feels easy. I should answer this one. And then they're, you know, they dip their toes in and they're more likely to answer
023again. and they may have caught on to the fact that we scaffled our questions. So, awesome. Doing great. Yeah, thank you so much for the shirt. I think it's first grade PLC next. chairs. Well, thank you for having us. Next. Um, well, I'm Lisa. I'm Angelie. I'm Ellie Pulman. Hi, Lisa Pargo. Lisa caring. Um, there's our tiger team here too. She is part of our PLC every Friday morning and in um creating this wall. And so our PLC question is what do we want our students to know and be able to do and and apply that to our grade level which is what um one RF 1.3 know and apply grade level phonyx and word analysis skill and decoding words. So, we really focused on our foundational skills and that learning to read component um
024decoding and then putting those phone names to graphimmes to letter sounds building words building words in sentences and really lifting that and then the end result is hey they're reading to learn um the end of first grade. So in all academic areas of comprehension, enjoyment and access to other academic domains all requiring strong foundational reading skills. Oh, how do um how do we know if they know it? We've used our common formative assessment. Um, we're using I Ready literacy tasks to progress monitor students and we do this weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly depending on the students need in reading. And what is a common formative assessment? It's a frequent low stakes assessment that provides teachers and students with feedback on learning and instruction and um allows for us to make any adjustments. Um, what are I
025Ready literacy tasks? It's a collection of formative assessments on I read that give us information on how a student is performing with funological awareness and coding or fluency readings. What is progress monitoring? It's a structured process of regularly assessing student learning to track their progress toward goals. Um data is collected and analyzed to see if students are responding to the instruction. Um so how do we know if they know it? Um as a team we're using I already literacy task to assess um students for their pseudo words which are like home silly words with students or madeup words um word recognition fluency and then reading fluency. So we do those three weekly bi-weekly or monthly depending on where the student is at. Um pseudo words like I said they're made up words and they are
026decodable with grade level phonics skills that we're teaching our students. Word recognition fluency. That's just those automatic words that students need to know. Um they're most frequently used in those decodable books um and used in early readers. And then reading fluency is the ability to read accurately an appropriate pace and um with proper expression. So by the end of first grade, first graders should be able to read 30 pseudo words, 34 word recognition words in a minute. And reading fluently at the end of first grade is 39 to 75 words per minute. So this is an example of some student um work and so when we progress monitor students were able to show them so they can see their growth and we can celebrate the success. In the blue area there you can see that
027that student has made enough growth that they are not only on but surpassing grade level. So we address student misconceptions and needs with our RTI model. At tier one, we teach and rethonic and retach phonics skills as needed. And then our wonderful lab team support students with higher needs in tier three setting. And then for tier 2 needs, our PLC um Friday weekly plans and implement small groupoup instruction four days a week. Um, and then here are the results of our sued award silly word progress monitoring from the last two weeks of instruction for students who received tier one and tier 2 instruction. And so we all have a slide that we put up in our room at our tier 2 time and the students know and they get excited to, oh, I get to
028go to Miss, you know, Miss Periggo or Miss Pullman or Miss Lambie or Miss Billy or Miss Scout and um they go and they do their learning and then they come back and then we head to our second recess and they're engaged and um for example, some of them are on even a tier 2 behavior plan and they take their behavior plan and they're really excited because they get to go, you know, have the another teacher fill that out and be proud and it's another teacher holding them accountable and so far it's been really successful and really lifted their behavior in other ways. So, um, so it's really like a win-win of learning and that social emotional as well. So, what do we do if they do know it? um since this is individualized. If
029students do know these skills, students work on their own ready pathway which is geared towards their own um learning and then read to self. It's something I also do and answer comprehension questions and or in a reading journal or they read um decodables depending on what they need. Sorry. Oh my gosh. teaching first graders is tough enough, but it seems like you guys are doing a great job. Ours last year, so they did a great job. Yeah, my daughter can read. So, I'm a little bit old school and I'm guessing that some of the terminology has changed. So when you're talking decodables and you're talking word recognition, this is our site words, correct? Recognition frequency words like part so many little books and staple them and put them on the Yes, we did. Are when
030you apply the sounds of So for example, it's diagramraphs and you pull up like th all of the you know whih what we're focusing on. Can I ask a clarifying question on the PLC process? So when you send students to your classrooms, how do you determine who's teaching what? I'm assuming different different things are being taught, right? During our PLC time, we analyze all the data and kind of see where the biggest need is and so that and to keep groups kind of relatively small so they get that smaller group time. We might need four teachers to teach one particular area concept and two to teach another. So um it really and it changes. It's very fluid. So it changes every few weeks. So not only is it data informed, but it's also a nice
031time to us for us to lean on each other's strengths. And so knowing how and what we all teach um but again knowing each other individually. So we're all teaching the same tier one, but we all have different strengths and different areas of expertise. So leaning on that has helped as well. Excellent. One more question. Sorry. Um I see that you're switching kids around and moving them between your own classrooms. Yes. Um, it's been a long time since I was in, but do you still have parents come in for breakout sessions to read with students? Yes. Reading chapter books, doing book clubs. Yes. But this work because it's most essential is done by all certified staff. And that's at a different time. All right. Like so if a parent comes in and volunteers, it's not
032at a tier two or tier three time. Thank you so much. Follow's up next. Come on, fellas. Reverend Lawrence, good to see you. Thank you. So, next one. So, um I'm Webster Curs. I'm one of the social teachers here at Marina High School. Um I've been gosh here for almost 20 years now at the high school. over 20 years with so teaching Steve Bar Lawrence and I see what I teach. I've been here for 32 years. Hello, my name is Dominic Bruce. Uh first year actually here at Meridian uh teaching freshman world history. Miss Olsson um Mrs. Olsen is not here. She is joining her time with her son. So she she started the year um teaching world history one class and then when she went on maternity re maternity leave um Dominic took over
033for that one class. So um so we um in is a little bit little bit different maybe because it's so there's so much nuance to it and so our st our main claim and I can almost say this this is our claim for all all our social studies classes is that you know students will construct arguments they will be able to make claims and then they will defend their claims and give an evidence of where how that claim answers answers, you know, how that evidence, you know, answers that claim. And so we do it's not we don't just do it one one time. We start with the first unit we did. We did we did one claim and evidence and then we continue to do it and then we just recently did another one another
034assessment where they had to make a claim and then they had to provide evidence and this one was a little bit harder because they had to do actually some research on their own. So the first one we almost almost don't don't say we spoon feed them but we kind of we get the kids and go you watch the video and then we talk about the video a lot and then we kind of go okay what's the plan you know how do we do it and so we kind we do do a lot of time we spend a lot of time actually trying to make sure that they understand the the value and the value of making sure they they can actually you know give evidence to their claim and and I know that in US
035history we almost we do that almost every week with a reviewer And the last question is what was the most important thing to learn the week and why? And so the always idea going give evidence why you why you think that. So um this is kind of the standard rubric that we use. Um you know this is the first one we use is called dangerous single story. It was a TED talk and it was um the idea of just you know making sure getting deeper than just you know looking at superficial ideas. And so again like I said this one was very you know we pretty much um you know the first unit is all about you know introduction to world history. We don't even really get into any time period. World history is about
036it. the high school is 1,200 to um we'll get through World War II, maybe get to Cold War. So, we're gonna cover about 500 years um or actually next 900 I'm not math about 700 years and we're done. So, um and so the claims always like you know what is the claim? Is it fully fully answer the question? Is it just partially what what are they putting into it? And then the other ones is the evidence. You know, does the evidence support your claim? And as we look at some of the examples of this one, the one that's pretty evident is you can tell we've kind of conditioned them also this first one what the claim should be. Um, and what I mean by that is um, we'll get to it in a little bit
037is that the everyone's claim is pretty much the same. Um the second one we did, you know, kind of unit three was how did the Columb exchange change Americans? Um and this one, you know, the questions and the answers the kids gave were a lot more varied because of um the different uses of, you know, the sources we had, you know, what we did in class. And then we use actually a DBQ from the OAR project that they give us. They gave seven different documents, either pictures, um, stories, they gave a poem, um, from an Aztec, a person, you know, an Aztec person that lived in the the major city and they had kind of make their argument and they kind of went and showed us, you know, they kind of show us, you know,
038kind of the claim and then made made the arguments. There's a lot more varied from that one because there's a lot more um changes that were you know that changed actually to America. Um some of the things we did kind of to help out our students um depending on their level of writing um they're whether they're you know IEP 504 their ML or they just need extra help. We had grabbing organizers. Uh we had we had document summaries and a claims bank so that some of the claims we had from previous um discussions kind of put them on a list so that kids could actually get access to it if they're having a hard time making a claim or buying a buying, you know, finding a claim that they might want to do and then
039they're able to go, oh this claim here is the you know the document that kind of talks about that claim. So kind of give them a little bit of help um finding those answers. And then question DBQ. Yeah. Oh doctor based um question. And so usually what they are they give primary sources from different times and then the students have to you know usually when you do a DBQ they have one day to look at the DBQ documents. You don't give them to you know like over time and then they go make their claim from that. The common use in the smarter balance test. um and they do the English uh portion of that, they do a DBQ, they do it where they get documents, they take notes on those documents, and then the next
040day they'll actually write the essay portion of it. So, it's kind of the movement all towards in standardized testing like that is you give them a day or a time period beforehand to examine documents, take notes from those, and then your next step is to actually write the essay using all that stuff. So we're just essentially trying to mimic that. In world history class, we do it in US history class. We have a essay and then in the AP gov class, they have to write an argumentative essay doing the same thing. Make a claim and he's familiar with it. Make a claim, use documents to u support that claim and look at counter arguments. Yes. So I'm sorry about that. You use acronyms all the time. Education acronym. I know that's why I know that's
041why it's all good. And the last one we did was just was just recently. We talking about the tree side. We we ended World War I going between the war years. And so we had a we had, you know, the question was um did I put up there yet? The question was um did the tree side, you know, lead us on a path of peace or the p the road back to war? And so kind of the idea of kind of going there, make an idea. Um I challenge my some of my my higher kids to go choose you know you know the easy answer choose the hard answer and come up with evidence and a few did um some just kind of went and said it's this is easier and I feel more confident
042doing it this way. So um a lot of them were going yeah definitely led us to war. Um but but also the idea is to kind of you know um for me is get you know I told my kids is I want quality or quantity you know we you give a good we want 500 words but it's one of those things where if the student especially you know different levels if you can give me 300 words and it's it's good I'm happy whereas going give me 500 words and I don't know where I I lose track where we're going that's not the best way to do it. Um but we did give um graphic organizers um that's the big one. Um the um OEER which is the um open source um that we use as
043our as our docu as our our curriculum. They have a number of different graphic organizers that we that me and Mr. Killian modified last year and so we just kind of plug them into what we're doing. But all around that same idea is um a claim evidence and then explaining your evidence including a counter argument. Yeah. And then this last way I do the counter argu argument and that's kind of the the next step. We did that because we definitely did that in US history and then they definitely do it in you know AP gov and as we go into you know civics next year it'll be definitely a thing that we'll do in civics too for seniors. Um things that you know how we know that they know it. Um one is you know
044we do give we give her youth quizzes. Um we don't give them very often in world history. Um but we give them throughout the year and the idea is to get them used to what we do in um their junior and senior year. That's kind of a weekly thing. It's almost like a it's, you know, kids know they come in and they open their Chromebooks, they know that it's time to do a review quiz. Um, and so it's almost like conditioning. Um, and so give them review quizzes. Um, example that we actually had review quiz. Which of the long-term World War I causes do you feel was most responsible for the war? And then why? So we talk about these long-term causes um militarism, alliances, uh imperialism, and nationalism. And they had to make choose
045one of those and then make a claim or make made a claim which they thought was most important and then give evidence why. So we did it through the review quizzes. Um and then as we f you know, as we go through the year, we continue to add different things like the counterargument. Um one thing we did last year, we me and Mr. Killian thought we didn't do a very good job with the explanation and so we we spent time last year a lot of time on explanation this year um because I've kind of we learned from last year from our first year doing it that we were able I was able to improve how we did explanation and also when I explained how we how I explained that to Steve and Dom as we
046went through it was easier to kind of see their writing is they're better explain the evidence how the evidence gets to their plane So um we just learned from the pre previous years has kind of helped with what we do. Um you know how we know also how we know it um the average playing score um was four out of five on a five point scale. I know we have a 10 10point one there but they had each one had a different different value. So like claimed five the evidence had four and the explanation had one that was wasn't as important for us. And so, um, this was, um, you know, high. I thought it was kind of high mainly because there's some of them actually had sentence stems. So, it started out with everything
047they needed. So, they just had to make the claim out of the second step. Um, the evidence um, if they had um, you know, if they evidence part was four out of five and then, you know, average was 3.8 85 for explanation because that's the hardest thing to do is if you have evidence even to find evidence of sort of your claim explaining how that gets to your claim is always hard and that that's you know one of those things that it's the correlation you know kind of yeah bring the two things together sometimes is a little hard for some students to write and so they also work with English so it does kind of go well across the curriculum this is some examples kind hard to see some. Um the one in the bottom
048right is a sentence stem. Um and then the other three are are actually just the basic graphic organizer that we used. And so um you guys see the different um you know examples of you know the claim. Some are more thorough and then some are a little more basic as you go through. And so and this is like this is the first one that we used. Um the things that we do if they don't we don't know if you know what do we do if they don't know it. Um you the thing at the high school the one big thing we have kind of our catch all it's easy and it really does help is T3. Um we we have an option to close our T3s and so if you know what you want to
049you know you know you have a students you need to work on something you can close it and have a small group and actually give individualized instruction. Um, one of the things that's hard with T3 is sometimes you have a lot of kids and so it's hard to get to all the kids that need the help you need. So having a closed T3 session where you have five, six kids and then actually just work on it. It does help. Um, others, you know, you give them graphic organizers or, um, one thing we did for a couple of our IEP kids is I create a slideshow so that they can chunk each part. And so it was easier, you know, instead of seeing about everything we had to do, even the graphic organizer, it had the
050graphic organizer in just one slide. It's like, oh, this is my question. And it broke it down. And that really helped some of our kids, you know, especially our like IP and our ML kids. Um the other things is like some of the things I do we do is bullets instead of sentences and then um and sometimes is helping kids after school and like you know one of the things I actually do tomorrow is actually have a kid after school for a while and we'll go through some of this stuff. So um those are a little bit harder but a lot of times a lot of parents are supportive of that if the kid needs it and a lot of times the parent will initiate it. Um this is you know again one of our
051um rubrics the idea of kind of going you know this is the la this is the last no last one um this is the one that is the Columbia exchange one but it has you know again claim thesis supporting claims evidence and then explanation and commentary um and then so we add kind of thesis um so that they kind of it goes well in English So there's a little kind of transition because in English they don't say make a claim but we say a lot of times make a claim and also the other part is as they go into you know juniors we're going to say you know we do our historical argument paper it is make a make a thesis so we definitely go we go that route so they got to get used
052to some of that verbiage um the last data point we did the tree of Versailles um our improvement on the claim um 4.5 out of two so it wasn't a huge increase. Um, but I also I think a lot of that was because we did they did so well the first time they kind of had that claim idea there. Um, you know, some of the you know when when we put they kind of put the data together I kind of even use kids that didn't do it part of the averages too. Um, the average claim you know without that would be about 475. They're actually really good claims you know this time. Um, evidence was improving. Um again, you know, using the evidence to go, oh, the treatment side didn't work because, you know, it
053caused hyperinflation. And they they did a really good job of bringing the evidence there. Um the explanation again is still it's up and down. Um but um and this one I found was kind of a little bit lower than the other other ones. But you know, the exchange ratios were was a little bit better. This one I thought would be higher and it wasn't as high as I thought it was. you know kind of the kind of claims again of this last one um the claims of you know cheater side not peace and um they you know the idea is is very thorough and so I had kind of different love give some different varieties of what they were and so as we read them you know you're kind of looking for certain things but
054again you're looking you're looking for evidence that um goes with the, you know, evidence that goes with the explanation that goes back to the claim. And then the last the last part I gave was actually counter the first time we did counter argument. And so, um, again, some of the kids did really well with counter argument and then others, um, you know, are are approaching it because it was the first time we really did it and we didn't do a lot of direct instruction into what we wanted. We we instructed it and kind of let them go and then we'll do another one. We're doing a project pretty soon in World War II. and we'll have them do the kind of the same thing to write a counterargument of some sort in some kind of
055writing questions. Yes. like say after say a lesson towards the end or something like that, pick a movie that might coincide with the lesson plan you gave and see okay here's some discrepancies of you know or you know hey they had it pretty much on just because there's so many different movies you know and I was curious I know I think we had Mr. Jabbor we watch Mr. would watch movies on Friday. And then he would go off on a tangent. Yeah. You know, and then we ask, well, what about C? And then he lo um I think for me um right now actually we haven't even like we're doing World 2. like when we get to World War II, we'll actually show the first part of um Dday of City Ryan. So, um we
056kind of talk about that a little bit. Um I probably do it a lot more in US history. I I do it a lot like we we're talking about um you know some of the civil rights stuff right now and we talk about kind of you know like you know these movies are coming out like Mississippi the Mississippi burn B burn B burn B burn B burn B burn B burn B burn B burn B burn B burning and so talking about kind of the first civil rights workers going out in Mississippi after the um the civil rights of 1964 act and talking about you know you know this is what kind of happened but then this movie comes out and there's a lot of discrepancies the movie's good you know I recommend you do
057you watch it also know it's not true full history. So for world history, um, we haven't done a lot of that, but we have these show we're not gonna watch a movie. So, but you're class, yeah, we try to sh uh like, you know, just create um let them know like, okay, this we learned about Jesse Owens, there's this movie about him and just so that they uh if they want to explore, they can. We had two students last year um actually kept wrote down all the movies that I had recommended relating to all the different people. They did a 24-hour movie watch and reviewed each movie and filmed themselves and then brought me this video of them watching Owen Marle and Jacob found and uh it was pretty funny and they three o'clock in
058the morning. All right, Mr. Lawrence, that one was a hard one to get. I just had a comment. Um, one of the things you shared was your quality over quantity. Yes. and looking at a 500word response over a 300word response. And I say I appreciate that the subjectivity um as opposed to children just trying to meet this metric of number of words even though it's gibberish or something and get it condensed and and share their story and especially when you're working with so many varying students with IEPs and 504s and MLS and using your rubric as it applies to each student individually. I appreciate that. Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. When I was in high school, if I knew I had to get to a certain amount of words, I was
059getting there. But there wasn't a whole lot left after. So, do all three of you or are all three finding yourself doing that same? It's it's actually kind of amazing. I do a learning strategy class and you know, kids write essays for English and they they look at the word count like every single time I put a word. Yeah. Like, no. So think about how much I talk and then I have to condense it for parade announcements. Yes. First appreciation a lot of redundancy built in there especially between the history English terms of the practice demonstrating evidence of hitting a standard in this case the claim requires evidence. How do you what's your sense of where your students are from the beginning of the year to now in terms of tracking their own ability to
060do that? Well, well, I'd say for my the ones I have I have a as far as the world history class that I'm teaching, I felt like they were pretty pretty strong when I got them. Um, and most of them I'd say at least a third and the very first thing I threw it at them. I just kind of wanted to I didn't give them a lot of instruction on I kind of wanted to get a sense of where they're at. Okay, you got to make this claim, but you know what that means. I'm not going to tell you too much to do. I had third knew exactly how to write that. So eighth grade, uh, ninth grade. So, eighth grade teachers, their social studies were doing great um at at prepping that and knowing
061they knew what they knew what evidence was like. They they knew what that meant. They knew what that meant to that they had to get pieces of it and apply it to this. I was so I'd say my class there's been some growth. I've got I probably there's more students that are that are able to do it, but I was pretty impressed that you know how smart they were when I got it. Sounds like little mini research papers over and over. Yes. Which typically you wouldn't see until junior senior year. So, it's great to see kids practicing this eighth and nth grade and getting there earlier. Yeah. And it makes a ton of sense just for some of the standardized testing that they have to do and just in the other classes. And then all
062virtually all of the AP classes like the English ones and the government ones all have a essay that built based on create a thesis pieces of evidence based on these documents counterargument. I mean so it it kind of dubtales all the way through. Thanks. I don't know about you guys. No, I agree. It's pretty much the same. You know, each of it's interesting because each of the classes are so different. Um, but I just, you know, you know, because of a lot of our schedule is based on math, you know, because as a freshman, if you're if you're going if you're doing geometry or out here too or something like that, you're going to be in one of the first classes. And so, um, so, but it is, you know, I I do think, you
063know, especially kids like for, you know, the kids that that struggle the most, I think they're the ones that improve the most with this. Great. So, excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Middle School Instructional Specialist Board. Hi. Well, I was here a couple weeks ago talking with you and I brought some students in. sync and this is I do the ML students and all the other teachers read our reading specialist. that's so we are the ones that step in when the kids don't get it. We're there. So you've seen these questions several times, right? Well, we're the ones that come in. Well, I'm permanently there and so is Olivia. We don't move from that position. The kids do, but we don't know that part. All right. So, all about ML. Why is there a little window
064in the dark? Thanks, Joe. So, stands for multilingual students. multilingual being um well I have quite a few students who are on English is their third language so they'll speak if they're from Guatemala they'll speak one of the 25 million languages of Guatemala uh by languages and then they learn uh Spanish socially or at school and then they come here and they are required to learn English so they have a walk behind All right. So, who I work with are the newcomers and beginners. A newcomer is literally a recent arrival to the country. So, our newest uh newcomers have been here two months. We had a lot of newcomers this year. and a beginner it it it fluctuates because it can be a couple years. Nobody learns the language like that. Although some do, they're
065really good at it, but they are not the majority. So, it takes a little longer. And then we h have the LES. So, there are students who've been in the program for more than four years. And truthfully, most of ours have been since kindergarten. Now, why that is, there's a thousand different reasons. And it's no shame on any of their previous teachers. It just and it's not our school district. It's not our state. It's countrywide. It's Canada. It's all over the place. And how we think about it, it does make a difference. And I also work a lot with teachers. So the way I spend my time at school is well right now I have about eight newcomers and three of those are great students so they're going to be in high school next year.
066One for seventh grader on his own right now and then sixth graders as well. So what I do with an L an EL ELD is English language development class two branches of that for sixth graders in the beginning of the semester but um so at the sorry beginning school year beginning school year I have two groups a group of beginner sixth grade um uh a group of beginner newcomers and that and then I also have an intermediate grade six class so I can help get them ready. But to talk about the uh beginner classes. So an example of that is a preposition in on hand at we all feel like yeah there's an expectation of knowledge by all of their teachers that they know if you say put your paper on the desk they know
067what that means right in Spanish there's several words for the same thing right so we get they get a little we do a lot of work on something like that that's how simple it goes right now we're doing a and the and when do we use them and how often you use it's not something you think So an intermediate class is a little different. They're the kids have usually been in they're usually the els. So they've been in the program for quite a while and the gaps in their knowledge they are they are with their peers in terms of their ideas and their idea formations. But when it comes to the writing, when it comes to being able to put in things like however, therefore, so we work a lot with th that kind of
068language in order to expand and make them feel more comfortable in their classrooms. They feel like part of the room they feel like they are doing as well as their peers. It helps a lot for when in the beginning of the year I prep them. So we have a language test. It falls in February, March. And that language tests our students on speaking, reading, writing, listening. Thank you. A little blank there. Um, so I prepare them. I prepare all students during they come in, put the headphones on, and they have to describe the room. They have to react to certain things. It's really hard to do that for any middle school kid to put a pair of headphones on, speak to a microphone, and describe the room you're in. Any kid would have a hard
069time with that. These kids just have to do that. I do push in especially with newcomers. That means I so I spend a lot of time in the sixth grade social studies. I have one student who is uh illiterate in his first language and he cannot read or write in English. So there's a lot of control F which gives it so he can find the term and then he can see the term in the on the textbook and then from there figure out how much of that sentence he wants to put is he he's participating. We have quite I've had quite a few kids that low in in uh in the classes. So when you're in that kind of situation with they're illiterate in their or language. Yeah. How do we know it's not a
070learning disability? Good question. With him I know it's not because when he hears it orally so I I'll Google translate quickly for him. So he can if he can hear it he can sort of understand it. But Google translate for Punjabi is very academic. So I'd like to find something that was a little less high. put it at a level that he can understand. Chachi is actually good for that. I can bring down the level of academic language which he needs. He was educated up till now. I don't understand why he is the first language I talk to his parents. I have no reason why he is but but he is learning English. He is able to communicate more and more every day. That's an aspect of what you should do is you have to
071you have to identify where they're at and how they're moving forward, right? Look for those things. Yeah. Okay. I also work with PLC's. I float around. Uh right now my focus is with the the science teachers and hopefully that will turn into something really positive. I'll come back and tell you about that, but not right now. We're in the beginning stages. And I work a lot with teachers one-on-one. We have a lot of really young teachers and I'm a very old teacher. So I come in and we I observe them in their classrooms. I usually observe two or three classes because they get nervous when they're being observed and I assure them I have no power and I calm them down, but I have to calm the students. They have to calm the teachers down.
072And we go over things just, hey, maybe you should try this. But I never try to bring into anything too much because nobody needs to hear all of things. It usually just focused on a small scholar said. All right. So this is an example of some of the materials I use. Um as you can see that of the basics of the community. How do you talk about um being in a community? Who is part of your great building that up? I also can access more academic math terms, but a lot of those math terms, there's so many ways to say plus, how do we say addition? It it's a lot. And if you don't know the language, you don't ask two things together, multiply, divide, there's so many different ways to say it. So that
073this stuff kind of backs it up and it's good for that. And I also have this uh more intense uh use of materials that I've been using more of the intermediate and it's it's a nice way to get them into it. So the big thing that I the test that I have is the Wita test and the way the levels are level one student really new to the country they cannot read or write and that's fine. that's just they have to do the stupid test which is my words to them is let's do the stupid test and then we're going to go on from there it's okay demoralizing to do a test you're not going to fail so that you know that's why I'm I'm the entertainer trying to get them through that because we'll
074do it again and they will do better level two they can say that I like I don't like I can't I can't um and it goes the the levels actually go up to level six, but a student will test out at level uh 4.7 and quite often we'll also look at their SBA score. So I had a student that scored 4.6 and we will look at that very tragically and then but because of his SBA scores I have no doubt he was able to test test out he would be out of the program. um after they're out of the program, I do follow them for a couple years to make sure they're they're okay to make sure they don't need to come back. So, generally, if they test out in middle school, they're doing fine.
075If they test out in elementary school, there have been a few that I've been worried about, but I've also been able to work with them and help them through it. So, this is so these students are currently in grade nine. So, I started my first reader with them was in 2022. And I've only I didn't put any level ones in there. Just two, three, and four. And so, oh, I think I reversed it. Something's backwards. No. No. Right. Okay. Sorry. My bad. My um students coming in the first time, they didn't really know. They hadn't been test prepped and it was really So I did what I could but it wasn't very much. So these are are level four 23%. So then I I was allowed to spend a lot more time pushing and just
076put those headphones on talking to that microphone. Yeah. The sound of your own and the amount of fart noises that they make is astronomical. But that's okay because eventually they actually do say something and they get better at it. They grow on it. they grow and they get a lot more confidence and we bumped it up to 46% of the school and then from there I bumped it up to 50. So every year students are progressing. I'm not you know not going into a lot of detail there but it's uh there I see a lot of positive results from that and that's Do you have any questions? Yes. How many hours of their day are they spent with you just specifically working on like the phonics and the only the the newcomers are in my
077classroom right now for the first uh semester I have intermediate so that a lot of the alals in there and then uh that is also me assessing how they're going to be doing and where they should be in their classrooms and that kind of stuff and then they I send them out for a second semester. they they don't I mean I take the place in an elective so it's really nice to get them out so they can be an elective and then um Becca Becca Roodie she's the one that works with them in class and she does a lot she she all day working with these kids and developing amazing relationships with them it's really really so a majority of their day is in class yeah so I have new newcomers and beginners in the
078home And then I have uh every other day I have them in in more a more intense class and then at the end of the day in seventh period when they are exhausted they are all kids are exhausted but they've been doing it in another language. So they're super exhausted um but they do let me get in there and get some teaching in there. So that it I really appreciate it when they focus. So and so I'm a book end and then sometimes in the middle of the day and I push into their classes. I seem to remember years ago about academic language taking upwards of seven years. Oh, is that still okay? So but we has a OSBI is saying four years and and that's they say you know they say a lot of
079stuff. Um, the reality is some kids can I've already I have a newcomer and he is already an ELA. I pushed him out because he didn't need me. He does need me for home room and moral support and the learn the adab boys he needs but academically he doesn't need. And I've seen the reverse of this at LC with their immersion program. I have two nieces and nephews in that and it's fascinating how they can speak Spanish fluently and they're this big. Yeah. Yeah. Uh immersion programs are very very very effective. Um I'm from Canada and my nephew did the immersion programs. They're really effective. But uh well we also don't have just one language. We also don't have Spanish. We also have Punjabi, we have Arabic, we have uh Mong, we have Chinese, we
080have there are a lot of other languages going on there. So, as much as I appreciate that, I think it's really narrowing. And this way, we get all of these cultures in one classroom and there that that's not easy. That washes like crazy. So, but that's a way better way of preparing a kid for the rest of their life than being in a a room where everybody is the same. Thank you. Thanks. Hello, I'm Olivia Engles. I am the reading specialist. I have a whole class reading intervention here at the middle school and then um in the afternoons I head on over to the high school where I do reading intervention over there as well. So reading intervention is tier three. This is when kids just aren't learning to read. They're not getting it and
081they're this far. We're in middle school now and we're still not decoding solidly. We're not comprehending solidly. they come to me. So, um I provide targeted instruction that slowly but surely brings them up to grade level reading. That's that's the goal. Anyways, so reading is it's a whole bunch of things. Just it's not just one thing, right? I like Scarboro's reading rope because it really lays it out um just what all goes into reading because you have your actually the first grade team did a really nice job kind of setting me up talking about decoding and encoding print concepts because that's where we start right those foundational skills and then we have to build on that we have to go to vocabulary to language structures and syntax um word recognition that site words and stuff
082like Right. Um, so my students here when they get to me usually based on recommendations from fifth grade teachers I'll partner with and get or Jen Anderson who was here earlier like who are you working with at the elementary school? Who do I need to see here? Let's look at I Ready data. Um, if you are more than one grade level behind, then I'm going to do further assessments to kind of see where you're at and see if you're a good fit for my class. Right. So, um that's kind of what we look at. Uh right now it's structured. I have a sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade class. I also take the spot like Judith of an elective. So, I just see my students twice a week. And the kind of stuff that
083we work on is phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and cognition depending on what they need. Um I kind of added to each piece. So in phonics we have decoding blending the automaticity which is like the word recognition fluency that's what they were the first grade team was talking about the rate in which they read. So we do a lot of fluency practice um the automaticity expression like the proity like how we read because we you know we want to get to the point where you know you ever listen to somebody read a book and do you want to listen to them going today is Sunday it is a great day right like we want to read with expression we want to we want to feel the emotions behind the words right so that's also what we work
084on which is to them extremely embarrassing but it's really important to get to that point. Um, and then we work on vocabulary, parts of speech, aixes, context, clude, root words, all that kind of stuff. And then the comprehension, uh, background knowledge. There's a lot that goes into it. Um, what it actually looks like for students, like what do students actually do? This is the tricky part. So imagine being a middle school student and you are very aware of yourself not really being able to read and being called on in class and ELA or social studies or whatever and you're terrified because everyone's reading out loud and you don't want to do that. We spent a lot of time in the beginning of the year just building connections and building a community because they have to
085be so vulnerable with me and with each other because they're like at the elementary school. They're used to the model where they are getting pulled out of class and they've got three or four students who are like them who are still learning how to read and it's it's safer, right? You're just with one teacher. It's just it's safer here. Now all of a sudden you're in a class with maybe 15 other kids and it's embarrassing. Like sometimes they make me close the blinds or they like don't want to they don't want their friends to know that they're in extended reading. It's there's a stigma around that, right? So we do a lot of just community building. Hey guys, it's okay. Like for whatever reason you're here, there's a million different reasons. Sometimes it's just as
086simple as our brains are not ready to process the information at kindergarten and first grade when we start to learn how to read. And that's okay. We're here now and we're going to work together and we're gonna tackle it. So, we do a lot of just just like, hey guys, we're all in this together. Let's do it. And then as the first grade teacher, I love that the first grade teachers went first because they got to set this kind of up for me. We do a lot of this is called phon mapping. So, um, I got them to the point where now I have this blank phone name mapping sheet on the desk and it's projected on the TV. And once they learn how to do it, so we're trying to sound out words and
087put each sound in these that are called upon boxes. So, they're trying to break down like we're going to hear the sounds of the words, but what's making the a sound in the neighborhood with four letters in one box? That's crazy, right? But that's that's where we're at. Like we're talking vowel teams. We're talking art control vowels. We're like really breaking down the pieces that are go into phonics. Once they learn how to do this, they can't get enough of it. Everyone like at first like nobody wants to raise their hand and volunteer. No one wants to get up and do it. It's what if I get it wrong? You know, it's embarrassing. But um by I want to say like October they're all like fighting for who gets to go up cuz they only
088do five words at a time. They're all scrambling like who gets to go up and do it in front of the class. They do it on my laptop and then they correct each other. They're like, "Oh, wait, wait." And they do the sounds. You're like a or I think I think maybe you're you're missing a box. and they're okay with it because we have spent so much time like that but the students can correct each other and the other students don't feel terrible about themselves right for making mistakes. So that's really really fun to see. Um so yeah we've spent a lot of time doing phonics. We'll do um open and close the six syllable types. we roll into like spelling rules because spelling and writing and coding really is like the other side of
089the reading coin. So you just can't have one without the other. Writing really helps uh solidify the reading piece. And then um we move into comprehension and focus on like the actual explicit reading strategies. We always do a whole class of novel together and it's um the first novel we do together is me reading it to them. so that I can model that fluency piece, the proing piece, the expression and stop every try not to be too annoying, but sometimes it's I am and I'm talking about vocabulary and words and what do words mean? um how does it where else would we see this word out of context? Uh that that kind of thing and really like break it down and then they have to read a book on their by themselves, do all the
090work themselves. And that's where we're at right now. And that's like the scary part. That's they're all freaking out like you got this. You can do it. It's okay. All the books are at their comfortable reading levels. I've held their hand through it. like they got this thing. But um so I use I ready and then I also use the ERA which is what we use at the elementary school as well. So this is kind of the reading levels for the ERA. Sixth grade is purple. Okay. And then fifth grade is orange. Fourth is black. Third is white. Second is red. uh first grade is blue. So this is for a sixth grade class and you can see there are no purples and we have a really big chunky second grade and first grade. A
091lot of my students came in just really low reading levels. By mid year we see that red really shrinking and the white expanding. We have a lot more people moving up to third grade reading level by mid year. And the orange is going up as well. And then this is just last week I finished my assessments and we have a giant chunk of purple which is amazing. That blue has completely disappeared. The second grade is shrinking. A lot more people where we want them to be. Just slowly just slowly climbing. It's it can be slow because I only see them twice a week, right? If and I have to kind of cater to a lot of needs in one class, right? I could have an eighth grade student who's reading at a second grade level
092and I could have eighth grade student that doesn't even need phonics at all and they just need comprehension. So, I kind of have to structure my class where I can meet all of the needs in the class. Um, some students will be in my class for one semester. Some of them will be in for one year. Some will be in my class for all three years of middle school. That's just kind of how it is. Okay. If they still don't get it at the middle school, luckily I follow them to the high school and that's been really great. I just started doing that mid year last year and we have seen some really really good good growth. I've got a ninth grader that I'm really working with because she when I first assessed her at
093the end of last year, she was at a second grade reading level and I just assessed her a week ago and she's all the way up to a board because I'm working oneon-one with her like three days a week and it's been amazing. So, when I'm not pulling students at the high school, then I'm pushing in to ELA classes and I work with all the ELA teachers. most of them. I'm still getting to know them and getting my foot in the door with some of them, but um yeah, I'll either pull out or I'll push in there and tell them that's what I Yeah. So, as a board collectively, we've had concerns about our district reading and math scores and levels. So, can you tell me why you're only seeing the kids twice a week
094if that's like kind of one of our primary concerns? Um, that's how my class is set up. I I take the place of an elective. So, we have like a black day, gold day schedule. Uh, that's not a me question. Okay. Sorry, I was just curious. I was like, well, that's okay. When we look at tiers of instruction or tiers of support, she's the higher higher tier, right? So we still have a lot to do with students when they're with their peers at grade level. So we're also in our ELA department especially is so on top of it. Their tier 2 intervention is amazing. So they use that win time and because I join the ELA PLC's um I'll work pretty closely with the ELA department. So, our teachers will pull students for tier three
095during that win time. And like Miss Michael Br, she does a lot of this comprehension stuff about this comprehension work. Not so much the phonics because that's my department, but she'll she'll do comprehension work with them in tier 2. I appreciate what you're doing. Yeah. Thank you. both guys. Yeah, it seems like hard work, but like how rewarding like be to see like these huge things. I think that's so big. It It is. It's It's amazing. I'm incredibly passionate about what I do. Yeah, this is like my dream job. It is. This is my fourth year here. Fourth? Okay. Yeah. I'm um actually I just signed up yesterday for a training to um for like to specialize in dyslexia as well just to get like a more multi-ensory approach too because it'll help with students
096in my class too who just need like the the hands-on piece with the learning because there's a lot of just neuroscience around the multiensory learning. So I get really excited to just like keep growing and learning. It's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Uh we're moving on to school report. 30 pages. Okay, talking. It'll be quick. I won't go through 30 pages in 30 minutes. Um, some of it will flash by, so stick with me here, Steve. Thank you. Um, good evening board. Thank you for having me today. Um, super excited to talk about our school report. um in a in a similar format to last year, I really like to take advantage of the opportunity because it's an opportunity to celebrate a lot of the hard work of every single person in the school.
097Uh whether it's par educators, whether it's teachers or you know students themselves, they work really hard and I think there's a lot to celebrate. Um and also in this I always like to really think about uh engineers without borders. They have this thing they call the failure report which is an opportunity to talk about mistakes and learn from those. And so by the end of the session, you'll hear the things that we're excited about and the things that that we like need to learn from, right? I think that's really important for our own accountability. Um, we're always going to go through the the kind of frame of our strategic plan and the commitments that we make to to kids and families. So on the side, you'll see just belonging, learning, wellness, and I'll highlight different
098elements and where I see that come true in the report today. Um, and the other kind of I like to speak in metaphors and stories. Um, and so I'm going to borrow something from both Jim Collins and Ste Steve CVY. They talk a lot about big rocks, right? And I think what you'll see in this report is we're putting some big rocks into place when it comes to our curriculum and some of our efforts. And we're super excited to say that a lot of the big rocks are in place. And as we move forward into next year, now we start to put those little rocks and sand in, right? And start to kind of refine as we think about our our big goals and things that we're we're doing our school. So last year we
099talked about the ways that we measure our success and some of the things we implemented. So we look at the CE survey which is a perceptual attitudinal survey where we look at how students are feeling, families are feeling and staff are feeling about you know their experience and their kids' experience in school. Um, we also last year talked about the writing rubric that we aligned and you saw PLC presentations all year long about writing and then this year you saw a lot of PLC presentations about math and alignment around math and the formative assessment data there. So I won't go too into detail but big picture you start to see this foundational literacy approach and implementation last year, the math implementation this year. Um, and next year we're going to do a deep dive into
100reading comprehension. Um, and specifically, we always have this goal of we want 115% median growth in both reading and and math when it comes to our IE assessments. And we also want our students achieving a typical or higher score on DESA, which is SEAL score. So that's, you know, a list of things like a student says like, I feel I can be successful or I can get frustrated and like kind of regulate and use my words. And so 95 to, you know, percent of our kids are pretty good with that stuff. And so we want to make sure that we're hitting that mark almost every year. Um so what I'll do is we'll kind of dive into like how are people feeling because how people you know how folks feel matters a lot. Um and
101there's a lot of parts of our CE longitudinal data that we're really proud of. Um and so what do we first start thinking about? We start thinking about our kids experience. So the fourth and fifth graders sit down and they take this survey. Uh and it's a bunch of different questions like I feel like there's an adult who cares about me. I feel like my teacher explains the why behind every lesson. Um I feel like at the school kids treat each other fairly and school addresses bullying. And so what you'll see in this diagram is that these are the percentages of students that agree or almost it's either it's almost always agree or agree, not the percentage that somewhat agree, right? And so there's kind of five categories. There's almost always agree, there's agree, there's
102somewhat agree, there's disagree, and strongly disagree. And so when you see numbers like 80%, that's 80% of students felt always almost always or always, right? Really strong kind of the top two. Um, and over the last three years, we've seen a huge kind of just increase in how kids feel about their future orientation, about their belonging, about their own ability to self-manage, their perseverance and stamina, self-efficacy, critical thinking, and collaboration, interpersonal skills. So that self-concept is really developing in a really positive way. And so to give you an idea of perspective, if you look at this graph, basically the dots and the lines are where we're at and the stars that are orange below are the national averages. So that tells you that that's where our students are feeling in terms of all those categories
103compared to other kids across the country. So that's really really awesome to see. I like that. I like that. That's really cool data. Yes. Very very cool. C survey is great. Um and what this looks like is stuff like this. So you'll see like the rules against bullying are enforced by all adults in the school. You see that the the three-year trend line right 2023 to 2024 to 25 going from 66 to 63 to 81%. I feel safe at the school which is a very important question 60 56 to 77 and then students are this I'm really proud of the growth and there's still a lot of meat left on the bones here in terms of getting better. Um but going from students are respectful of others at this school 22% 19% 51 51% right
104a big jump so still a lot left I'm not happy until these are 100 right and I still want to make sure that we're celebrating the growth pour that in it's awesome yeah very very excited about that same thing with families so you see that three-year trend line too and and they answer very similar questions like I feel that the school addresses bullying or I feel that the school is you know thoughtful about my kids future. Like lots of very specific questions in that way. And you see the trend lines in very similar domains. Collaboration, communication, clear and shared focus, high standards and expectations, effective leadership, supportive learning environment, parent and community involvement, and then modering of teaching and learning. So that three-year trend line going up at all categories and really really excited to
105reach 80% in those. And I also remind you that those 80% scores are domains of a lot of questions, right? So it's not just one or two questions to list about six to 15. Yeah. What was your percentage of participation at some? Good question. So those numbers have been consistent for the last three years. So it's about 60 staff members take it about 150 125 somewhere depends on the year parents take it. Okay. Families. And then we have about almost 200 students take it. So maybe more than 200 about 220 this year. And it's in their home language. Yeah. That's translated. You know, like you said, we're just tracking like the top two responses. Like what percentage of the responses are below that that were I'll show a little bit of a longitudinal like I
106wanted to show like a couple example questions that saw some good growth and I'll show some ones that I'm not pleased with as well. Right. But yeah, we we'll So here's an example from a family version of clear and shared focus. But this is our lowest category. Okay. So uh this was echo behavior rules for all students. the schoolwork my student is assigned is relevant to their future. I'm informed about progress toward the improvement goals of the school and my student understands the purpose of each lesson. And so this was our lowest scoring area on average I believe focus but it still showed existing positive growth. Yeah, super excited about that. Um I think I got this one right at the school's doing a good job of preparing my students for successful future. When I
107think about thriving, which we talk about with our commitments and our strategic plan, this is a really important question because that's what we're here for, right? It's not just for the 12, 13, 14, you know, maybe 15 and beling. We want our kids to be successful when we're no longer around, right? And I think about this question a lot of going from 66 to 86% about how how families are feeling their kids' future, what they're going through. remind me how long has the the focus and the um strategic plan been in place? It feels like forever, but I know it's not. It's not been forever. So, it was three years ago we started the process. So, it's two years and you know we have but I I like that now that we're actually committed. It's
108in writing and we're focused. We're seeing consistent improvement. Yeah. I think it's been a a northstar for how we act and how we think about kids experience. And I think we're having some great alignment across all three schools in our ideas. Um, and I four schools, I call it, four schools. Um, and I think I think that that's helping us, right? And I think a lot of this success is just all of our work as a community of coming together, right, and talking about this. So really really excited. So this is the part where I talk about what are staff thinking. So what you notice is we didn't see the same improvement with staff, right? We saw some places plateau or it stayed about the same plus or minus a couple percentage points or some
109places dip. And so we actually just put this out to the staff. We said what's going on here? Like our students experiences threw them through the roof, right? Our family's perspective and experience. What's going on? And then our staff like we kind of hit a we went up from 23 to 24 and then 2025 plateaued or went down a little bit in some areas. So we had lots of questions and we started talking about that as a staff. Um and I've come to you before talking about the I they gap right and over the last three years at our school we've seen this closing of the I they gap and that is um basically shortly when I answer a question about myself like I'm willing to change for the better of the school people tend
110to say yes I'm willing to change but when you start taking survey questions about my colleagues are willing to change there tends to be a gap there natural it's a natural psychological ph phenomenon related to the Dunning cougar effect which is if I'm going to show up late to work, I'm going to blame it on my kids not getting ready in the morning, the stop lights, and the person who's driving the truck in front of me or whatever it is. But then sometimes with our colleagues, when someone shows up late to work, we go, "Oh, they they don't they're lazy or they don't care, you know, it's not as important to them, right? We kind of attribute different feelings." And so really high performing schools close that gap. It's a natural gap, but we started
111seeing the closure of that over the last three years where 30% went down to 20 and one of them was down to about 10%. And then SE opened up again. And as we started talking to staff members and asking questions, part of it is the conversations we're having are more more challenging, right? So when we think about the PLC model that you're seeing in front of us, I think you've seen the presentations and the change over three years of what they look like, the sophistication, the content that they're talking about. When we sit PLC and we talk about gradebooks and field trips, those are pretty easy conversations. When I look at data and I say, "These 10 kids really need support. How are we going to do it?" Passion starts to come out, right? And
112so when you think of high performing sports teams, people that make it to the top and go to the championship, there's conflict along the way, right? And so I think that's what you started to see and we started talking about it. And so therefore, the time and place that we were in now is we need to talk about how to have productive conflict, right? And I always say conflict is two people in the same county. And so we need to learn how to do that because when we have conflict, better ideas turn out for kids. And and I think we see that in some of our most effective teams. So we put this in front of staff and we said gosh look at all that growth with students in some domains we had a 30%
113increase like for behavior standards we had a 30% increase for students nearly 28.7 uh% increase celebrating student success families felt positive um all of these things were going up and really the only places that we went up for staff was in confronting bias and our intervention for struggling students and so we said why is this happening and you know talk about So, we talked about solving problems of resolving conflict and we just said it's like having spinach in your teeth when you got spinach in your teeth and someone comes up to you and says, "Hey, Steve, you got spinach in your teeth?" Instead of getting upset about it, go, "Oh, thank you." Right? And now it'll look going around looking like, you know, a guy with spinach in his teeth, right? It's embarrassing. And so,
114we talked about feedback as a gift, right? And the person who gives the gift and giving the feedback and also how you receive it and how you should feel. And so we talked about it's very important to say things like, "Hey, when you disrupt your colleague about this, I know you're passionate about it." It just it it turns their voices off in the meeting. Right. So we need to increase the frequency of having those productive conflict conversations. Can I? Yeah. Go ahead. When you got the responses back from the staff and we've seen progress, you said the upward trajectory and then we've had some dips. Has that been any kind of alignment with continued growth of that building? Are you seeing so the the dip? So we we saw the student population continues to grow.
115Oh, sorry. You seeing the student population grow and the satisfaction of the staff decline? No. No. Because we had a lot of growth between uh 23 and 24. So when my first year as a principal was three years ago, now we are about 700 students and we're 82 right in the last three years. So we're growing. Um and we saw growth in staff, family, you know, student satisfaction in many ways as a school continues to grow. Um I I I really think listening to the staff and seeing what's happening and also I think the evidence is what you see here at the board meets. I think that the conversations we're having is now people are raising expectations in PLC, right? And so what happens if we're in a room with higher expectations, right? We're going
116to have disagreements and and and those disagreements are important, right? And so now it's just learning how to do it. We talked about, hey, you know, when's the time to give folks feedback? And the time to do that is if it's keeping you up at night, right? If it lasts with you one more day. Um, and we made a joke is if you sit down in a survey and you're thinking about somebody, then you probably should have said something, right? And not that we're looking to game survey results because we tell the truth at our school. Um, I think the biggest thing is that we just need to make sure that what we found out in the staff is a lot of people were like, is it me? I want to know. I can't change
117behavior, right? unless you give me an opportunity to look in the mirror. And so that's the conversations that we had. And I think from a as a board member, my concern would be behavior standards and safety. Like totally, oh my gosh. Well, what's interesting is this is uh really I brought this to the attention of staff. You know, this going down on behavior standards, you know, if I look at the data and fewer than 3% of kids have more than six OS, office referrals in the school. 90% of the kids in our school have fewer basically than one one or zero office referrals in the school. And so kind of similar to when colleagues take a survey about each other, they're thinking about that one person, right? And so we talked about a staff is
118maybe we're thinking about that one student, but when you step back and you look back, a huge percentage, a significant overwhelm majority of kids are doing what they're supposed to be doing most of the time, right? And and what we talked about was like look at this students see that in themselves here, right? And I think that I mean huge shout out to Nate Bey with doing the assemblies in third, fourth and fifth grade because this is the fourth and fifth grade students, but just the power of positivity and celebrating the students and kids seeing each other shine and do well has a huge impact, right? And so the thing that we talk about as staff is like I know it can be hard sometimes when you have a tough day and a student's doing
119something but it's important to step back and look back and most of the kids are doing the right thing 99% of the time. Can I ask a clarif we'll get there at the end. Uh so this year big rock Eureka math we got that in place in terms of our academic focus. You saw in you know board meetings every month basically about the results and how they're being used and we are attending to that data pretty quickly. No longer are we waiting just three times a year for the I Ready scores to come in and do something about in which that data gets cold basically after two weeks. We are looking at fresh data every two weeks. how our kids doing on their recent topic assessment, right? On their their end of module assessment and
120then we're using that to drive our tier two groups and basically have tighter feedback loops and responsive loops. The other part that we saw with behavior to get into that as well is you know we started implementing a lot of intensive tier two and tier three plans and our O count our office count went down by 34% this year at this day. So I think that speaks a lot to some of the behavior standards and all that. You see that in the student and family results. Um this is a snapshot of the average uh office referral by month. Right? So in the green you have last year's data and the blue you have this year's data. And what I'll name is this red line across the top is 75th percentile which means that you have
121more OS than 75% of the schools using this PBIS data. So if we hit that red line that's not a good line to hit. Okay. And also this is flatlined right? Every school has a trajectory that goes up and down like this because there's three months that I always say are the hardest are October, March, and May. We'll get into why right now, but it's a cycle every single year. Um, and you see some months where O data is almost half or less than half. And your O data can be the same student multiple times. Yeah. Okay. And I would actually say that a lot of this data is less than it's less than 5%. Yeah. I have that I think I put that graph in here. No, I didn't. So, what we'll do, you
122know, is we'll continue to build on these goals. Every year, we're looking at 115% meeting growth because we always want to close gaps. Um, we have had a school improvement plan for the last three years, three years focusing on the gaps that we see for our multilabel students that are students with IEPs. And so, that's been a big goal. Um, and then what we're doing right now based on those goals is similar to last year. We're projecting about 129% growth, which is awesome. Math is going to be tight. It's 115% right now. We've seen some really good stuff, but um, we don't have our results in for, you know, I Ready because that's next week. So, you'll we'll find out if we met that goal. We're really excited with some of the early results that
123we're seeing from the midyear I Ready is the highest we've had in the last six years um, or five years for I Ready. So, there's some really good early indicators there. But listening over the first year, my entry plan year, and looking at what we've seen, like math is an area that we really need to continue to double down. And I think that's very similar to what you see in schools across the state. Sorry. Um, so next year as we think about moving and building on the successes, um, we're thinking about developing partnerships to with families and students to start getting and looking at the start getting students to reflect on their own growth more and put the work and the reflection on students of setting goals. I know that's a component of the strategic
124plan. So, we'd like to emphasize that. Um, we also are going to be focusing really deeply on reading comprehension strategies. You know, I I teach math in my background and that's kind of been my my baby in my past. And I will also say that teaching really good reading comprehension is incredibly challenging and it takes years to master. Right? The phonics stuff is very much like buy the book, here you go, step one, step two. Math, you can give her curriculum. It's lesson one, lesson two. Reading comprehension is an art form. And so it's going to be a challenging and really fun and really exciting work. Um, and so with that, because those big rocks are in there, we also talked about some of those feelings from staff is because people have been grinding for
125the last three years. New curriculum, new curriculum, new curriculum. So, next year will be the first year that we don't have any new curriculum that we're implementing. And so, our mantra is refine is greater than grind, right? So, how do we continue to put those pieces of sand in, right? Instead of lifting those big rocks, because I think we've been lifting big rocks for a couple years now. Um, and as we close, I want to celebrate a couple things. Um, we have an amazing staff. This one of the most incredible staffs that I've ever worked with and I've worked in different states and different schools across the country. We have exceptional teachers as we've seen the Thrive Awards. Uh, you know, Natalie Heining, uh, as a classroom teacher is incredible. Her classroom is magical. Rebecca
126Kratzig led all the stuff that you're saying with the mask. That's her. And I'm going to quote one of my favorite artists, Lee. He says, "Real G's move in silence like lasagna." And that's Rebecca. Okay. And what I mean by that is that like she is huge part of all the success that you've seen with the math the formative stuff. She built that that program alongside with Dwan Mat. And then Mickey Flity is our librarian and parent and she makes the PTA run. So in partnership with Riley, she does an incredible job of raising a ton of funds to make sure the kids have the most magical experiences. So really excited to support and celebrate them and really appreciate the district and recognizing them. We also have Jordan Walcott who won the Golden Apple Award
127with the Walton County Library System. His partnership there and making sure that books are magical in his classroom that kids love to read. He brings librarians in all the time to talk about checking out books outside of school at the Walom County Library System. And then both Natalie and Angel are also finalists in top five. So five teachers, right? There's five private and five public. Um, and so of the five teachers, Irene rather has two that are finalists for a $5,000 award from Brown and Brown and Lyndon. And um, as we zoom out, I also think it's important to share that we have incredible teachers, incredible people. Um, and everyone gets to celebrate this, which is the banner behind you as well. Um, but we were recognized uh, from the um, state board of education
128and I'm going to kill this acronym here, educational opportunity gap oversight and accountability committee. What do they call it? Gu I don't know like just it's a long mouthful but really what they recognized us for was um in alignment with our school improvement plan we have two areas that we were recognized for for growth in students in one or more racial or ethnic groups and also growth for students in special education. So that means that we are being recognized as one of only 16% of schools in the state of Washington for closing those opportunity achievement gaps. Right? No excuses. Let's make it happen. Right? And I think that's really cool that we're seeing that within our school and being recognized for it. Um, and so as I close, I just want to say I have
129incredible, incredible gratitude for district leaders and the board supporters because all of this is possible because of the systems, the strategic thinking, the foresight and make it happen. So it's the community support with the PLC's. I know it is hard sometimes as a family to have a different schedule on Fridays. that late arriving can really be hard for families and I'm a father of two and different schedules are really hard for us as well and I will tell you that that PLC structure that our district in invested in over the last you know 8 10 years I believe right when we started um is really coming to fruition for realizing the results for kids it's it's the the support from every district member to make it happen whether it's technology whether it's teaching and learning
130a lot of the supports they do have a huge impact um It's our food service workers who, you know, deal out almost 500 plus meals for kids every day to make sure that they're fed, got the nutrition that they can be successful in class. Um, they're also want to shout them out because they got a perfect score, a perfect score um from the health board when they came in and it was when the lead person Renee when she was out. So I think a lot about when we think about principles, one thing that happens, we talk a lot about the difference between transformational leadership and transformative leadership. You're a great leader that if I got scooped up by the aliens that the school would continue to run and I think about that with like Renee.
131So she was out on a day and her team was out without that leader and what happened was they still got a perfect score from the health department. So I think that's impressive. So we just have so many incredible people. Um, families give us feedback so that when we get better, right? Feedback makes us all better. It's the breakfast of champions. And our students at the end of the day need the most recognition because it's their hard work that led to this. So, I just want to share gratitude for everyone that's involved in our school. And I'm ready for questions if you have any. Good job. I'm impressed. It's not me, it's the team. Team's doing great. It starts with great leadership. Thank you. I appreciate it. thinking outside the box and seeing if you
132have vision visionary leadership is remarkable. As much as I'd love to take ownership, uh a lot of that's informed by our staff, right? And you know, there are many people who've given a lot of feedback and and and led in many different parts of our school. So, I really appreciate that and I'd be remiss to not share all that work. But your presentations are outstanding. I mean, they're like like there's a 30 what 30 slide PowerPoint. I was engaged the whole time. Great. Great job. I was worried about it. I appreciate that. Thanks. Don't press a little wink woven in there. Ask everyone. There you go. Keep us engaged. You're doing great. We all really appreciate. Yeah, I really appreciate. On a personal note, I worry about you. You got a lot going on. That's
133a big school. That's a lot of students. with a lot of staff. Thank you guys. There's a lot going on. Yeah. I think I think the um the thing that's been really helpful is the support and distributing the leadership, right? I think you see like different people stepping up in different ways, right? So Mr. Vorbin, I would say you see like Rebecca is doing her admin internships each part of that year. Then 20 2023 2024 was hammered at the middle school. So I think it's just really cool to see this just incredible group of people with a lot of friends that step up for kids. We like to see great teams do great things and stay together. Congratulations. Large part of it is your vision for fun and giving space for that. It's been just
134since you since you've been here, you know. I mean, I remember I mean it was toxic place. People didn't want to be some of them and stuff like that. Since you've been here, I have heard nothing but positive feedback even from the people who are questionable like oh like, oh yeah, he's so great. I'm sure like him. Well, yeah. Well, he gave a chance, you know. So, yeah, nothing but positive. I I do like the comment though too about refined is better than grind and I am excited to see if that has any influence over the surveys and the feedback from the staff because there have been so many moving parts and we live in a small town and lots of people talk. Um, so I think now that you can get some stabilization and
135see growth, I I'm excited to see how that influences feedback and maybe paper surveys in the future. Thank you. Awesome. So thankful you're still here. You're a rock star. Okay. Well, now some fun begins. Um we are going to do the second review and approval of the facilities naming and dedication committee recommendations. Can I please get a motion to receive? Do you need to come up? Right. I think so. I No, no. I just don't know if you want to come up. Well, Mr. Chairman, I would I consider it an honor to make a motion to approve naming the stadium field Bob Ames Field and also to allow preparations immediately for September 27th celebration. Good. I will second. All those in favor I Kennedy I would also not Brian do you have anything to say?
136I just wanted to make sure that um you guys know that uh Bon is here. He's part of the committee. Thank you for coming and thank you for being a part of that committee. It's like it was an honor. It's absolutely I mean, you know, for a lot of us, we're like, this probably should have happened years ago, but we had the policy in place and stuff. We ran things. So, I'm looking forward to I'm looking forward to the 27th. Thank you for this was a very easy one. Yeah, for your time and energy on the committee as well. Yes. Thank you. Round of applause. you at the 27th, right? Wonderful. I almost wore my jersey. Thanks, Brian, for leading in. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Brad. All right. Um, second read and approval. Law
137Europa Academy Agreement. Can I please get a motion to adopt? I will make a motion to adopt um the LA Europa Academy of Dave. Uh I will second. All those in favor? I second approval. Boys and girls club data sharing agreement. I do have one question on that. Just one. Yeah. I want clarifying. It states that it the data will be shared only on the students who are club members and I am assuming to become a club member the parent or guardian would also sign off on receiving a charity bed data. I don't know that they would sign off. The agreement is that if they choose to participate, they're participating in a structure where they'll receive academic support and that requires cooperation and coordination between Boys and Girls Club and Marian School District. So the
138product of them being involved in the programming is that they'll receive that support. That only happens when we share information back and forth. So I don't know that each parent would sign off independently but they will know that that is part of the program is that we are sharing the data I figured you didn't have problems with the first sale or the third one. Okay. Can I please get a motion to adopt Boys and Girls Club data sharing agreement? holding a motion to adopt the Boys and Girls Club data sharing agreement. Second, all those in favor. All right. Superintendence report. Sorry. This is the presentation that Brian didn't get to share last time, right? in there. So, sorry, I'm just gonna go through real quick here. So, actually quite a few of the items that
139I have to share have already been shared. So, for those who can score, it won't take perfect. I really appreciate uh Tyler's perspective on the honoring of Irene Ryder. um he does a lot of deflecting to make sure that different people get recognition and I think that um the way he's looking at it big rocks is right uh there was a lot around alignment being able to um think about curriculum and the work that um Adrian's done and just across the system whether we're looking at students you know who receive services training consideration on how all those pieces work together um it's it's excellent recognition And I will not be surprised if we continue to see more for it's uh it's really good the thrive awards. And so as Tyler mentioned, we do get awards
140for people who represent our five commitments. And what's great about these awards is that they're nominated by people in the community, whether it be families or students or colleagues. And so we had our thrive awards and and they've been shared on social media. We've sent out messages on that. So that's always fantastic. As you know, Mr. Toruson has um elected to retire this year. So Mr. Kate is moving from interim principal at the Graian School Middle School to principal next year. And then we have already posted for high school assistant principal. And um I think we close on Tuesday. We already have a number of people that have started the application process. It's it's good. So we'll continue to And will that be a similar format as when Mr. Dawing we all have the opportunity
141to go. So it's a little bit it's a little bit different because it's an assistant role. Kirk, do you want to talk about the parts? I think the one piece that Yeah. So it'll be it'll be basically five stations. So have a student interview, a formal interview, a performance task. Um sometimes if we have capacity we put in a campus law. Um but the community forum I think what you were looking for that we tend to hold off for um for the principles for assistant principles for sorry the community is for the principles and not for the we don't do that we haven't done that in the past for the AP position that has been for the principles get to have a say on it Yes. I'm just curious. So now we're in a situation
142where the assistant principal is now the principal like and so you're talking about the community when they come in and they meet the candidate. That was the principal. I don't think would be super crazy that I mean we'll take a look. They are acting as principal many times in that other principal or in emergency situations like what we've been dealing right now. The cultural fair I talked about it a couple times. Good turnout. um lots of activities, great feedback from families that that attended. So um this was the the first one at the high school and also had students from elementary to come in and participate as well. So that was a good events. I attended the superintendent conference and co- led a presentation from AASA on the public education promise that has five principles
143trying to look at public education and the um the aspect really interesting on a national level when you ask about public education serving 51 million students what's the perception and there often times public education in America struggle you're not doing well and then when you ask how's your local school system, people are really excited about their local school system. So, it's this idea of national to local and so looking at language and having a program of being able to promote public education in a manner that is across the spectrum. So, there's five principles. This was a a program developed. It was a charge from 2021. It's called learning 2025 to create and restructure the perception of public education. So the five principles uh prioritize student learning the new basics real skills for real people or
144real life excuse me not real people um attract hire retain and reward best employees build highly engaged family and community partnerships and measure what matters. So a lot of things that are in alignment with things that we're already working on. Um, so it's super exciting and being able to have conversations with other leaders across the state to talk about how you could leverage these principles to help address conflict or issues or concerns in their own communities. So, um, that was a good experience to to share that conversation. That's it. That's what I have. And then we've got um a couple of events that we typically have or concerts at the end of the year, couple more schoolboard meetings, and then for your calendars, June June 5th is um graduation. So 6 PM we'll gather and
145then over 6:30 and um you'll be there. And then last day school is June 12th. So, we do have a new a new retreat date of the 16th. Do we have any information from our student board representative? Um, a little bit. I think I'm not sure if I we had a board meeting in tournament, but we did have a districtwide like two years ago. I had I had to leave for a match. So once Logan spot, she can touch more on it, but we talked about wellness and there was a good start to discussion and she said it was good as well. Then we had a high school advisor meeting today and we did go over the assistant principal interview and like some questions for the student as well as we did a share your
146voice which is just like an open-ended feedback to student advisory that will hold for next year. So I'll give that to him. So good positive things that people want to see. So that was that's awesome. Did you guys recruited for student advisory or what does that look like next year? So, we're going through we're going to start the process earlier because last year we started in the fall. So, that means like we really start in October. So, we're going to do it now and then we have the eighth graders coming up for a tour. So, telling them that in the summer will be better as well as getting applications out um this month or next month. And then people who are in it this year just have the opportunity to like automatically join but then
147newcomers just do the same application. This is like three questions. Districts for golf. Oh yesterday champions right? Yes. Boys and girls and Wednesday stay then is that we leave on Sunday. on Sunday. Okay. Wow. And where's it at? Spokan at Lake. So, we're taking three girls and then So, yeah, boys, we got first, second, and third. Then girls, we got first, second, and third. So, we're taking three and then boys are taking four cuz they since more boys participate in golf, they get to pick seven where we only get to pick like top five. So, it qualifies three girls. That's awesome. Nice time. Pretty solid. Yeah, it's awesome. Very cool. Okay. Is there any information from board directors? No. Okay. Well, we can uh sign